I love you guys...

I'm not drunk.  Well, maybe very slightly, but I love you all anyway.

This morning I asked a question on Twitter: "Question for atheists; had you been born before we knew anything about reality (say 500 years ago) do you think you'd have been an atheist?"

I've had a lot more answers than I was expecting, which is always lovely in itself, but what's made me really happy is how honest everyone was willing to be about the extent to which their ability to reason and reject religion has been a product of the time in which they're lucky enough to have been born, and the opportunities they've been lucky enough to receive.

The vast majority of people who answered said they think they'd have been theists or deists if they'd been born before we knew so much about the universe as we do now:

I love this, beautiful tweeps - I don't think one could ask for a better rebuttal to the common claim that atheists are arrogant than the fact that so many of us are willing to state that we'd have been believers too had the fortune of our birth been different.

Even the few people who were prepared to say they think they would have been atheists five hundred years ago were for the most part very hesitant about it; there was a lot of hedging going on:

Again, this is great; even when giving the more controversial answer, everyone was completely happy to say that they were only conjecturing, that they couldn't be sure. Again, how far from arrogance could you get?

For myself, I'm going with "not sure", too.  If I had to place a bet on what my own beliefs would have been five hundred years ago, I think I'd have to go with deism.  I'd realised conventional religions were rubbish by the age of eleven or twelve, before I knew any science to speak of, so I'd like to think I'd have got that far.  Then again, ignorant as I was at that age I still knew that the earth went around the sun, that there had been dinosaurs, and that logic mattered... I don't really think it's possible to answer the question with any conviction.

There was one tweet I got in reply to my question that echoed my own thoughts very accurately:

THIS is the other reason all the answers I got to my question made me so happy. I agree with Adrian; the atheist movement has grown unimaginably even in my own lifetime.  More and more people all over the world are rejecting religious superstition, and we're becoming more vocal and more recognised.  This is what science and modern education allow; not everyone gets over their indoctrination, of course, but the point is that so many people now have the opportunity to do so.  Information is freely available to so many of us, and for some people all it takes is an awareness that there is an alternative to religion to pique their interest and make them seek out that information.

This is why I think we need to be sure we're heard.  We don't need to be rude or cruel, but we need to be sure that everyone we can reach knows that there are people in the world who don't have religion at all, that non-belief IS an option and that there is a whole community of people waiting for them should they decide to make the leap.

Why do I do this?

I had lunch today with a customer (yes, I have a job, just one aspect of the actual life I have beyond arguing about religion and geeking it up on science!) who added me on facebook a while back.  I'd forgotten he could see what I talk about on there - or talked about, anyway, I don't really bother with FB any more - and he asked me why I take time I could be using profitably to talk about religion, why I have such a problem with it.

It's a question I get asked all the time; even my family don't understand in the slightest why I do this, so I thought I'd have a crack at answering it.  I can only give my reasons, of course (and the list will not be exhaustive, by the way, I'd have to write a textbook for that); nobody speaks for all atheists or all antitheists and in fact I know many of both who would probably disagree with much of what I'm about to say.

There's a lot contained within the following which I'll go into in a moment, but for me the issue with religion can be summarised in one sentence:

Religion wants to tell us all - even those of us who don't believe it - how to live; it demands a say in decisions and policies that affect all our lives, and it does so without offering so much as a single shred of evidence that any of what it tries to dictate is based in reality.

One of many things I wish I could make believers understand is just how much you start to notice the influence religion has on all our lives once you stop believing in it yourself.  In fact, there's an idea; if you're reading this and you're a religious person, I have a challenge for you.  Watch the news on TV this evening, and just try to reflect honestly on how much of what you see can be directly linked with religious belief. I think you'll be surprised, and it might help you to understand how it can feel to be an outsider to the whole thing.

I'm lucky enough to live in the UK, which is relatively progressive (although we still lag behind other parts of Europe in some respects).  Yet even here, I am part of a society in which being gay or bisexual is still considered worthy of note, and where doing nothing more objectionable than satisfying sexual desire can still make a woman the subject of mockery, suspicion, contempt, even outright hatred. Sex - when it occurs outside the traditional one-man-one-woman, pair-bonded-and-monogamous-forever paradigm - is still regarded by many as a dirty, shameful thing to do. Do we really think this is unconnected with the concept of "sin" as promulgated by the Church of England for centuries and by the Catholic church before that?

We still live in a society, too, in which religion is accorded respect it simply does not deserve.  I disagree with many religious values on moral grounds, but because I am an atheist - as opposed to a member of another religion or of the same religion but a differing opinion - I am often expected to keep my mouth shut out of "respect". I recently had an argument online with a believer about the right-to-die laws in the UK when they were shown up for the antiquated, wantonly cruel laws they are by the Tony Nicklinson appeal case (outlined here); I think the laws need to be changed, he maintained that they're OK as they are - and his reasoning for this came from his religion.  It is not possible to have a discussion about an ethical issue with someone whose ethics are based on religion if you cannot criticise or question that religion. And that means its very fundamentals, too, not just whatever verse the person happens to have pulled out of their arse this time. After all, what Jahweh says about assisted suicide doesn't matter two shits if Jahweh cannot be proven to be any more real than Severus Snape (although personally, I'd prefer to live in a universe run by the latter than by the former).  It is utter nonsense - madness - lunacy - to accept "I believe deity X exists, therefore everybody else must take into account what I say s/he thinks about Y" as if it were a reasonable premise, yet we all do it all the time.

But I'm very lucky to live in the UK; there are infinitely worse places to live, and it's no coincidence that - with the still baffling exception of the USA, where people with no idea how lucky they are seem determined to think the laws and mores of places like Somalia something to aspire to - an increase in religiosity is strongly correlated with a decline in human rights, freedoms and quality of life (see this map for a simple outline). Many of the poorest, most deprived, most oppressive and most dangerous places to live on our planet are also the most religious, and when one considers what follows when religion is allowed to become powerful this is not surprising.  So I could bitch about being called a slapper for wearing a tight top or about being hit on at a conference or about being met with hostility when I speak my mind on certain subjects - but the fact is that I'm exceptionally lucky.  There are places in the world where I could be killed for some of the things I say and do and think - and the laws that would allow that are almost all religiously based.

