The author(s) of Blazing Cat Fur seems to have his or her panties in a wad over atheists. I realize it’s not hard to imagine that right-wing, conservative, religionist blogger might find himself in that predicament, but in this case he seems to be having a good time re-hashing that tired, old argument that atheists are always afraid to criticize muslims. This argument is, of course, completely falacious -even more than usual the way it is presented:

“[Atheists fear Muhammed] And run scurrying like cowards…

University atheist society president forced to resign after cartoon of Muhammad having a drink with Jesus is posted on Facebook…”

Blazing Cat Fur links, of course, to another article at Answering Muslims, which has a somewhat different take on the matter:

The president of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society at the prestigious University College London (UCL), Robbie Yellon, has stepped down over the controversy.

But the Society still refuses to take down the image – claiming its right to defend ‘freedom of expression’.

Secretary for the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, Michael Paynter,said: ‘Robbie stepped aside because he signed up as president to organise events and run a student society.

‘He did not appreciate the stress he would be under when dealing with a controversy like this, so he wanted to make way for someone else.’

When you got to the Facebook group page for The University College, London (UCL) Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society, you see that there’s been a bit of intra-group politics going on. Something that isn’t unique to atheists. From what little I’ve read, the out-going president has a differing opinion that many of the more hardline members. And his position is understandable: he’d like to foster debate, interaction, and eliminate some myths about atheists. But I also empathize and agree with the positions of those that take umbrage to limitations on free speech. It should not be okay for one group to silence another simply because they don’t want their beliefs and delusions discussed, debated, or even made fun of.

So, Blazing Cat Fur: where do you get “scurrying like cowards” and how do you arrive at “forced to resign?”

A small sample size (n=1) makes the author of that blog look very stupid. Particularly since that person was neither scurrying nor representative of the atheist population. From just the article BCF linked to, it was pretty clear he didn’t want to deal with controversy -no one “forced” him to do anything. Indeed, the point of the resignation was to not allow himself to be “forced” into something he wasn’t keen on!

BCF also linked to an atheist in Jakarta who was beaten, apparently in an effort to support the argument that atheists are cowards. It wasn’t clear how an assualted atheist in Jakarta, Indonesia relates to a university freethought club in London, England, but the implication is that since atheists aren’t speaking out about this obscure story, we’re “scared” of muslims and, therefore, aren’t “rushing out to defend this guy.”

Here are some criticisms of Islam and Muslims by atheists:

Atheism in Indonesia: Two Articles
About.com Describes Islam
Honesty: The Muslim World’s Scarcest Resource
When Debating Muslims
Are Atheists Afraid of Criticizing Islam?

Oh, and the UCL is apparently so afraid of Islam and Muslims they’re hosting a debate titled, “Do we need God?” on March 1, 2012.

Atheists aren’t afraid of Muslims. Christians are. And they project that fear on us.

Related articles

• Atheists face Muslim-led censorship from UCL Union – Alex Gabriel – AlexGabriel.co.uk (richarddawkins.net)
• London University demands Jesus & Mo’s removal from atheist Facebook page (freethinker.co.uk)
• Cartoon row prompts UCL atheist society president to resign (tithebarn.wordpress.com)
• London Atheist Group Accused of Bullying After Posting a Harmless Image of Muhammad (patheos.com)

1949-2011

Referred to as one of the Four Horsemen of New Atheism, Christopher Hitchens died yesterday at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer.

He was a political pundit, an author, an essayist, and an outspoken atheist. And his voice will surely be missed.

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• Hitchens 1.0 (jeremystyron.com)

If you don’t know, About.com’s reader’s choice awards are being compiled. Now’s the time to nominate your favorite atheist sites, podcast, books, etc. for 2010.

