UNI Freethinkers and Inquirers

Pansexual: A leap into creativity.

2012-02-01T11:00:00.010-06:00

Pansexuality is, to me, the idea that the binary norms of gender are not a factor in your mind's process to determine sexual attractiveness. Rather, your mind uses their personality, experience (read: past history with them), gossip, physical appearance, and your desires (among other possible factors) to filter out who you find attractive.

This is strikingly different than bisexuality because in that it often respects the one-to-one relationship of gender and sex. That isn't to say that bisexuality always does, but it's most basic levels often do. Pansexuality gains increased relevance to describing sexuality when you look at gender and sex as not only two different characteristics, but gender as a complete spectrum. Gender is nothing like biological sex, but a complete range to describe how a person carries themselves.

What pansexuality isn't.
Pansexuality is not attractiveness towards all people, nor is it the inherit flexibility of one's sexual thresholds where they always want to have sexual intercourse.

Pansexuality is not an excuse for someone to have rampant sex, even though many people use it as such a scapegoat.

What pansexuality is!
Pansexuality is, again to me, the application of a different set of glasses onto people. It is a set of glasses that doesn't look into biological sex or physical appearance as dominating factors in attractiveness.

Pansexuality is liberating because if you are pan then you're able to look beyond many of the things that most people use to (in comparison to you) limit their sexuality.

Sign up here to volunteer for Darwin Week 2012!

2012-01-30T13:10:00.001-06:00

Instead of the regular Monday events post this week, I'd like to take this time to promote something really important. This week UNIFI is going to be putting up posters for Darwin Week, followed by dinner with all of the volunteers. We are also looking for people to volunteer during Darwin Week itself. Volunteers last year essentially carried the event forward because officers cannot be everywhere at once, and we rely on volunteers to table for us, help set up between talks, and so on. It's essentially that we get anyone who has some free time during the week to sign up - and the upside is that it's really fun!

If you have any interest in volunteering (and having dinner) this coming Friday, or volunteering for Darwin Week itself, please fill out the form below!

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Links for the Sabbath: 1/29

2012-01-29T09:00:00.009-06:00

Is science becoming a second thought for many people? I think with the current culture there are many problems with the current ways people think about science. "Without a concrete, tangible in-your-face evidence, people find it much harder to "believe," even though global warming, as any other scientific claim, has nothing to do with belief." - By "Marcelo Gleiser"

There is an old 1970's Sweedish law that requires "neutralize their sexual organs". Clearly this has been opposed by human rights groups across the world.

“When trans people can’t present official identification matching their preferred gender presentation, they can suffer “frequent public humiliation, vulnerability to discrimination, and great difficulty finding or holding a job,” -- Boris Dittrich

An Amazing Photo Essay

2012-01-28T10:00:00.005-06:00

A guy that goes by the name Chrispy Paul, (probably a nickname) who has his own blog, wrote a great post yesterday that is catching a lot of peoples attention on reddit. The post is titled Religion and Me: A Photo Essay and it is nothing short of amazing.

I've read a fair share of "coming out" stories, but nothing quite like this. The whole post is compiled of photos from the internet that goes along perfectly with his journey of becoming an atheist.

For those of you who are to lazy to click on the link to his blog, I'd like to share with you my two favorite passages from his post.

Here is the first one:

...I concluded that praying was not as productive as I had been lead to believe. I had realized that I was brainwashed, that everything I had been told about God; His love, His commandments, His hatred of human nature, His stories that only a child should believe, yet all the adults were swearing by, were all falsified and fabricated. I realized that religion is just a pervasive venom we were being spoon-fed by irresponsible adults.

And this one was by far my favorite:

To me, sin is just an invented sickness designed to sell you a fake cure, a pill you could swallow whole, using your code of morals as the liquid chaser. The name of that cure is Religion, and along with it's imaginary illness, Sin; the duo write the greatest prescription for permission to hate that the world has ever seen.

If you are reading this hopefully you have time to check out his post. If you didn't realize I linked his post above I'll link it again here.

To end on a humorous note, here is a fairly old commercial with good old Chuck Norris giving a roundhouse kick to separation of Church and State:

Rethinking social change

2012-01-26T21:39:00.002-06:00

This opinion column was originally run in The Northern Iowan, UNI's student newspaper.

Though I regretfully could not attend his entire talk, I had the privilege of hearing Ellis Cose, journalist and author of several books, speak very briefly during lunch after the Martin Luther King Day of Service last week. He spoke about King's legacy, saying all the usual things that one would expect of someone honoring this important man, but then made a remark that struck me: that even though King is now regarded as a relatively uncontroversial figure, he was not viewed this way during his time.

This is an important point that is generally overlooked when it comes to studying King and his leadership style. While everyone recognizes him as being a non-violent, peaceful voice of the African-American civil rights movement, many fail to consider the fact that he was still a radical who broke laws, led marches, staged boycotts and wasn't afraid of stepping on toes to get his message across.

His "I have a dream" speech was no doubt inspirational, but that alone could not have created the sweeping change his leadership helped promote. What really made a difference were things such as arranging sit-ins, leading marches and helping to orchestrate a bus boycott that eventually hurt the bus system financially. And during the Birmingham Campaign, in which blacks were encouraged to break as many segregation laws as possible for the purpose of overflowing jails, King was quoted as commenting, "The purpose of ... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation."

To get back to Cose's comment, I agree that people today see him in a different light than people saw him back then. Why is this important to note? Because knowing this can help us analyze views regarding today's social movements and predict how our attitudes and actions will be seen in 50 years.

Take the gay rights movement going on now, for instance. As an avid supporter, I've heard countless people make remarks questioning why I'm so passionate about it. "Worry about more important things." "Don't talk about gay marriage; someone might get offended." "Calling people just annoys them." "Can't they just be happy with civil unions? What's the difference?"

Hypocritically, most of these same people who see current social movements as too "in-your-face" also see King as an important, inspiring figure of justice and social change. It's easy to see why this happens — we've all grown up with legal racial equality, and thus tacitly support the person who helped make it happen. We don't have to give it much of a second thought, because the ‘60s civil rights movement never inconvenienced us. Its positive effects have been there our whole lives.

By contrast, we may have to deal with being bugged by a phone call supporting economic justice, or being made uncomfortable in a conversation about immigration, or being offended by someone drawing Muhammad to protest anti-blasphemy laws.

But while our days may be made slightly easier without these inconveniences, these small inconveniences are what make social change occur. Without being "in-your-face" every once in a while, nothing happens; society becomes static. To be effective, social movements have to get on people's radars by getting them talking. For instance, while the Occupy movement's protests have been said to inconvenience some big cities, it has gotten people to take note of economic inequality in America. And like the ‘60s sit-ins that gained more attention when the police brought out fire hoses and attack dogs to use on the demonstrators, more people have sympathized with the Occupy message since the protesters have been victim to police brutality such as pepper spraying and violent arrests.

My hope in bringing this up is that the next time people are tempted to tell an activist to "live and let live," think about King's philosophy and methodology, and how our current social movements will be seen in 50 year. When your grandchildren ask you with disbelief, "Could gay people really not get married when you were young?", be proud that you argued the topic, offended some people, inconvenienced someone's day and helped create social change.

This is home.

2012-01-26T19:19:00.014-06:00

The image above is home. It is the place where all but five hundred of the over ten billion humans have lived and will live their entire lives. It is the only place we know of that contains our scale of life. This place is amazing to us, for it gives us physical locations of shelter, warmth, chilling, cyclical seasons, and the chance for us to learn about its inner-most workings.

This is not a planet to us, but our figurative mother. It is the place we have called home, mother, savior, basket, and to some, God.

We are currently destroying our home. We are currently deconstructing the adventure of this planet's creation and evolution that has taken part for over four billion years. This is not a secret either, but a cold fact of our current existence. It is a side-effect of our selfish processes, and we are not transparent to the planet, as we should be.

Clearly it is foolish to expect that we, as humans, who: explore, break, change, break, learn, create, break, and improve everything in our lives could ever become transparent (or, cthulhu-forbid foster naturalistic processes) to this planet? Or is it?

We are able to create and manipulate data into new forms and constructs at a rate that is equal to the previous year's amount of creation and manipulation. (Read: exponential growth) We are not different from the systems we create, nor the systems which we experience, but part of those. Even more humbling is the fact that we are physically exchanging matter with those systems. From the most complex systems of galaxies spanning thousands upon thousands of light-years, to single celled bacteria, we are making exchanges with everything.

The counter-concept of this which seems to propagate so many human minds is an barrier of absolutes. It is not our abstractions of superficial importance which we impose on reality that dictate the truly powerful systems in our lives, but those systems which we often least understand have control over us.

I wish, beg, and plead with people on an almost weekly basis to become open to this train of thought. It is far less of a disturbance or shattering of your views than what you may think. However, it is a fundamental switch in how to function. A complete unwrapping of the world around you, and that's special. It's always a thrill to learn something (a)new. Just as other things may excite you, understanding the systems and their inter-connectivity is mesmerizing.

Events for the Week, 1/23

2012-01-23T16:02:00.000-06:00

Monday, January 23, 5:00 PM: Come out to UNIFI Dinner tonight at 5 PM in the Rialto Private Dining Area. Join us for good food and great fun.

Thursday, January 26, 8:00 PM: The improv comedy duo Gay/Straight Alliance will be performing at the Maucker Union. After their performance, they will be hosting a Q & A session.

Sunday, January 29, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: UNIFI's weekly Brunch at the College Square Hy-Vee! Join your favorite freethinkers for all sorts of great Hy-Vee food and all sorts of great UNIFI camaraderie!

Links for the Sabbath: 1/22

2012-01-22T09:00:00.008-06:00

Welcome to your weekly Links for the Sabbath!! This is a collection of exciting news, events, and information from the world around you!

NASA has discovered that there is a lot more water on the Moon than what we thought. "making lunar soil about twice as wet as the sands of the Sahara — which by moon standards is practically drenched."

In the town of Malibu, California a private school has rejected an LGBT group's request to become a recognized student organization. Now students are starting to stand out in support for the group.

Announcing the Darwin Week 2012 lineup

2012-01-19T20:08:00.001-06:00

It's that time of year again! Darwin Week 2012 is quickly approaching, and with it comes the best lineup of speakers that we've ever brought to UNI! Darwin Week will take place February 13th through the 16th in the Maucker Union CME. We will have three faculty talks every day, followed by a keynote speaker at 7:00 pm, and an after-party at Beck's for wings, burgers, and one-on-one with the keynotes.

Monday, February 13th: Skepticism
- Dr. Joe Nickell, world renowned skeptical investigator of the paranormal

Tuesday, February 14th: Sexuality
- Dr. Clint Kelly, Professor of Biology studying behavioral and evolutionary ecology at Iowa State University

Wednesday, February 15th: Diversity
- Jamila Bey, NPR Journalist and secular activist in the diverse atheist movement

Thursday, February 16th: Origins
- Dr. Lawrence Krauss, MIT educated theoretical physicist and professor of physics at Arizona State University

Stay tuned for more information, as well as info on how YOU can help out with the best student event on UNI's campus (ever!). Check out DarwinWeek.com for more details.

What's wrong with SOPA and PIPA.

2012-01-18T09:03:00.016-06:00

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) are two bills making their way through Congress. They have the power and potential to destroy the internet as we currently see it.

Read what these bills can do. (Click to expand)

The largest copyright producers (the mass media giants, recording industries, and movie makers) would be able to dramatically overextend their reach into your freedoms. The internet has been used to save lives in every country of the world, it has helped overthrow deadly dictators and governments, and gives entertainment to you and your friends.

Some of the largest tech organizations and companies in the world are against these bills, for the damage they could cause: Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, LinkedIn, eBay, Mozilla Corporation, Roblox, Reddit, the Wikimedia Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the ACLU, and Human Rights Watch, Wired, Hacker News, Namecheap, ars technica, Wordpress, and thousands upon thousands of other websites are protesting today in opposition.

As atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, and other like minded people, I think it is vital we take a stand for free speech, and against censorship. Just as we've seen in countless other countries (North Korea, China, Australia, Iran, etc..) people deserve the ability to express themselves, openly.

These bills are dangerous and they need to never become US law. Sign the petitions, learn what you can do, or take part in the protests. Thank you.

Tim Minchin has some thoughts about the Pope

2012-01-17T17:58:00.000-06:00

Let's just take a second and hear him out. Also, there's some language.

Well there you have it - Tim Minchin is as irreverent as usual. If you're still reading then you either didn't watch the video, or weren't offended enough to leave. Awesome. So was the language in the video warranted? There's a well-documented history of Pope Benedict XVI's involvement in covering up child abuse within the church.

So given the Church's long history of abuse scandals and their recently-halted campaign against condoms and other contraceptives in Africa, it's hard to be sympathetic. The Pope sits in Vatican city while people starve outside, only venturing forth occasionally in his pope-mobile (which is apparently more protective than divine favor). So yeah, fuck the pope, and anyone who would aid in covering up even a single abuse.

Events for the Week, 1/16

2012-01-16T19:09:00.000-06:00

MLK Day of Service: A big thanks to everyone who came out this morning to volunteer for the MLK Day of Service. UNIFI brought 18 volunteers to the event which is awesome!

Thursday, January 19, 7:00 PM: Join UNIFI in the Maucker Union to help spread the word about Darwin Week! We'll be making announcements about Darwin Week on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. and will need help making sure our reach is large as possible.

Sunday, January 22, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: Join UNIFI for our weekly Brunch at the College Square Hy-Vee! Join us for great conversations and all sorts of delicious foods.

Links for the Sabbath: 1/15

2012-01-15T09:00:00.006-06:00

Welcome back to the second semester! If you made it to brunch today we had 40+ people there and it was a blast!

The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study conducted and published a study recently about how the quality of life for kids under lesbian parents and the results indicate that there is a great average quality of life for kids raised by lesbian parents.

"Our results revealed that the NLLFS adolescents rated themselves comparably to their counterparts in opposite-sex parent families on QoL. These positive reports about the NLLFS adolescents’ QoL are in keeping with the findings of previous studies on the psychological adjustment of adolescents with lesbian mothers 13,14,16 that suggest that adolescents living with lesbian parents function as well as, or sometimes better than, those reared by opposite-sex parents."

Jessica Ahlquist Won!

2012-01-12T19:56:00.004-06:00

Yesterday, a U.S. District Court sided in favor of Jessica Ahlquist that the prayer banner being displayed in her Rhode Island High School was unconstitutional! If you haven't been following the story, here's what happened: Jessica knew that this banner didn't belong in a public school, so she brought this to the attention of school officials.

What she didn't expect was the heated controversy that ensued. Instead of the school officials realizing that the banner was unconstitutional and taking it down, they instead voted to keep it up. Despite taunting and name-calling from her peers and their parents, when the ACLU decided to take up the issue in court (after the school wouldn't even take it down at their request), she volunteered to be the plaintiff.

And unsurprisingly, the courts upheld the constitution.

The ruling is really empowering in light of all that Jessica has had to go through, and it even explicitly affirms her courageousness! Here are some highlights (courtesy of Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist).

The Court rules that Plaintiff [Ahlquist] has standing in this matter and rules in her favor on the merits of this dispute. The Court also orders the immediate removal of the Prayer Mural from the auditorium at Cranston West.

…

The Court refrains from second-guessing the expressed motives of the Committee members, but nonetheless must point out that tradition is a murky and dangerous bog. While all agree that some traditions should be honored, others must be put to rest as our national values and notions of tolerance and diversity evolve. At any rate, no amount of history and tradition can cure a constitutional infraction. The Court concludes that Cranston’s purposes in installing and, more recently, voting to retain the Prayer Mural are not clearly secular.

…

Plaintiff is clearly an articulate and courageous young woman, who took a brave stand, particularly in light of the hostile response she has received from her community.

Congratulations to Jessica on her win, and for standing up for what is right. Hopefully others in the atheist community will continue to be inspired by her activism and courage.

Why, as an atheist, I support polyamory

2012-01-10T22:33:00.000-06:00

"So if you're not happy unless you're married to five other people, is that OK? Reason says that if you think it's okay for two, then you have to differentiate for me why it's not okay for three." -Rick Santorum, comparing same-sex marriage to polyamory

As a staunch defender of same-sex marriage and gay rights in general, I have found myself confronting this argument before: if we let gay people marry each other, who’s to say that one person can’t marry four people? I’ve tried to counter this by saying that marriage is a relationship between two people, and that not including any gendered qualifiers in that definition does not open the door for marriages of more than two people. But I’ve been thinking lately. Russ Shafer-Landau came to campus last semester to talk about marriage equality, and the argument he gave was essentially as follows:

The government should not restrict people’s rights, provided that there exists no good reason to do so.

There is no good reason to restrict the marriage rights of LGBT individuals.

Therefore, the government should not restrict the marriage rights of LGBT individuals.

I found the argument to be very compelling, but if I’m going to be intellectually honest, then I have to admit that the same argument applies to polyamorous relationships. That is, Rick Santorum is right: allowing gay marriage means allowing marriages between more than two people. Of course, for all I care, people can enter into relationships and subsequent legal contracts with whomever they like. But I have to admit that from a tactical perspective, I was worried by this realization. I’ve managed to convince family members, for example, that gay marriage today is just like interracial marriage in the sixties. It took a while, but these family members came around. The problem is, they might not have come around if they realized that the slippery slope really is valid in this instance.

I thought it made more strategic sense to get people to accept same sex marriage, and can cross the polyamorous bridge when we come to it. But the more I think about it, the more this approach makes me very uncomfortable. There is a relevant psychological phenomenon at work here. It’s called last place aversion. Simply put, most people don’t want to come in last. At times, people near the bottom will even oppose measures thatcould help them, if they would help those below them more. That is, even though everyone is better off, they don’t want to be last. A way of understanding this phenomenon is to look at slavery in the old South. Some of the most ardent defenders of slavery were poor white people who did not directly benefit from it. They benefited psychologically by being able to say, “I may be poor, but at least I’m not black” (sociologists call this a psychic wage). Something similar happens to atheists today: liberal public figures are almost unfailingly religious. This fact in and of itself seems harmless, but some ofthese figures are willing to repeat the same tired arguments about atheists having no basis for morality that one would hear from William Lane Craig (seeAl Sharpton).

It is this feeling of being thrown under the bus by people with whom we agree on almost every major issue that should make atheists think long and hard about their approach to discussing polyamorous marriage. When we refuse to honestly acknowledge the connection between same sex marriage and polyamory, we are no better than Al Sharpton claiming that "morality" is an explicitly religious idea; we are stepping on the necks of one group in order to raise another to recognized legitimacy. It is wrong, and I will take no part in it. So cheers to wedded bliss between consenting adults, regardless of age or number!

