Why is the Secular Coalition for America giving Justin Vacula — online bully, A Voice for Men contributor — a leadership position? [UPDATE: He’s resigned.]

@Ozy:

IDK, I feel like one can have rigidly structured systems of morality and comfort in the face of death and social aspects and connection with a greater whole *without* having the God part, and that in fact developing those is one of the things the atheist movement should be doing instead of appointing Vacula to leadership positions.

You can arguably create a specifically Christian or Muslim or other religious morality, by interpreting said religion’s holy texts (I say arguably, since there are always so many ways to interpret them, and historically there have for instance been Christians who think utilitarianism captures the core of Christian ethics, or Kantianism, or virtue ethics…).

I don’t think you can have a specifically atheist morality (although perhaps that’s not what you meant?). Since pretty much the entire field of moral philosophy abstains from referring to God when arguing for their respective positions, we can conclude that ALL current moral-philosophical schools are compatible with atheism. (Which is one reason why it’s stupid to claim that atheism=nihilism, and I’m saying this as a theist.)

@pecunium

Before I leave this discussion I want to highlight one thing.

In one of my comments I said: “Everyone should inform themselves and listen to the other side of the story before they sign the petition. I think that’s a fair request.“ You called that passive aggressive arrogance and me inept.

Later in the discussion you claimed that Vacula posted the address in two different places: „He did it twice, in two different fora. Did he remove it when he apologised? This one is against you.“ This is clearly false. He posted it in one forum. So obviously you are not familiar with the facts. But when I ask people to inform themselves I’m passive aggressive and arrogant. I hope you see the irony.

With this I’m dropping out. I really have better things to do than wasting my time with people like you.

Katz, my examples of ineffective charities, alternative medicine, and Republican economics were examples of uncontroversial places where believing things without or against evidence is a Bad Thing, not example of things religious people do more. I’m sure any study done would be confounded by the varieties of religion, with left religious doing the dumb shit of alternative medicine and feel-good charity and right religious doing the dumb shit of Republican economics and proselytizing charity.

Religion is, obviously, not the only silly thing that people believe for no reason; goodness knows that plenty of atheists believe stupid shit about economics or sociology or medicine or what have you. Religion is just the most entrenched, most popular variety of non-reason.

The reason that I care is that poor thinking leads to bad outcomes and I’m highly skeptical that people who are lazy in one aspect of their investigation of the world are able to set that all aside when they start investigating things that actually matter. I think that teaching children from the cradle that the best way to find out about the world is to read a very old book, to believe whatever someone in authority says, or to take their perceptions* for granted is wrong. I think that our culture is weighed down with irrationality and I think that we would all be better off if we could start dealing with the world as it is, rather than the way we’d like it to be. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe religious people are able to stick their irrational bits in the corner when they’re dealing with the rest of the world.

I have not made a hypothesis about how brains functioned in the past. I have made an observation about how brains function now, how everyone’s brain functions. I personally am skeptical that religion “evolved” in any traditional sense of the word. We can, of course, observe developing religions now, like Scientology, Mormonism etc., but those don’t necessarily provide much insight into the origins of religion as a whole.

It really would be more useful if people would address what I’ve actually said, rather than talking to some fantasy anti-theist making easier arguments.

*One of the reasons that I don’t count spiritual experiences as evidence for the existence of a spirit or deity is that spiritual experiences can be induced with drugs or brain damage. If it were possible to induce the experience of eating a ham sandwich with neural stimulation, we could still look at the sandwich and see confirm that it exists. The existence of ham sandwiches is well within the facts that have been discovered about how the universe works. Supernatural objects have no such outside confirmation and if they exist, there’s precious little space for them to sit. If you’ve had a spiritual experience (I certainly have), and concluded that this indicates that a deity exists, I’m interested to know how precisely you think that being interacted with your brain to produce that experience.

So Thomas fixates on pronouns, tone trolls, and leaves without answering any of the reasonable questions he was asked. Let’s see if he can stick the landing for another year, I guess.

@lauralot89:

“As a nonbeliever, I just don’t see the point in wanting people to not believe in religion/deities/faith/whatever because they’re believing in things that are not true. I don’t get it.”

It’s because our beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum, they inform our actions and stances on things.

Thomas: Look Pecunium, I’m not going to argue with you about the American jurisdiction and the legal meaning of specific terms which might be different from the casual meaning. Quite frankly, I know shit about the American law and I don’t really care.

