Archive
SASHA now has a video camera!
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 folks!
I’m really excited to announce that I got an actually decent video camera that we can now use for SASHA events. Expect lots more video coverage of our meetings/talks, tabling events, and other stuff in the future!
Here are two fun videos to get you started. The first is a talk by Alex Papulis, one of our members, about Sam Harris’s newest book, “Free Will,” from our last weekly meeting. The second video is some outdoor fun with street preachers on the Mizzou campus, Brother Jed among them. Enjoy!
For now we are using my own personal YouTube channel, but soon we will have a SASHA channel set up. You can subscribe to mine if you’d like, but FYI that is my personal channel, not the official SASHA channel, which is coming soon.
First video:
Second video:
Until next time!
- Dave
mail@davemuscato.com
(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, Dave 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!
Blasphemy Day!
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
If you like this article, please upvote it on Reddit.
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!
Dave here. As our regular readers know, I study the evolution of morality in cooperative species, and the subject of today’s article happens to be one of my all-time favorites.
Today is Blasphemy Day, and SASHA will be tabling at Speakers’ Circle on the Mizzou campus beginning around noon. Blasphemy Day is important because it seeks to educate people about the importance of freedom of expression, even when these expressions are contrary to others’ religious beliefs or offensive to religious people. In the words of Justin Trottier:
“We’re not seeking to offend, but if in the course of dialogue and debate, people become offended, that’s not an issue for us. There is no human right not to be offended.”
Now, if I can say what I was going to say in such a way that it does not offend someone, of course I will attempt to do that. If you have what I consider a legitimate reason for being offended at a certain wording – structural violence, for example – I will say what I was going to using words that don’t offend you instead. But I will still say what I was going to say if I still have a good reason to do it. It’s illogical to set an idea aside as beyond criticism without any good reason; that’s called the fallacy of special pleading. And that’s what Blasphemy Day is about.
I think we do need to address the subject of mockery in all of this. Mockery is NOT what Blasphemy Day is about. Although I do think there is a place for calculated mockery – as a device in rhetoric – within atheist activism (or any type of activism, for that matter), I want to make it clear that the purpose of Blasphemy Day is not simply to mock religious beliefs. Speaking your mind – including mockery of an idea – even if others are “offended” is one thing; mocking a person (rather than their beliefs) is quite different, and not what we seek to do. Mocking a person is verbal harassment and one step shy of bullying.
Mockery evolved as a conformity enforcer; there is some really interesting research on mockery within the fields of neuroscience, cultural anthropology, and sociology/social psychology. Embarrassment and shame are fascinating emotions. Embarrassment originates in the amygdalae and the insular cortex, very old parts of the brain responsible for some of our baser functions like fear conditioning & memory, social interaction, & awareness of personal space (in the case of the former) and the processing of disgust & norm violations (in the case of the latter). According to Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at NYU and author of the excellent book Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are, “Anatomically the emotional system can act independently of the neocortex [the higher-order, "thinking" part of the brain responsible for conscious thought, language, etc]. Some emotional reactions and emotional responses can be formed without any conscious, cognitive participation…because the shortcut from thalamus [which regulates, among other things, wakefulness & emotional arousal] to amygdyla completely bypasses the neocortex,” a process called amygdala hijacking.
A classic gesture of mockery. A variation appears in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 1: "Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it," followed by the famous exchange, "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" "I do bite my thumb, sir." "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" "No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir."
In the earliest groups of humans on through today, mockery (or its friendlier cousin, teasing) triggers embarrassment. This triggering sets off a pattern of emotional responses, independent from rational thought or even conscious control. People do not like being mocked, and we can show this empirically with fMRI scans of people’s brains – it causes amygdala hijacking. People respond to mocking by shutting down logically: Literally, as in their responses stem from their amygdala, without asking the neocortex first. People may become very quiet or stammer – remember, fear conditioning & social interaction exist in the amygdala; language and conscious thought in the neocortex – or they may become defensive or angry if the logic is against them and cognitive dissonance takes over, as can happen in heated debates, e.g. religious ones. Mockery causes vasodilation of the face (blushing), causing our cheeks to appear red and feel warm because of the elevated volume of blood, which Darwin called “the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.” There is some really interesting research into why humans evolved this response (we are the only animals to do so), but that’s a topic for another article!
