Newsletter : July 2011 : Issue 14

In this issue: Committee activity || Featured article || Book review

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Welcome to Atheism’s July Newsletter – Issue 14.

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Committee activity

World Atheist Convention, Dublin, Ireland 3-5-June 2011 – Well, we all returned safely from Dublin after a very enjoyable conference. Many thanks to our hosts, Atheist Ireland. Here is a  review of the conference:

“In Dublin’s Fair City (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Drink 12 Pints of Guinness)” (by Richard Honess)

In early June 2011 I set off from my humble abode in London and three trains and a ferry later I was arriving in Dublin, Ireland’s capital city, to attend the World Atheist Convention that was being held at the O’Callaghan Alexander Hotel. I was first struck by the general “laid-backedness” of the city, and by how sunny and warm it was (however I have been subsequently assured by the locals that this weather was simply freaky!).

This would be my fourth Atheist Alliance International Convention, having previously attended Burbank, Copenhagen and Montreal, and as a result I knew that I was going to be amongst friends, and it seems that those that know me seem to increase exponentially. Indeed one convention goer described the Atheist Community at conventions as a “second family” and to some of my American friends who have very religious families and have been ostracised or at least alienated by them, often the only real family they have. Now whilst living in the UK and having a very close and loving family I have no such negative issues (I consider myself lucky in that regard) but I still feel an amazing sense of community; and I think that this must be similar to the community building that religions already have built into them and so easily provide people, that I considered that this maybe one of the reasons why many people don’t give them up!

In this case that feeling of inclusion was almost immediate when one of the conference organisers, who is a Facebook friend, but had never actually met in the flesh before recognised me as soon as I booked in, and almost right away I was lending a bit of a hand with fetching, carrying and testing the IT. It was during this that I first met and had a productive chat with the incoming president of the newly restructured AAI, Tanya Smith, from Australia. She definitely had a can do, let’s go get ‘em attitude which I immediately warmed to! A good start!

So the night before the big day, the organisers had, erm, organised (again via Facebook, all praise to Facebook) a meal and a drink in The Church which was a bar and restaurant that had been converted from…a church! A conversion I fully support and approve of. Over 40 conventioneers attended and I was able to chat to, and have a few pints of the black stuff, with a few of the speakers including Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland, Rebecca Watson from Skepchick and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor from the Freedom From Religion Foundation to name just four.

The Friday began with registration where all conventioneers were issued with a very attractive orange lanyard, and the convention kicked off with an open meeting of the newly restructured AAI with an opening address and a review of the work AAI had been doing so far in countries in the third world such as Uganda. The new board was also elected. This was very efficiently handled by our new president. The meeting was scheduled to take place between 2pm and 4.30pm, we were done by 2.30! In fact some people were entering the room to come to the meeting as we were leaving!

However the real business of the convention began at 5pm with an opening address from Atheist Ireland president Michael Nugent. Now if you have never heard Michael talk before it is well worth seeking him out on YouTube or seeing him live if you can. He is an incredibly funny man with a cheeky sense of humour and dry delivery. He was addressing questions asked of him about the arrogance of atheists, or the arrogance of the belief that the universe was not created for our benefit, and the comparison with not believing in god to not collecting stamps. All I’ll say is that our aphilatelist (thanks to Dan Barker) convention was going to be fun. This was then followed by a keynote speech by Senator Ivana Bacik, the only member of the Irish Parliament who is a member of Atheist Ireland. She gave a great impassioned speech and warned of creeping fundamentalism within society.