My nominations are:

Best Agnostic or Atheist Book of 2010: The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, by Victor Stenger (even though this debuted in the fall of 2009, it was 2010 when I read it)
Best Agnostic or Atheist Blog: Atheist Revolution
Best Agnostic or Atheist Podcast: Reasonable Doubts
Best Agnostic or Atheist Website: Iron Chariots Wiki, by the Atheist Community of Austin
Best Agnostic or Atheist to Follow on Twitter: vjack of Atheist Revolution
Best Agnostic or Atheist Facebook Page: Atheist, Agnostic, and Non-Religious
Best Agnostic or Atheist Social Networking Website: Atheist Nexus
Best Agnostic or Atheist Forum: Rational Skepticism
Best Agnostic or Atheist Ad: “You Know it’s a Myth…” -if only because of the discussion and attention it created. The American Atheists paid over $20k, but I seem to recall a story that they made over $60k in new memberships and donations.

Irreducible what?

There’s a fascinating discussion going on at Reddit started by the son of creationist-biochemist Michael Behe who is revealing his recent “deconversion” from Catholicism in particular, theism in general. I’ve included a few snippets here, but follow the link above and below for the full discussion which is probably still unfolding.

At seventeen, I was something of a little thinker, and I liked questioning everything and looking at issues from different sides. I had never applied that to religion, so I eventually decided to dive right in and listen to the opposing side. I had the utmost confidence in my faith, and I was a very devout Catholic. The first book I read against religion was Dawkins’ “The God Delusion“. While I didn’t (and still don’t) agree with everything he said, I tried to empty my mind of assumptions and reformed opinions as much as possible. I read through the whole book in two days, and the result was quite shocking to me. It was like taking off rose-colored glasses for the first time. I realized how questionable religion might sound to some who had not grown up around it. And that was the foundation of my change- it took quite a while to accept, I’d say about six months, but the more I read, the more I realized that religion’s claims were simply unfounded.

When asked about the quality of his relationship with his family and the backlash he received, salty914 (the atheist-Behe’s nom de Reddit) had this to say:

Bad. And I do confidently blame religion for this. I certainly don’t think it always turns out this way, but my stubbornness in maintaining and voicing my beliefs conflicted with my parents’ policy of keeping the rest of my family shielded from alternate viewpoints. “Indoctrination”, unfortunately, is really the word that describes it best, and I do believe that my younger brothers (the members of my family I am closest to) are truly being hurt by this. So my parents and I are in perpetual disagreement. I have, for the most part, stopped talking to my parents, and I am not allowed to speak to my little brothers at all.

[...]

The vast majority of families that I know are devout Christians, often Catholic. I have been cut off from several of my friends, I have been rather demonized by parents of my friends, and in the case of one family, my friend’s father threatened her that she would not have a normal life unless she severed contact with me completely. I am either spoken to with curtness and disdain or am not spoken to at all by many families I know.

This, I think, is one of the built in safe-guards the spell of religion has that prevents so many people from questioning their religious doctrines to begin with or, if they do, from voicing their disagreement or acting on it by leaving their churches. One is left to wonder how many people feel too trapped to escape or even question religious indoctrinations. My hat is off to the salty-Behe. I was lucky not to be saddled with a deeply religious family so my atheism isn’t even a blip on their collective radar. His courage and integrity to think for himself and be his own person is commendable.

When asked for, “insights into how the mental compartmentalization which allows someone with a decent education to be a creationist works?” Behe had this to say:

After not questioning an issue for twenty years, hearing everyone and everything around you affirm it repeatedly, the brain becomes so used to looking at it in a certain way- as truth, in this example- that it can be very difficult or even nearly impossible for you to look at the issue without that desensitization in the back of your head assuring you that it’s true and can’t be disproved. I know someone has reached that point when literally nothing I can say will change their minds. [...] the idea will not require any detectable amount of proof after lying stagnant in the creationists’ head for so many years. They will look at it and it will appear absolutely normal and completely plausible. This is the damage that indoctrination causes.

It’s definitely an on-going “tribulation” for him, as he still resides in the Behe home and has to adhere to their rules:

…there is a LOT of tension in the house. I was probably a full-blown atheist for about a year before I told my parents… around here, you get used to keeping secrets. I couldn’t take it longer than that. When I did them, it was essentially an appeal to let me live my life and not drag me along for every Mass, every Confession, Rosary, etc. That didn’t work, to put it lightly. If anything, they are now more strict about forcing me to go to church because they believe I am in need of “graces” that I can attain from church. And of course, this has only increased my dislike of religion.