Humans evolved to form tribes, in the same way that dogs form packs, fish form schools, and birds form flocks. There are excellent scientific reasons for this, especially when you start getting into game theory (my personal focus within economic anthropology). The point is that we thrive when we work together, and die when we don’t, literally. One person cannot fight off a sabertooth cat by him or herself, let alone accomplish something like international trade. For that, you need high-functioning groups. And studying how people interact with each other in groups is the field of group dynamics. Among human groups throughout history, status has been a vital part of our existence. Status is relative, and so irrelevant for solitary creatures (except when mating). I mentioned earlier that mocking enforces conformity. The neurological mechanism for this is by triggering a fear response via the amygdala and a norm-violations response via the insular cortex. We evolved this response to mocking because mocking helps people in a group work together better. When everyone is on the same page – when everyone follows the same norms – we get a lot more accomplished, and gene proliferation is maximized. Now, this is only true for workers.
For innovators, conformity is bad news. In fact, all innovation – ever – is borne in nonconformity. This goes for mutation at the level of individual genes all the way through scientific progress at the societal level. Mocking an idea, a belief, a behavior, or a person lowers its/their status. Because lower status equates to fewer mating opportunities (among other things), we have a hard-wired, evolved desire not to be associated with ideas, beliefs, behaviors, or people of low status. This goes back millions of years to the first animals to develop norms. And even today, millions of years later, a quick dose of mockery can instantly put us back in line.
Status is very important between groups, too. And this is where blasphemy comes in. When you have a group of believers and a group of non-believers – whether we’re talking about Christians versus atheists, Christians versus Muslims, ancient Jews versus Babylonians, etc – you are going to encounter fights over status. The reason for this is easy to explain from an evolutionary point of view: We can demonstrate empirically that groups are more successful (in the genetically relevant sense of maximizing their populations) when they not only have group loyalty, but when they have high status. Being around people who are not like us – who do not share our beliefs, worldviews, language, culture, etc – makes us produce more cortisol, that is, we feel more stressed. We have a strong biochemical incentive to be around people we like and who like us (Note: PDF link to biological anthropologist Helen Fisher’s research in evolutionary cognitive neuroscience).
We feel attachment more easily to people we feel tied to. If you have ever been to another country where no one spoke your language, and you meet another English-speaker, you know what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter that you are strangers, it doesn’t matter that if you passed this same person on the sidewalk in your hometown, you wouldn’t even notice him/her – when we’re in a strange place among strange people, we are naturally drawn to familiarity. The more stress we feel, the more we are drawn to familiarity, and the more fear we feel for the unfamiliar. It’s a survival mechanism, an adaptation: Proto-humans without a strong sense of loyalty to their groups were quickly dispatched with (converted or killed) by other groups comprising members with a stronger sense of loyalty. And just having a strong sense of loyalty to your group isn’t enough to out-compete other groups, for the first group to develop the idea that it is a shining beacon of light versus all other groups will quickly out-compete all others: To really be at the top, your group also has to have a sense that it is elite, that it is high-status, and that all other systems are low-status.
You can see this played out in history. Consider the ancient Greeks: The Greek word βάρβαρος (cognate to English “barbarian” and used the same way) literally just means “non-Greek.” Greek historians regularly used other pejorative language to describe other cultures and it’s clear from reading Herodotus et al what they thought of people who weren’t awesome enough to be Greek. This in a time when the Greeks were at the height of their accomplishments scientifically, politically, economically, architecturally, and aesthetically in literature, poetry, sculpture, etc. Ancient China, as well, is famous for its view of outsiders – witness the Great Wall – but this is not unique to ancient societies: Despite ranking quite far from #1 in pretty much every measure (education, health, happiness, income equality, longevity, literacy, GDP per capita, infant mortality, etc), I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a Republican voter who wouldn’t agree with the statement, “The United States is the greatest country in the world.”
Blasphemy is a special category of criticism. Imagine I were to show a hard-line Republican presidential candidate all the statistics in the world that this country is NOT the greatest in the world, by any quantifiable measure one might care to name. Do you think any of them would even come close to saying, “The United States can learn from the example of other countries, particularly the ones that beat us out on these quantifiable measures (e.g. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, France, Singapore, South Korea, etc)”? It would be career suicide!
