Curing The God Virus
I am currently reading The God Virus, by Darrel Ray. I already owned his book when I heard him speak at the Midwest Humanist Conference last month, but I hadn’t really started reading it in earnest until last week.
In his talk and his book, he likens religion to a virus. He compares the way that a virus or parasite can take over its host’s brain functions causing the host to do things that are actually against it’s own well being.
He gives the example of a parasite which infects a specific species of ant. Once infected, this ant will be compelled to climb to the highest stalk of grass that it can find where it is likely to be eaten by a cow. This, of course, is suicidal as far as the ant is concerned, but is just want the parasite wants because it is only in the digestive system of the cow that the parasite reproduces. It’s offspring is then excreted from the cow in moist excrement which the species of ants seek out as a form of moisture needed to survive.
Another example given is that of certain species of rat who, when infected with a particular pathogen, completely lose their ability to detect cat pheromones, making them that much more vulnerable to being caught and eaten. This pathogen needs to get into a cat in order to reproduce and thus infects the rat in such a way that it loses it’s innate ability to detect when a cat may be nearby.
And thus, Mr. Ray continues, does the God virus, the pathogen of religion, infect and alter the behavior of humans in such a way as to maximize it’s own survival, even at the expense of it’s host’s well being.
A perfect example of this are Islamic terrorists who’s minds are infected with a religion which fills their heads with images of paradise and keeps them from thinking rationally about the consequences of their intended actions. Because of the infection of religion, they have become unable to think rationally about anything that may contradict their religious teachings. This leads them to easily persuade themselves that killing innocent people is both right and required by their religion.
All religions show these same infectious qualities that interfere with people’s ability to rationally consider other views or even the consequences of their own religiously motivated words and actions: Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to protest ideas against their beliefs; right wing religious fundamentalists who kill abortion doctors; Sikhs who kill Hindus who violate their sacred temples; Christians who beat and murder someone just because they are homosexual. All of these heinous acts are caused by an infection with the God Virus which turns off the part of people’s brains that allow them to think rationally about anything that contradicts their beliefs.
Although I know it is anecdotal, I wish to relate my own personal experience of having been infected with the God Virus.
To give you a quick background that leads up to the events of my infection, let me summarize my religious background unto that point.
I was raised Catholic, received First Communion and Confirmation. I considered myself a devout believer in God, but always questioned many of the teachings of the church and the bible. After moving onto college and the Army, I became what I called a generic Christian, eschewing the teachings of the Catholic church because I could no longer, in good conscience, support most of them.
As time went on, my readings of and about the bible taught me that there were far too many contradictions and human tampering with the source documents of the bible to be able to believe in much of any of it, except as allegory.
By the time I married my first wife, I was a believer in God, but believed that any sources for the “true” Christianity had long been lost, adulterated, or destroyed. Still, I converted to her religion of Armenian Orthodox, which was, at is basics, little different from Catholicism.
In about 2002, I had what I thought was a revelation from God to become a Muslim. I became completely consumed by Islam and read and thought about nothing else for months until I finally under went the Shahada, or conversion to Islam.
I was sure I was saved. I was sure that the Qu’ran was a divinely revealed (not inspired, but revealed) book.
The Qu’ran taught me that Christianity and Judaism had been corrupted, as had the original teachings of the prophets, which were the same for Islam as for the other two religions. This completely reinforced what I’d already come to believe from my own studies.
But I began to change. I started to allow myself to look down on others, to view everyone else as misguided. I even allowed myself to hate others, those enemies of Islam.
Hate was something I had never allowed myself to feel before, believing we were all human and therefore, equal. While I could justify hate for certain individuals, because of their words and actions, the idea of hating a whole group of people was, up till this point, an anathema to me.
My first marriage fell apart, due to many reasons, but as my mental energies were focused on divorce and all that goes with it, religion took a back seat to the turmoil I was going through.
There came a time when I had some breathing room to look at my religious believes again, and I was horrified by what I’d allow myself to become. Someone who hated; who ignored the evidence that was contrary to my world view.
I had another revelation at this point, not a religious one, but an emotional and intellectual one. I realized that I needed to apply the same standards to studying Islam as I did Christianity earlier. Once I did this, the entire house of cards fell down and the infection of Islam was gone from my mind.
Still, the infection of the God Virus was not completely gone as I struggled to figure out what my spiritual beliefs were in the aftermath of my rejection of all religions. Did I still believe in God? Yes, I told my self. But what kind of God was he?
For a short while, I decided that maybe he was a deistic God, one who created the universe and then moved on, never to interact with it. So was I a deist? Maybe God was just completely beyond our knowing so maybe I was an agnostic?
