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16 Because I am an atheist: Heather McNamara

July 24, 2012
by Crommunist
· Because I Am An Atheist · blog

Today’s contribution comes from Heather McNamara, who blogs at “The McNamara Report“

…I am no longer burdened with acquiescence to the moral superiority of an entity created by men from an era that loathed my gender, my orientation, and most of all, my autonomy. I can now understand my feelings for what they really are. They are not bogeymen or sinful desires of the flesh that seek to draw me away from anyone’s true purpose or plan for me. My feelings for women are no more or less supernatural than my friends’ feelings for the opposite sex. I am free to pursue relationships, love, and sex with whomever I wish so long as I treat them well. My heart and my bedroom are now happy, restful, pleasurable places instead of battlegrounds. I can now experience the kind of love and ecstasy my friends always have without guilt or fear of having disappointed my Father.

I have learned that I’m a better, more powerful person than I thought I was. Each accomplishment, talent, and triumph for which I previously felt unworthy and attributed to the graciousness of a higher power were in fact my own. When I have overcome poverty, depression, and severe anxiety, it wasn’t because a higher power finally saw fit to have mercy on me. It was because I fought valiantly and won. With my new confidence, I feel better equipped to handle the difficult situations such as the inevitable divorce and subsequent poverty that life has thrown at me since coming out. I don’t have to wonder whether a god will see fit to help me through this one or accept bad situations as my just desserts for straying from its path. I knew I would get through these things just like I got through everything else. And I have. I’m quite capable. … Continue Reading

12 A shooting, many questions, no answers

July 24, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · crime · culture · law · news · police · politics

Shortly after midnight on Friday, July 20th, a heavily-armed man burst into a movie theatre and opened fire on the crowd, killing twelve people and wounding nearly 60. This latest act of mass violence in the United States sparked yet another national conversation about the need for gun control, and questions about what could prompt a person with an otherwise-bright future to commit such an atrocity. I lack the necessary knowledge (and the energy) to comment much further about this particular shooting other than to say that I obviously wish it hadn’t happened, and that something must be done to make such events more rare. I do not believe that more guns are the answer to the problem, but that idea appears to have some serious currency in the United States, so I guess take that for what it’s worth.

Such acts are incredibly rare here in Canada (especially compared to our southern neighbour), and yet Toronto has recently been visited by a pair of public shootings that have sparked our own national conversation. The first shooting occurred at the beginning of last month in the food court of the city’s largest shopping mall. Two people, the apparent targets of the shooter, were killed. The motivation appears to be related to gang activity. At the beginning of last week, Toronto was once again visited by the spectre of violence at the hands of armed gunmen: … Continue Reading

68 Science vs Philosophy

July 23, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Brian Lynchehaun · critical thinking · philosophy · science

Recently, a number of people have opened their mouth to deride Philosophy. Notably, they tend to be people who are well-placed academics such as Krauss and Dawkins. Likewise, Atheistlogic has stuck their oar in too, though much more articulately. Atheistlogic spells out the general objection quite well, I think, so I’m going to focus on their comments as a stepping off point.

0 Because I am an atheist: The Uncredible Hallq

July 23, 2012
by Crommunist
· Because I Am An Atheist · blog

Today’s contribution comes from fellow FTBorg Chris Hallquist, who blogs at The Uncredible Hallq.

Because I am an atheist…

…I can view religion honestly.

I was raised a liberal Protestant, Congregationalist to be exact. I’ve joked that our family was one step away from being Unitarians and this made becoming an atheist not much of a leap, but this is a total lie.

The truth is that when I finally admitted to myself, “yup, I’m an atheist,” it had a couple immediate, beneficial effects on my life

As a young, liberal Christian teenager, I had no problem ignoring the scary stuff in the Old Testament, letters of Paul, and well everything except the stuff about Jesus. And the stuff about Jesus included some good stuff, “judge not least ye be judged,” the parable of the good Samaritan, giving to charity, the parable of the sheep and the goats (a good rebuke to fundamentalists who say it’s all about whether you believe in Jesus), and so on.