Just like an atheist presenting a factual, reasoned, logical, evidence-backed case against the claims of this-or-that religion, in politics, particularly for those on the right, nationalism turns honest criticism into blasphemy. We’re not allowed to say that the United States is not the greatest country in the world, regardless of what the every single quantifiable measure out there shows. We’re not allowed to say that Christians worship thin air when they pray. We’re not allowed to say that Muhammad was either delusional or a liar. To do so is transgression on the sacred, to borrow a term from Michael Taussig, an anthropology professor at Columbia.
Blasphemy is, quite simply, the lack of reverence for the sacred. This can include gods, people, documents (the Torah itself is considered sacred by Jews; if you accidentally drop a bound copy on the floor, you’re supposed to kiss it as a sign of apology), rituals, or even words: The word “Yahweh” is considered so sacred by orthodox Jews that they do not say it aloud, but instead call their god “Lord” (“adonai” in Hebrew) during prayer, or “the name” (“hashem”) when speaking about God rather than to him. If you ever see the this in writing somewhere:
“G-d”
the reason is that it’s considered improper (by Jews) to write out God’s full name on a piece of paper, since you don’t want that piece of paper to end up in the trash, or even electronically, since that file may end up being deleted!
As rational people, we are free to say that there is no good reason to think that these ideas and practices have any basis in reality. The meme of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god has developed the fascinating self-defense mechanism of declaring it blasphemous to criticize it openly. Can you imagine if a virus [a literal one] infected our brains in such a way that it specifically targeted our desire to combat it? That is what the meme of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god has done, and unbelievable effectively, for thousands of years, successfully infecting roughly half of the world’s population (!).
Fortunately, this self-defense measure is only applicable if you’ve already been infected, or partially-infected (in the case of those who “respect others’ beliefs”). In the words of Richard Dawkins, “Stop being so damned respectful.” Religious ideas are ideas like any other, and if they cannot stand up to scrutiny, it’s because they’re not very solid to begin with. This is not to say that, normatively, we should mock people who believe these ideas. Far from it. But positively, we are free to question the beliefs themselves, and be demanding of evidence and good reasons when it comes to why someone thinks something is true.
Asking hard questions, and being free to ask hard questions, isn’t something to be ashamed of, or something to fear. It’s just part of being diligent, being rational, and being honest in our paths as seekers of knowledge.
Looking forward to seeing you at the table!
- Dave
mail@davemuscato.com
(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, Dave posts updates to the SASHA blog every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. His website is http://www.DaveMuscato.com.
If you like this article, please upvote it on Reddit.
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! 
Dave’s Mailbag, Thursday 9/22/11
Welcome to the official MU SASHA daily blog!
First time here? Read this.
If you like this post, please upvote it on Reddit.
Update 9/24 @ 6:55 AM: Redditors, you are AWESOME! We just broke our previous records of most visitors in a 24-hour period (in only 4 hours and 8 minutes!) AND our record for most views to a single article of all time! (This is our previous record-holding blog post with 2,874 visitors in 24 hours and 5,352 views of all time). Thank you for your amazing upvotes and please continue re-posting on Facebook/Twitter/Google+! We are a DAILY BLOG so please subscribe 
We are at 4,632 visitors since midnight/5,524 total views and still counting. Please enjoy; we’re so thrilled to have you here!
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!
I regularly receive emails about my articles here; depending on the nature of the message, I sometimes get one that I think is better served with a public response. Last night I received the following, presumably in response to my blog post about religious identity vs. practice in America, and thought you all might be interested:
Dave,
You are an asshole. In a depressed society where kids are turning to identity in gangs, and their parents are working as hard as possible to keep them in church based programs and out of trouble, you are running your mouth in opposition. Really dude…you are pathetic. No one has to “identify themselves” as you say. These are churches set up to create a positive identity for a child, and you inflect that kids are forced to go to church. The church in some poor depressed neighborhoods is the very outlet for safe harbor for children…
[sender's name withheld by Dave]
Sender,
Thank you for your message. To make sure I understand your position, your claims are:
1) We live in a depressed society
2) Kids are turning to identity in gangs
3) Parents work to keep their kids in church-based programs
4) …and out of trouble
5) No one has to “identify themselves”
6) These churches [in poor, depressed neighborhoods] are set up to create a positive identity for children
7) Churches in some of these neighborhoods are a safe harbor for children
Let’s break this down:
As a student of economic anthropology, one of the things I study is quantifying and analyzing data about social welfare, the overall well-being of societies. There are a couple of ways to assess your claim. You didn’t mention where you’re writing from, but considering you said “we live,” I’m presuming we’re both from the United States. The HDI (Human Development Index) is the most common composite statistic used to rank countries by level of human development. It’s a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living for countries worldwide.
