An Imperfect Response
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Ron Lindsay’s tone-deaf greeting at the Women in Secularism conference. I wasn’t the only person who wrote about it.
Other people who are friends and acquaintances wrote about it as well. They were pretty teed off. I could see why.
Now, a lot of people seemed to think that there was a call for Lindsay’s to be ejected from his position with the Center For Inquiry. I didn’t see that call in the pieces I read. The letter to the CFI board signed by speakers at the conference did not ask for his resignation. I saw a lot of people asking the CFI board to do “something” in response to the situation.
Shit that Pissed Me Off This Week – 6/14
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is Off the Rails
Kennedy has long been an Anti-Vaccine crusader and I dislike the anti-vaxx movement with only slightly less zeal than the creationist movement.
I have two children on the autism spectrum. They were both vaccinated and I know two things:
1) Vaccinating my kids did not make them autistic
2) Even if it did (and it didn’t), I would rather have autistic children than children with Smallpox or Polio
You think this guy was happy he wasn’t vaccinated?
Kennedy and others like him have been pushing misinformation and, as this article proves, they are willing to name names. They people they name, however, never actually said what they are claimed to have said. Nor do the studies they cite actually say what they claim those studies say.
So all he is doing is engaging in character of assassination.
I get that big pharma is theoretically evil but here’s the thing – vaccines are not. Yes, pharmaceutical companies make money off vaccines. I guess that’s a price I’m willing to pay to ensure that my kids don’t get the measles.
Claiming vaccines cause autism is to make the claim that you understand a shitload more about autism than all the folks out there researching the condition.
And in the meantime, making people afraid of vaccines is contributing to the rise of diseases we thought had been eradicated. That’s what I call a lose-lose.
Geeks Without God Gets Reflective about Comedy
This week’s episode features emergency fill-in guest Joseph Scrimshaw. Joseph is in the midst of a big Kickstarter campaign so it seemed like a great time to feature him on the podcast. We got him to tell us all about the Kickstarter (of course) and then we talked about Joseph’s favorite obsession, comic theory.
Speaking of Joseph’s Kickstarter, my band, The Dregs, will be contributing a song to his Flaw Fest album assuming it gets funded so now I’m not just excited because I like the idea, I’m also excited because I want to write a song about guilt for Joseph’s album.
He also decided that Bugs Bunny is an atheist and I’m all for putting Bugs in our court.
So hey, listen to the podcast and support the Kickstarter! It’s what friends do!
Shit That Pissed me Off This Week – 6/7
Baptist Church Plans to Dump the Boy Scouts because They Don’t Hate Gay People
The Boy Scouts expected that they would get some pushback from members of the faith community when they chose to accept openly gay scouts. Good thing, too. Because they are getting it.
Baptist ministers are saying that they have no choice. It is not a hate thing. It’s a morality thing. They just can’t support the Boy Scouts now that the organization has embraced a morally improper lifestyle by accepting openly gay scouts.
Look at how immoral this possibly gay boy scout looks!
That isn’t hate. They feel really badly about the whole thing. It isn’t their fault. It’s god’s fault!
I mean, sure, Jesus preached forgiveness and all that bullshit but not if you aren’t willing to deny your own sexuality because god doesn’t love you just the way you are.
Yeah. Fuck those guys.
Alphabetical Movie – Looper
Time travel is probably one of the most tricky conceits for any movie. The moment you decide your movie will involve time travel, you are immediately faced with the unavoidable fact that you can’t write such a story without creating a paradox.
How can the Terminator possibly succeed at killing John Connor since he already hasn’t?
If you are going to tell a good story about time travel, you have to embrace the paradox. You have to just accept that it doesn’t all make sense but if time travel were really possible, it wouldn’t all make sense.
If they can go back to the exact point in time they want to get some whales, why couldn’t they come back five days earlier so they wouldn’t be crippled by the probe?
Geeks Without God Talks About CONvergence
Our podcast got started at CONvergence 2012 and as CONvergence 2013 approaches, we decided to spend some time talking about the convention because, honestly, it’s one of our favorite weekends of the year. The three of us have a busy weekend planned. How busy?
Well, you can listen to the episode to find out!