My right to free expression is protected under law in the UK, but that's not the case everywhere by a long shot - and again, it's often religion that prevents this. People have died this week because of something someone said about a deranged paedophile who lived 1,400 years ago.  This is not OK, and to try to argue that we should tolerate or even respect it because it's part of "a different culture" is sickening and utterly cowardly.  All that does is label the people who do the killing irretrievable savages and their victims not worth so much as an admonition.

This is not the time to get into the reasons all religions are factually ludicrous; if you're not clear on that, consider how logical you find a religion other than your own and then just try to accept the fact that yours is no different from the outside.  Even deism is no better than a grandly illogical god-of-the-gaps argument, and to then take that fallacious premise and progress with it to try and tell us all what the deity thinks of our sex lives or our diets is just insane. Suffice it to say, if belief in the doctrine of any one religion were as reasonable and based on evidence as proponents like to pretend, we would not have thousands of conflicting religions and an ever-growing number of people with no religion at all.

Religion affects me and the people I love by throwing up barriers to birth control, to abortion, to dignity in death, to medical research, to equality, to gay marriage, to free expression, to open politics, to reasoned debate, to scientific advancement and to education. People all over the globe are murdered, tortured, abused, enslaved, mutilated, oppressed, threatened, violated, debased, even starved and allowed to contract  lethal but preventable diseases... all in the name of religious beliefs.  And to really hammer the point home - religion does all this, and yet never, in the entire course of human history, have we seen one shred of credible, verifiable evidence that what any religion has to tell us is correct.  In fact, we've had endless proofs that it's crap... and yet we are still ordered to respect it while it commits such atrocities.

That is why I get so angry about religion.

Another update on songs for atheism (with apologies for my negligence!)

Dave H. has just reminded me that I failed to follow up on my second post about songs for atheism - which is very bad of me because several people were kind enough to make suggestions. So without further ado, here we go:

Prepagan suggests "Beyond Belief" by Elvis Costello:

And "(What's so Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" by Brinsley Schwartz (a new one on me!):

Secularokie suggests Grinderman's "Heathen Child":

..."In the Beginning" by Todd Snider (I love this)...

... Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" (apologies for the ad on this one, if anyone can find a decent one without that please post the link below!)...

... and Hayes Carll "She Left Me for Jesus":

Jeremystyrondotcom suggests Tool's "Eulogy":

"Innocent" by Our Lady Peace:

"Adia" by Sarah McLachlan:

...and "Megalomaniac" by Incubus:

Tyler V submits Pearl Jam's "Unthought Known" (to be fair, that's a shout):

And Dave H. himself suggests "God" by Tori Amos:

... Chris Smither's "Origin of Species":

... a medley by Susan Werner:

...Steve Martin's "First Hymnal for Atheists" (or "Atheist Song", I'm not sure) - I actually heard this ages ago and forgot about it, so thank you Dave!

... and "The Christians and the Pagans" by Dar Williams:

... and I would like to suggest anything by Jonny Berliner; here's an example, but you can also visit his website  here - have a look, he's a great musician and very funny too.

A personal account from an exceptionally brave ex-Mormon

About a week ago, I read a tweet from Bethany Anderson in which she said she was embarrassed to have spent sixteen years as a devout Mormon.  I live in the UK where we don't have Mormons (I don't think - I mean, I daresay there's the odd one but it's not a faith we have to deal with directly), so I messaged her and asked if she'd be willing to share her story.  It's worth noting that although Mormonism can seem more crackpot to us than conventional Christianity, that's really only because it's less familiar to us; caveat notwithstanding, I'm always intrigued to hear stories about loss of faith from other people, particularly when their starting point was one so unfamiliar to me. Given how alien Mormonism seems from such a distant perspective, I was astonished by how much of Bethany's account was almost achingly familiar; it seems many formerly-religious secularists and humanists have experiences in common, something I think we could all do with remembering from time to time.

It also raises a question that is endlessly intriguing to me; so many of us are brought up to be religious in such similar ways, and only a minority ever escape from it. What is it that those of us able to find our way out have in common, and why do we have it?  Why doesn't faith "take" with some of us, when it is so devastatingly successful with the majority of our peers?  I think these are among the most important questions we secularists and atheists (and antitheists like me) can ask.

Bethany, I am in awe of your bravery; I too was an atheist by your age, but I was several years older before I dared to come out and older again before I started educating myself in the sciences.  We can't help how we're raised, but we can decide to overcome it; I don't think you have anything at all to be embarrassed about.

Here is Bethany's account in her own words.

"Religion to Reason: How I Came To My Senses And Left Mormonism Behind

The summer of 2008; I am only 14 years old, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is my whole life. I’m at Girls' Camp, a Mormon all-girls’ camp that takes place every summer. It is Friday night, which is always the most emotional night at camp; the night we bear our testimonies. As people go up and talk about how much they love Christ and have felt him in their lives we are all quickly in tears. I felt then what I perceived as the spirit of God all around me and my friends, and it wasn’t long until I too was overcome with emotion. But I wasn’t sad, I was the happiest I had ever been - up to that point, at least. I knew Jesus was my savior and I knew he loved me.

A few months later our church leaders decided the Young Men and Women were ready to learn more about the church's official stance on Gay Marriage and Proposition 8. I was confused. I had already heard plenty about gay marriage in the controversy surrounding Prop. 8, and I thought it was OK. I had formed my own opinion before the church had told me what it ought to be, and I didn't understand why they conflicted. What was wrong with a man marrying another man? They didn't want to hurt anybody. Why was I the only one who looked around the room with concern on my face, when everybody else was nodding their approval? If we’re all God’s children, why should some children get fewer rights? It made no sense.

I continued to think about the right people and the wrong people.

In the months to come I struggled to fall asleep at night, wondering what would happen to my cousin who lives in New York. She isn't LDS, she is Jewish. And on top of that she is a lesbian! But she is a good person. Why is she going to be punished? What about all of the Jewish people? They don’t deserve to be punished! My mind raced until I finally fell asleep with tear streaks down my cheeks.