There’s a lot more discussion at Reddit and hopefully more to come. I doubt we’ve seen the last of salty914, the atheist son of Behe! He remarks his intent to write and try his hand at journalism. Perhaps he’ll start a blog and join us in the Atheosphere, if he hasn’t already.

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I received another one of his B**b Quake emails yesterday, apparently I’m on the list with a bunch of Harvard atheists that seems to include Steven Pinker.

In it, Markuze brags that he met (sort of) PZ Myers in a hastily written post script:

go post this up on “pharnygula”. I’ve had an opportunity to see PZ’s ugly face in real life! I am spamming the world from the Delta Hotel where the convention is taking place…

So I think to myself, hmm… I wonder if anyone shot any video or photos that caught him on camera.

Low and behold (or more like LOL and behold!), here he is!

Image by Tessa Brown by way of Pharyngula

Let’s face it. Dennis looks just like we thought.

According to PZ Myers (a.k.a. Pharyngula), Markuze didn’t hang around.

A while after someone pulled a fire alarm in the hotel, he appeared in the hall, ranted and raged and argued incoherently with a few of the attendees, and then…ran away. Really! He ran off!

I wonder if he pulled the fire alarm. LOL.

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The chick in this video wasn’t really yelling “Admiral Ackbar!” Nor was she the Star Wars fan I initially thought. But she was definitely a nut as were the rest of those attacking Lars Vilks over a cartoon.

In case you weren’t aware, Lars Vilks is a cartoonist who has been very vocal about freedom of speech in Sweden. What has him in trouble with Muslims is his cartoon depictions of Mohammed as a dog. So much so, that the nuttiest of them (al-Qaeda) has offered a bounty of $100k for his death. The so-called religion of peace will kill over a cartoon. Dumbasses.

Here’s the cartoon:

mohammed as a dog

Pharyngula is where I first saw this, but I think it should be reposted again and again. The more these nuts do wacky shit like attack cartoonists, murder film-makers, and threaten those who dare question, criticize or ridicule their superstitions, the more we bloggers of the atheosphere should respond with it.

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Word Cloud for Dave Mabus Website

If you’ve ever spent any appreciable time on science blogs and forums, you may have had the occasion to read one of these really strangely worded and formated posts by a character who calls himself Dave Mabus.

So what’s he on about?

According to him, he’s been waging a “propaganda war” for the last three years against atheists, skeptics, and rationalists. As you can see from the word cloud above, he’s nearly as fixated on James “The Amazing” Randi as he is Nostradamus. More so than even atheists. Other special favorites of Markuze are PZ Myers, Phil Plait and Richard Dawkins. Apparently he’s even threatened PZ Myers’ life and, according to one science forum I visit on occasion, Markuze has threatened to hack them or shut them down with a DoS attack.

But why? What’s his Beef?

Markuze seems to think that he has a special gift of prophecy and that he’s waging a war against blasphemy. He very often cites quatrains of Nostradamus as justification for his lunacy, but he clearly ignores the fact that Nostradamus is well-debunked by rational and critical looks at his quatrains (short, poetic prophecies of dubious and vague nature). He cites vague passages that could truly refer to any number of events in history, but somehow they hold special meaning for Markuze.

Markuze is, however, clearly a person in need of psychological help if his personality is accurately portrayed in his words, spammed across hundreds of blogs and forums. In several posts, and on his website, he threatens violence and displays extreme hatred for those who don’t think like he does. For instance, he writes on his site, “so why don’t you all [atheists] go shoot yourselves in the HEAD [sic], surely better than your miserable lives?”