But, as my long suppressed love of science and thinking returned, I realized that being agnostic is merely, for me, a way of avoiding the really hard thinking and the requirement to actually answer the question for myself.
I could then see the choice between deism and no belief at all present itself. As I suggested in my post yesterday, if there was a deistic creator, that fact makes no difference at all for our existence and the fate of our universe, leaving me with non-belief, or atheism.
So, I feel that I’ve finally rid myself of the God virus. It’s taken 50 years and more ups, downs, back and forths and wild roller coaster rides than I can even count.
Inoculating yourself against the God Virus is hard and fraught with pitfalls, but well worth the freedom that it brings. I suggest that everyone give it a try.
Vaccines – The Need For Informed Consent
I was discussing my passion for educating people about the need to get vaccinated with my wife. We were specifically talking about vaccination exemptions in light of the pertussis epidemic in California.
I explained how two of my coworkers felt that having the right to opt out was important. She said that since I was such a supporter of critical thinking I should be supporting people’s right to opt out.
I told her that my coworkers held common misconceptions about vaccines, like they cause autism and brain damage, or that there is mercury in them and since they were misinformed they couldn’t make an informed decision about it.
I believe that more needs to be done to educate the public about the facts about vaccines. Another thing that needs to happen is that obtaining an exemption should be made with informed consent. For example, here is the current rules regarding vaccine exemption in California:
“Each student in California is required to submit a “California School Immunization Record” to be admitted to school (California Health and Safety Code Section 12-375).
On the reverse of the form is the following statement: “I hereby request exemption of the child, named in the front, from the immunization requirements for school/child care center entry because these immunizations are contrary to my beliefs. I understand that in case of an outbreak of any of these diseases, the child may be temporarily excluded from school for his/her protection.” To exercise the exemption, you simply sign the immunization record under this statement.
There is another exemption which is available, although it is more difficult to exercise because a medical opinion is necessary. If immunization is “contraindicated”, that is, considered to be potentially harmful to the child for medical reasons, an exemption is granted upon the filing with of “a written statement by a licensed physician to the effect that the physical condition of the child is such, or medical circumstances relating to the child are such, that immunization is not considered safe, indicating the specific nature and probable duration of the medical condition or circumstances that contraindicate immunization…” (California Health and Safety Code Section 120370).”
Why is it so much easier to get an exemption just because it is contrary to your beliefs, but you have to jump though hoops to get a medical exemption? Shouldn’t both require the same kind of standards?
I believe that if you wish to have an exemption because it is contrary to your beliefs, you should at a minimum be required to read, sign and have witnessed, an information form explaining the the real, proven risks of vaccines, along with the facts of the consequences of not vaccinating, such as the symptoms of the diseases that the vaccines in question are designed to fight and the facts about the injuries and mortality rates associated with each disease. This would be real, informed consent.
Yes, people have a right to consider not vaccinating their children, but that right can only go so far. It must be weighted against the public health risk of the reduction of herd immunity in each community.
We need a major public health initiative to educate the public about the real risks and benefits of vaccines. People need to be educated about the real risks of the vaccine verses the real risks of the disease itself because the risks of injury and death from the disease is far, far greater than the risks of the vaccine.
For information about the vaccines and requirements of exemptions where you live you can check out the following sources:
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
The Centers For Disease Control National Vaccine Program Office
Immunization Laws
Time To Be A Dick!
A scant four days ago, I posted my views about Phil Plait’s Don’t Be A Dick talk at TAM 8. The upshot of which was that we need to engage people with civility, but there are times when ridicule is in oder. This, I think, is one of those times.
Today, I posted on Facebook and Twitter that I want to organize a vaccination drive in my area and requesting help to get it organized.
The only response I received so far was from one, Zack Wellington, of Brattleboro, Vermont, who, according to his profile, is looking for free-thinking canines to romp with. It’s too bad that Zack isn’t a free-thinker himself. He seems to have a very serious case of alt-med delusion.
