Even atheism has a tinfoil-hat tendency

I am bored by so called ‘rationalist’ and ‘secular’ groups at the moment. In fact the poorly disguised racism and flat-earth thinking prevalent on even usually sane and witty websites and forums bores me so much I’ve withdrawn permanently from some and may stop looking in on others until the nonsense abates.

Inevitably, the sad case of Shafila Ahmed brought out the bigots in force but then, as a veteran anti-racist, I’ve always known how the fash and their kissing cousins like to infiltrate and poison the unlikeliest forums. Sadly, if any well meaning secularist points out, say, a problem caused by Muslim fundamentalism or orthodox Catholic thinking then it quickly becomes an invitation for the pub bore to jump in – and when you mention Judaism all kinds of freaks crawl out of the graveyard of ideas we all thought they’d been confined to since 1945.  

Some years back I was perturbed to see a flat-out UKIP lie circulated as ‘fact’ in a BHA forum, and more recently names I recognise as dreary BNP klingons were trying to start ‘skeptic’ and ‘atheist’ groups which – rather curiously - seemed far more intent on spreading common folk myths about Islam than exploring their origins and then debunking them along with the religious mythology they claim to be worried about. When even one of the atheist world’s best known women academics says she is avoiding some secular conferences after getting death threats from misogynistic male skeptics you know things are out of hand.

It rather proves the point I try to make to such fundamentalists. They assume 'All Muslims are....' (as if every Muslim lives in a tiny closed  community with no access to others, and has no interaction within other communities) and also assume 'All atheists are...' (as if every atheist was also a non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic progressive liberal, when every second comment on every secular website shows that all they have in common is a professed disbelief in the supernatural, while the vast majority are all too willing to swallow whole the most common folk myths about every sector of society).

Still, I hadn’t realised just how bad things were until I sent a jokey response in to a NSS Newsline item concerning a Revelation Channel report on Mitt Romney's visit to Israel, in which it was claimed that he mentions Israel a lot because "Israel is mentioned in the Bible more than any other country".

Things, I should explain, have been a bit dull on Newsline recently. The stories from the two producers are as sharp and relevant as ever, but they invite reader letters in response, and I suspected they have been ready to slash their wrists at the drivel from non-religious ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ types which have featured in recent months. So, tongue-in-cheek, I pointed out that “Reliable sources insist that the State of Israel came into being on 14th May 1948”, and that if he “is correct, (and as a deeply religious man and avid Bible-reader running for the most powerful job on earth surely he must be)” I wondered “would Mr. Romney accept that the Gutenberg Bible, all such historical Bibles held in museums around the world, and all those Bibles passed down for centuries and so solemnly read on Sundays in our nation's best known churches must be forgeries?”

I readily admit I do this every few months on NSS and other forums to draw out and wind up the flat-earthers. Anyone who knows me well can testify that when asked in interviews for my hobbies I always reply “Winding up fundamentalists until they explode”, so my refusal to take ‘serious’ topics, well….seriously is hardly a state secret. I picked up the idea from the late Robert Anton Wilson, who worried about ‘the New Inquisition’ – those who create a scientific orthodoxy that can no more be questioned than a mediaeval pope – and thought that the best way to draw attention to a ludicrous failure to approach things with an open mind was to poke fun with a very straight face. Usually it works, and I get a few e-mails from friends who had a giggle, but this time not just one but two herberts who probably think they are models of sane and sober rationality replied to Newsline trying to ‘correct’ my ‘mistake’ about the birth of Israel.

DUH!!! (Bangs head on desk in stunned disbelief before falling off the chair shrieking with laughter). It’s tempting to reply in turn asking if there’s an e-mail equivalent of the ‘SATIRE’ sign that used to flash on and off during Monty Python sketches, but is there much point?

So, all a bit sad, and by comparison I heartily recommend you read the reply sent to a BNP pamphleteer by one Dick Wolff, who describes himself as a United Reformed Church minister and Green Party  councillor for Oxford City. You can read it at http://dickwolffblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/got-sent-bnp-pamphlet-today.html and I think the sane and humane attitude expressed will make your day, as it did mine. Mr. Wolff may be a believer in things I cannot rationally accept as true, but is certainly someone I would be glad to count as a friend - unlike the tinfoil-hatters currently crowding to sites I used to think of as refuges for the purely rational.

Essential reading

My favourite monthly online reading is now up on the net.
Gay & Lesbian Humanist is published by the Pink Triangle Trust, previously in print form but these days as an e-mag. I dutifully plod through other humanist/atheist publications to check I haven’t missed anything vital, but this and The Freethinker are the ones I actually look to for relevant information - and sheer enjoyment.
This month, while mainstream media meekly kiss the Papal Ring, G&LH reports that:
“The man who has colluded in protecting priests who have abused children, who has been responsible for the deaths of many in Africa and elsewhere who might have benefited from the use of condoms to stave off disease, who has probably contributed to the suicides of many gay people and who wants to dictate to the UK how it should frame its equality laws is to be a guest of honour in the United Kingdom this coming autumn.”
Elsewhere Michael Campbell of Young Freethought explains why he set the site up, and how the hardbitten cynics of militant atheism (no really, the Torygraph, Times and many a bishop say it, so it must be true) got behind a much needed resource for young non-believers.
There’s also coverage of another vital youth issue, homophobia in schools, in a piece on FIT, a film being sent to all UK schools. Sadly, I doubt that includes Manx schools, where pupils still have to tackle the institutional homophobia of the Manx Educational Department rather than relying on their elders to stamp out a prejudice.
Maybe Manx kids could just hook up with another contributor, Arsham Parsi of Iranian Railroad for Queer Refugees: after all, both countries are run by profusely whiskered throwbacks with imaginary friends..
Lots more good stuff there too, so go to http://www.gayandlesbianhumanist.org/index.htm for inspiration to kick against the pricks.

Atheist Blogroll

I'm proud to say this humble blog has been added to The Atheist Blogroll.
The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. Any fellow heathens with a blog who want to join in should visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.
Now, sad confession here.
Normally, when you join up, there's an all-singing, all-dancing list of over a thousand of us scrolling away on the sidebar. Me - I followed the instructions to install and it all went Pete Tong on me.
Never mind, follow the link on the sidebar and you'll get to some blurb about the Atheist Blogroll, and scrolling away there is the complete list.
And very heartwarming it is too, seeing all those thousand plus links and knowing that everyone of them leads to another dissident. Some big and professional sites, others tiny little drops in the blogosphere like this, but all of us pushing back the dead weight of religiosity.

An Irish reformation

The campaign against a blasphemy law in Ireland (see Down with that sort of thing! )is gathering pace rapidly, and the associated website at http://blasphemy.ie/ is well worth a look. Why not add a message of support while you’re there.
Atheist Ireland, the group behind it, has only been around since December 2008, and though I keep in touch with Irish humanists north and south of the border I hadn’t seen these guys before. There’s a website at http://atheist.ie/, again well worth a look, especially the blog.
The latter reveals a lively interest in the kind of topics favoured on here – e.g. free speech, censorship, religious privilege – and a robust, no nonsense stance. They definitely join my list of fellow spirits to keep an eye on and collaborate with should opportunities arise.
It’s great to see things are perking up in Ireland, as also demonstrated in the latest issue of Humanism Ireland, which dropped through my letterbox this morning. OK, got to declare an interest as this blog started life as a column in that mag’s predecessor, which continues in the current mag. That said, it’s a cracking wee mag which equals any Brit humanist publication: in fact the wide range of articles, topics and contributors is evidence of a real open door policy which I only wish those mags would try to emulate.
You can find out more at http://nireland.humanist.org.uk/publicat.html , though unfortunately the usual sample articles from the latest (and particularly informative) issue aren’t up on the site yet.

Plonkers on parades

Courtesy of the ever excellent Ophelia Benson’s Butterflies and Wheels site (see sidebar) I was guided to a P.Z. Myers demolition of the newest witterings by Madeline Bunting and Julian Baggini.
If you haven’t been following the debates on the Guardian ‘Comment Is Free’ section, this sad pair of hacks are being wheeled out to try and convince liberals that the New Atheism (whatever that means) is just the teensy weensiest bit too strident, and Bunting in particular, rants on a lot about ‘foghorn voices’. Pot, kettle, black in her case from a frequent apologist for the worst kind of faith-based bigotry.
P.Z’s satirical piece has Bunkum and Bagpuss tutting away like two old biddies as an Atheist Pride parade goes past. Tittering at their ‘sorrowful cluckings’, he goes on to say ‘the image that keeps coming to mind is of two old prunes reassuring each other that their wizened ways are the only path to reason, all the while they sit alone, ignored. It would be amusing if it weren't also a bit sad and pathetic.’
See http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/mr_b_and_miz_b_savor_their_suc.php
for more.
And as befits one of the best atheist blogs in the world, even the comments section on P.Z.'s site, Pharyngula, is a source of wonder and inspiration.
I was particularly encouraged by Pareidolius, who said:

‘I love my varied group of friends and day to day life, but I also know that my sense of self-approval grew out of a youth spent in the heart of the Gay community in San Francisco. It was a revelation to find a loud, proud, accepting community that helped wipe away the years of being called a faggot and a geek in highschool. Being different was okay, hell, it was encouraged. There was love and acceptance and yes, it was noisy and obnoxious and certainly turned off the fundies and some of the old "lets just live quietly and get along" types (gay uncle Toms).
When I sometimes feel like Hitchens or Dawkins are too hard and polemic, I remember my coming-out years, and that as god-free folk, we are still awash in the hatred of magical-thinking. Awful violence is committed daily in the name of gawd. Women still get clitorectomies in the name of Allah and some kids in rural towns are in danger of being bashed by their own parents should they come out as queer. In our own way atheists are queer. Queer in every sense of the word as we are perceived by "good", polite, religious society. Maybe a few float laden parades wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.’

I have also had a busy, varied and eventful past in urban, activist communities elsewhere, and am now trying to get by in a quieter place. Sadly, the Isle of Man is still a racist, superstition-riddled backwater everywhere outside our finance sector, and that’s the worst paradox. Our public sector, our small business community, the euphemistically named ‘third sector’ which throttles all attempts at true community in favour of a Stepford alternative fit only for braindead rednecks – all dull little pools of incest and bigotry closed to gays, foreigners and other ‘subversives’.
Only in the finance sector can you, for example, be assured of BUPA coverage or retirement benefits for a gay or common law partner, or know that you will be employed or promoted based on your ability, hard work and determination, not your nationality, family links with toytown Rotarians or membership of a cretinous evangelical cult.
Even funnier, some local finance sector critics conveniently forget that the main inspiration and backing for their self-important ‘community ventures’ is right wing religious organisations who used offshore structures to contribute to the Bush, and now even Obama, campaign funds via a network of trusts set up specifically to (1) evade US regulations limiting political funding and lobbying and (2) close down professional US public services in favour of amateurish ‘faith based’ charities ultimately controlled by evangelical ‘megachurches’. If they took time out from vacuous sermonising and begging for a chance to throw away public money they might have noticed a Manx court case involving the IRS less than two years ago – the international financial community certainly did.
…and they wonder why nobody who works for a living takes them too seriously!