Then you shouldn’t have introduced the terms. You could have left it out as not relevant. But you didn’t.

So yes, maybe you are right, though I remain skeptical. Because I’m smart enough to realize that this shit is complicated and you are layperson as well. If you’re interested in that discussion you should debate with a lawyer.

Actually… I’m a semi-pro. I’ve had to deal with this sort of thing in my professional capacity. Again, you brought it into the discussion.

You can be skeptical all you like, it doesn’t change you being wrong.

It’s because our beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum, they inform our actions and stances on things.

Going by that logic, I shouldn’t let anyone have different political/philosophical/ethical/any other beliefs than my own.

I’m an atheist scientist myself and used to regularly attend Skeptic events in the UK, mainly because I simply enjoy attending talks about science. I hate to say this, but: while I’m sure the majority of Skeptics are open-minded, well-adjusted people, in my experience the movement does seem to attract a lot of socially awkward men, including some single men who may describe themselves as Nice Guys, and I’ve experienced sexism on numerous occasions.

A few examples: being chatted up by two men on two separate occasions, both of whom seemed pleasant enough until they asked me “so, what do you do?” and got the answer “I’m a neuroscientist” after which they immediately changed and started belittling me and trying to take me down a peg or two. A female scientist I spoke to at one event told me she’d had exactly the same experience multiple times with men finding out she’s a senior lab group leader at her institution. I met a now-ex boyfriend at another Skeptic event and left him when I discovered he also had a nasty belittling streak with regards to my academic achievements. At a more recent event I brought my current boyfriend along and got talking to another female Skeptic, then when she mentioned her own boyfriend the man sitting with us angrily announced, “yeah, well I’d have a girlfriend if it wasn’t for everyone already being in relationships!” while glaring at my boyfriend. It was as if he was trying to say “you non-regulars should stop coming here and taking our Skeptic women”, and later my boyfriend told me that overall he’d been made to feel very uncomfortable and unwelcome by this man.

I don’t want to generalise, but these are just a few examples from my own experience of the Skeptic movement and thinking about them it seems these sexist happenings have happened to me pretty regularly, and in a space which I had expected would be welcoming and tolerant to all. I used to wonder why Skepticism was getting such a major misogyny problem, now I’m wondering if it’s always had one and the Skeptic misogynists are just getting more vocal.

@Nepenthe:

*One of the reasons that I don’t count spiritual experiences as evidence for the existence of a spirit or deity is that spiritual experiences can be induced with drugs or brain damage. If it were possible to induce the experience of eating a ham sandwich with neural stimulation, we could still look at the sandwich and see confirm that it exists. The existence of ham sandwiches is well within the facts that have been discovered about how the universe works. Supernatural objects have no such outside confirmation and if they exist, there’s precious little space for them to sit. If you’ve had a spiritual experience (I certainly have), and concluded that this indicates that a deity exists, I’m interested to know how precisely you think that being interacted with your brain to produce that experience.

I can’t speak for others, but I can block-quote myself from back in the thread as to how I trust religious experience:

I’m a theist. The reason is that although I experience reality as pretty flimsy when I’m not on Haldol, I have always experienced the presence of God as rock firm. Sure, you could say I should put complete trust in my experiences when I’m ON Haldol, since science has proven that Haldol is an anti-psychotic drug. The problem is that I would have to completely trust my Haldol-drugged experiences FIRST in order to believe in scientific proof, since world-without-Haldol doesn’t follow scientific patterns. Problem of circularity. However, I do believe in God based on pure experience, and derivatively, I also believe in science and the world as it looks on Haldol, because I once had a religious epiphany to the effect that this is the version of reality I ought to trust.
Now, given that I have thus decided to trust this version of reality, which follows scientific patterns, I have the same standards for scientific proof as any sceptic.

I’m completely aware that this recounting of my experiences doesn’t provide anyone else with a reason to believe in God. However, most of you, atheists and theists alike, probably believe without questioning it that the external world is real and that your senses are generally (not in every instance of course, but generally) reliable. And that can’t be scientifically proven.

I should probably add, too, something to these last lines: You might spontaneously think that the reliability of your sense experiences can be proven because, say, you experienced eating a ham sandwich, and then other people affirmed that you really did. Or some neurologist examined your brain and said “yup, reliable perceptive facilities”. But these other people who confirmed you ate the ham sandwich, or the neurologist, were also things you percieved with your senses. You must assume that your senses are, not in every instance but in general, a reliable source of information, for this to be evidence.

