I Am The Blog

For Dr. Ray, “Religion is a sexually-transmitted disease”

My wife and I went to go see Dr. Darrel Ray, psychologist and author of the best-selling book The God Virus, speak yesterday in Memphis. His talk was a very thought-provoking and provocative look at how religion continues to spread despite the fact that logically, most religious belief makes very little logical sense. Ray compares the effects and propogation of religion to those a virus.

In addition to Ray giving a very enjoyable talk, I was pleasantly surprised at just how well the analogy holds up. I had read and heard about Dr. Ray prior to the talk and knew the general premise of his book, but Ray went into detail about a number of ways religion acts like a virus. Here are just a couple examples of many he gave (he spoke for almost 2 hours, not including the Q&A!).

* Religion “infects” its hosts through vertical and horizontal transmission. Just as a disease like HIV can be passed from mother to child (vertical) or from one adult to another (horizontal, religion can be spread through childhood indoctrination (vertical) or through adult conversion (horizontal). This explains his claim that “Religion is a sexually-transmitted disease.”

* The religion “virus” negatively affects its hosts’ behavior. Ray said that you can often see a visible change in a person when you switch from daily topics such as the weather, family, work, etc. to religion: their facial expression and look changes, and sometimes the way they speak does as well. Ray says this is because believers are reverting to back to a time in childhood when they were “infected” with the religion virus (such as 5-7 years old) when logical thinking had not fully developed. Ray argues that religious people can’t be convinced logically of the problems with their religion because the “virus” effectively stopped their logical development on religious topics at a young age. People may be geniuses at logic in other areas, but are stuck at a childhood level when it comes to their religion (but often can objectively consider others’ religions).

I have actually noticed people’s expressions change when the topic switches to religion, so I can subscribe to this part of the analogy as well. He also spoke about techniques that, wittingly or not, preachers use to make people more susceptible to and dependent on religion, such as the emotional ups and downs of a typical religious service (making you feel guilty [e.g. for sins you have committed] only to make you feel better at the end [e.g. for forgiveness of your sins), the cadence of prayers and other liturgical elements, the music and its lyrics (such as the saved wretch in “Amazing Grace”).

My wife, despite being a believer, said the Ray presented arguments well and that they made sense. Not that she agrees with them, of course, but she understands his arguments and thought overall he seemed fair and friendly. I was a little worried what her reaction would be to a talk about a “God virus”, but I think Ray overall did an excellent job of presenting his points in an interesting, matter-of-fact way that didn’t sound overly anti-religious.

The one part my wife reacted negatively to (which made me a little uncomfortable as well), was his statement that non-believers on average have a 5-point higher IQ than believers. Ray made sure to point out that it was a correlation and not a causation. But I think even this may not hold up necessarily. IQ tests have a margin of error, and my wife and I have read that they may be dependent on many other factors as well (for example, poorer students may not have been taught proper test-taking skills and so many perform more poorly on IQ tests even if their actual intelligence is higher). Even if there is a negative correlation between religion and intelligence, I don’t think it’s helpful to think in those terms; I think it could lead to further claims by religionists that atheists are being insulting or condescending to believers.

In his defense, this was a very small portion (perhaps 30 seconds) of his talk. Ray made it clear at several points that he’s not trying to demonize or insult religion or its promoters, going as far as to say that he thinks the Pat Robertsons of the world truly believe they are doing what is best even when it seems ridiculous to outsiders. He thinks that believers are just blinded by the religion virus and are doing what they think is best. Ray has also set up a foundation, Recovering from Religion, which he says aims to help people who would like to be cured of the God virus, which I think furthers the impression that I had for 99.9% of the talk: that Ray is a once-religious man who wants to explain to others why he left religion, show the world his observations as a psychologist about religion’s effects on people, and help those who wish to leave their religion. I thought the talk overall was very enjoyable and informative. I bought the book on Kindle and look forward to reading more.

Image source: http://www.midwesthumanistconference.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/darrel-ray-thumb.jpg

This is why I blog about religion

Sometimes I wonder why I bother blogging about religion and atheism. Does it really matter if I read and talk about religions I don’t even believe in anyway? I used to believe in God, after all, so why I don’t just let bygones be bygones, leave religion alone, and post about something a little more entertaining, like funny animal videos on YouTube! It’d be a lot cheerier, and I’m sure I’d get a lot more traffic on my blog.

Then I see something like this letter to the editor, and I remember why I blog.