On April 18, 2008, the evening before the Day of Silence [see website for details]. I was at a Church youth activity, making conversation with my friends about this and that. I was pretty excited about the Day of Silence, I jumped at the opportunity to put down bullying and support LGBT community. I asked a friend of mine if she was participating. She thought I was joking, scoffing "of course not". I was once again beset by confusion; was she pro-bullying? Others quickly joined her stance. "Why wouldn't anyone want to participate?", I thought - especially people who believed in loving their neighbors.

I began to notice more and more things the church and I disagreed upon, things I must have overlooked before and that I could no longer ignore. I began searching for another religion, one that might share my basic morals and beliefs. I talked to my atheist brother, Michael, one night, as we shared a lot of ideologies. He gave me some of the best books I've ever read; Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Sam Harris' End of Faith. After reading those I was at peace with my beliefs. Not so much with my still devout father and mother, but one thing at a time, right?

That was around the January of my sixteenth year. Now I'm a secular humanist and I feel great; I had coffee for the first time only a few months ago, and I'm no longer afraid that learning more about science will rob me of my faith.  As a matter of fact, I'm in the process of applying to colleges to get my degree in astrophysics! The future has never been brighter.

If anyone has any questions about my Mormon life and my new atheist experiences, I'd love to hear from you through Twitter, @TheYoungAtheist."

"Islamophobia" - time to end the doublespeak.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that a number of people in the Islamic world are kicking off and killing people about something utterly trivial. Again. If you do need to catch up, though, there's a decent tl;dr here.

However, at this point you could be forgiven for not being terribly interested in what's set the nutters off this time (although you should definitely care about their actions, which have already left many dead. Again.). I mean, you can guess. Someone spoke or wrote or drew (or in this case made a film, as it happens) about their "prophet" Mohammed and so they're screaming blasphemy and demanding retribution. Again. Because they absurdly think their damn silly superstitious rules apply not only to them but to everybody else. Again. And their response has been crazily, loonily, insanely disproportionate.

..... Again.

If there is any good that can come out of this whole depressing mess, it's that the Muslims who're doing it - and I accept they're a minority, by the way - are hurting their own cause when they do this stuff, in the long run at least.

Why?

Because they're making Muslims look like lunatics. They're showing Islam up for the oppressive, paranoid, violent ideology it is. They're showing the world that Islam cares more about some obscure film than it does about murder, injustice, torture, abuse, oppression, mutilation, inequity and violence. They're demonstrating again that Islam cares more that we should all feign respect for their "prophet" than it does for innocent human life.

And you don't get away from that, by the way, with "oh but Islam isn't really about that".  Bull. Shit. Christians have been making the NoTrueChristianTM argument for centuries, and it doesn't wash for them either.  If you believe in the "truth" of a given book - and if you consider that belief a virtuous thing - you don't get to object when someone else takes those same lessons from that same book and uses them to justify murdering somebody. Know why? Because they have precisely the same amount of evidence to say that their beliefs are correct as you do to say yours are - that is, none. Nada. Zip. Bupkis. Zilch. (That goes for arguments between religions too, by the way; someone who believes for no rational reason that Book X is magic hasn't a moral or logical leg to stand on when someone else believes the same about Book Y and acts on that - but that's maybe a point for another day.)

I can virtually guarantee that at least some people who read this - Muslim or otherwise - will by now have dismissed me as "Islamophobic", or even racist.  But I have a couple of points to make about those two accusations (because it's not the first time they've been aimed at me).

"Racist", first, because that's the most transparently nonsensical thing to call someone who dislikes Islam. The only way in which an aversion to a religion could be taken to mean an aversion to a "race" of people would be  if one had to belong to a certain race in order to be a Muslim. Not only is that demonstrably not the case, but even if it were true it would make Islam racist, not me.

And "Islamophobic", which brings me back to the title of this entry.

I am sick. To goddamn. Death. Of this mealy-mouthed, snivelling, craven, manipulative, lying little gobshite of a word that's wormed its way into our lexicon.

Look up "phobia" in any decent dictionary. There are lots of variations on a theme, but you'll notice there is a commonality; they all describe a "phobia" as irrational, illogical, disproportionate to the danger, unreasonable. My chest-constricting, panic-inducing, uncontrollable fear of injections is all of those things - it is a phobia.  My fear and dislike of Islam is not irrational, or illogical, or unreasonable - and it certainly is not disproportionate to the danger it poses. Just ask the families of all the people it's killed.

We know what happens when Islam is allowed to rule, we've watched it for centuries; education and reason are set at naught, women become property, people can be murdered at whim in the name of "honour", genocide can be justified by reference to the magic book. And to draw the "prophet" Mohammed becomes the greatest of all wrongs, an insult that can justify murder.  There are factions within Islam that openly wish to destroy Western ideals and take over. One of the most common taunts I hear from Muslims when discussing religion online is along the lines of "watch out Europe, you'll fall to Islam in the next 10/20/50 years".

So yes, you're damn right I'm scared of Islam, as well as considering it ethically loathsome, factually laughable and worthy of no respect whatsoever (that last point is crucial - I am scared of Islam, but I do not respect it. Do not mistake the two). I consider freedom of expression to be the most important right we have, and we in the West have fought hard to get it. I am scared of any ideology that threatens this freedom. Is that irrational, when we know through centuries of bitter experience what happens when we don't have that freedom? I don't think so. I consider that a perfectly rational dread, which by definition means it is not a phobia.  So please can we drop the ridiculous, knee-jerk label? All it does is reinforce the notion that those of us who watch Islam with fear are unreasonable in that fear or in our expression of it. We're not; we're precisely the opposite.

Which is more respectful, honest criticism or a pacifying lie?

Last night I got pulled into a fight about religion and atheism with someone I care for very deeply, and who cares for me. Much was said that probably should not have been, and both of us were guilty of letting anger dictate our handling of the discussion. The main source of the disagreement was my - totally acknowledged - lack of respect for religious beliefs, which I consider no less foolish (and far more dangerous) than belief in astrology, ghosts or the Evil Eye.