The United States is among the highest in the world when it comes to human development. In fact, using 2010 data (the latest available), we rank at #4, with an HDI of 0.902, behind only Norway, Australia, and New Zealand.
Now, human happiness is not totally dependent on life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living. People are happy or depressed for all sorts of reasons, many of them subjective:
My ex, Bekka, took the above picture during her Peace Corps service in Liberia, West Africa. These are her brothers and sisters from her host family during training. They are all smiles basking in the attention, and from what I understand talking to her, some of the hardest-working, gentlest, and nicest people you could hope to meet. Liberia is one of the poorest countries on Earth, ranking 162nd on the Human Development index, with a GDP per capita of $392, or about $1.07/day. It is also one of the most religious, with approximately 100% of the population self-identifying with a religious tradition (mostly Christianity, also Islam and indigenous religions). Liberia recently went through two terrible back-to-back civil wars, in which about 1 out of 7 people in the entire country died, and unemployment is still around 90% (!), with 85% of the population living below the international poverty line of $1.25/day purchasing-power parity. Lest readers retort, “Well, I don’t know what $1.25 can buy you in Liberia. Maybe you could live like a king on $1.25/day there,” well, that’s what purchasing-power parity means. In other words, 85% of the population lives on less than what you could buy in the United States for $1.25/day in US dollars ($456.25/year).
I think that, if your claim that we live in a depressed society is true (it’s not; “depressed” is a relative term meaning “in a state of relative unhappiness”; according to 2006 figures, we rank fairly high, at #26 on the Satisfaction with Life index; see also this link – it’s not even that we’re not below-average when it comes to happiness; we’re actually in the top 1/7), we ought to examine what the happiest societies are doing differently than we are.
You imply that promoting atheism, as I do, leads young people away from church and into gangs, and therefore is damaging to the goal of lifting our society out of its depressed state. If I have misunderstood your logic, please let me know, as I don’t desire to tear down a straw man.
We can test your claim empirically. I have already addressed that this is a loaded claim in that our society is, in fact, not in a depressed state by any of several quantitative measures. Even if that were true, though, if atheism leads to crime, then the most atheist societies should have the most crime, especially gang-related crime as you are concerned with. We can also test your claim the other way around: If religion leads to less crime in society, than the most-religious societies should have the least crime, especially when it comes to gang-related crime as you stressed.
I could quote to you a bunch of statistics, graphs, charts, maps, and studies that demonstrate beyond any reasonable refutation that the opposite is true: The most atheistic societies (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, etc) have the least crime, and the most religious societies have the most. I can’t help passing up two quick examples: South American & Mexican drug cartels, and the Italian mob, both in countries with the largest populations (and proportions of the population) of Roman Catholics in the world. If anything, it appears that the hierarchical example of Roman Catholicism may have taught them how to organize their crime! To demonstrate the absurdity of this claim, I’m could say two words to you that you’ve never heard back-to-back before: “Swedish mobsters.” Exactly.
Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) receiving The Order of St. Sebastian (The Godfather, Part III). Did you know that “Corleone” is actually Swedish, not the name of a city in Sicily, Italy as portrayed in the films?
But instead, I’m going to follow Phil Zuckerman’s advice [the sociologist at Pitzer College who wrote an ethnographic book about his studies in Denmark & Sweden called "Societies Without God: What The Least-Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment"]:
Don’t get sucked into arguments about “Can we be good without God?” Don’t try to convince theists that secular morality is actually more rational and, well, more moral. Rather, just insist that morality is ultimately revealed and shown through human action and deed. And we can plainly see that the least religious countries and states are generally the most moral, peaceful, and humane, while the most religious countries and states are the most crime-ridden, corrupt, and socially troubled. End of discussion.
