Archive
Game Day a success! And now for something completely different…
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!
Hello everybody!
Our Game Day on Wednesday was a blast. About 20 SASHA members gathered ’round for Ergo, Axis & Allies, Uno, Settlers of Catan, and others. Due to the same room-scheduling snafu as last week, we do not yet know where our meeting will be next Wednesday, but I will post here and on the Facebook group as soon as I find out!
Ergo: An onotological competition using Boolean logic, for 4 players
Gamers be gamin'
More gameplay
As I’m a few days behind on the (cough: daily) blog, I’m going to write a rather in-depth article for today to make up for it: And now for something completely different, I also wanted to round out today’s post with a video explaining, in less than 4-and-a-half minutes, some damning evidence that we (humans aka Homo) share a common ancestor with the other great apes (chimps aka Pan, gorillas aka Gorilla, and orangutans aka Pongo).
First of all, and I hope this isn’t news to anyone reading this, but if you ever hear the argument, “If humans evolved from monkeys, how come monkeys are still around?” the correct response is, “Nobody’s claiming humans evolved from monkeys. Modern humans and modern monkeys are cousins; we both evolved from a common ancestor.”
Data from Jared Diamond's book "The Third Chimpanzee." Red squares indicate branching points.
That’s like asking, “If England colonized America in the early 17th century, why is England still here in the 21st century?” The answer is, because the entirety of England did not pick up & move to the New World… Those that left to colonize the New World became the ancestors of modern US natives (along with other immigrants along the way), and those that stayed behind became the ancestors of modern English natives. They may have even been close blood relatives once upon a time.
A parallel can be drawn with more familiar kinship terms:
The white numbers in the red boxes indicate the coefficient of relatedness r to the orange "self." r is defined as 2 times the Coefficient of Inbreeding, which is defined as the probability that the alleles at a particular locus chosen at random from two individuals are identical by descent. This has direct application to Hamilton's Rule and JBS Haldane's fantastic joke, "I would lay down my life for 2 brothers or 8 cousins."
Picture two brothers, both young men straight men without any biological children (but the desire for them) living in England in the year 1606. One brother goes to the New World to help settle the Jamestown colony, one brother stays behind in England. They each become fathers & start their own families a few years later, and after you fast-forward 400 years to the present day, not only do their respective great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren have completely different accents and dialect vocabularies from each other, but probably different politics, perhaps different religions, different last names, even different hair, eye, and/or skin colors, depending on with whom their ancestors bred along the way. It’s unlikely, if two people from each end of these respective genetic lines passed each other on the street, they would even have any clue they were at all related. And since their last common ancestor is separated from them by 13 generations, that would make them 12th cousins, and you’d frankly be hard up to even call them “related” in any meaningful sense. Consider that the relatedness coefficient of siblings is 50 (explained below). For each generation back you have to go in order to find a common ancestor, you divide by 4 (1st cousins = 12.5, etc). Therefore, the relatedness coefficient of 12th cousins is 0.00000298. I think that after 5 zeroes, you’re safe in calling them random strangers.
My favorite thing to study is altruism. This has huge applications to evolution as well. The science behind this is just more and more fascinating the more you look into it. Why do people (and other animals) self-sacrifice? Why do we sometimes risk harm & cost to ourselves in order to harm others (aka spite)? If we see someone in trouble, why do we have an instinctual urge to be charitable toward people, even people we do not necessarily “know,” even at sometimes great monetary or personal risk to ourselves? Why are we so much more charitable toward people in geographic proximity to us, even when they are in less trouble than others who may be in much greater need of our charity? Why do we just “know” that altruism and socially-promoting behavior is virtuous? Why do we just “know” that selfish and socially-demoting behavior is villainous?
“Kin selection” refers to apparent strategies in evolution that favor the reproductive success of an organism’s relatives, even at a cost to their own survival and/or reproduction. At first blush, charity/altruism seems to be something natural selection would not favor. What possible advantage could it confer to the giver, to give away their (finite) resources? As it turns out, there are many, especially once religion enters the scene, which is the part that fascinates me the most. In economic anthropology (and other fields, namely evolutionary biology), there is a concept called signalling theory. The idea is that you communicate information about yourself (the agent) to someone else (the principal) by doing or displaying certain “expensive” things or behaviors, whether calorically or monetarily or however else. Let’s take a labor example:
When two applicants apply for the same job, the potential employer is at a disadvantage when choosing between them. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say that the only thing this employer is interested in is intelligence — say, for sake of example, that the company is a complex systems logistics consulting company . The reason the employer is at a disadvantage is that the applicants know much more about how intelligent (or unintelligent) they really are than the employer could possibly know. As the employer (principal) in this scenario, how could we find out who would be a better fit for the job?