This letter to the editor is why I write my blog. I saw this posted on the site of fellow atheist blogger Jason Mosler. Sure, it’d be easy to laugh this letter off as just the rantings of some religious nut. But reading it a second time, it disturbed me on a number of levels.

This is a real person, Alice, writing to a real small-town newspaper in Alaska just a few years ago (January 2007). Alice honestly thinks that:

• People who don’t believe in God should be “kicked [out] of the country“.
• The United States is based on the principle that you “must believe” in God.
• You can believe in God “any way you want“, but Alice only cites mainstream Christian denominations as examples of acceptable beliefs
• Atheists practice “evil“, although it is not explained what this means
• Atheists are responsible for the “ruin” of America and for crime being “rampant“, even “if they have never committed a crime“.

People like Alice are the reason I write this blog. Her religion has closed her mind so much that I’m sure she doesn’t even realize how hate-filled and out-of-touch with reality her letter is. For all we know, Alice is like many Christians: a kind-hearted, generous person in her day-to-day life who truly wants to do what’s right. But because her religion has taught her that people who don’t believe in her god are “evil”, all critical thought stops. She says and thinks the most horrible things because she knows she is right. Crime is up, atheists are in America, my faith says atheists are bad, so atheists are to blame and must be kicked out of society.

If Alice is like most people, she did not choose her religion growing up, but was brought up in a community that is largely if not exclusively Christian. She may never have met an open atheist in her life, but her faith has her so convinced that atheists are the cause of society’s ills that everything she sees (from currency to crime reports) serves to prove it to her. It would likely be difficult if not impossible to convince her otherwise.

We should feel sorry for Alice, for her head being filled with such hateful nonsense based on a book of fairy tales written thousands of years ago. But at the same time, I think we should also have a healthy dose of fear. We live in a society where it is still perfectly acceptable in many circles to openly hate and wish harm on people who don’t believe in God. And that is scary. There are unfortunately still people who think that Jews or Blacks, for example, should be kicked out of the country, but would a letter to the editor blaming Jews for America’s problems saying they should all be sent to Israel be published in a newspaper? Thankfully, there is very little chance of that happening. It’s no longer acceptable to openly say such things in society about most minority groups. But for some reason, it’s still okay to say just about anything you want about atheists, no matter how bigoted or unsupported it is. Many readers I’m sure said or thought “Amen” upon reading Alice’s letter.

Anti-atheist sentiment is what is “rampant” in our country these days. As long as there are people who believe that non-believers are evil and don’t deserve to be citizens, then my blog has a purpose. People need to know that religion is brainwashing good people into believing nonsense and spreading hate. There are people who strongly believe that atheists don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else, some of whom are actively trying to push their bigoted beliefs onto the country as a whole.

If even one believer sees this post and thinks about their belief, or one non-believer realizes how important it is to help change minds about atheists, then writing this blog is definitely worth it.

The Human Spark

Actor Alan Alda (image source: Wikipedia) hosts a new series about human origins

Last night, I was looking at the TV listings and saw that there was a show called “The Human Spark” on. It turns out it’s a three-part series about human origins and why modern humans have the special, hard-to-define “spark” (intelligence, creativity, etc.) that sets us apart from other primates. I watched the first part and it is very well-done. (Check the PBS listings here or your local listings for repeats of part one and airings of the next two parts).

Alan Alda goes around the world asking questions of experts and seeing first-hand some evidence of human ancestry, trying to figure out why we got that “spark” that makes us human, while other animals (including close relatives like Neanderthals) did not. The premise of the show is thus evolutionary in nature, so I’m sure there are some young-earth creationists out there who aren’t happy. If you’re like me and aren’t an expert in science, but are interested in where we came from (and think it has nothing to do with “Let there be light”), you should like this series.

What drew my attention to the show, I have to admit, is that it’s being hosted by Alan Alda. Alda played Hawkeye on the ground-breaking show M*A*S*H (a sitcom/drama about the Korean War which lasted longer than the Korean War itself did). Hawkeye has always been one of my favorite TV characters (probably because my dad liked him) and I had read that Alda is involved in charity work. I also thought I had read he was an atheist. I checked into it and it turns out he considers himself as “not a believer” but doesn’t like the words atheist or agnostic. According to a piece on the Edge Foundation website (found via Wikipedia)

I still don’t like the word agnostic. It’s too fancy. I’m simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people. Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I’d said in a book I wrote that I wasn’t a believer. I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel. This gets us back to that most pressing of human questions: why do people worry so much about other people’s holding beliefs other than their own?