Unlike all of the other conventions that I had been to which usually consist of several set piece presentations by one speaker and with QandA if there was time, the plan was to have mostly panel discussions with lots of QandA for the audience to get involved, and the first panel was entitled Weird Science versus Weird Religion and featured YouTuber DPR Jones, Danish science journalist Lone Frank and some bloke called Richard Dawkins. The discussion took in some people’s apparent psychological need for religion and the rather depressing view that people will always believe nonsense. However this, of course, shouldn’t mean we should stop trying. During the QandAs for this it became apparent that there were a group of Muslims in the audience. One of them got up to answer a question of Richard Dawkins. The response to this question is now all over YouTube and the internet so I don’t really need to elaborate on Richard’s response except to say that Christopher Hitchens has the Hitchslap, well, we now have the Richslap! The discussion was interrupted by a pizza delivery by a loon calling himself Jesus Christ who had been bombarding the organisers and the hotel with crank emails, fortunately we know where he lives and the pizza companies will be billing him later! It ended on a very positive note, mainly a comment from Richard Dawkins that we should challenge, confront and when necessary ridicule faith.

This was then followed by a brief handover of the AAI from outgoing president Nick Lee (who takes over the newly formed Atheist Alliance of America) to Tanya Smith. As a member of an international affiliate I am certainly looking forward to working with the New AAI.

After a very nice buffet we were then treated to a comedy show by local comedian Abie Philbin Bowman who was work shopping his latest show Pope Benedict: Bond Villain. To give you an idea of his work his previous shows include Jesus Christ the Guantanamo Years (which apparently he performed in Pakistan) which was about the problem Jesus had during the second coming getting past US Immigration, and Eco-Friendly Jihad about environmentally considerate suicide bombers.

The next day kicked off with a panel on Secular Education & Human Rights with Jane Donnelly of Atheist Ireland, Thomas Prosser of Trinity College Dublin and the aforementioned Annie Laurie Gaylor. Examining the rights of children not to be indoctrinated and the very clear difference between the education systems in the US and Ireland (the system of the UK seems to fall somewhat between the two). This was followed by a panel on Speaking Out Against Blasphemy Laws with Michael Nugent, Anne Marie Waters of the One Law for All Campaign and David Nash a historian and blasphemy expert from my own alma mater Oxford Brookes University. The main point I got from this is if your blasphemy law is repealed (as they all should) be careful what hate crime legislation they may put in its place.

After this everyone’s favourite PZ Myers gave a keynote speech. His style of delivery and message is certainly one that appeals to me and many of the convention goers. His talk is bound to make it onto YouTube very soon (if it has not already by time of publishing) so I’m not going to spoil it except for the comment that accommodationalists are like people that have rolled in a pool of bulls excrement to get rid of the smell of skunk spray (I shall say no more!).

The next panel was bound to be a bit controversial. Paul Kirby, Tanya Smith, Bobbie Kirkhart (former AAI President) and Anne Marie Waters were discussing Women Atheist Activists. The conclusion of the panel was that women have to do more to put themselves forward into positions of leadership and speak out on atheist issues more. The big controversy was that the panel said that they had not suffered any sexism within the atheist community and that this isn’t really much of an issue; a view not shared by Rebecca Watson (and others!) in a later panel where she revealed some of the more interesting emails she receives from time to time. I have also been informed by a reliable source (PZ Myers) that Tanya was later informed of some of the issues and has reassessed her position, who would have though it, an atheist changing their mind when given more information! Let’s hope we can all learn from this.

Sadly there was not much time for discussion in the next panel, Religion: Accommodate or Confront, due to time overruns which was a pity as it was a topic that I am particularly interested in as my own group was formed due to a lack of confrontation in the non-theistic community in the UK. However Dan Barker, Richard Green (of my group Atheism UK), René Hartmann of the IBKA, Germany, appeared to agree the answer was – confront! Sadly, just as they were about to start discussing how to deal with the I’m an atheist buttery, which rears its head whenever we decide to confront, time was called.

The last panel of the day was on Communicating Atheism and consisted of YouTuber AronRa, Rebecca Watson, our august editor Tom Melchiorre (is that a good enough plug?) and that Dawkins fellow again! The main take home was, let’s communicate in any way we can!