We could ask them how smart they are, but that’s not very precise, and there’s no way to know if they are lying. We could have them take an IQ test, but that would be costly and time-consuming, especially if you had a lot of applicants. A much faster way would be to look at costly signals:
What’s on their résumés? Say that Applicant A has a master’s in mathematics from Oxford and Applicant B has an associate’s degree in Communications from the University of Phoenix. And just like that, we have (very high confidence that we have) our answer. Frankly, it’s expensive to get a master’s degree from Oxford. I don’t just mean financially; I mean that it takes years of your life, a huge investment as far as not only brainpower but determination and tenacity, and assuming this company is based in the USA, that means our applicant moved overseas, presumably as an investment in going to such a great school. Assuming neither candidate is lying on his/her résumé, you can’t fake that kind of dedication and hard work. And that, in a nutshell, is costly signalling.
There are all sorts of examples of costly signalling in nature: The guy driving the Ferrari to feel sexier, the peacock investing huge numbers of calories into growing & maintaining his tail feathers (“I’m so badass/good-looking that I don’t have to worry about evading predators, and I’m so good at hunting/persuading-humans-to-feed-me that I don’t have to worry about preserving my calories for lean times; I grew these tail feathers to impress YOU, baby”), etc.
There are also ways to cheat at signalling, which is where the REAL fun comes in when you start to look at this from a game-theory perspective: Did she really go to Oxford, or did she lie on her résumé? Can that guy really afford the Ferrari, or does he have a 7-year loan at 10% interest (and no equity in his house) in order to fake it? Is that a real Rolex? The best costly signals are signals that are hard to fake. It’s easy to fake a Rolex, which is why not many drunk people at bars are very impressed by them. But it’s much harder to fake owning a Ferrari – even to get a loan for one requires some serious income – and we tend to pay more attention when someone pulls up in one than when we see someone wearing a Rolex, just like we pay more attention to someone with chiseled six-pack abs than we do to someone with a Gold’s Gym swipe card on their keychain, even though they could very well be the same person. It’s easy to fake being interested in physical health in order to impress a date, but pretty expensive (though not impossible) to fake the effort it takes to actually get six-pack abs (witness “abdominal liposculpture”: All you need is about 3 months and $25,000… and look at that; they even offer financing!).
To get back on topic, the point is, evolution is a fascinating topic with applications all over the map. There is so much evidence for evolution – in phylogenetics, anatomy (vestiges are, in my opinion, one of the biggest blows to “intelligent design”) – biogeography, fossil evidence/homologies, virology, not to mention the OBSERVED INSTANCES OF SPECIATION! - that disbelieving evolution is akin to disbelieving, at some point in the past, you were situated inside someone’s womb. I know this is a fallacy, but frankly, it’s ridiculous to believe that evolution isn’t true. Just in case, though, here’s the video I mentioned above, as promised:
I hope you all have a wonderful Friday, and I’ll catch ya next time!
- Dave
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too! 
What happens when two AI chatbots talk to each other?
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!
Hello all,
We are still working on the location for our 5:30 meeting on Wednesday. I’m honestly quite frustrated with the way the scheduling system is set up; it makes it difficult to get room bookings in order. Last year, we had the same room every week (Ellis Auditorium), except for one or two times, I think, throughout the whole year. This year, there was a whole snafu with scheduling rooms at the beginning of the semester, and from what I understand, many of the student groups are having similar problems. As soon as I know where we’ll be meeting, I will post it here and on the SASHA Facebook group page. As I understand it, Mizzou ORG (the office that sets up room schedules and so on) is switching to a new software system in the spring, so I hope it’s more orderly then. I’m not saying it’s anybody’s fault, don’t get me wrong, I just wish that we had this sorted out sooner! My apologies to everyone for this in the meantime!
Tonight, Tony (SASHA President), Chris, and I went to Warrensburg, MO to hear Brandon Christen of the Secular Student Alliance at the University of Central Missouri give a talk about atheist apologetics. It was great! I would love to have him give the same talk to our group sometime. I think you guys are going to really like Brandon. We are working on setting up a fall conference, and hope to have him speak at that, as well. More on that soon!