He did start out as a believer, though. Even though he rejects the labels atheist and agnostic, he has made a conscious movement away from religious belief. Perhaps he is more of a secular humanist, since he doesn’t believe in God or heaven.

For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff. One day, though, I realized I was no longer a believer, and realizing that, I couldn’t go back. Not that I lost the urge to pray. Occasionally, even after I stopped believing, I might send off a quick memo to the Master of the Universe, usually on a matter needing urgent attention, like Oh, God, don’t let us crash. [...] But my effort to keep the plane in the air by talking to God didn’t mean I suddenly was overcome with belief, only that I was scared.

In any case, Alda seems to be genuinely interested and fascinated by this series. As am atheist/non-believer , I also find myself more interested in topics like evolution and human origins than I used to be, so this show is right up my alley. The site for the show has video clips (which aren’t embeddable, unfortunately, but you can view them on their site) as well as other information. The first part in the series will be repeated several times over the next few days, so if you missed it but are interested, check your local listings.

EDIT: The show is airing on PBS, the link was there but I never said it in the text. Sorry about any confusion!

Dan Barker calls for Memphis Council to steer clear of prayers, keep church and state separate

Photo source : The Daily Helmsman

Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), spoke out last night in Memphis against the religious convocations given at Memphis City Council meetings, arguing instead for neutrality in government when it comes to religion.

Barker opened on a light note, excusing himself for starting a little late, saying he was looking for someone who could begin the meeting in prayer (he asked if there were any councilmembers who could assist). The rest of his talk, followed by over an hour of Q & A with both supporters and detractors, combined background on state-and-church issues across the country, personal anecdotes, and light-hearted humor.

Barker specifically addressed the Memphis situation several times, explaining that it was wrong on constitutional grounds for the city to include religious prayers in its official procedings since this constitutes government speech in support of religion, something not allowed under the First Amendment. Barker noted that the very phrase of the First Amendment is one restricting the rights of the government in terms of religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

In its complaint letter from September, FFRF noted that this year, nearly all of the convocations were done “in Jesus’ name” or with clear references to the Bible. According to Barker, convocations like those given at Memphis council meetings “crossed the line” by subjecting citizens to prayers given by religions, more often than not “in Jesus’ name”. He also noted that the City Council website also contains a biblical reference, further indication that the Council is playing favorites in religion.

He addressed critics who claimed FFRF was trying to advance atheism in government, stating that FFRF is only seeking neutrality. He said as a former minister, he understood where some religious people were coming from, incorrectly seeing as an “attack” what is really constutionally-mandated neutrality in government.Memphis is not being called on to begin meetings with “God is dead”, for example, but simply that neither religion nor irreligion be sanctioned by government officials in the public square.

Barker made a distinction between the public square (where government and citizens meet) and the public sphere (where citizens express themselves). Government officials, just as anyone else, have the right to pray in church, talk about God, or exchange ideas on whatever they want to in the public sphere; however, once they are acting officially in the public square in their jobs as representatives of the people, government officials must remain neutral. Barker pointed out that City Council members are free to pray in their offices before the official session begins, but not during the session itself as an official act of government.

In response to a questioner who said that the founding fathers were religious and did not think government and church should be separate, Barker said that in addition to God not being in the constitution, the founders did not have official prayers at the Constitutional Convention. Ben Franklin made a motion at the convention to have prayers at the meetings, but his motion was not even seconded, much less adopted. Barker said this showed that while some founders in their personal lives were Deists or Christians, most of them wanted to keep church out of the government and let each person decide for themselves according to their own conscience what to believe.

Another questioner wanted to know what FFRF would consider to be an acceptable solution to the current situation, where the City Council holds prayers. Barker said preferably on constitutional grounds, there should be no prayers during government meetings, but he offered at least two possibilities. The Council could have a moment of silence if it were clear that the moment was not stemming from a ploy to get around state-church separation, which Darker said would prove difficult in this case. Another possibility was establishing a system where anyone from any religion or no religion could speak to the assembly on any topic; drawing names from a hat to determine who would speak, for example, instead of the current situation of chaplains being invited to pray.