Shit that Pissed me Off this Week – 5/31
Arizona State Representative was so Upset an Atheist Rep. Didn’t pray, he Prayed Twice
I missed this one last week, sorry.
So here’s what happened. Arizona State Representative (and secular humanist) Juan Mendez gave an invocation that did not include God. They take turns giving the invocation, it was his turn and he gave an invocation based on his beliefs. Which is totally his fucking right.
Representative Steve Smith was so upset about it, he offered up a special prayer the next day for “repentance of the previous day.” In addition to a prayer he’d already given. Because he had to make up for Mendez, I guess.
Oh god, please forgive my fellow legislators for being tolerant of beliefs other than their own. As I’m the only one of them without sin, I’m going to cast the first stone.
Now let’s step back for a moment and ask what the appropriate response would be had Mendez given a Hindu prayer. Or a Jewish one. Or an Islamic one. Would that have been OK because he’d mentioned a god or gods (even if they weren’t the right one)?
Assuming Smith’s response had been the same (two prayers to make up for the lack of a Christian one), would he have taken flak for choosing to disrespect any belief system other than humanism?
I’ll bet people would have been pissed as hell. Not just Muslims or Jews or whatever other religion he’d chosen to disrespect but Christians as well.
As it is, Smith will be applauded by the religious right for standing up to the godless left even though the godless left has had to tolerate Christian prayer in the Arizona state house for every day except one.
I am a White Male and I Cannot be Silenced
It sounds really stupid when I say that I can’t be silenced, doesn’t it?
I mean, here I am writing a blog entry and I get to say whatever the fuck I want. Nobody is telling me to shut up because I’m a white guy. Nobody seems to think that I haven’t a right to speak my mind. It’s really fucking easy for me to have my say any time I like.
I bring this up because I’ve been reading a lot about a welcome address given at the Women in Secularism conference just over a week ago. The address got on the nerves of a lot of attendees because the speaker, a white male, chose to use part of his speech to admonish the women in attendance for perhaps taking feminism too far.
Now the fact he is a white male should not be the big issue here as he is the CEO of the Center for Inquiry and they did sponsor the event. Having him open the conference does seem somewhat appropriate.
Shit that Pissed Me off This Week – 5/24
Florida Teenager Faces Felony Charges for Being a Lesbian
Actually, she isn’t facing felony charges for being a lesbian. She’s facing felony charges for statutory rape because she was having a consensual relationship with a girl who was 14. When she was 17, that was (at least according to the articles I’ve read), legal.
But she turned 18. And her girlfriends’ parents immediately had her arrested.
Update: Apparently it wasn’t legal when she was 17 because if you are under 16, you can’t have consensual sex with anyone in the State of Florida. It would seem they waited until she was 18 so she could be charged as an adult. Classy.
And the county prosecutor is going for it. Because the law is all about protecting the innocent and that fourteen year old was clearly being corrupted by her girlfriend the second she turned 18. There is, apparently, no nuance in statutory rape laws that takes the age of the offender into account. ‘Cuz an eighteen year old may be older than a fourteen year old but she is just as much of a child.
Oh sure, you can hold her hand now. But you’d better let it go before you turn eighteen!
If she had been a boy, I’ll bet this would not have happened.
Hey, you folks who are against same-sex marriage and who still think that you aren’t bigots – don’t you think getting an eighteen year old girl expelled from school and possibly putting her in prison because she’s a lesbian seems just a little bit bigoted?
Update: There is a lot more nuance to this case. I checked my sources before I posted it but bias is always a risk. I’m still annoyed by any situation that could have a child (and yes – an eighteen year old is still a child) sent to jail for fifteen years because of sexual curiousity. If there is one thing that scares the piss out of us in this country, it is human sexuality.
Geeks Without God gets Artsy Fartsy
I gotta be honest. I could have talked about this week’s topic for a lot longer than we did. Our jumping off point was a discussion of a jackass that Molly had as a professor in college. From there, we talked about the idea of aesthetic beauty and what art we all found attractive or interesting.
Of course, given the theme of the podcast, we also talked about whether or not religion could be afforded any intrinsic value because of the art and architecture that has been created in the name of religion.
It is all very philosophical and involves discussions of trips to Europe, artistic styles and even comic books. Have a listen if that is your thing!
Grail Diary 