Events for the Week, 1/9

2012-01-09T13:32:00.007-06:00

Monday, January 9th, 5:00 PM: Welcome yourself back to the year with UNIFI Dinner! There's always great food and conversation, so stop by from 5-7pm in the Rialto private dining!

Monday, January 9th 8:00 PM: One Iowa at UNI is hosting their first meeting of the next semester! They will be planning the next year, so make sure to stop by the SIAC Conference Room (Upstairs in the union) and give your input into protecting marriage equality!

Monday, January 9th 9:00 PM: The NI Democrats are also hosting their first meeting of the semester. Make sure to stop by the State College Room to meet the group and prepare for this semester!

Monday, January 16th, 8:30 AM: UNIFI is hosting a day of service for MLK day. If you're interested feel free to sign up!

Sunday, January 15th, 11:00 AM: Need to relax after a stressful week? Come by UNIFI's weekly Brunch at the College Square Hy-Vee. There's breakfast, Chinese food, pizza, UNIFI members. Everything you need to make sure you survive this next semester!

Oops, God Made A Mistake

2012-01-04T19:20:00.000-06:00

For the masochists out there who follow GOP politics, the Iowa Caucuses took place last night, and resulted in an absurdly close race between Uber-conservative culture-warrior Rick "frothy mixture" Santorum and flip flopping expert Mitt Romney. Romney took the state by just 8 votes -barely beating Santorum - both of whom only beat Ron Paul's impressive showing by a few percent. The other candidates did quite poorly, confirming that the excitement and buzz generated by this rotating cast of flavor-of-the-week candidates was as temporary as most suspected. Perry and Cain had both had their brief time in the spotlight, along with Michelle Bachmann who won the Ames Iowa straw poll.

These results seem to confirm that a large portion of Iowa Republicans are drawn to Christian fundamentalist candidates like the cookie monster to cookies, and the electability of a particular candidate or their sensibility when crafting policies is secondary to the amount of crazy they can produce while racing to the right and pandering to the base. The other portion of Iowa Republicans seem to have finally come to terms with Mitt Romney's (in my view) inevitable success in winning the Republican nomination.

What's interesting about this year's Jesus-pimping crop of candidates is that several of them have claimed that they were told by God to run for President, or at least urged to do so. Members of the crew claiming divine endorsement include Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain. Even more interestingly, two of the three have now "suspended" their campaigns, which of course means they can still solicit money from donors, presumably to pile up and roll around in. Was God wrong? Was he hedging his bets? Was his endorsement a cynical and morally bankrupt contrivance of sleazy politicians pandering to the religious right? My guess is that it's probably something like the latter.

As the election season progresses, take a moment to reflect on our current political situation, and how imperfect but at least electable candidates like Jon Huntsman get so few supporters while the conservative masses and the media take turns favoring candidates with the moral fiber and intellectual capacity of a brick wall. Perry's paltry showing in Iowa suggests that he will probably be one of the next to go, and Santorum's right wing zealotry probably won't be enough to carry him through primary season, not unlike Mike Huckabee's 2008 win in Iowa.

Little seems to have changed in the last 4 years, and if that's true in Iowa, it's probably true nationally. Although this election season will probably be mostly partisan pageantry lacking almost any identifiable substance, at least God's chosen candidates may soon be out of the picture. Maybe next time around he'll lend his endorsement a little more selectively.

Links for the Sabbath: 1/1

2012-01-01T17:27:00.003-06:00

Welcome to the new year! I hope that you enjoyed your new year celebrations and are ready for another 365 days!

A team at MIT has recently developed a camera that can capture frames (actually, individual lines of a scene) at 1 trillion captures per second. That speed allows us to see the movement of photos on a macroscopic scale and gives hints towards other future technologies.

In other science news, the LHC has released some preliminary details on the search for the Higgs Boson (the particle which is predicted to give other particles mass by sticking to them and being slowed down by the (also proposed) Higgs Field. However, this news is only certain to a degree of 2.4 to 3.6 standard deviations (sigma). That means that the spike of activity from the particle collisions is not rare enough at that energy (125 GeV, billion electron volts) to warrant a discovery. For that you need something in the range of 5 sigma (or a million times less likely), which the LHC hopes to obtain in the coming year.

This is misogyny.

2011-12-29T22:54:00.006-06:00

Misogyny and the objectification of women is always upsetting, but it's especially disappointing when it comes from members of a group with which we identify. And what happened on r/atheism recently is no exception.

Four days ago on Reddit, a 15-year-old girl posted this:

It reads "What my super religious mother got me for Christmas..." which a picture of her holding a copy of Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World.

What should have been relatively straightforward, "That's so cool, my parents would never do that!" or something discussion turned into a misogynistic, objectifying, violent rape joke session.

To a 15-year-old girl. Because she dared to show her face on the internet.

Some of the "highlights":

The jeans I'm wearing right now are older than her. But then again, they're full of holes.
- Aaaaaand so is she...
I wasn't trying to, but it needed to be said.

Relax your anus, it hurts less that way
- Blood is mother nature's lubricant.

BITE THE PILLOW, I'M GOIN' DRY!

Obviously, these comments are horrible and undeserved. But wait, there's more. It's her fault:

You didn't need to include yourself in this, it serves no purpose, you knew your post would never go anywhere unless you did so, for shame lady. Merry Christmas!

You sorta posted a comment "bracin my anus" to "brace for the complements", and are complaining how sexualized this post has become. I respect you for your intelligence, and the fact that you read sagan, but come on, bracin my anus? really?

Nobody deserves to be treated how she was, regardless of whether or not they said the word "anus" jokingly, or *GASP* dared to be a pretty girl while simultaneously being intellectual and on the internet.

Shame on those commenters, and shame on those who excuse this type of sexism and objectification.

For some good takes on this incident, Rebecca Watson and Greta Christina have laid it out quite well.

How do moderates affect society?

2011-12-28T11:02:00.000-06:00

What are your thoughts on moderate christians? Some think they fuel fundamentalists, while others don't see them as much of a problem. The Atheist Experience blog has a great post on how moderates do in fact fuel fundamentalists.

If you don't feel like reading, here is a great response by Richard Dawkins when asked if society as a whole is too tolerant of religious extremists.

I find myself still on the fence on this issue, so I'd love to hear your thoughts to try to convince me one way or the other.

Your fellow humans are amazing

2011-12-25T08:00:00.004-06:00

I guess I've never been a big fan of Christmas, even as a kid. It always seems strange to be able to celebrate when there are people who are worse off than I was. As I've grown up it seems similar. Now it's a time to relax from "adult life", share, and enjoy your life. Have you seen how others live this past year? The Boston.com Big Picture section is always fantastic in comprising breathtaking photos every week, and they have a three part series on how 2011 went.

Each photo will link to a different part.

Cal Thomas: An Immoral Moralist

2011-12-22T19:11:00.005-06:00

This post originally appeared on Keenan's personal blog.

I was recently perusing the opinion section of my local newspaper The Sioux City Journal when I came across Cal Thomas’ column "Death of an Atheist". At the time I read the article I was not that familiar with Mr. Thomas’ work so I eagerly read through an article about the late Christopher Hitchens, of whom I have much respect. Unfortunately, the contents of the article were marred with posthumous insults, pejorative stereotyping, and worst of all shady arguments for the existence of God.

If any of these were used against Hitchens when he was still alive, Thomas would have been eviscerated. Convenient then, that he waited until after the man was dead to write an attack piece. Now while Hitchens himself was known for continuing attacks on his adversaries post-mortem; these were attacks he conducted while they were still living and knew full well they had an opportunity for rebuttal. Thomas did nothing of the sort and, like the invertebrate he is, waited until the prolific polemicist was dead before conducting his assault. This was both cowardly and immoral.

Further (and possibly even more infuriating) the arguments that Thomas used don’t even hold their weight. First, Thomas assails Hitchens for being “unoriginal” in his unbelief and states that the wisest people of our time have responded to these accusations. This is rubbish. Cal himself consistently quotes a book that is over 1500 years old in constructing his argument, so there is nothing original about his belief either. As far as the wisest people responding to disbelief, that may have flown as late as the 19th century but I have a hunch that most if not all contemporary analytic philosophers disagree. In other professions, great minds such as Einstein, Freud, Crick, and even bastion of the right Milton Friedman have expressed their disbelief.

Thomas then asks, and I quote, “Why contribute to charity or perform other good deeds? Without a source to inspire charity, such acts are sentimental affectations, devoid of meaning and purpose. If survival of the fittest is the rule, let only the fit survive.” Now I want to be crystal clear here; what Cal has just said is despicable. Essentially, if he isn’t going to get into heaven then he doesn’t want to be bothered helping people. Without God, there is no incentive. What a bastion of good will this man is, what convictions. If eternal punishment doesn’t await me...then I see no reason to be altruistic. Scrooge indeed.

Cal then cements his ignorance with the statement, “To object to God is to create morality from a Gallup Poll. In Gallup We Trust doesn’t have the same authority.” Surely the intersubjectivity of morality doesn’t have the same authority as a divine being, but I would argue that it actually has better outcomes. God was willing to sit idly by while we hashed out whether or not slavery was moral, for instance. Take Leviticus 25:44 where clear instructions on how to buy a slave are spelled out and the moral authority to treat them as livestock is granted. If we were content with Biblical morality we would still own slaves (Leviticus 25, Exodus 21, Ephesians 6, Timothy 6), women would still be subjugated by patriarchal dictum (Colossians 3, 1st Timothy 2, Titus 2) and rape would be condoned in certain circumstances (Judges 21, Numbers 31, Deuteronomy 20). “In Gallup We Trust” isn’t looking so bad now, is it Cal?

Finally, Thomas sums up his comments by saying, "Who is the author of evil? And if God is nonexistent, why do we call it evil? Is one person’s evil another person’s good? Does such a view lead to ethics that must inevitably be situational?" This is, in essence, the Euthyphro dilemma which Aaron Friel already covered in another post back in October. I won't go into this because he did a much better job than I ever could elaborating on divine command theory...which is essentially what Cal Thomas is proposing. The fact of the matter, though, is that human beings are actually quite resourceful in negotiating moral norms amongst themselves and have no need for divine intervention in this respect. Stating that Hitch isn't brilliant because he came to terms with this fact while Mr. Thomas is still unable to is ignorant and childish. Cal, you've raked a good man through the muck without much to show for it. I hope you're proud of yourself.

'Tis the Season... to Buy Last Minute Gifts

2011-12-21T21:13:00.000-06:00

If you're like me, you bought or will buy the bulk of your gifts this holiday season as late as possible. And you probably haven't bought books yet because, hey, classes are like, two or three weeks away.

But when you do get around to holiday shopping, if that's your thing, you should buy through our Amazon affiliate link. Don't worry, you don't pay a penny more and a portion of the proceeds go to help our group out. Worried about those gifts getting here on time, or buying those textbooks the week before classes? No worries, right now Amazon is offering some sort of free two-day shipping, and students are eligible for for six months of free Amazon Prime and 50% off after that. Which is awesome, because I'm one heck of a procrastinator and I don't notice I forgot to buy gifts until I hear them being wrapped in the other room.

And if you aren't going to be buying anything now, you can help us in the future by merely bookmarking any of the links above with our affiliate ID embedded. Use it when you do need to shop on Amazon and you'll help us out then.

Thank you for supporting us, and happy holidays!

The Trouble with Atheism

2011-12-20T15:31:00.000-06:00

How far off do you think atheism is from being a religion? I suppose the majority, if not all, of my fellow freethinkers would say atheism isn't anywhere close to being a religion, which I agree with 100%. According to a documentary I found the other day titled The Trouble with Atheism, atheism and science are becoming more of a religion then we realize.

Here is a little summary of the documentary itself:

The Trouble with Atheism is an hour-long documentary on atheism, presented by Rod Liddle. It aired on Channel 4 in December 2006. The documentary focuses on criticizing atheism, as well as science, for its perceived similarities to religion, as well as arrogance and intolerance. The programme includes interviews with a number of prominent scientists, including atheists Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. It also includes an interview with Ellen Johnson, the president of American Atheists.
Liddle begins the documentary by surveying common criticisms of religion, and particularly antireligious arguments based on the prevalence of religious violence. He argues that the “very stupid human craving for certainty and justification”, not religion, is to blame for this violence, and that atheism is becoming just as dogmatic as religion.
In order to support his thesis, Liddle presents numerous examples of actions and words by atheists which he argues are direct parallels of religious attitudes. He characterizes Atkins and Dawkins as “fundamentalist atheists” and “evangelists”.
In response to atheistic appeals to science as a superior method for understanding the world than religion, Liddle argues that science itself is akin to religion: “the problem for atheists is that science may not be as far away from religion as you might imagine”.
He describes Fermilab, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory focused on particle physics, as a “temple to science”, and characterizes Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species as a “sacred text” for atheists.

After reading the summary my curiosity got the best of me, I decided to take some time and watch the documentary. If you have a spare hour this winter break I'd suggest taking some time to watch at least the first 20 minutes. By watching this I came up with the conclusion that the presenter of the documentary may have a flawed understanding of what atheism is and especially how science itself works. I'll let you come up with your own interpretations if you would like to take the time to watch it for yourself.

On another note if you enjoy watching documentaries, I found this one on Documentary Haven. It is a website with over 1,700 different documentaries with a wide range of topics to select from (science, space, atheism, religion, philosophy, etc..). All of these documentaries are free and a great way to learn more about anything you may be interested in.

Check it out if you have time!

Legendary only begins their descriptions

2011-12-16T21:50:00.019-06:00

What is death? Is it simply the end of consciousness? Could it be cycles in your body ending in a manor that leads to the failure of your body to operate? What if it's defined as the release of impact on the world around you?

In 2011 the world has experienced countless deaths, and among the thousands of starving, pillaged, homeless, rich, and sick are people who have impacted many of us. Two of those are Christopher Hitchens and Steve Jobs. Both of these men were visionaries in their respective domains, but their accomplishments pour out into life beyond activism or leading a company. It's hard to calibrate sentences that recognize them, which makes their memories that much more valuable.

Take Hitchens, a man who dedicated his life to advancing the movement of stellar brutality towards religion. Really, it is impossible to understate his discontent towards ideologies that do no satisfy reality. What I personally enjoy about Hitchens was his ability to deconstruct the most personal tracts of human action in each of us. When Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer he did not approach it like many of us would, with self-destructive fear, but with the willingness and courage to stare death in its cold face.

"Oh, and the regular painkiller. How happily I measured off my day as I saw the injection being readied. It counted as a real event. With some analgesics, if you are lucky, you can actually “feel” the hit as it goes in: a sort of warming tingle with an idiotic bliss to it. To have come to this—like the sad goons who raid pharmacies for OxyContin. But it was an alleviation of boredom, and a guilty pleasure (not many of those in Tumortown), and not least a relief from pain." -- Christopher Hitchens (Source: Vanity Fair)

Steve Jobs was a founding member of Apple Computing and friend of Steve Wozniak. Jobs was not interested in perfection, but instead he was entirely focused on escaping the bounds of reality in order to achieve what few thought was possible in the wave of technological advances that he was the instigator of. When Jobs was working on a product there was no "good enough" or "it'll do", but rather the investment, no, obedience of examining the entirety of our natural actions and mapping them onto a digital device.

"Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.

And it’s that process that is the magic." -- Steve Jobs (Source: 37signals)

These two men, Christopher Hitchens and Steve Jobs are connected in a way that binds us all. We all have talent, just as these men do, however the recognition of their contribution is humbling. They ignite passion in me to pursue depths of knowledge I might leave untapped otherwise, and they build attribution towards goals I think we all share. Not minor changes to our lives, but the composition of their flair within ourselves is what I think they are trying to instill in each of us.

All-American Fear Monger

2011-12-14T17:32:00.001-06:00

This program creates an image that's harmful education-wise to the belief structure and memories of millions of Americans who will look at this and say "Well, all Muslims are like that." Well, that's not accurate.

Has someone finally thrown down the gauntlet against cultural depictions of Muslims that focus too heavily on the terrorism narrative? Does the enlightened source of this quote harbor a deep concern about media that stereotypes Muslims as terrorists? Actually, no. The source of that quote is David Caton, of the Florida Family Association, and he is actually complaining about the lack of stereotyping in TLC's show "All-American Muslim."

I was unaware of this, but TLC has a show which follows an Islamic Family in their everyday lives. I think it's actually a pretty cool concept: the reason behind stereotyping is presumably that the only cultural images of Muslims many Americans see are images of terrorism. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Islam or the Koran in the same way that I'm not a fan of Christianity or the Bible, but I think TLC putting a regular family who happens to be Muslim on TV is a genuinely good thing. It's not that people won't make generalizations based on limited information (I think that's pretty much human nature), but this will at least give them a frame of reference that is not based on terrorism.

The complaint from the Florida Family Association seems to amount to, "We have to stop this, because our children will see it and not be afraid of everyone that comes out of that Mosque down the street." Check out the first John Stewart clip below for a bit more on this. I heard a similar story on Rachel Maddow last night. Apparently Lowe's got wind of this controversy and chose to pull their advertising from the "All-American Muslim" time slot (see second video below).

Florida Family Association

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Lowe's pulls advertising

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

A Coming out story: From bible study leader to atheist in a week.

2011-12-13T12:31:00.003-06:00

For those that don’t know me, I’m new to UNIFI and new to atheism all together. But this is my story of how I came out as an atheist.

My mom is religious, but my dad is an atheist. Every Sunday, my mom dragged me out of bed to go to church and I sat there through the service spacing out, not really caring. Even though I grew up in the church, I never really thought about religion or the possibility of a god. Then, in high school, some friends started inviting me to their youth group at a different church. I was "saved" at the age of 16 on a mission trip we went on that summer. Over the next couple of years I did my best to base my life on Christianity. I read my bible, prayed, was active in the youth group and the church, went on more mission trips.

When I came to UNI as a freshman, I began to ask myself some questions that made me question my faith, and not knowing how to respond to that, I chose to ignore those questions and kind of ignore faith as well my freshman year. But at the end of the summer after my freshman year I decided I wanted to start getting more serious about my Christianity.

My sophomore year, I got really involved in BASIC on campus and sometimes Navs. Every single decision I made was based on my faith. I read my bible every day and felt guilty when I missed a day. I led a bible study. I volunteered at church. My entire social circle consisted of Christians. Every single day for me was driven by the idea that there was a god, one who died for my sins and loved me.

The point at which I started to question is unclear. It might be when my sister came out as bisexual, or a conversation I had with a Christian friend this summer that taught me to challenge everything I believe, or this semester getting to know international students who grew up in different cultures with different religions. But once I started to question, I became addicted to finding answers. At first, I was surprised that the answers were taking me so far from what I had believed for 4 years of my life.