The problem was that not everything about Jesus was good stuff. Greta covers this really well in her “The Messed-Up Teachings of Jesus,” but one thing I’d highlight is the thought crime stuff. That messed with my head, especially since it was right there in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, mixed in with the “blessed are the poor” stuff and stuff about not taking an eye for an eye.

The other immediate change once I started thinking of myself as an atheist was that I no longer felt any need to make excuses for fundamentalist Christians. Don’t get me wrong, part of me thought they were scary, but I also had it in my head that Christian = good so sometimes I felt obliged to think good thoughts about them. Once I stopped identifying as a Christian, I could see them for what they were, and see that the correct response to their quoting the Bible to support their views was not to argue interpretation but just say, “OK, if that’s what the Bible says, the Bible is wrong.” It’s really refreshing to be able to be honest about things like that.

Consider submitting your own statement, by e-mail or as a comment!

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32 The one-way mirror of racial privilege

July 23, 2012
by Crommunist
· anti-racism · blog · critical thinking · crommunism · culture · privilege · race

One of the most powerful tools we have when trying to parse an argument is the analogy. We can take the elements of a position, plug them in to a different context, and then press ‘play’ to see whether or not the argument still logically follows. So when a religious apologist talks about the perfect love and perfect mercy of YahwAlladdha, we can ask if it would still be considered ‘loving’ to lock your children in the basement and torture them (for any amount of time, let alone eternity) if they disobeyed your rules. We can point out the absurdity of demanding that atheists ‘play nice’ or ‘leave well enough alone’ by pointing to the similarities between ours and other civil rights movements, and show how active engagement in the public sphere is vital to progress.

Accustomed as we are to the incredible usefulness of this tool, there are cases where it goes horribly awry – namely, those cases in which privilege plays a significant role. At once, argument by analogy becomes completely derailed, and to the person drawing the (flawed) analogy, it seems as though the “privilege card” is being pulled out of nowhere. The argument seems to be, to them, that one is wrong simply because ze is white, or male, or cisgendered, or whatever dominant group identity is germane to the conversation – that the mere fact of being in the majority immediately disqualifies your arguments. Then out come the waterworks: “you’re just as bad as those you criticize – my opinion is being dismissed as you complain about people dismissing yours!”

Animated .gif of a Decepticon laughing and shooting lasers

Let’s just jump ahead a few paragraphs to the end of the argument and state unequivocally that your argument is bad, and you should feel bad.

Now that everyone who needs to learn this lesson has stopped reading, let’s forge ahead, shall we? … Continue Reading

38 The Allure of White Supremacy

July 20, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Edwin · politics · racism

[TRIGGER WARNING] There’s going to be some pretty racist stuff going on in this post. Please be aware of that before diving in.

NOTE: I had originally opted to use more inclusive and gender neutral language when I first wrote this post, but I decided to change it so that the voice it is written in is clearly that of a white male. In several places I am trying to bring us all into the heads of white supremacists, and I have yet to meet a single white supremacist anywhere who has ever used the words ‘zie’, ‘zir’, or ‘ze’. I hope you’ll bear with me here. Also, while you and I may understand that concepts like ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘race’ are socially-constructed abstractions that have little to do with reality, white supremacists don’t. They see race as an essential characteristic of a person (unless they need to remove a person from their ‘natural’ racial category as we’ll see a bit later).

NOTE THE SECOND: I will not be linking to any white supremacist websites, forums, or book links of any kind in this blog. I absolutely refuse to be a party to driving traffic to their sites, or to drawing traffic to this one from theirs. I will provide a brief bibliography at the end of this post, and I will provide links to pertinent information from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Racism is ugly. It is damaging, and it is cruel. Yet for a significant chunk of society, racism is also highly attractive. It is appealing on many different levels; it can be psychologically rewarding, and it can even sometimes (and in some situations) be praiseworthy – at least by some members of society (and not just the goose-stepping, sheet-wearing segment). There is a reason why people become active (either actively or passively) in white supremacist activity, and that reason isn’t always simple ignorance; there are more than a few highly educated and articulate people who are nevertheless wedded to the idea that their skin colour makes them a higher order to being than others. … Continue Reading

21 Movie Friday: Black Folk Don’t… do atheism

July 20, 2012
by Crommunist
· black history · blog · movie · race

A brand new series came to my attention a little while back called Black Folk Don’t, which confronts and discusses (but doesn’t necessarily debunk) stereotypes about the African American community. I had been meaning to throw one of them on here as a Movie Friday for a couple of weeks, but the latest version was just so squarely on the nose that I had to share it.