There were three separate comments, each with responses. Let me give you the ensuing tet-a-tet in it’s entirety:
| Jay Walker: I want to do vaccine drive in the Omaha, NE but have no idea how to go about it. If you know, send suggestions to jwalker1960@me.com
Zack Wellington: you are protesting vaccines? good boy! Jay Walker: Um..No. Zack Wellington: sorry. |
| Jay Walker: Another reason to vaccinate, as if there weren’t enough already: http://bit.ly/a6eIy2
Zack Wellington: oh. oops. how about reasons NOT to vaccinate. more of those. Like autism, learning disabilities, brain damage…, not to mention contracting the thing you’re trying NOT to get. Jay Walker: How about all of those things have been proven, time and time again not to be true? How about the thousands of children stricken with polio in the early 20th century and then vaccines came along and polio went away? How about the eradication of small pox and the millions of people who died from it before a vaccine? How about the three infants who died recently in California of whooping cough because the people around them hadn’t been vaccinated? Zack Wellington: as Richard Bach said, “Argue for you limitations and they are yours.” Zack Wellington: one of the great things about being “scientific” is that you get to focus on things you don’t want, sometime to the exclusion of all else |
| Jay Walker: Vaccinating saves lives. Not vaccinating cause avoidable death and suffering. Just ask the World Health Organization. Ask the parents of babies who died from whooping cough in California and Australia. Even if vaccines did have a risk of autism disabilities, which study after study have show they don’t, those small risks are far out weighed by the huge risk of death and disability when you don’t vaccinate. |
LIKEFirst off, what the hell does, “Argue for you limitations and they are yours.” and “one of the great things about being “scientific” is that you get to focus on things you don’t want, sometime to the exclusion of all else” have to do with the point I was trying to make? What does that even mean?
How much freaking harm is going to have to be allowed to occur before people wake up to the fact that this anti-vaccination crap is just that, crap?!
People like Zack epitomize the credulous, unthinking, mindless magical thinking that runs rampant in our society. “Modern medicine is bad!”, “Vaccines cause autism!”, “Natural is good!”
I was born in 1960, at 28 weeks. The local hospital had just opened a state of the art NICU with incubators and doctors and nurses who were highly trained in the latest modern medical treatments. I should have died, and if I’d been born anywhere else, I probably would have. But I survived. I survived because modern, science based medicine had provided the tools, theories and training to save me. There was no shaman waving leaves over my head, no Wiccan priestess casting incantations in my direction, no priest with the last rights, just doctors and nurses who spent years in medical school and residency who knew what to do because science and critical thinking taught them how premature babies worked.
Show me one example of a time when an alternative medicine or natural remedy saved someone’s life. I’m not talking about eased their pain, helped them sleep or settled their stomach. I’m talking about treating their heart disease, curing their cancer, saving their freaking lives!
Of course they can’t show me. The trail of alt-med is littered with the bodies of those who sought healing in it’s magical, natural arms only to find out too late that it offered nothing but broken promises and squandered time.
I can show you millions of people who are alive today whose cancers are in remission and whose hearts and arteries have been mended by chemotherapy, radiation treatments, surgery and modern pharmacology, people who now have years more to spend with their loved ones and enjoy the gift of life.
I’ll end with Zack’s favorite quote, according to his Facebook profile:
“He is happy in his work because he is in harmony with his group and his emotions are flowing. He is free.”
~Natural Dog Training, Kevin Behan
You know, I wonder if he would have his free-thinking dogs vaccinated for rabbis or distemper? Somehow I suspect he would.
Have I been enough of a dick? Good!
I May Not Agree With , But I Will Defend You’er Right To
Ahmed H. Sharif, a NYC cabbie, was attacked by a passenger who slashed his face and neck after asking him if he was Muslim and he replied in the affirmative. Once again, intolerance has reared its ugly head. This time, apparently, it is religious intolerance.
If you have been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m no fan of religion. I believe that religion is harmful, breeds intolerance and hatred, and oppresses women and those who do believe as they do.
I also, however, believe that people have a right to believe and worship as they choose (or to chose not to believe or worship at all), as long as they don’t use their belief to try to harm or oppress others. Its basically and live-and-let-live thing.
There are basic human rights that we all have and freedom of thought and belief are one of the most personal and integral to our sense of self and wellbeing. It is this freedom, along with many others, that I, as a humanist, feel I must respect and fight for.
How do I fight for it? Well, first of all, I write this blog. Getting the message out there is the first step in educating people about these things.
I also support many organizations like The Freedom From Religion Foundation, Non-Believers Giving Aid, Doctors Without Borders, and others with what money I can donate and with my time in any local activities they sponsor.
But I do more that just this. I talk to people. I express my belief in our basic human rights whenever a story like Mr. Sharif’s comes up. Some people don’t agree with me, so do. Some, however, never gave it much thought and I can see the realization in their faces when they listen to my arguments supporting Mr. Sharif’s right to be a Muslim. I can tell that, perhaps thought I didn’t change their mind, I did give them something to think about.
This is the message I want to send to you today. Don’t just sit back and let these kinds of incidents go by without doing something, writing something or saying something to someone about them. You don’t have to get all up in people’s faces or climb up on a soap box and shout it out (but please feel free to do so if you choose). If you hear these things mentioned in conversation, put your two cents worth in. Bring it up yourself if no one is talking about it. Just a, “Hey, did you hear about…?” will suffice to get the conversation going.