The Sunday, often a bit of a graveyard shift, started a bit later than other conventions (is this a case of lessons learned) and began with a panel subject of Building Secular Coalitions which, on its face, might seem a little dull, but produced an entertaining and interesting discussion. Nick Lee spoke about how he was able to build coalitions with religious groups who also see the value of secularism, a representative of the IHEU (whose name escapes me at the moment) spoke about the build up of secular and humanist groups around the world, Maryam Namazie from One Law for All spoke about when working with people ensure that they share your goals and never compromise on your secularism and Mark Embleton (President of Atheism UK), once he had finished cracking jokes about experimenting with comparing the taste of Guinness in Dublin with that back in London (the conclusion, by the way, is that more research is needed!), spoke about the problems of trying to build coalitions with other non-theistic groups (if you are reading this you know who you are).

There then followed a brief extract of a speech that was due to be given by Kirumira Mgapi Michael from Uganda who sadly, and once again, had been denied a visa to give a speech at an AAI Convention. Past president (and now treasurer) Stuart Bechman read the extracts which brings home why an atheist worldview and atheist activism is so important. I can only hope that Kirumira can make it soon because if his talk has even half of the passion that the extract contained I’m sure we would all feel privileged to hear him.

There then followed a discussion on the Dublin Declaration of Religion in Public Life. This was a declaration from the conference setting out our principles and goals with relation to how religion should be treated in the public arena. The original draft had been circulated many weeks previous and had been subject to numerous online discussions. This had led to a second draft which although framed differently (and in the opinion of some in the room negatively) was much more tightly focussed on specific issues. The room was split about which to adopt until Maryam Namazie came up with an inspired idea to combine the two. This was later done and a far better declaration produced. What I will say is that no matter what you thought of the second document it really stimulated an excellent discussion from the conference floor which had an influence of the final draft which was adopted unanimously by the conference. I only hope that we as individuals, affiliate groups and as a worldwide organisation act upon it.

Roger Lepeix from the International Liaison Committee of Atheists and Freethinkers in France gave a short talk on the formation of a new international freethought confederation; followed by the final keynote speech of the conference. An impassioned speech by Maryam Namazie who spoke about the injustices of Sharia Law of which there are many, and a call to arms (intellectually speaking) to de-religionise society. She was simply the star of the conference. Her experiences, her campaigning work and the suffering she has seen in the name of religion should send a clear message to those who call themselves atheists and prefer to attack Richard Dawkins and the other Gnu Atheists for being outspoken when the real enemy is unreason, superstition and religion; and that to criticise religion is not racist it is not intolerant, the only intolerance is that of intolerance itself one of the root causes being religion. One of the muslims at the back tried to accuse her of being as aggressive as the Mullahs she criticises and stated that some academics had stated that Sharia Law had been a great blessing on society. Maryam gave this short shrift stating that they would never need to fear for their personal safety when leaving a secular conference, yet she has feared when leaving meetings in areas like Bradford. No atheist is going to physically assault them or execute them for not conforming, or for changing their minds, and to claim that we atheists would do that was a disgrace. She told the conference to ask them about the stoning of gays and apostates and the fact you would never get a straight answer from them. This earned her a standing ovation from the conference and a feeling that we would be going back to our communities with a renewed vigour to stand up and do what must be done!

All in all this was a fantastic convention, with more audience participation and energy than I had ever experienced before. I can say I am a convert to the panel discussion (although I admit I do like the big set piece speeches as well). A big thank you must go out to Michael Nugent, and all those in Atheist Ireland who made this a convention to remember. All I ask is, of those that attended, is be motivated to act and speak out and we can make the world a better place.

Richard Honess is the International Liaison Officer for AtheismUK, a public servant and ex-primary school teacher from London with interests in musical theatre, collecting DVDs, distance running and had just taken possession of a new 12 string guitar. He thinks the Guinness is better in Dublin, and that probably has something to do with the Liffey water!

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Featured article

Religion: Accommodate or Confront? (by Richard Green)

Background – the following article is a transcript of the presentation given by Richard Green of Atheism UK as a panel member at the recent World Atheist Convention.

