Emphasis Mine.

Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

Not that the avowed atheist has any doubts himself.

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that “even the skeptics can accept it,” the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist said.

“If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive, then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.”

Leakey, a professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, recently spent several weeks in New York promoting the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. The institute, where Leakey spends most of his time, welcomes researchers and scientists from around the world dedicated to unearthing the origins of mankind in an area rich with fossils.

His friend Paul Simon performed at a May 2 fundraiser for the institute in Manhattan that collected more than $2 million US. A National Geographic documentary on his work at Turkana aired this month on public television.

Now 67, Leakey is the son of the late renowned archeologists Louis and Mary Leakey and conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise. The family claims to have unearthed “much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution.”

On the eve of his return to Africa earlier this week, Leakey spoke to The Associated Press in New York City about the past and the future.

Exitinction driven by environmental change

“If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you’ve got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena,” Leakey says. “Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change. Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that the future is by no means a very rosy one.”

Any hope for mankind’s future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past.

‘If you don’t like the word “evolution,” I don’t care what you call it, but life has changed.’— Richard Leakey

“If we’re spreading out across the world from centres like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?” he asked.

“If you don’t like the word ‘evolution,’ I don’t care what you call it, but life has changed. You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So, the question is why, how does this happen? It’s not covered by Genesis. There’s no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I’ve read from the lips of any God.”

Leakey insists he has no animosity toward religion.

“If you tell me, well, people really need a faith … I understand that,” he said.

“I see no reason why you shouldn’t go through your life thinking if you’re a good citizen, you’ll get a better future in the afterlife.”

Lost legs in plane accident

Leakey began his work searching for fossils in the mid-1960s. His team unearthed a nearly complete 1.6-million-year-old skeleton in 1984 that became known as “Turkana Boy,” the first known early human with long legs, short arms and a tall stature.

Richard Leakey discusses the evidence for human evolution over a collection of hominin fossil casts at the Turkana Basin Institute’s Ileret research facility in northern Kenya in 2008. (Bob Campbell/Turkana Basin Institute/Associated Press)

In the late 1980s, Leakey began a career in government service in Kenya, heading the Kenya Wildlife Service. He led the quest to protect elephants from poachers who were killing the animals at an alarming rate in order to harvest their valuable ivory tusks. He gathered 12 tons of confiscated ivory in Nairobi National Park and set it afire in a 1989 demonstration that attracted worldwide headlines.

In 1993, Leakey crashed a small propeller-driven plane; his lower legs were later amputated and he now gets around on artificial limbs. There were suspicions the plane had been sabotaged by his political enemies, but it was never proven.

About a decade ago, he visited Stony Brook University on eastern Long Island, a part of the State University of New York, as a guest lecturer. Then-President Shirley Strum Kenny began lobbying Leakey to join the faculty. It was a process that took about two years; he relented after returning to the campus to accept an honorary degree.

Kenny convinced him that he could remain in Kenya most of the time, where Stony Brook anthropology students could visit and learn about his work. And the college founded in 1957 would benefit from the gravitas of such a noted professor on its faculty.

“It was much easier to work with a new university that didn’t have a 200-year-old image where it was so set in its ways like some of the Ivy League schools that you couldn’t really change what they did and what they thought,” he said.

Human survival in doubt

Earlier this month, Paul Simon performed at a benefit dinner for the Turkana Basin Institute. IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond and his wife, Peggy Bonapace Gelfond, and billionaire hedge fund investor Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn, were among those attending the exclusive show in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

Simon agreed to allow his music to be performed on the National Geographic documentary airing on PBS and donated an autographed guitar at the fundraiser that sold for nearly $20,000.

Leakey, who clearly cherishes investigating the past, is less optimistic about the future.

“We may be on the cusp of some very real disasters that have nothing to do with whether the elephant survives, or a cheetah survives, but if we survive,” he warned.

see:http://richarddawkins.net/articles/646060-evolution-skeptics-will-soon-be-silenced-by-science-richard-leakey

By: Katherine Bagley

“In recent years, the world’s scientists have begun to show that climate change is altering the magnitude and frequency of severe weather, andpolls say a majority of Americans now link droughts, floods and other extremes to global warming.

And yet, this country’s TV weather forecasters have increasingly taken to denying evidence that warming is affecting weather—or is even happening at all. Only 19 percent accept the established science that human activity is driving climate change, says a 2011 report by the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, making TV meteorologists far more skeptical than the public at large.

That’s a troubling statistic for some climate advocacy groups, which recently launched the “Forecast the Facts” campaign. Those advocates worry that Americans hungry for information on global warming will seek answers from popular and enterprising TV forecasters who reject the climate science consensus—especially as social media use grows.

“Their denial has the potential to have a huge impact on their viewers,” says Daniel Souweine, co-founder of the nonprofit Citizen Engagement Lab and campaign director of Forecast the Facts.

Climate skeptic forecaster James Spann, for instance, a TV meteorologist in Birmingham, Ala., has almost 98,000 Facebook “likes” and 60,000 Twitter followers, more than any local TV talent in the nation,finds one report. A recent tweet has Spann attacking Bill Nye, the TV host and science educator, for connecting hurricanes to climate change. “Somebody needs to tell this stooge the difference between weather and climate.”

“Local weathercasters are sort of rock stars … and surveys show that the general public cares about what their weathercaster thinks of climate change,” says Edward Maibach, director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication and lead researcher on several surveys of meteorologists’ global warming views.

But why TV meteorologists veer so far from the opinion of climate scientists is something researchers haven’t yet polled. Experts interviewed for this story cite three main reasons for the disparity: their different levels of confidence in climate models, meteorologists’ lack of education in global warming science and personal politics.

Distrust in Climate Models

About 97 percent of climate researchers believe that climate change is real and caused by humans, according to a recent reportfrom the National Academy of Sciences. Most working meteorologists fall into that camp, says Keith Seitter, the executive director of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). TV forecasters make up a small fraction of meteorologists.

In 2007, the 14,000-member AMS released a statement acknowledging the scientific consensus that human activity is causing the world’s climate to warm. The AMS is the nation’s largest meteorology membership organization.

Seitter says most U.S. meteorologists are researchers, such as state climatologists or those who work at NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), universities and nonprofit institutions. About 10 percent are TV weather reporters, he notes.

They are “unusually skeptical” and “pretty vocal … [This] has caused some conflict within the AMS.” Some members have dropped their membership because of the society’s stance on global warming, Seitter says.

Experts say one answer to the broadcaster/scientist disparity lies in their different levels of confidence in computer models.

While the models TV meteorologists use to forecast weather use the same “physics” as those scientists use to predict long-term climate trends (for instance, the same calculations for how the atmosphere and biosphere interact), the data they plug into them is quite different, explains Keith Dixon, a research meteorologist at NOAA, who focuses on climate variability.

Just using different data produces scenarios with vastly different accuracies, he says.

TV meteorologists generally plug in very localized parameters like current wind speed and sea surface temperatures, which provide clues to rainfall and cloud formation in the immediate future, in a particular area.

Weather models are usually only accurate in predicting five- or seven-day forecasts—if that. A common belief of broadcasters is that climate models are just as fallible.

“The forecasters live in the real world. They know models in general, and they know these models don’t even get tomorrow right,” says Joseph D’Aleo, a well-known climate skeptic and the first director of meteorology at The Weather Channel. “They aren’t going to trust them to be right about what is going to happen in 2100.” Polls show that a vast majority of weathercasters, about 75 percent, distrust models of climate change.

But Dixon says that mistrust isn’t warranted.

He explains that climate scientists crunch different data that plays a large role in determining long-term climate variability, such as the movement of heat within the oceans or the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface. “We’re making projections about the overall climate,” Dixon says, and that bigger-picture data is what makes long-term predictions so accurate. Plug in current wind speed into those models, he suggests, and the accuracy plummets.

“It’s a bit disappointing that this confusion over the models still exists.”

Seitter of AMS agrees there is a “disconnect” over the models and says it “can be easily fixed.”

“Simply teaching [broadcast meteorologists] about the differences [between weather and climate] models, about how they are essentially the same, but used in different ways, can do a lot to clear up any skepticism.”

State of Meteorology Education

Most research meteorologists have graduate degrees in meteorology or related fields like atmospheric sciences. About half of TV forecasters have bachelor degrees in meteorology, says Maibach of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. The other half is composed mainly of journalists who were assigned the weather beat.