Issues like religions freedom, or as I prefer to call it, freedom of conscience, along with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of choice (to chose what happens to your body, to choose who to marry, etc), the right to health care, the right to shelter and food, and many more, are all things that we, as humans, have in common.
To sit back and let an injustice go by ignored and unanswered is perhaps one of the greatest evils that we, as humans face. It is more so our indifference, rather than our cruelty, that causes the greater harm.
Dealing With Magical Thinking In Friends and Family
As skeptics we are used to refuting pseudoscience and magical thinking that we read, see or hear around us. But how do you deal with a situation where a good friend deeply believes in not just one pseudoscience, but many, including some conspiracy theory thrown in for good measure?
I was presented with this very scenario today in a conversation with a good friend of mine. We began talking something we have in common, polyamory.
But after a few minutes of that, the subject of atheism came up. She said that she considers atheism to be an extreme view because it is on one end of the spectrum with believing in many gods. I disagreed and explained my view that atheism is non-belief in any god or gods and that I arrived at it by careful, evaluation and rational thinking.
She said that she believes that she is one of the about 3% of people who can experience spiritual things. I told her that I experience the same thing when I look at a beautiful sunset or think about quantum mechanics.
She said that she meant that she also can sense things other people can’t to which I replied that science has shown that these types of experiences are internal to our minds and not caused by outside supernatural things.
She then suggested that I read The Secret because it is a very scientific way of looking at the spiritual world. She said that it was too dry and scientific for her, but thought that I’d really like it.
She said that we are all responsible for what happens to us. Not just responsible in the sense of taking responsibility for what we say or do, but that we are responsible for what happens here on earth in all respects. I told her that I can see how that could be given things like over population, global warming, and such, but that there are definitely things that we have no control over, like the weather or if an asteroid hits the earth. She then said that we, in fact, are responsible, maybe not on a personal level, but if the energy of enough people wish for an asteroid to hit earth, or if there is enough negative energy to attract one, then we are responsible. I asked her if she meant to say that this energy we have extend across the whole universe and she said yes.
Later, when politics came up, she expressed the belief that Bush had an hand in 9/11. She told me that there are plenty of web sites out there where I can get that information.
Well, by this time, I wasn’t saying very much. After all, she’s a dear friend and I love her, so I didn’t want to start arguing every point with her.
I have to admit that I’m at a lose, intellectually, with her. My instinct is to just let it go. Her friendship means a lot to me, much more than being right about these things. Still, there is so much magical thinking and pseudoscience going on in her head that it’s hard for me to even know where to start the next conversation.
Has anyone else had a similar experience with a friend or family? If so, please share it.
It’s Time To Smack Yourself Upside The Head With Some Critical Thinking
I read an interesting article today entitled, Why have UFOs changed speed over the years?. The article examines how in the 1950′s UFOs were reported to move at very high speeds, but since about the 1960′s they more often than not move very slowly or not at all, hovering in the air. This reminds me of other conversations I’ve head or been a part of about ghosts.
In the 1800′s and early 20th centuries, ghosts were misty, gossamer things, looking in photographs of the time like gauze which, it was shown, they were.
Today, ghosts are often shadows, cold spots in a room, mysterious voices on tape or spikes on meters.
Anyone interested in UFOs or ghosts should be asking themselves, “What is it about the properties of these things that have changed over the past decades or century?”. Of course, most anyone who believes in ghosts or that UFOs are alien crafts would never ask themselves these questions because they don’t want to have to think about it, because to do so would be to come face to face with facts that they won’t like.
Occam’s Razor tells us that the simplest of two or more theories that fit the facts for a phenomenon is most likely the correct one.
What does Occam’s Razor tell us about the change in properties of ghosts and UFOs over time? Let’s consider two possible hypotheses for each, shall we?
We will take UFOs first.
In the 1950′s UFOs were unbelievably fast, often attaining speeds in excess of 18,000 mph! They also often traveled in groups and straight lines or other geometric patterns. They were also almost always seen during daylight hours.
Since the mid 1960′s on, UFOs have slowed down. Now they appear almost exclusively alone, unaccompanied by other UFOs. They move very slowly and often hover only feet above the ground. They don’t travel in geometric patterns anymore, but often waft along as a leaf in a gentle breeze. And almost all of them appear at night.
One possibility to explain change in behavior and even appearance is that there are different aliens visiting us now than there were 50 years ago. But if so, where did they first ones go? Were they driven out by the new comers?
The other possibility is that alien ships have never and don’t currently visit earth and UFO sightings, then and now, are misinterpretation of natural phenomenons.
Distances are notoriously difficult to judge, even for experienced observers like pilots. This is even more true at night. Light and shadow during the day can create unexpected and unfamiliar shapes. The same is true of lights in the night sky.