Much more was discussed during the talk and the Q & A. A summary of additional topics discussed, as well as commentary on the event, will be posted in the next few days, so please check back. In the meantime, here is an article that is appearing in today’s Commercial Appeal (Memphis’ leading daily newspaper) about the meeting, as well as some previous posts as background (1, 2, 3).

Dan Barker (FFRF) tonight at 7pm

Source: The Daily Helmsman

Just a reminder: Dan Barker event tonight, 7pm, in the Rose Theater at the Univ. of Memphis. Here’s an article in yesterday’s Daily Helmsman, the Univ. of Memphis newspaper, about the event as well as my previous post about it with more info.

Dan Barker to visit Memphis, address church-state violations

Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor
from FFRF. Source: http://ffrf.org/radio

Freedom from religion is finally coming to Memphis! Well, I should say: Dan Barker from the Freedom From Religion Foundation is coming; since the City Council here continues its unconstitutional prayers at its official meetings, we’ll have to see if freedom from religion will soon prevail here.

Dan Barker, co-president of FFRF and author of the recent book godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists (foreward by Richard Dawkins), will be coming to the University of Memphis campus on Thursday, December 3, 2009.

Barker, who is a minister-turned-atheist, will be speaking about the importance of state-church separation — a particularly hot issue now in Memphis.

In September, FFRF lodged a complaint with the Memphis City Council over starting its meetings with convocations (read: religious prayers) and giving gifts emblazoned with the city’s official seal to religious leaders (see my original post here and a follow-up here). The controversy made the local media and has sparked some debate in town.

For now the city is continuing the convocations, and Council Chairman Harold Collins has said they would be willing to take the matter to court. It will be interesting to see what Dan Barker has to say on the issue. The FFRF has a long history of championing the rights of non-believers to have church and state separation, including taking a case against the White House faith-based initiatives all the way to the Supreme Court.

Dan Barker’s event will be held at Dec. 3 at 7:00 pm in the Rose Theater (470 University Center: map). For more information, visit the Campus Freethought Association website or contact Jason Grosser. I’ll also be sure to post any news on the Memphis state-church situation, as well as information on Dan Barker’s visit (including a report after the event)

Churches denounce children as ‘witches’; 1000s of kids maimed and killed

“Accused child witches Jane, left, and Mary, right [...] Jane’s mother tried to saw off the top of her skull after a pastor denounced her and Mary.” Source : AP, MSNBC

With Halloween just around the corner, many kids in the US will soon be joyfully donning witch costumes and visiting haunted houses at their local churches. In many parts of Africa, however, the subject of witches is no laughing matter at church.

MSNBC reports that, according to an investigation by the Associated Press, an increasing number of children are being maimed or killed because churches are accusing them of witchcraft. According to MSNBC,

“Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t limited to a couple hundred cases. Over the last ten years, in just two states in Nigeria,

“around 15,000 children have been accused [of witchcraft] and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.”

In many cases, the churches involved are affiliated with churches in the US, who defend themselves by saying that they are unaware of what’s going on. And more local churches are reportedly turning to the practicing of finding witches because it is profitable to them. According to a member of the Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation Network,

“Even churches who didn’t use to ‘find’ child witches are being forced into it by the competition. They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism.”

So if anything, the situation seems to have worsened since I last posted about a couple of months ago. It’s good that this crisis is starting to get into the public light a little more, but that isn’t enough since at least some of these people believe they are doing what God wants them to. Churches in the US, whether directly linked to the congregations that are conducting these literal witch hunts, or just sending missionaries over to Africa, need to spread the message that witch burning and mutilation is not okay.

My hunch is that some church leaders may be shying away from a public campaign against these horrible attacks on children because the Bible actually does say that witches shouldn’t be allowed to live. (Unfortunately for these children, it doesn’t say how to tell when someone is or isn’t a witch.) I would think it’s hard for Christians to tell people to disregard something that is right there in the Bible, without worrying about throwing the whole thing into question. But with thousands of children suffering and dying, I don’t know how they can remain silent.

Should ministers have to pay taxes?

IRS logo

Churches in the US are given a lot of benefits by the government, including tax exemptions on property tax, donations, social security taxes, and sales tax.

But did you know that preachers also personally receive hefty tax breaks from the IRS at everyone else’s expense? According to ABC News Sacramento, a lawsuit filed this week in Sacramento against the IRS, Timothy Geithner, & the state of California will help determine whether it’s legal for preachers to get a free pass on taxes that other citizens must pay.