I think I knew subconsciously for weeks that I was an atheist, but I denied it to myself for fear of how people would react. I didn’t want to make those that I love uncomfortable. A week ago, I realized that by trying to make everyone else comfortable, I was making it more difficult for myself. Saying the word ‘atheist’ aloud was very freeing. I felt like I was being true to myself, however it has been met with much opposition. It’s hard for my friends to accept this about me but they are trying and I’m determined to not lose good friends over this.

The first week of my life as officially an atheist has been great. I still have questions, but they aren’t frustrating or consuming questions that I feel I have to make excuses in order to match my belief system like before. Life just makes sense. It’s amazing how logic actually makes sense.

I am an atheist, and I am damn proud of it.

Feel free to relax to these. (Oh look, science!)

2011-12-12T15:06:00.003-06:00

If you want something to relax you during finals I'd suggest any of these videos. They work for me, and I hope you enjoy them.

Links for the Sabbath: 12/11

2011-12-11T09:00:00.001-06:00

The NASA spacecraft, Kepler, which has found over a thousand candidates for planets in our nearby solar system, has found a planet that is in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. You can read some great discussion about this over on Hacker News.

A Christian student organization at the University of Buffalo has told its treasurer that he must leave the group because "the problem was that Jackson doesn’t accept Bible verses that condemn gay people" after they found out that he is gay.

What do you think of Rick Perry now?

2011-12-08T22:17:00.002-06:00

Rick Perry recently started a new ad campaign, and in doing so has racked up over 300,000+ dislikes on one of his videos. So, what do you think of it? Is it completely insane, or just mostly?

Do Not Donate to the Salvation Army

2011-12-06T10:43:00.003-06:00

I intended to write a tactful and measured post today about the controversy surrounding the Salvation Army and their Christian influences, but I will admit I hadn't actually seen their positions laid out before now. I thought the controversy probably had to do with some obscure statement by their equivalent of middle management, and not the organization itself. After visiting their site though, It's actually a lot worse than I thought. (If you don't care to hear the details, skip to the bottom for a TL;DR: and a list of secular charities)

Edit: Probably more important than the contents of their website is their long history of anti-gay activism, even threatening to close all NYC soup kitchens if they were forced to follow civil rights laws on treatment of LGBT individuals.

First, they are very obviously an Evangelical Christian organization. If you have ever been to their site, then this is probably a painfully obvious observation, as they make no attempt to hide it. Perhaps it's entirely my fault for not having known that until now, but I would guess that most people don't. Their What We Believe page has a detailed exposition of their religious convictions. It's pretty standard Evangelical dogma, and while I think this alone is problematic for a charity, I'm going to focus on the most objectionable material from their Position Statements section.

They preface the section on homosexuality with this 'rationalizing religious bigotry in light of modern morality' statement:

Sexual attraction to the same sex is a matter of profound complexity. Whatever the causes may be, attempts to deny its reality or to marginalize those of a same-sex orientation have not been helpful. The Salvation Army does not consider same-sex orientation blameworthy in itself. Homosexual conduct, like heterosexual conduct, requires individual responsibility and must be guided by the light of scriptural teaching.

Ok, so don't be mean to gays or call them heteros in denial. That's not a perfect answer, but it's also not the worst thing they could say. Here's where the downhill slide starts though:

The Salvation Army holds a positive view of human sexuality. Where a man and a woman love each other, sexual intimacy is understood as a gift of God to be enjoyed within the context of heterosexual marriage. However, in the Christian view, sexual intimacy is not essential to a healthy, full, and rich life. Apart from marriage, the scriptural standard is celibacy.

So sex is a (straight) marriage-only privilege. If you're not married, or not 100% straight, you're encouraged to take the Godly route - celibacy! Which is fine, because sex isn't needed for a "helpful, full, and rich life." Easy enough to say, I suppose, and probably written by some compassionate Christian man who gets to have all of the biblically-sanctioned sex that he wants. Like a Billionaire telling an individual of lesser means that money isn't everything, and that you can be happy without much of it. Of course that's just speculation on my part. On to the rest of the anti-gay bullshit:

Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. The Salvation Army believes, therefore, that Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life. There is no scriptural support for same-sex unions as equal to, or as an alternative to, heterosexual marriage.

So I guess this is the inevitable conclusion. From the two premises, namely that A) Sex is for marriage, and B) Marriage is for straights, therefore Sex is only for straights. Gays should just pretend to be straight, and go about their lives being unhappy and unfulfilled, because God would rather you discipline your genitals to some arbitrary standard than live a happy and fulfilling life. Ignoring the desires that he created you to have, I suppose. Do I have to tease my way around the conclusion here? If you think this is a reasonable position, then you can fuck off and stop reading this blog post. If a charitable organization with a wide net of supporters thinks this is a reasonable position to be pushing on people, then we shouldn't have to pretend that it's anything but shameful and immoral. There's no reasonable discussion to be had here. If you agree with this then you need to rethink what it means to be a good, caring, empathetic human being.

Charity should not come with the precondition of having to tolerate ideological nonsense like this. It should be about helping people irrespective of their beliefs. And even if there is no discrimination in practice, it's condescending and utterly contemptible to provide help while passing judgement on their personal lives. "Here's some food, and by the way, your sex life is sinful" should not be acceptable behavior.

Just to be sure I'm not overreacting, the evangelical right wing bullshit doesn't end there. Here's a couple other choice quotes from their Position Statements page, which you can visit for yourself if you feel that I have robbed these statements of their context.

Pornography is an increasingly harmful scourge on society, endangering and degrading the physical, moral, and spiritual welfare of all those involved. It is clearly linked with prostitution, sexual abuse and assault, and other forms of sexual exploitation. Pornography promotes deviant sex and violence. It harms and demeans those who are portrayed as sexual objects, as well as its users and purveyors.

The Salvation Army holds to the Christian ideals of chastity before marriage and fidelity within the marriage relationship and, consistent with these ideals, supports measures to prevent crisis pregnancies. It is opposed to abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection or for any reason of mere convenience to avoid the responsibility for conception. Therefore, when an unwanted pregnancy occurs, The Salvation Army advises that the situation be accepted and that the pregnancy be carried to term, and offers supportive help and assistance with planning.

Here's the point: Think about this organization carefully, and decide whether or not they are worthy of your money. Personally, I will be skipping the bell ringers this year, and any donations that I make will go to secular charities that do a lot of good without the Evangelical baggage. And I would encourage everyone who can afford it to make a donation. We can't pray-away our problems, so we have to actively work to fix them. And in times like these every penny counts.

If a local Salvation Army is the only outlet for the needy to get food in your area, there's no reason you can't buy and then donate food items. Making a statement about their political and religious convictions should not come at the expense of those who need immediate local assistance. If you were simply planning on making a cash donation online, then feel free to put your money towards a purely secular group.

Here is an (incomplete) list of secular charities to choose from:

The American Red Cross
Doctors Without Borders
Habitat For Humanity
UNICEF
Amnesty International
Heifer Project

Events for the Week, 12/5

2011-12-05T16:12:00.000-06:00

Monday, December 5, 5:00 PM: Kick off Dead Week with UNIFI Dinner! Join us in the Rialto's private dining area at 5:00 PM for a stress-free dinner full of great conversation.

Wednesday, December 7, 8:00 PM: UNIFI is hosting a Panel Discussion Wednesday night in the Hemisphere Lounge (right behind Chats in the Maucker Union). The topic for the discussion is "What is morality?" Join us as we discuss the concept of morality across different religious and philosophical viewpoints.

Friday, December 9, 6:30 PM: Need to take a break from studying on Friday night? Join UNIFI at Beck's on the Hill at 6:30 for our annual Festivus party. Come out for the Airing of Grievances, Feats of Strength, and all your favorite Festivus traditions!

Sunday, December 11, 11:00 AM: Need to relax Sunday before starting your week of finals? Come by UNIFI's weekly Brunch at the College Square Hy-Vee. There's breakfast, Chinese food, pizza, UNIFI members. Everything you need to make sure your finals week starts off great!

Links for the Sabbath: 12/4

2011-12-04T09:03:00.003-06:00

Welcome to Links for the Sabbath! This week isn't filled with much, but it should be amazingly interesting none the less!

Also, if you're interested in helping out charities, namely Doctors Without Borders you can, all you need to do is upvote one/all of these posts.

[ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ]

Michele Bachmann visits UNI

2011-12-01T21:33:00.002-06:00

On Wednesday, Minnesota congresswoman and GOP presidential candidate visited UNI to give a talk on education. While her actual talk consisted of nothing more than anecdotes regarding her family and childhood in Iowa and how that somehow shaped her views on education, the Q&A portion was where her irrationality (and crazy) came out.

The best overall summary of her responses is this: "Well I believe that should be up to the states to decide, as the federal government shouldn't have a role in education." Essentially, she able to dodge clearly stating her views in most areas because she could use that line as an excuse.

However, discussion moderator and Iowa Public Radio personality Ben Kieffer wasn't afraid to force an answer out of her when he asked if she considered intelligent design a science, and if it should be taught in public schools.

Despite the typical presidential candidate inability to directly answer a question, a few of Bachmann's crazy, anti-science, religiously-motivated views came out:

1. She believes intelligent design is science.

2. She believes it should be taught in public schools.

3. She believes not doing so is "censorship" on the part of government.

4. She believes there are "problems" that evolution needs to work out, such as the 2nd law of thermodynamics and irreducible complexity.

Luckily, where there was some applause to this response, the vast majority of the audience members were shaking their heads in frustration.

If you'd like to read more about her visit, several media outlets have given their take:

Think Progress

Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier

Northern Iowan

Jesus & Nazareth

2011-11-29T18:42:00.001-06:00

Hey all!

I've got a great video for you all to watch. James Randi gives a nice short little talk about the Jesus myth and how simple archaeology has shown it impossible for Jesus to have been born in Nazareth.

Enjoy!

Events for the Week, 11/28

2011-11-28T15:37:00.001-06:00

Monday, November 28, 5:00 PM: Mondays after break can be rough, so why not wind down with UNIFI Dinner? Reward yourself for going back to class with good food and great conversations in the Rialto's private dining area.

Wednesday, November 30, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM: UNIFI will be volunteering at the Northeast Iowa Food Bank! After raising $700 for the Food Bank during Out Week, let's show them that we haven't stopped caring! We'll be meeting in the circle drive outside the 23rd Street Market at 5:00 PM and then driving to the Food Bank.

Sunday, December 4, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: Kick off Dead Week with UNIFI Brunch! The week before finals can be stressful, so join UNIFI at the College Square Hy-Vee for our weekly gathering to have some fun before you start your week of studying.

Links for the Sabbath: 11/27

2011-11-27T09:19:00.001-06:00

Welcome back from Thanksgiving break! I hope you took the week off to be productive or lay around and relax. I spent the week either working (for money), reading, or seeing family.

Sometimes I forget just how insane some people are, take this for example where some women will have to cover their attractive eyes (no joke) because men are getting to distracted. Really, you can't make this up. -- "The proposal was made after a member of the committee was attracted by a woman's eyes as he walked along a street, provoking a fight, one report on the Bikya Masr news website suggested." --

In 2002, the committee refused to allow female students out of a burning school in the holy city of Mecca because they were not wearing correct head cover. The decision is thought to have contributed to the high death toll of 15.

In lighter news, Des Moines is awesome, because of a recent city ordinance they passed. This change adds gender identity the, "gender-related identity of a person, regardless of the person’s assigned sex at birth.", as a protected class from discrimination. This is meant to mirror state legislation, and I think it's fucking awesome!

One last thing! If you'd like to share your story about mental illness, Chris Burke (or the Waterloo Atheists and Agnostics) is looking for stories, feel free to email him (winghamatheist@gmail.com)

Should we care about mental illnesses?

2011-11-26T20:31:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T14:40:00.004-06:00

Sit back, relax, let your turkey digest, and enjoy these atheist-related Thanksgiving bits.

First up: thanks, Greta Christina, for making me aware of this video. It's a compilation of

what some Skepticon IV attendees are thankful for.

Second, here's a comic from Ape, not Monkey (a science vs. religion webcomic).

And last, check out the five atheists examiner.com says we should be thankful for (I agree with their assessment).

Happy Thanksgiving from UNIFI!

Help Unifi by Buying Through Us This Season!

2011-11-22T21:01:00.001-06:00

I had begun writing about “Gelato-Gate” from this year’s Skepticon, but Harvard Humanist James Croft put it better than I could have.

Instead I ask, do you think consumerism is a humanist value?

Me neither. But we’re on the verge of another holiday season and I think gift giving, no matter the reason, is something we can all support. And hey, who doesn’t want a new gadget or TV when they’re selling at door-buster prices on Black Friday? Finally, we’re nearing the end of the semester and it’s time to get those textbooks.

If you fall into any of those categories, consider buying through our Amazon affiliate link, and check out the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals this weekend. It doesn’t increase your prices at all but it gives us a small portion of your total and helps your favorite student group on campus. For students: congratulations! You’re eligible for six months of free Amazon Prime and 50% off after that. With it, most items in the store will have shipping upgraded to two-day delivery for free. Of course it’ll be completely unnecessary, seeing as how none of us students procrastinate on things like buying books.

You can start helping us now by merely bookmarking any of the links above and using it to shop in the future.

Thank you for supporting us, and have a great Turkey day.

Don't be afraid this break, you're cool.

2011-11-21T21:38:00.003-06:00

Hey all!

I'd like to remind all of you that during this holiday break you might encounter family members saying things which aren't correct, hurtful, or counter to your ideology. As Hemant Mehta talks about in a post today, you don't have to be afraid of speaking your mind.

However, I (and others, probably) want to remind you to do so with respect of people (as we always act). It probably isn't a good idea to fight with your family over the difference(s) in beliefs, but it is often important to let people know there is at least disagreement within the family. I can speak that my immediate family knows of disagreement even excluding me, and it creeps up into my extended family.

It probably won't make an earth-shattering difference how you act, but feel free in knowing that you shouldn't be ashamed or frightened of expressing who you are this holiday break.

Links for the Sabbath: 11/20

2011-11-20T10:00:00.005-06:00

Happy weekend-before-thanksgiving-break! This is your usual Links for the Sabbath, complete with amazing videos, and a chance for you to help out a fellow member!

A member is looking for any interesting drama or poetry about how the founding fathers were NOT Christians, if you can help you can email Mandy Paris!

The Amazing Atheist: It gets better

2011-11-18T20:57:00.001-06:00

Thoughts? He always has a way with words, be it good or not, he's unique.

It’s Important to Be Wrong Once in a While

2011-11-15T09:43:00.001-06:00

I was wrong. You might have heard recently that UNIFI was wrong, but allow me to clarify: I was wrong. I was wrong that you should not feed the trolls. I’ve been convinced by the arguments of my peers, of past and present members of UNIFI, and the vexations expressed in comment threads and blogs following this week’s events. And I’m not just wrong, I must also profess ignorance.

When UNIFI’s Keenan wrote his response to the growing dialogue on how to deal with “trolls” and hateful comments, I was unread on the issue. I didn’t even know that academic literature existed on the subject. When he referenced the literature and the “spiral of silence”, I didn’t know what it was. I still don’t know where one might apply it—I haven’t had the time to read it.

And it’s important that I’m wrong. It’s substantial and meaningful in ways more profound than being right. Realizing I’d been wrong allows me to discard my preconceived notions and build a stronger foundation for my beliefs, so I can say that being wrong about things made me who I am. But I’m still not sure if I’ve earned the title of skeptic.

Coming Out As Wrong

During UNIFI’s Atheist Out Week campaign, I felt alone because I didn’t have a “coming out” story. That is, I’ve never believed. I don’t recall ever attending a church service or being asked to read the bible.

But I do, sort of, have my own story. I was the kid that teachers described as “precocious” and students described as “know-it-all”. That’s not a compliment to me, mind you. It took me most of my life to admit I was wrong. If I claimed knowledge I didn’t have, I rationalized it away later. This started to change in middle school, when surrounded by the bright students of Malcolm Price Lab, I had to articulate my beliefs and then actually defend them. I can easily say I’ve never cheated on a test, but I’ll admit now that I cheated on some arguments. When confronted with evidence to the contrary, I rarely relented. I’d rationalize away the flaws in my argument and persist.

I first admitted I was wrong privately, a small victory. It was after a mock debate on whether or not to allow a chemical plant to be built near a river. During that debate, I lied. I claimed knowledge I didn’t have to solidify my argument. I don’t even recall whether or not we won; the sting of realizing as I was saying something that I had no evidence whatsoever of its truth washed away the other memories of that day. I looked up my claim later online and I was … wrong.

Since first admitting I was wrong, I had a lot of catching up to do. At Cedar Falls High School, I opted to sit with people I didn't know, and with whom I didn't agree; once I sat with conservatives and people who quoted scripture in defense of their positions. I came away a better person for it. I learned better how to articulate an argument and to submit it to criticism. I also learned not to take personally some of the harsher remarks. Especially, I learned something akin to Hanlon’s razor and took it to heart. It became the one thing I would always fall back on in an argument. My preferred version goes a little like this:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by misunderstanding.

Sitting between Guy-That-Quotes-Scripture and Guy-That-Thinks-Iraq-Had-Nuclear-Weapons led to some very prideful arguments, if you’ll allow the understatement. Words were exchanged and the bell would sound and we’d return the next day, maybe with a printed off article or two to back up our positions. I’m not sure if we ever budged, but I learned not to interpret malice into their words. We didn’t see eye to eye, but there was no hate. I was often wrong even then, of course, but they’re no longer around to hear me admit it.

Learning to gracefully accept being wrong is my Moby Dick, I’m still working out the kinks.

At the same time, I think our community is, too. In the past six months we’ve had some prideful arguments. Unfortunately there’s no lunch bell to send us off to classes and give us time to think. We give ourselves no time to relax, and no room to recant our invectives before beginning another argument.

Our movement is predicated on the belief that we can and will be wrong. A lot. And that’s OK. When we admit we’re wrong, we grow as people, as a community.

How I Was Wrong This Time

The argument started when I commented on Facebook. (Future skeptics take note, this way danger lies.) I read posts by a fellow unknown to me at the time, Kurt Metzger, and the outrage that followed on Rebecca Watson’s wall. It seemed to me that his comments were designed to incite a response, and not engage in a dialogue or even form a commentary on the situation. Note: I may very well be wrong here, but these were the thoughts I had at the time. I remarked on the troll-like behavior and thought that was that.