Given that our brains are hard wired to seek patterns in everything we see, it isn’t surprising that we will jump to conclusions about what we just saw. This is called pareidolia. UFOs are a popular topic so it is one of the first things that come to our minds when we are trying to explain the unfamiliar in our skies.
Given that our current understanding of physics tells us that to travel the vast distances of space in any reasonable amount of time, say withing a generation or so, would take more energy than an entire star puts out, we can safely conclude that the probability of aliens visiting us is fairly low.
On the other had, given that our brains will always, almost without fail, assign meaning to random patterns, the probability that UFO sightings are misinterpretations of unfamiliar patterns in the sky is very high.
So, apply Occam’s Razor, we can confidently say UFOs are not anything out of this world and can be explained by natural phenomenon, even if we can’t always determine what those phenomenon are in every case.
Now, onto ghosts.
At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, ghosts were white or gray, misty things that communicated with us mortals by knocking or rapping on floors and tables.
Today, ghosts are shadowy figures, or often, completely unseen, that communicate with us via EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), EMF (Electro Magnetic Frequency) meters, or K2 meters, which measure magnetism. In fact, according to Grant, from the SciFi Channel show Ghost Hunters,
“The K2 meter measures magnetic fields, and it’s been specially calibrated for paranormal investigations. The theory behind the K2 meter is that if there’s a spirit in the area, the K2 meter will pick up it’s magnetic field. You can then train the spirits, supposedly, to intensify its magnetic field, therefore lighting up the lights on the meter.”
Wow, specially calibrated for paranormal investigations! I would so love to find out just how you calibrate a device to detect the paranormal, but I supposed I’ll have to leave that for another blog entry.
So, let’s put our hypotheses out there and see what Occam’s Razor tells us about them.
The ghost hunters will say that all of these things are caused by spirits or ghosts. They can’t tell us exactly how they do these things; what mechanism is enabling the ghosts to create shadows, make it cold in one part of a room, put voices onto tape or make an EMF meter change.
Now for the rational hypothesis.
All of these things can be explained by known psychological and scientific mechanisms.
In the 1920s and 1930s, it was show rather conclusively, by people like Harry Houdini, that the raps and knocks that were supposedly from spirits, were in fact made by the psychic mediums who conducted séances. The gauze like emissions made by the “spirits” was exactly that, gauze. The misty apparitions in photos, double exposures.
Today, we have shadows, cold spots, EVPs and EMF readings. Let’s look at each of these a little closer.
Shadows are just that, a darker area amongst a better lit area. Anyone who was a child can remember being in their room in the dark, terrified, sure that the shadow on the wall, or in the closet was a ghost or monster there to devour them. A quick flick of the light switch, or turning on of the flashlight showed that it was merely something as mundane as a coat hung upon the back of a chair or a baseball bat leaning out of the closet.
Cold spots. Considering that most ghost hunts take place in older structures, it really isn’t any surprise that there are drafts wafting about all over the place. Unless a room had been hermetically sealed, I’d be surprised if there weren’t changes in temperature within any room.
EVPs. These are supposed spirit voices caught on tape or other recording devices during ghost hunts that normally can’t be herd while the recording is being made. Lets see how these “voices” might get on the tapes.
In almost any modern community, we are surrounded by electromagnetic waves of all types: radio, T.V., cell phones, high voltage electrical wires. All of them produce electromagnetic radiation that can interfere with recording devices. These waves pass through the circuitry of the devices and can generate electrical currents that can cause spurious noises to be recorded.
The vast majority of times, it is just random burst of noise that rises about the background static. And, as with random patterns that our eyes see and our brains try to apply meaning to, the same is true of sound. Our brains desperately strain to make sense of senseless static and noise. Listen to the same section of noise on a tape enough and your brain is bound to assign meaning to it. Once that meaning is in your head, there is no getting it out. Once you tell someone else what you “heard” they easily hear the same thing.
EMF readings. Remember all that electromagnetic radiation I talked about flying around us all the time? Well, these EMF meters are able to detect certain portions, or frequencies, of that radiation and they do what they were designed to do: display some numbers, or in the case of the K2, light up sets of lights.
What does Occam’s Razor tell us here?
Considering that the first hypothesis doesn’t have an explainable mechanism, and the second has boat loads, I think the answer is clear The second one have an overwhelming preponderance of evidence to support it.
It is amazing just how much gunk and other crap you can get our of your brain if you just apply some critical thinking. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather live in a world that I can reasonably explain than one full of fear and anxiety.
How about you?
The BBC Puts Its Foot In Its Mouth. What Next; Bat Boy?
In an article on the BBC website on August 23, titled Space is the final frontier for evolution, the heading stated:
“Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution.”
