Author Archive for Staks

Guilty Pleasure

Published
by
Staks
on May 22, 2012
.

For me, have to admit that it is a guilty pleasure to argue with fundamentalist religious believers in situations when I probably shouldn’t. I try to be good and not to start the discussion, but I admit that sometimes I will passive/aggressively get them to start the discussion. Sometimes however, I try to be good and to not do that either.

Let me give an example: I was at a wedding over the weekend and I knew that someone there was very religious. It was very tempting for me to start a religious discussion. But I knew that this was not the time or the place for such a discussion and that such a discussion would distract from the event. But I still have to admit that the desire for such a discussion was definitely there.

It really isn’t hard to get such conversations started because usually the fundamentalist religious believers will don’t feel the guilt and so they start these conversations without me even having to passive/aggressively nudge them in that direction.

I feel the guilt. I know that I shouldn’t pick a fight with these believers in certain settings. I also feel guilty because I know I know more than they do and that they are ill-equipped to defend their ridiculous beliefs. It is sort of like me being a bully in a sense and that is why I feel so bad when I get into those conversations in those settings with those people.

But it is so much fun. They are just so cocky and so ignorant of reality… not to mention so ignorant of their own Bible and the history of their religion. Not in all cases mind you, but usually. I try to be good and not get into those discussions in those types of settings. Sometimes (like this weekend) I am successful. Other times, not so much. ];-)

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

I Do Weddings

Published
by
Staks
on May 21, 2012
.

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to officiate my first wedding. Two of my friends over at PolySkeptic got married and had asked me to conduct the wedding.

While there was serious talk about me officiating wearing Jedi robes, we all thought better of that. Sure it would have been fun and funny, but I think in this case it would have been too much. I did write a speech that had a little humor in it, but I wanted it to also strike the right tone of seriousness, wisdom, and a touch of tradition.

While in college, I was ordained via the internet to the Universal Life Church with a friend. This technically grants me the right to perform weddings. However, I had also been considering becoming a Humanist Celebrant through the American Humanist Association. But for the purpose of this weekend’s wedding, the couple got paperwork to do a “self-uniting” ceremony which would allow for anyone to marry them as long as there were witnesses willing to sign the paperwork.

Everything went well and I am happy to report a successful ceremony. Congratulations again to my friends Shaun and Ginny and a special thank you to them for giving me the opportunity to officiate.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Teaching an Old Dog a New Trick

Published
by
Staks
on May 16, 2012
.

I had a pretty interesting conversation at Arby’s yesterday. I was waiting for my food next to an old guy who was probably around 80. He had ordered a couple of shakes to take home for him and his wife. He was telling me that his wife likes the Jamocha shake, but he likes the black and white shake. He then joked about not being racist because of the black and white shake. Not all that funny, but he was an old man and I got where he was going with it. But then things turned interesting. He said almost out of nowhere that he’s not about the gay marriage though.

So I decided to have “that conversation” but to do it in a light hearted way. I asked him with a smile on my face, “Why not? It’s no big deal.” Before he could answer I continued, “Who cares, they deserve to be happy too, right?”

He kept my light hearted tone and say that the Bible says no to gay marriage. Clearly he really doesn’t know what the Bible actually says on the matter and I could have quoted verses to him. I could have also pointed out the Bible’s support for slavery, genocide, etc. But I still wanted to keep the conversation non-confrontational.

I continued in my light hearted tone, “The Bible is wrong. It was written a long time ago by people who didn’t know how the world really worked.” I then said something about society learning and progressing.

The old man actually seemed to agree with me on that. He said in an obviously defeated tone that he supports all the rights for gay people, but he just doesn’t think it should be called marriage.

I just laughed it off and told him that that sounded like semantics and that I have friends who were gay married and their relationships are fine. I continued in my jovial tone and told him that it doesn’t really matter what you call it, it still is marriage, so we might as well just say so.

He nodded in agreement and oddly enough that was when our orders were ready. I held the door for him on the way out and he told me that the other day a woman held the door for him too. He told me that she said that she didn’t hold it for him because he was old, but because she thought he was cute. I told him that I didn’t swing that way and that I just hold the door for everyone.

He chuckled and we went our separate ways. I actually think I changed his mind on the subject right there on the spot and that doesn’t happen very often. And they say you can’t teach old people new tricks.

Enhanced by Zemanta

If We Don’t, Who Will?

Published
by
Staks
on May 15, 2012
.