Good points, but I’d say the Skeptic movement is a little different in that it’s based around the importance of evidence and thinking objectively, and not letting prejudice, emotions and personal beliefs get in the way of the facts. For example- favouring evidence-based medicine over unproven alternative therapies and the teaching of evolution over creationism. In this you get a lot of debunking- of evolutionary psychology as pseudoscience, of theories claiming one race is more intelligent than another, etc. Despite this the sexism remains and a lot of Skeptics don’t practice what they preach with regards to women- they’ll attack racism but defend sexist behaviour, they’ll claim the media shouldn’t focus on the appearance of scientists so much while they themselves fetishise “nerdy girls”, and of course they’ll ridicule a woman for admitting to feeling intimidated in an elevator at 4am and post hateful comments when a female Skeptic posts something feminist on her blog.

The majority of them are very nice and accept that a wide range of issues fall under the Skeptic umbrella, from gay rights to libel law, and a lot of men accept that feminism and equality in general are also skeptic issues (Martin Robbins for example: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/10/sinister-campaign-against-page-3 ) but a minority make an exception for feminism and can’t quite seem to explain why.

@Unimaginative

I’ve investigated “world religions” pretty extensively. Take Buddhism. While in some aspects, it presents a relatively empirical theory of mind, other aspects are faith based, like cosmology, belief in reincarnation and certain conceptions of karma, and the existence of deities and hell beings. (And these have devastating effects, particularly the belief in reincarnation and karma.) And while my experience is obviously with my own culture, I feel pretty confident, given my knowledge and admittedly limited experience of other cultures, that irrationality is a universal.

And yes, science is not the proper approach to all human experience, but it is the proper approach to claims about reality. It would be pointless to approach a Rembrandt and say “This painting is beautiful because it is X% black” or whatever. (Of course, empiricism and reliance on evidence is far more than science proper. Any complete discussion of art would require noting that, say, women’s work is represented far less often than one would expect and that from reading historical documents discussing women in art we can make reasonable hypotheses as to why.)

@Katelisa

No, religious people do not constitute all lazy or irrational thinkers, as I said explicitly. They merely constitute the largest, most entrenched group, to the point where even discussing religious belief in a non-deferential way is considered rude, mean, or unfair, in a way that discussing political or economic theories is not.

@lauralot

When anti-theists talk about forced conversion, you can start talking about “letting” people believe what they like. Critique is not force.

@Dvärghundspossen

Actually, I don’t have any particularly strong beliefs about my own existence or the existence of external reality. I accept it as axiomatic (a statement assumed to be true without proof), because it’s not a particularly useful argument to have. Do I exist? I don’t know, but I’ll act like I do. Any theory about, well, anything is going to have a few things taken axiomatically, the fewer, the better. If a theist says to me, well, I have absolutely no proof of the existence of god, but I take it as an axiom because I can’t see any other way to function, that’s a semi-acceptable answer. (Only unacceptable in that the existence of atheists acts as a counter-example to the no other way to function claim.)

I’m really having difficulty understanding your “pure experience”. How could you have an experience of a deity? How did it interact with you to give you this experience? That’s the other thing about science/empiricism. We don’t ever say, well, that’s the answer, it’s incomplete, but we’ll call it a day. I mean, except in the literal sense, and then there’s beer.

How could you have an experience of a deity? How did it interact with you to give you this experience?

I’ve had an experience of deity. I have no idea of *how* it interacted with me, and it’s probably not something I could intentionally make happen again. My feeling is that something clicked in me and I *allowed* it to happen.

So I’m a theist who used to be an atheist, but I’m not religious. I don’t think god is a person or a group of people, I don’t think there are any rules that need to be followed or not, I don’t think that there are any rewards or punishments related to rules (except that there are consequences to our actions that are inherent in the actions themselves). I don’t think there’s a divine plan for my individual life’s path, or that it’s a sin to stray from that particular path.

I don’t think that god wants anything in particular from people. And I’m definitely not philosophically consistent about any of it.

I could spend a year writing up a treatise about it, and it still won’t come out right, and it still won’t make any sense to people who haven’t had an experience of deity (which I keep typing as diety 🙂 ).

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t evangelize, and my experience has impacted my actions and reactions in that it leads me to err on the side of compassion whenever possible. I think that’s a net “good” in the world, and I’m okay with that.