This is something I’d expect to read on the Fox News or Answers In Genesis sites, not the BBC site.
The article references a study by PhD student Sarda Sahney and colleagues at the University of Bristol. The study finds that;
“really big evolutionary changes happen when animals move into empty areas of living space, not occupied by other animals.
For example, when birds evolved the ability to fly, that opened up a vast range of new possibilities not available to other animals. Suddenly the skies were quite literally the limit, triggering a new evolutionary burst.
Similarly, the extinction of the dinosaurs left areas of living space wide open, giving mammals their lucky break.”
This concept challenges the idea that competition for resources in crowded habitats is the major driving force of evolution and concludes that competition did not play too large a role in the pattern of evolution
The article does offer a alternative explanation for the findings:
“Professor Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University, US, told BBC News he “found the patterns interesting, but the interpretation problematic”.
He explained: “To give one example, if the reptiles had not been competitively superior to the mammals during the Mesozoic (era), then why did the mammals only expand after the large reptiles went extinct at the end of the Mesozoic?”
“And in general, what is the impetus to occupy new portions of ecological space if not to avoid competition with the species in the space already occupied?””
I have to strongly agree with Professor Stearns. Just because there was more space available doesn’t mean that natural selection was not in play, it more likely means that the species that did survive thrived in greater numbers than they otherwise might have. The increase in space and corresponding resources, while allowing more of a species to proliferate, doesn’t diminish the role of natural selection in the least; it just changes the outcome of its effects.
It is really sad to see an organization as respected as the BBC participating in sensational journalism by making unfounded claims, especially about something as easy to fact check at natural selection.
More (and better) Photos From the Midwest Humanist Conference
The Midwest Humanist Conference 2010, taken by Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers.I’m still kicking myself for not taking my Sony Cyber Shot with me!
The Midwest Humanist Conference
The Midwest Humanist Conference was held at the Country Inn and Suites in Lincoln, NE on August 22, 2010. This is the first conference like this that I’ve ever been to, and so I was very excited. This was also the first chance I was going to have to meet fellow members of The Omaha Atheists.
I want to give you my impressions of all of the speakers and speeches. While I did take some notes, they weren’t particularly copious, so please don’t take this as a blow by blow report so much as it is what I took away from them.
The conference was kicked off by Jason Frye, the organizer of the conference. He began by highlighting the day’s speakers and then showed us a hilarious video call Jesus Beer.
The first speaker was August Berkshire, president of Minnesota Atheists and a Camp Quest Minnesota Board member. His speech was titled, Humanity of Atheism.
He started off by saying that atheist should not be capitalized (unless, of course, it is in the title of something or at the beginning of a sentence). His reason for this is that atheist is a descriptor, not a proper noun. It describes a state of non-belief in any supernatural being, not a description of the person themselves.
He went on to promote the idea that humanism and atheism need to merge. In this way, humanism gains from the higher public visibility of atheism and atheism gains from being associated with a philosophy of high ethics and morality, something that it unfortunately lacks in the public perception today.
I found August to warm and approachable and he brought great intelligence to his arguments.
The next speaker was Greg Lammers, American Atheists Missouri State Director.
He began his speech with, “Once upon a time…” and went on to describe how every sixth Thursday of the month he goes to the Catholic center to meet with “Monsignor Scarface” where they have a conference call with the Pope so he can inform the Pope as to the latest going-ons of the atheists in Missouri.
The point, of course, was to illustrate that we shouldn’t just believe things because someone tells us they are so. He has a very humorous delivery which really made the talk very enjoyable.
His main point was illustrated by a quote from Proverbs 1:7:
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”
He talked about how insidious it is that a religion would choose fear as its foundation of wisdom, giving some very humorous, but poignant examples of this (none of which I can specifically remember, unfortunately).
He ended by stating that he believes that the better response would be:
“Doubt is the beginning of wisdom.”
For it is through questioning everything that we learn the truth about our world.
After lunch, was the keynote speaker, D.J. Grothe, president of The James Randi Educational Foundation. His talk was titled, The Humanism of Skepticism.
D.J is a very engaging and well polished speaker who exhibits great enthusiasm, grace and humaneness to every subject he speaks on.
He began by explaining what, as he sees it, true skepticism is. A true skeptic is not someone who, out of hand, dismisses things that are improbable or on the fringe, but someone who is always open to all possible explanations and insists on questioning and testing all of them, if possible. They will then conclude that something is probable based on the evidence. But they are always open to new evidence that may cause them to change their conclusions. This is a very naturalistic way of looking at the world.
He stressed that, although skepticism has traditionally concerned its self with the investigation of the paranormal, alternative medicine, or just plain fakery, that in the past seven years or so, religious claims have begun to come under its purview.