Religious believers often try to defend the ridiculousness of God’s commands in the Bible by asking me, “Who are you to question God?” Who am I indeed? I think the question I would like them to answer is, “If we don’t question God, who will?”

Now of course God is fictional and so it really doesn’t matter. However, I think atheists have been trying to convince religious believers of this reality for a long time and that a different tactic might just be to inspire religious believers to rebel against their God. When their God doesn’t come around to smite them, then they will stop believing that their deity exists.

With that said, many atheists often refer to God as a tyrant and this question about accountability proves it. Just as religious believers claim that we must be accountable to God, we have to claim that their God must also be accountable to us. After all, only tyrants believe they are unaccountable.

This brings us into a full conversation on morality in which religious believers will no doubt ask about our moral grounding. We can of course turn this around and ask about God’s moral grounding. If God’s moral grounding comes down simply to God’s whim, than all things are permissible and morality is meaningless.

Enter the “God is perfect” argument and all we have to do is point out that we only have his word on that and his actions according to the Bible seem to contradict that word. We can then either point out our favorite atrocity from the Old Testament or even some of the “metaphors” that Jesus uses that seem particularly violent from the New Testament. Of course the whole concept of Hell (which comes from the New Testament) is also evidence that God is certainly not perfect. Even our justice system as flawed as it is, allows for people to be redeemed rather than sentencing everyone to eternal torture.

But the point here is that religious believers need to hold their deity accountable. If they don’t, who will?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Expanding a Love of Science to the Mainstream

Published
by
Staks
on May 11, 2012
.

We atheists think of celebrities, the names that come to mind are people like Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and other prominent scientists. To us, science is cool and scientists are awesome! Unfortunately, the mainstream doesn’t share our view and that is very unfortunate.

That being the case, I want to try a thought experiment. I saw this view on YouTube yesterday by melodysheep called “We Are Stardust.” The video is a synthesized song using the words of a few prominent scientists. To me honest, I thought they should have used more scientists or just stuck with one. But that’s another discussion:

I want people to pick one or two friends or family members who are not involved in the greater community of reason and who might not even be atheists. The friends in question have to be mainstream, not fundamentalists. Then, show them this video, get their reaction, and then report back.

I want to know if they have heard of any of the people featured in the video, what they thought of the song, the message of the song, and then maybe what they think of science in general. Were they inspired by the song or bored by it?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Obama Evolved!

Published
by
Staks
on May 10, 2012
.

I am willing to admit that I was wrong. People told me that President Obama was just waiting until his second term before he openly supports same-gender marriage and I laughed. I didn’t think he would support it until after he was out of office when there wasn’t anything he could actually do about it. I was wrong and to President Obama, I’m sorry.

With that said, let’s face facts. He wouldn’t have done it at all if Vice President Joe Biden didn’t come out with his statement on Sunday’s Meet The Press. Right afterward, David Axelrod issued a statement claiming that Biden wasn’t really for gay marriage and that his position was the same as the President’s position. But that didn’t hold any water and everyone knew it. So the President felt he had to come out in support of gay marriage.

I am really glad he did. I have been complaining about Obama’s “evolving” position for a long time. But I am concerned with his couching this with, “I personally believe” and then falling back on the “states can do what they want” approach. I would prefer that he would “evolve” toward a federal amendment on this issue. But if he is going to fall back on the states thing, he can at least promise that he will personally campaign on this issue state-by-state.

The thing is that Republicans have been using gay marriage as a wedge issue for a long time. Now, the numbers favor gay marriage (60%). So maybe Obama should be out there using it as a wedge issue. Conservatives have gay family members too and this is an issue that many Republicans have realized or in the process of realizing that they are going to lose if they stand against the tide of history.

Now that Obama has “evolved” on gay marriage, it is time to push him to evolve on greater support for the atheist community too. He can start by stopping with the “God bless America” bit that almost all politicians use. We get it, he’s a Christian. But he doesn’t have to push it on us. So now is the time to put the pressure on him more on promoting gay marriage state-by-state across the nation and on atheist and secular issues too.

Oh, I guess we need a lobbying organization for that. If only people weren’t calling to de-fund our lobbying organization…

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Herding Cats Indeed

Published
by
Staks
on May 9, 2012
.

The Secular Coalition for America hired a new Executive Director who is a Republican. That means that she voted for Republicans and she worked for Republicans. Yet for some reason people are shocked that she gave money to Rick Perry and worked for Trent Lott. Atheism is not a religion and yet even the religious have strong divides when it comes to political parties.