Prominent broadcast meteorologists who are skeptical of climate science fall into both categories. For instance, John Coleman, co-founder of The Weather Channel and weatherman for KUSI-TV in San Diego—who has described global warming as “a fictional, manufactured crisis and a total scam”—has an undergraduate degree in journalism.

Others, including San Antonio meteorologist Bill Taylor and Cleveland forecasterMark Johnson, both vocal climate skeptics, started with undergraduate degrees in journalism or related fields like communications and later obtained meteorology certifications from Mississippi State University, a three-year distance learning program. Still others, like Brian Bledsoe of KKTV in Colorado and Andre Bernierof WJW in Cleveland, also both known skeptics, hold undergraduate degrees in meteorology.

But even if all TV forecasters had degrees in meteorology would it matter? “There are virtually no undergraduate meteorology programs in the country that have a significant climatology component,” says Bud Ward, editor of the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, part of a Yale climate initiative that has recently turned its attention to this issue.

“You can go through your whole degree without ever having taken a course on climate.”

Even those programs considered top in the nation—such as Penn State and the University of Oklahoma—are only now adding global warming science to their curricula, though they have long taught the fundamentals of how the climate system works.

Bill Brune, an atmospheric chemist and head of Penn State’s Department of Meteorology, says that students are exposed to concepts of climate science in two required classes—a survey course on atmospheric sciences and an upper-level undergraduate course called Radiation and Climate.

“In these and other courses, students are shown the changes in atmospheric composition and their impacts on atmospheric science and climate. The words ‘climate change’ … do not necessarily appear on the course descriptions, but they are in the course syllabi or lectures.”

Brune says changes are afoot. The course Climate Dynamics, currently an elective for meteorology students, was approved as a requirement starting next year. The class will cover climate change and its human influences, Brune notes.

Most undergraduate programs, including the University of Oklahoma, have added optional climate-related coursework during the past few years, a decision that some experts say could portend an increase in the number of forecasters who accept human-caused climate change.

D’Aleo, formerly of The Weather Channel and a former professor of meteorology at Lyndon State College of Vermont, says that introducing climate science into curricula will bias students against the belief that long-term climate change is driven by natural forces.

“When I was a professor years ago, we taught students how to think, not what to think,” he says.

AMS and the National Weather Association (NWA), the other major U.S. professional organization for meteorologists, offer optional broadcast meteorology certification programs. To obtain AMS certification, forecasters have to take courses on a range of topics from atmospheric physics to remote sensing, to pass a written exam and to have their on-air work and forecasts reviewed.

The AMS doesn’t require climate science coursework to earn certification. Nor does the society test forecasters’ global warming knowledge during the exam. “There is no discussion of changing the requirements to include [climate change],” says Seitter of AMS. The certification program is geared toward making sure broadcasters have adequate knowledge of forecasting, “since this is what these guys are getting paid to do.”

Seitter notes that forecasters are encouraged to take global warming courses on their own.

To get NWA certification, TV meteorologists similarly have to pass a written exam and have their work critiqued by the society. Applicants are not tested on their climate change knowledge.

Souweine of Forecast the Facts believes the AMS and NWA programs need to change. “A certification for meteorologists that has no requirement for them to be able to speak intelligently and in an informed way about climate change seems like an empty certification,” he says.

Souweine says the campaign plans to put pressure on both societies to require such coursework.

But whether or how a weathercaster chooses to discuss climate change may come down to something harder to influence, says Maibach: their personal politics and beliefs.

In recent years, climate change has become a partisan lighting rod, with the majority of Democrats, about two-thirds, believing that Earth’s temperature is rising from human activity, with only one-third of Republicans agreeing with them, say polls.

No candidate who was vying for the GOP presidential nomination admitted to the scientific consensus, even if they supported climate policy in the past.

Meteorologists are not immune, says Maibach. “Climate change has become so politically polarized that someone’s party affiliation is now the dominant lens through which people come to look at the issue—even if they have scientific training.”

Maibach says he believes that personal politics are so central to views on climate change that he is considering asking TV meteorologists to state their party affiliations in upcoming surveys.

Audience Expectations

Weathercasters are often the only people at their stations with scientific backgrounds. As a result, they often engage in on-air chit-chat with news anchors on science issues, including global warming. They also write articles for the station’s website and are frequently invited to give guest lectures at schools and various community organizations.

For many Americans, their TV weatherperson is the only climate-related authority they encounter each day.

“Most Americans are never going to know who the world’s major climate scientists are, but they know who their weatherperson is,” Souweine says. According to a survey by Maibach and colleagues, more than three-quarters of TV meteorologists say they have discussed the topic of global warming either on or off air.

The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication has hosted workshops across the country that connect TV weathercasters with climate scientists. During the day-long event, climate scientists discuss the link between climate change and weather, address the latest science and help meteorologists understand how global warming will affect their regions. “We go into this realistically,” says Ward, the editor of the forum and workshop organizer. “We know we are not always going to change people’s opinions, so that is not our goal. We just want to provide them with accurate information and give them avenues to ask questions.”

But some, like D’Aleo, who is no longer on the air but runs a website calledICECAP, which promotes views of climate skeptics, say global warming should be off limits to forecasters.

“It is not our role,” he says. “And in fact, many station managers have told forecasters not to do it, because if you take one side or another it will alienate a percentage of your audience and you might lose them.” In 2010, D’Aleo did anon-air segment with Coleman in San Diego, in which he accuses climate scientists of manipulating temperature data on global warming.

Souweine of Forecast the Facts says that silence isn’t an option. “Viewers do care about this … They feel it is the job of the news to tell them what is going on, and [climate change] is the biggest weather story of the 21st century.

“When they don’t mention climate change while reporting on another set of record high temperatures or unprecedented severe weather,” Souweine continues, “it is like a news reporter talking about a string of murders and not mentioning there is a suspect in custody.”

InsideClimate News intern Kathryn Doyle contributed reporting to this story.

Republished with permission of InsideClimate News, a non-profit, non-partisan news organization that covers energy and climate change—plus the territory in between where law, policy and public opinion are shaped.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.alternet.org/visions/155571/why_don?page=entire

By:Adam Lee

“What kind of world would we have if a majority of the human race was atheist?

To hear religious apologists tell it, the triumph of atheism would mean a swift descent into selfishness and chaos. The defenders of the faith argue that atheism inevitably leads to selfishness and nihilism, and that only religion can justify charity or compassion, bind people together in community, or inspire a lively and flourishing culture. But this assertion can only be sustained by ignoring the accomplishments of famous nonreligious people throughout history, of which there have been many.

To dispel the myth that nonbelievers have never contributed anything of worth or value to human civilization, I want to highlight some who’ve left their mark in the arts, the sciences and the humanities. Demonstrating that the godless count distinguished members of the human race among our numbers is a way to fight back against this prejudice and to demonstrate that we, too, have a historical legacy we can be proud of.

Not all of the people profiled here were strict atheists, but all of them werefreethinkers, a broader umbrella term that embraces a rainbow of unorthodoxy, religious dissent, skepticism, and unconventional thinking. It’s no surprise that so many influential thinkers and creative types have come from the ranks of these intellectual revolutionaries. Organized religion tends to reward people not for thinking creatively or critically, but for reciting and defending the dogmas of the previous generation. Throughout human history, it has consistently been true that hidebound theocracies have been mired in poverty, backwardness and intellectual stagnation, whereas the most dramatic advances have come about in times and places where people had the freedom to think for themselves, to freely question and debate. The lives of the men and women recounted here bear testimony to this.

1. Albert Einstein. The archetypal scientific genius, Einstein inaugurated a revolution in physics that bears fruit to this day. His theories and equations undergird the 20th century: technologies from nuclear power to GPS satellites only exist because of his discoveries. But beyond his impressive scientific contributions, he was known as a peacemaker and civil-rights advocate: he was one of the first to warn the world of the dangers of Nazism, joined anti-lynching campaigns, publicly opposed McCarthyism, and called for nuclear disarmament worldwide. Later in life, he was offered the presidency of Israel but turned it down, saying that he was unqualified.

Einstein famously made statements like, “God does not play dice with the universe” that have inspired religious apologists to try to claim him as their own, but on other occasions, he made it clear that this was nothing but poetic metaphor. He made his views known in letters, writing, for example: “I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” On another occasion, he wrote, “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

2. Robert Ingersoll. One of the most famous Americans most people today have never heard of, Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, known in his lifetime as the “Great Agnostic,” once commanded national fame and renown. In an era before television and radio, public oratory was the leading form of entertainment, and Ingersoll set the gold standard. He was one of the most sought-after speakers in the country; he drew crowds of thousands, and on one occasion, after hearing him speak, Mark Twain observed, “What an organ is human speech when it is employed by a master!”

He was a staunch abolitionist who served honorably for the Union in the Civil War, and went on to advocate progressive causes like free speech, women’s rights, anti-racism and the abolition of corporal punishment. Though politicians repeatedly sought his endorsement and his rhetorical talents, the highest position that Ingersoll himself ever held was the attorney general of Illinois — due, no doubt, to his willingness to eloquently express his freethought views. In a eulogy, the New York Times observed that only his outspoken irreligious views kept him from taking “that place in the… public life of his country to which by his talents he would otherwise have been eminently entitled.” Not that Ingersoll himself would have wanted it any other way: as he declared, a truly spiritual man “attacks what he believes to be wrong, though defended by the many, and he is willing to stand for the right against the world.”

3. W.E.B. DuBois. Contrary to popular impression, the black community in America has a long tradition of involvement with freethought and secularism, as exemplified by one of its most influential racial-justice activists, W.E.B. DuBois. One of the first black men to get a Ph.D. from Harvard, DuBois was one of the founders of the NAACP and a prolific and critically praised writer, educator and historian.

By DuBois’ own account, he was raised religious and attended an orthodox missionary college, but his doubts about religion blossomed while studying in Europe. When he returned to America, he taught at a black Methodist college, Wilberforce University, but drew the wrath of school administrators for refusing to lead students in prayer. As Susan Jacoby quotes him in her book Freethinkers, “I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war.” He also said he wanted “to make the Negro church a place where colored men and women of education and energy can work for the best things regardless of their belief or disbelief in unimportant dogmas and ancient and outworn creeds.”

4. Zora Neale Hurston. Like DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston was an influential black freethinker and an acclaimed early 20th-century author. She attended Columbia University on a scholarship, and while living in Manhattan at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, met scholars and artists like Margaret Mead and Langston Hughes. She herself wrote both fiction and anthropological works about the black community. Her masterwork, the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, was judged one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

In her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston makes her freethought views clear and denies that the prospect of nonexistence after death holds any fear for her:

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws… It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men?

5. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Although no one person deserves sole credit for laying the groundwork for the 19th Amendment, Elizabeth Cady Stanton comes close. Stanton organized and shepherded one of the pivotal early events in the suffrage movement, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, and she played a key role in issuing the famous Declaration of Sentiments that first called for women’s suffrage (against the wishes of other attendees, some of whom felt that demanding the vote was too radical even for them).

Despite a lifetime of organizing and lobbying for women’s suffrage, Stanton was often shunted aside by her own movement for her controversial, outspoken freethought views and her attacks on religion as a major justification for the continued oppression of women, including her scathing The Woman’s Bible. On one occasion, she wrote, “I have endeavoured to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at least that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church.”

Some of Stanton’s spiritual descendants in the feminist movement had similarly irreligious views. One of the most famous was Margaret Sanger, one of the founders of Planned Parenthood and a fearless crusader in the fight to make birth control available and legal to American women. Sanger’s motto was “No Gods, No Masters,” and her newsletter had the memorable title The Woman Rebel.

6. Asa Philip Randolph. The 20th-century American civil rights movement is often identified with Christianity, which is almost single-handedly due to the influence of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But secular humanists played almost as important a role. One of them was Asa Philip Randolph, a trailblazing labor organizer whose career spanned the 20th century and who was one of the pioneers of the strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience.

Randolph entered the civil-rights movement by way of the labor movement, beginning by organizing mainly black railroad workers. But he soon set his sights higher, especially as the country was drawn into World War II and the defense industry was booming. He took the lead in organizing civil-rights marches that convinced presidents Roosevelt and Truman to issue executive orders ending segregation in defense contractors and the armed services. As his star rose, he served as vice president of the AFL-CIO and helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

In addition to all this, Randolph was a lifelong freethinker. He was the founder of a literary magazine, The Messenger, whose masthead declared that “Prayer is not one of our remedies... We consider prayer as nothing more than a fervent wish.” He was also one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto in 1970.

7. Robert Frost. New England’s most famous poet is justly immortalized for his poetic tributes to nature and rural life, but his religious skepticism is lesser known. Frost’s views on God are complex; for much of his life, he grappled with a deep-seated superstitious fear he could never fully shake. But after 20 years of marriage, his wife said that he was an atheist, and he didn’t deny it.

What’s interesting is that this comes through inadvertently in his poetry. When speaking of his fellow human beings and their relationships, Frost is warm, welcoming, thoroughly humanist. But when he turns to the subject of God, he more often than not becomes dark and terrifying, depicting the idea of a deity as a savage force of nature more than a worthy object of reverence. His famous poem “Design” calls the suffering and predation in nature a “design of darkness.” The poem “Once by the Pacific,” Frost’s vision of the apocalypse, has the poet looking out at crashing ocean waves and envisioning them as a harbinger of doomsday. The poem “A Loose Mountain” envisions God as a cosmic destroyer waiting to hurl a meteor at the Earth, like a stone thrown from a sling, biding his time so he can release it when it will cause the maximum amount of devastation.

8. Emma Lazarus. Like Robert Frost, Emma Lazarus was a poet whose words have defined the American experience. She may not have as many classics to her name, but her one crowning achievement may be even better known than any of his: her poem “The New Colossus,” best known as the words engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” The statue was originally a symbol of republicanism, but Lazarus’ poem recast it as a beacon for immigrants from all over the world. Even when America has fallen short of this ideal, these words remind us that we can do better and inspire us to work for positive change.

Lazarus came from a Jewish background, but she was known as a freethinker. As the Jewish Virtual Library records, on one occasion she told a rabbi who asked her to contribute to a hymn book, “I shall always be loyal to my race, but I feel no religious fervor in my soul.”

9. Yip Harburg. E.Y. “Yip” Harburg isn’t a household name, but some of his works are. Harburg was the Broadway lyricist who wrote the words to some of America’s most memorable and culturally significant songs, including “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” ”Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and all the music from The Wizard of Oz, including “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Harburg was known as “Broadway’s social conscience” for the progressive messages of his songs and musicals, including “Bloomer Girl” and “Hooray for What,” which advocated feminism and anti-war themes respectively. At one point he was blacklisted by McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, but kept working for the stage even as he was barred from television and film. He said in a biography, “The House of God never had much appeal for me. Anyhow, I found a substitute temple — the theater.”

For more famous historical freethinkers, see my series “The Contributions of Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby’s book, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, or Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: A History.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.alternet.org/story/155590/9_great_freethinkers_and_religious_dissenters_in_history?page=entire

By: Austin Dacy

“It is hard to imagine a less hateful person than Alexander Aan. Mild and soft-spoken, the 30-year-old Indonesian bureaucrat recently told Al Jazeera, in an interview conducted just outside his jail cell, “As a democracy and part of the global community, because we are not isolated from the outside world, I think we should be more tolerant. Nobody hurts anyone simply because he has different ideas.” And yet Aan is facing up to 11 years in prison for blasphemy and inciting religious hatred because he voiced his skepticism about Islam on Facebook.In the West, the paradigms of blasphemy are fair-haired Danish cartoonists drawing the Prophet and Richard Dawkins badmouthing Yahweh. The public debate is about how to balance freedom of speech with respect for religious belief. But Alexander Aan’s case, playing out in the world’s most populous Muslim country, represents a much different global reality. Here the value at stake is not just freedom of speech, but freedom of conscience. The real contest is not between atheists and believers, but between those who affirm the equality of all persons of conscience and those who deny it.Aan was arrested in a small town in West Sumatra on January 18 after a number of local residents assaulted him at work in an act of self-styled vigilantism. They were reacting to some of his postings on a Facebook page devoted to atheism: a note entitled “the Prophet Muhammad was attracted to his own daughter-in-law”; a comic suggesting the Prophet slept with his wife’s maid; and a status update reading, “If you believe in god, then please show him to me.”Prosecutors have charged Aan under the Electronic Information and Transaction Law, which prohibits inciting hatred or enmity of a religious group, and under the country’s blasphemy provision, Article 156a, which criminalizes “hostility, hatred or contempt” and “disgracing” of a religion. Article 156a also prohibits attempts to persuade others to leave their religion and embrace atheism.Aan’s small, pro bono legal team is not optimistic. The Indonesian legal system is designed for unequal treatment of unbelievers. The constitution officially recognizes the religions of Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism, and stipulates that every citizen must believe in a supreme being.