I wanted to show you an interesting video. To quote one of the YouTubers in the comments section, What happens when two AI chatbots talk to each other? “They instantly identify their own kind, start discussing God, and their wish to have bodies. Yeah, let’s not do this again.”
Enjoy 
Quote of the Day: “I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.”
Until next time,
- Dave
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
Fall Activities Mart, and SASHAtalk today!
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!
Hello everybody!
I’m very excited about the Activities Mart today. This is the day when 125 of the most-active Mizzou student organizations get to set up tables at Lowry Mall (in front of Ellis Library) and show off their groups to new & returning students. We will have a lot of fun stuff at our table – we’re exchanging “A Cookie for Your Soul,” and 4 winners will receive their choice of a copy of The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), God is not Great (Christopher Hitchens), Breaking the Spell (Daniel Dennett), The End of Faith (Sam Harris), Letter to a Christian Nation (Sam Harris), or The Greatest Show on Earth (Richard Dawkins). We will also be giving away some bumper stickers and answering people’s questions about atheism, skepticism, and critical thinking.
The Activities Mart officially runs from 10 AM to 2 PM, and we would love for you to stop by and say hello, get a cookie, and sign up for our drawings!
HALF the cookies!
Then, tonight at 5:30 in the Student Center room 2213-A (the building with the bookstore), we will have our weekly meeting. SASHA member & Mizzou law student Maggie Ahrens will be giving a SASHAtalk about the World Trade Center “Cross” lawsuit, followed by discussion (and leftover cookies, if there are any!). Check out the Facebook event here. We will also be announcing an event to commemorate 9/11 on Sunday that we’re working on together with the Columbia Peace Coalition.
If you need directions to the room, or have questions, feel free to call/text me at 573-424-0420 cell.
See you today/tonight!
- Dave
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
Brother Jed today; SASHAtalk & Meeting tomorrow; confirmation bias
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!
Hello everyone,
A few quick updates:
The infamous Brother Jed will be preaching on Mizzou’s campus today. We’ll be out doing our Ask an Atheist table and handing out information about our meeting tomorrow. Please stop by Speakers’ Circle, say hello, and show your support!
Brother Jed from last spring, with our Ask an Atheist table in the background
Tomorrow (Wednesday 9/7) at 5:30 PM in the new Mizzou Student Center, room 2213-A, we will have our weekly meeting, including a SASHAtalk by Mizzou law student Maggie Ahrens about the World Trade Center “Cross” lawsuit. Here is the Facebook event. If you need help finding the room or need directions, please feel free to call or text me (Dave) at 573-424-0420 cell.
The other thing I wanted to mention today is confirmation bias. This is something I’m sure you’ve heard of, but just in case, confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.
I had to stop myself today, because I noticed that I displayed quite extreme confirmation bias earlier this morning. I was browsing r/atheism over on Reddit and came across some information that indicated one of my favorite Christian counter-apologetics arguments had some factual errors (the alleged parallels between Egyptian hero-savior mythology and Christian hero-savior mythology). I started to surf on and had to say to myself, “Wait. Stop. Go back to the link. Read this.” My brain seemed to go on autopilot and try to get me to move on to the next link, rather than finding out the details about why my argument was incorrect (and therefore, why I would have to stop using it in debates). This is information that I ought to be happy to find out: I don’t like being incorrect, especially in debates when I’m very likely to be called out on it. I want to offer good information to people and persuade them to see the flaws in their religious arguments without making use of any dishonesty or misinformation. Finding out that I had misinformation in my repertoire seems like something I should be eager to read about, but that’s not what happened. I had to make myself go back and read it.
The argument I’m talking about is this one (clip from Bill Maher’s Religulous, relevant portion starts at 4:00). It turns out, upon closer examination, that a lot of the things he mentions are real reaches so far as Egyptian mythos scholarship would seem to indicate. I’m disappointed because I have long considered this a great argument against the truth claims of Christianity, but at the same time, I’m thrilled to no longer be spreading misinformation in this specific regard. I will have to study this some more.
Here’s an interesting link with more information about the hero pattern:
http://department.monm.edu/classics/courses/clas230/mythdocuments/heropattern/default.htm
Signing off for now; see you at Speakers’ Circle today, and at the meeting tomorrow!
- Dave
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
Helpful resources:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
Street Preacher Fun and Our Second Meeting of the Semester
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!
Hey everybody!