Let’s move on to the United States, since that will give us data most applicable to our real concern, religiosity vs. crime & depression [of society in general] in this country. I think two complementary facts should demonstrate to you the fundamental flaw in your claim: In the US, in states with the highest percentages of atheists, the murder rate is lower than average. In the most-religious US states, the murder rate is higher than average (PDF link). The National Gang Intelligence Center, a subdivision of the Department of Justice, put together a nice map illustrating where gang activity is concentrated in the United States:
A vast majority of gang activity in Illinois can be attributed to the fact that it contains Chicago (see below). This makes it an outlier in the Midwestern states. Most gang activity in the rest of the country (California, Florida, New Mexico) is immigrant-related, almost exclusively from Mexico & Latin-America (the Latin Kings gang, which is the largest & most-organized in the United States, is actually based in Chicago).
ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) at Trinity College produced this excellent video lecture with Professor Juhem Navarro-Rivera explaining the demographics of religious belief among Latinos in the United States (roughly 21 of every 25 Latinos in the United States identify as Catholic/Christian):
You can download the full report as a PDF here. I can’t help but mention the similarities of the map on the cover of the above report to the map of gang members per capita I posted above from the Department of Justice. Not to say that correlation implies causation (cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy), nor to imply that all Latinos are involved with gangs, but read the reports, look at the statistics, and see for yourself: Self-identification with a religion is highly positively correlated with criminality, both in the United States by state, and in countries around the world. Whether the lower crime rates among atheists is due to their atheism or a third factor is something we should definitely look into, but what is clear is that advocating atheism cannot be said, reasonably, to lead to higher crime rates, nor to depression as a society. In fact, the data suggest the opposite.
If that were true, when we compare a map of religious adherence to a map of crime rates, we should expect to see TWO things:
1) The areas with the MOST adherence should have LOW crime rates
2) The areas with the LEAST adherence should have HIGH crime rates
What do we see when we look at the data?
Click for source dataAt best, the correlation is inconclusive. For certain states, it seems to be the opposite – the more religion, the more crime; for others, religiosity and crime don’t seem to be linked.
There is a myth, perpetuated by theists, that religion is necessary in order to keep people from becoming criminals. You made the claim that no one has to “identify themselves,” and then go on to say that churches provide a positive identity for children. Well, which is it? You seem to be implying (again, correct me if I’m wrong) that without a religious identity, children would fall into the trap of 1) no identity or 2) a criminal or gang identity.
This is a false dichotomy. You are ignoring the obvious alternative of an atheist identity. As a demographic, atheists have fewer divorces, abortions, and STDs, and lower poverty rates, homicide rates, overall crime rates, and teen pregnancy rates. As a demographic, atheists have higher IQs, incomes, education rates, and literacy rates, and more Nobel Prizes, university professorships, etc. You paint the picture as though without after-school church programs or Sunday School, youth would be lost. You’re forgetting philosophy clubs, science fairs, Camp Quest, the wonderful world of reading, of history, mathematics, biology, COLLEGE, hope for the future, and so on.
Religion is for people who have never matured in their understanding of ethics. Religion teaches a child’s view of ethics, that “being good” means “obeying your parent.” It gives a moral blank check to those bold enough, dishonest enough, to claim to speak for God. Atheism means looking at ethical questions as an adult among other adults, considering ethics as a means of maintaining peace and cooperation among equals, so that all may pursue happiness within the limits that ethics defines. – John B. Hodges
It seems to me that the best thing we can do is teach ethics to young people. You may argue that teaching religion IS teaching ethics, but I would ask, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?” and point you, again, to the expert on this topic, Phil Zuckerman, and his quotation: “We can plainly see that the least religious countries and states are generally the most moral, peaceful, and humane, while the most religious countries and states are the most crime-ridden, corrupt, and socially troubled.”
What we need is to teach young people how to think critically, how to understand the social and psychological pressures of what draws people to criminal behavior, and the alternative: Not more religion, not more thinking that if you just close your eyes really tightly and cross your fingers, society will magically improve, but more science, more reading, more knowledge – the only things that have ever demonstrably led to actual improvement in human societies, as Steven Pinker aptly points out in this linked video, tipping exponentially toward a better world starting with the Age of Enlightenment in the 16th century, when science really began to shape how we view (and govern) ourselves.