He posited that religious claims, including the very existence of God or gods, should be investigated using the same methods as those used to investigate the paranormal, especially given that both claim supernatural causes.
He then tied this into atheism by saying that atheists should use the skeptical tool kit, as it were, to support their ideas. In this way, skeptical thinking can inform atheistic thought, creating a solid, empirical foundation for its conclusions.
My favorite speaker was Amanda Knief, cofounder of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, Humanist Celebrant, and public policy attorney.
I was not previously familiar with her or her work and this was a fantastic introduction for me. She spoke about atheism in the workplace with emphasis on the legal rights of atheists.
I learned that atheists are protected from discrimination in the workplace by the same laws that protect people of all faiths (even though atheism isn’t a faith). By using several court cases as examples she illustrated how these protections came about.
She has a wonderfully engaging speaking style, strong, yet graceful and humorous. I came away highly impressed and deeply moved by her presentation. She is someone I’d gladly go to hear speak at any and every opportunity.
Dale Hilderbrant is a magician and mentalist. His topic was Psychics: Tricks of the Trade.
He did some neat tricks using exaggerated techniques to highlight just how the sham psychics do it.
During dinner, I found that he has an in-depth knowledge of magic and mentalism and has written several books on magic.
The next speaker was Darrel Ray, author of The God Virus. His talk was provocatively titled Religion: A Sexually Transmitted Disease.
He began by giving two examples that illustrate that what we in the west consider normal sexual behavior is, in fact, not normal at all.
The first is the Hazda tribe of Tanzania. These people have no known gods or religion. They have no concept of marriage as we would understand it.
In this society, multiple partners are the norm, with the woman being the dominant one in establishing relationships. All children are raised by the entire community. They have no concept of adultery or anything of that sort and a high value is placed on sexual pleasure as an integral part of their lives. Sexual pleasure is discussed openly among everyone, including children, who learn about sexuality and sexual practices from observing their parents and listening to adults talk about them.
The second culture is the Hawaiian culture before contact with the west.
Here again, we have a society where monogamy is unknown. In this culture, religion deals mainly with prohibitions on different types of food, rather than different sexual practices. Here, there can be different types of relationships; sexual relationships for love, sexual relationships for procreation, and sexual relationships for pleasure. In all of these relationships it is very common that a different partner is involved for each type of relationship.
Again, as with the Hazda, children are raised by the community. Children are not only taught, but prepared for their sexual coming of age by either their grandparents or aunts. The boys have their penises blown on from infants up to the age of seven, as this was believed to prepare them for future sexual relationships. The girls would, almost daily, have their clitorises pulled and stretched to make them larger over time to heighten their future sexual pleasure.
These examples then led into what Darrel called infection of The God Virus. The premise of this is that our concept of what constitutes “normal” sexual behavior in the West was shaped by the Judeo/Christian religions which manufactured prohibitions on various sexual practices and relationships.
He used examples from the Bible that showed that, in the Old Testament, the only prohibitions of sexual relations were for homosexuality and promiscuous women. We were shown that Abraham, David, Solomon and others were certainly polygamists, yet both Christianity and Judaism, beginning right around the time of Jesus, prohibit polygamy without any biblical basis.
He went on to show that it was early Christian writers and theologians who were both preoccupied and terrified of sex. This was tied very closely to a hatred and condemnation of women.
He then moves onto the New Testament. Here he relates that, to be called “rabbi” in the Jewish culture both in Jesus’ time and today, it was not just presumed, but expected, that the man in question would have to be married. About the only examples of unmarried rabbis are those that are widowed (my statement, not his.) Yet, nowhere in the New Testament is Jesus’ being married mentioned. In fact, none of the disciples are mentioned as being married, but we can conclude that some of them must have been for Jesus tells them:
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters–yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple. “ Luke 14:26
Who, Darrel asks, removed or suppressed the mention of their wives from the Bible, and why?
He gave numerous examples from his years of practicing clinical psychology where it became obvious to him that married people, over time, because satiated with each other. In other words, they no longer find sex with their partner exciting or interesting and the urge to have sex with someone else becomes stronger and stronger until it tears the relationship apart. This isn’t a flaw with any of these people but a fact of human nature.
Satiation is a well established fact of human psychology that we can no more ignore that we can other feelings. He used the example of if you eat chocolate every day; you eventually get sick of eating chocolate. This is something I’m sure we can all relate to.
He goes into primary and secondary sexual characteristics. For example, primary sexual characteristics would be things like heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual.