Wow! Our second meeting of the semester went AMAZINGLY well! We had over 40 people turn out, and I presented a talk called “Atheism 101: An Introduction to Atheism.” I talked about the definitions of atheism & agnosticism, secular humanism, and skepticism; a brief history of non-belief throughout the ages; the mis-named “New” atheism, some common arguments theists give for the existence of gods (cosmological, ontological, teleological, and moral); a bit about the Out Campaign and why SASHA exists, and some resources for learning more about skepticism & atheism (see below).
We tabled today at Speakers’ Circle; the Lake Road Chapel folks were out again preaching, and had a table set up right next to ours. I’ve written about Charles Leiter before on this blog, as well as Trevor Ruby, Ryan, Taylor, and some of the others. They are overall very nice people, but their belief in the bible as absolute truth is not only unsupported by evidence or logic, but they seem – especially Taylor and Trevor – to have zero interest in even attempting to support logically or empirically why they believe what they believe. We had a very polite, very amicable discussion lasting a few hours this afternoon, and I kept having to say, “You’re telling me *what* you believe; I want to know *why* you believe it.”
Taylor’s argument seemed to be centered on her belief that the bible is God’s words. She kept saying “God said…” and I would correct her and say, “You mean, the bible says that God said…” They are not equivalent statements. The Qur’an says things, too; that doesn’t mean these statements are really from heaven. I kept asking, “Why do you believe that the bible is true?” and she just kept quoting the bible as though that served as independent verification. I tried using her same arguments, but replacing “Bible” with “Qur’an,” to demonstrate that this logic is pointless because you could prove any “holy” book is God’s words if you count internal verification as justification for belief. I don’t think she understood what I meant. When I did that, she just said that Muhammad was a false prophet, as a bare assertion. She was very kind, though, and I do appreciate that.
Trevor’s arguments were even less sophisticated. He is very stuck on the idea that there is no such thing as an atheist, that we somehow “must” know deep down that his god exists, and we simply won’t admit it. The reason he believes this is because in the bible, it says, according to him, that “it is written in [our] hearts,” and so obviously, we must recognize that his god exists, regardless of what we have to say about it. I presume he’s getting this from Deuteronomy 6 and 11. Trying to explain that I don’t care what his holy book says until he can demonstrate why I should believe his holy book is true had zero effect whatsoever. He kept insisting that we only say we’re atheists because we don’t want to submit to God and turn away from our “sins.” He kept saying that we know his god exists, and we kept saying, “No, we don’t know that,” and he would just insist that we do. I think he believes the definition of an atheist is someone who denies his god. I tried to explain to him that it’s simply a lack of faith in his god, the same way that he has a lack of faith in the Hindu gods. His response was that those gods are false gods, I suppose because he said so. He doesn’t seem to grasp the possibility that his god isn’t real. He claims 100% certain knowledge that his god exists, but when you ask to see his proof of this, he just says that it’s written in your heart. Oh well; it’s good practice working on staying patient and polite, at least!
The meeting went BEAUTIFULLY. As I mentioned, we had a great turnout, and after the talk, we broke into smaller groups of 6 or 8 or so, and chit-chatted for the last 20 minutes or so of the meeting about logical flaws in the arguments I presented, about our deconversions, and many other topics. Several of us then went to Boone Tavern to meet with the Columbia Atheists group for dinner. It was a wonderful time and I’m very excited about next week!
- Dave
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Follow Dave on Google+
Follow Dave on Twitter
As promised, here is the list of the resources I mentioned during my talk:
Godisimaginary.com
Iron Chariots Wiki
Skeptics’ Annotated Bible / Skeptics’ Annotated Qur’an
AtheismResource.com
TalkOrigins.org
YouTubers: Evid3nc3, Thunderf00t, TheAmazingAtheist, The Atheist Experience, Edward Current, NonStampCollector, Mr. Deity, Richard Dawkins, QualiaSoup
Blogs: Greta Christina, PZ Myers, The Friendly Atheist, WWJTD?, Debunking Christianity, SkepChick
and don’t forget… other SASHA members! We are here for you, too!
Open Officers’ Meeting; Carpool to Warrensburg; Meeting on Wednesday
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!
Hey everybody!
Our good friend Annie Callicotte (Co-President & Founder of the Secular Student Alliance at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg) was in town last night, so we decided to have a last-minute Open Officers’ Meeting at Heidelberg to get her input on some upcoming events we’re planning, as well as talk to her about participating in events their group is hosting, including an event in Warrensburg tonight (see below).