Let’s look at the Catholic Church for a moment. In that religion, whatever the Pope says goes and yet there are some very Right Wing Republican Catholics and some very Left Wing Democrat Catholics. Paul Ryan is a Catholic and John F. Kennedy was a Catholic. So if it is this hard to herd Catholics who are supposed to do what the Pope tells them to, why should it be any easier for atheists considering we aren’t even a religion.

Oddly enough though, most atheists agree on most issues despite our lack of a Pope. But we aren’t going to agree on everything. Edwina Rogers is a Republican and so it is pretty likely that most atheists will have disagreements with her on various issues. But when it comes to secular values, she claims to agree with us 100% and the board of the Secular Coalition for America agrees.

As a movement, we are going to have internal disputes, but at the end of the day we need to work together. This means we sometimes have to put our person opinions aside and work with people we disagree with to get our common goals achieved. We don’t have to play nice and she can still call bullshit where we see bullshit. But just because someone is full of shit on one or more issues doesn’t mean we can’t work with them on other issues. You can read my defense of Edwina Rogers and the SCA HERE.

There is also some internal drama going on with the National Atheist Party. They just fired their VP of Administration. I’m not sure what the drama there is yet, but it is drama we don’t need.

Atheists tend to be very opinionated and we get passionate about our opinions. But we have to remember that at the end of the day, we are all on the same side. We all want to support secular values and all want a more secular nation.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

What’s The Point of an Argument?

Published
by
Staks
on May 8, 2012
.

In my experience, there really are two goals that people argue for when they argue about issues and depending on which one of these goals or reasons people use will shape the argument dramatically. Sometimes an argument is just not worth having or is not worth having with the person one is having it with. It all depends on the reason or goal of why someone is in the argument in the first place.

The first goal of an argument is that the person wants to win the argument. They don’t care what you say, they just care about winning. So they will say anything. They will misrepresent your position, they will appeal to authority, they will get overly emotional, and they will do whatever it takes to win the argument. Notoriously, these people will be the first to suggest that they know they won’t be able to change your mind on an issue because they are projecting their own mindset into you.

Arguing with these people is often a waste of time. Sometimes however, you can get past their stubbornness and get them to actually care about learning something. But this is difficult because their goal isn’t to learn, it is just to win.

That brings me to the second goal of an argument and that would be to advance one’s knowledge. One puts out an opinion and someone else challenges that opinion. But the goal isn’t to win and to hold your opinion; it is to try to see where the other person is coming from and to maybe change your opinion if one is presented with a valid argument or some credible evidence.

This goes beyond just a willingness to change one’s opinion; it is desire to genuinely understand where the other person is coming from. It means that you don’t just take what they say at face value, but that you also try to understand the meaning behind their words.

Let me use an example. Recently, Sam Harris wrote a blog post about profiling and in that post he was advocating that we profile Muslims and anyone who looks like they could conceivably be a Muslim. Some people too this to mean that we can only determine what a Muslim looks like by a glance. In other words, they take Harris’s words at face value without trying to genuinely understand what he might have meant.

Even after Harris clarified what he meant in his addendum, people still clung to the idea that “looks like” means very superficial characteristics like skin color. I didn’t have to wait for the addendum to figure out that Harris meant all kinds of other traits including behavior when he said “looks like.”

While I have been pretty vocal against profiling, I don’t want to get into that argument here. My point here is to talk about arguing itself. When we argue an issue like this, what is our goal? Is it to win the argument and be proven correct? Or is it to genuinely understand where the other person is coming from and be open to changing our opinion if that is where the argument goes? We should give the person we are arguing with the benefit of the doubt. If they say something that seems out of character for them or that is pretty absurd on the surface, we should ask for clarification and/or we truly understand what their position actually is. This is how we have a reasonable conversation.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

The Avengers and Atheism

Published
by
Staks
on May 7, 2012
.

If you are a geek like me, then you went to see Marvel’s The Avengers this weekend. It was a fucking awesome film. But what does it tell us about religion and what interesting things should atheists take away from the film?

On the surface, there are two references to gods. The first was when Captain America was about to get in the middle of a fight between Thor and Loki. Black Widow warned him that they were “like Gods.” The Captain responded by saying that there is only one God and that he doesn’t dress like that.

Christians may look at this and say, “See, Captain America believes in God!” I look at it and say, “See, Captain America believes in God. This is how far we have come since WWII, the idea that there is a God is ‘old fashioned.’ Captain America doesn’t know who Stephen Hawking is and that is why he still believes in ancient superstitions. How quaint.”

