Atheist Revolution Feed

• Atheist PR: Does it Matter to Them?

  Since the earthquake in Haiti, the secular community has been rallying behind a number of valuable relief efforts. Many have donated to the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders directly. Others have routed their contributions through secular charities in the hopes of elevating the profile of charitable giving by atheists. After all, desperate Christians trying to defend an indefensible worldview are fond of clinging to their relatively higher rate of charitable giving. While I support efforts to increase awareness of atheist philanthropy, I am realistic about the efficacy of such efforts. I have had a link to Haitian relief efforts above the fold since I learned of the quake (the current link points to Non-Believers Giving Aid). And yet, here is an email I received a couple days ago from Gary with "Haiti" in the subject line:Just wondering...Christian organizations have ponied up the majority of independent fundraising for those whose lives were destroyed in Haiti. Hundreds of Millions of Dollars. Does your organization believe in helping anyone but yourselves? I guess not. Oh, please read the constitution...it grants us Freedom OF religion...not Freedom From Religion. Get a clueDespite the efforts here and at most other atheist blogs I visit regularly to call attention to the situation in Haiti and encourage donations, Gary continues to accuse us of being selfish. I realize that it is entirely possible, probable even, that Gary is simply a tool. But I must wonder whether his reaction is typical, and if so, what that means for those interested in trying to improve the public image of atheists through means such as highlighting our charitable giving. Subscribe to Atheist RevolutionCopyright © 2010 Atheist Revolution. This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement.

• Modeling as a Factor in Anti-Atheist Bigotry

  An atheist is simply someone who does not believe in gods. Why would it be necessary for religious believers to demonize such a person? What would possibly motivate some religious individuals to threaten, intimidate, or even assault someone simply because of his or her lack of religious beliefs? Every one of us comes across people with very different beliefs and values frequently without lashing out at them. What makes atheists so different? We know that atheists are demonized like few other minority groups in the United States. I suspect we could identify a number of contributing factors (e.g., the historic association of atheism with Communism, misplaced fears about atheists trying to destroy religion and ban bibles, defensive reactions against confronting one's own ignorance and superstition, etc.). But there is an even simpler and often overlooked factor which appears to contribute to how the general public perceives and interacts with atheists: modeling. When the average person hears about an atheist holiday sign being vandalized, he or she may experience conflicted emotions. On one hand, maybe the atheists deserved it for meddling with religious holidays. On the other hand, vandalizing someone's sign is probably illegal and certainly doesn't seem reconcilable with respecting free speech. But what happens when the average person learns that the sign was vandalized by an elected official or someone running for office? When the average person hears someone make bigoted statements about atheists, he or she may initially have the thought, "You wouldn't say that about Catholics, or Jews, or other religious groups." But what happens when the person making false and/or bigoted statements is a state governor, a state legislator, a Catholic cardinal, a Baptist pastor, or even a U.S. senator? When the average person inhabits a culture where bigotry toward atheists is considered to be perfectly acceptable, what else is he or she to think? We must continue the important work of raising public awareness of anti-atheist bigotry, clearly identifying bigoted statements as such. However, we also need to make sure that bigoted statements by public officials and others with any sort of cultural clout are met with swift and compelling responses. In essence, we must increase the social and political costs for such statements. Subscribe to Atheist RevolutionCopyright © 2010 Atheist Revolution. This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement.

• When We Must Intervene

  "Do we have a right to tell people they are wrong?" This was the question recently posed by Richard Collins (End Hereditary Religion) after he encountered it during a public parenting forum. I agree completely with his affirmative response. In fact, I think I'd take it an additional step and suggest that we may actually have an obligation to do this when it comes to religion, at least in some circumstances. Richard begins by pointing out how interconnected we are and the implications this has for us on the subject of parenting.Incompetent parents raise children who because of the maltreatment they endured are angry and become dangerous to everybody around them.He notes that we all end up paying the costs for those in society who go wrong as a result of poor parenting practices and suggests that this is part of what gives us the right to speak out "especially against willful ignorance." I tend to feel the same way when it comes to some aspects of religion. For example, teaching children to hate atheists and homosexuals because of assorted passages in their "holy" book causes pain and conflict.Trying to protect the feelings of such people, who will not listen to reason, commands far less importance that trying to prevent very real harm to thousands of children.On some issues of vital importance, I believe we in the reality-based community may incur an obligation to speak out. Take the prevention of HIV/AIDS as an example. If I were to run across someone providing erroneous instruction to children, I believe I would incur a duty to at least attempt to correct the misinformation. Increasingly, I feel this way about atheist-bashing too. Subscribe to Atheist RevolutionCopyright © 2010 Atheist Revolution. This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement.

• Why I'm Skipping the Super Bowl

  I had been planning to watch the Super Bowl. I don't particularly care who wins, and I don't really care for either of the teams playing. Still, I was planning to watch it because I almost always do. But now that I've learned that CBS, the network broadcasting the Super Bowl, has been working closely with Focus on the Family to produce a commercial opposing reproductive rights for women, I think I'll skip the game. Focus on the Family is the Christian extremist organization formerly ran by James Dobson. I suspect you are already familiar with them and the evangelical fundamentalism for which they stand. Now they want to use Tim Tebow to spread their anti-choice message. To be clear, I recognize the right of Focus on the Family to purchase ads like anyone else and the right of CBS to air them. What troubles me is that CBS is violating their own policy of rejecting advocacy ads during the Super Bowl in order to accommodate Focus on the Family. They've never allowed advocacy ads, and this will be their first. And yet, they've rejected ads from the other side of the political spectrum as violating this policy. Some have speculated that CBS is doing this to generate buzz in the hopes of boosting ratings. I might believe this if we weren't talking about the Super Bowl. Something tells me that their ratings will be fine no matter what ads they air. But they'll have to do without this viewer. Subscribe to Atheist Revolution Copyright © 2010 Atheist Revolution. This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement.

• Idiot of the Week: Rabbi Yehuda Levin

  When Pat Robertson made the recent statement about the Haitian earthquake being a curse from his god, quite a few people stepped up to condemn him. The secular community led, as is so often the case, but I was happy to see many from Robertson's own religious tradition joining the chorus of condemnation. Yes, many Christians did the right thing here by speaking out against Robertson. Unfortunately, this has not stopped others from coming out and praising Robertson or essentially saying the same thing that made him fodder for so many comedians. The Christian Newswire brings us the story of the Rabbinical Alliance of America and a statement they released in which they make essentially the same claim Robertson did. In their version, it wasn't Haiti's pact with Pat Robertson's devil that prompted supernatural wrath but homosexuality. It seems to me that Jewish extremists must have been feeling increasingly jealous of all their attention their Muslim and Christian cousins were receiving and decided it was time to flaunt their own brand of crazy. After describing efforts to end DADT as "the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military," the statement issued by the Alliance went on to say:Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.Congratulations to Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance of America and author of this statement, this week's idiot. H/Ts to Blag Hag and Unreasonable Faith Subscribe to Atheist RevolutionCopyright © 2010 Atheist Revolution. This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement.