Be a good little atheist...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But you do feel the need to tell us stay in the back of the bus.

 

[bokonon]

But you do feel the need to tell us stay in the back of the bus.

You're not in the back of the bus. That bus is in your head, warrior man.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

You're not in the back of the bus. That bus is in your head, warrior man.

The sad thing is you believe that.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Yes. That was the point I was making. You said that the Darwin fish was "a statement in support of a scientific evidence based reality". And now you agree that scientific evidence based reality is inanimate and doesn't care whether you support it or not.

So...why have a symbol that shows support for it?

Um, because she's not trying to please 'scientific evidence based reality', she's advertising that she supports a scientific, evidence-based approach to issues. She's making a statement about herself. It's self-expression.

He says, hoping he hasn't put his foot in his mouth by putting the wrong words in someone else's.

 

[Mister Agenda]

I disagree.

You don't put the Darwin Emblem (Fish don't have legs) on your car because you think clients might be offended.

Not addressed to me, I know, but I don't put the emblem on my car because I'm lazy and cheap and not very motivated; but if I weren't, I still wouldn't put one on my car because I know too many people who did and had it stolen, sometimes with additional vandalism to the car. OK, I guess that still falls under lazy and cheap, just a difference of degree.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Fair point. But I'm here on a sceptics' forum discussing scepticism and subjects related to scepticism with other people on a sceptics' forum. That's not the same as walking around with a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase "I don't believe in God". Which is, essentially, what the Darwin fish is. I honestly can't imagine why anybody would.

Evolution does not equal atheism. I know a couple of people who have used that emblem who are religious.

If anyone is wondering how I know all these people (since I've used the 'people I know' bit twice now), I attend the local UU and I organize the local atheist meetup; so I personally know upwards of 400 people who accept evolution as the most likely explanation for the diversity of life. I know that wouldn't be too unusual in some circles, but for a non-academic in SC, that's a lot of evolution accepters to be in contact with.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Not addressed to me, I know, but I don't put the emblem on my car because I'm lazy and cheap and not very motivated; but if I weren't, I still wouldn't put one on my car because I know too many people who did and had it stolen, sometimes with additional vandalism to the car. OK, I guess that still falls under lazy and cheap, just a difference of degree.

My license plate frame says: "Rationalia.com, where God fears to tread."

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

This after you asked people not to use ancedotes?

Bwahahahahahahahah
Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

Do you read exchanges before commenting on posts?

It is not clear at all which anecdote you are referring to or why you think it was used inappropriately.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I didn't say you were.

Yes, I'm aware of that. The question I've been asking and, as yet, have got no answer for is - why?

I didn't say it did.

Your initial comment was a non sequitur.

The Darwin fish is a statement in support of a scientific evidence based reality.

But scientific evidence based reality doesn't care whether you support it or not. It just is.

Non sequitur. Scientific evidence based reality is an inanimate thing. The Darwin fish on a car is an advertising message aimed at people who see it. Your post makes zero sense.

BTW, I do not have one on my car. As I pointed out, if I did it might offend my clients. So all my comments on billboards and car signs are general comments.

Not all adverts work, no. There are ad campaigns that increase sales, there are ad campaigns that do nothing whatsoever to sales, and there are ad campaigns that decrease sales. I've seen nothing which indicates that atheist adverts have had any effect whatsoever. Do you have some evidence that they have?

Marketing is about much much more than "sales" of products. One markets candidates, ideas, charities, other causes, public service messages, and so on.

Humanists Launch Godless Holiday Campaign

"We expect these bus signs to generate a lot of public interest," said Fred Edwords, director of communications for the American Humanist Association. "Some folks may be offended but that isn't our purpose. We just want to reach those open to this message but unaware how widespread their views are.

The "goodness' sake" ads and posters direct people to a special Web site at http://www.whybelieveinagod.org/ that helps people find others of like mind in the Washington, D.C., metro area and nationally. The site also informs the public about humanism and answers common objections to the slogan as well as to the appropriateness of running the campaign during the holidays.

Such high-profile promotion isn't new to the American Humanist Association. Throughout 2008, humanist advertising has become more visible across the nation. In particular, highway billboards have been erected just outside of New York City, Philadelphia, and other major cities. They read: "Don't believe in God? You are not alone."

"Those billboards," Fred Edwords added, "started raising the profile of our movement and generated an avalanche of responses, both from people who realized that they, too, were humanists as well as from those who disagreed with us. But everyone heard our message loud and clear. And this is what it takes for us to reach our audience."

But they're more amenable to posters and Darwin fish?

You are mistaking the target audience. The idea of the evolving fish is not to convert theists to atheism or to convince Creationists that evolution theory is correct. The target audience is people who have not formed an opinion or who believe there really is a controversy over evolution theory. The message is, evolution theory is commonly accepted science, and lots of people recognize that fact.

 

[Resume]

Obnoxious? You mean like "Uppity ******"?

I was thinking uppity ****************.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Um, because she's not trying to please 'scientific evidence based reality', she's advertising that she supports a scientific, evidence-based approach to issues. She's making a statement about herself. It's self-expression.

He says, hoping he hasn't put his foot in his mouth by putting the wrong words in someone else's.

No foot in your mouth, I've been trying to say this for 4-5 posts now and it wasn't getting through. Help was appreciated.

 

[jakesteele]

S.E. Cupp is being absurd if this is true. Believers raise cane at atheists all the time. Atheists are bullied in school, fired from jobs, kicked out of their apartments and sometimes treated like pariahs. If we appear a bit arrogant at times well maybe its just payback on our parts.

Where exactly did you get that info? Do you have links, charts, graphs, data, stats, etc.?

 

[jakesteele]

Most atheists are "arrogant" if they say anything at all. I've been called "aggressive atheist" because I asked a guy to prove his god existed. He went into carpet-chewing mode immediately. The über-defensiveness of the believers says volumes about their belief in their own propaganda.

The uber-offensiveness of neo-atheists says volumes about their belief in their own propaganda.

Atheist's Law of Immaculate Perception© – they are the only ones who see reality exactly as it is unhindered by any cognitive biases. So therefore, to disagree with them is to disagree with reality itself.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Where exactly did you get that info? Do you have links, charts, graphs, data, stats, etc.?

No stats that I'm aware of. Plenty of links to examples if you are familiar with Google and want to know. Sometimes it's bad enough to make the news.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The uber-offensiveness of neo-atheists says volumes about their belief in their own propaganda.

Atheist's Law of Immaculate Perception© – they are the only ones who see reality exactly as it is unhindered by any cognitive biases. So therefore, to disagree with them is to disagree with reality itself.

I'm not defensive, chucko. I'm having fun.

 

[marplots]

<snipped a bunch that was worth reading>

That's how they turned out. What I'm talking about is what did you do when you were in charge before the kids were making their own decisions. Did your wife take them to church or not and who decided?

They did get exposure to religion, a few years in a Baptist school and a few years in public schools as well. They did go to church and Sunday school until the one abandoned it as a teenager. I don't see any innate harm in being exposed to religion and religious ideas. In fact, I would say this makes for a better atheist.

Seriously though, a single anecdote is really not relevant to what is being described here.

True, I was just outlining my perspective.

Look at your response to the politician question. It's time for you to drop this denial at least when it comes to replying in the thread. If you really couldn't say that a single atheist is or is not proportional to the population at large then why didn't you bother to look it up? Perhaps you preferred your weasel answer?

I'm not sure how it's a weasel answer, I just looked up the answer to your question. This gets at the heart of the matter though. I think your premise is that not having a proportional representation in the government of atheists is a data point that informs us about bigotry against atheism.

If that is so, then we'd have to demonstrate that people are voting based on someones stated religious preference. We could check by asking voters whether they even know what faith practice someone follows -- my guess is that most wouldn't actually have checked into it. But say they do and it matters to them. Then you'd expect this result because politicians are elected based on a majority. So, if you had even a 15% atheist penetration in the general population, you'd expect a huge skew anyhow.

I don't vote based on religious preference (or none) but I'm wondering if you do? If you do, then it's the same bias in reverse. If you don't, then you are ascribing a property to others which you don't yourself possess -- a bit unfair on the face of it. All in all, I can't extract much meaning from the single atheist in congress, certainly it doesn't rise to the level of bigotry for me.

Two Buddhists in the elected federal government? Who are they? And no, hiding your atheism does not count. No one is arguing there aren't closet atheists in office. I'm certain there are. Yet they have to pretend or they would not be elected.

I forget the Buddhists' names, but one is from Georgia and one from Hawaii. I don't suppose it really matters, does it? As far as pretense goes, I suppose they do try to hit some particular characature, as much as any celebrity would. I certainly do not believe I know much about these people on a personal basis. We could look at voting records. Take some anti-religious stance, (maybe abortion?) and see if the fruit matches the purported religious identifier.

Another weasel answer. Here, let me help you out.

According to Adherents, a reliable source of religion poll data, 3-9% of US citizens are atheist, agnostic, or answer they "don't believe in god" when polled. There are 100 Senators, 435 Representatives, 5 Delegates and 1 Resident Commissioner (elected but don't vote), and the President (VP really elected on coattails), for a total of 542 elected members of the federal government. 3-9% would give you ~16 to 49 atheist/agnostics. And you found one.

Time to quit weaseling.

It's a weaselly world, full of uncomfortable nuance.

If I've read you right, I strongly disagree with the importance atheist leanings hold as an identifier in society. I think this is largely a result of atheism being an internal state, invisible to others when I walk down the street. I also have no necessary philosophy or dictates that flow from it -- it would be hard to pick me out as an atheist by looking at my political stance or lifestyle. This is probably because I see atheism, not as something to be expressed militantly, nor as a creed I intend to make universal, but rather, for me atheism is a freedom from playing the game -- as much as the old analogy about collecting stamps means I can ignore stamp collectors in general. I do not care if the guy who rings up my purchase is a Christian or a Muslim; it doesn't bother me if my plumber spends all weekend in church; I don't mind that my auto mechanic worships Satan or thinks his incantations are helping him build his business.

Religion harms the religious much more than it harms me. I'd take a different position if we were discussing skepticism though and the overlap.

 

[slingblade]

Where exactly did you get that info? Do you have links, charts, graphs, data, stats, etc.?

Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study

What: U of M study reveals America’s distrust of atheism
Who: Penny Edgell, associate professor of sociology


MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (03/28/2006) —American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.

Remainder of article here:
http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2006/UR_RELEASE_MIG_2816.html

Personal Opinion article (not a study, chart, or graph, but not entirely worthless, either, anecdotal though it may be):

Erik Brown writes in The Daily Reveille:

For simply being an atheist and expressing my views, I have received hate mail, faced rejection, been harassed and condemned to hell, had my property destroyed, trash dumped outside my door, received numerous threats of violence and been punched in the face - not to mention fired from a job. I also find it incredibly hard to find a job in Baton Rouge outside the University and certainly have a snowball's chance in hell of ever holding public office regardless of my political orientation or party.

I and many atheists like myself are tired of being persecuted. This anger and frustration can come out in criticism, but a careful distinction needs to be drawn between religious criticism and bigotry. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom from criticism - religious institutions are a powerful force in society that, like government, must remain under close scrutiny.

http://www.lsureveille.com/opinion/atheist-contest-reflects-a-trend-1.1178865

"Radio" broadcast:



[edited to add one more:]

Summary:

When the U.S. Constitution and its first ten Amendments were written, the authors included guarantees of religious freedom among the federal civil service and officeholders. Article 6 of the Constitution states:

"No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Inclusion of this clause was probably partly motivated by the large number of non-Christians among the authors of the Constitution, including many Deists.

However, many state constitutions -- when originally written -- required officeholders to believe in a God (or Gods or a Goddess, or Goddesses, or a God and a Goddess, or Gods and Goddesses). Most Constitutions didn't specify the number or sex.

After the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was proclaimed on 1868-JUL-21, its Article 6 became binding on individual states. The religious requirement clauses in state constitutions became null and void. The 14th Amendment stated:

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

Still, the clauses remain on the books in a few states AR, MD, MA, NC, PA, SC, TN & TX), and are occasionally dusted off in the media when someone wants to bash Atheists, Agnostics, etc.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/texas.htm


It occurred to me the other night, as I was typing the volumes of my own anecdote, that such studies are simply compilations of anecdotes, formally collected, analyzed and evaluated. It beats me why studies are seen as more evidentiary than individual anecdotes, but they are.

When you ask atheists for evidence of persecution, their anecdotes may not be provable, but they provide data points, just as they would if you were conducting a formal study.

 

[Irony]

It occurred to me that it might be good to add the cases of atheistic parents being discriminated in child custody cases (you can find several examples just by googling), but then they'd probably be called whiny and trivial since the people in question could always just go out and make more kids.

 

[bokonon]

It occurred to me that it might be good to add the cases of atheistic parents being discriminated in child custody cases (you can find several examples just by googling), but then they'd probably be called whiny and trivial since the people in question could always just go out and make more kids.

Are any parents denied joint custody because they are atheists? The examples I found by googling were cases like "the judge took away Sunday visitation from me permanently (I have my son every other week rather than every other weekend, so the change could have been much worse), so that the child “could get the religious instruction he needs” via my ex-wife."

"Discrimination" in this case seems to be getting visitation 5 days out of every 14 rather than 2 days out of every 14. Or am I misreading this?

 

[slingblade]

Well, I'd say you're isolating one kind of incident, and at least suggesting that they all are "no worse than."

I don't think that's intellectually honest, but I'm not suggesting you're trying to be dishonest.

I think it's very hard to prove this. It's opinion, it's anecdotal.

But as a divorced woman, I can tell you that I knew when my ex was trying to be sneaky and devious and hurt me through our children, though I'd have been hard-pressed to prove it to any outsider.