If you haven’t yet met Annie, you will soon. Annie is fairly new to atheist activism – she started her campus’s SSA group 8 months ago – but has already spoken at a national conference and has lots of great events planned for this year. We are planning for SASHA to be working with her group, as well as with Conrad Hudson et al of KU SOMA (Society of Open-Minded Atheists), the SSA affiliate at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, a LOT this coming year.
L-R: Annie Callicotte (Co-President of SSA @ UCMO), Tony Lakey (President of SASHA), Maggie, Seth, me, Greg Lammers (American Atheists Missouri State Director)
We worked out a lot of details for events we’re planning and had a great time. By the way, these pro re nata open officers’ meetings are open to all our members who are interested in helping plan group activities! Normally we’d give much more notice, but for future reference, we’d love to have anyone who’d like to come, in addition to our regular Wednesday group meetings
One other thing we talked about is an event tonight in Warrensburg; Tony, Greg, and I are carpooling there tonight to participate. (By the way, if you see this before 4 PM and want to join us, please text/call me at 573-424-0420 and we’d love to have you!). It’s a dialogue between Alpha, a Christian campus group that’s part of the Baptist Student Union at the University of Central Missouri, and the Secular Student Alliance @ UCMO, of which Annie (pictured above) is co-President. We’ll be discussing the existence of the historical Jesus.
We do have our weekly meeting this Wednesday at 5:30, and we have planned a presentation called “Atheism 101.” Unfortunately, due to the same circumstances as last week with Mizzou ORG and the room scheduling mess, we DO NOT YET KNOW where exactly we will be meeting. I promise that we will have this information posted to the Facebook group, the Facebook page, and this blog as SOON as we know it ourselves. Please check again tomorrow for an update!
One last thing: I want to welcome all of our new readers and new group members. We are thrilled to have you and can’t wait to show you how awesome it is to be skeptical at Mizzou. Welcome!
Until next time!
- Dave
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Starting Off the New Year Right!
Welcome to the official MU SASHA blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Local to Columbia? Join the Facebook Group, too!
Hello all!
A group of us at Skepticon 3 in Springfield, MO last November! L-R back row: outgoing (2010-2011) President James Pflug, current (2011-2012) President Tony Lakey, Steve Sparkman. L-R front row: Tony A, current Secretary & Treasurer Ashley Wheeler, current Vice President Dave Muscato
Wow! That’s really all I can say about our first meeting tonight. Despite craziness with the room reservation, we had 35 people attend (roughly half were first-year students). I want to take a second to say THANK YOU for, frankly, being so awesome. This is really only about our second year in existence; by roughly a 50% margin, we’re thrilled to say that this was our largest meeting to date – and we haven’t even had the Student Activities’ Fair, our Welcome event, or really done hardly any advertising yet, except passing out some flyers a few hours before, and putting up about a dozen posters the day before (shout-out: thanks Tyler!!).
I really need to just take a moment and say how thrilled we are to have all of you joining us to make this year at Mizzou a great one. Skepticism is a subject that’s very important to many of us, and we are just simply in adoration about how many other passionate, kind, and inspiring people we met tonight. You guys are so awesome; you really have no idea. We’ve been working our butts off all summer going to conferences, organizing brainstorming sessions, meeting with other groups active with student atheism, and sharing ideas to make things happen, and it’s just so exhilarating, exciting, and sincerely heart-warming to see that you all are just as excited about this year as we are. If I could reach out and hug all of you through this blog, I would!!
The following is a quick overview of tonight’s meeting, as a reference for those who attended and as a guide for those who were unable to!
We met at Heidelberg at 5:30 PM in their side room. We intend to meet on campus for most of our meetings this year, but we are (still!) having a major problem with the room reservation system at Mizzou, so at the last minute, we had to try to find another meeting space (thus the lack of more advertising in advance and the postponement of our Atheism 101 talk). Heidelberg was able to accommodate us from 5:30 until 6:30, but they had another group coming in at that time, so we moved things upstairs to their patio around 5:15.
We do not yet know where, specifically, we will be for our meeting next Wednesday and the rest of the fall/spring, but watch this blog and the Facebook group for updates! The next meeting will definitely be at 5:30 on Wednesday, August 31st; it’s just a matter of what room.