According to the Freedom from Religion Foundation:

“Ministers, who are paid in tax-free dollars, also may deduct their mortgage interest and property tax payments. Under both Federal and California law, allowances paid to ‘ministers of the gospel’ are not treated as taxable income, unlike the situation for other taxpayers. Only ‘ministers of the gospel’ may claim these benefits”.

No matter what your stance is on whether churches should get tax exemptions, these ministers-only tax exemptions go even further. Unlike charity laws which give tax benefits to both secular and religious organizations, these laws give benefits only to ministers. In some cases, clergy even “double-dip“: they “deduct their mortgage payments and real estate taxes from income tax, even though they paid for these with tax-exempt dollars, amounting to a government subsidy solely for clergy,” according to FFRF.

In a secular nation, which has a constitution prohibiting the establishment of religion, it seems both illegal and unjust that ministers of any income get a free ride on taxes everyone else has to pay. Just like everyone else, some men and women of the cloth make little money, while others are multi-millionaires. So why shouldn’t they be taxed at the same rates as everyone else? The rest of the country shouldn’t be made to pay more taxes to make up for this unfair exception.

Freedom of religion should allow ministers to worship, not to cheat the tax system at taxpayer expense.

Site is back up

Image retrieved from “http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunrise_over_the_sea.jpg“

My site is finally back up, in (nearly) the same state it was a little over a month ago. I apologize for any inconvenience to my vistors during this period.

My blog was hacked because my hosting company refused for over a month to upgrade WordPress to the most current version, even though a well-known exploit was out there and I asked them on several occasions to upgrade their installation. When I was hacked, because of their outdated version of WordPress, they refused to help me in a timely manner to get my site back to normal.

I was able, mostly on my own, to get my site back up and running. This took a while since Google needed to be convinced that my site was safe, and I needed to figure out how to install WordPress on my own. I am running my own installation now so I do not need to rely on my hosting company’s (lack of) upgrades to ensure the security of my site and its visitors.

My site is now safer than ever, and I should be able to do what my host is unable or unwilling to do: keep WordPress up-to-date. Now that I’m back online, I hope to post tomorrow with some new Atheist/Freethought news, and post links and articles regularly from here on out.

Memphis council ready to go to court over prayers

Official city emblem on the Memphis City Council website. The Council gives cufflinks with this official emblem to Chaplains of the Day.

The Memphis City Council, under fire for allowing prayers “in Jesus’ name” and giving gifts to preachers at its public meetings, would be willing to take the matter to court if challenged, according to an article in Memphis’ top-selling daily newspaper, The Commercial Appeal .

The Commercial Appeal article fills in some of the details of the situation, including the fact that these invocations have been occurring for “almost 18 years” and that the goody bags given to each officially- appointed Chaplain of the Day includes “city emblem cufflinks and necklace pendants for spiritual leaders”.

On the one side is the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), whose co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor said “They’re not separating their personal faith with their governmental duty. It’s really crossing the line.”

On the other side is Memphis City Council chairman Harold Collins, who defended the practice, saying “It does not alienate people who are not of faith [...] They don’t have to participate in the prayer.” He states that the reason invited chaplains are Christians is because council members are Christian. If FFRF challenges the practice and threatens to sue them, Collins said “We’d have to see them in court.”

The Pro Tem Mayor, Myron Lowery, who is also a former council chairman, has decided not to step into the fray except to say that “I am not going to stop the council from doing what it’s been doing for years and to which I feel is to their benefit.”

I believe the case is even more clear-cut than I originally thought. In addition to the fact that most of the prayers are clearly Christian in nature, and the councilman admits that they invite mostly Christians, it also appears the Council gives these Chaplains cufflinks with the city’s emblem on them. This certainly could be interpreted as city approval of these chaplains, unless they give the cufflinks to anyone who comes by. There are also the “necklace pendants”. I wonder what these “necklace pendants” look like. A cross is a type of pendant, but no mention is made of this in the article.

In any case, it sounds like these gifts are specially given to the chaplains. The Council is using city money to reward preachers from one religion, Christianity. If that isn’t government endorsement of religion, what is?

In general, FFRF diligently pursues cities who make illegal sectarian prayers at town meetings. As I mentioned earlier , such official endorsement of religion has been found to unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. The initial reaction of the council chairman does not sound like they are willing to find a compromise or re-evaluate the council’s practice in light of the allegations. If they’re unwilling to even attempt to fall into constitutional guidelines, it looks like they’re headed for a lawsuit.