Welp, that's it

I've decided to discontinue blogging. It didn't turn out to be as interesting as I thought it might be, and opinionated as I am, I'm having trouble thinking of things to blog about. Besides... I have video games to play :3

Anyway, thanks to everyone who read. See you later!

"Beyond Disbelief" Study Completed

"Beyond Disbelief" is a preliminary study meant to survey the attitudes of the nonreligious. You can get the full report here.

A lot of it is stuff that anyone in the skeptical community would already know, but there are a few quotes I have to pull out of it:

The nontheists [we studied] were remarkably liberal, with 91% rating themselves as left of centre.

[...]

There was no relation between atheism [...] and family religiosity. Rated hostility to religion was not correlated with family background or negative family or other influences.

[...]

Over 90% of atheists surveyed agree that religions are opposed to progress and social change, and over 80% believe that religions do more harm than good and that the world would be better off without religion. Across items, a clear plurality and often a majority of atheists selected the highest level of agreement for these anti-religious statements. Atheists not only believe in the separation of church and state, oppose tax exemptions for religious institutions but are also almost unanimous, at 99% agreement, that there is no place for religious symbols or rituals in the public sphere in a secular society. Similar percentages agree that religions are based on ignorance and uncritical thinking and lead to hypocrisy. Perhaps particularly revealing is that over 85% of our respondents agreed with the rather strong statement that the “It is a violation of the rights of children to indoctrinate them into religion without a choice among points of view;” a sentiment perhaps especially associated with the new atheism.

[...]

As noted in our introductory remarks we did not treat categories as mutually exclusive and many respondents checked more than one label to describe themselves. For example, 2054 respondents checked atheist, and 1103 checked agnostic; but both boxes were checked by 674 respondents. Had we not allowed this it is possible that many or most of the 674 might have checked agnosticism only. Forced-choice surveys may therefore underestimate the number of atheists. This applies a fortiori to questions that add adjectives that convey a sense of absolute or dogmatic certainty such as the description “convinced atheist”. Our hypothesis is that, even beyond our sample, the majority of agnostics are, in fact, atheists and that many would so self-identify if given the opportunity to qualify their commitment.

Weekly Link Dump

(I haven't forgotten! It's just that FFXIV just came out...)

Religion and skepticism:

Experts schedule conference to say: Galileo Was Wrong

"Draw Mohamed Day" organizer goes into hiding after Muslim threats

Guardian Online: Pedophile priests remain part of church

American Humanist Association Speaks out About "Burn a Koran Day" Controversy

Pew study: Religion plays key role in deciphering public opinion

Muslims call for federal probe in Quran burning

Where are the Christians With Real Courage?

Scholars hotly debate treatment of apostates


Politics:

Republicans Block Defense Funding Bill to Sabotage “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Repeal

Don't Be Mean to the Girl: Gender, Power and the Politics of Pretty

The Foxification of the Republican Party


Science:

How the Mind Counteracts Offensive Ideas

Breaking: Web Not Corrupting Our Youth After All

The "other" atheism

I've been thinking a little more about the Pope's recent comments during his visit to Britain, as well as some comments by other Christians I've seen. The Pope said that Nazism was the result of atheism - not the result of over a thousand years of Christian-fueled antisemitism, or political issues surrounding the end of the first World War, but "atheism". Other people I've seen blame the problems in American government not on the Christianity* that our politicians hold, but on their "atheism", of all things. Or, they'll look at skyrocketing teen pregnancy, and blame it not on the miseducation they receive, but on teens' supposed "atheism". Or, some good Christian will suddenly go on a gambling spree, or will be caught having an affair, or abusing their children, and the explanation for their behavior will be "atheism".

It's very difficult for an atheist to see the connection there - how is critical thinking or skepticism involved in any of these? Considering that the perpetrators in all these examples believe in one or another god, how can this possibly be pegged on atheism?

The answer I think is that there's another atheism out there, one that isn't a definition of what atheists believe, or even of what atheists do, but is instead controlled and defined by believers. It's the product that occurs when things don't go the way that believers planned, when their supposedly god-given ethical systems or lifestyles fail. It can't be granted - if their ethics really came from an infallible source - that there's an issue with their belief system or practices, so the only alternative explanation is that, therefore, it must be from a lack of godliness - the "other" atheism.

This is what allows Christians to blame Nazism (which was anti-atheism) on atheism, this is what allowed John Milton to label Satan - who obviously believed in the Christian god - an atheist, and it's one of the scapegoats that allows believers of all stripes to preserve their belief in their own infallibility even when it obviously fails.

Unfortunately for atheists, the blame doesn't dissolve. It gets redirected toward skepticism and secularism, and in turn promotes even deeper fundamentalism, since the obvious response to an apparent lack of religiosity is to promote even more of it, and more publicly, and more extreme versions of it - and perversely, the more often it fails, the more often it's promoted.

Pope says atheists are Nazis

I just had to post this since it's so funny. The Pope! thinks atheists! are the Nazis!

This is the same pope who was in the Hitler Youth as a child, who has refused to defrock (or even demote) actual Nazis and Holocaust-deniers in his own organization - this, from the head of the same church that courted Nazi Germany, attempting to become its official church - and when Hitler was himself a member of said church, and has never been removed - this same pope is accusing atheists of being Nazis! I just had to lol.

Link: BBC News - Pope speech compares atheist 'extremism' with Nazism

Weekly Link Dump

Just because it's interesting to me to see how different news sources write about the same issue...

CNN.com: French senate approves burqa ban

Deseret News: French Senate passes ban of full Muslim veils


Two from Belgium this time:

Global Post: Belgium: Amid sex scandals, de-baptism gains favor

USA Today: Belgian report: Church abuse led to at least 13 suicides


And finally, two local links.

Salt Lake City Political Buzz Examiner: Utah governor's race: Herbert gets defense, Does Utah need campaign reform?

The Ground-Zero Mosque is turning into a reality show

Now Fred Phelps of "God Hates Fags" fame has gotten into the act, claiming that if no one else is going to burn a Koran, he will.

LINK: Times of India - Now, another US church says will burn holy book