The person I argued with is not devoutly religious, but has never entirely shaken off their rather puritan christian upbringing. They've known for many years now that I'm an atheist, but until yesterday our conversations on the subject had been limited to the occasional reproachful remark when I was too openly disdainful of religion in their presence.

The argument was not even about christianity in particular - I actually suspect this person knows specific religions are intellectually indefensible - but about my lack of respect for what people of all religions sincerely believe; this person is concerned for my safety, believing I may be at risk of drawing real-world ire from certain religious factions I have written about, both here and in other places. This person is liberal in most ways and certainly doesn't take their morals from any holy book; I can discuss almost anything with this person calmly and rationally, even if we disagree completely... but when it comes to religion, alone among all other human sillinesses, this person just wants me to shut up.  It became so strange I can only express it by quoting the brilliant and ever-eloquent Douglas Adams: "Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? Because you're not!".

I'm always wary, in the aftermath of an argument in which feelings have been hurt, of the risk of digging in deeper to one's original position to avoid having to think that maybe the criticism was warranted - of rationalising what one said or did after the fact. I don't think I'm guilty of that in this instance, but if you think I am do feel free to tell me so in the comments; the fact is that I'm NOT totally certain how objective I'm being here:

I sincerely don't think the way to show a person respect is to fake respect for their foolish beliefs.  The person with whom I had the argument last night is exceptionally intelligent, and far more educated than I am; for me to decide for them that they couldn't handle what I had to say about one of their beliefs would be breathtakingly condescending, unspeakably arrogant.

Of course, not everybody in the world is comparable in intelligence to my interlocutor from last night (in fact, statistically the vast majority are not), but when did one's right to hear an honest opinion depend on one's intelligence anyway? Where's the cut-off, do we consider you incapable of coping with facts and our honest opinions if your IQ tests at - say - 120 or less?  What about educational level, how many GCSEs and A Levels do you need, which Universities qualify you for honest feedback on your beliefs?

Something I occasionally find irritating about atheists - open ones, I mean - is our tendency (some of us are more guilty of this than others, of course) to consider ourselves more intelligent than believers. Yes, there are a few studies that support this in a very minor way, but even of these the most marked average difference I've ever seen reported is ten or so IQ points. When you're dealing with a species of which some members have IQs of 20 and others have more than ten times that - and when you're dealing with a system of measurement which is itself acknowledged to be an imperfect measure of intelligence - such a minor trend is all but meaningless.  I am an atheist and I score relatively highly on IQ tests - but that does not leave me safe to assume I am more intelligent than any religious believer I encounter, because the statistics simply don't support that.  We'd probably be marginally safer guessing that we're more educated than believers - there is at least a relatively objective measure for that - but again the existence of renowned scientists who're also religious, and of people like my conversant last night, show that we'd be very, very foolish to make any assumptions of that kind.

Here's the heart of the problem for me; I simply do not, cannot, see anything in religious beliefs deserving of anybody's respect.  When a person tells me that I "ought" to show respect for those beliefs, I am put in an impossible position; I can either be honest and disrespect the beliefs, or I can lie and disrespect the person.  When the person in question is someone I already respect deeply, this is troublesome and upsetting - and leads to what happened last night.

This is the first time in my experience that what I say about religion has led to serious disagreement with someone I love - or at least, the first time it's become genuinely acrimonious. Has anything like this happened to anyone else? How do/did you handle it? Is my position on respect reasonable, or am I rationalising? Can relationships be repaired after something like this?  I'd love to have input from other non-believers because this has hurt me considerably, in a way no amount of ranting from religious people (or other atheists, I suppose) over the internet ever has.

Time to get back to laughing at superstition.

Well, in all the hysteria and ill-feeling surrounding Atheism Plus, I've grown almost nostalgic for the sort of stick I usually only get from religious people.  When you've grown accustomed to "you're a murdering whore and you'll burn in hell", "gender traitor" and "chill girl" (which latter I rather like, actually) can only ward off the cravings for so long... and I'm jonesing for a meaningful argument now.

So, I thought I'd ask everyone - here and my lovely peeps on Twitter - a question.  Well, two, actually, though they're related.

1: What's the single dumbest/silliest/wrongest/funniest/most infuriating argument you hear from believers in defence of their faith, and why? (And if you'd like to explain how it's wrong, please do so of course!)

2: If you could wave a magic wand and make every religious/superstitious person in the world understand just ONE thing, what would it be and why?

I think it'll be interesting to see how many of us hear the same arguments, which ones annoy us most and which are most common.  We all have slightly - in some cases even widely - different reasons for opposing religion, it's always fascinating to hear how other people think about things.

Please let me know what you think!

Clarification on yesterday's circumcision post

Hello again,

Yesterday I gave my opinion on male circumcision, for religious purposes and more generally; that can be found here.  From the comments I've received (more on Twitter than on the post itself, actually), I conclude that there are one or two things I need to clarify because I have expressed myself clumsily.

First thing; there is a difference (to me at least) between regarding an action as an act of mutilation and considering a person to be "mutilated".  I suppose I should have anticipated that my using the term "mutilate" to describe the act of circumcision would cause some men who have been circumcised to feel I am making a comment on their attractiveness or their suitability as a sexual partner - this was not my intention, however. As far as I am concerned, whether an adult male has been circumcised or not makes no difference whatsoever to my... well, let's say "for my purposes" and leave it to the imagination.  I do not consider a circumcised penis to be in any way ugly or undesirable, and I apologise for my clumsiness in having given that impression to some people.

That said, little as it may matter in adulthood once it's done with and healed, I cannot see the unnecessary removal of an infant's foreskin as anything other than an act of gratuitous mutilation. It's a subtle distinction, but it's an important one; in my opinion it is cruel to subject an infant to unnecessary surgery, but it does not follow that - if you have undergone said surgery (of your own volition or otherwise) - I will then consider you unattractive or somehow complicit in what I regard as an act of wrongdoing.  It was not remotely my intention to imply anything of the sort.