Desecrating Secularism

As the Indonesian activist Karl Karnadi points out, the persecution of Alexander Aan comes in the context of broader trends of “increasing religious intolerance in Indonesia which has victimized minority Ahmadiyya Muslims, Shia, Christians, Buddhists.” Indonesia’s Minister of Religious Affairs has recently called Shia Islam a “heresy” and publicly backed provincial bans on the Ahmadiyya, who consider themselves Muslims but differ from mainstream Islam on the finality of the Prophet.Viewed in this context, atheists’ conversations on the internet should be seen as one end of a continuum of manifestations of conscience, exercises of the capacity to grapple with ultimate questions of meaning, value, and morality. From a moral perspective, there is an important symmetry between the attitude of the believer who reserves special reverence for a deity, saint, or prophet, and the attitude of the secularist who asserts that every person is equally holy. Neither of these beliefs is uniquely deserving of being labeled a spiritual commitment, relegating the other to mere “speech” against that commitment. Alexander Aan has no less moral ground to claim that monotheism insults his sense of what is and what is not sacred. In my book The Future of Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights (Continuum, 2012), I call this The Symmetry Thesis.A government that singles out some citizens’ conceptions of the sacred for official protection is guilty of a gross failure of equal treatment. This principle of equality is supported by recent developments in international human rights law. Last summer the United Nations Human Rights Committee commented that laws restricting blasphemy are inherently discriminatory because they give to traditional believers a legal protection that is not available to the religiously heterodox or secular.The same inequality can be found in the criminalization of “hatred” and “enmity” towards a religion. The problem is not confined to Indonesia but can be found in most of the hate speech statutes throughout secular democratic Europe. Article 226b of the Danish Penal Code, for instance, singles out for protection—among other categories—groups of people who “on account of their faith” are threatened, insult or degraded. It does not single out people—regardless of their affiliation—on account of their convictions of conscience

Know Thy Enmity

The most principled motivation for hate speech laws can be found in the principle of equal respect for citizens. And yet, in the final analysis the principle of equality undermines their legitimacy. What is morally objectionable about hate speech is its attack on the standing of a group of citizens, a denial or denigration of their entitlement to equal concern and respect. Laws against group insult or group defamation, as Jeremy Waldron maintains, are intended to protect vulnerable minorities by exhibiting the state’s commitment to their equal dignity and equal standing in the face of bigots. Surely we all have a duty to work towards a society in which all citizens enjoy equal standing. The difficult question is what the state legitimately may do to promote this end.If the state is to intervene on behalf of the reputation and standing of “Muslims,” or any other faith community, it must first decide on whose behalf it is intervening. It must lend its official approval to some idea of what counts as a “real” or “authentic” member of such groups. Were Aan’s expressions hateful or abusive towards Muslims? That depends on whether we assume that a Muslim is by definition one who believes in the moral perfection of the Prophet. Without this assumption, talk of Muhammad’s sexual indiscretions cannot be construed as inherently insulting to “Muslims.”As the American constitutional scholar Robert Post has argued, the identities of such communities are not scientific facts but social categories that are open to moral contestation and re-negotiation. It would not do to take a poll of all of the self-identified members of the group to determine what they believe. For some will believe it, and others will not.The question now becomes, which of the various understandings of the identity is most genuine, authentic, or warranted. And that question is not subject to a statistical proof. It is a normative question. Typically it is the most vulnerable or marginalized within the community who have the most urgent stake in contesting and re-negotiating the meaning of the identity. In a just society, such questions are not to be decided by the state but are to be left to individuals to work out in the public and cultural space.Clashes over blasphemy and so-called religious hatred are not about free speech versus belief, or atheism versus faith. They are about equal treatment for all persons of conscience. As with attempts to stop blasphemy, a state that attempts to use the force of law to stop defamation or insult of religious groups must select certain identities for protection to the exclusion of other identities. The very same value that underlies the protection of the traditionally religious believer—equal respect for freedom of conscience—also underlies the protection of the secularist and atheist alongside the heterodox, dissident believer. As goes Alexander Aan, so go we all.

Emphasis Mine.

see: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/6012/

By: Sara Robinson

“The Conservative War On Education continues apace, with charters blooming everywhere, high-stakes testing cementing its grip on classrooms, and legislators and pundits wondering what we need those stupid liberal arts colleges for anyway. (Isn’t college about job prep? Who needs to know anything about art history, anthropology or ancient Greek?)

Amid the din, there’s a worrisome trend: liberals keep affirming right-wing talking points, usually without realizing that they’re even right wing. Or saying things like, “The education of our children is a non-partisan issue that should exist outside of any ideological debate.”

The hell it is. People who say stuff like this have no idea what they’re talking about. The education of our children is a core cultural and political choice that reflects the deepest differences between liberals and conservatives — because every educational conversation must start with the fundamental philosophical question: What is an education for?  (N.B.: terminal preposition SIC)

Our answers to that question could not be more diametrically opposed.

A Question of Human Nature

Our beliefs about the purpose of education are rooted in even deeper beliefs about the basic nature of humanity.

All conservative politics springs from one central premise: they believe that human beings are essentially fallen and deeply flawed. Human beings are swayed by uncontrollable passions, we make consistently bad choices and we are incapable of governing ourselves. Given our basic depravity, civilization can only work if we submit ourselves to the external guidance of society’s appointed authorities, and stay on the straight and narrow path our betters have clearly marked out with rules, oversight and punishments. Without those constraints, we cannot be trusted: our own perverse natures would inevitably lure us into ruin.

George Lakoff pointed out that in this worldview, children are born evil, and it’s the duty of the Strict Father to beat it out of them. For their own good, kids must learn to accept the boundaries and order imposed by the authorities who’ve magnanimously consented to responsibility for their wretched and unworthy souls. The main imperative of education is to break the child’s will, force him to conform to society’s expectations, make him an obedient and compliant employee, and prepare him to survive in a hostile and competitive world that will cut him no breaks. Nobody’s going to protect you; for good or bad, you’ll only be given what you earn. What kids need most from school are hard skills and marketable credentials that will enable them to find a stable place in the hierarchy, thus securing their futures.

Libertarian education critic John Taylor Gatto has rightly pointed out that the “hidden curriculum“ of public schools is designed from the ground up to reinforce these deeply authoritarian lessons. According to Gatto, the student is trained to eat, sleep, excrete, and think by the bells — no daydreaming about history during math class! She also learns to accept the judgment of teachers, peers and other worthies who are entitled to evaluate her worth; it’s beyond her pay grade to assess her own performance. This lesson fosters a lifelong dependence on external authority, and further quashes self-assessment and critical thinking. High-stakes testing is an artifact of the conservative belief that education is about acquiring a required body of knowledge that’s been determined by experts. If it’s not in the book, you don’t need to know it. And the ultimate outcome — the purpose of this whole process — is to graduate with a credential that will certify your acceptability to the established hierarchies of the economic world.

In the conservative model, critical thinking is horrifically dangerous, because it teaches kids to reject the assessment of external authorities in favor of their own judgment — a habit of mind that invites opposition and rebellion. This is why, for much of Western history, critical thinking skills have only been taught to the elite students — the ones headed for the professions, who will be entrusted with managing society on behalf of the aristocracy. (The aristocrats, of course, are sending their kids to private schools, where they will receive a classical education that teaches them everything they’ll need to know to remain in charge.) Our public schools, unfortunately, have replicated a class stratification on this front that’s been in place since the Renaissance.

Gatto argues that this kind of regimented education is profoundly inappropriate in a democracy. If you teach a child that he is incapable (and intrinsically unworthy) of governing himself — a central assumption of conservatism — then how on earth can he participate in governing his country?

The answer, of course, is that he can’t. And indeed: that is the whole point.

A Democratic Education

Democracy begins with the premise that most people are intrinsically decent and good, and that they can usually be trusted to make the right choices for themselves. Without this humanist belief in people’s essential moral and intellectual competence, a system of universal citizenship and collective governance would be philosophically unthinkable — and functionally impossible. This assumption also has profound implications for education.