Later I checked Google+, and found a post by Rebecca Watson at the top of my stream. “Meme that Crotch” it said, and the description and contents alluded to an attempt by a Skepchick sister site to turn this troll’s face into a meme image. Never mind that her post actually preceded my comments on Facebook, I was convinced there was someone wrong on the internet and this got the better of me. I wrote, with snark, that she was doing everything possible to give the alleged troll what they wanted. This may be wrong, but I understand how this escalated the argument.

Rebecca responded, ironically, in precisely the way I would have wished her to respond to Kurt Metzger. That is, she responded with a lazy dismissal. After all, my comment was a continuation of an argument that I perceived because I didn’t read the timestamps on posts. When reading the dialogue that ensued, please use Hanlon’s razor liberally. I didn’t take any comments to imply malice, and neither should you. In the heat of an argument we can and do say things we don’t mean, and I know too well the urge to not be wrong. I don’t begrudge her any of her responses, or the commentary that followed.

As I said earlier in this article, I was wrong. I was wrong about the manner in which I approached her with criticism, and I was wrong to presume that I know how one should deal with hateful comments. I would invite the reader to see Keenan Crow’s post on our blog and his comments on Rebecca Watson’s Google+ post. As skeptics, the least we can do is be well read on a subject. I, at least, intend to read the literature before commenting further on whether we should “feed the trolls”.

Starting the Conversation Over

Rebecca Watson is an esteemed blogger and vocal critic of sexism and a tremendous asset to the skeptical community. But in our exchange of words that followed and the wider public’s heated reactions, I don’t think either of us put our best foot forward. I know I didn’t.

Going forward, we should check our tempers at the door in these discussions. We should strive not to make the seemingly dogmatic statements or inferences of malice that impair fruitful dialogue. I think it does a tremendous disservice to the community when criticism is met with hostility. Further, leaders and members of the skeptical movement cannot afford to be dismissive to criticism that contains citations to academic literature on the issue at hand. As skeptics, I don’t think we should ever shy away from the science. At the very least, we can’t know it’s wrong until we’ve given it a look.

I don’t agree with statements made (1, 2) about the discussion that followed. It’s poisoning the well, even with the best of intentions. I also think we should reject the the false dichotomy, often said, that we must either respond to hateful commentary or suffer silently. There is an entire gradient of levels of response and I think any discussion that starts out by suggesting one side only wants the other to “shut up” prejudices the conversation and makes progress difficult.

It’s easy for us to forget that we’re talking to other human beings in these things, and forget that their intentions might be lost in translation to words. Criticism and misunderstanding are understood to be malice, and it harms the discourse. Had the conversation been more civil, I might have realized I was wrong sooner. The dialogue that transpired was more apt to inspire further disagreement and dispute than to allow any consensus to form. Part of this was my fault, my wrong in coming into the discussion with a snide remark was just one, perhaps necessary, step toward the breakdown in communication.

We have, each of us, the capacity to be better than this. I understand that tempers flare, and misunderstandings quickly escalate. Inferring malice on top of this only brings the situation to fever pitch. It’s possible for these misunderstandings to persist and for us to all be wrong about something. I know I was.

In the future, perhaps we can learn to be wrong with dignity, and embrace the discussions that follow criticism. It’s those discussions that will help us be a little less wrong than we were before—and that’s highest praise one can have for a skeptical argument.

Events for the Week, 11/14

2011-11-14T13:46:00.001-06:00

Monday, November 14, 5:00 PM: Our weekly UNIFI Dinner will be taking place in the Rialto private dining area like always. If you have a meal plan and enjoy hanging out with great people, there's no better place to eat dinner.

Monday, November 14, 7:00 PM: Join One Iowa at UNI for their weekly meeting tonight in the Oak room in the Maucker Union. They'll be celebrating Liz Mathis's victory in last week's election.

Sunday, November 20, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: Join UNIFI at the College Square Hy-Vee for our weekly Brunch. The best part of Sunday is eating Chinese food and hanging out with UNIFI. If you'd rather eat breakfast and hang out with UNIFI, make sure you get there before 11.

Links for the Sabbath: 11/13

2011-11-13T10:00:00.007-06:00

Greetings fellow skeptics!! You've once again lasted another week and that means it's time for UNIFI brunch and Links for the Sabbath! I hope you enjoy the stories as much as I do!

Christopher Hitchens is dying, as we all know, but hundreds of fans sent in short tributes to him, and they were compiled into the above (tear-jerking) video.

Who says NASA doesn't do anything? They recently captured images of a passing asteroid that flew by the earth last week. The pictures are really fascinating and give us more insights into the rocky bodies.

Do you think monkeys can understand the concept of money and perhaps show emotion and empathy towards other monkeys? Well, a few recent studies are shedding light on these intelligent creatures.

"Judgment Day: Intelligent Design On Trial" a documentary from NOVA was put onto Youtube this week, it really is a good summary of the battleground that shouldn't even be a question.

Rebecca Watson's Trolls - Why the Skepchick needs a new external relations strategy

2011-11-12T15:37:00.005-06:00

This post originally appeared on Keenan's personal blog.

Rebecca Watson is a victim. You don't have to take my word for it, either. You can read this post or this one or watch this video. It's so strange that someone who is a public figure and also a rather ardent social critic would have condescending or even violent threats directed towards them. Except that it isn't. In fact there's even a term for those people. They're called reactionaries and they've been around since before the term was coined during the French Revolution.

You see, when you threaten the status and societal benefits of being in a traditionally privileged group (in this case, men) they are going to do everything in their power to fight back. I am not agreeing with this in any way, shape, or form. In fact I consider myself to be a rather staunch feminist. All I am saying is that if you want to be on the cutting edge of erasing male privilege within society, you should fully expect and come to terms with (notice I didn't say "accept") the retaliation that the group you're assailing is going to offer.

The point you receive pushback and feel the need to voice your disgust is is the perfect time to prove that you aren't taking them seriously, however. There is a fantastic political theory out there called the "Spiral of Silence" theory and it basically posits that the less attention you give a fringe group, the less willingness they will have to express their unpopular ideas in public, and therefore less other people will be exposed to them. This is how racism became unpopular in America. We are now seeing the same phenomenon with homophobia which, just like misogyny, is still very prevalent in the media.

It is easy to see what happens when Rebecca responds to someone with traditionally misogynistic views. She isn't going to change the view of a true misogynist just like she will never change the view of a headstrong racist. She can only hope to minimize and trivialize their contribution to the conversation so that other people don't end up agreeing with them on some sort of facial evaluation of the issue. This includes: ignoring, blocking, laughing them off as the joke that they are, etc. It does not include writing a lengthy article where you expose their views to thousands of additional readers with varying levels of critical thinking skills. If nothing else it gives them additional ammunition and allows her traditionally pro-feminist blog to become compromised by the very message she seeks to eradicate.

I'm not saying they're right. I'm simply saying that Rebecca has created a false dichotomy in her mind when she states that the only two choices are a.) respond forcefully through her blog or b.) curl up in a ball and cry herself to sleep at night because the mean old men said nasty things. I agree that those people are bullies...but I disagree that they want her silence. They want her attention. They want to provoke a response and get their message out there as prominently as hers. She has given them that vehicle.

Yet for all the talk of bullying and decrying those in positions of power who want her to shut up, she sure does a lot of that to others...even those who are largely sympathetic to her cause. Take for instance her use of time at the CFI Student Leadership Conference, where she could have used her time to give a rousing speech about the importance of student involvement in the secular movement. Instead she used this time to tear down a specific student's completely defensible position on what she viewed as improper inference to something that was not necessarily implied (which is, arguably, a logical inconsistency on Rebecca's part).

It seems that Rebecca believes herself to be sacrosanct...an interesting position for a skeptic to take. Any time her methods are called into question she becomes defensive and uses ad hominem attacks on her detractors...which is, of course, another type of logical fallacy. Interestingly enough her tactic for suppressing the comments from UNIFI members is exactly what they have suggested that she do to Metzger, and for some reason it is valid in certain situations but not others. The odd thing is that if she would flip these tactics she would expose a much more relevant discussion on methods and leave out the batty anti-feminist "comedian" altogether.

So what is the end goal here, Rebecca? Is it to promote skepticism and feminism? Or is it to build your reader base and enthrall them with sensationalist responses to those who don't deserve even the most cursory of dismissals? It seems that you have abandoned strategies that are empirically proven to have a positive impact on society in favor of your own haphazard "I'm really pissed in this instance so I'm going to write about it" method. This is not the modus operandi of someone who is truly concerned with skeptical inquiry and social progressivism. These are the markings of an attention seeking media personality. Your move.

DON'T MESS WITH FOOTBALL!

2011-11-11T21:10:00.000-06:00

I was going to write a lengthy rant about the Penn State situation and our priorities when it comes to directing our anger and energy, but John Stewart nailed it like I never could have in less than 2 minutes.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Most of the discussion I've had about this centers around arguing whether Paterno deserved to be fired or not. I'm going to be generous and assume, for the sake of argument, that Paterno and company are guilty only of incompetence and not a conspiracy to cover up the abuse (though it looks more and more like that was the case). The answer is still YES. Any other organization with good sense would let go of anyone who was capable of such a terrible blunder. The fact that Paterno is a very successful coach and that Americans place far, far too much importance on college football does not excuse this kind of behavior or make it amenable in any other way.

Everyone involved should be fired and anyone guilty of covering up the abuse should be prosecuted. The football program will just have to deal with the losses. Will they lose their next game? Probably. Have they suffered a big morale loss with losing their winningest coach? Surely. However, the combined frustration of the coaches, players, fans, and administration cannot measure up to the suffering felt by even one of those young boys who was abused and then hung out to dry while nothing was done about it. This is a shameful situation for all involved and those who 'only' lost their jobs should count themselves lucky while they can.

Bill Maher: Don't be a dick

2011-11-10T21:46:00.005-06:00

I just got back from a UNIFI event where we watched Bill Maher's movie, Religilous. I hadn't seen the movie since early high school (when I was a more passive atheist), so it was interesting to see what I thought as an activist atheist.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good movie. It shed light on the much of the nonsense behind a wide variety of religions, and as well as make good points about the serious consequences of even passively supporting religious belief.

While I won't go too far into the details of the movie, I would just like to share one thought I kept having while watching: Bill Maher, in the words of Phil Plait, needs to be less of a dick.

It's one thing to criticize or poke fun at religion, but it's another to seemingly nit-pick unrelated characteristics of religious people and use them in making your case. One instance where Maher creates this straw man is when in the on-screen commentary, he makes fun of a word someone uses for the purpose of making the point that they are stupid. While this was funny when he did it to the Arkansas Senator, in the instance to which I'm referring, it was to someone for whom English was obviously not their first language. This, to me, is just "being a dick," and doesn't make any substantive point about religion.

He creates straw men again when he talks to gay muslims and makes them uncomfortable by talking about sex acts, when he makes up fake texts in the on-screen commentary that a muslim cleric is supposedly receiving, and in the documentary's general style of intermittently cutting to funny clips during interviews.

Maher makes some good points, but when this movie is so laced with condescension and straw men, it loses a lot of its credibility. Being that I'm an atheist and I think this, I can only imagine what a theist or someone on the fence would think of his methods.

I encourage UNIFIers who attended the event (or anyone, for that matter!) to give their views on this in the comments.

Liz Mathis Won!!

2011-11-08T22:47:00.002-06:00

In case you haven't noticed (it's all over Facebook) Liz Mathis has won the Senate District 18 election! This means that there won't be a majority of senators to bring a gay marriage amendment to the table, that workers (and working families) will be supported, and that many things which the republicans bring to the table will have a better chance of being shot down!

You can view the election results over here. (Thanks KWWL!)

Really, thanks goes out to every organization and volunteer who put time in. One Iowa reports that they identified over 1,000 marriage equality voters, had over 900 hours of volunteer service, identified over 250 marriage supporters to vote early, and made over 12,000 phone calls to SD 18. All of that time making calls, going door to door, or entering data was worth it!

Thanks to everyone involved with this, One Iowa @ UNI, UNI Students for Working families, and the UNI Dems for your work! We've made a positive difference in Iowa, woohoo!

Events for the Week, 11/7

2011-11-07T14:09:00.002-06:00

Monday, November 7, 5:00 PM: Join UNIFI for our weekly dinner at the Rialto. Come to the Rialto's private dining area at 5 PM for good food and great company.

Tuesday, November 8, 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM: Help One Iowa at UNI Get Out the Vote! We'll be meeting in Lang parking lot (across from University Book and Supply) at noon and carpooling to the Cedar Rapids/Marion area. Then we'll be going door to door to make sure equality supporters make it to the polls.

Sunday, November 13, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: UNIFI will be hosting our weekly Brunch at the College Square Hy-Vee. There will be breakfast, Chinese food, pizza, a salad bar, and really anything else you can find in a grocery store. Join us and start your Sunday with good food and great conversations.

I almost died today

2011-11-05T16:48:00.003-05:00

This post originally appeared on MU SASHA's blog written by their vice president, Dave Muscato

Hello all,

This afternoon, I pulled out onto Paris Road and another car came barreling through the red light, without even slowing down. If I had been going 2 miles per hour faster, it would have T-boned me right in the driver’s side door. I estimate the other car was going around 50 mph.

I did honk at him (her?) by reflex, but strangely, immediately afterward, I wasn’t scared or freaked out so much as that I felt annoyed. And whereas some people might be tempted to pray or thank a deity, my first instinct was to think, “I should blog about this.”

That’s as close as I can figure as a “true test of atheism.” At no point during that entire episode, until quite a bit after it was over, did I think anything about gods (and even then, it was only because I noticed that I didn’t have an urge to pray or thank one).

It’s interesting to me how far I’ve come in the past few years. If this had happened 3 or 4 years ago, I’d be praising Jesus for saving my life.

What’s interesting to me is that, when people’s lives are “spared” in such a manner as this, why aren’t people ever pissed at Jesus for letting them get so close to death in the first place?

I mean, if you’re going to give credit to Jesus for saving you from getting hit by a car, doesn’t it make sense that he would have the power not to let you get into the situation in the first place?

Some people might say that it’s just human actions and the natural universe that gets us into these situations, but when we get out of them, that’s Jesus or [insert deity here]. But that doesn’t make any sense. If you’re saying human actions and the natural universe gets us into these situations, why invoke a deity to explain the tail end of it? Why not just say that human actions – my honking the horn, my noticing there was a car coming and slamming on my breaks, etc – and the natural universe was responsible not only for getting me into that situation, but getting me out of it as well?

I see no evidence that any deity had anything to do with what happened this afternoon, either the situation in the first place or getting me out of it once it was in motion. The simplest, most “elegant” explanation, and the explanation that fits all the evidence the best, is simply that the other car wasn’t paying attention and ran a red light, and I happened to notice in enough time to prevent myself from getting hit. Why do some people insist on making it more complicated than that, especially without ANY evidence that that’s the case? I just don’t get it.

Actually, that’s not true. I do get it. I get it because I used to do exactly the same thing. It’s comforting, in a way, to have an imaginary friend who watches out for you. Interestingly, we only give credit when things go well. We pretty much never get pissed at Jesus when things don’t go well – we tend to credit nature or human action for that.

I posted about this whole thing on my Facebook status:

I almost died today. I was pulling out onto Paris Road and another car came barreling through the red light, without even slowing down. If I had been going 2 miles per hour faster, it would have T-boned me right in the driver’s side door. I estimate the other car was going around 50 mph.

I did honk at him (her?) by reflex, but strangely, immediately afterward, I wasn’t scared or freaked out so much as that I felt annoyed. And whereas some people might be tempted to pray or thank a deity, my first instinct was to think, “I should blog about this.” I wonder what that says about me…

A friend of mine who believes Jesus is a god, “R,” responded:

Thanking the Deity!

A few other friends posted various things, and in good spirit, I responded to her:

which one?

R responded:

The God of the Universe, Lord of Lords, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, the Great I Am (does that answer your question?)

I said that I was going to blog about this after all, and respond to the comments here.

So, as far as asking if that answers my question: Honestly, it doesn’t really. Those titles can and have been applied to dozens of deities throughout the history of mythology. Of course, I know that she meant Jesus (or did she mean Yahweh? Or El?). But the more-important question is, I think, why credit Jesus, Yahweh, or El? Why not credit Saint Christopher, who is the Catholic patron saint of travelers and transportation? Why not credit Hermes, the Greek god of travelers? Why not credit the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

There is absolutely no reason to assign credit to any of the preceding above and beyond any of the others. As far as we can tell, it’s equally unlikely that any of them had a hand in it. And frankly, rather than piss one of them off for crediting the wrong one – Yahweh makes it pretty clear in Exodus 20:4-5 that he doesn’t take too kindly to people worshipping anyone else, and a lot of the Greek gods were pretty petty creatures when it came to being spurned, too – it seems to be the best thing to simply look at the evidence and try to decide what really happened.

In this case, the entire episode can be explained without any kind of supernatural appeal. It’s not like something miraculous happened here, something that doesn’t seem to be explicable with natural reasoning. I noticed the guy was running the light, slammed on my breaks, honked, and so avoided colliding with him. Is there any good reason I myself shouldn’t “get” the credit for preventing this accident? That’s the explanation that seems to fit the available evidence better than anything else.

Interested in your thoughts.

- Dave

Take action on November 8

2011-11-04T14:30:00.002-05:00

This was originally posted in the Northern Iowan, UNI's student newspaper.

Over the course of this past week, I've been taking considerable criticism for my column entitled "Slacktivism at its finest." I'd like to take this time to address some of those concerns, as well as clarify my views.

In a nutshell, in my opinion piece I called out Occupy Cedar Valley for doing something that isn't very productive, but gets a lot of attention, rather than phone banking for working families or marriage equality, which is very productive but isn't as 1960s-glamorous as protesting.

Before addressing the various concerns, let me explain where I was coming from in my last article: to put it bluntly, I was frustrated. I had watched around 20 people working hard phone banking for weeks (through UNI Students for Working Families or One Iowa at UNI) and then saw 10 times that amount find the time to protest in a park. I couldn't understand why so many people would be a part of the latter, but not find an hour a week to engage the political system through something as effective as phone banking.

While on the whole I stand by what I said, in hindsight, I should not have let my negative emotions dominate as much as they did. Because of this, I'd like to concede a few of my critics' points.

I agree that I did not address some of the positives that the Occupy movement has to offer. Even though it's not perfect, it does, admittedly, do two things. First, it gets people involved and paying attention to political issues who might not be already. Not that the whole movement is comprised of people who previously weren't civically engaged, but it's especially effective at energizing people who typically wouldn't be vocal about political issues. And second, it builds community. It brings people together and creates a much-needed conversation about the wide economic disparity and corporate greed that has plagued our country.

