"I think we were worth it": Arguing About Religion

Is arguing with religious believers worth it?

The Secular Student Alliance conference last weekend has left my head buzzing with ideas, which will be filtering out into my writing over the coming days and weeks and probably years. The one I want to talk about today came from Jerry DeWitt, executive director of Recovering from Religion (CORRECTION: it was Keith Lowell Jensen), who gave an answer to this question that’s still echoing in my head.

There’s a talk I sometimes give, called “Resistance Is Not Futile: Is Arguing About Religion Worth It?” (Here’s a video of it.) In it, I make the case that arguing with religious believers is worth it — and give some ideas on how to do it. And when I give this talk, there’s a little interactive exercise that I do. I ask the people in the audience to raise their hands if they’re an atheist. I ask them to keep their hands up if they used to be religious. and then I ask them to keep their hands up if they were persuaded out of their religion — at least in part — by arguments against religion that they read, or saw on YouTube, or heard from their friends, or whatever.

There are always lots of hands still in the air. Proving my point: that arguments against religion can be effective, and are not a waste of time.

At the Secular Student Alliance conference last weekend, Jerry DeWitt (CORRECTION: Keith Lowell Jensen) made very much the same point during his talk — but in a way that was both more succinct, and more powerful.

He was talking about this notion — very prevalent in the atheist community — that arguing with religious believers isn’t worth it.

He asked the audience to raise their hands if they used to believe in religion.

And then he said, “I think we were worth it.”

I think we were worth it.

When this question of arguing about religion comes up, we sometimes see it purely in adversarial terms. As if arguing with people made them the enemy… and as if saying, “I think you’re mistaken and here’s why” were the same as saying, “I think you are stupid and inferior and worthless.”

But I don’t see it that way. When I argue with a believer about religion, I’m not saying, “I think your beliefs make you stupid.” I’m saying, “I think you’re smart enough to get this. I think you’re open-minded enough to be willing to change your mind. I think you’re strong enough to deal with changing your mind about something important.”

I think the atheist community is awesome. Sometimes totally maddening… but awesome. I think becoming an atheist can make your life better… if for no other reason than that it is correct, and a correct understanding of the world makes us better able to cope with it. And most people in the atheist community used to be religious. Many people in the atheist community had their minds changed, at least in part, by arguments against religion. Including me.

I think we were worth it.

"I think we were worth it": Arguing About Religion
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The Mission

I was digging through my old fiction files (I’m pulling together an erotic fiction collection), and I came across this story, which I wrote years ago and had forgotten about. I started the story thinking it would be erotica, but I never found a good place to put the sex scenes in, and it wound up seeming like a better story without the sex actually in it.

I hardly ever write fiction, except for porn, but I’m fond of this one. I never found a home for it, so I’m publishing it here now.

The Mission

“I’m on a mission,” she said.
We were in the women’s bathroom at the Cafe Rio. I was zipping my jeans back up and tucking in my T-shirt. “A mission,” I said. “Am I one of the heathens you’ve come to convert?”
“Kind of,” she laughed. She pulled off her latex gloves, the ones that had been in her purse about fifteen minutes before, and threw them in the trash. “My shrink suggested it, actually.”
“Your shrink suggested that you fuck strange women in cafe bathrooms?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Well, okay, no, not in those words. She, we were talking about — you know how hard it is to meet women sometimes? How dykes will sit in a bar for hours before they get up the nerve to say hello?”
I nodded. “Lesbian sheep.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Huh?”
“Lesbian sheep,” I repeated. “This biologist, he was doing research on wild sheep, some species where the males have all this gay sheep sex with each other. Somebody asked him if there were lesbian sheep too, and he said there was no way to tell, since what female sheep did to initiate sex was to just stand there.”
She giggled. “I’ve been to that bar.”
“We’ve all been to that bar.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, I was talking to my therapist about this, and she said, ‘What do you think would happen if you made the first move? What are you afraid of happening?’ Kind of a good question, I had to think about it for a while. Anyway, a little after that I came into some money, sort of unexpectedly. Not a ton, but enough so I could quit working and travel a while, if I did it on the cheap.” She spread her hands and grinned. “So here I am.”
I stared intently into the warped mirror, trying to fix my lipstick. “Here you are what?” I asked. “You were talking to your therapist about lesbian sheep, and now you’re traveling around the country hitting on women in cafes and saying you’re on a mission?”
“More or less. It’s sort of an experiment. I’m seeing what happens if, every time I want to have sex with a woman, I ask her.”
I practically jammed the lipstick up my nose. “You’re asking every woman you’re attracted to, to have sex with you?”
“Yup.”
“Every one.”
“That’s the idea. I chickened out a few times when I first started, but I’ve been close to 100% for almost four months now.”
“Wait. I’m still kind of… every one?”
“That’s it. I’m on a one-woman mission to rid the world of lesbian sheep syndrome.” She giggled again. “Lesbian sheep. That’s good. I’ll have to remember that.”
She looked at her watch. “Shit. I need to get going. I told my friend I’d meet her at six for a movie.” She reached out and shook my hand. “I’m Julie, by the way. I’ll be in town for a few days. Maybe I’ll run into you again.” She kissed my hand and scurried out of the bathroom.
That was the first time I saw her. Continue reading “The Mission”