This is the burning issue. It was the subject of a similar discussion at last year’s fractious Council for Secular Humanism conference in California in the context of the relationship between science and religion. In this discussion at this atheist convention, we are talking about the relationship between atheism and religion.

“Confront” conveys a hostile or argumentative intent or manner with which atheists “challenge religious faith”. No matter how reasonably or politely they do it, they are accused of being hostile or argumentative, of being confrontational. As was said in the following passages from the “Four Horseman” discussion of 2007:-

Dawkins: “One of the things we’ve all met is the accusation that we are strident or arrogant, or vitriolic, or shrill. What do we think about that?”

Dennett: “Well I’m amused by it, because I went out of my way in my book to address reasonable religious people. And I test-flew the draft with groups of students who were deeply religious. And indeed, the first draft incurred some real anguish. And so I made adjustments and made adjustments. And it didn’t do any good in the end because I still got hammered for being rude and aggressive. And I came to realise that it’s a no-win situation. It’s a mug’s game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude.”

But – and here’s the thing – the accusation comes not just from theists and religionists but also from atheists and humanists. As Susan Blackmore has pointed out:-

A really clever trick – and I’m not sure how the great religions have managed to pull this one off – is to make the rest of us feel that we ought to respect people for believing impossible things on faith, and that we should not laugh at them for fear of offending them. In a society that strives for honesty and openness, that values scientific and historical truth, and that encourages the search for knowledge, this is outrageous – and it’s scary that we still fall for it.

The advancement of atheism entails challenging religious faith. But, such is the zero tolerance which religious faith has evolved as a defence mechanism for itself, this is always perceived by some, on both sides of the faith divide, as confrontation.

The alternative to confrontation is accommodation, which means (more in US than UK, usage): a “settlement or compromise”. But there is no scope for compromise between religious faith and the lack of it. There is no possible half-way house. You either have it or you don’t. You cannot have half a religious faith.

So, to “accommodate” means to “refrain from confronting” – completely. And “confronting” means “challenging religious faith”. Therefore, to accommodate religion is to abandon the advancement of atheism.

Why do we find such aversion to confrontation, even among atheists and humanists?

Well, many contemporary atheists still have a religious mindset; they believe in things that do not exist. They have replaced the concept of a super-empirical God with secular deities – usually collective constructs – such as the state, the nation or humanity

Of course, these things do, in some sense, exist as empirical facts, but they do not exist in any holistic sense as if they were sentient entities, singular conscious actors with intrinsic value, purpose, responsible for anything or as a source of morality. In the latter sense, they are mere abstractions.

Such atheists rely on faith in these abstractions to be confident in the existence of order and morality. They act as if their non-existence, or at least the lack of them as a rationale, would lead to chaos and immorality and they use them as an appeal to authority for justification of goals and actions.

The distinction, between those atheists who still have a religious mindset and those who do not, corresponds to the recently drawn distinction between “soft atheists” and “hard atheists”. Soft atheists refute the religionist claim: “Without God, there is no morality”, by way of the “Good without God” paradigm. But, far from refuting such religionist claim, hard atheists grant it. They hold that, just as there is no such thing as God, so there is no such thing as morality, only the illusion of it.

“Morality”, in this sense, means not our moralistic intuitions and emotions but a universal injunction external to them. The former are empirical facts; the latter is a figment of our wishful or fearful imagination, but is widely accepted as real.

Atheism implies amorality; hard atheists are amoralists. Soft atheists are moralists; they hold that one can be an atheist and still believe in morality.

Belief, in a universal injunction external to our moralistic intuitions and emotions, entails belief in an external source of it. For the theist, that source is a divine commander; for the soft atheist, it is a secular deity such as humanity – which arch-accommodationist Paul Kurtz has endowed with “global consciousness”. But the mindset is essentially the same, belief in something that does not exist. The reason why the soft atheist dislikes criticism of religion is that the same criticism can be levelled at the soft atheist.