The other thing that's been said repeatedly about yesterday's post - and I definitely could not have predicted this one, because it's utterly bizarre - is that because I am opposed to unnecessary circumcision it follows that I must also be an anti-vaxxer. This truly baffles me, it makes less than no sense.  I am against subjecting children to unnecessary risk and pain; in what way this could possibly make me anything other than strongly pro-vaccination I am at a loss to discern.  Vaccinations are necessary, to protect both the child as an individual and the "herd". Reading of outbreaks of preventable diseases resulting from the selfish decision of a few parents not to vaccinate, thereby risking the health of their own child and that of other people makes me sick with anger. Circumcision - in all but a tiny minority of cases - is NOT necessary, and carries risks for nobody but the child.  If the child grows up suffering absolutely no ill-effects from the procedure (assuming for a moment that we could prove such a thing), that's fantastic and I'm happy for him - but why take the risk on his behalf in the first place?

That's it, really, just wanted to explain myself on a couple of points - hope I make more sense now!

Any move to restrict circumcision is a good thing, but I can't help thinking the media's somewhat missed the point again.

The New York Post reports today that a group of two hundred or so orthodox Rabbis in New York have signed a "proclamation" claiming that the Health Department's concerns about the ritual of metzitzah b'peh - in which blood is suctioned from a male baby's circumcision wound by mouth - are "lies", spread "in order to justify their evil decree".  They have also stated that even if the law is changed, they will simply ignore it.

The article I quote can be found here, but as with so many news pieces dealing with religious customs and ceremonies I can't help but feel a point is being missed. Don't misunderstand me; anything that draws attention to the entirely unnecessary dangers of circumcision, anything that might - just maybe - make a parent stop and think "wait, why am I actually allowing this to be done to my child?" is a good thing, particularly in the USA where circumcision is as much a cultural thing as an overtly religion custom and far more common than it is in the UK and much of Europe.

This, specifically, is the aspect that bothers me; all the emphasis in the proposed change to the law seems to be on avoiding the risk of herpes (and other diseases, one would like to assume), which is a danger specific to oral contact with the child's wound.  It is true that babies have been killed and brain-damaged by contraction of the herpes virus during their circumcision, and of course that needs to be prevented from happening again; but by placing all the emphasis on that risk, the law-makers in New York leave their stance on more modern circumcision methods open to interpretation, and it would be very easy to conclude that it is only the oral contact specifically that carries any risk for the baby.  Who knows, though?  Maybe that really is their stance.

When Germany outlawed circumcision for non-medical reasons a few months ago, the decision was met with hysteria and outrage among both Jews and Muslims, with one Rabbi describing it as "perhaps the most serious attack on Jewish life since the Holocaust".  Much was made of Europe's - and particularly Germany's - history of oppressing Jews, but while this past certainly can't and shouldn't be denied, nor should it be allowed to become some sort of carte blanche to do whatever you like without reference to ethical considerations or legality just because you're Jewish.  It's my opinion that Germany's decision was the correct one, even though I'm certain people will find ways to flout the new law; they've considered the moral implications, and taken a stance on the issue. That speaks volumes in its own right.

Circumcision - unless for legitimate medical reasons - is one of those issues we seem perpetually to be debating and I sincerely fail to understand why. I literally don't get it.  I understand that religious people hold deep convictions on this matter; in a strange sort of way, though, the religious people almost aren't the problem. WE are the problem, we who feel the need to honour their grisly traditions, we who allow them to mutilate babies - who cannot possibly have any notion of the belief system into which they are being presumptively inducted - because they believe it should be done.

Ask yourself seriously; if a parent asked a doctor (or anyone else) to cut their baby's ear off, would we consider that person a fit parent?  What if they demanded not only the removal of the ear, but that the procedure be carried out in unsanitary conditions and without anaesthesia?  Now what if you learned not only that people were ritually removing babies' ears in unsafe conditions for religious reasons, but were in fact up in arms at the prospect of being made to ask permission to do so?!

Male circumcision has been associated not only with communicable diseases as already detailed, but also with long-lasting psychological trauma, reduction in sexual response and confidence, and even with increased pain response throughout the body later in life.  I know many men who have been circumcised (not all for religious reasons, as I have already said the practice is very common in the USA even among the non-religious), and almost all of them resent it to varying degrees. Sex is a crucial aspect of being human, one of our most primal drives (arguably the primal drive among males) and an essential part of our individual and cultural well-being. I cannot begin to imagine how violated and angry I would feel if I were forced to spend my life wondering how different - even, torturously, how much better - my enjoyment of sex might have been if someone had not wantonly lopped off an important part of my anatomy when I was too young to defend myself.

Over again we hear the same tired old arguments in favour of circumcision (apart from the religious irrelevancies, I mean); that it reduces risk of infections, that cleanliness is more assured, that it reduces risk of penile cancers, that it's desirable - weirdly - that a male child should "look like his father".  Leaving aside the absurdity of that last one, the rest, I believe, will be shown to be on balance not worth the risk of the procedure.  We are learning, now, to follow where evolution leads us in medicine. In the same way that more pioneering surgeons are now accepting that the best place to attach an ACL graft is almost always where the original ACL was (because evolution has shaped our complex knee joints over millions of years, through epochs in which ACLs attached in a non-optimal position would have been punished far more than they are today) I would not be surprised at all if in twenty or fifty years we learn that it really is best, medically, to leave the foreskin in place.

And aside from all that, of course, there's the issue of how far parents' (or Rabbis') "rights" to practice a religious or cultural custom should outweigh the rights of the child not to be permanently affected by that custom, both physically and psychologically.  I would have no problem - in principle, although I might find myself objecting to excessive parental/cultural pressure - if an adult male, able to weigh up the risks and assess for himself the importance of the decision, were to decide to be circumcised.  If that is what he wishes to do, I struggle to find any arguments that would justify anyone in opposing that decision. But to make a permanent and life-altering decision like that for a child too young to have any opinion on the subject... that, I contend, is deeply wrong and should not be considered acceptable.