Secondary sexual characteristics would be things like fetishes or other specific sexual activities that arouse us, for example pornography, shoe fetish, or a particular attraction to specific body parts. It is the pursuit of these secondary sexual characteristics that we spend most of our time and energy perusing, and therefore it is these that are often the cause of the stress and anxiety around sex in relationships. We often have been conditioned by The God Virus to feel ashamed or degenerate because of these desires we have, but everyone has them.
He suggests that openly talking with our partners about sex and, especially, these secondary sexual desires that we have is critical to a healthy, long term relationship.
He goes on to suggest that we may have to renegotiate our relationships to accommodate these issues, but strongly urges that we be open and honest with our partners. For example, if we feel the strong need to have sex with someone else, we need to tell our partner that and negotiate something that we are both comfortable with.
Jason Frye, the organizer of this conference, was the next speaker and his topic was Homosexuality & Humanism.
He covered the creation of the LGBT Humanist Council, which is an important step forward for humanists. He went on to stress, using hilarious videos, why LGBT issues are humanist issues, which basically boils down to the fact that LGBT issues are, at their heart, human rights issues no different than other human rights issues that affect people of color or women, for example.
I was surprised to learn that domestic partnerships lack over 1000 rights otherwise afforded to married couples, including such basic rights as the right to hospital visitations, the right to time off for funerals, the right to Social Security Survivor benefits, among the thousands of others.
One very astonishing thing he said is that most gay men are not allowed to give blood:
“Gay men remain banned for life from donating blood, the government said Wednesday, leaving in place — for now — a 1983 prohibition meant to prevent the spread of HIV through transfusions.
Before giving blood, all men are asked if they have had sex, even once, with another man since 1977. Those who say they have are permanently banned from donating. The FDA said those men are at increased risk of infection by HIV that can be transmitted to others by blood transfusion.” (Associate Press, Thursday, May 24, 2007)
This, even though gay men are not the highest HIV risk group. That sad statistic is held by Black Women, who have no over-reaching ban to giving blood. (Diagnoses of HIV infection and AIDS in the United States and Dependent Areas, 2008,; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
The final speaker was Dan Barker, co-president of The Freedom From Religion Foundation.
His topic was titled, America Doesn’t Have a Prayer, in which he discussed the history of, reasons for and current status of their lawsuit against the U.S. Government over the National Day of Prayer.
This was a suit that was brought earlier this year to stop the President from declaring a National Day of Prayer, as mandated by a 1950’s law passed by Congress at the height of the Cold War.
The current status of this is that a federal judge in Wisconsin determined that this law was unconstitutional and enjoined the President to not issue the yearly proclamation, pending appeal of her decision.
The case is slated to go before an appeals court this fall.
The basis for their suit is that since the proclamation applies to all citizens, all citizens are affected, even those who don’t pray or aren’t religious as stated in the ruling:
“It goes beyond mere ‘acknowledgment’ of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context. In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience. When the government associates one set of religious beliefs with the state and identifies nonadherents as outsiders, it encroaches upon the individual’s decision about whether and how to worship.”
He went on to describe how the National Day of Prayer was created by the evangelical religious right, who consider this their pet project and have a documented history of denying participation by other, non-evangelical, religious groups. He claims that the supporters would lose nothing if Government did not support the National Day of Prayer as they would still be able to organize and promote it, as they always have and continue to do.
The whole conference was a fantastic experience for me. Being new to the skeptical movement and humanism, it was wonderful to interact with everyone involved.
I wish I was able to give all the speakers as an in-depth review as I did for Darrel and Jason Frye, but I just couldn’t remember enough details to do them justice and I certainly didn’t want to report erroneous information.
I would strongly recommend anyone with an interest in humanism (and who shouldn’t be interested in helping their fellow human begins?) to check out the links I’ve provided. There is an enormous wealth of great information to help you get involved in a wide variety of different causes if you so choose.
Even if you can’t get involved, you can certainly learn some things that you didn’t know before. Sometimes knowledge is its own reward.
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You can see pictures from this event on my Facebook page or my Mobile Me page. I apologize for the poor quality; I should have brought my good camera.
The event was sponsored by American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Center for Inquiry, Council for Secular Humanism, Humanist Association of San Diego, Humanist Community of Silicon Valley, Lincoln Secular Humanists, Planned Parenthood of Nebraska & Council Bluffs, Scouting for All, The God Virus, The James Randi Educational Foundation, LGBT Humanist Council, The Freedom From Religion Foundation, The Lincoln Atheists, The Omaha Atheists, The Thomas Jefferson Humanist Society
Coming Soon – The Midwestern Humanist Conference
I just got home from the Midwestern Humanist Conference in Lincoln, NE. There were wonderful speakers, excellent speeches and a lot of really nice people. I’ll be blogging all about it tomorrow. I’m tired after a great day so its off to bed.
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