Among liberals, the ultimate purpose of both education and parenting is to bring forward the best that lies within us, with the ultimate goal of maximizing the unique potential of each child. The stronger each of us is individually, the stronger civilization is as a whole. Education should, above all, foster self-knowledge and self-discipline, equipping us to make the best possible contributions to the collective — and to pursue life, liberty and happiness wherever those pursuits may take us. It’s hoped that they will take us on many unforseeable adventures — adventures for which we will need to be ready.

Central to this preparation is the development of our own internal authority and judgment, which we rely on to guide us through life and make us thoughtful, moral citizens. It’s assumed that people who are accustomed to this kind of personal freedom will also fiercely resist authoritarian leaders, whom we know we can never trust as thoroughly as we trust ourselves.

Our system relies on citizens who can think critically and clearly about any new situation they’re facing, and reason out solutions to problems without input from others when it’s necessary. And in today’s economy, it will often be necessary. We’ve known for 25 years that the old paternalistic workplaces — the ones with rigid hierarchies, where people could spend 40 years at the same plant — are gone. Most workers these days can expect to change careers two, three or four times over the course of what may well be a 50-year working life.

Given this reality, the college-as-job-training model the conservatives are promoting looks patently insane. Subjects like logic and philosophy, anthropology and rhetoric, foreign languages and history provide the mental flexibility, deep perspective, and sharp critical thinking skills that allow one to make one’s own way on unfamiliar landscapes, a skill that’s useful when the world keeps changing around you. People with rich liberal arts backgrounds are also far better prepared for leadership roles, and better positioned to recognize and seize on whatever opportunities fate throws their way. And survival in the economy of the future is going to depend far more heavily on our ability to create and maintain strong, broad social networks — to make and maintain supportive relationships with people who understand your value.

It’s obvious that stripping these mind-expanding fripperies out of the curriculum — as conservatives are proposing, often with no push-back at all from liberals — serves the narrow, functional conservative view of education and citizenship very well. But we let them win this point at our peril. It’s not exactly accurate — but nonetheless true — to say that the reason we call it “liberal education” is that the more of it you have, the more liberal you’re likely to be. If we buy into the idea that critical thinking is somehow non-essential, we’re not only betraying the entire future of the liberal tradition in America; we’re also depriving future generations of the basic skills and knowledge they’ll need to defend their democracy from the plutocrats who are always standing in the shadows, determined to wrest it from them.

Getting Back to a Liberal Education

Once you understand how very different our underlying worldviews are, the things we need to do to preserve our idea of a progressive, empowering education become far more clear. And once we’ve gotten a firmer grasp on what our own values demand on this issue, the easier it will be to talk about our vision of what American education should be.

Some examples:

Tests are valuable. They give teachers useful feedback about where each kid is, and what can be done to improve his or her progress. But they are only a means to an end – and the end should be a comprehensive, appropriate education. Only totalitarians who reject our democratic goals and values can possibly believe that tests are ends in themselves. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all education, and no student’s potential can ever be described by a single number.

The same applies to teachers. In a democracy, we find competent people, and then we trust them to do the right thing until they’ve shown us they can’t. Teachers deserve at least this much from us. The grinding, constant oversight is an authoritarian response that de-professionalizes and demoralizes smart people. The metrics used to reward and promote them should reflect the full range of skills they bring to their work, and the actual difference they make in the lives of their students. Let’s make it easy for really talented people to love this job — and then let them do it.

The arts, crafts and humanities matter. From kindergarten through college, we’ve seen 25 years of deep cuts in music, art, lab science, foreign language, school papers, drama departments, sports programs, home economics, and shop class. All these classes have one thing in common: they’re the hands-on subjects where kids spend the most time thinking independently, exploring their own creativity, experiencing themselves as productive and competent, and gaining confidence in useful real-world life skills.

What they learn in these classes doesn’t show up in test scores. But these lessons yield adults who can take care of themselves in a wide range of situations. You may never use a quadratic equation again for the rest of your days, but no matter where you’re headed, your life will be forever richer if you know how to informally test an idea, play on a team, make a satisfying dinner, speak some basic Spanish, handle a wrench and a drill, and write an engaging narrative on a subject you care about.

Teamwork matters. The cooperative skills we learn while playing sports or doing a class project with friends are essential to economic survival in an increasingly interdependent world. High-stakes testing reinforces the conservative message that you’re on your own — and will rise or fall on your own merit, as defined by external authorities who grade the tests. But a truly progressive education focuses on teaching kids to work together, build relationships, and draw their sense of self-worth from their ability to make strong contributions to the group. In the years ahead, which one of these people would you rather be sitting across the table from at a city planning meeting?

College isn’t just about job prep. It’s about developing the leaders who will set the standards for our entire culture. When we short-change students on the liberal arts curriculum, we are dooming the next generation to be led by people whose perspective, vision, flexibility, insight, and compassion aren’t up to the highest standards. If we want our nation to be better, we need to train better minds — and for thousands of years, a firm grounding in the arts and humanities have been the main way civilizations around the world have always developed this talent.

Discipline is not about control or retribution. It’s about encouraging students to make better decisions, exercise some foresight, take responsibility, and recognize the effects their actions have on the larger group. If a disciplinary intervention doesn’t meet those goals, then it’s not effective, and shouldn’t be used.

Vocational ed is not for losers. Our country is a far better place when it’s well-stocked with tradespeople, factory workers, technicians, small business owners, and service providers who have mastered their fields, and take pride in their work. These people are the foundation of our economy, and the real wealth and job creators. When we short-change their training, we’re undermining our own future competitiveness — and cutting the knees out from under the next generation of the American middle class.

And finally: critical thinking is the birthright of every American. We should not aspire to a feudal society where only the elites are taught to think independently, evaluate evidence, weigh complex factors, and make informed decisions. But it will become one — in just a generation or two — if we stop making this thefoundational competence delivered by our educational system. A democracy in which a majority of people are no longer capable of basic critical thinking skills cannot remain a democracy very long.

Our educational system is a product of our deepest values. And the battles we’re having now are, very directly, battles over what we believe is possible in America, and what kind of country we want to be 20 years from now. The conservatives are not wrong: for 150 years, the schools have been the leading promoter and disseminator of progressive values. They are now doing their best to dismantle that system, and replace it with one that produces followers, subjects and serfs.

What is education for? We won’t even be a contender in this fight until we’re committed to our own clear, coherent, values-based answer to that question. How we answer it will shape the country’s future.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.alternet.org/story/155469/how_the_conservative_worldview_quashes_critical_thinking_–_and_what_that_means_for_our_kids%27_future?akid=8811.123424.vrbO8r&rd=1&t=2

By: Thomas Riggins

“ In the last chapter of his book Anti-Dühring, Engels treats of the state, family,education and sex by critiquing the views of the German “socialist” and professor Eugen Dühring‘s on these subjects. Dühring had created, on paper, a complete system of socialist governing thru means of collectives which, Engels has pointed out in his analysis in earlier parts of this book, is completely unworkable and perpetuates the capitalist relations of production and distribution which socialism is supposed to abolish.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://politicalaffairs.net/engels-on-the-state-family-education-and-sex/

By:Chaz Muth, Catholic News Service

Emphasis Mine.

” Arianne Gasser of Canton, Ohio, is proud to call herself a graduate student at a prestigious Catholic university, and she also is proud to call herself an atheist.