We are, all of us, guilty of overlooking grisly and amoral acts committed in the name of religion that we would not even consider allowing for other reasons. I believe the gratuitous and dangerous mutilation of an infant's penis falls into that category, and I would like to see media outlets push past the unspoken taboo of religious custom and address that, rather than trivialising it by focusing on the very worst outcomes imaginable.

Time to weigh in on Atheism Plus

For a few days now I've been seeing comments about something called "Atheism Plus" or "A+" all over Twitter.  I didn't know what it was but I could see it was generating strong feeling, so I googled it earlier.  The first post I found on the subject was at Greta Christina's blog, which can be found here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/08/21/why-atheism-plus-is-good-for-atheism/

Now, I have to say that when I read this my initial reaction was to wonder what on earth the problem was; I've seen some people come down pretty hard against A+, but based on what I read here I couldn't see why.  Much as I admire thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett and other names typically associated with "New Atheism", I've thought for a while now that it would be good to let people see that not all atheists are posh, uber-educated, straight white dudes aged forty to eighty - they're not actually all that representative.

Atheists and secularists, in my experience, do tend to be more progressive in terms of promoting social equality.  I'm sure there are exceptions, but I think as a rule we're pretty consistently ahead of the curve.  And I want to make this clear right now; I am totally, totally, in favour of improving the culture of atheism such that it is more welcoming, more supportive and more inclusive to everyone.  If we have been guilty of making people feel excluded, I consider that something that should be addressed.

But after reading Greta's comments, I read around a bit further and was increasingly horrified by what I found. Now, it's rare for me to disagree with Greta, and in fact I can't help thinking that maybe the A+ movement's spun out of control since she registered her approval of it, that maybe it started out far more sensibly. In fact, from looking at Jen McCreight's blog where the whole thing seems to have started, I think it probably WAS quite laudable at first: http://freethoughtblogs.com/blaghag/2012/08/atheism/

But then the problems start to creep in. Notable among them is Richard Carrier's particularly charmless post which can be seen here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2207/  You know you're on dodgy territory when the opening sentence reads "There is a new atheism brewing, and it’s the rift we need, to cut free the dead weight so we can kick the C.H.U.D.’s back into the sewers and finally disown them, once and for all."  It doesn't bode well, does it?  What that essentially amounts to is "I'm sick of hearing opposing opinions, it's time to brand dissenters subhuman, generate a bit of mob mentality and forcibly eject them from our movement".  With that kind of mentality, your reasons for trying to exclude the given group/s are all but irrelevant - you've become at least as scary as they are.  From that beginning, it's not a huge surprise to end with "I call everyone now to pick sides (not in comments here, but publicly, via Facebook or other social media): are you with us, or with them; are you now a part of the Atheism+ movement, or are you going to stick with Atheism Less?  Then at least we’ll know who to work with. And who to avoid."

In practical terms, what this seems to have led to is an assumption that only people willing to sign up to the A+ movement are in favour of social equality.  When I registered the irony of this - that based on my refusal to label myself according to other people's definition of an acceptable person, I am assumed to be a bigot - on Twitter, I was met with comments like this:

@Jitterysquirrel: "When you fight against social progress and equality, you are a bigot. When you shit on those who don't, you're an asshole too."

What?! I'm not fighting against social progress, that's just ridiculous! All I'm doing is arguing that A+ does not equal good person, and that good person does not equal A+.  I'm in favour of equality and progress as I hope other posts in this blog illustrate; I'm just not going to buy into the mentality that one must wordlessly submit to the A+ movement and promise never to disagree with any other member ever again in order to be a decent person. You know, because that's ridiculous.

I think the thing that bothers me most about the A+ movement, though, is how needlessly pessimistic - even plain cynical - it is.  When I meet a new person, be it online or IRL, I assume they're NOT a dick until they give me reason to think otherwise (and occasionally, they do, of course). I would like to have the same courtesy extended to me, that's all.  If I say something that betrays prejudice, bigotry or even just thoughtlessness, by all means call me on that because I don't want to be that kind of person - I want to know about my mistake and learn from it... but at least wait until I've actually cocked up before you start calling me an arsehole.

Atheism Plus is in many ways very deserving of praise. I am completely behind most of its values and aims. But by adopting the attitude of "if you're not with us, you're against us, against our values and therefore a bigot", they've shot themselves in the - well, not even in the foot. They've shot themselves in the head. I'm an A+ by everything except the label - but give me a ridiculously unnecessary (and hilariously melodramatic) ultimatum like that, and I'm out on principle.  If that kind of bullying mob mentality worked, I'd still be a christian.

Tony Nicklinson takes the control he was denied by a cruel and outdated legal system.

This morning, Right-to-Die campaigner Tony Nicklinson died less than a week after losing his challenge to the UK's existing law.  He sought to make sure that any doctor willing to assist him in ending his own life - an act he couldn't perform without assistance - would not face prosecution for murder for doing so.  His plea was denied on the grounds that the court was worried about setting a "dangerous precedent" for future cases.

Within hours of the verdict's being announced, Tony's wife Jane established a petition on change.org; that can be found here: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/tony-nicklinson-s-right-to-die-change-the-law

Now here's something else that I almost didn't post; it felt almost indecent to watch this at the time the appeal was denied, and in a way it feels even more so now.  But this is a case that's all about people valuing legal familiarity and moral tradition over compassion; it's important that people know exactly how this decision affects real people.  This was the reaction of Tony and his wife when they heard the news (warning; I still can't watch this without being very upset. It is not pleasant viewing. But it's necessary.):

It is a mystery to me how anyone can watch this poor man's reaction to the outcome of his case and NOT feel utterly, utterly gutted for him.

This morning's news puts the above into a new light for me, too.  When I first watched this footage, I saw a man realising he now has no choice but to continue with a miserable, blighted existence, unable to escape from it without risking another person's freedom.  NOW when I watch it, I see a man realising that he has no resort but to commit slow, painful suicide by the only means at his disposal - by starving himself.

The Guardian and others report that Tony refused food after the verdict was delivered, and that as he weakened he succumbed to pneumonia, which finally killed him.