I also agree with those who said that rather than focus on how not enough people are phone banking, I needed to do a better job of motivating people to do so. For those who don't know, Senator Swati Dandekar has resigned from Senate District 18 (Cedar Rapids/Marion area), and if Democrat Liz Mathis doesn't win the upcoming election, several things could be put on the line, such as collective bargaining rights, marriage equality and low tuition. These are all important issues that, based on public statements, every Occupy participant should support. Though it may sound like an exaggeration at first, it's not a stretch to say that this is one of the most important elections Iowa has ever faced.

With so much at stake, I can agree to one final criticism — I did not help to unify the groups that are supposed to be on the same side. While we may have our small differences, when it comes down to it, we likely agree at least 90 percent of the time; Occupy Cedar Valley, UNI Students for Working Families and One Iowa at UNI are all progressive groups fighting to better the lives of others. And despite what some have claimed, I do not think these groups are mutually exclusive — in fact, I think it's great to, say, occupy in the afternoon and then spend a couple of hours phone banking.

My hope is that despite our differences, we can work together, especially this week, and make a difference in our state. Whether you've been involved or are just hearing of these groups now, I encourage you to get out there and protect what's at stake this Nov. 8.

Aubrey De Grey on the end of aging

2011-11-02T17:36:00.005-05:00

Aubrey De Grey is one of the leading advocates for research into ways to slow and possibly end the process of aging. He's an interesting character, fast talking and heavily bearded, but his ideas are even more strange than his demeanor and appearance. He believes that science has already shown us the causes of aging, and more importantly, ways to slow it. He also believes that with time (and funding) that the problem can be solved altogether. Through his advocacy he has garnered a great deal of attention, allowing him to appear on popular late night programs, and a number of news shows.

I have been careful so far to not describe him as a scientist, because I see nothing to warrant that title. He has a B.S. in computer science, and is the "Chief Science Officer" of his foundation promoting the study of aging, but that appears to be the extent of his qualifications. His views are also controversial, of course, and it seems like the vast majority of the science community do not share them. That does not discount his work, but it should be enough to be reasonably skeptical about his claims.

Here is his TED talk about aging. It's worth watching just because his ideas are incredibly interesting, even if they may not be true. What do you think? Does this seem like a revolutionary, if under-appreciated, idea? Or is it something that has yet to be confirmed by science? If he is right, would you want your life to be significantly longer? Indefinite?

Events for the Week, 10/31

2011-10-31T15:47:00.005-05:00

Monday, October 31, 5:00 PM: UNIFI Dinner will be in the Rialto private dining area tonight as always. If you like to eat and hang out with great people, then there's no better place to be today at 5.

Monday, October 31, 9:00 PM: UNIFI and One Iowa at UNI will be co-hosting Costume Bowling tonight. Join us at Maple Lanes in Waterloo for Quarter Mania tonight from 9:00 to 11:00, and don't forget to wear your costume!

Tuesday, November 1, 7:00 PM: The UNI Philosophy Club is hosting a talk by Dr. Russ Schafer-Landau titled In the Defense of Marriage Equality. This event is being co-sponsored by UNIFI and One Iowa at UNI. Join us in Seerley room 115 Tuesday night for great talk.

Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, November 5,6,8, Various Times: Our amazing friends at One Iowa @ UNI are going canvassing all weekend (and Tuesday, during the day and night) in Cedar Falls/Marion in order to protect marriage equality in Iowa. Please join many One Iowa @ UNI, UNIFI, and UNI Democrats members in protecting equality. If you're interested, please fill out this simple form!

Sunday, November 6, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: The long running tradition of UNIFI Brunch will continue at the College Square Hy-Vee. Come join us for all kinds of good food and all kinds of great conversation as well. As always, make sure to show up before 11 if you want all kinds of breakfast.

Links for the Sabbath: 10/30

2011-10-30T10:00:00.006-05:00

Greetings! The time has come to check out some of the best links from the past week! From science to retirement there's a lot this week!

In news that hasn't been very public, Harold Camping has retired from the public sphere. Ironically, he was not very public about this.

The British Royals are moving closer to equality in the line to the throne. "Sons and daughters of any future U.K. monarch will have equal right to the throne" but "British kings and queens will no longer be banned from marrying Roman Catholics."

Lastly today, the experiment which supposedly broke the light barrier will be re-tested fairly soon, in hopes to learn more about our world.

Science: What's it Up To?

2011-10-29T12:54:00.001-05:00

A Night With Chris Moon

2011-10-28T07:34:00.012-05:00

Last night a group of UNIFI members attended a talk by Chris Moon where he laid out his personal history with the paranormal, and talked about his exploits while "investigating" paranormal phenomena. Stef already did a very good job of describing the basic outline of the talk, so I'll try not to repeat much of what she said. Moon himself claims to be not only a paranormal investigator, but a psychic medium. For someone peddling pseudo science and nonsense, he's admittedly charming, and quite a good speaker.

I made the mistake of not bringing something take notes with, but luckily I remember enough to share a few of the observations I made throughout the night. There are just a few of the reasons I find "paranormal investigation" utterly unconvincing, and occasionally comical.

Chris started the talk with a video presentation, set to intense music, utilizing choppy footage, and flashes of vaguely spooky images on the screen. It's the type of editing that's regularly used to make several people standing in the dark talking to themselves interesting (check out commercials for popular Ghost Hunting shows for the same technique). I can't blame Chris for wanting some flair in his presentation, but it really served to set the mood: what we were seeing was entertainment, designed and packaged purposely to convey that.

Chris also put "Not Fiction." on the screen several times, making it clear how he views his work. It's not fiction, it's real and very serious. That seriousness, however, is undercut by the absurdity of almost every claim that he made when he strayed close to the realm of testable science. He demonstrated a fundamental (and hilarious) misunderstanding of physics by citing the law of conservation of energy as evidence that ghosts/spirits exist. He also cited the loss of weight upon death as evidence that spirit energy has mass and resides within the body, eventually leaving through a "vortex", which he described at length while looking at a photo of mist in a graveyard. It's not clear why it was only leaving after being buried if that weight is lost nearly immediately upon death. Of course, this was an effect that was produced by a single person, and is largely considered meaningless.

The presentation also contained examples of photographic and audio "evidence" gathered by Chris and his team. As usual, the audio is garbled and nearly indistinguishable, and the photos are hazy and unclear. Is that effect a lens flair, or a photo of demonic energy? Is that sound ambient noise or perhaps a byproduct of the audio equipment, or is it a spirit voice trying to cross over? I think Occam's razor applies here, and as far as the "evidence" goes (don't get me started on the shameful ways that term was abused), it was all pretty vanilla. I should also note that just for completeness, he also claimed that some ghosts speak in short bursts of scratchy noise that is actually compressed audio, and some speak backwards (why?). Yet even with this variance in methods of communication, there was no mention of any non-English ghosts.

Chris's best material, as expected, came in two forms: anecdotes and emotions. The two most subjective, bias-addled, un-reproducible "evidences" were the best. He told a number of stories throughout the night, ranging from engaging to fantastical. Hardened skeptics being levitated in front of a crowd. Men being lifted and thrown into shelves. Chris Awaking with a phantom rope tightening around his neck. Investigators suffering scratches on their body. Naturally, all but the last went undocumented. While any "investigator" will tell you stories like this, it's rarely caught on camera. And it's never documented under controlled conditions. Ghosts, it seems, have something in common with God in that sense: a distaste for being "tested", only appearing to people in ways that scientists cannot properly observe. And that's granting that it actually happened. As has been established in the legal realm, eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Time and circumstance distort our memories.

As I said, personal emotional experiences also played a role. The most engaging footage shown throughout the night was reaction shots of people crouched over in a dark room reacting to feelings, sudden heavy emotions, or talking about being touched or communicated with. Or just having an inexplicable feeling of unease, something we are prone to when in conditions where we are expecting it. See: confirmation bias.

When it was time for the ghost hunt after the talk, I (as well as other UNIFI members) tagged along and tried not to fulfill the role of the snickering, belligerent skeptic, but it was genuinely hard not to. Chris broke out his "Frank's box", an invention that he purchased from an interesting character that is described on his website. The device itself is essentially a (short wave?) radio that Chris tunes with a knob, and then interprets the fuzzy, indistinguishable output audio as ghostly communications. If you're startled by the leap from radio to ghosts, you're not alone. Chris sat in the middle of the crowd and solicited questions from students, which he repeated to the spirits present, and then interpreted the response. I stress "interpreted", because when he would say something like "He said Robert, did you hear that?" I did not, in fact, hear it. Not once.

In all honesty, what he was doing during the ghost hunt was just a really just lazy cold reading where he would pretend to listen to his magic box, and spit out easy answers that were almost universally accepted by an audience who were ready to hear the dead. We got answers to almost every yes/no questions, and unsurprisingly, did not get answers to most questions that were easily falsifiable or too specific. Only first names, almost never last. No pop culture references were answered. Historical questions that could be fact checked were ignored. But "Are you angry" almost always gets a solemn "yes". Chris might object that it doesn't work that way, that ghosts will communicate only on their terms, but that just makes the practice even less falsifiable, because there's always a justification for failure. Silence from the radio is angry ghosts that want us to turn the box off for a minute and then "try again". That's how "intense" the experience was, as Moon put it.

All in all, I shouldn't have to convince even the slightly skeptical reader that the whole thing was nonsense - they already know that. While there were a shocking number of people at the event who were clearly eating this stuff up, I would hope that it's just the type of person who is attracted to this sort of event, and most people, especially readers of this blog, don't need to be convinced that grainy shots of a camera flash reflected off of a dust particle are not "evidence" for the paranormal.

What really bothered me about the whole event is that it was held in the first place. Chris seemed like a genuinely nice guy, and I have no problem with him personally, but I do have a problem with this sort of event. This university is an institution of higher learning, and to bring in a speaker who is peddling fairly blatant pseudoscience as fact should not be acceptable. At our Darwin Week event each year, UNIFI seeks to promote critical thinking and advance public understanding of science. Both of those goals are being directly undercut by events like this, and some students may have left the event last night more superstitious than when they came in, and I view that as a problem. It shouldn't have to be said that there isn't a shred of credible evidence suggesting that ghosts, spirits, and demons exist. And while talking about them can be good for a laugh, it's not OK to mislead people about the nature of science, and what science really says about the paranormal, because it's fairly conclusive.

And this it's more than just harmless fun: it harms the general population's ability to think critically, distinguish between good and bad sources of information, and make sound decisions. It also directly or indirectly enables professional frauds who call themselves psychic mediums to steal money from vulnerable people in exchange for made-up and utterly useless information about their deceased loves ones. Many of the most popular of these mediums have been debunked, but it's an easy business to get into if you can practice cold reading and live with yourself after scamming people out of their money, so there are plenty of them around.

For those reading this who are skeptical of claims made by paranormal "investigators", I would encourage you to not be afraid to ask questions and call people out when they make unsubstantiated claims. For anyone reading this who believes, I would strongly encourage you to look into criticisms of paranormal investigation by real scientists, and perhaps do more reading about the scientific process in general. Statistics reliably and routinely show us that Americans do not understand how science works, and so scientific literacy may become one of the major factors that holds back our cultural and technological growth. Let's work together to keep individuals like Chris Moon, as nice as he is, from being part of the problem.

-------------------------------------

Here is my hastily written article about this topic from last year, and here is a commentary on my article (and a response to my article from another student) by a prominent skeptic.

UNIFI goes...ghost hunting?

2011-10-27T22:51:00.006-05:00

As I write this, around ten UNIFI members are on a ghost hunt. Yes, you read that correctly--your favorite college skeptics are currently touring supposedly haunted places on campus with "paranormal investigator" Chris Moon.

As part of the Campus Activities Board's Halloween event, they brought in Moon to first give an hour presentation on his background in ghost hunting, and then show fifty lucky students what paranormal investigation looks like firsthand. While I did not get selected to go, I'm anxious to see what the others have to say.

I did, however, attend his presentation. First, he talked about how he had his first experience with the paranormal at age seven, because his childhood home was haunted. Apparently, the day they moved in, the ghost of a boy floated at the foot of his bed and stared at him. He claims this wasn't the end of his experiences with the paranormal, as he kept encountering ghosts in that house, and in the next house to which he moved.

Eventually, he realized he had psychic powers, and decided to combine this with the "science" of paranormal investigation to talk to the dead. He proclaims that in his in early teens, he was an amateur paranormal investigator. After touring with his various heavy metal bands in early adulthood, he made the decision to get into the business of ghost hunting for good.

From there, he told the audience all about how he and his devout Catholic and devout skeptic (?) father made a magazine called Haunted Times, met a guy who gave them an incredible machine that allowed them to better communicate with the dead, and gave us countless examples of ghost hunts that he'd been on, complete with sound bites and pictures.

While there were some parts of his stories I couldn't explain off the top of my head (he woke up with a rope burn around his neck where the spirit of a horrible man lived, etc), all in all his "evidence" was pretty laughable. The word that kept echoing in my head all night was...CONFIRMATION BIAS. You're looking for a response on your EVP (electronic voice phenomena) machine, and you convince yourself that the random noises you hear are not just, well, random noises, but a VOICE! And that voice is amazingly answering the very question you

asked!

If I had been given the opportunity, I would have asked him this: Why don't the ghosts speak very clearly? If you want to use these recordings as evidence, don't you think it would be more convincing if the audience could decipher what was being said without you needing to show us your translation on the screen?

The pictures took on the same characteristics as the audio--not very clear. And after watching him claim that there were orbs and spirits in picture after picture, it made me want to ask if he even remotely knew how light worked. C'mon, man--EVERYONE knows that "orbs" are just the camera's flash reflecting off of particles in the air. It's common knowledge.

I'm excited to see what claims Moon makes on his "paranormal investigation" tonight--stay tuned for an update from one of the ghost hunting UNIFI members!

Rick Santorum does something amazing, oh wait nevermind...

2011-10-26T15:54:00.009-05:00

Oh boy, Rick Santorum does it again, somehow this man continues to provide nothing of substance or quality to the public.

"I said this is wrong. We can’t do this, we can’t have a constitutional right to consensual sexual activity, no matter what it is."

Did he forget about this thing called heterosexual sex? Or is his hate for gay sex causing him to destroy any form of sex? Sure, we should make non-consensual sex illegal, but to make blanket laws which deprive adults of their rights seem counter to his usual stance.

Occupy the Polls; We are the 9 to 19%!

2011-10-25T20:14:00.000-05:00

With the "Occupy" movement gaining steam, reading the news has changed from something I dread or sends shivers down my spine to one that almost daily gives me a paroxysm of delight. Of course, not all the news is good, but the progressive in me is pleased to see a new populist movement whose de facto leader is neither Ron Paul nor Sarah Palin. However, the full effect of the movement probably won't be felt until the 2012 elections or later cycles. In the meantime, there are almost certainly electoral races in your district that need your attention.

The secular movement is also growing, it's been a long time coming, but the non-religious are now at least a double digit percentage of the population. Chant with me now, "We. Are. The 9-19%." Alright, not as catchy as Occupy Wall Street's slogan.

What this means for you is that you're part of one of the fastest growing demographics, one that politicians must start paying attention to. By getting out to the polls and making your voice and your vote heard, you can influence politics in your district for years to come. Your vote will help secure the future of secular politics.

Here in Iowa there are elections that may affect the future of marriage equality—candidates are running or gearing up campaigns to amend the constitution and bar same sex marriage. In my hometown of Cedar Falls, for the first time there are "Tea Party" candidates running for local office; they are staunchly conservative, very religious, and publicly supportive of injecting religious ideas and morals into modern politics. You can't get rid of these ideas by sticking your fingers into your ears and chanting louder, you have to vote.

Please, read about your local candidates positions, and "Occupy the Polls" this November 8th.

Events for the Week, 10/24

2011-10-24T13:40:00.002-05:00

Monday, October 24, 5:00 PM: The weekly tradition of UNIFI Dinner continues tonight in the Rialto's private dining area. Join us for good food and great company.

Thursday, October 27, 7:00 PM: UNIFI goes ghost hunting! Well, not really, but UNIFI will be attending UNI CAB's Film and Ghost Hunt this week. We'll be watching The Sixth Sense and then traveling to two "haunted" locations on campus with professional ghost hunter Chris Moon.

Sunday, October 30, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: UNIFI's weekly Sunday Brunch at the College Square Hy-Vee. There's pizza, Chinese food, a salad bar, and breakfast for the early birds! Join fellow UNIFI members for the best brunch you'll have all week.

Sunday, October 30, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM: This week, UNIFI will be co-sponsoring the One Iowa Phone Bank for the Special Election. Come out to room 252 in the Schindler Education Center to help One Iowa at UNI protect marriage equality in Iowa!

Links for the Sabbath: 10/23

2011-10-23T10:22:00.007-05:00

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected signs of icy bodies raining down in an alien solar system. The downpour resembles our own solar system several billion years ago during a period known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment," which may have brought water and other life-forming ingredients to Earth.

OpenBible has released another analysis of the bible, this time they graphed how positive or negative various stories in the bible are.

St Paul's School in south west London has knocked down its chapel to make way for new science classrooms, becoming the first of the country's leading public schools to do without a place of worship.

Oh hey, you lived through the world being destroyed, again...

The meaning of life without religion

2011-10-22T16:23:00.008-05:00

It's always bothered me that religion seems to have a monopoly on giving life meaning. That's one of the most common justifications for believing in God - it attaches purpose to an otherwise pointless existence. Not only is this an incredibly bleak view of humanity, it's a terrible way to even approach the question.

There is no single unifying purpose for our existence. Your life's meaning is not for me, or anyone else, to hand down to you. We give life meaning, and that's true for everyone. Religious doctrine frequently teaches that meaning and purpose are a divine gift, handed down from on high. It's a role for us to fulfill, not a choice that we make about our own lives. I find this insulting. As human beings we have well developed cognitive faculties that allow us to assign "meaning" to existence. We have complex emotions, relationships, wants, desires, and feelings. It's absurd to think that the human experience, and what it means to us, can be boiled down into a single purpose that works for everyone. And we shouldn't want that.

And even if we did want to have our live's meaning handed to us, the religious prescription is a cynical mockery of the entire idea. The most common religious explanation says that our primary purpose is to worship, glorify, and praise God. Essentially it's the view that we're all creations of a serial narcissist, here for the sole purpose of catering to his whims, and feeding his ego. Is this sort of love deserved? I think the obvious answer is no. It's based on fear, intimidation, and the prospect of eternal punishment. That's not a particularly healthy relationship, and it's not befitting of an intelligent and dignified species.