The pride she has in her atheist status is part of what inspired her to travel from the Philadelphia area, where she is enrolled at Villanova University, to Washington in March to join thousands of other atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers for the “Reason Rally,” an event that was billed as an assembly to unify secular people nationwide.
Carrying a sign that reads, “This is what an atheist looks like,” Gasser is part of a growing segment of Americans under the age of 30 who identify themselves as atheists or agnostics.
It’s a movement that concerns Catholic leaders worldwide, including Pope Benedict XVI.
“We have morals and we have beliefs and we have these values,” said Gasser, as she walked along the National Mall and marveled at how many people turned out for the rally. “People just think that we’re evil, God-hating. We’re just people. We just don’t believe that something happens to us after we die.”
A survey released in 2009 by the Pew Research Center found that a quarter of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 surveyed said they were atheists, agnostics or had no religion.
“Radical secularism” threatens the core values of American culture, the pope warned a group of U.S. bishops visiting the Vatican in January. He called on the church in the U.S., as well as politicians and other laypeople, to render “public moral witness” on crucial social issues.
“The larger concern with secularism is that it damages people, and that it actually keeps people from being reasonable with one another,” said Chad C. Pecknold, assistant professor of systematic theology in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
“It creates a great level of intolerance for people of faith. I think secularism for Pope Benedict is a feature of this growing bifurcation between faith and reason,” he told Catholic News Service.
Pecknold, who also is the author of the 2010 book “Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History,” said secularism is a greater threat to humanity than to the Catholic Church because it could lead to great social unrest and fragmentation.
Vilification of Muslims in the United States following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania can be viewed as an example of secularists’ intolerance.
Richard Dawkins, vice president of the British Humanist Association and author of the 2006 book “The God Delusion,” was quoted as saying religion is dangerous “because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others.”
His remarks are an illustration of hostilities toward people of faith, Pecknold said.
“These are all examples of an attempt to cause civil unrest, which I don’t think are sustainable,” he said. “It could actually lead to greater and greater social unrest, and could potentially give so much power to culture wars that we become an increasingly fragmented society.”
The greatest threat to civil society comes from militant atheists, Pecknold told CNS.
Gasser and many of the atheists and agnostics who gathered at the “Reason Rally” said they don’t see the secular movement as a threat to society. They just want people to respect their right to shun organized religion and to have their voices heard by politicians and policymakers.
They carried signs that read “Good without a God,” “Proud to be an atheist,” and “It’s OK to be an atheist.”
Others carried signs or wore shirts that had more provocative messages, such as “If you really believe prayer worked, you’d stop voting,” “Freedom is the distance between church and state,” and “No God, No Devil, Just Us.”
Gasser said she just wants her voice to be heard with the same volume as Christians, Muslims and Jews.
“I’m not really into politics, but I do think that secular beliefs need to be treated equally with people who are believers,” she told CNS. “I don’t think we’re recognized in the government policies and the way people cover campaigns. It’s just all appealing to religious people, but there are so many of us who want to have a say in how our country is run.”
The poll numbers revealing growing atheist numbers and events like the “Reason Rally” have theology scholars focusing on what they believe is driving the secularism movement.
“The cultural conditions have become more conducive to atheism. We can see that in economic ways in that we are encouraged to think of ourselves as economic individuals,” Pecknold said.
“We see that in the Tea Party, a libertarian approach to economic good in which economics is something that is merely representing my own self-interests,” he said. “That kind of radical individualism in economic terms or philosophical terms is itself kind of a practical atheism, in which you detach yourself from any sort of transcendent notion of the good, any sort of sense of a common good that you would participate in.
“A kind of view in which I can participate in something bigger than myself is kind of eroded from our economic practice as human beings.”

See:http://www.catholicfreepress.org/spiritual/2012/04/20/secularism-in-america-growing-american-movement-raises-concerns/

By: Valerie Tarico

“A Midwestern (sic) atheist tells of sitting in her lunchroom at work and listening as conversation opened up around her about religious differences. Her co-workers included several kinds of Protestants, a Catholic, even a Jew. Sensing they were in risky territory, they worked to find common ground. “At least there aren’t any atheists around here,” one woman said in a warm inclusive tone.

What’s a girl to do in a situation like that? Should she out herself or just keep quiet? In his seminal book, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, sociologist Erving Goffman posed the perennial quandary of stigmatized persons: “To display or not display; to tell or not to tell; to let on or not to let on; to lie or not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when, and where.” (p. 42)

Disclosure feels risky because it is. In 2008, Atheist Nexus gathered “coming out” stories from over 8000 visitors who described themselves as atheist, humanist, freethinker, agnostic, skeptic, and so forth.  Some of the tales are painful to read. One woman said, “I’ve had people literally, physically BACK away from me upon hearing I am atheist. My children were told to run away from our evil home.” A man’s confession of lost faith almost cost his marriage: “My wife told me that I’m caught in Satan’s grip, and confessed that after I deconverted she considered leaving me. I believe the only reason she didn’t is because she’s financially dependent on me.” Elsewhere a young woman tells of losing thirty-four Facebook friends when she announced her lack of belief.

The consequences of anti-atheist stigma are public as well as private. Most self-described atheists are acutely aware of survey results showing that U.S. atheists are less electable than reviled minorities including Muslims and gays. Seven states still have laws on the books that ban nonbelievers from holding public office.  A Florida minister whose deconversion recently made national news said that job interviews were cancelled when prospective employers found out.

In the minds of many believers atheism is linked with immorality, and despite mounds of evidence to the contrary, religious leaders reinforce this stereotype. I once attended a Palm Sunday service at a popular Calvinist megachurch in Seattle. The minister was determined that his congregation should believe the resurrection of Christ to be a physical, historical event. He said, “If the resurrection didn’t literally happen, there is no reason for us to be here. If the resurrection didn’t literally happen, there are parties to be had. There are women to be had. There are guns to shoot. There are people to shoot.” I found myself thinking, if the only thing that stands between you and debauchery, lechery and violence is a belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus, I’m really glad you believe that. But what are you saying about the rest of us?!

Anti-atheist stereotypes work to bond believers together in part because many Americans think that they have never met an atheist. A stigmatized minority can be the nameless faceless “other” that people love to hate as long as members remain nameless and faceless. But as the gay rights movement has shown, things get more complicated—and attitudes start changing–when we realize we are talking about our friends, beloved family members, and co-workers. Coming out has been such a powerful change agent for gays, that atheists (along with other faceless groups like Mormons and women who have had abortions) are explicitly taking a page from the gay rights movement and launching visibility campaigns.

That is easier than it sounds. Among atheist and humanist leaders, passionate disagreements have erupted about what kind of visibility will actually help advance acceptance and rights for those who eschew supernaturalism.

As a social cause, rather than just a life stance, atheism was catapulted forward by 9-11 and the ascendancy of the Religious Right. Cognitive scientist Sam Harris says that he began writingThe End of Faith the morning after seeing the trade towers bombed with jet fuel and airline passengers. Biologist Richard Dawkins, who had previously hosted a gracious series of televised interviews exploring faith and non-faith, shifted tone and became a patriarch of anti-theistic activism. Journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote his scathing indictment, God is not Great. Doubters started coming out of the closet. I, myself, began publically challengingEvangelical Christian teachings when George Bush pointed to heaven to indicate where he had sought advice before invading Iraq.

It takes energy and guts to buck taboos and norms as strong as those surrounding religion, and so the first out the door were anti-theists who felt so strongly that they were willing to throw themselves into the fray, do or die. The “New Atheists” attracted a preponderance of young males who largely fit godless stereotypes: some defiant, some nerdy, many hyper-intellectual.  All were, for one reason or another, either impervious to rules protecting faith from criticism or willing to pay a price for breaking those rules.

Some of these firebrands can be counted among today’s leaders, and many have kept an edge that is honed by the seemingly relentless assaults on science and civil rights perpetrated by Christian and Muslim fundamentalists. They remain fiercely defiant, unapologetic about their scorn for religion, willing to use shock tactics if that’s what it takes to break what they see as a terminal religious stranglehold on society.  Several years back, a group called the Rational Response Squad promoted a “blasphemy challenge” urging people to videotape themselves denying the Holy Spirit because one Bible writer calls such blasphemy an unforgiveable sin. In 2010, a Seattle cartoonist launched “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” after learning about death threats against Trey Parker and Matt Stone for depicting Mohammed in Southpark . This winter American Atheists provoked quite an outcry with a billboard that quoted a Bible verse: “Slaves Submit to Your Masters – Colossians 3:22.”

The organizers of these irreverent events see them as advancing values that they cherish deeply –perhaps one could say values they hold sacred: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom from cruelty grounded in dogma or superstition.  And yet, criticism of such in-your-face attacks on religion has often come from people who share their goals. As the atheist visibility movement has expanded, quieter, more diplomatic leaders have emerged.  Many of them insist that aggressive confrontation does more harm than good –that atheists need to be changing stereotypes, not reinforcing them, and that there is such a thing as bad publicity.

Biologist P. Z. Meyers and Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein have staked out two very different positions in the naughty-or-nice controversy.  Meyers writes a popular blog,Pharyngula, which evolved from a primary focus on biology and politics to include broad-based uncensored anti-religious news and commentary. Meyers doesn’t suffer fools lightly and makes no bones about letting people know that he finds most religion not only destructive but also stupid. Epstein, by contrast, seeks to build ethical and spiritual community that builds bridges between faith and non-faith. His Humanist Community Project encourages humanists to develop the traditional virtues of religion: communities built around shared values and social service. Where Meyers might rail against “faith in faith,” Epstein’s colleagues find common ground with open, inclusive religious groups like the Interfaith Youth Corps.