I am glad for Tony, happy for him that his misery is over.  I'm angry and sad that the end had to come about as it did.  Tony's decision to take his own life in the only way left to him is proof of the futility - leaving aside for a moment the cruelty and cowardice - in denying him his right to die. By handing down the verdict they did, all the court ensured was that Tony's death would not be painless and dignified but would be protracted, painful and miserable.  And although one feels desperately sorry for Tony, one can't help feeling almost worse for his family, who had to watch him suffer so terribly.



Follow up: While I've been writing this, I've been having a discussion on Twitter with some chaplain up North somewhere who (obviously) thinks the law's fine as it is.  It went on for a while and we reached a point where everyone in the world was allowed an opinion on a person's request to die (as long as they were against it, obviously) EXCEPT the person whose life was in question, but this tweet sums it up for me (spelling etc. corrected): "Desperately sad, but he effectively took his own life by refusing food and treatment. Law need not be changed, nor should it be."

There are people so ideologically opposed to compassionately ending suffering that they consider forcing someone to starve himself to death is better - and even then, it's a fair bet that even THAT's only because they can't stop it. I'll leave that one with you. I'm not sure what's going to happen to the petition now since it was specific to Tony, but if anyone knows of a more general one to change the law please tell me in the comments!

How the media misses the point where religion is concerned

It's time I returned to my much-neglected blog. For some time now, I've been trying to care a little less about religion because it was beginning to affect other areas of my life too much; now, however, something's happened about which I cannot NOT comment.

Yesterday, the 19th of August 2012, many news outlets around the world reported that a child in Pakistan - part of a small, Christian community - had been arrested on suspicion of burning pages from the qur'an.  The girl in question is reported to be eleven years of age, and the mob's reaction to the "crime" she's accused of has led to hundreds of people being forced from their homes.  It is alleged that the child was beaten before being arrested, and that she may even face the death penalty for "blasphemy".

Now, I hope I don't need to point out to anyone all that's wrong with the idea of "blasphemy" as a crime - free speech, right to dissent etc. etc.. And I hope I don't need to explain why executing anyone for anything is a brutal and backwards way to run your country. But that's not what I want to talk about.

Here's what's pissing me off.  There are reports that the child may be mentally disabled; some outlets are saying she has Down's syndrome, others that she has an unspecified mental illness.  The BBC, in particular, seem to be making a big thing of this, as can be seen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19311098

Here's my question. HOW IS HER MENTAL HEALTH STATUS RELEVANT?!

What does it matter?! In any sane society, any person has the right to burn any damn book they like (as long as it's not rare or someone elses property), and little as we may like it we can't punish them for it.  The BBC and others, by making such a fuss of the possibility that this child is mentally disabled, are making an excuse for her that simply IS NOT REQUIRED.

If a mentally disabled person commits a crime, we quite rightly assess whether they were able to appreciate the wrongness and/or ramifications of what they were doing before we decide whether to punish them. If it is found that they could not understand why what they were doing was wrong, we don't imprison them although we may detain them for their own and others' safety.

Here's the catch; "blasphemy", by any non-insane definition, is not a crime. If this poor child DID burn a book, no one was harmed by that action. By being at such pains to point out that she may not have understood what she was doing, the BBC is lending credence to the ludicrous notion that what she did was wrong and in need of excusing.  This attitude is not only factually laughable, it's dangerous too since it carries the implication that threatening to execute this little girl would somehow be acceptable and reasonable were she not disabled.

Sickening.

Interview with an Atheist: Part Three

Do you like being an atheist?

My own answer: "Well, the first thing to explain with reference to this question is that whether a position is pleasant or not is not any comment on the accuracy of the position. It wouldn't matter if being an atheist made me unbearably, suicidally miserable, it would not affect the likelihood of a deity or deities existing (actually, having to accept that the stories of the Harry Potter novels – and especially Severus Snape – are not real can make me pretty blue at times).

That aside, I am in general a lot happier as a non-believer than I was as a christian; my memory of believing in Jahweh is dominated by guilt, confusion and feelings of inadequacy, so it's nice to be free of that. This isn't to say I don't still feel guilty when I do something wrong, or confused when confronted with a difficult moral decision – in fact, moral questions have become if anything more troublesome now that I can't just refer to a book to tell me what I should do – but there's a lot less fear and a lot more honesty in knowing that the person I answer to is me, not some invisible and baffling entity I can't hope to understand.

This is probably as good a moment as any to make a confession that I think could leave me open to criticism from believers; I don't think I'm intellectually capable, with the evidence we have to date, of believing in a deity. Unless something dramatic turns up – and obviously I don't think it will, or I wouldn't be an atheist – I don't think I could believe if I wanted to. I am incapable of the kind of double-think religious faith requires. The beauty of atheism, for me, lies in the blissful absence of cognitive dissonance. There is nothing about NOT believing in deities that doesn't make sense or requires apologetics and mental cartwheels, because atheism is just the null hypothesis maintained in the absence of a reason to deviate. Intellectually and morally, atheism is completely satisfying.

There are aspects of atheism that bother me at times, though. The most obvious of these is the way other people look at you; “atheism” is a word that simply states one non-belief I have out of a near-infinite number of non-beliefs, yet people can hear or read that word and think they know everything about me from it – and most of what they think they know is unpleasant. I also know that my mum's not thrilled about my being an atheist – more to do with my outspokenness than with my actual lack of belief, I suspect – and that troubles me because it's an invisible barrier between my mum and me, a topic to be skirted around. The one and only thing, though, that I truly dislike about having become an atheist is actually attributable to my having been religious first; and that is the loss of an afterlife, the complete and final loss of loved ones in death.
 