We need to teach young people to be more skeptical, not more obedient. Teaching obedience is not only demonstrably ineffective (see above) but leads to rebellion (at best), or worse, the idea that people can do whatever they want – no matter how disgusting, inhuman, cruel, and savage it may be – because your invisible friend will still be your buddy and let you live in his invisible mansion when it’s over. Teaching young people how to read, and teaching them philosophy, leads – demonstrably – to more ethical behavior. And as Phil Zuckerman said, that is really what our concern is in all of this.
If I have misrepresented your view, please let me know exactly what you meant to say, and I will respond. I hope this has helped you (and other readers) see that religiosity is, actually, a bad influence when it comes to moral, pro-social thought & behavior.
Take care,
Dave
mail@davemuscato.com
(573) 424-0420 cell/text
If you like this post, please upvote it on Reddit.
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!
Making headway!
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 everyone!
Today we set up the Ask an Atheist table again at Speakers’ Circle, and handed out approximately 150 of these flyers:
We got overwhelmingly positive responses at the table; we had a few very good discussions and helped several people understand what we mean by the word “atheist”/”agnostic,” why we do what we do, how atheists make ethical decisions, etc. We told a lot of people about events we have planned for this year, and I think we’re going to have even more people at our next meeting than we did at our last one, especially considering we haven’t put up the bulk of the posters yet!
Coincidentally, there were independently two (unrelated) street preachers at the circle today, as well. The first up was a 40ish man with a thick Alabama accent and a VERY loud voice who read from his bible incessantly for several hours. He was completely uninterested in opening a dialogue and simply yelled bible verses at students. A few people sat and listened, but he didn’t really have a crowd going. I went over and tried to start a conversation with him, but gave up after about 5 minutes – every time I asked him a question, e.g. “You quote the bible, but why do you believe in the bible?” or “What’s your name?” he simply said “Not now” and continued reading his bible to the open air. I don’t think he really reached anyone.
Sister Cindy preached next, but honestly I didn’t get a chance to listen to her, since I was back at the table by then. I did see that she was holding up a condom, so I imagine she was talking about “fornication!!!!!” I do think it’s interesting that, according to Brother Jed’s journal about today, he was worried about a young guy named Marcus who all set to get saved, but changed his mind at the last minute because he realized that he would have to obey the bible in its entirety (according to Jed), and believing and obeying the Christian bible meant turning against his sister, who’s gay. (Jed quoted Luke 14:26 in his journal, which reads: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”) I think it’s ironic that Sister Cindy was preaching today, considering that apparently she believes it’s alright to pick and choose from the bible (see 1 Timothy 2:11-12).
We’ve discussed this before at meetings, but I think it’s worth mentioning: Our table has a big sign that says “Ask an Atheist” (see yesterday’s post for a photo), and we’re wondering if we’re really approaching our tabling with the right goal in mind. Although we do want to chat with people who are curious about atheism and help them understand better what it means, we are also—primarily, even—seeking other atheists who are interested in joining our group. The sign we’re using now doesn’t really work well for that purpose. We get a lot of people giving us thumbs-up as they walk by, or taking pictures of our sign and waving at us, or telling us “Keep up the good work!” and so on, but we want those people to stop at the table and learn about our group! Those who did approach us, often, didn’t even realize we were part of a group that has regular meetings, as much as just taking it upon ourselves to answer people’s questions about atheism. I think we’ll need to make a new sign with something more direct, for example, “Atheist? Join the club!” or something along those lines to accompany the one we have now.
After we finished tabling, we went to the LGBTQ Resource Center‘s welcome pizza party. It was great! So many people having fun, getting to know each other, and knowing that have a safe place on campus to learn, read, and not have to worry about people not understanding them. This is the type of thing of which we need more, not Brother Jed telling people that they are “not worthy” because they’re not willing to “hate” their sisters simply for being gay. I am honestly tired of Christians, mostly who haven’t ever read the bible, trying to convince me that Jesus was all about love and peace. The character of Jesus as portrayed in the bible doesn’t exactly match the glowing beacon of acceptance your youth pastor told you about, guys… sorry to burst your bubble!
People who use reason, logic, and evidence to decide how to weigh what’s acceptable or not are the people I want to hang around, and an ethical (and legal) system based on critical examination and rationality is the kind of system under which I want to live. Richard Dawkins explains it well in this clip, I think (and gets a round of applause, as well):
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.