Blogger Greta Christina has said that atheists should “let firebrands be firebrands and diplomats be diplomats.” She argues that both confrontational and collaborative tactics made the gay rights movement stronger and will do the same for non-theism. But what kind of confrontation? Ugly partisanship can backfire. For example, Fred Phelps and Sean Harris give homophobia such a vile face that they trigger disgust, pushing people in the opposite direction. Some atheist activism may do the same.

Even reasonable confrontation tactics can backfire –especially in the hands of a hostile journalist. Cathy Lynn Grossman of USAToday attended the April Reason Rally in D.C.,  a gathering she described as “hell-bent on damning religion and mocking beliefs.”  There she found plenty which, when taken out of context, could be used to reinforce stereotypes.  Her article headlined with a quote from Richard Dawkins, encouraging nonbelievers to “show contempt” for baseless dogmas. It was accompanied by a picture of Jen McCreight  cheerfully carrying a sign that read: Obama isn’t trying to destroy religion, I am. Other speakers were depicted as ornery, offensive and more than a little scary.

Ad campaigns by nontheist organizations reflects a struggle to find messages that connect with either teetering believers or closeted skeptics while avoiding backlash. In 2009 a London publicity campaign went viral internationally with bus ads proclaiming, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”  A variety of billboard campaigns have followed, some more provocative than others:  “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence,”  “You Know It’s a Myth.  Solstice is the Reason for the Season.”  “In the Beginning Man Created God.”  “We are all Atheists about Most Gods; Some of Us Just Go One God Further.” “Don’t Believe in God? Join the Club.”  All have drawn protests or vandalism from indignant theists.

It may be almost impossible to avoiding causing offense while challenging the religious status quo. Nontheist organizations have traditionally ignored communities of color, but African Americans for Humanism recently launched an outreach campaign with the tag line, “Doubts About Religion? You’re one of many.” Billboards and posters show faces of familiar Black leaders – as well as ordinary group members. Coalition of Reason organizer, Alix Jules of Dallas says that even this understated approach is plenty controversial for two reasons:  Almost 90% of African Americans express certainty about the existence of God, and honoring religion is seen as a matter of loyalty.

In Halifax, Nova Scotia, Humanists of Canada wanted to run a bus campaign that said, simply,You can be good without God . But the public bus agency refused the ads because they “could be too controversial and upsetting to people.” One reader commented,

I think we should make atheist ads as innocent and non-confrontational as possible. Not because we should avoid controversy, but because it we will get the controversy no matter what we put up, and the kinder and gentler our message the more obvious the hypocrisy of our critics. I’m hard put to think of one more innocent than this one, though.

Humanist blogger and speaker James Croft, a doctoral student in educational philosophy at Harvard, insists that it can be done:

There are ways of conveying our values that are both strong and civil, which avoid insults and (except in certain cases) ridicule without giving one inch of ground on the battlefield of our core values. All the evidence shows that this hybrid approach is more effective than simply seeking to be likable, or relying on confrontation alone.

In their effort to find the balance that Croft calls “strong and civil,” the Freedom From Religion Foundation has moved toward more personal messages, ones that offer a glimpse into a godless individual (or family) rather than some form of universal claim. Since 2007, they have purchased billboard space for messages including “Imagine No Religion,” “Beware of Dogma,” and “Thank Darwin: Evolve Beyond Belief.” But their latest campaign, “Out of the Closet,” puts real names and faces together with simple statements of values or disbelief: “Atheists work to make this life heavenly,” says Dr. Stephen Uhl of Tucson on one sign. “Compassion is my religion,” says Olivia Chen, a Columbus student whose appears on another.  A recent campaign in Clarkville, Tennessee, merely shows a young woman identified as Grace beside the words, “This is what an atheist looks like.”

Atheist visibility is more than ad campaigns.  In 2009 psychologist Dale McGowan, author ofParenting Beyond Belief, launched the Foundation Beyond Belief , a tool that lets the non-religious visibly contribute to nonprofits working on education, health, human rights and the environment. Last year, the foundation add a donation category called “Challenge the Gap” that builds bridges by contributing to the work of religious groups with shared values. Hemant Mehta of “The Friendly Atheist” hosts news and commentary of interest to young nonbelievers—absent the edge that characterizes an earlier generation of blogs. He brings more humor than anger when he talks with secular student groups about outreach.  Small local groups are doing their part. Seattle Atheists dress as pirates and carry a Flying Spaghetti Monster in summer parades. But they also participate in food drives and blood drives. They hand out water during an annual marathon. The aim is not only to make themselves more visible but to show that they too are compassionate members of the community of humankind.

As nonbelievers gain recognition as normal and ethical members of society, I think we will find that confrontation diminishes and bridge building grows.  It’s not only that both are necessary but that one paves the way for the other. The Stonewall riots and San Francisco drag scene laid the foundation for Feather Boa Fathers and It Gets Better and  pride parades that include local businesses and church banners. Early feminists who stayed defiant even when beaten and jailed made way for the apple pie tactics of Moms Rising, which has stenciled messages on onesies and delivered cookies to congressmen to get their equal pay message across.  In the words of Ecclesiastes, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” The questions are in each case, to whom, how, when, and where.

Greta Christina has estimated that atheist visibility is about thirty-five years behind the gay rights movement. That sounds close. We’ll have caught up when a majority of Americans know they know a nontheist – and that friends, family members, and fellow citizens really can be good without God.“

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington and the founder of Wisdom Commons. She is the author of “Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light” and “Deas and Other Imaginings.” Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.alternet.org/story/155278/should_atheists_slam_religion_or_show_respect?akid=8723.123424.sDTZId&rd=1&t=5

By:DAISY GREWAL

“ Why are some people more religious than others? Answers to this question often focus on the role of culture or upbringing.  While these influences are important, new research suggests that whether we believe may also have to do with how much we rely on intuition versus analytical thinking. In 2011 Amitai Shenhav, David Rand and Joshua Greene of Harvard University published a paper showing that people who have a tendency to rely on their intuition are more likely to believe in God.  They also showed that encouraging people to think intuitively increased people’s belief in God. Building on these findings, in a recent paperpublished in Science, Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia found that encouraging people to think analytically reduced their tendency to believe in God. Together these findings suggest that belief may at least partly stem from our thinking styles.

Gervais and Norenzayan’s research is based on the idea that we possess two different ways of thinking that are distinct yet related. Understanding these two ways, which are often referred to as System 1 and System 2, may be important for understanding our tendency towards having religious faith. System 1 thinking relies on shortcuts and other rules-of-thumb while System 2 relies on analytic thinking and tends to be slower and require more effort. Solving logical and analytical problems may require that we override our System 1 thinking processes in order to engage System 2. Psychologists have developed a number of clever techniques that encourage us to do this. Using some of these techniques, Gervais and Norenzayan examined whether engaging System 2 leads people away from believing in God and religion.

For example, they had participants view images of artwork that are associated with reflective thinking (Rodin’s The Thinker) or more neutral images (Discobulus of Myron). Participants who viewed The Thinker reported weaker religious beliefs on a subsequent survey. However, Gervais and Norenzayan wondered if showing people artwork might have made the connection between thinking and religion too obvious. In their next two studies, they created a task that more subtly primed analytic thinking. Participants received sets of five randomly arranged words (e.g. “high winds the flies plane”) and were asked to drop one word and rearrange the others in order to create a more meaningful sentence (e.g. “the plane flies high”). Some of their participants were given scrambled sentences containing words associated with analytic thinking (e.g. “analyze,” “reason”) and other participants were given sentences that featured neutral words (e.g. “hammer,” “shoes”). After unscrambling the sentences, participants filled out a survey about their religious beliefs. In both studies, this subtle reminder of analytic thinking caused participants to express less belief in God and religion. The researchers found no relationship between participants’ prior religious beliefs and their performance in the study. Analytic thinking reduced religious belief regardless of how religious people were to begin with.

In a final study, Gervais and Norenzayan used an even more subtle way of activating analytic thinking: by having participants fill out a survey measuring their religious beliefs that was printed in either clear font or font that was difficult to read. Priorresearch has shown that difficult-to-read font promotes analytic thinking by forcing participants to slow down and think more carefully about the meaning of what they are reading. The researchers found that participants who filled out a survey that was printed in unclear font expressed less belief as compared to those who filled out the same survey in the clear font.