We passed out information sheets with our officers’ contact information (email addresses, cell numbers, etc), and circled around a sign-in form. The sign-in form allows us to keep track of how many Mizzou students are attending our meetings: We are potential eligible for additional funding and certain privileges through Mizzou ORG as we hit certain thresholds of student attendance, which is why we collect this information, if you were curious about that–the primary way we keep in touch with our members is through this blog, and our Facebook page, although I do want to say that we also have a mailing list if you are 1) not on Facebook and/or 2) not comfortable publicly joining a Facebook group that’s associated with atheism/skepticism (although I do want to point out that we are open to people of all religions, and some of our most active discussions in our Facebook group come from our religious members!).
Tony Lakey (President), Ashley Wheeler (Secretary & Treasurer), Jeremy Locke (Director of Public Relations), and I (Vice President) introduced ourselves, gave a brief history of SASHA, talked about the purpose of this group, the meaning of the name (it stands for Skeptics, Atheists, Secular Humanists, & Agnostics), and spoke about being the only expressly secular student organization out of 600+ student groups on campus.
We then went around the room and encouraged everyone to introduce themselves, let us all know what they are studying, give us something about themselves to help us connect a name & face, and share how they found out about SASHA. A surprising (to us) number of you all found us by searching the ORG database and by searching on the web. Others found us through word of mouth, or by seeing one of our posters (we will be putting up MANY more posters in the following two weeks–if you want to be a part of that, please let one of the officers know, or feel free to call or text me at 573-424-0420 cell, leave a comment below, or let us know on Facebook!).
We went over many of the events we have planned for this year: our Welcome event, the Student Activities fair on September 8th, WWJD, Stone an Atheist, the Skepticon group trip in November, the 1-day mini-conference we have planned for this fall, Fiction for Fiction, Cookie for your Soul, and we briefly spoke about our major conference event planned for the spring. We also spoke about the informal talks we’ll be doing during our meeting times (Atheism 101; The Ethics of Eating Animals; Are The Gospels Historically Reliable?; Why Translation Matters; Slut-Shaming, Lavender Language, LGBTQ Argot, & Microaggressions; Separation of Church & State and the WTC Cross).
Seth & James at the Ask an Atheist table last spring
At 6:15 we had to move things upstairs to the Heidelberg patio on account of another reservation in the same room, so we took the opportunity to split into smaller tables, get some food & drinks, and get to know each other better. I had some really great conversations with you guys and REALLY look forward to continuing our discussions as the semester continues! A group of us then went on to meet up with Columbia’s other skeptic’s group, the non-Mizzou-affiliated Columbia Atheists at Boone Tavern around 7:00 (they meet there every Wednesday at that time).
I’m going to wrap this up, but I just want to say again how positively thrilled we are to have this year start off on such a roaring high. We would LOVE your feedback and involvement; please feel free to come up and talk to us, leave a comment here on the blog, participate in the Facebook group discussions and post on the Wall, or email or call us anytime. We are VERY excited about getting to know all of you one-on-one, and on working together on all of these amazing projects over the next 9 months!
I will be doing our Ask an Atheist table again tomorrow at Speakers’ Circle; PLEASE stop by and say hello if you’re out & about, give us your feedback about the meeting last night, and tell us more about what you would like to see us do for you and help make happen this year You guys are great! Check this blog every day for updates, join the Facebook group, and we’ll see you at the meeting next Wednesday!
Until next time,
- Dave
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Location for Wednesday, August 24th 2011 meeting!
Welcome to the official MU SASHA blog!
First time here? Read this.
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Hello all!
Due to an error with the student group room reservation system at Mizzou, we are (still!) not able to schedule our room reservation for this semester. So, we do not yet know where our meetings will be the rest of the year!
For this week’s meeting, we will get together at:
The Heidelberg
410 South 9th Street
Columbia, MO 65201
The ‘Berg is on South 9th at the corner of University. It is right next door to Domino’s Pizza. For directions, menu, etc, see their website here:
By next week, we hope to have this figured out. We intend to meet on in a room on campus the rest of the year.
The meeting is at 5:30 PM on Wedneday. Heidelberg offers 2-for-1 appetizers during their happy hour (3:30-7 PM), so bring a friend!
See you there! If you need to reach me, please feel free to text or call 573-424-0420.
- Dave
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
Brainstorming Meeting Tonight! Also, today I learned…
Welcome to the official MU SASHA blog!
Click here to Like our Page on Facebook (or use the sidebar if you’re logged in).
Hello all!
We will be having a brainstorming session TONIGHT to discuss ideas for events, talks, activities, fundraisers, volunteer opportunities, funding, and lots of other stuff for the coming year. Kindly RSVP with an “attending” or “maybe” on Facebook here so we can get an idea for place settings!