The Mission

Help PZ and Hemant Get Tattoos For Charity!

I’m just going to lay it out there. If the Foundation Beyond Belief can get 5,400 people on their international team this week, raising money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society through their Light the Night Walks, Todd Stiefel will get a mohawk — and PZ Myers (Pharyngula) and Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) will get tattoos.

Quote, from Todd Stiefel:

Our goal this week is to go from 400 to 5,400 people on the Foundation Beyond Belief international team raising money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. We need your help. Please join our team at http://pages.lightthenight.org/2012/FBB. Please encourage your friends and local freethought groups to join as well. If we make this viral, we can hit this stretch goal!

If we are able to add 5,000 people before the end of Saturday, July 14, I will shave to a mohawk while at Camp Quest South Carolina next week. Additionally, PZ Myers and Hemant Mehta will get tattoos. (Watch their blogs today for proof.) Yeah, they are more braver than I am.

Anyone is welcome on the team, regardless of belief (or lack thereof). All money raised goes directly to benefit LLS. Blood cancer does not discriminate and neither do they. They support religious and nonreligious people. 78.1% of their expenses go to cancer research, education and support services.

Also, anyone on the team at the end of the week will be entered in a drawing to win a Kindle Fire! Thanks to LLS for that incentive prize.

Finally, everything we raise this year will be matched dollar-for-dollar until we hit our $1,000,000 goal!

Let’s show the world the kind of good atheists, agnostics and humanists can do when we join together.

Join the team today! You can also help by spreading the word, and upvoting it on reddit.

We can do this! Do it for the tattoos; do it for atheism — and most of all, do it to fight cancer.

Help PZ and Hemant Get Tattoos For Charity!

Pat Robertson Rejects The Bible

Hey, whaddya know? Pat Robertson says we can ignore the Bible, and that humanity’s morality has evolved beyond it!

When he says so, anyway.

From Right Wing Watch:

When asked on the 700 Club today why some believe “America was founded as a Christian nation” even though it allowed slavery, Robertson said, “like it or not, if you read the Bible in the Old Testament, slavery was permitted.” But Robertson concluded that despite what the Bible says, “We have moved in our conception of the value of human beings until we realized slavery was terribly wrong.”

I assume Pat Robertson will now be taking back everything he’s said about homosexuality, women, the coming Armageddon, and whether Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for America’s abortion policy. He will soon be openly rejecting the very notion that morality should be based on an internally inconsistent, wildly inaccurate text written thousands of years ago, and will be embracing a humanist philosophy of basing morality on what most helps people and supports a flourishing society for all.

#holdingmybreath

Pat Robertson Rejects The Bible

Who I Look Up To

“Who in the atheist movement do you look up to?”

At the Secular Student Alliance 2012 conference this weekend (a juggernaut of secular awesome!), Jessica Ahlquist was asked this question during the Q&A for her talk. I have no idea what her answer was (if anyone knows, please tell me) — because I was too busy thinking about what my answer would have been if I had been asked it.

The easy and obvious answer would be the famous names, the writers and thinkers who first got me thinking about religion and helped me become an atheist. Richard Dawkins, for instance. I have a few issues with Dawkins: but the bottom line is that before I read The God Delusion I called myself an agnostic and was occasionally blogging about religion, and after I finished The God Delusion I called myself an atheist and had decided to make atheism the center of my writing career, and I will always be grateful for that. Another obvious answer would be the atheist bloggers who inspired me to get into the game. Adam Lee at Daylight Atheism is the main one who comes to mind: the one who made me realize that, when writing about religion, you can be civil and clear and witty, without sacrificing a passionate and uncompromising vision.