A few lines of text later, Markuze appeals to popularity in arguing against atheists, stating that we’ve “adopted a position against 98% of the human race, both past and present” but he cites no figures to support this. Still, theists are admittedly a majority in the world. But there are reliable figures that atheism and the non-religious are  currently 10-13% of the world’s population if not more. In some nations, the percentage of non-believers is as high as 30% (see WikiPedia: Demographics of Atheism)

Markuze also speaks of an “atheist purge” in his rants, telling the world to “[p]lease keep your atheists in check, or we will…”

And he claims to have had a “simple” objective:

1) to reveal that Nostradamus was a genuine prophet who could predict the future with 100% accuracy;

2) to demonstrate that prophecy and atheism are not compatible with each other and are mutually exclusive;

3) therefore dawkins, pz, randi and their skeptic atheist followers were deluded liars…

Looking through his site, painful on the eyes as it was, there was no indication that he gave any “proof” of Nostradamus’ predictive power. If anything, he confirmed the silliness of believing in that sort of thing. And I would agree with Markuze that prophecy and atheism are incompatible. Prophecy is built on fantasy, wishful thinking and a desire to influence groups of people. Most “prophecies” in biblical mythology and the vague, rambling quatrains of Nostradamus were so vague as to be easily attributed to many historical events that were to follow their publication. Some, especially those in biblical mythology, were written after the fact or were self full-filled. To an extent, this is the nature of Nostradamus’ prophecies: the are self full-filled by those that interpret events to fit a quatrain only after the fact. As a prophecy, any given quatrain of Nostradamus is worthless since they have zero predictive power.

One can only guess at the psychological workings of Markuze that lead him to his conclusions in number 3. His inclusion of a “therefore” seems to indicate that the first two points were premises or a logical argument, but they appear true only in his mind.

So what informs Markuze’s fantasies? Where does he get the ideas for the web of delusion and hatred and loathing for atheists that has polluted and influenced his thinking?

The clues are in his posts and rants. Particularly in his choice of pseudonyms. “Mabus” is a fictional character from the science fiction television series First Wave, which aired from 1998 to 2001. It featured a pair of heroes who were dispatching Gua, aliens bent on taking over the Earth, in an underground “war” which was fueled by propaganda generated by tech-savvy ”Crazy” Eddie (Rob LaBelle). The aliens were evil and using science as their weapon against humanity. “Crazy” Eddie was a Nostradamus buff who was using quatrains to track and kill the atheists. I mean aliens.

Mabus is a name that really exists in the fictional writings of Nostradamus, so clearly this is where the show’s writers obtained the name. It was also the name Nostradamus gave for the “anti-christ,” that person who is supposed to be the “anti-” version of another fictional character but of biblical mythology.

The real question is why does Markuze choose the name “Mabus” as his pseudonym, knowing that this is the name of the anti-christ? My guess is that it has to do with Markuze’s dual personality, one of a polar nature.

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If you’re an atheist and not on Twitter, where have you been!?

The atheosphere is alive and well there, thriving in a see of @Tweets, RTs, and #tags (like #atheist, #atheism) which are handy ways to sort the “tweets” -short, 140 character micro-blog posts that announce what’s up to your followers and whoever picks up your tag.

And, like all good social media, there are polls. Check this one out:

Atheists Dominate Twitter Poll

As a social tool, Twitter is effective at getting the word out. The recent Iranian protests demonstrated this, so its natural, perhaps, that atheists who consider themselves activists in the cause of consciousness-raising have found themselves on Twitter and being followed. Closely.

One of my favorite bloggers, vjack of Atheist Revolution has over 1150 followers. Hemant Mehta of The Friendly Atheist has over 1900 and PZ Myers of Pharyngula has over 8450! Incidentally, Hemant is following PZ, who’s following Richard Dawkins, who has over 13,516 followers! Vjack and I are following all three.

In an on-line article with the Religion News Service^[1] Hemant was quoted as saying:

Twitter is tool a for understanding people’s experiences with atheism in different countries and a convenient medium for exchanging brief, efficient messages, especially for atheists who don’t have the time or energy to commit to a full-blown blog.

If you want some truly interesting people to follow, check out Richard Dawkins’ follows. For as many followers as he garnered, Dawkins is only following a handful -21 to be precise. To round out the Four Horsemen, Dennett’s following/follower ratio is 0/0; Sam Harris is 0/0; and Christopher Hitchens is 0/6860. Hitch has a single tweet! Among Dawkin’s 21 “following”, however, is Phil Plait, Adam Savage, PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, and “David” who’s Twitter page is “Beeritforward” and who claims to tweet each time he takes a drink!

I recommend the RNS article, Atheists put their faith in Twitter. Its a good read.

