Angry Atheists

On the news the other day I saw a Christian complaining about Bill Maher and atheists in general.  He was playing the clop when Maher said the Pope was comparable to a polygamist cult leader who encourages child molestation.  This guy said that Maher was a “hateful person who has a lot of anger toward Christianity.”  He then went on to make a larger point:  That it seems to him that atheists are always angry and – wait for it – this must be because they have doubts.

First of all, I think Bill Maher has said some stupid things.  But he’s a comedian.  He was making a joke.  He wasn’t being hateful or angry – at most he was being sarcastic.  And the joke wasn’t even original or shocking.  Are we seriously going to ooh and aah with indignation that a comedian made a joke about Catholic priests touching little kids?  I mean, honestly, the subject has become a cliched gimmick used in movies.  Every reasonable person knows that it’s an off-color joke and not a serious indictment of Catholicism.

About atheists being angry in general . . . I don’t know where that’s coming from.  I don’t see any atheists on TV red-faced and shouting.  I dont’ see any atheists angrily demanding concessions.  Is there a rash of atheist hate crimes going on somewhere?  Where are the angry atheists?  Even the main subject here, Bill Maher, wasn’t angry in the least.  He was mocking (because, again, he’s a comedian).  But there was no hate.

I disagree with the atheists who put up that sign in the Washington State capitol building, but there was no hate involved in that as far as I can see.  Stupidity, maybe, and childishness.  But hate?  Just because someone says something you find offensive doesn’t mean they’re doing it out of anger.  I post criticisms about Christians and creationists all the time, bit I don’t hate them.  I’m not angry with them.

I can’t speak to how many and which atheists might have “doubts” about their position, but I can make one point.  Treating atheism as a belief like Christianity is simply wrong-headed.  An atheist doesn’t have a “crisis of faith” like a Christian might.  We atheists (ideally, at least) do not have a faith-based position.  We simply don’t see a reason to believe in Christianity (or any supernatural myth or story) without evidence.  Most Christians wouldn’t call a rejection of astrology a “belief,” but this is exactly the same as an atheist rejecting Abraham’s God.

If an atheist is having doubts about atheism, it doesn’t mean he’s losing faith in atheism.  That’s impossible.  Barring any actual evidence for God, the only way for an atheist to have doubts about atheism is to have faith.

Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, and Sex Crimes

I heard that Katy Perry suggested she would like to kiss Miley Cyrus on TV, in emulation of Madonna’s infamous kiss with Britney Spears several years ago.  The first thing I thought was, “Isn’t Miley Cyrus a kid?”

But the guys around me were talking about it with wide eyes and hushed voices, like it was the hottest idea to ever grace their brains.  This struck me as amazing, because I live in an environment where sex acts with minors are not highly regarded at all.  For my part, my opinion was that a woman kissing another woman is erotic, but a woman kissing an underage girl is not.

One of the guys argued with me that since Miley Cyrus is sixteen or seventeen (I don’t know which and I don’t care) and the legal age of consent is sixteen in some states, it would be okay.  I asked him what the legal age of consent was in this state – his home – and he didn’t know.  I then asked him that if it were eighteen, would he feel okay about taking a sixteen-year-old girl to a hotel across state lines and screwing her.  To take it to a further extreme, perhaps I should have asked him what he thought about places in the world where he can go and legally fuck a thirteen-year-old prostitute.

I tend to be of the opinion that when we’re talking about sex between adults and kids, we should err on the side of caution.  Take the issue of these “attractive” female teachers having sex with their male students.  First of all, that the media would even call them attractive is repulsive; there’s nothing attractive about a sex offender.  Secondly, imagine someone in the media reporting about a male teacher having sex with a fourteen-year-old girl and referring to the teacher as a handsome man.  I don’t want to delve too deeply into the double-standard issue here, but the implication would be that the girl was lucky to snag such a hot guy.