But that’s not my answer. I do admire these people — but they are not who I look up to the most.

The people in the atheist movement I look up to the most are the organizers. Continue reading “Who I Look Up To”

Who I Look Up To

Evil Perverts

Hey, I called called an “evil pervert” by a Christian! Right here in a comment on my blog. Ingrid, too.

I feel sorry for your cats. They deserve better than to live with two evil perverts.

Well, they got it half right.

I gotta say: it’s been a while since I’ve actually been called “evil.” Kind of an odd experience.

What’s really funny about this is the comment about the cats. Like our cats really care whether their caretakers are atheist dykes. (I assume the “perverts” part is referring to the dyke thing.) I mean, if anything, the opposite is true. If I believed in reincarnation, and could choose my next life? I’d come back as a lesbians’ cat. We are the biggest suckers for cats on the planet. We have “SUCKER” written on our foreheads in cat language.

If the rest of the comment had hadn’t been in such deadly earnest, the concern trolling for our cats would make me call Poe. As Adam Lee (Daylight Atheism) said when I told him (after he stopped laughing): “Who will tell your cats about Jesus?

Evil Perverts

Caturday: The Argument from Kitties

It’s been a few weeks since the SSA Kitten Blogathon of Doom, so I thought some of you might be ready for some kitty pictures again. Especially since the presence of these kitties in our lives is causing me and Ingrid to seriously question our lack of belief in the supernatural. I present to you: The Argument from Kitties.

Houdini

Talisker

Comet

Here’s our thinking. Our cats are, by all reasonable objective standards, the best cats on the planet. What’s more, they are not only the best cats on the planet — they are the cats that are most perfectly suited for us. And obviously, they’re the cutest as well.

But what are the chances that we would happen to end up, not just with the single best cat in the world, but with the all three of the best three cats? And then add to that unlikelihood: What are the odds that, at the exact moment we decided we wanted to get kitties, the three best, cutest, best suited for us cats on the planet would just happen to be the first three cats we looked at?

Then multiply that by the astronomical improbability of the combinatorial math. The three combinations of any two of our kitties are — again, by all reasonable objective measurements — the three best possible combinations of two kitties. And the combination of all three of our kitties is clearly the best three-cat set in the universe.

Comet and Talisker snuggling

Talisker and Houdini snuggling, with remote controls

Comet and Houdini snuggling

All three kittens snuggling

There is no way this is just a coincidence. And don’t come at me with some ridiculous notion that we are biased to the point of dementia with stupid love for our cats. There must be some conscious guiding force at work. Theistic catvolution.

Caturday: The Argument from Kitties

Baby Changing Station…

I was at the Northstar Cafe in Columbus, Ohio today (I’m in Columbus for the Secular Student Alliance conference), and this sign was in the bathroom, and it made me unutterably happy.

Baby Changing Station sign

It’s a small framed sign sitting on the sink of the one-hole bathroom, which reads, “Baby changing station located in the men’s room.”

Change happens in baby steps. Literally.

Baby Changing Station…

Fashion Friday: Trying Things On

When you’re shopping for clothes… where do you start?

As regular readers of Fashion Friday know, I’m a fan of the fashion makeover show, “What Not to Wear.” I have some issues with it, but on the whole, I find it entertaining, informative, often oddly touching, and loaded with both specific tips and broad philosophical insights about fashion and style. (Not to mention insights into human psychology.)

It’s fascinating to watch the mental processes and emotional rollercoasters the show’s participants go through when their entire wardrobe is decimated, and they have to start from scratch. And one of the most common reactions the participants have to shopping for a new wardrobe is paralysis. They walk into a clothing store in New York with $5,000 of someone else’s money… and they have no idea where to start. They try on a couple of things that don’t look right… and they get frustrated, or they feel like failures, or in some cases they have a complete emotional meltdown.

I actually understand this, and have sympathy with it. I’ve only been seriously into fashion and style for a relatively short time, and when I was beginning to explore this hobby in a more conscious and thoughtful way, I often felt overwhelmed by all the options, and had no concept of what to even try on.

So I developed three rules for myself for trying things on — actually, they’re more guidelines than rules — and I thought other people might find them useful. Or at least entertaining.

Rule #1: If it catches my eye, I have to try it on. Continue reading “Fashion Friday: Trying Things On”

Fashion Friday: Trying Things On