But without God, what is the purpose of my life? What meaning can it possibly have without religion? The answer is that it has the meaning that I assign to it. I choose to value knowledge and discussion. I would also be nothing without my friends and loved ones - and these are relationships based on mutual respect and affection, not intimidation and the threat of punishment. My love of life and the people in it is not expected - it's earned. I'm here to pursue the things that I'm passionate about, to find intellectual stimulation, and to enjoy good company. And that is something worth living for. And this viewpoint, that life is worth living because of how we choose to live it, does not require the approval of any God or Gods.

When did being smart become a bad thing?

2011-10-21T19:18:00.001-05:00

After watching the most recent Republican debate and listening to commentary from the hosts/guests of various talk shows, one aspect of the conversation really troubles me.

Much of the praise for characters like Hermain Cain is for their mannerisms. "I like the way he talks" or "He says good, simple, common sense stuff" or "I like that he's blunt" are the most common praises that I hear for Herman Cain. In contrast, for Gov. Romney a common criticism is that "He talks too much like a politician" or "He sounds like one of those elitist college professors". I also heard a candid comment from someone on NPR who said, paraphrased, "I like that Cain used to be a CEO, I think that experience is more useful for a president than a career politician".

I don't want to talk here about the specifics of their politics or their debating, but rather about the question the debate raised in my head: What makes these people idols?


Why in the world does anyone listen to this asshole?

Why is it considered admirable for someone to simplify an issue as complex as tax reform into a three-word slogan, and then to give little or no insight about why this plan would be a good idea (Cain when asked about who is advisers are: 'My advisers come from the American People.')? Why do people continue to admire someone with the fucking racism to say that Cain is 'more black' than Obama? Why does business experience translate into skill as a government leader? Why is it called 'bluntness' and not 'ignorance' when someone claims that being poor is a result of being lazy? Why is someone with the tactlessness to suggest that poor people should eat 'used food' a presidential front-runner? Hell, why are all of the GOP front-runners people who proudly reject evolution and global warming despite overwhelming scientific evidence? Why is it a bad thing to be educated or to sound like it? Why is 'folksy' simple-mindedness a positive attribute for the most powerful office on Earth?

#IDontHaveFactsToBackThisUp, but I think the divide between rational people and people who support candidates like Herman Cain runs deeper than the color of their state.

I can't wait until we win.

2011-10-19T11:13:00.014-05:00

I really can't wait until marriage is legal for all couples, or when schools teach reality and not delusions, or when transsexual people are accepted, or when companies don't get off the hook for destroying the environment, or when adults are able to make choices for themselves about their bodies. Why can't I wait? Because it's been far too long that these things have been prevalent in our society.

We've kept onto these stone-age lies for the sake of emotional comfort and it's time we move beyond. It's time we do things like understand the cosmos and respect medicine, or become tolerant of differences in people and support everyone in need. The worst thing is that these things aren't natural to so many people, but have to be "forced" into their lives.

One principle that this country, in specific, was founded on is the idea that each person needs to build up a level of tolerance. Aka, the understanding and ability to your self and others into something productive. You have no, I repeat no, reason to hate someone for who they are. I say again, they are a human being just like you, they came from two parents, just like you, and they have goals and dreams, just like you.

It doesn't matter if you don't like to see two men kiss. Many people don't, but in public you have to accept a lot more than in your private home. You have to accept being photographed, or being talked to by strangers, or having a car splash water on you, and you have to see people you know and talk with them.

I've said this countless times, but when people reject reality, and believe whatever they want to, they slowly become detrimental. They hold us back from exploration and adventure, from knowledge and kinship. Rather they persist in myth and superiority than become humble to the only life they have.

You can see how far people can change if you ever talk to young kids. They don't care about race, religion, size, gender, sexuality, or anything of the sort. Instead, they want to play and have fun, with everyone. Also, they grasp onto anything new or interesting, like looking into a telescope or playing with animals. Why are they doing this? Because hate is something we learn, not something we are born with.

Honestly, I can't wait until we win, and I hate that I have to use the word "win", because it's completely counter to the goals and movements. It's not about "winning", but acceptance of this amazing planet, which is full of so many varieties of life each with countless stories.

Concerned vandalism is not okay

2011-10-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

As a member of one of the most distrusted minorities in the United States, you learn that sometimes you just have to buck up. Not everyone understands that atheism can be a thought out, intellectual position (or at least part of one). Every now and again you get the well-meaning but ultimately condescending "I'll pray for you". This person wants you to know that they care. They think you're going to spend eternity in Hell, and the most moral thing for them to do is to try and save you. Fair. What grinds my gears is when they think the best way to do this is to deface my property.

Case in point: I (used to) have a UNIFI poster on the corkboard outside of my dorm room door. Alas, it was torn down this weekend by a vandal who was apparently concerned for my immortal soul (or for the poor innocents strolling through the hallways of Bartlett, wide-eyed and vulnerable to any door posters they happen to come across). The poster read, in large, bold letters: "NO GOD? NO PROBLEM!" I realize UNIFI has a reputation for subtlety, and that this poster was nothing less than a shining exemplar of that virtue. However, this passerby took issue with my poster, and tore it down. Believe it or not, I have had issues with this kind of vandalism in the past. I just have to walk down the hall and print off another one, and in a few hours to a few weeks my concerned vandal repeats the process. This happens all the time (it happened to Michael Dippold 26 times in Campbell Hall last year), which is not to say that it's okay. It isn't. At best it's breathtakingly condescending, at worst plainly mean and bigoted.

What annoys me personally (and seems to place the offender firmly in the condescending camp) is the anti-science Bible tract that appeared today on my board, in the place that was recently occupied by my poster. It's a Chick Tract (which makes it even worse...ugh) in which a brave Christian student confronts a bully of an evolution professor! I am not interested in your Chick Tract. I do not believe that your taste in door decorations is better than mine (the poster was much more aesthetically attractive than the little tract), and I do not trust your judgment over my own when it comes to theology. Who honestly thinks that the best way to start a conversation (with the goal of winning a soul for Jesus) is vandalism? Slip the damn thing under my door, at least.

If my well-meaning vandal is reading this, know that I am not severely PO'd, and I would like to have an actual conversation with you. I get the distinct feeling that you will never read this blog post, and that you will not respond to my actual attempt to start a conversation. Why can't evangelicals all just treat people with respect? Princess Jasmine said it best: "I'm not a prize to be won [for Jesus]".

On a serious note, if you have had your UNIFI poster vandalized on UNIFI's campus, please notice the new link in the sidebar. -->

The link (or this one) will take you to a Google form. You can help us keep track of how many UNIFI posters are being torn down across campus. Don't have a UNIFI poster? Don't worry! We'll bring some to brunch this week.

Events for the Week, 10/17

2011-10-17T15:45:00.002-05:00

Monday, October 17, 5:00 PM: UNIFI's weekly dinner is tonight. Join us in the Rialto's private dining area for good food and great conversations. Everyone has to eat dinner anyway, right?

Saturday, October 22, 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM: Help UNIFI make a difference by participating in UNI's Make A Difference Day. Check in will begin at Maucker Union at 9 AM, and buses will leave at 9:30 AM. Contact Cory Derringer to join UNIFI for this awesome service event.

Saturday, October 22, 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Want to relax after a long day of making a difference? Join UNIFI in the Oak Room in the Maucker Union basement to watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos. There will also be free pizza. Free food and Carl Sagan? What's not to love?

Sunday, October 23, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: As always, UNIFI's weekly Sunday Brunch will be held at the College Square Hy-Vee. There will be lots of great food and conversation with fellow UNIFI members, but make sure to show up before 11 if you want breakfast.

Sunday, October 23, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Do you support marriage equality in Iowa? Then come to room 252 in the Schindler Education Center to help out with One Iowa at UNI's Phone Bank for the Special Election and help protect marriage equality.

Links for the Sabbath 10/16

2011-10-16T20:13:00.005-05:00

Welcome to this week's Links for the Sabbath!!

Apparently, the O'Reilly Factor altered an email sent in by a viewer to make it seem like the email was attacking the show in a way that actually didn't happen...

Creationism in the classroom

2011-10-15T17:15:00.000-05:00

I doubt very many of you have heard of The Geological Society of America (GSA), but they are a large "society" dedicated to bringing anyone with an interest in the Earth Sciences together.

Here is a little excerpt from the website to give you a better idea:

Established in 1888, The Geological Society of America provides access to elements that are essential to the professional growth of earth scientists at all levels of expertise and from all sectors: academic, government, business, and industry.
The Geological Society's growing membership unites thousands of earth scientists from every corner of the globe in a common purpose to study the mysteries of our planet and share scientific findings.

Every year GSA holds a large convention for all of the Earth Science junkies out there. Geologists from all over the world come to present to show off their research to anyone who is willing to listen. I had the opportunity to make it out this year to learn more about what was going on in the field of geology and to get a good grasp on what Grad schools around the country were looking for.

I saw a ton of great talks and some not so great talks; there was one talk in particular that really caught my attention. The title of the talk was "Countering Creationist Misconceptions in the Earth Sciences" presented by Steven Newton. Right when I read about this talk in the program I knew I had to go and listen because I figured it would make for an interesting blog post.

Steven Newton works for the National Center for Science Education and their main goal is to defend the teaching of evolution in public schools. From what I got out of the talk Newton is their geologist and spends a lot of time helping K-12 teachers dealing with the grief from: students, parents, and administrators when it comes to creationism in the classroom.

During the first half of his presentation he goes into a few creationist claims like the gaps in the fossil record, radiometric dating is inaccurate, evolution is a hoax, and global warming is a lie. I do not need to get into detail about each one because they are all equally ridiculous and elementary claims. Newton did a great job at going through each claim, providing examples, and showing us why these can't stand up to science.

The last half of his presentation he got into ways to deal with creationist claims when they come up in the classroom. Newton first pointed out that some people feel a good way to deal with these situations is to give equal time to both sides or even hold a debate in the classroom. He made it very clear that this is an awful idea and I couldn't agree more. It is a terrible idea to elevate these non-scientific claims to the level of actual science. Scientific ideas must go through long difficult processes to even get recognized by the scientific community. Giving equal time to these creationist ideas would be like cutting in line, which obviously isn't right.

So far in the presentation I had agreed with everything Newton had talked about. That was until he told the audience what he considered to be a "powerful" way to handle creationist claims in a classroom.

Now another thing I like to point teachers to, this is one of the more powerful things that...I...I...can do in my work at the NCSC is a fall back on the science standards.

When I heard him say this my jaw literally dropped. I couldn't think of a bigger cop out to this type of situation. He is basically telling teachers to say "Hey, I would love to teach that the earth is 10,000 years old, but the school has these science standards that I must follow." There are literally hundreds of other ways a teacher could deal with this situation that would look better then falling back on the school's science standards. The only instance where I could understand using this technique is if the teacher is in jeopardy of losing his or her job.

My advice to the teachers would be to make sure you really understand what it means and takes for something to be considered a scientific theory. If you really understand what it takes you can explain to whoever why such claims, like the earth being a mere 10,000 years old, can't stand up to real science.

It's beauty over brains...right?

2011-10-13T16:37:00.006-05:00

I concur with PZ Myers that the way girls are socialized is seriously screwed up. While I could write for days on this issue, his post has brought to my attention one particularly scary example of how society promotes beauty, having a boyfriend, and doing "girly" activities as being more important for girls than intellect or independence: a video game called Lady Popular.

Luckily for us, we don't have to actually play the game to find out all the sexist crap that is involved--gaming site kotaku.com has the details. Some of the (for lack of a better word) highlights:

To get out of my parents' house and into the real world of successful ladies, I had to complete three tasks. Three tasks that would set me on the path to womanhood. I had to:
- Change my hairstyle, getting two "cool" pigtails in black.
- Buy at least one thing I like from a store in the mall.
- Rent my own apartment.

Obviously there's nothing wrong with the third requirement, as getting your own apartment is a good step to take in entering the real world (well, maybe after going to college, but I'll let that slide for the moment). But the game is only 1 for 3 in promoting female empowerment so far, as changing your hairstyle and going shopping are clearly not important to making it in life.

Another "highlight" is when the reviewer talks about how his character was invited to a party, but couldn't go unless she got a boyfriend by going to a club and flirting. Oh, and when she finally got one, this message popped up on the screen:

..................WHAT. Her boyfriend is considered a source of income? So let me get this straight--first, the game sends the message that you can't attend a party without a guy by your side, and THEN it promotes the idea that men should take care of women financially?

Oh, and there's more.

So apparently Car Washer's $50/day isn't going to cut it with all the shopping she has to do, and she needs to find a job. My first thought--good! Promoting a woman's ability to be independent! But what are her job options? Cooking and hair dressing. While there is nothing wrong with either of those professions, there isn't even the option of doing something more intellectual, or at the very least less stereotypically female.

Then, one time when the reviewer logged on to play, he received this message:

Remember that excessive weight loss or gain is not healthy and will make your lady unhappy, she might even get sick. So try to maintain her weight in the ideal range. For this purpose, there are various options available in the game such as sports, nutrition and so on.

And it informs him his character needs to be at 126 lbs. Yes, obviously being skinny is of utmost importance in life!

So let's review: this game promotes that to be successful, you need looks, material possessions, a boyfriend, your boyfriend's money, a stereotypically female job, and a good body. With this sort of propaganda in our culture, it's no wonder why there are still fewer women in leadership positions.

Michael Shermer: Why People Believe Strange Things

2011-10-12T21:48:00.004-05:00

Skeptics are often accused of focusing solely on religion, and while religion provides cover for the of the most socially acceptable nonsensical beliefs, there are many other claims that are also worth focusing on. In fact, people believe a lot of really bizarre things, and this is true even for some atheists. That is why atheism is best viewed as a specific application of skepticism, which is fundamental to correctly interpreting and understanding the world around us.

Michael Shermer is both an atheist and a skeptic, and the founder of the Skeptic Society, which works to promote scientific skepticism and resist the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. I've linked his wonderful TED talk below, about "why people believe strange things" because it's a really good introduction to the importance of skepticism. And while debunking crop circles and alien encounters might seem trivial with all of the other problems in the world, it's something that's worth keeping in mind, because those are just symptoms of the larger problem: lack of or poor application of critical thought. Check out the video below to see what the Skeptic Society is all about.

You. Are. Awesome.

2011-10-11T15:27:00.004-05:00

Today is National Coming Out Day and while any day is equally good to come out, the support from others can help you feel free to be yourself. I wish everyone who is on their journey of self-discovery the very best and feel free to contact me (Facebook Profile) if you want someone to listen.

Events for the Week, 10/10

2011-10-10T13:25:00.000-05:00

Monday, October 3, 5:00 PM: The weekly UNIFI Dinner will be taking place tonight in the Rialto's private dining area. Join us for good food and great conversation. If you have a UNI meal plan, there's really no reason not to come.

Thursday, October 13, 7:00 PM: Ever have a friend, roommate, family member, or random person on the street tell you why you're wrong for not believing in God? Learn ways to counter the common arguments they present by attending UNIFI's Know Your Arguments: Counter-Apologetics located in the basement of Maucker Union (Specific room TBA). Afterwards join UNIFI at Buffalo Wild Wings for delicious chicken.

Sunday, October 16, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: UNIFI's weekly Brunch will be taking place at the College Square Hy-Vee. If you like socializing with great people, breakfast (but only if you show up before 11), and/or Chinese food; then this is the event for you.

Sunday, October 16, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Do you believe same sex couples should be allowed to get married in Iowa? If so, come to room 252 in the Schindler Education Center to help out with One Iowa at UNI's phone bank to help protect equality.

Links for the Sabbath: 10/9

2011-10-09T10:40:00.008-05:00

Welcome to another amazing and fantastic Links for the Sabbath!! It's filled with interesting stories and article from across the brains of many smart people.

Samuel Shore, a member of Illini Secular Student Alliance, talks about how kids are becoming less religious the more they use the internet.

Have you ever wanted to see all of the logical fallacies that exist? Well, there is a taxidermic chart that lists all of the known points. It's even clickable!

The Euthyphro dilemma and the false Christianity of Divine Command Theorists

2011-10-08T18:38:00.000-05:00

This post is written as an open letter to an anonymous other party, whom has been invited to respond in a subsequent blog post.

My friend wrote to me recently, “I’m beyond atheism now. I don’t believe that other people believe in god.” More and more, I’m inclined to feel similarly. In testing the faith of the devoutly religious I have often found myself speechless at their responses, wondering if any could truly believe what was just uttered. This week my faith in their faith was shaken again during an ongoing debate with an other party. During our argument, I posed a variant of the Euthyphro dilemma and argued that perhaps they too are nonbelievers. The standard dilemma, as posed by Plato, is as follows:

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?

Effectively, is good intrinsically good, or is good what the gods command to be good? As an atheist, humanist, and one who proudly proclaims to be “Good without God”, my position on the dilemma is self-evident. However, many religious individuals fall into a camp known today as divine command theory. It's a belief prominently featured in a conservative Christian political ideology known as Dominionism.

Given that the discussion had headed down the road of divine command theory and the second horn of the dilemma (that good is what God commands to be good), Cody Hashman, UNIFI cofounder, posed this simple question to the other party:

Would you for no other reason that God commanded you to do it, kill me?

Their response lacked substance, citing that God’s word says not to kill, and so no killing would be done. I liked this new tact and I thought to explore it further, so I posed again the dilemma, but with further exploration of the second horn.

I supposed that if good is what God commands, that what is pious or good is arbitrary, based upon God’s will alone. Then God could command murder on Sunday, declare it unforgiveable on Tuesday, and repeat the whole thing next week. And by definition, it would be good. If to divine command theorists this is considered a sensible basis for morality, I am perplexed.

That said, based on what the other party said earlier, I didn’t think they would kill based upon God’s word. I went further, I adopted my friend’s idea and I became a bit of an atheist hipster. I don’t believe that they believe God is real.

I reasoned that were the other party to receive a command from God to kill, even if they were to receive the most visceral communication from the divine, they might reject it. Their prior responses lead me to believe that if they heard voices, they would sooner see a physician than a pastor.

So I suggested there was a new trilemma in the second horn:

One might deny the vision, communication or command from God outright. No matter how visceral, no matter how realistic, one would deny the possibility that it might be God.

One might believe the command, but reject its morality.

One might believe the command, and accept its morality.

I argue that the other party would deny the vision, making them an atheist, or reject it, making them at best, a Christian that has denied the morality of God. This is of course, a contradiction; if they believe that good is what God commands, then rejecting the morality of God’s command is logically impossible.