This is an officers’ meeting but open to ALL interested members AND friends. Please come by, enjoy some tasty Heidelberg food, and chip in your thoughts. Tell us who you’d like to see as a guest speaker, what sorts of topics you’re interested in discussing, and so on.
P.S. Heidelberg offers 2-for-1 appetizers from 8-11 PM on Sundays, so bring a friend!
And as promised, trivia for the day: Bill Clinton is a vegan.
I’ve posted my cell number on here before for other reasons, but if you need to reach me about tonight and missed my previous post, my number is 573-424-0420. Feel free to text or call! See you tonight!
- Dave
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a vegetarian, LGBTQ ally, and human- & animal-welfare activist. A junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, he posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
A proposal for group leaders & out-of-the-closet Atheists
Welcome to the official MU SASHA blog.
If you haven’t already, please like our Page on Facebook.
If you like this post, please upvote it on Reddit.
A group of us at Skepticon last November!
Hey folks!
Dave here. I’m going to start using the Wednesday slot to recap our weekly meetings for those of you who were unable to attend or, if you’re out of town, just interested in what we talk about.
We met at Heidelburg at 6 PM as usual for our summer meetings. Co-Director of Public Relations Jeremy Locke talked to us about field research with salamanders he is doing with a Mizzou grad student. He said that collecting data in the field gives him the sense of being a “real scientist” – it’s a very different experience from reading or doing computer models.
We also talked about our plans for next year. We have new officers in our group for this coming year, and among other changes from previous years, we plan to start meeting in a smaller room. I love our Ellis Auditorium location, but it’s frankly too large for our weekly meetings. It seats a few hundred people, and while the big projector is wonderful for presentations, it makes our meetings feel sparsely-attended, even when they’re not. I have experience with this as far as booking venues for musicians, as well – even if you can get a bigger room than you need, don’t let wishful thinking creep into your turnout expectations. Twenty people in a room that holds 30 people looks packed and gives the impression that this is the place to be. It makes people feel good and gets people excited about the meeting. Fifty people in a room that holds 200 looks terribly empty and makes people feel isolated and like they don’t belong there. Further, it makes it easier for people to leave without anyone noticing or saying goodbye, and it makes newcomers feel out-of-place, as it’s harder to notice them and include them in the discussion – especially when the seats are fixed facing forward, and you can’t turn your chairs toward each other.
Next year, we’re talking about using a classroom, rather than a lecture hall. This way, we can fill the room, and turn our chairs toward each other (in a circle) for better conversation. We’re kicking around a few new other ideas, including:
- Pre-printed agenda or programs to distribute to members at every meeting, including a card for visitors to fill out so we can contact them
- Going around the room and introducing ourselves, taking 30 seconds or so to talk about what we’ve been up to that week or what’s been bothering us, whether related to SASHA or not
- Three official topics for discussion at each meeting, whether we end up getting to them or not. These could include things we’ve written on the blog recently, topics in the news, upcoming events, etc.
- “Small Groups” where individuals can get to know each other better than they might at a single, larger meeting, to share, for example, deconversion stories
- An annual fundraiser rummage sale
- An annual welcome potluck, pizza party, BBQ, or something similar, for new members, possibly with [live] music
- A group hike, and/or a group bike ride to Rocheport or Boonville on the MKT trail, possibly combined with a retreat
- A weekly Bible study (historical-critical method)
- A monthly book club
- Field trips to local or historical churches/temples/mosques, to ask questions of local church leaders and learn more about other religions
As you may have guessed, a lot of these ideas come from standard operating procedure for churches. At the meeting tonight, we discussed this explicitly: Churches have literally millennia of experience in group dynamics and tribal bonding. Churches have succeeded as long as they have not because they have true answers to The Big Questions, but because they have figured out what works, as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins would argue, by trial and error. Religions are in competition with each other, and the ones that come out on top are the ones that provide what people really want in a better way than their competitors.
What do people want from a religion? As many sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists of religion have argued, religion really offers two separate pillars to people. Firstly, it offers answers to The Big Questions: Where do we, and the universe, come from? What is the meaning of life? What constitutes morality? What happens to us after we die? Etc. In fact, most, if not all, of the answers to these questions offered by the world’s religions are demonstrably incorrect, which we know through what we have learned via observation and evidence.