To be honest, as a teenage boy, I would have loved it.  I wouldn’t have hesitated.  But that doesn’t make it okay.  When I was a kid I also thought things like smoking and drugs (and worse) were cool.  I was underage, and those teachers are child molesters.

One of the guys I was talking to asked me, “So are you saying that doing that would make Katy Perry a child molester?”  I said, “No, just a statutory rapist.”  I was saying that to get on his nerves – I don’t really care about this particular issue.  The point is just an interesting one to me, because I always want to know how and where people draw their lines.

Me personally, I believe that there should be age-of-consent laws, but that doesn’t mean I put much stock in those laws.  I don’t refrain from screwing kids because of a law.  I also don’t think that as soon as a girl turns eighteen, she’s fair game, as if some magical frontier of maturity has been crossed.  The very fact that the boundary is titillating to so many men (witness the ads for the “Finally Eighteen” Girls Gone Wild video) is disturbing to me.  Oftentimes there’s a “You’re all mine to despoil now” mentality that seems no different from the victimization of a child.

This is about holding ourselves to a certain standard.  If your idea of right and wrong is “I do exactly as much as the law allows,” that’s hardly any different from saying, “I do as much as I can get away with.”  I think we can all do better than that.

The Tactful Christian Response to Homosexuality, Part IV

Sometimes I get passionate about topics and use invective to underscore what I see as irrationality.  I try to stay away from ad hominem attacks and insults of any kind – but I generally have no problem calling someone’s argument ridiculous if that’s what I think.  But that’s an attack on their argument, not them.  I think the difference is important.

So it does with this latest attempt by Christians to be “reasonable” in their labeling of homosexuality as a sin.  The main thrust of the proposition is 1) Homosexuality leads to psychological problems like drug use, domestic violence, and unhappy personal relationships, etc., and 2) Since this is risky, self-defeating behavior, it is a sin.

The first point is nothing but an a priori assumption.  The main indicators of things like drug use, domestic violence and unhappy personal relationships are socioeconomic.  They cut across gender, racial, and cultural lines – they certainly cut across sexual lines.

Of course, this point also assumes that being gay is a choice, like one might choose to date irresponsible jerks or alcoholics.  As if gay people should simply refrain from pursuing same-sex relationships because the Christians warn that it might be correlated with risk factors.  Is that supposed to make them lead happier, more successful, less-risky lives?  Repudiate who they’re sexually attracted to?  Ignore who they wish to share intimacy with?  Or are Christians going to hold the position that they’re all delusional, and their “true” sexual orientation just needs to be brought out?

The second point is best summed up in a quote from someone I’ve been arguing with: “Risky behavior which isn’t necessary for greater good is indeed a major category of sin.”

I think a statement like that is ludicrous.  Are people supposed to weigh every risk they take in their lives to see if it coincides with the goal of the “greater good”?  Choosing some dangerous careers aren’t necessary for a greater good.  Skydiving or climbing Mount Everest isn’t necessary for a greater good.  Driving on a busy freeway at rush hour isn’t necessary for a greater good.  Eating butter with your meal every day isn’t necessary for a greater good.  By this rationale, people who do these risky things (all of which are much riskier than being a homosexual) are sinning.  A couple hundred people die every year from fires caused by Christmas lights – am I reaching to call putting up Christmas lights a risk that isn’t necessary for the greater good?

Besides, how do you define the “greater good”?  Are we talking about what is best for society at large?  If so the only two tenents we need be concerned with are: Don’t Victimize Anyone and Be Productive.  That’s it.  Granted, it’s a generalization, but that’s all that’s required for a healthy, stable society.   As long as you’re following those two rules, you’re contributing to the “greater good.”  At the very least, you’re certainly not harming it.

Why Laura Ingraham Should Shut Up and Write

I just finished the book Shut Up and Sing, by conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.  I am someone who disagrees with her often.  I’ve posted criticisms about her views on transgenders, I’ve seen her host The O’Reilly Factor, and several times I came away with the opinion that she had a snobbish, disdainful attitude toward anyone who didn’t agree with her.