The relationship with secularism is different. According to UK “Secularist of the Year 2009”, Evan Harris, in the preamble to his “Secularist Manifesto”:-

Secularism is not atheism (lack of belief in God) and nor is it humanism (a nonreligious belief system). It is a political movement seeking specific policy end-points. Many secularists are religious and many religious people – recognising the value of keeping government and religion separate – are secular.

Secularism seeks to defend the absolute freedom of religious and other belief, seeks to maximise freedom of religious and other expression and protect the right to manifest religious belief insofar as it does not impinge disproportionately on the rights and freedoms of others. In addition secularism aims to end religious privileges or persecutions and to separate the state fully from religion which is a necessary means to that end.

That is secularism per se, independent of atheism. It accommodates religion because it does not advance atheism.

But secularism, for the atheist, is merely a sub-set of atheism. The premise of atheism is that the word “God” (or any other word), when used to refer to a super-empirical object or process, does not symbolize anything intelligible. Therefore, the theistic assertion “God exists” is false. The state and its branches cannot derive their legitimacy from “God”. “God”, “faith” and “religion” have no place in a state’s constitution (written or unwritten), its laws or its actions. The principles of secularism are but an application of the premise of atheism. Active secularism aims to remove religion from public life. Active atheism aims to remove religion from life, of which public life is a sub-set.

Religious faith makes people hold as true things which either have no truth value or which are demonstrably false or contradictory. Therefore, the world would be a better place without it – “better”, that is, in the epistemic sense rather than in the ethical sense. There is no need to seek a substitute for God as the source of order or morality. Indeed, to do so would introduce other falsehoods.

Challenging religious faith is an end in itself. IF it is perceived by some as confrontation (as it inevitably will be), then so be it. The alternative, accommodation, is either to do nothing or to admit quasi-religions based on secular deities.

The message to those theists, religionists, who display zero tolerance to the advancement of atheism, is: “Get over it!” And the message to those atheists, humanist and secularists, who share the same zero tolerance, is: “Look at your own mindset!”

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Book review (by Lt Zippy)

“How to be an Agnostic” by Mark Vernon

When I picked up this book I did not know what to expect. Reading the notes on the back of the book it notes that Mark Vernon is a former Anglican priest, but as I read on my heart (in a metaphorical sense) began to sink. The words “spiritual not religious” sprang up and hit me in the face, then it stated that he left the church a “committed atheist, and now finds himself to be a committed, searching agnostic.”

This made me groan. There seems to be a couple of types of agnostic, those like me who state that I do not know if a god exists or not but given the lack of any evidence for one I choose not to believe, making me an agnostic atheist. Then there are those that say both atheists and theists are certain of their position and agnosticism is a “middle way,” continually seeking something. Vernon appears to be of the latter variety. This was instantly a turn off for me, but I cannot judge a book by its cover (literally) and so I began to read.

Maybe this blub on the back coloured my view, but sadly the book continued in the same vein. Continuously misrepresenting atheism as absolute certainty, and invoking the word “spiritual” several times. I cannot divorce the word spiritual from its supernatural roots and I wish that other non-believers would stop using it.

I’ll give you a quote from the book, and it is actually the caption for an illustration of T.H. Huxley:

“T.H. Huxley, coined the word agnosticism, and it’s one that has stuck for describing a mid-position between the certainties of atheism and theism.”

I wanted to scream! With such a blatant misrepresentation of what atheism is today (and indeed what agnosticism is!) I found it almost impossible to carry on. Actually I did find it impossible to carry on. When a book like this starts on a false representation of what atheism and agnosticism are, then blends spirituality and the search of “something” I couldn’t stomach it any more and couldn’t go back after the introduction.

Whilst I cannot comment on the rest of the book, I learned enough from the intro that this was not going to be for me. I know that my view may not be sophisticated, but when a book starts by misrepresenting my position I lose interest quickly.

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