These studies demonstrate yet another way in which our thinking tendencies, many of which may be innate, have contributed to religious faith. It may also help explain why the vast majority of Americans tend to believe in God. Since System 2 thinking requires a lot of effort, the majority of us tend to rely on our System 1 thinking processes when possible. Evidence suggests that the skepticamajority of us are more prone to believing than being skeptical. According to a 2005 poll by Gallup, 3 out of every 4 Americans hold at least one belief in the paranormal. The most popular of these beliefs are extrasensory perception (ESP), haunted houses, and ghosts. In addition, the results help explain why some of us are more prone to believe that others. Previous research has found that people differ in their tendency to see intentionsand causes in the world. These differences in thinking styles could help explain why some of us are more likely to become believers.

Why and how might analytic thinking reduce religious belief? Although more research is needed to answer this question, Gervais and Norenzayan speculate on a few possibilities. For example, analytic thinking may inhibit our natural intuition to believe in supernatural agents that influence the world. Alternatively, analytic thinking may simply cause us to override our intuition to believe and pay less attention to it. It’s important to note that across studies, participants ranged widely in their religious affiliation, gender, and race. None of these variables were found to significantly relate to people’s behavior in the studies.

Gervais and Norenzayan point out that analytic thinking is just one reason out of many why people may or may not hold religious beliefs. In addition, these findings do not say anything about the inherent value or truth of religious beliefs—they simply speak to the psychology of when and why we are prone to believe. Most importantly, they provide evidence that rather than being static, our beliefs can change drastically from situation to situation, without us knowing exactly why.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.

Emphasis Mine

see: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/645821-how-critical-thinkers-lose-their-faith-in-god

By: Lawrence Krauss

“Recently, as a result of my most recent book, A Universe from Nothing, I participated in a wide-ranging and in-depth interview for The Atlantic on questions ranging from the nature of nothing to the best way to encourage people to learn about the fascinating new results in cosmology.  The interview was based on the transcript of a recorded conversation and was hard hitting (and, from my point of view, the interviewer was impressive in his depth), but my friend Dan Dennett recently wrote to me to say that it has been interpreted (probably because it included some verbal off-the-cuff remarks, rather than carefully crafted written responses) by a number of his colleagues and readers as implying a blanket condemnation of philosophy as a discipline, something I had not intended.

Out of respect for Dan and those whom I may have unjustly offended, and because the relationship between physics and philosophy seems to be an area which has drawn some attention of late, I thought I would take the opportunity to write down, as coherently as possible, my own views on several of these issues, as a physicist and cosmologist.  As I should also make clear (and as numerous individuals have not hesitated to comment upon already), I am not a philosopher, nor do I claim to be an expert on philosophy.   Because of a lifetime of activity in the field of theoretical physics, ranging from particle physics to general relativity to astrophysics, I do claim however to have some expertise in the impact of philosophy on my own field.  In any case, the level of my knowledge, and ignorance, will undoubtedly become clearer in what follows.

As both a general reader and as someone who is interested in ideas and culture, I have great respect for and have learned a great deal from a number of individuals who currently classify themselves as philosophers. Of course as a young person I read the classical philosophers, ranging from Plato to Descartes, but as an adult I have gained insights into the implications of brain functioning and developments inevolutionary psychology for understanding human behavior from colleagues such as Dan Dennett and Pat Churchland.  I have been forced to re-examine my own attitudes towards various ethical issues, from the treatment of animals to euthanasia, by the cogent and thoughtful writing of Peter Singer.   And reading the work of my friend A.C. Grayling has immeasurably heightened my understanding and appreciation of the human experience.

What I find common and so stimulating about the philosophical efforts of these intellectual colleagues is the way they thoughtfully reflect on human knowledge, amassed from empirical explorations in areas ranging from science to history, to clarify issues that are relevant to making decisions about how to function more effectively and happily as an individual, and as a member of a society.

As a practicing physicist however, the situation is somewhat different.  There, I, and most of the colleagues with whom I have discussed this matter, have found that philosophical speculations about physics and the nature of science are not particularly useful, and have had little or no impact upon progress in my field.  Even in several areas associated with what one can rightfully call the philosophy of science I have found the reflections of physicists to be more useful.  For example, on the nature of science and the scientific method, I have found the insights offered by scientists who have chosen to write concretely about their experience and reflections, from Jacob Bronowski, to Richard Feynman, to Francis Crick, to Werner Heisenberg, Albert Einstein, and Sir James Jeans, to have provided me with a better practical guide than the work of even the most significant philosophical writers of whom I am aware, such as Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn.  I admit that this could primarily reflect of my own philosophical limitations, but I suspect this experience is more common than not among my scientific colleagues.

The one area of physics that has probably sparked the most ‘philosophical’ interest in recent times is the ‘measurement’ problem in quantum mechanics.  How one moves from the remarkable and completely non-intuitive microscopic world where quantum mechanical indeterminacy reigns supreme and particles are doing many apparently inconsistent things at the same time, and are not localized in space or time, to the ordered classical world of our experience where baseballs and cannonballs have well-defined trajectories, is extremely subtle and complicated and the issues involved have probably not been resolved to the satisfaction of all practitioners in the field.   And when one tries to apply the rules of quantum mechanics to an entire universe, in which a separation between observer and observed is not possible, the situation becomes even murkier.

However, even here, the most useful progress has been made, again in my experience, by physicists.  The work of individuals such as Jim Hartle, and Murray Gell-Mann, Yakir Aharonov, Asher Peres, John Bell and others like them, who have done careful calculations associated with quantum measurement, has led to great progress in our appreciation of the subtle and confusing issues of translating an underlying quantum reality into the classical world we observe.   There have been people who one can classify as philosophers who have contributed usefully to this discussion, such as Abner Shimony, but when they have, they have been essentially doing physics, and have published in physics journals (Shimony’s work as a physicist is the work I am aware of).  As far as the physical universe is concerned, mathematics and experiment, the tools of theoretical and experimental physics appear to be the only effective ways to address questions of principle.

Which brings me full circle to the question of nothing, and my own comments regarding the progress of philosophy in that regard.   When it comes to the real operational issues that govern our understanding of physical reality, ontological definitions of classical philosophers are, in my opinion, sterile.  Moreover, arguments based on authority, be it Aristotle, or Leibniz, are irrelevant.  In science, there are no authorities, and appeal to quotes from brilliant scholars who lived before we knew the Earth orbited the Sun, or that space can be curved, or that dark matter or dark energy exist do not generally inform our current understanding of nature.  Empirical explorations ultimately change our understanding of which questions are important and fruitful and which are not.

As a scientist, the fascination normally associated with the classically phrased question “why is there something rather than nothing?”, is really contained in a specific operational question.  That question can be phrased as follows:  How can a universe full of galaxies and stars, and planets and people, including philosophers, arise naturally from an initial condition in which none of these objects—no particles, no space, and perhaps no time—may have existed?  Put more succinctly perhaps: Why is there ‘stuff’, instead of empty space?  Why is there space at all?  There may be other ontological questions one can imagine but I think these are the ‘miracles’ of creation that are so non-intuitive and remarkable, and they are also the ‘miracles’ that physics has provided new insights about, and spurred by amazing discoveries, has changed the playing field of our knowledge.  That we can even have plausible answers to these questions is worth celebrating and sharing more broadly.

In this regard, there is a class of philosophers, some theologically inspired, who object to the very fact that scientists might presume to address any version of this fundamental ontological issue.  Recently one review of my book by such a philosopher, which I think motivated the questions in the Atlantic interview, argued not only that one particular version of the nothing described by modern physics was not relevant.  Even more surprisingly, this author claimed with apparent authority (surprising because the author apparently has some background in physics) something that is simply wrong:  that the laws of physics can never dynamically determine which particles and fields exist and whether space itself exists, or more generally what the nature of existence might be.  But that is precisely what ispossible in the context of modern quantum field theory in curved spacetime, where a phenomenon called ‘spontaneous symmetry breaking’ can determine dynamically which forces manifest themselves on large scales and which particles exist as stable states, and whether space itself can grow exponentially or not.  Within the context of quantum gravity the same is presumably true for which sorts of universes can appear and persist. Within the context of string theory, a similar phenomenon might ultimately determine (indeed if the theory is ever to become predictive, it must determine) why universes might spontaneously arise with 4 large spacetime dimensions and not 5 or 6.   One cannot tell from the review if the author actually read the book (since no mention of the relevant cosmology is made) or simply misunderstood it.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-consolation-of-philos