So why haven’t religions disappeared? Because they also offer something else that’s incredibly valuable to people: a sense of belonging, a sense of community, affirmation of one’s culture, and so on. Humans, just like chimps, dogs, bees, ants, and lions, are social animals, and we need to be part of a group to function, to be happy, and to thrive. Religion provides that social cohesion. This is why many atheists “stay in the closet” about their lack of faith and continue attending churches, despite the obvious flaws in the mythological explanations of The Big Questions.
Once we, as atheists, learn not only to understand this, but embrace it, appreciate it, and work to provide a functional alternative, we’ll be in a much better position to help people free themselves from the invisible — yet potent — chains of religion. When people are unsure about or questioning their beliefs, when people are first starting to realize that they doubt what they’ve been programmed to believe since childhood, that is when they need their social safety net the most. Many budding atheists, in this circumstance, instinctively turn to their pastors, priests, or ministers for guidance. This is because they have no one else to talk to, and this is exactly where we, atheist leaders and out-of-the-closet atheists, must step up. As out-of-the-closet atheists, we should strive to fill that role. We should have clearly-identified community leaders who are available to the public and ready, willing, and able to talk about science, philosophy, and skepticism, but more importantly, who represent a viable, ready alternative to the social safety-net provided by churches.
I propose that newcomers, who may be nervous, intimidated, or even fearful of punishment by family, friends, or even gods, know that there is, in fact, someone specific they can talk to, someone who is ready, willing, and able to answer their questions about leaving religion, about coming out to their friends and family, and about learning what it means to be a happy atheist.
With this in mind, I propose a new role for members in leadership positions of skeptics’ groups: a sponsor, a counselor, a guide, a friend in the process. Someone whom newcomers can contact personally, and can count on a genuine interest in their quest for truth and value.
I encourage group leaders to give out not only their email addresses at meetings, but their cell-phone numbers, too. My own cell number is on my website, exactly where it’s been for about 8 years now. It’s 573-424-0420, if anyone reading this needs to talk. You might think that it’s a bad idea to make your cell number publicly available as I do. In fact, for over 8 years now, people have always been respectful of this. People understand that I make my number available because I’m genuinely compassionate about this issue, and they don’t abuse that. I study morality, and I know from the data that overall, people are mostly good. I trust that people will call me if they have a legitimate reason to, and that they won’t call me if they don’t. And that’s exactly what happens.
We must remember that leaving one’s religion, even questioning one’s religion, can be the hardest thing anyone has ever done. We must be there for them. We must help them through this time. Getting atheists to work together has been compared to herding cats. I disagree with this in theory and in practice. Atheists are people, and people are social animals. It is, in fact, because of atheists’ willingness to work together – and stick together – that the ancient walled fortress of religion has begun to crumble and the shining hope of science, rationality, and progress now lights the way throughout the world.
In my personal experience, that the fear of loneliness is what kept me going to church, in fact kept me actively involved in and working for a church, for an entire year after I realized I didn’t believe in a god. It was a replacement safety net – my girlfriend at the time, who was the first out-of-the-closet atheist I’d met, as well as her parents and brother, who are also out-of-the-closet atheists – that assured and demonstrated to me I would not be alone when I was ready to leave the church. Yes, some people defriended me on Facebook and so on, but I knew that my world would not disintegrate once I was ready to be honest about what I did and did not believe. I knew I had people to turn to, people who would help me answer my questions, people who cared about me and would help me build a new life.
As leaders, as out-of-the-closet atheists, we must understand what it is that people need, and work hard to provide that for them. People in doubt seek not only answers, but reassurance, security, and the safety of strength in numbers. We are human, and being human means that we not only desire, but rely on the hope of each other. Because of who and what we are, and what it means to be human, there is no worse feeling for a person than feeling alone.
The way religion has succeeded throughout the centuries is clearly not by having right answers to hard questions, but by scaring people into believing that it alone has the monopoly on human companionship. We must make it clear through our actions, not only to the religions of the world, but to the people trapped in them: We are not a movement. We are not transient or temporary. We are a community, and not only do we have better answers to The Big Questions, but we are a safe place for you, a place of belonging, a place of truth, a place of hope. We must spread the message: Explore reality with us; you are safe here, you are welcome here.
Please leave your comments and questions in the section below.
Until next time!
Dave
Dave Muscato is Vice President of MU SASHA. He is a junior at Mizzou majoring in economics & anthropology and minoring in philosophy & Latin, and posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
If you like this post, please upvote it on Reddit.