I contend the other party is as much an atheist as I am, albeit with all the odd traditions and confusing hats of apparent religious belief. I don’t think them so immoral as to kill merely because they have the belief that God commands it. Perhaps this is naiveté on my part; perhaps my unshaken belief in the intrinsic good of most human beings is false.

I hope it not so, but as a skeptic, I remain open to the possibility.

Thanks, science!

2011-10-07T23:47:00.000-05:00

This clip went viral last week. It shows a 29 year old woman who was born deaf hearing her own voice for the first time. It's one of the most heartwarming, lovely moments I think I've seen on video...and we owe it all to scientific research and human ingenuity. We are all very lucky to live in a time in which our technology allows us to live comfortably and to overcome disabilities; where deaf people can hear again and where people with no limbs can swim the English Channel.

When incredible stories like this come about, people often shout 'Praise to God! Glory be to God!' This really bothers me because I see no need to throw humanity under the bus. Humble attitudes are useful when we judge our own actions and abilities but when it comes to our accomplishments, as individuals or as a species, we have every right to boast and be proud and to thank those who are really responsible. Next time you are on the receiving end of a medical 'miracle', don't forget to thank your doctor. Next time you study and get a great score on an exam, pat yourself on the back and be proud. Most importantly, next time you are suddenly aware of the relatively comfortable life that you live and of the technological, social, philosophical, and scientific progress that has been achieved over the previous centuries, thank those who have come before you with great ideas and inventions and be proud to be a part of the human race.

Don’t let emotion trump reason in sexual assault case

2011-10-06T20:32:00.007-05:00

So often do our emotions get in the way of our ability to think rationally, and much of the rhetoric regarding the University of Northern Iowa sexual assault case is a prime example. For those who haven't read about it online or in the previous addition of the Northern Iowan, the backstory is that in 2004, a UNI freshman reported being raped by two UNI football players. One was found guilty of third-degree sexual abuse, one of misdemeanor assault with intent to inflict serious injury, and both served a prison sentence.

In 2007, the woman sued UNI, asserting that the university did not sufficiently support her after the incident, and requested damages on the grounds that "they failed to make academic accommodations she requested, declined to let her move to another dormitory and did nothing when she reported receiving harassing calls from players," according to the Associated Press.

Now here's where the heart of the controversy comes in: The Iowa attorney general's office, which is serving as the university's defense in this case, is requesting several pieces of information from the plaintiff that her lawyer claims is part of their tactic to "attack the victim."

Some of this information includes medical records, educational records, employment records (which include her work at a strip club), cell phone records, counseling records, her personal journal, her Facebook history and records of her father's death from 1991, where he allegedly went missing and then was later found dead in his car in a river.

You're not alone if your gut reaction is to agree with the victim's attorney, who is quoted as saying, with regards to the requests of the defendants, "It just furthers the hostile environment towards my client." Furthermore, I think we can all agree that if what the victim is suggesting about the university's treatment of her is true, we should be appalled. Though UNI now has a highly regarded system of preventing and addressing sexual assault with its Center for Violence Prevention and online educational program for first-year students, that doesn't make up for its alleged failure to address the needs of that student in 2004.

However, despite all this, we need to take a step back and recognize, in a rational manner, what the purpose of this lawsuit is.

The plaintiff is suing for specific damages: "for the loss of her access to education at UNI" and "pain and suffering." This means that it is up to the victim and her attorneys to prove the university is guilty of these claims, and up to UNI and the Iowa attorney general's office to fact check her assertions and defend against this.
While it may be easy to feel the victim's pain when we think about all the personal information she is being asked to turn over, we need to remember that this is all part of the standard process of discovery, where both sides request information in order to ensure they have all the facts relevant to the case and can each make the best argument possible.

As far as the relevance of the defendants' requests goes, when you look at what the victim is actually claiming in the lawsuit, it starts to make a lot of sense. For instance, since she is claiming the university did nothing when she received harassing phone calls, they have every right to have access to her phone records in order to ensure that these calls actually took place. In addition, because she stated that her subsequent social and professional interactions were inhibited by the assault and UNI's mistreatment of her, they need to verify these claims by looking at her Facebook history and employment records.

Finally, though they are thought by many to be the most invasive requests, it is in fact, relevant to the case that they have access to her counseling records, her personal journal and records of her father's tragic death. This is because if the plaintiff is claiming her mental health has been negatively affected by how UNI treated her after the assault, they need to have as much evidence as possible regarding her mental health prior to, and after, the incident, especially in light of the fact that she reportedly had a "cutting incident" in 2005, and a suicide attempt in 2007.

As far as her father's death is specifically concerned, while its relation to the case isn't as obvious, it's important to know about because it could both affect her prior mental health and shed light on her family's mental health history, as it's possible his death was a suicide.

While it makes sense to feel bad for this woman and all she has had to go through, we cannot abandon rationality for this reason. Our justice system is based on evidence, and if one isn't willing to provide evidence for that which they are claiming, one shouldn't be suing another party.

Thoughts on this year's Blasphemy Rights Day

2011-10-05T09:00:00.001-05:00

After the conversations UNIFI has engaged in over Blasphemy Rights Day this year, I have come to two conclusions about this event. First, Blasphemy Rights Day is completely necessary at the University of Northern Iowa. Second, if there is an ideal way to hold this event, we have yet to find it.

There is a palpable need for students on our campus to be educated about the hardship that people are forced to endure across the world (and in some parts of the United States) simply for being honest about their beliefs. I don't think most people realize that there is a values dilemma where free expression meets criticism of religion, and that this dilemma is called blasphemy. Educating students about this is a worthwhile goal, and it is what leads me to believe that Blasphemy Rights Day is a necessary event in UNIFI's lineup.

In regards to this year's event, I believe, based on the positive feedback I've received, that it was the best yet. There is definitely something to be said about this milder approach to the event. Once we take the blasphemy off the sidewalks, and simply remind people of legislation that we can all agree is wrong, they see the point more easily. It's hard to see a valid point through an emotional shroud, and this year's approach was incredibly effective at lifting that shroud for a lot of people.

With that said, our attempts to be less offensive this year have not impressed some of the event's critics. This fact was made glaringly obvious by some of the less-than-thoughtful responses to the event which can be found in a certain facebook thread (some of the more offensive ones have been deleted, presumably due to author embarrassment).

While it is clear that this year's event was largely successful, I am not convinced that there is an ideal way to have an event like this, and so there will always be a need to tweak it each year. Clearly, we struggle in finding the balance between not offending people (a battle which, frankly, we will never win) and actually challenging them with a values dilemma between free speech and religion. There is more to Blasphemy Rights Day than legislation; it isn't just about what you're legally allowed to do, it's also about the category 5 shitstorm that gets kicked up in reaction to a peaceful event. The reaction to Blasphemy Day 2009 (and Blasphemy Rights Day 2011 for that matter) shows that there needs to be a Blasphemy Rights Day 2012. The overreaction to the Danish Muhammad cartoons provided the initial inspiration for this event, yet what the Jyllands-Posten did was legal.

In short, this year was undoubtedly successful. Our primary goal was to educate and raise awareness about blasphemy legislation which threatens free expression, and we accomplished that. A necessary dilemma for future years will be the choice between neglecting to challenge people with a conflict of values or fighting the negative image that will follow openly challenging cherished beliefs.

UNIFI Misconceptions

2011-10-04T13:36:00.004-05:00

A lengthy discussion recently started in the UNI class of 2015 Facebook
group. I ask that if you go view the thread to keep your comments to
yourself. It is already quite long and enough has been said on either
side of the discussion. The original post was put up in response to
Blasphemy Rights Day 2011. It more or less said UNIFI was insulting
others with the chalking and explained that "no one cares what happens
in other countries" because this is America.

Of course this sparked a number of responses and "likes". While reading
through all of the comments, and occasionally adding in some of my own
opinions, I noticed one thing in particular - the majority of the people who
disagreed with our chalking clearly did not understand the point of the event. I
got the feeling we were being stereotyped as no-good Jesus-hating freaks
with nothing to live for. I am so very tired of people judging our student
organization without actually taking the time to talk to us to learn who we
really are.

Because of this I want to take some time to hopefully show the problems witih
UNIFI stereotypes I've heard in the past.

1. UNIFI members all hold the same beliefs and agree on everything.

False. Members of UNIFI have many different points of view and
ideas that not everyone in the group agrees with. Yes, the majority of us do
not believe in a God, but we also have many members that may consider
themselves agnostics or deists and on occasion we do have people come out
to events who do believe in a God. We have members who would love to do
interfaith work and others who would like to prove to the world they can do it
on their own. We also have vastly different beliefs outside of religion.

2. People in UNIFI sit around at Brunch bashing religion.

False. This one couldn't be further from the truth. I will admit that
before my first brunch I thought the same thing, but at every brunch we talk
about something different. I can say with confidence that religion is probably
one of the least discussed topics. The conversations usually just consist of what
we did over the weekend, how classes are going, what movies or video games
we like, etc. We’re a community of people with similar values, but they are not
the only thing that defines us.

3. Members of UNIFI are disrespectful when talking to religious students.

False. I cannot vouch for all members of UNIFI, but I do know that
most members, and especially the leadership team, make sure to be respectful
of the person they are talking to. When discussing sensitive topics it’s a lot
easier, and the other person is more likely to listen if you are polite, calm, and
respect the person, even if you don’t respect their beliefs.

4. UNIFI is a club is solely based upon showing your disbelief in a religion.

False. Here is our mission statement:

The mission of the UNI Freethinkers and Inquirers (UNIFI) is to
foster a welcoming environment for skeptics and non-believers, toencourage
an open and involved dialogue on secular issues and rational thought, and
to reach out to the community on matters important to all freethinking
individuals.

I feel as though this says enough about why our student organization
exists. The religious students have many places to go and be with other like-
minded individuals (NAVS & BASIC), so why can't non-religious students
have the same opportunity to be a part of a supportive community?

These of course are not all the misconceptions I've noticed since joining
UNIFI, just a few of the worst from the past couple of days while following the
discussion on Facebook. If you do have a negative view of UNIFI, I hope that
before you judge us based solely on rumors you here around campus, you take
the time to come to an event, or to at least sit down and talk with one of us. It’s
easy to hate a group that you’ve never actually met, but much harder when you
make an effort to see them as real people with nuanced and differing beliefs.

We hold our weekly brunches Sunday at the College Square Hy-Vee starting at
11 am, anyone and everyone is welcome to sit down and learn about who we
really are.

Further Thoughts on Blasphemy Rights Day

2011-10-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

This a response (to the response) of this year's Blasphemy Rights Day from Keenan Crow, a member of UNIFI.

Yesterday was Blasphemy Rights Day and as many of you know it was executed quite differently than in past years. At first, this really upset me. As Professor Doug Shaw stated in his views on Blasphemy Rights Day “It didn’t make me feel brave.” It is important that we all assert ourselves on such days in our own ways...ways that make us feel brave, ways that make us feel like we matter on campus, and most importantly ways that assert who we are and what we believe in regardless of the situation. I wanted to desperately to draw something obscene on the sidewalk just like others had done in the past...if no more than just to assert my right to do so. And perhaps I still should do something outrageous or provocative...but on my own. Not representing a group.

As we all know and as Professor Shaw pointed out this group consists of many different kinds of freethinkers who are at many different stages in their journeys, and though we may not believe in it ourselves many of us still have ties to the Christian community. Being part of this group means that when we as a group do something, it represents all of us. Some of us don’t necessarily want to be known for vitriol. Some of us just want the sense of community that this group provides...the bravery comes later on an individual basis.

There has been, in the past, a view that the door-in-the-face technique will be most effective at getting people to pay attention to us, and it certainly has. But in this situation I don’t think we can follow a notion of “any press is good press.” We are already a marginalized group and anything negative we do is perceived as amplified.

What some of you may not know is that even atheists on campus have a distaste for UNIFI precisely because of the harsh tone that was taken in the past. While at the progressive picnic this year I decided I was going to officially join the group. I talked to a friend about it who was also an avid atheist...whole heartedly expecting a warm response that he was already a member. “No way,” he said, “all those guys are about is generating controversy and borderline hate speech. I want to have a future.” It made me seriously reconsider my choice.

I think that this Blasphemy Rights Day is an example of moving away from these kinds of demonstrations. We may not get as much immediate notoriety this way, but we will have a larger group with stronger ties to the community. This is the only way we will honestly affect people and begin to show them that atheists aren’t the terrible stereotypes they’ve heard since kindergarten.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the fringe part of the group expressing their views as well...as long as it is known that this isn’t the view of the group as a whole you will surely find support. But when we assert that all of UNIFI should come out and make outrageous statements I think we pigeonhole a large portion of the group’s actual views and make it impossible for us to show what we are about individually.

Take this into consideration; the best way to win an argument is to make small concessions to the other side to show that you understand what they are saying and that they have valid points. If you are arguing with someone and they tell you flat out that everything you’re saying is wrong, you immediately shut down the rational part of your mind and go on the defensive. This is what the old school method amounted to in my view. People that were screaming at us weren’t really thinking, they were just screaming. People listening immediately made a judgement one way or the other to avoid being labeled by their peers. I think subtlety will do us much better than this in the long run.

Events for the Week 10/3

2011-10-03T13:32:00.006-05:00

Monday, October 3, 5:00 PM: Join fellow UNIFI members for UNIFI Dinner tonight in the private dining area of the Rialto. Enjoy good food, great conversation, and possibly stack things.

Tuesday, October 4, 7:30 - 9:00 PM: Rough first couple days of Homecoming Week? Why not come out and wind down with UNIFI at Russel Hall? Michael Kelly, a member of UNIFI, will have his band performing!

Wednesday, October 5, 9:00 PM: UNI Proud will be hosting a Candlelight Vigil at the Campanile to remember the members of the LGBT community who were killed because of their identity.

Sunday, October 9, 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM: Join UNIFI for our weekly Brunch at the College Square Hy-Vee. There will be Chinese food, a salad bar, and fun conversations with friends. What's not to like?

Links for the Sabbath: 10/2

2011-10-02T13:52:00.006-05:00

Greetings! You're just in time for this week's Links for the Sabbath!

On Saturday, Doug Shaw, a professor of mathematics at UNI shared his view on Blasphemy Rights Day. You should check it out!

Supreme Court Justice Scalia has made his religious intentions quite clear in his most recent public appearance, for saying that religion trumps law. "Judge Scalia has said in as many words that he does not hold himself to the law when it conflicts with his personal beliefs."

Doug Shaw's thoughts on Blasphemy Rights Day

2011-10-01T12:07:00.006-05:00

Doug Shaw is a professor of Mathematics at UNI and sent us his thoughts on Blasphemy Rights Day, which happened yesterday.

So I've been following Blasphemy Day at UNI through its journey from
"Draw Mohammed" day, to "Blaspheme against Gods and Religions on the
sidewalk," day to its current, "Chalk about blasphemy laws" day. It's trajectory reminds me of half of the atheist spectrum. You've walked along the atheist spectrum, right? It ends at the "Angry-in-your-face" Atheist stereotype , goes through the "Don't be a dick" activist , past the "My religion (or lack thereof) is my own business" maverick, through the "I'm still in the closet" person, and starts at the "I'm faking it every Sunday for my family and friends" misery. It should go without saying that these are all atheists - this isn't a club with admissions requirements and dues, levels and degrees; if you don't believe in God, then you are an atheist, just the same as anyone else who doesn't believe in God.

Not only are the militant stereotypes on the spectrum, I am glad they are there. One of the stupidest things about the liberal movement is that every couple of years they disavow and jettison 5% of their most extreme members. Kick the Communists out, then the Socialists look extreme. Kick the Socialists out, then the New Dealers look extreme. Soon, Nixon is viewed as moderate. These days, if you look at Reagan's policies, HE'S the new "center." When Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are considered the extreme left, and Joe Liebermann is the "moderate" you know some definitional changers are going on. And yet, the left keeps throwing out their 5% most-left, and wondering why our national discourse keeps shifting to the right. Asserting the government's right to torture suspects and wiretap non-suspects, suspending Congressional elections, limiting the right of the poor to vote - all of these ideas were considered too extreme for even serious consideration when I was a kid, but now, although they are far right, they not too out-there for debate. Because the left bi-annually disavows it's "extreme" 5%. That wasn't a digression; that was a vision of the way Atheists will be treated if they disavow, discourage, silence, their angry extremists. Go back to that spectrum I described.

Where do you think the "center" is? In which direction would that center move if Dawkins, Harris, Stenger, Hitchens, and the angry neck-beards were to go away?

Let's go back to Draw Muhammad day. I get the reason it had to evolve. There's an old joke: "Why do animal rights activists target fur-coats, but not leather jackets?" "Because an old lady won't kick the shit out of you like a biker will." There are places in the world where drawing Muhammad will make you a target for violence. Instantly. But at UNI? No. That's the reality. No. While making a global point, it was making a minority that already has to deal with bigotry feel more alienated than they already were. So it was broadened, and took on the big guns. And so on; you know the story. And here we are today.

But here's another aspect of Blasphemy Day, an aspect that is important to me, that I don't think most people consider. Last week, I did something socially brave. In my life as a quiet friendly professor, I rarely have moments where I have to choose between bravery and inertia - and when they do come, they come unexpectedly enough that I don't really have time to think about my actions. And there have been times where I was a coward, and I am ashamed of those permanent memories, even though I can rationalize them as "I didn't really have time to think about what I was doing" or "My social skills are poor" or however else people rationalize cowardice. But sometimes I've been brave, like I was last week. The details are unimportant - I was with some people whom I respect a lot and love a little, and I defended something that was worth defending, even though I am socially awkward and really didn't want to alienate these people whose opinion I value. Even though it was hard, so hard, for me. I did it. And I'm proud of myself. I'm a better person than I thought I was.

And where did this strength come from? The examples of my brave friends. The examples of brave famous people I admire (Looking at you, Teddy Roosevelt). And the example of things like UNIFI blasphemy days. While I can understand the arguments against the in-your-face Blashemy Days of the past, and they are valid arguments that I sometimes agree with, I have to say that when I saw the chalking, when I watched the people responding calmly to people yelling at them at the Union without backing down, somehow I felt like I could be strong, too. It is no coincidence that I came out to the UNI student population at a UNIFI meeting. Would I have been brave last week had it not been for Blashemy Days gone by? Probably. But maybe not. I'm sure memories of those Brave and Strong events contributed to the confidence I needed.

I do know that today's Blashemy Day was much more mature than Blashemy Days gone by. And as I walked to work today, and read the chalk, I found it interesting. But it didn't make me feel brave. And it didn't make me feel strong. I felt a little bad for some lady in Iceland, and then I got to my office. And while UNIFI may have done the right thing this year, speaking completely personally, as someone who is a lot less self-confident than he appears, I think something was lost.