The second reference to god in the movie is when Hulk picks up Loki and smashes him against the ground repeatedly. As he pulverizes Loki, he exclaims, “Puny god!” This of course is what all atheists do. We pick up the concept of god and smash it against the ground with reasoned arguments… repeatedly. ;-)

But what else is there to learn from this movie? We can learn a lot actually. While the movie starts off with our heroes already being heroes, there is a moment in the movie where they really own up to being heroes. This is a journey we all can take and it doesn’t require a god. To be heroes, we don’t need to be a god like Thor, have super strength like Captain America, or be zapped with gamma radiation like the Hulk. Half the heroes in the movie are people with no super powers at all! More than half if you count Nick Fury, Agent Hill, and Agent Colson. Plus, Pepper Potts has no power and she contributed at least 12 percent to the team.

There is also a great deal of pro-science in the film and even a scene where Tony chastises the other heroes for not reading up on the latest science. Science itself is responsible for three of the heroes: Iron Man, Captain America, and the Hulk. Okay, the Hulk was a mistake of science, but there is still a scene where Tony puts a positive spin on that to Bruce Banner.

At the end of the day, The Avengers is about people helping other people. It isn’t about praying for some deity to perform miracles.

Enhanced by Zemanta

People Can Change

Published
by
Staks
on May 4, 2012
.

There are two ways I can go with this blog. First, religious believers often tell me that they know that nothing they say will convert me to their religion of choice and that they know that I have already made up my mind. Second, it bothers me when people take something I said years ago and seem to think that I still hold those views without considering the possibility that my views have changed as I have learned new stuff.

I think I have already addressed the first point in other blog posts, but it is the second point which I think is important and relevant. People can change. Most atheists are living proof. How many atheists in our community started out as religious? How many were once even fundamentalists? How many were fundamentalists who at one point in their life asserted that they would never lose their faith in God?

I believe in the power to change people’s minds with new information and evidence. As a result, I try not to judge people too harshly because I am hopeful they can change. This goes for Bill Maher on the issue of vaccinations, Sam Harris on the issue of profiling and it goes for Edwina Rogers on issues of politics. This belief in the power of people to change (based on evidence and observation) motivates every conversation I have with the religious.

It also applies to me. I can change my opinion on an issue too and have done so in the past. It would be arrogant and naïve to assume that all my present opinions and beliefs are the right ones and that they will never change. If you think I am wrong about something, present evidence and new information and try to change my opinion.

Change isn’t easy, but it does happen. As Humanist, I believe in people. Sometimes I think our greater community of reason has lost sight of that. We get so wrapped up in “take downs” that we lose sight of our empathy and compassion. We get so wrapped up with winning an argument, that we lose sight of our real goal of expanded knowledge. We focus so much on trying to change other people’s opinions that we forget to open ourselves up to the possibility that our opinions and beliefs can change too.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

The National Day of What?

Published
by
Staks
on May 3, 2012
.

Let me get this straight, today is the National Day of Prayer and all Americans are encouraged to ask some magical sky daddy to save the country because our politicians are not up to the task? Okay, where are the adults.

I have a better idea; let’s fire those politicians and start coming up with actual solutions to our nation’s problems. I know that sounds crazy and all, but we gave the whole National Day of Prayer thing a shot for 61 years and it doesn’t look like it’s working. Let’s try a new approach. I call it trying to actually fix out problems ourselves!

It’s very American. We can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and with some hard work, we can change the world. We need to stop asking for handouts from this God guy and start being independent. So instead of praying, maybe we can find some alternative…

Progressive Christians and Hell

Published
by
Staks
on May 2, 2012
.

Whenever I get into a discussion about religion with a progressive Christian the first thing I like to bring up is Hell. It is easy for progressive Christians to speak out against Dick Cheney’s torture program here on Earth, but for some strange reason they are much more hesitant to speak out against God’s eternal torture program in Hell.

Recently, a progressive Christian attempted to give progressive Christianity credit for all that is good and justice in our society. I had to disagree. So the very first thing I asked was about whether progressive Christians believe in Hell. I got two responses and I think they are both interesting.