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1. Atheists put their faith in Twitter, S.J. Velasquez

Image via CrunchBase

You might have noticed that I don’t have a Reddit link on my blog. I used to. But the plugin I was using didn’t get upgraded or properly installed in the current version of WordPress and I never really figured out the social media thing anyway. I have links to StumbleUpon, Technorati, etc. in my sidebar, but I know I’m not using them to their potential. What I need is a tech-savy co-blogger

But I’ve been meaning to get the Reddit thing figured out for a while now. I like to visit the /r/atheism subreddit on occasion and see what’s being talked about and I see these sites are getting a lot of notice. One of the things I do have figured out fairly well is Twitter -I just don’t use it nearly as effectively as I could. It was on Twitter that I noticed VJack’s tweet “vjack: An explanation of why the atheism reddit does not appear on the default front page. http://is.gd/2AnGN (via @AlisonFreed) #atheism (about 6 hours ago from Tweetie).”

Atheist Revolution is probably one of the gold standards of the atheosphere. VJack has, hands down, some of the best content and good traffic to boot. So when he notices something like reddit’s explanation, it’s probably worth reading.

In a nutshell, it seems that the folks at Reddit noticed that the polar divisiveness of atheism and theism creates controversy and, from their perspective, inflates the issue. Here are some quotes (the full explanation is here):

attacking a reddit generates a lot of activity on that reddit and makes our algorithm think the reddit is more popular than it really is, making the problem even worse.

Given the nature and somtimes polarizing tone of the content on the atheism reddit, it will likely always garner the ire of many other users. Showcasing religious flame-wars only serves to lower the level of discourse on the site as a whole

/moviecritic and /atheism aren’t legitimate top ten reddits. They appeared that way because they were under attack, making them appear even more popular. Removing atheism from the top ten by hand isn’t about censoring, it’s about a shortcoming in our popularity metric.

In the words of one of the commenters, “r/politics and r/worldnews both make the front page, and they’re both full of conflict; so that argument smells like bullshit to me.”

This is a very good point and one that I immediately thought of as well. Politics is very divisive and creates probably just as much polarity as atheism if not more. I can’t imagine that they would even consider removing /politics from appearing on the front page. But when you think about it, the purpose of the /atheism subreddit is to bring in one spot a subject matter of interest to like-minded people -to see what’s new, hot, or popular on the web on a given topic. I visit /linux and /science for this reason as well. That controversy is created; that people want their voice heard on the topic is testimony to the vital nature of the discussion. There are accusations of censorship on the part of Reddit and childish bickering on the part of /atheism posters, but there exists a deeper issue: the topic of superstition versus rationalism and reason.

I’m not sure where I stand on the issue and whether I even have a right to voice an opinion. I’m a very casual and passive member of Reddit. I lurk and click. But I do want to share this comment that I noticed:

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I’ve just added a “Godless Search Engine” to the menu bar at the top of the page. If you click it, you’ll be taken to a page with a single post displaying a search box powered by Google that searches more than a dozen or so sites relevant to godless information.

Included are some popular blogs like Atheist Revolution and Daylight Atheism, which post regularly and with topical material. But I’ve my main focus was to include repositories of information useful in on-line debates and research. Sites like “infidels.org” and “atheism.about.com.”

Here’s the full list of sites I have in the engine so far. If anyone has suggestions to make it more inclusive, post a comment on the Godless Search Engine page or email me at the link on the right side bar.

http://www.atheistrev.com/*

http://planetatheism.com/

http://www.investigatingatheism.info/*

http://www.examiner.com/x-8947-LA-Atheism-Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-8776-Boston-Atheism-Examiner

http://www.examiner.com/x-8948-Dallas-Atheism-Examiner

http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/*

http://www.secularhumanism.org/*

http://www.religioustolerance.org/*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists

breakingspells.wordpress.com/*
www.daylightatheism.org/*
www.samharris.org/*
www.infidels.org/*
www.atheists.org/*
www.positiveatheism.org/*
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist
atheism.about.com/*
www.autodidactproject.org/guidathe.html
www.wonderfulatheistsofcfl.org/Quotes.htm