Remember what Blasphemy Rights Day is all about.

2011-09-29T18:26:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow is Blasphemy Rights Day and I want to remind everyone WHY we are supporting this day. We don't want to insult religion or bring about hate, but instead raise awareness of the serious situations in many countries around the world.

Blasphemy Rights Day 2011

2011-09-28T18:13:00.001-05:00

In anticipation of the event on Friday, here's a video from UNIFI on why this day is so important.

Correction: A viewer has pointed out that blasphemy laws in England were abandoned in July 2008.

Objective Morality vs. Christianity

2011-09-27T17:31:00.004-05:00

I thought I'd share this video from Nonstampcollector about Christianity and objective morality. It's a 15 minute video, so here are some of the highlights:

He begins by hypothetically granting the following premises from Dr. Craig:

1. An undefined theistic god exists
2. Morals are grounded in God
3. God's nature IS the objective moral standard
4. God is loving, generous, faithful, kind, etc
5. Objective moral duties constituted by God's commands
6. God's moral nature expressed to us in the form of divine commandments
7. God's commandments must be consistent with his holy and loving nature
8. These commandments reflect God's essential character

Essentially, he grants for the sake of argument a god's existence, and this god's status as the supreme moral law giver of the universe, in order to examine whether Christianity is compatible with these propositions. The problem comes when the apologist declares that God's loving commandments can be found in the Bible, which is full of immorality.

For a more specific breakdown of some difficulties inherent in a Biblical view of morality, see the video at 5:55-6:50.

He then argues that if there is an objective moral law-giver, then that lawgiver is not Yahweh, because Yahweh's commands are inconsistent. See the video for the complete list of verses about slavery, cruelty, genocide, etc.

His best argument in the video is a defense against the "out of context" argument. He explains that invoking "context" for a moral or immoral action goes against the idea that any action is objectively moral or immoral. Of course, this only refutes a deontological view of Christian objective morality. In other words, if actions are right because God said that they were right at the creation of the universe, and they were and are forever right, then you can't argue context.

If it's not the action itself that is right or wrong, but God's opinion on the subject makes it right or wrong, then the previous argument does not apply, but at what cost? In that scenario, morality becomes nothing other than God's authority/power/gun to our heads.

The most hideously cruel and sick acts...can be morally good depending on the context. So there is no "objective" standard of objective morality, it's subjectively "objective". There is nothing so evil or cruel or barbaric or disgusting that this god of yours couldn't be ok with in certain circumstances, because your understanding of morality implies that if god did it, it would simply *be* moral. Nothing is absolutely, objectively immoral, because morality under this model is subject to the opinion of God at that time. It's all circumstancial.

Yes neutrinos were recorded going faster than light, no it doesn't mean anything, yet.

2011-09-26T13:37:00.010-05:00

So, you may have heard that an experiment at CERN (or technically between CERN and OPERA) recently recorded neutrinos that were traveling at 1.0000248c. (Also known as slightly above the speed of light.) This would violate the known laws (descriptions) of physics, because according to Einstein's theory of special relativity nothing can travel faster than light.

The experiment was setup to have particles traveling in one direction along the 730km path in about 2.43ms. However, when this was performed the particles were measured to arrive 60.7ns too early, with an error deviation of +/-6.9ns. This gives what is called a "6 sigma" result because of the high number of tests that are able to be measured so precisely, and in particle physics (and when measuring collisions) in order to claim that a result is free of statistical wavering and is actually an empirical observation you must be at a level of at least 5 sigma. In other words, this result holds up to the standards of a discovery.

The neutrons were sent with different energies, so their collisions are measured in two groups, those above 20GeV (billion electron volts) and those below. The two means for the groups are 13.9 and 42.9 GeV, but the different groups showed no energy dependence on the velocity of the neutrinos. (Because of a ~1ns difference) What that means is that the neutrinos traveled at the same speed (to an extremely precise measure).

What all of this means is that throughout years of patient and well-thought out precautions the neutrinos were measured to be traveling faster than the speed of light. HOWEVER (and this is a very strong however) this is the result of one experiment. The team has since contacted other groups to verify or counter this result. Also, the team has summarized their results in an extremely well manor:

Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results.

Please, don't take my exact word for this and if you're interested read the sources listed below. Also, you can listen to particle physicist Brian Cox's take on this whole experiment. I might have missed some detail or mis-worded something in the post, so if you find something that should be fixed, please let me know.

Various Sources
[0]: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=58
[1]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPERA_experiment#Neutrino_time-of-flight_anomaly
[3]: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html

Links for the Sabbath: 9/25

2011-09-25T07:20:00.011-05:00

Greetings everyone! It's time once again for some of the best links from around the Internet! Perhaps you've seen these, but hopefully not!

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wants everyone to know that he respects human life, and in order to do so supports capital punishment. Why? Because "The death penalty is intended to affirm the value [and] sanctity of every single human life, and thus by the extremity of the penalty to make that visible and apparent to all".

Recently, the White House has created a section on their website that allows for people to create and vote on different petitions. They have some really interesting ones going, such as: legalizing same sex marriage, promote or require the teaching of evolution over creationalism, end discrimination based on sexual identity or orientation, repeal DOMA, and (to name a few) remove "under God". You should check them out!

Dave Muscato, MU SASHA's Vice President, wrote an absolutely fantastic response to a Christian's letter. You should read it, seeing as it hit the front page of /r/atheism!

Re: Where's the Transitional Form?

2011-09-24T17:45:00.000-05:00

Not all of us spend an unhealthy amount of time on reddit.com, but occasionally underneath the meme images and flame wars are some true gems. These two image popped up on the "atheism" subreddit today and I think it makes a poignant defense of evolution against naysayers arguing that scientists lack evidence for evolution or have "gaps" in the fossil record:

As a comment, one user added their take on speciation:

Beautiful.

Coexistence, can it happen?

2011-09-22T21:26:00.007-05:00

Normally the Northern Iowan opinion columns don't discuss religion, but there's one this week that does. In the article the author (a UNI student) says, "I came to the conclusion that religious coexistence is a romance; something that looks great on paper but impossible in practice."

Really, I'm interested in this view, also when things like this are said:

I can remember back the last couple of years on days when some deranged lunatic was calling students sinners. I remember being so angry that a peaceful, loving religion was being so grossly misrepresented and was simply adding to the negative stereotype. I also remember days like "Blasphemy Day" in the past couple of years. I remember being so angry that peaceful nonreligious people would soon be made into hated targets.

But really, I think he makes a very strong and accurate point when he says the following. Many students don't seem to care, and I think everyone needs to remember that. Even if we, (UNIFI, Basic/Nav's, Me) want to spread our message. Perhaps it's better to act smarter, not harder.

I look at it now and I throw my head back and laugh. Screaming doesn't get us to think about a possible afterlife. Some mean-spirited chalked phrases don't get us to think outside the box. It just does a fantastic job of royally ticking us off. And really, that's pretty funny. Somewhere in our own self-denying, narcissism-fueled psyche, we actually think that we know what's going on. And better yet, that we have to tell the world what's right for them.

Genesis: The Scientifically Confusing Explanation

2011-09-21T15:48:00.000-05:00

I've been super busy this week, but here is a funny video you all should check out.

Enjoy!

Marriage Equality Faces Imminent Threat

2011-09-20T15:23:00.008-05:00

This is a guest post from Kyle Woollums, President of One Iowa at UNI, the local chapter of the state-wide organization, One Iowa.

On Friday, September 16, Senator Swati Dandekar resigned her seat to accept an appointment from Governor Branstad to serve on the Iowa Utilities Board. Senator Dandekar represented Marion, near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and held pro-equality views for the duration of her term.

Generally speaking, resignations of senators are common and not too important. But everything is different this time.

With Senator Dandekar’s resignation, marriage equality could be put to a public vote sooner than ever anticipated.

Democrats formerly clutched onto a slim majority in the Iowa Senate, with 26 seats compared with the 24 of the Republicans. A special election will be held on November 8, 2011 to determine who will replace Senator Dandekar. If the seat is won by a Republican, the senate would be evenly divided.

But what does this all mean? In short, we have to do everything possible to fill the vacated seat with a pro-equality candidate.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal has successfully blocked attempts to write discrimination into Iowa’s constitution. His ability to do this may be compromised if a democrat majority is lost in the Senate. As Troy Price, the executive director of One Iowa states, “‘Until now, we have been able to prevent a discriminatory and unconstitutional marriage ban from going on the ballot with pro-equality supporters in the Senate. But marriage equality is now facing a serious and credible threat,’ Price said. ‘If we lose this seat, we lose a majority in the Senate and we face a marriage ban on the ballot.’”

As president of One Iowa at UNI, I’ve noticed the growing apathy among pro-equality voters. Many think that marriage equality is safe in Iowa. That has never been further from the truth.

Now, we must band together to show the power of equality.

Now, we must work diligently to spread the word about why marriage equality matters.

Now, we must share our stories and challenge assumptions about marriage equality.

One Iowa at UNI has always been a “take action” community and student group. We don’t sit around discussing equal rights; we actively fight for them. We educate people, share our stories, and get people politically involved. There’s no better time to join our fight than now.

We will fight hard to make sure a pro-equality candidate is elected. But we can’t do it without you. We need as many people as possible to work with us to share their stories and show others why marriage equality matters.

No group should have their rights voted upon by others. But that’s exactly what anti- equality senators want to happen. We need to change that, right here, right now.

Join our community on Facebook, where you’ll be able to follow our events and activities. We refuse to sit around waiting for our rights to be taken away. We will be out there, working directly with Iowans, changing hearts and minds, ensuring that Iowa remains a bastion of hope in the Midwest. And as our state motto decrees, “Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain.”

Join us in the fight against injustice. Each one of us can make a difference in this election.

Links for the Sabbath: 9/18

2011-09-18T19:15:00.009-05:00

I don’t know how much credence we should put into the claims that we are getting less religious as a nation, but maybe these upset people are so mad and offended because we’re winning, and because they read a message and were forced to think, just for a second, that they might be wrong about eternal life and fate and god’s plan and even heaven.

Atheist Fundamentalism

2011-09-17T19:02:00.003-05:00

Thoughts?

Out Week Blurbs: John Chesley

2011-09-15T17:00:00.001-05:00

For part of Out Week UNIFI is gathering short stories of people and their "coming out" stories. If you would like to submit yours please email it to outweek@unifreethought.com.

Growing up I went to church every Sunday, prayed at dinner, and believed what my parents told me, like any other well behaved kid. My parents taught me that the bible should be used as a metaphor and not be taken literally. They weren’t stupid, they knew “God” didn’t create Adam and Eve or that Noah built an Ark and fit two of every animal inside (get a reality check if you consider those facts). What they knew is that the bible contained (mainly the new testament) deeper meanings behind the writings. So in a nutshell my family and I were never fundamentalist Christians.

During my high school years I became completely apathetic to religion. I fell asleep in church every Sunday, and I would play along during our weekly youth group, but never actually followed along. Once I got to college I found out there were actually a lot of people who took religion seriously. I wasn’t used to this since I came from such a liberal church. It honestly frightened me that people in my hall took the bible as truth. This is when I really started to question my beliefs.

I didn’t want to call myself an atheist because I thought of it as such a negative term. At first I went with agnostic and stuck with it for about a year. It seemed like a nice neutral stance and it worked for me. Once my sophomore year began I dabbled in Deism for a bit. That is about the time I decided to give UNIFI a try. The first couple of weeks after joining I realized how silly it was to deny the fact that I actually didn’t believe in a God.

Joining UNIFI opened me up and made me realize that there was nothing wrong with calling yourself an atheist. The sour name ‘atheist’ just turned out to be a horrible stereotype, which just wasn’t true.

Coming out as an atheist was as simple as making a change in my religious beliefs on facebook. I don’t feel like I have lost any friends or made any enemies, it is quite the opposite for me. Being an atheist has made me happier, stronger, and more confident with who I am.

If you would like to view pictures of people holding up the "I am an Atheist" signs, UNIFI has created a site WhatAnAtheistLooksLike.com.

Out Week Blurbs: Stef McGraw

2011-09-15T09:00:00.001-05:00

For part of Out Week UNIFI is gathering short stories of people and their "coming out" stories. If you would like to submit yours please email it to outweek@unifreethought.com.

I was raised Unitarian Universalist, which for those who don’t know is a very liberal religion that believes it is up to each individual to search for truth. I wouldn’t even technically call it a religion, but rather more of a spiritual philosophy. As such, the church is composed of people with differing beliefs, such as liberal Christianity/Judaism, paganism, agnostic theism, and even, yes, atheists. While I didn’t know exactly what my parents believed growing up, I knew I could place both of them in either one of the latter two categories.

I don’t think I could ever say that I believed in God, though I know that during the rough middle school years, in times of stress I would sometimes make bargains with some higher being, just in case one was out there. (“I promise I’ll never slack off again if just this one time you let me do well on this test I forgot to study for!”) In any rational state of mind, though, I knew such a being probably didn’t exist. I self-indentified as an agnostic if I was asked my beliefs, as I was both not completely certain I wanted to give up the notion of a higher power, and I was aware of the stigma involved with the word “atheist.”

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment when I fully accepted that I didn’t believe in God, but it just sort of came naturally; I didn’t believe because I never found a reason to. While many of my friends were active in their churches, I just found religion to be a waste of time. I continued to attend the UU church, though I was becoming a bit disillusioned with the emphasis it sometimes put on spirituality.

Just as I cannot pinpoint when I became an atheist, neither can I pinpoint when I started to identify as one. While I didn’t go around telling everyone, when it was relevant to a discussion I would (hesitantly) mention my beliefs. This wasn’t always met with a positive reaction, though—I had friends who I could tell disapproved of my atheism and wanted me to believe.

When I got to college, I found UNIFI and decided to get involved; I loved that the group accepted me for my non-belief, as well as promote critical discussion on all issues. It was during my first semester of college that I felt comfortable enough to truly “come out” as an atheist, meaning I hardly ever shied away from making it known if it was relevant to discussion. Knowing I had a whole community of people behind me, I was able to lose my inhibitions and display my atheism with pride.

If you would like to view pictures of people holding up the "I am an Atheist" signs, UNIFI has created a site WhatAnAtheistLooksLike.com.

Out Week Blurbs: Adam Shannon

2011-09-14T17:00:00.005-05:00

For part of Out Week UNIFI is gathering short stories of people and their "coming out" stories. If you would like to submit yours please email it to outweek@unifreethought.com.

I never remember being a “christian” or really believing in any the stories and tales that were taught during Sunday school. I only remember not having my stream of questions answered, or legitimate evidence provided for anything they said. Church always seemed like a way for adults to talk with their friends, because that’s why people showed up an hour early and stayed for at least another after the service, right?

On the other hand, I often remember what Ricky Gervais would talk about when his mother eventually told him that she was using God as a baby sitter so he would behave. Even though she didn’t believe, it was easy for her to come home from work and know that they wouldn’t be burning the house down. That’s what religion seemed like in my younger years, not what could now be classified as a crusade on intelligence.

When someone asks me, “What’s it like to not believe?”, I don’t have an answer besides, “Well, what’s it like to not believe in Thor?” I haven't believed in things like religion; I don't know what it's like. Even with Santa I never really believed, but thought it was just something. (Because I figured out that it was impossible to visit every house, even with timezones.) So, it’s always seemed weird when people can believe in things they’ve never seen or even witnessed.

Anyway you put it, I’m glad to be an “out” atheist. It doesn’t feel like a badge of superiority, but a badge of humbleness. Yes, we don’t know everything, but we are trying, and that’s all you can ask for.

If you would like to view pictures of people holding up the "I am an Atheist" signs, UNIFI has created a site WhatAnAtheistLooksLike.com.

Out Week Blurbs: Michael Kelly

2011-09-14T09:03:00.001-05:00

For part of Out Week UNIFI is gathering short stories of people and their "coming out" stories. If you would like to submit yours please email it to outweek@unifreethought.com.

I grew up in a small conservative town with a conservative and very religious family. When I was five years old my family divorced. I lived with my mother after that. I grew up mainly in a single parent household with my brother and sister. I went to church every Sunday and I was very religious and conservative up till my freshman year of high school. I started to doubt and criticize my 7th and 8th Grade year, but I just assumed I was wrong and "lost". My sophomore year I started to think that "maybe I'm not wrong"!

I was a closet Atheist my sophomore year of high school. My junior year I became vocal and told my mother. She was incredibly upset and she felt as if she failed me as a parent. We are on good terms now, but it took some time. I didn't tell my father till May of this year. My father is very conservative and very religious. I got caught going to my ex-girlfriends college and spent the night there. As you could imagine, he wasn't happy about it. He and I had a talk about the situation and he kept asking me questions like "How could a Christian believe that's right" and "The Bible says". Then I told him I was Liberal and an Atheist. This was the most upset I've ever seen my father. We got into a fight. It lasted for about two hours, but we came to an understanding. He's still not happy about me being an Atheist and Liberal, but at least I can be honest with him and the rest of my family. They still love me and accept me, but it wasn't easy. One thing I know for sure though, is that it does get better and it is always good to be honest with those who you love.

If you would like to view pictures of people holding up the "I am an Atheist" signs, UNIFI has created a site WhatAnAtheistLooksLike.com.

Out Week Blurbs: Ryan Owens

2011-09-13T14:44:00.000-05:00

For part of Out Week UNIFI is gathering short stories of people and their "coming out" stories. If you would like to submit yours please email it to outweek@unifreethought.com.

My story isn't really special. I was never hardcore about my faith. I didn't go to church regularly or read the bible. I was what I would call now, a "sort of christian". A believer, but for no reason. Before I was in high school I had a lot of questions about religion. One I brought up a lot was the idea of the first cause and God being the eternal creator. Things started to seem wrong the more thought about them.

As time went on I became hung up on the problem of evil (I wouldn't have know that's what it was at the time). If you aren't familiar, the problem of evil is an objection to the existence of an all powerful loving god on the basis of evil existing in our world. As i thought at the time, "If God cares for us, why do we suffer?". I didn't know that there were people that felt the same way. I didn't even begin questioning God's existence. I just got mad. For a long time I truly believed God was a dick. He does what he wants and to hell with us if it is his wish.

By the time I had begun to let go of that anger and actually stop believing God was even a real thing, I knew what the word atheist meant. I knew that's what I was and I couldn't understand why no one was talking about it. I was in high school that I found some of my friends that went to church didn't actually have any real belief in God. It was just something they did. For family, for tradition, its just what we do.

If you would like to view pictures of people holding up the "I am an Atheist" signs, UNIFI has created a site WhatAnAtheistLooksLike.com.