The first response was that most progressive Christians reject the concept of Hell entirely. I wish that were true, but it has the same ring to it as when Dinesh D’Souza claims that only about 5% of Christians reject the science of evolution. He is just pulling a made up number out of his ass. I don’t think most progressive Christians reject the concept of Hell, just that they prefer not to think about the concept much. To the credit of progressive Christians, they do focus more on this life than they do on the next life. But I question how many truly reject the concept of Hell entirely.

That brings me to the second response which was alone the lines of, “It doesn’t really matter where I think you go when you die, it is really up to God and I’m not judging.” Note that this isn’t an exact quote but it is a pretty accurate summery. This person apparently is part of that tiny small minority of progressive Christians who don’t reject the concept of Hell outright. This I think is actually the more typical progressive Christian view and it is a view I have a serious issue with.

Can you imagine if we showed the same indifference to the Bush/Cheney torture program? For me, the issue is simple. If you believe in Hell, then you most take a stand against God. If you believe that God exists and that Hell exists, then the moral thing to do is to criticize God for torturing anyone for all eternity. You can’t hide behind God’s judgment. Torture is wrong and eternal torture is ridiculously wrong. If God does it or even allows it to happen when he has the power to stop it, then God is immoral, period. Further, if you believe in God and Hell and you don’t take a position against God, then you are also immoral. Think about it!

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

America’s Profiling Problem

Published
by
Staks
on May 1, 2012
.

Sam Harris recently wrote a blog post defending profiling. I, like most other people in the greater community of reason disagree with Harris on this point. There are two main issues that I have with profiling. First is the moral issue. People are more than their profile and it isn’t fair to single people out because of physical traits they had no control over. Second, is the obvious point that profiling just plain doesn’t work. PZ Myers made that case pretty well on his blog.

So if profiling doesn’t work, what would work? Well, I’m not a security expert, but I think aside from watching out for suspicious behavior we also should be doing more in addressing religious fundamentalism. We seem to be fighting the so called, “war on terror” with our hands tied behind out backs. Our government should be actively speaking out against religious fundamentalism. We should be making the case that religion is bunk.

Sure there will probably be political reasons to hijack a plane, but I think it takes religion to get a hijacker to crash a plane into a building ending his or her own life in the process. We live in the information age and yet we are fighting terrorists in the same manner we fought the Nazis. Armies, tanks, and fighter jets aren’t going to cut it. We have to use the power of the internet and social media to show that religion is ridiculous.

But we can’t do that, because we live in a country that is religious. We can’t set out to prove that Allah is imaginary without also proving that Yahweh is imaginary. But if we could show just how ridiculous Islam is, then we wouldn’t have to worry about profiling possible Muslim terrorists… or Christian terrorists. If we could convince the religious that religion is ridiculous and false, then our terrorism problem would all but go away.

Before I end today’s blog, I want to make a point in defense of Sam Harris. While I disagree with him on this issue of profiling, I take issue with people within the greater community of reason who are quick to label him a racist because he supports profiling. I think people throw these kinds of labels around too liberally and in doing so they are watering down the term.

When we look at actual racists, we look for a pattern of behavior. Harris doesn’t want to profile because Muslims are black, he wants to profile because Muslim fundamentalists flew planes into our buildings. While I disagree with Harris on profiling, labeling him a racist is absurd. Any generally reasonable person who does this should really be ashamed of themselves. See my blog post: The Benefit of the Doubt.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Comedy Journalism

Published
by
Staks
on April 30, 2012
.

Over the weekend, journalists across the nation gathered in Washington to attend the yearly White House Correspondence Dinner. Once again, this dinner proves that comedy is the best journalism.

For a long time now, people have been getting fed up with our journalists who have far too often exchanged hard hitting questions to politicians for political access. As a result, our politicians can get away with pretty much anything because no one is going to question them about it or hold them accountable… except late night comedians apparently.

Usually it is Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert who ask the tough questions and that is why neither will likely host the Correspondence dinner every again. This weekend, it was Jimmy Kimmel’s turn to host and he made some great points practically right to the President’s face.

He talked about some of the important social issues like gay marriage, marijuana legalization, guns, and appeasement. Obama is notorious for his position of “evolving” of gay marriage and so Kimmel’s jokes about how all marriage is pretty gay hopefully hit pretty hard. I just wish some of the “journalists” in the audience did their job and followed up with the President on his position.

Sure it is easy to joke about legalizing pot, but the fact is that doing so would seriously fix our prison problem in this country, save lives, and probably help to balance the budget.