But it’s difficult to keep that opinion after reading her book.  A friend of mine looked at me with tide eyes when he expected me to excoriate her and I instead told him, “She seems like a cool chick.”  It’s always amusing to me when people think that because you disagree with someone, you automatically have to despise them and can’t possibly say something positive about them.  Maybe I’m emotionally detached, or maybe I’m just trying to be rational.  Since I’m an equal-opportunity criticizer, it wouldn’t be very fair if I wasn’t also an equal-opportunity defender.

To be clear:  I think gay marriage should be legalized.  I’m pro-choice.  I think intelligent design “theory” being taught as science is an insult to humanity and harmful to kids.  I think that Christianity is almost certainly a fable.  I think the true path to morality is the use of reason and the application of secular law.  The notions that mankind is inherently sinful, that the deity of the Old Testament is good, and that we need divine guidance to be saved/forgiven/immortal are insulting to me.  In short, I’m on the opposite side of everything that is most important to Ms. Ingraham.

I also think she makes some glaring blunders, such as claiming that our inalienable rights come from God – that they indeed couldn’t exist otherwise.  Did God give us freedom of religion, Ms. Ingraham?  You can claim that He granted us the free will to worship as we want, but if we only get into heaven by venerating Him, how is that not extortion?  But the main problem I have with conservatives like Ms. Ingraham is that they can spend volumes telling us why Christianity is good and helpful and required for a moral society.  Even if this is correct, it doesn’t make it true, and they never seem to get around to presenting an argument for that (generally because they don’t have one).

But I agree with Ms. Ingraham about the radical left, the “elites” who want to stamp out all signs of religion from the public square, the PC police who want to rewrite history and kill critical inquiry, the social-relativists who defy rational thought, the celebrity dingbats who cozy up to the likes of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, the backwards moralizers who denounce this country as a full-time job but never say a word about the horrible things our enemies do, the anti-American-wannabe-Marxists in universities who are teaching ideology instead of methodology, and generally anyone who thinks Michael Moore knows what he’s talking about.  (Particularly affecting to me was the reminder of Chrissie Hynde’s wonderful pre-war shout-out: “I hope the Muslims win!”  Has anyone ever explained to Ms. Hynde what our fundamentalist Muslim enemies think of American female rock stars with liberal social views?)

I can’t wait to read Ms. Ingraham’s next book.  This country needs voices like hers because they cut through all of the garbage flying around out there.  However much I might disagree with her, I would rather argue about it than become one of the whining hypocrites who preach tolerance but never tolerate conservatives.

What’s Wrong With the Culture, Part II

Lately I’ve been stuck on the idea that social conservatism is dying.  As someone who is very progressive socially, I think this is a good thing – at least as far as the issues are concerned.  For example, I think that in fifty years, almost all of us are going to look back and say, “What the hell was wrong with us, to think that we had a right to tell gay people they couldn’t get married?  How could we have been so stupid?”  (I’d like to think that we’ll say the same about the War on Drugs and turning women into criminals for prostitution, but I’m not holding my breath.)

I started my last post on this because Katy Perry’s song “I Kissed a Girl” was the number-one song in the country, and Bill O’Reilly did a segment about the permissiveness building in the culture.  Apparently “permissiveness” equals “immoral” to some conservatives.  Maybe I’m making too far a leap and sounding like a hippie here, but what exactly is so wrong about expressing one’s sexuality?  Social conservatives constantly demonize sex and sexuality except when it’s between a traditional heterosexual married couple.  I have no problem with the traditional heterosexual married couple, but it’s simply a fact that not everyone wants that.  And it’s also simply a fact that deviation from that conservative “norm” does not automatically infer immorality.

An extremely liberal guy like Obama is probably going to be the next president.  It would have been safer to bet on the proverbial snowball in Hell than on someone like Romni or Huckabee being elected.  Gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts and now in California.  San Francisco is possibly going to legalize prostitution.  Sex inundates the culture from top to bottom.  It’s no longer socially taboo to admit pornography and masturbation habits, or to smoke weed.  And as for Katy Perry’s song … young women today use their bisexual dalliances as a selling point to men.  On a dating show, I once heard a young woman’s mother bragging to her daughter’s potential boyfriend about her good qualities.  Guess what one of those good qualities was?  “You should pick my daughter because she’s made out with a girl before.”

Social conservatism is dying.  You don’t have to listen to me: You can hear it directly from the mouths of the social conservatives themselves.  I once even heard Bill O’Reilly compare America’s decadence to that of ancient Rome – and we all know what happened to Rome when it got too fat on itself.

But I don’t see the end of social conservatism as the end of – or even a weakening of – America.  I don’t necessarily view a pursuit of personal happiness, even if it’s hedonistic in nature, a bad thing for society.  If people are doing something that makes them happy and not harming anyone, how is it bad?  The only other requirement for a healthy society is that they are productive.  If college girls want to kiss their girlfriends for Joe Francis or Kallissa Miller, who cares?  They’re not being transformed into crack-addicted welfare-queens; they’re still going to school and getting degrees and contributing to society.  If men want to visit a brothel or spend two hours a day masturbating to Internet porn, so what?  As long as they’re otherwise being productive, why should it matter to the rest of us?

No one should be crying for social conservatism.  Here’s the crux:  It can’t seem to compete in the free market of ideas.  It has only itself to blame.  It pits itself against personal gratification, so it’s no surprise that it’s dying.  I’m not saying it’s a good thing to focus solely on personal gratification, but any ideology that’s consistently against it is doomed to wither.

What’s Wrong With the Culture?

On The O’Reilly Factor the other night, one of his segments was about Katy Perry’s song, “I Kissed a Girl,” which was the number one song in the country.  The point, of course, was the ubiquitous one from a conservative like O’Reilly: American culture is sliding further away from traditional values.  He asked, “What would Elvis think?”  It’s funny that he would mention Elvis, who fifty years ago was just as controversial as O’Reilly believes Katy Perry’s song to be today.  How many conservatives back then railed about rock ‘n roll and Elvis?

I don’t think anyone, including O’Reilly, takes this song very seriously or considers it a huge threat.  However, it is a fact that conservatives continuously claim that the culture is going downhill.  Whether it’s the permissiveness, the gay issues on prime time TV, the nudity on the Internet, the way schoolkids dress, the breakdown of the traditional family – we hear this all the time.

My question is this:  What is it about conservatism that’s so unappealing?  Why do so many people toss it out?  Why do millions of Americans love the idea of a song that tantalizes with the image of a girl-on-girl kiss?  Why does it seem to be the norm of human culture to move further from conservative values and toward secularism and permissiveness?  I’m sure many Christians have an easy answer for that: Mankind is weak and consumed by selfishness and a lust for sin, easily fooled and tempted.  This rather insulting view of their fellow human beings is inconsequential, I think, because the numbers don’t support it.  America is by far the most religious nation in the Western world.  Something like seventy percent of Americans still identify themselves as Christians, however loosely.  Today Christians are even supporting gay rights and ordaining gay ministers!

I’m not making a statement about whether secularism or traditional Christian values are right or wrong; I just think this is an intersting question about humanity.  Why is conservatism dying?  If it’s the right way to live, if it gets you to heaven, it it’s best for society, why is it so unattractive?  Why can’t it compete in the market of free ideas?  And shouldn’t it have to? 

Perhaps the answer is a simple as all human beings are hedonists at heart, that given half a chance, we run off to seek self-gratification and little else.  We want pleasure.  And why not?  Pleasure equals happiness.  Happiness equals a productive, healthy society.

Of course plenty of conservative have healthy, happy lives, but obviously, by their own admission, many more people seek happiness elsewhere.  Do conservatives really want to pit themselves against happiness?  Do they really want to say, you must be responsible and moral and follow these guidelines – even if it means you have to give up what makes you happy?  No wonder they’re doing so poorly in the free market.