Some of my own thoughts below the fold.

16 Because I am an atheist: WilloNyx

July 19, 2012
by Crommunist
· Because I Am An Atheist · blog

Today’s contribution comes from reader and bl0g-buddy WilloNyx, who writes at IdioPrag.

Because I am an atheist…

…I am more moral. The confidence that I was doing “god’s work” kept me blind to the harm I caused with my religion. I believed the “hate the sin love the sinner” trope and I did not actively campaign for gay rights. Because I am an atheist, I no longer have doubts that fighting for equality is the most moral path I can take.

Because I am an atheist: I am a trans feminist. If it were not me seeking out other atheists like myself, I probably wouldn’t have found various atheist sites that taught me that feminism wasn’t a dirty word. No matter how cultured I try to be I am limited by my geography. Atheism, and atheists taught me to look skeptically at my own biases toward feminism. Transgender atheists taught me to look skeptically at those feminists who would erase the experiences of women they deem not women enough. Because I am an atheist, I fight sexism against all women.

Because I am an atheist: I don’t indoctrinate my kids. I no longer fear hell for their sake. Because I am an atheist, I can love my children for who they are rather than who god wants them to be. … Continue Reading

37 Trayvon was part of YahwAlladdha’s plan – Zimmerman

July 19, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · forces of stupid · law · news · race · racism · religion

There is a school of thought among anti-theists like myself that rejects the smiling, hat-in-hand, ‘moderate’ version of theist belief that seems to dominate the newspaper opinion columns and academic debate halls (and yet seems to correspond not at all to the front page headlines) as profoundly dishonest. If you believe that the Bible or the Qur’an or the Torah are literally true, or even true as metaphor, then you cannot escape a few simple conclusions, the first and most obvious of which is that the guy running the show is a petty and vengeful dictator who will torture you eternally out of ‘love’ (one of many words that seems to have a completely different meaning when describing the deity than it does when used to describe anything else).

This particular group of anti-theists don’t have a whole lot of patience for those who say that the different religions are just ‘different ways at arriving at the same answer’ or that religions are all ‘fundamentally about peace’. “Bullshit!” they (we) say, “you can only claim that if you just flat-out ignore half of the shit in your book. If you’re going to ignore parts of it, we invite you to join us and ignore the whole fucking thing.” Anti-theists are potty-mouths.

And in that sense, the only times that anti-theists and religious fundamentalists agree (when it comes to questions of theology) usually involve at least one dead body: … Continue Reading

19 Myth… confirmed

July 18, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · news · politics

There is a bit of ‘wisdom’ about stereotypes that says that they have a basis in truth. Reader and regular commenter mynameischeese* referred to a particularly insightful observation:

As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once pointed out, the problem with stereotypes isn’t that they’re untrue; it’s that they are incomplete. If you go to Mexico, you can find a guy in a sombrero playing mariachi music. He does exist. But he can’t represent all of Mexico.

It’s an instructive way to think about stereotypes – as a selective slice of reality that is stretched and warp to represent the totality. However, when you look with any serious scrutiny at the situation and attempt to find any truth, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find that the stereotype is woefully unhelpful.

I usually discourage the use of stereotype whenever possible. Stereotypical thinking not only often goes hand in hand with system justifying behaviours, but are often based on harmful ideas that can ‘other’ minority groups, even if that dehumanization is unintentional. Stereotype-based thinking is the antithesis of a skeptical mindset, and can lead us to make really poor decisions. Plus, the fact is that the more we learn about reality the more interesting life becomes – living in a world where everything adheres to a stereotype is boring.

That being established, as we said off the top, sometimes there’s truth in even the most cliched stereotype: … Continue Reading

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