I've said before in this blog that I think indoctrinating children into a belief in hell is little short of child abuse, but actually in my case the long-term damage has been done by my indoctrination into believing in heaven. Hell was a threat, and once I realised it was an idle one I was nothing but glad that it wasn't real; however, the idea of meeting loved ones again after death took longer to shake off, and I sincerely wish I'd never had it. For ages – years and years – after I shook of christianity, I still had a kind of half-formed, unexamined assumption that something in our consciousness survives death; that idea is everywhere, I remember reading Wuthering Heights at school and finding genuine solace in the idea of Cathy and Heathcliff being buried in a shared grave. Even after the concept of any specific afterlife was gone, I still sort of assumed that at the moment of death all this stuff we don't know in life – why we're here, what happens to us after death, the nature of consciousness etc. - would become clear... as an atheist, of course, I now know this will not be the case, I will never know that stuff, I will simply return to non-being. That realisation doesn't bother me anymore, but the fact that I now have to accept that people I love are just gone when they die – which I didn't have to face before – still stings. Overall it's probably good for me in the sense that it makes me reluctant to hurt people or argue with them, but it does mean I'm denied a source of solace in certain situations that was available to me when I was a believer.

Having said all that, I prefer on principle now to learn the truth whether I think I will like it or not; there's a fascination and a thrill in being free to consider all the options without having to fret about whether they're compatible with stuff I want or feel obliged to believe. I'm free to learn as much as I can in the fields of science (although those who know me will confirm that my education is informal and my understanding patchy at best), and I regularly learn things that make me feel almost giddy. There are some incredible, bizarre and wonderful facts to be understood about the universe and our place in it that is very sadly unavailable to religious people. I can sit and contemplate the huge unlikelihood of my own existence – although I can't hope to actually grasp it – or muse of the vastness of space and time, or try to work out what Hawking and Einstein are going on about with all those dimensions, or how the hell quantum theory can possibly be correct (the maths tells us that it is, at least partly, but that doesn't mean we can understand it yet!). Or at the other end of the scale, I can pick up my cat, look at her paws and reflect on the fact that they're really very little different from my own hands in their basic structure (seriously – if you have a cat take a look!). I can marvel at the ingenious and improbable animals and plants thrown up by the process of evolution, and I can be humbled by the reflection that the only reason I'm able to think about all this is that I happen by pure chance to belong to a species of ape whose big survival characteristic, developed over aeons by uncaring and implacable processes of evolution, is not long claws or big teeth or strong legs but a large brain which has gradually become capable of abstract thought and which may yet prove to be our species' undoing.
 

So, short version; there's one or two aspects that are hard for me to swallow and things can certainly be more complicated without a handy book to tell me what to do, but overall I find non-belief suits me just fine and leaves me free to do what I want to do (within the limits of my own moral code) and learn what I can. And as I said, I don't think I could now be anything but an atheist on the available evidence."

Ryan's answer: "I'm not sure I would say "like" or "dislike" being an atheist.  It is just an arbitrary description based on my non-belief.  If there were no notion of gods, there would be no notion of atheism.

Personally, I do have a small sense of "pride", (if that's the right word) in that I am not disillusioned by nonsensical belief systems.  The only aspect of being an atheist that "I don't like" would be the misconceptions about, and demonization of, atheists and atheism.
 

I prefer the truth I don't like, to the lie I do like; not matter what that truth may be.
That is not to say that I don't like the apparent fact that there are no gods, for if there are gods, they are almost surely heartless, masochistic, incompetent, and unworthy of praise.
The suffering and evil in the world, and the lack of any appearance of "intelligent direction", I feel, justifies this statement; regardless of some "divine, means-to-an-end, plan"."

Leah's answer: "I find it intellectually liberating to not believe in gods. I am happy to be my own 'master of fate', to take responsibility for my own actions, and at the same time not to sweat over the notions that some of the actions (or even thoughts!) that are perfectly human, healthy, wonderful or necessary would be deemed as 'not cool' by some invisible sky fairy or another. I am glad I have no dogma dictating to me whom to hate and discriminate against. And skepticism overall is a great tool to see through scams and shams of all sorts.

Seeking the truth and appreciating the REAL beauty of this world are worth ANY 'sticks', even though I'm lucky to only get lame attempts at 'excuses for god' and a few predictable labels from the 'loving' believers online, not where I live. Those discussions are funny, although at times a bit annoying, as it's all same old b.s. and lack of ANY knowledge of the most basic science...

As to not liking anything... It may have been a bit discomforting when I had to let go of the fuzzy 'soul' notion (I was never a believer in anything else, but for some reason thought there may be one :D), but frankly, it's all the better push to live THIS life the best way possible every day, for any day can be the last and when it's over - it's over..."


Lance's answer: "I do like being an atheist. Exposure to the atheist community has driven me towards a more rigorous style of thought about everything in my life, and has made me more willing to consider that some of my dearly held beliefs could be wrong. The experience of being on the wrong side of social privilege has also opened my eyes a bit to what it must be like to be on the receiving end of the injustices of sexism, racism, and homophobia. My atheistic worldview that has brought me to a place of greater intellectual humility, and has helped me grow in my compassion for others. Sometimes what's right and what feels right are not the same thing, and without skepticism I was not able to entertain that what felt right to me might actually be wrong. Much injustice is perpetuated in that fashion.

I also enjoy the company I find in the atheistic community.

It is worth the threat of the stick, but not because of intellectual satisfaction. I could have that and be in the closet. It's worth it because of the internal consistency I experience, and because of the intellectual honesty. It's worth it because I believe sincerely that the world will be a better place when belief in a god is no longer able to distort our values away from what truly matters - the well-being of human beings in this one precious life. I think that Secularism and Feminism go hand-in-hand, and that these two ideas together could do enormous good for humanity. That is why I have become outspoken; the social movement is worth the threat of the stick.

I think the thing that I most dislike about being an atheist is how frustrating it is to have ideological clashes with people who are, almost be definition, unwilling to consider that they might be in error. I'm an idealist and an optimist. I don't argue for its own sake, but to change minds and thereby improve our world, and I have mostly met with frustration in this regard. Some days, my idealism barely survives contact with the internet.

I don't wish I was a believer of false things, but I do wish we lived in a universe where reincarnation or some other form of afterlife was true. Life is beautiful, and I will be loathe to surrender it when my time comes."

(Incidentally, I heartily recommend Lance's own blog, which can be found here: heartheretic.blogspot.com)