But the greatest joke of the night in my opinion is only really funny because it shows the primary problem with the Obama presidency. It is a problem that I have often wondered if Obama was even aware of. So the fact that he had to fake chuckle at the joke is at least an acknowledgement of his awareness. That is at the very least a good first step. Now, we just have to make sure he realizes that we really consider this to be a huge problem that threatens his re-election. In any case, here’s the joke:

“President Obama wanted to move the dinner to the Kennedy Center this year, but the Republicans wanted to keep it here at the Hilton so they compromised and so here we are at the Hilton.” – Jimmy Kimmel

Why can’t our journalists ask Obama about his history of Republican appeasement?

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Hell is a Terroristic Threat

Published
by
Staks
on April 27, 2012
.

I get e-mails, messages, and comments from Christians all the time either telling me flat out or eluding to the belief that I will be tortured for all eternity in Hell. It is more than them just stating a belief however; they are also making the claim (either upfront or covertly) that I should be tortured for all eternity. The purpose of their message is simply. They are trying to invoke terror.

These types of religious believers want atheists to be afraid. They hope to use our fear to force us to accept their claims and their beliefs on insufficient reason. It should also be noted that they want us to embrace their values which are often hateful and immoral.

This is terrorism and we shouldn’t be afraid to call it such just because they are Christians and not Muslims. Don’t get me wrong; most of these threats of eternal torture are empty. Christians make these claims, but most don’t actually intend to do anything about them. Instead, they just leave it up to their invisible enforcer. And since I really don’t believe their enforcer or their place of eternal torture actually exists, I generally don’t find myself in any type of real fear. These are usually empty threats… but they are threats of a terrroristic natural nonetheless.

It should also be pointed out that there are a few crazy fundamentalist Christians out there who not only make these threats, but imagine themselves as God’s enforcers (because we all know that the all-power deity is much too busy to do his own dirty work). There really are people out there who will take it upon themselves to try to “send” you to Hell to be tortured for all eternity.

The fact that these threats are put up on billboards astounds me. While Christians complain about atheist billboards being “offensive,” they are putting up terroristic threats unchallenged and unreported on the news. Atheists have to start holding these Christians fundamentalists accountable for their terroristic threats even if they are not always threats we take seriously.

We have to start pointing out to Christians that when they start talking about Hell, they are issuing a terroristic threat. We have to call attention to this to the general public. We have to make it clear, claims that non-believers will be and ought to be tortured for all eternity is not okay. It is not that it is offensive to us, it is a terroristic threat. It doesn’t fall under Free Speech either. You can’t go around threatening people under the First Amendment.

So when Christians “inform” me about Hell, I ask them whether they believe I should be tortured for all eternity for my lack of belief or whether they think God is immoral? I find that this puts them into a position in which they have to defend the indefensible. At the very least it will get them questioning the morality of their deity.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Labels and Substance

Published
by
Staks
on April 26, 2012
.

Yesterday Hemant Mehta of the Friendly Atheist took issue with comments made by physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in relation to atheism. In a video by BigThink, Tyson attempts to distance himself from atheism. Here’s the video:

While I wouldn’t call myself a “militant atheist” because I don’t own any guns or advocate violence (the way militant Christians and Muslims do), I am a pretty vocal atheist. So much so, that one would be hard pressed to claim that I was soft on religion. But here I have a disagreement with Hemant.

Tyson here is making the same kind of argument that Sam Harris made at the AAI convention a number of years ago. I find this type of argument quite compelling; almost enough to get me to stop using the label altogether… almost.

But at the end of the day, I would rather have people take both approaches. People like me and Hemant who are vocal about our non-belief and who seek to form a community around our atheism and people like Harris and Tyson who don’t want to be lumped in with Stalin every five seconds. I will still label Tyson an atheist because at the end of the day, he still doesn’t believe in any deities any more than I do. But I respect that he doesn’t want to be part of a united front in this culture war, but instead wants to go it alone and who is willing to fight battles on his own terms and without the baggage that the label “atheism” carries.

At the end of the day, the substance of Tyson’s position is the same as my position. So I really don’t care what label he uses. As a point of fact however, Tyson is wrong in his usage of the terms, but I suspect he knows that. His point is that he doesn’t want to be lumped in with people like Dawkins, Hitchens, and ironically Harris (who never really embraced the label either). I’m less concerned about labels and care more that Tyson is out there educating people about science and promoting the values of reason and critical thinking.

Oh, and while I disagree with Hemant Mehta on this, here is evidence that I can be friendly ;-)

Thanks to Joel for taking the photo at the Reason Rally.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta