In a conversation with the Priest-Chieftain last night, the Pagan comedian said: “Christians we might see as people like those who deny global warming.  You might defend their choice to believe that as freedom of speech – but if they are wrong, and people must die in combat to reach Valhalla, it could be disastrous for millions of people.

“Christianity is a threat to the salvation of millions,” he said.  ”With no mighty warriors to help him, Odin won’t have a hope at Ragnarök!”

Sørensen told the Priest-Chieftain the viking people had given too much ground to this new fashionable ‘monotheism’.  He said: “There’s too much apologising – making concessions on things like, Thor throwing lightning bolts or Frigg being Odin’s wife.  Don’t give in to them!

“If you believe in the gods all bets are off.  Odin can throw Gungnir and never miss.  There’s a temptation to give a bit of ground to their ‘messiah’.  But if you believe the gods, why shouldn’t there be valkyries?”

“People call it ‘Thursday’ out of a sense of duty, so maybe goðar don’t have to try hard enough.”

Sørensen said that it was no longer fashionable to be a pagan. “In modern civilisation, it’s incredibly cool to be a monotheist.”

Read more at Chortle.co.uk.

Franz Sørensen is currently appearing in Only One God? You’re Kidding Right? at the Oslo Playhouse.

I don’t think that giving a description of ‘what skepticism is’ is going to help illuminate someone who is coming to this cold, if only because I don’t think people come to skepticism cold. They come to it gradually, absorbing it piece by piece through a kind of osmosis. Then one day they realise that their vaguely connected interests and questions have led them into a particular area of thought and activism called skepticism, like walking down a cul-de-sac to find a party at the bottom. Then they find they have to put up with people asking them ‘what skepticism is’ and are reduced to writing amateurish blogposts like this one in order to avoid giving an answer…

What I thought I would do instead is go through a selection of some of the books/podcasts/programs that formed my skeptical education – for want of a better term. All of these things opened up my mind in some way, either teaching me something I didn’t know, portraying the things I already knew in a fresh light, or both. They cleared away some of the mental fog that surrounded me, and simultaneously made me realise how much I didn’t know and how much there was to learn. In short, they woke me up a little. I list them here as suggestions for those new to skepticism, in the hope that the effect they had on me may be replicated for them. Even if only one person is inspired, that is still worth the attempt. I’m probably not suggesting anything here most skeptics haven’t already heard of, as I won’t be going far from the beaten track so to speak, but you may get something from my tuppence-worth of thoughts on them regardless. It’s not an exhaustive list, just a list of books I’ve read essentially, and of other things aside from books, too. This is basically my attempt to justify all those hours of my life spent absorbing knowledge that has basically sat in my head all this time with nowhere to go. Validate me, oh wonderful blogosphere!

Books:

The Bible – my first exercise in skepticism, when I wasn’t even aware what it was. You often hear from theists turned atheists that reading the bible from beginning to end with an open and critical mind was the turning point in their journey away from belief. I can completely understand why. Although I have always been atheist, I have also always had an interest in religions themselves, and a few years ago while on hard times and unemployed with lots of spare time I decided to read the Bible right through, in as objective a way as possible. What you get, divorced from the highly selective quotes priests throw out of pulpits like m & ms designed to lead you, ET-like, up the garden path of belief, is a fascinating collection of historical texts from many different periods of time, that give a huge insight into what people have believed in over the years, their intentions and their dreams, their preferred reading materials, their rituals, way of life: everything. It is a great historical compendium. It is also an extremely unpleasant book, filled with the worst kinds of disgusting violence, racial hatred and misogyny, just to list a few of its repellent peccadilloes. However, what you receive overall is a sense of how building a narrow religious worldview around a book such as this is in reality a rather daft and thankless task. You wonder why they bother; but then, maybe the main lesson to be learnt here is that most Christians don’t read the whole Bible. They should, because by doing so, you realise that believing in God isn’t quite the sane idea it may have once seemed. If you read the Bible objectively, it becomes much more difficult to argue the case for God without running into all kinds of complications, some linguistic (we’re talking translations of translations of translations here: of texts written by people who often disagreed with each other in the first place), some historical (it could after all, just be made up: the archaeological evidence is sketchy at best for most biblical events), some rational (donkeys and snakes don’t speak; the Noah’s ark story stretches science into the realm of fantasy), and some philosophical (is God love, or is he an utter bastard?). At the end of the matter, it just boils down to applying your own judgement. You should never beleive in God because of someone else’s interpretation of a book you’ve not fully read or understood. You have to do that yourself. That is Skepticism.

For the record, I skimmed a lot of the prophets, and the psalms. This was for my own sanity. My favourite book of the Bible was Ecclesiastes. You don’t need to know this, but now you do.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. This book is famous more for the responses to it than for anything actually in the book itself. It annoyed a lot of Christians. It probably also annoyed a lot of those ghostwriters for shit celebrity ‘auto’biographies who were kept off the number one spot in the bestseller lists. It could also be argued that it didn’t do any favours for the perception of atheists in the media either, and this could be down to what a lot of people saw as Dawkins’ holier-than-thou tone in the book, sometimes adopted by slavish fans of the book who just want to get one up on the creationists. Dawkins maintains his writing is simply passionate, and that the accusations say more about religion’s easily bruised sense of blasphemy. Anyway, all this would be to miss the point. I read the book to see what all the fuss was about, and it was quite easy to see why it has become such a touchstone book for many atheists. It really is one of the best argued cases against the idea of a God: well constructed, and extremely well-informed and presented. Dawkins knows his stuff, and knows how to write. The tone can occasionally grate, but it’s worth it. Read the Bible and then this and you’ll feel like a professor.

On a side note, I can sometimes get frustrated by what comes across like a skeptical obsession with evolution. It used to seem strange to me that nearly all the science focus in skepticism was around evolution. It’s extremely important, yes, but science is a huge and fascinating arena full of many other ideas we can focus on. The problem is that skepticism hasn’t really had any choice, given the rise of creationism over the last few decades (particularly in America, but also to a lesser extent in Britain). I am frustrated by the impression sometimes given that we are some kind of Darwin cult, but if science education is constantly getting attacked by fundamentalists who object to the theory of evolution because it disagrees with their favourite book, then I’m not sure that skeptics have had much choice other than to go on and on about evolution. We go on about it because there is a genuine attempt to confuse people about what it is, and to damage the education of children. There is a genuine fear that if we don’t do our best to convey why evolution is true then science education will just slide backwards until we’re really in trouble. I wish we could shut up about Darwin for a while, but we can’t.

Anyway, it’s a good book. Unlike ‘The’ Good Book.

Bad Science: this book is simply a great reference tool (aswell as funny). It highlights another area where woolly thinking and credulity can be dangerous, that of public health. The world of medicine is constantly undermined by the halfbaked claims and sometimes outright fraud of people who claim to be offering viable ‘alternatives’. Names such as Patrick Holford, Gillian McKeith and Matthias Rath will no longer sound innocuous after reading this book. This doesn’t mean the book is character assassination. It is never anything but fair and accurate. The book is ruthlessly researched and reasoned, and is simply one of the best books on the subject, if not the best. If you have any doubts about the latest alternative medicine fad, Goldacre is the man to read.

I would add that while in America religious fundamentalism seems to be the bigger threat in society, here in Britain alternative medicine is the more accepted form of muddy thinking and falsehood. This is why the book is important. Both are dangerous in different but no less important ways. This book helps to show how skepticism can be part of a truly righteous fight in the real world, not just a personal exercise in self growth.

Programs/Podcasts:

TED talks. These lectures from the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design conference woke up my science brain. This was before I got into skepticism, but was a major step on my way to that destination. The actual conference itself is something of an elitist and expensive backpatting session for smart people, but the lectures are published online for free, and they are great (but short) lectures by leading figures in many areas of research. For me, they reinvigorated the sheer joy of ideas, and experimentation, and finding out about the world. Sometimes, there just doesn’t seem to be enough of that in our everyday lives: the joy of simply knowing stuff.

There’s not just TED: there are science lectures and programs all over the net. They’re even on tv. Carl Sagan’s lectures are highly regarded, though I have yet to see them myself. These days, most science lectures or programs seem to presented by Brian Cox. He doesn’t sleep, I think.

Skeptoid: the first podcast I ever listened to, and the first self-described skeptical product I ever exposed myself to. Each week, Brian Dunning takes a well researched skeptical look at some aspect of pop phenomena. It could be anything from the city of Atlantis to UFOs. I don’t always agree with his conclusions, but that’s fine, because that’s part of skepticism. The research is always thoroughly done, and the show always interesting. The first episode to really impress me was the one which completely debunked the conspiracy theories surrounding Roswell in New Mexico. There is research in that episode which I have never seen or heard on any other show purporting to get to the facts regarding the Roswell ‘incident’. That fact alone has caused me to never take any statements regarding unusual theories at face value. I will find as much research as possible via my own initiative, striving for objectivity, and keep a closer eye on those who I know are doing the same. The world of UFO research all too often resembles an echoing chamber, in which only a couple of choice selections of data can be heard, rebounding constantly from researcher to researcher… If you’re interested in getting as close as you can to the truth regarding strange claims, then Skeptoid is a great place to start. Websites by lone bigfoot hunters and UFO enthusiasts who only reference those who only reference them, are not… Skeptoid was good for my skeptical side in that I stopped reading a lot of bullshit which was simply wasting my time.

Podcasts are a huge part of organised skepticism. Essentially web-based radio shows, they can be a great disseminator of skeptical material, and can be instrumental in bringing people together. Indeed, a mutual liking for Skeptoid was one of the catalysts which led to the first stirrings of what became the MSS. Two years later and the MSS now has a well established Skeptics in The Pub night every month, two podcasts and an international conference under its belt. The conference was organised in conjunction with the Greater Manchester Skeptics, who formed themselves after seeing what was going on just down the motorway in Liverpool, and who also now have a very well established Skeptics in The Pub night and a podcast. And all in the space of a couple of years. Check out the list on the right hand side of this webpage for a good introductory starting point in skeptical podcasting.

Skeptics in The Pub:

Skeptics in the pub! That great informer, entertainer, friendship creator, skeptical haven and supplier of food and drink. Skeptics in The Pub is one of the great inventions in skepticism. All the other stuff is made up of things you can do on your own, but if you want to meet other self-described skeptics and/or curious people like yourself, SitP nights are the place to go, and they’re all over the place! Go to one near you. You won’t regret it.

This list attempts to cover all the SitP groups of the British Isles. It probably doesn’t, so if anyone knows of any that I’ve missed, please let me know and I’ll include them in the list below. For now, however, this is more than a good start. Most of these groups either have their own website (a quick google should find it), twitter feed or facebook page:

Aberdeen, Aberystwyth, Bath, Belfast, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Cork, Cheltenham, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Guildford, Hampshire, Kent, Lancaster, Leeds, Leicester, Lewes, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, The Peak District, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Reading, St Andrews, Sheffield, Swansea, Westminster and Winchester.

Aswell as SitP, there are also various other skeptical organisations, such as Grassroots Skeptics and Ladies Who Do Skepticism, plus other similar groups outside the skeptical umbrella that do the same kind of thing, such as Cafe Scientifique and SciBar. Whatever it is you want in a skeptical community, it is out there waiting for you.

So, what are you waiting for?

Bob Churchill, British Humanist Association

by Bob Churchill
When: Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8.00 – 11.00 PM
Where: The Head of Steam, 7 Lime Street, Liverpool

Bob Churchill will discuss the BHA’s Census Campaign, what the problem with the religion question on the Census is, why it matters in the long-run, and why you’re probably not a Jedi. Bob will also divulge the surprising reasons as to why the Office of National Statistics declined to make the question more accurate even though they knew how to do it – and it’s probably not what you think.

About Bob Churchill

Bob is Head of Membership and Promotion of the British Humanist Association. He studied Philosophy at the University of Warwick and Queens University, Canada. Subsequently he worked in communications for a social housing organisation and then in marketing and information systems development for an industrial technology company.

Bob joined the BHA in January 2008. He has responsibility for managing the membership scheme and communications, promoting Humanism via their events and publications and liaising with Local Humanist Groups.

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NOTE: Due to our regular third-Thursday slot clashing, somewhat ironically, with St Patrick’s Day, this lecture will be taking place on Wednesday 16th March, at the Head of Steam, Liverpool.

Five Bad Reasons to Believe in God

by Mike Hall
When: Thu, Aug 19, 2010 8.00 – 11.00 PM
Where: The Vines (aka the Big House), 81 Lime Street, Liverpool

Summary

Apologetics is the systematic defence of a position. Religious apologetics specifically is a field of theology which seeks to present a rational basis for religious faith, defend the faith against objections and support the claim “God exists”. But are the arguments made by apologetics sound?

Mike Hall takes a look at five common apologetics, deconstructing the arguments presented and exposing any flaws.

Biography

Mike Hall is the president of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and presenter of the Skeptics with a K podcast. His particular interests are the existence of God, alternative medicine and Doctor Who. He owns at least two cyberman heads.

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With the coming of a very low-key, very gentle pro-atheism awareness campaign on facebook in ‘A’ week (http://www.aweekonfacebook.com/, Facebook event, #aweek Twittertag ), I’ve been reminded of the hesitation that many atheists feel towards the promotion of atheism in any way. Talking about any type of promotion or advocacy in favour of atheism as annoying because “this is the sort of thing that X-, Y- or Z-ians/-ists/ers do” may not be exactly how the majority of atheists feel, but I’d say, and only from my own feeling (not very skeptical, but still), that a large majority of atheists either couldn’t care less in trying to spread ideas and grow our mostly merry, but sometimes quite grumpy band of disbelievers, or are very uncomfortable with the thought of trying to actively or passively win people over to the idea that, maybe, they should give up the idea of an invisible Daddy In The Sky who grants wishes a little less frequently than you see the evil evidence of His Divine, or more humanly – if not humanely – divined, Will

But when you see the damage that religion does, and the toxic effect that a supreme, unquestionable authority and unquestioned afterlife can bring – from the banality and stupidity of the penny candle, crap wine and drain-filtering devices (pieces of The Christ’s Holy, suspiciously bread-like, Flesh must be saved from the insult of the sewers) of Catholicism (though after 2000 years on a bread and wine diet, I’m certain Jesus could make excellent use of modern facilities) to the horrendous tradition of wife-burning in Hindu ‘Sati’, thankfully both illegal and much reduced in modern India, or the unholy union of extreme Christianity in demonising a contraceptive layer of latex that could do so much to help the AIDS crisis – doesn’t this, shouldn’t this drive anyone with a rational bent and compassion for humanity towards doing what we can to reduce the influence of The Beast, even to simply kick the giant’s toe?

I can understand that being an atheist-in-practise and technical agnostic in a theist or desperately-wanting-to-believe world soaked in a steady stream of pap-filled, infuriating pamphlets, preaching and priests can be a frustrating existence, but to turn around from this and in that frustration deny to rationalism in general, or your rationalism in particular, the weapons of the battleground of ideas, the modern tools of marketing and persuasion, and give all the ground to fight for over to theists is to stop kicking the giant’s toe and take a gun to your own.

The argument that people should be left alone to find their own path, free to decide without coercion is, firstly, to deny that massive pro-theist coercion is out there, all day every day, not to fight against that tide is to resign the game. Secondly, it strikes of a high-handedness that’s quite prevalent in Buddhism, in my opinion, but without the necessary element in Buddhism of what is called ‘skilful means’, the art of manipulation over the long-term…

It’s with this in mind that I offer you, gentle reader, this parody of a pretty famous anecdote in the world of Zen:

A: Tell me, B, of this Atheism, this acceptance of the overwhelming probability that there is no supreme creator, no divinely-ordained purpose to the existence of every particle and person, no will to bend our souls to…

B: I know not of this Atheism. I cannot breathe of what I accept as truth, for this will inevitably influence your biases towards what would be your own internal outcomes… Yay, I decry the Dawkins and the Sagans of this world for their petty, insolent meddling in the minds of others. There should be those things left to monks and priests and dress-wearing men of every shade or stripe, every colour and complexion. We, WE have a very, VERY high horse upon which we sit and cannot be seen to enter into the arena of ideas with those of such trivial notions of idealistic fancy. Truly, it is a shame we cannot live without air and alimentation, for the foul believers indulge in these earthly, despoiling pursuits also.

A: But B! I’ve seen you chuckle at the Holy Men! I’ve seen you! You mock them! You do not go to the temples as other men, you prefer to sit with Dostoevsky, or a little light Kafka splayed upon your lap! Tell me! Show me the way that you take!

B: I cannot behave as the priests do. They take your hunger and feed you themselves… I leave you to feast upon yourself. Let your chips fall where they may.

A: Please! I beseech you! In the name of Pedagogy!

B: No.

A: An idea! A sign! A Symbol! Anything!!!

B: Have you finished your porridge?

A: I have. I HAVE!

B: Then wash your bowl.

–

Easter is based on a beautiful, empirical, scientific scheme – The first Sunday after the full moon (The Paschal Moon) following the Vernal Equinox – and is a picture of the lack of divine influence in the universe. Why not take this event, this year as the chance to express to the people who know you, the people who may be vulnerable at the moment, to say to the people who may be tempted (link NSFW: Swearing) to celebrate the death and resurrection of a Jewish Carpenter by telling children that a giant bunny left chocolate eggs in the night, to tell the people who will be influenced to even a tiny degree by your choices that you choose reason, you choose a life without a manic-depressive divinity pouring over every detail of you life – especially your sex life and pig-eating habits – and that you openly, unashamedly, staunchly reject giant bunny rabbits with the lock-picking skills of a cat burglar bringing chocolate eggs to the bedrooms of our children in the night.

Don’t get me started on Santa.

Come on!

Go get the A.

Upload and set it to your profile picture.

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I’m very much a supporter of seperation between church and state, and believe secular states (of which Italy, perhaps surprisingly, is one) are a progressive way forward into a less ideologically narrow world future. Coming from that viewpoint, this seems to be a reasonable judgement. One which will cause consternation to a large number of people (which I’ll come to later), but a rational and wise judgement none-the-less. At the same time, whenever I hear about rulings of this kind, I feel slightly uneasy. I suspect it’s the language used by the judges when they give their verdicts. For example:

“Its presence [the crucifix] could disturb children.”

‘Disturb’ implies an air of threat or unease, something which constantly distracts and worries. Now, a naked dead man in a torture pose probably isn’t the greatest image to expose your nation’s children to, but is it really going to disturb them? Children aren’t that easily disturbed when it comes to graphic violence (remember watching Robocop as a kid and loving it?), and in the home country of the Vatican, Catholicism’s particular brand of torture porn is everywhere anyway. You can’t walk down a street in Italy without seeing a crucifix. In fact it’s more likely to engender indifference or annoyance than anything else. I’m not sure ‘disturb’ is an accurate word in this regard.

Of course, saying a crucifix might mildly annoy non-Christians is not going to sound very impressive in a court ruling. The judges need to show they have strong reasons for their judgements, and their language has to be sturdy. A certain aggression is needed: your icon is disturbing us, therefore we will remove it. The same goes for the comment that “it violates pupils’ rights”. In everyday usage, your rights are things like being able to walk down the street without being stabbed, or going the toilet without a crowd watching and laughing. Things which affect you directly. ‘Violate’ seems too strong a word to use for ‘rights’ regarding a pupils’ eyeline in a classroom. The judges, however, need to show due cause for their verdict. The verdict is based on a legal case of infringement of rights, and they need to show this clearly and forcefully.

Nevertheless, I still find the language somehow… well, ‘disturbing’. It feels like an attack by one group against another. Which is a shame, because that’s not what is happening. Unfortunately, that’s how it looks: it looks like atheists bashing Christians, and it has generated the usual knee-jerk responses. There has been a lot of rants (guess the newspapers which printed them) about unaccountable officials showing no respect for individual cultures, despite the fact that you could very easily interpret the presence of a crucifix in a multicultural classroom as doing that exact thing. There has also been the usual complaint that Christianity’s rights are being trampled on, as if they are the only people whose rights matter. This is a weighing up of the rights of different people of different faiths. You can’t expect one faith to have more rights than the others. It’s about respecting as many people as possible, and concessions have to be made. To top things off,  bishops have denounced the ruling as another sign of Europe’s ‘degeneration’ into secularism. It’s all so familiar.

Ignoring the contentious notion that secularism is somehow a ‘degeneration’ and not a step forward, these arguments are bogus anyway. Church and state were formally seperated in Italy in 1984, so classrooms have no special right to display a crucifix. All this ruling effectively does, is take away Catholicism’s special privilege. You could, if you wanted, even view the hanging of crucifixes in classrooms as a leftover from the days of fascism under Mussolini, who made Catholicism the state religion. In that light, the notion of continuing the practise feels much less noble.

Personally, I find it misleading to link this issue to fascism. It is also a little close to Reductio ad Hitlerium for my liking. There are cultural factors to consider here, too. Italy may be a secular state, but it is one with a long history of religion. (Though not the first country to have Christianity as its official religion, as I mistakenly implied on ‘Skeptics With a K’ recently. That honour goes to Armenia). Religion has been central to Italian life for centuries: it is inextricably bound up with the culture. Its myths, ideas, images and tropes are in the language, the architecture, the literature, in Italian life in general. You could easily consider crucifixes as simple cultural decoration, like china teacups in England, or cowboy hats in the USA. If that is the way you see it, then this ban could genuinely be interpreted as an attack of some sort.

Besides, if you take the ideology of Christianity away, and view the crucifix as simply an object, is anyone truly offended by it? I don’t think I would be. I was never offended when my primary school made me sing hymns; I was just bored shitless.

But that’s me. Maybe a lot of people are offended by it. Presumably, that is why this went to court in the first place.

At the very least, the ruling doesn’t seem to have had the desired effect. Italy’s government is appealing against it. Local mayors are pressing schools to hang crucifixes regardless. The same is happening in civil servants’ offices and high street stores. Even the Greek Orthodox Church, who don’t agree with the Catholics over the specifics of all this iconography business anyway, are calling on Christians of all sects to unite in protest. All this over a naked dead man wearing a convenient scrap of cloth over his genitals. What would Jesus think? Apart from ‘ow’.

So, how to sum up this hokum? I was struck by the opinion of a bishop from the Greek Orthodox Church, Bishop Nicholas, who apparently lamented that “at this rate youngsters will not have any worthy symbols at all to inspire and protect them”. This irked me. Jesus is not the only inspirational mythical figure ever to inspire people, and won’t be the last. His removal from a classroom wall isn’t going to remove his religion from the culture either.  If he’s so inspirational, you don’t need to keep reminding people of his existence. Also, what about the the currently alive role models? The politicians, thinkers, artists, philanthropists, charity workers… there’s no shortage. Christianity does not have a monopoly on inspiration.

What exactly is the crucifix supposed to inspire anyway? Martyrdom? Is that truly a worthy idea? What about getting someone else to absorb all your sins by proxy, who then gets mutilated and killed for things that you have done? Is that something you want your kids to be inspired by?

Maybe this ban was the right decision.

Humanist Dave with beard and taped photo

Last month, MSS member Chris jetted off to a bright future and a new life in Canada. I think. I mean the brighter future bit, not the Canada bit – I know he’s in Canada. Or at least he said he is, I’ve no real hard evidence. Hmm. Anyway, in his first overseas missive, Chris introduces us to the Canada Humanist scene and their own Atheist Bus Campaign…

Greetings from Canada! Coincidentally, just as Ariane Sherine prepared to make her way to my old stomping-ground in Liverpool I attended my first meeting of the Humanist Association of Ottawa (HAO) at which the topic was the Atheist Bus Campaign. I thought it worth mentioning not only because of the fact that it was relevant to a Merseyside meeting, but also because it raises some issues that haven’t been so important in the UK.

David of the HAO gave a talk on Humanism as a whole and also, more specifically, the way that Humanism has been represented in Ottawa. While I disagreed with some of what was said (“Humanists are all atheists”, “Humanists only believe in what can be proven”, “Humanism is not a religion”) this was largely a matter a semantics. The most interesting side of the talk was what the group had been doing to spread awareness of Humanism and represent the non-religious in the city. So far they have been accepted onto interfaith panels in the city which contribute to the development of council policy. However, they have not been successful in getting involved with religious newspaper columns and the wider media. The group have also had a presence at gay pride parades and festivals, running stalls and distributing leaflets. However, an initial application to run the Atheist Bus advertisement (the same as has been running all over the world) was initially turned down by the city’s transport authority, OC Transpo.

It was this latter campaign that spurred the group into action. They saw three potential avenues to fight the decision: (i) through the law, (ii) by submitting a complaint on the basis of restriction of freedom of speech, or (iii) politically. The legal and human rights approaches were both deemed to be too expensive and too lengthy for a small organisation like the HAO and so they opted for politics and publicity as their weapon of choice. Turning up to the next OC Transpo meeting in specially-made t shirts and with duct tape covering their mouths (and with the media forewarned), four bold members of HAO made their presence felt (calmly and politely). Two HAO members gave presentations as to why they felt the advert should be run. In response, a member of the audience gave a presentation outlining why she felt that the advert should not be run (focusing on Hitler and Stalin being atheists and, therefore, if we run the advert we will inevitably have another holocaust…).

OC Transpo stated that it was their policy that “if in the opinion of the management an advertisement may offend some readers, we will not use the advertisement”. Clearly there is enough wiggle-room in this policy to (appropriately) fit a bus. Two letters of pre-emptive complaint had been received and this was enough evidence for them to decline the advert. This was in spite of 90% of the media coverage and the majority of local church groups actually being in support of the advert.

Dave with atheist bus ad

The next step was to take the matter to the City Council. Here 20 HAO members made an appearance in the public gallery, proudly sporting their Atheist Bus t shirts and attracting even more media attention. Bizarrely a counter-protest was organised outside which involved teachers and pupils from a local church-run primary school. Clearly it was more important that the children learn how to be “good Christians” than learn anything useful in the classroom. Having said that, David made the point that everybody (including both protests and the city council) conducted themselves in a civil manner. During the meeting the council voted 18:5 to overturn OC Transpo’s ban on the advert – a strong decision in favour of the HAO.

However, there are a few little details that made for interesting hearing… The first is that one council member decided to vote against overturning the ban on the basis that she was exercising her freedom of speech. The lady did not seem to see the irony behind using her free speech to ensure that others did not have the opportunity to exercise theirs… Secondly, these people were politicians and a number of individuals were careful to state that, although they were in favour of running the advert, it was not because they agreed with its message or even that they thought that free speech was that important, but simply because they saw a lengthy lawsuit coming and wanted to save taxpayers’ money. Very principled! Finally, and possibly the most outrageous, was the action of the mayor of the city who voted against overturning the ban. Only the previous day he had been present at a meeting of the Ottawa interfaith group where representatives from all the major faiths had agreed that they had no problem with the advert.

In the end, though, the OC Transpo decision was overturned and the advert ran on 30 buses for 4 weeks at a cost of CAD$7,000. However, David was pleased to point out some “bank-of-the-envelope” calculations that he had been doing which had estimated the value of the media coverage over the affair as being worth somewhere in the region of CAD$400,000-500,000. Subsequently the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled that (to paraphrase) “Canadians do not have the right to not be offended”. Also in terms of free-speech, the Supreme Court announced that a criterion that should be used in deciding whether to permit controversial material such as the Atheist Bus campaign should be whether the benefits of releasing it outweigh the costs of not doing so. Clearly the correct decision has been reached in Ottawa, although along the way the inherent reluctance of those in power to permit the basic human right of freedom of speech has been laid bare. Whether this stems from individuals acting on the basis of their own conscience and particular beliefs rather than out of a desire to serve their electorate’s needs or whether politicians are simply afraid of losing votes by alienating the religious element of the electorate is unclear. Whatever the answer, the Ottawa Atheist Bus campaign stands as a good case study of how Humanism and Atheism have been successfully promoted despite initial opposition.

Anyway, in tribute to the book and Ariane’s upcoming talk (which will be fab, so please come along!), I thought I’d stick my oar in and have a bit of a blog about atheism myself. As far back as I can remember, I’ve never believed in a God. Lately, I’ve heard and read a lot of stories by people of their conversions to athiesm, or from atheism to theism, or of their struggle to ‘come out’ as an atheist, particularly in religious households; but I have no such story to tell. No-one in my family is religious or cares much either way about whether a God exists or not, and the friends I grew up with seem to have been in the same boat, so far as I know. It’s simply never been an issue for me, to the extent that I’ve never even really thought of myself as an atheist. It would be like giving myself a label based around the fact I have arms, or have never owned a chicken.

Yet, the more people I meet in the Skeptical community, the more I realise that I may have been lucky. Maybe the town in which I grew up is simply a godless island in a sea of Church of England style passive-aggressiveness. Maybe stories of atheistic struggle are playing out all over the country and I just never noticed.

That said, the Skeptical community is only small, comparitively speaking (though growing considerably all the time), and is probably not a fair representation of atheistic and religous tribulations nationwide. Still, I do wonder.

Back in my primary school days (cue the sound of sweeping harps amid a slow dissolve back to the eighties) I remember one Christmas when Santa Claus himself arrived at out school to deliver presents to all the children. I can’t remember how old I was, though I was still young enough to have some residual belief in Father Christmas, albeit tempered by suspicion and doubt. I believed Father Christmas might exist, but that all those people who looked like him in shopping centre grottos were just his servants, and the nubile girls in skimpy costumes clearly weren’t elves either, but just there to grab the dads’ attention. See how sophisticated my beliefs were? Ahead of my years, I was!

But… this particular Father Christmas? Well, according to our teachers he was the real deal. He lived at the North Pole (or Lapland, or wherever the hell it was. It was cold anyway), was married to Mrs Christmas, owned reindeer and had a fondness for mince pies and brandy (such a terrible role model, drinking and driving over the festive period like the office knobhead after a Christmas party; no wonder he legs it to the North Pole afterwards, he’s dodging the police. Do we have an extradition treaty with the North Pole? Maybe we could get the penguins to arrest him? Do penguins even live at the North Pole? Have I ever read a book? When will this pointless tangent end?).

Where was I? Oh yes, the real Father Christmas. The REAL Father Christmas had come to our school. Apparently, he was on a special visit just to our class before he had to go and get ready for his Christmas seasonal work of breaking into people’s houses and leaving stuff on the living room floor. I, like all my fellow credulous pupils, believed every word the teachers told us about this magnificent man in his stupid red dressing-gown. I bought it hook-line-and-sinker, like the good, ignorant child I was.

Then I saw the elastic on his beard.

It wasn’t even that well hidden, looking back. There it was, a clearly visible white line of elastic, stretching from his ridiculously white cotton wool beard, up and over his cheek, and disappearing under his frankly disappointing attempt at a Christmas hat. I glanced at my classmates. They were in a world of their own, dazzled by the great bearded one’s handing out of brightly coloured presents. I stepped over for a closer look. It was clearly, undeniably elastic. The beard was fake. ‘He’ was a fake.

He wasn’t the real Father Christmas!

At that moment, I had one of those small but incredibly important epiphanies that litter childhood, like a small bulb (probably an LED) going on inside my head. The teachers had lied to us! Obviously, I knew Father Christmas couldn’t be everywhere at once, and often sent out servants in his place; but the teachers had informed us plainly that this man in front of us right here was definitely, definitely, definitely the real Father Crimbo. I was crushed under the terrifying weight (about two ounces) of the knowledge that those in a position of authority over us had abused our trust. This man – this badly clothed man saying “Ho-ho-ho!” over and over again like some kind of deranged alien pirate – was an imposter!

Feeling like a moral crusader (if I’d known the song back then, Saturday Night Fever would have been playing inside my head, just like it is now for absolutely no reason at all), I pulled aside a couple of my classmates and told them the shocking truth about the filthy, lying ‘beard’. I was expecting outrage at this affront to our persons, solidarity for my moral cause. Nothing but the real Father Christmas will do for us! You can’t pull the wool over our eyes! We’ve been conned! It was clear that the great man himself had been too busy to come to our school, and the head had roped in somebody else at the last minute to pretend to be him, probably a supply teacher. He wasn’t even fat and jolly!

Unfortunately, there was one problem. The other kids didn’t believe me. Or rather, they refused to believe me. They looked at me like I was mad. I pointed to the elastic, but their eyes just glazed over, then they called me silly and went back to playing with their new toys. They simply didn’t want to know! It wasn’t even like I was saying that Father Christmas didn’t exist, just that this wasn’t him. The evidence was right there in front of us for us all to see, in all its elasticy fakeness! However, for them the evidence didn’t wash, and from that point on for the rest of the day I was cast out to the fringes of our little mini Santa-church, a metaphorical atheist at the last supper (“Ignore him Jesus, he doesn’t believe in you - can I have some more wine?”). Maybe I should have attacked Faker Christmas, pulled his beard off and waved it above my head, howling in primal victory. Sadly, that is not my style. Or so people tell me.

At this blanket refusal of my discovery, even more lightbulbs (or LEDs) came on in my mind. I realised that not everyone around me was happy to accept the facts of the world around them, like I was. In fact, they were quite happy to just blatantly ignore them and believe whatever the hell they liked. To top it off, they seemed to be having a much better time of it than I was. Bastards. Ignorance really is bliss.

Looking back, I can see the similarities between the thinking of my fellow pupils and people who believe wholeheartedly in God. I don’t know whether my classmates believed in God or not, but this kind of thinking is everywhere. Truth be told, an awful lot of people simply don’t care what the facts are, they are going to believe what they want to regardless. This is fine for them, for the most part, but it’s not so fine for those of us who don’t think that way, who interact with the world more self-consciously. We’re not killjoys, it just takes a bit more to get us to believe something (hell, if the guy who visited our class had actually had his own beard, I might have been convinced). Both kinds of thinking can usually exist alongside each other quite happily. I personally don’t care who believes in God, as long as we all respect and get on with each other. The problem is those occasions when the two kinds of thinking do clash. On the small scale, it may be an annoying, whiny child called Colin complaining about a false beard. On the large scale, however, it could be the stress of somebody telling their parents they’re an atheist, and being treated differently because of it. Those parents might not be particularly religious (those kids in my class weren’t that bothered about the reality – or lack thereof - of Father Christmas either, until the situation was there on a plate in front of them), but when their child suddenly seems to have a view fundamentally at odds with their own, then quite unexpectedly their reason runs and hides, and they can often have genuine difficulty accepting what, to my mind at least, should not be a big deal at all. Being an atheist is a perfectly reasonable and logical position to come to, and it does worry me that it can cause so much consternation to some people. It is this strange strain of magical, wishful thinking that causes it. If something upsets the status quo, cognitive dissonance sets in and the person confronted refuses to see the metaphorical elastic on the metaphorical beard. Suddenly we seem to be on a different gameboard, and the rules don’t make that much sense anymore.

Where does this thinking come from? Part of me thinks that it’s a necessary function of the human brain, one that simply helps us all get along with life and with each other. Certainly, it seemed to benefit my classmates a lot more than it did me. Maybe my brain’s just wired wrong. Most of the time, this thinking is harmless. It could be that I am just a killjoy after all, incapable of shrugging my Skeptical shoulders and diving into the deep end of the pool with all the other humans. Maybe I think about things too much and have crossed the line from Skepticism to Cynicism, as has been suggested to me a couple of times.

Personally, I don’t see myself as cynical at all. I would love to live and let live. Let us all believe what we want and leave it at that. However, I still hear stories of people struggling to have their atheism accepted, of having their rationalism questioned because it’s led them to a conclusion at odds with what other people ‘want’ them to believe. Having a problem with this isn’t cynical. It astounds me that this happens in the twenty-first century. I don’t know whether it’s a sign of a rise in Skepticism, or in magical thinking, or both. Maybe the two feed off each other in a strange way. Maybe I’m just noticing these things more now because I’ve drifted into the Skeptical world. I really don’t know. I really don’t.

But can’t you see it?

It’s right there.

There!

The beard! It’s fake – can’t you see the elastic?

…

Oh, forget it, just pass me a mince pie.

Right, I’ve just finished watching Chloe’s sterling performance for AHS on the BBC’s “The Big Questions” (it’s on iPlayer) and am chewing my own arm in frustration. I am absolutely sick and tired of the sheer amount of time wasted on programmes like this dealing with basic, basic misunderstandings about atheism and weak poorly-reasoned arguments that have been bludgeoned to death about a million times in print and on television. Enough! From now on, if you ever want to discuss religion with me – or just generally – you should take these three points as read. They are done, over, talked to death, and repeating them will make you look like an idiot.

1) “Atheism is intolerant because it sees itself as a neutral position, and wants to remove religion from the public sphere”

Your problem here is just common-a-garden ignorance of basic terminology. What you’re describing there is a natty thing called secularism, which protects people of all denominations by not privileging any. Removing the ten commandments from courts, stopping faith schools getting public funding, campaigning for an end to bishops in the House of Lords – discrimination against Christians? No, it’s stripping away centuries of privilege. Really, for it to be discrimination, you’d have to be losing rights that other people have rather than losing ancient feudal powers resulting from hundreds of years of total cultural dominance. Consider it this way. In a free society you are able to choose to support any of hundreds of political parties, from the Lib Dems to the Monster Raving Loonies, even to the BNP if you really feel the need. So, say the Tories are in power and they decide that from now on they’re going to have 26 Conservatives permanently sitting in Parliament who cannot be unseated, and have all the voting rights of regular MPs. Public outcry would undoubtedly follow, but can you honestly say with a straight face that Tories would have a genuine reason to be offended by this? Do you honestly believe that removing these 26 unelected partisan figures from Parliament would constitute anti-Tory discrimination? Of course you wouldn’t. This is pretty much the situation with the bishops in the Lords and it shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone – not to atheists, not to Christians, not to people of any other faith; it shouldn’t even be acceptable to the bishops themselves, and they’d say so if they weren’t enjoying the extra power.

So to sum up:

• Atheism: no belief in a God
• Secularism: not allowing any religious belief or lack thereof to be privileged in government to protect them all. It prevents the passing of laws that restrict the freedom to worship and stop one sect being able to legislate itself into permanent power.

If secularism were the same as atheism, we’d be pushing an atheist agenda instead of one where the state has no opinion on the whole debate. When was the last time you saw a recklessly secularist government pushing for atheism as opposed to just taking away unwarranted privilege?

2) “Atheists say religious belief can make people do evil things, but so can atheism! Just look at Pol Pot/Stalin/Hitler etc”

Fucking hell. This one is buried and rotting the ground and has been for years. It seems like no matter how many times you explain this to people, they just tune it out and keep on repeating it. It’s like a goddamn virus! Let’s put it simply:

• Atheists: follow their own conscience, aren’t told what to do by a supernatural entity, personally responsible for their own actions
• Religionists: are given rules that they are not allowed to break by a supernatural entity, which allows the absconding of responsibility to someone else

Dictators like Stalin and Pol Pot did not carry out their atrocities because they were atheists. They did not do them in the name of atheism. They did what every dictator does and dismantled opposing sources of power for their own ends. In many cases the alternative source of power was organised religion, but this was not out of some atheistic imperative to wipe out the religious! Compare this to religious texts, many of which demand blood sacrifice, genocides and all sorts of discrimination. The crusades were carried out in the name of Christianity. The oppression of women and homosexuals in Iran is carried out in the name of Islam. The genital mutilation of millions of babies is carried out continuously in the name of Judaism. Millions of people across the world are HIV positive and will die of AIDS in the next decade because the Catholic Church believes that contraception is sinful.

Here are some stories that have recently been in the news, where awful crimes have been perpetrated and then justified with religious belief, or have been carried out because of religious belief. I see about three of these every day. I challenge you to find similar cases where people have committed crimes in the name of atheism, or because Richard Dawkins told them to.

• Mom of dead girl: Sickness was test of faith
• San Antonio baby found stabbed, decapitated – Police say mother, whose bail is set at $1 million, told them devil made her kill newborn
• British Humanist Association: Anti-witchcraft conference attacked by Christian church in Nigeria

3) “Your arguments are infantile because you know nothing about theology”

Sorry guys, I know you’ve spent your life studying it, but if you don’t believe in God then theology is a crock. It doesn’t matter how intricate and powerful your ‘discoveries’ might be but to paraphrase PZ Myers: “science doesn’t care”. I could posit the existence of living, breathing Haggises in the wilds of Scotland. I could write books about the quality of their tartan, their mating calls, explanations of how they are able to hide from human eyes due to excellent camouflage. I could describe with pinpoint accuracy their ability to use complex tools, their fondness for water and their average weekly diet. But you know what? If I couldn’t provide even basic evidence that they existed at all then the rest is just bullshit. If you reject a premise because it is entirely unsupported by evidence, then everything you have deduced and developed over the centuries is unsupported too. It all rests on the question of whether God exists or not; if he doesn’t then theology is bunk. This one also seems not to die, but it needs to be put down swiftly. It’s a rubbish argument.

It absolutely boggles me that these three arguments get rolled out even on TV programmes by people who are meant to be seriously intellectually committed to this debate. So next time, take these three lines of arugment as read, because atheists are sick of them. They’re lazy, and ignorant, and really really boring to counter. It just eats up time that could be spent debating more interesting issues.

Personally, I’d really test the fella, see how far he could go.  If I could sell my soul for, say, a guarantee that hell would stop being such a crappy place to spend eternity, I think that would be a decent deal.  You know, scatter a few cushions, stick in a pool table, get rid of all that fire and brimstone and gnashing of teeth, and Hades could really be a decent hang-out.  It’s essentially a bit of an eternal fixer-upper.  Plus, I can imagine I’d get some serious respect from the population of Hell for putting an end to their eternal damnation and torture, so that would really start me out on the right foot, socially-speaking.

So, with this in mind, what would you enter into a Faustian pact with the horned-one for?  What would you trade-in your immortal soul for?  And what impact might that have on your day to day life?

Leave your answers, as weird, wacky and wonderful as you like, below the fold.