BNFree / Bloomington-Normal Freethinkers

http://pewforum.org/Religion-News/Fla-church-plans-to-burn-Quran s-on-9-11-anniversary.aspx

A Florida church with “Islam is of the devil” signs in its front lawn plans to host an “International Burn A Quran Day,” on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks this year…In response to the posting of the event on Facebook a little more than a week ago, Jones said that people have been mailing Qurans to the church to burn. He said organizers got the idea, in part, from another Facebook page, called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.”

The event’s Facebook page says its purpose is “To bring to awareness to the dangers of I and that the Koran is leading people to hell. Eternal fire is the only destination the Koran can lead people to so we want to put the Koran in it’s [sic] place — the fire!”

This story troubles me on several levels, not least because it holds up a mirror on several levels to my own participation in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Let me start out by saying these Christians have every right to burn whatever books they please. Hate Speech is still speech, and therefore it’s protected. I had to stop and think, though, whether what these people plan to do is different than drawing Mohammed in kind or only in degree. continue reading…

Something has been on my mind that affects everyone, has not been truly addressed by anyone, is assumed to be the job of someone, but should be resolved by each one.  This is the current state of our public debate and even personal debates.  It does not matter who we think is inciting it, how clearly they seem to be pushing it, or how big the problem seems to be; we can, and must, all take part in solving it.

Conversely (does linking count as advertising?) to the size of the problem, the steps to solving it can be begun in a very small way on a daily basis.  It begins with how we speak and respond to overblown rhetoric.  It also involves our attitude towards how others speak to us and about things that are important to us.  Let me give you a personal and very recent example.  Facebook, is a great place for social networking, but it can be full of pitfalls when one have a wide variety of friends and family members on it.  My paternal Grandmother is on my page and has one of her own.  She is an Evangelical Christian and I am an Atheist (et. all applicable labels) I shared a comment about resurrection that was to occur on Sat. the 3rd of April that started off sounding religious, but was really about Dr. Who.  (because I am a major geek for the Doctor)  She had a reply, but promptly removed it once she noticed the joke and the thread about it because she is not a Whovian it was not immediately apparent.  Her page posted a comment questioning whether or not Atheists could get home owners coverage for ‘acts of God’ my response was simply “Country and State Farm say yes” with a wink and a smile.  We have continued with these back and forth barbs on occasion, but we also are sure to reassert that we love each-other on a regular enough basis.  She also managed remind me at our recent family reunion just how funny she is on a totally different subject.   While we have both gone out of our way to ensure that the light manner is fairly clear, we also both make the choice not to take these things personally or as insults, because everyone has that choice. continue reading…

Lately there’s been an issue rising to the surface of atheist thought, and that issue is tone.  Are Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett actually being militant in their assertions?  Should they be toning down their messages?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and will continue to do so, but my answer right now is no.  No.  I completely reject and deplore the accusation of militancy leveled at “the new atheists.”  Sure, Harris et al. are making points that are provocative.  That’s just it: there is no “kinder, gentler way” to say, “You guys are confused by millennia of indoctrination and your thinking is wrong-headed, which is bound to lead to disastrous results for our society and our world.  Please stop deifying and demonizing, worshipping and praying, because we urgently need you to snap out of it and help us evolve our species and take care of our planet.”

Religionists don’t think they’re indoctrinated, don’t believe they’re confused.  They don’t get it.  Why?  Because up to now our social handbook has encouraged everyone to tiptoe around the obvious and try to not let on that many of us hold an alternative viewpoint that isn’t very flattering to believers.  Our handbook is going through a revision, this social etiquette is changing, and I say good riddance to past standards.  I hope the enabling of irrationalism goes the way of allowing smoking in the office, ignoring evidence of child abuse and taking picnics to slave auctions. continue reading…

Most lobotomy procedures were done in the United States, where approximately 40,000 persons were lobotomized. In Great Britain lobotomies were performed on 17,000 people, and the three Nordic countries of Finland, Norway and Sweden had a combined figure of approximately 9,300 lobotomies….  The USSR officially banned the procedure in 1950. Doctors in the Soviet Union concluded that the procedure was “contrary to the principles of humanity” and that it turned “an insane person into an idiot.” (Photo and text from Wikipedia) continue reading…

One of my favorites poets ever is Emily Dickenson.  I’m not sure why she was considered so ‘dark’.  She wrote beautifully of a complicated world.   She spent some time writing about the fear instilled in everyone about hell and her own fear of eternal life or, at times, her longing for it.  Maybe it was this common curiosity about living forever that drew me to her.  Much like the beauty Vincent VanGogh found in the Starry Night or Sun Flowers, she seemed to see beauty in everyday things.  The poem that shows this best and I love the most, is about the color yellow in nature.  Seriously.

Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets,–
Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover’s words. continue reading…

Science enthusiasts and critical thinkers cannot escape the reality that human culture world-wide is absolutely chockablock with fake science. The word “scientific” has a cachet that I’ve seen co-opted for homeopathy, energy-harmonized aluminum plates, even Biblical “scientific discoveries” (always good for a laugh.) Science seems to be all about the results, the inventions, the breakthroughs. It’s never about the process, the codified critical thinking that keeps those end products from being complete hokum. We humans have a tendency to see what we want to see, to see what agrees with our preconceptions, to see what benefits us and justifies our beliefs. The scientific method is what developed in order to boil out the biases, the fallacies, the unconscious assumptions which corrupt our cognition.

Pseudoscience has been a bugbear of mine for quite some time. So, let’s talk about UFOs, and why the pseudoscience of UFOlogy fails on so many counts.

FALSIFIABILITY: UFOlogy prominently displays a hallmark of many pseudosciences—it begins with its conclusion, and then goes looking for whatever disparate facts might support it. One of the most common misconceptions about science is that you start with a hypothesis—a question that you’re testing, which you then gather data or do experiments to support. However, one requirement of a good hypothesis is that it is willing and able to be proved wrong. If it is not, you are setting yourself upon a primrose path of Confirmation Bias. continue reading…

Let me begin by saying, I have fallen in love with Dr. Who, but things weren’t always this way. Growing up we were not really allowed all that much SciFi except when my mom would watch Star Trek. As I got older Star Trek continued to be the sum total of my SciFi experience, even though I did not follow it in any sort of regular way. By time I got to college I decided to major in Theatre. While we do have some geeks in our midst, the dynamic is really more pretentious than anything. At the same time, many of my friends would be considered in the geek category, including things like D&D, Magik, comic books, and SciFi. I just never crossed over.

While living in CA I found more of the similar comic book friends, but still resisted, then I met someone. He has a huge comic book collection, loves SciFi, but doesn’t do dressing up for things if it’s not Halloween. I started reading some graphic novels and I was off. Next it was “Good Omens” (Best. Book. Ever!) then everything else available by Gaimen and Pratchett. There was no way to know where this would lead. continue reading…

Having gone back through all of the blog posts BNFree has produced so far, I realized something: we have yet to have a blog about Freethought. Since BNFree (think Bein’ Free) stands for Bloomington/Normal Freethinkers (not Pee Drinkers, FREE THINKERS, sorry I had to shout, but I just wanted to be clear for my readers who are hard of hearing), I thought, freely I must admit, that it would probably be a good idea to actual do a blog about free thinking.

So, what exactly is a free thinker? Someone who thinks freely. That explains that. OK, that wasn’t very helpful, but in my defense, when has a blog I wrote ever been helpful? A freethinker is basically someone who is an agnostic, atheist, humanist, skeptic, and/or a deist (in some definitions). Freethought/freethinking is a kind of catch-all name that encompasses many different groups. From the fifteen seconds of research I did (this is the second most research I have ever done in a blog), I found that freethinking is basically adogmatic with a strong scientific bent. Freethought is based on following where the evidence leads. continue reading…

I had a little trouble when I went to write my rent check last month. My wife and I had some one-time expenses in our budget for May, and so as I watched my weekly paychecks come in, it was evident that the month-end total was going to be a tight squeeze in the checking account we use for it. To top it off, my direct deposit didn’t hit my checking account when I was used to seeing it, and it was the last one for the month. So I sent an email to the home office, asking whether there were any trouble signs. The reply, from a clearly frustrated HR rep, was that many people had inquired, technically it didn’t have to be there until tomorrow, there weren’t any problems she could see, and she didn’t know anything else.

I thanked her, reassured her I wasn’t going to be a jerk about it, and it got me thinking, that “I don’t know” is a perfectly honest answer. In any area of inquiry, our available pool of facts is limited, and nothing is ever known to an absolute certainty. (Unless you’re going on faith, in which case you’re taking “belief” and counting it as “knowledge” which is, at the very least, dishonest. More on that later.) Based on the HR rep’s reply, I was at least able to eliminate some hypotheses: that there wasn’t an error in my time reporting or in the payroll submission. Anything else is left to the vagaries of the electronic banking infrastructure, which I know from professional experience to be arcane and impenetrable–the money gets there when it gets there. continue reading…

When one holds very strong opinions it is bound to happen that one of these will eventually run head first into another strongly held opinion. This happens to me most painfully when it comes to things like freedom of speech. It is something I defend strongly even when it is speech that is detestable.

Then there is the Westboro Baptist “church” picketing of schools and funerals.  This makes it very difficult indeed.  While I feel that freedom of speech is one of our most important rights to exercise and makes us stronger and freer, I’m not unfeeling enough to not have a gut reaction to such monstrous behavior.

What can the answer be?  Speak louder!  Impressed does not cover how I felt about those who prevented a protest of a funeral in Louisiana.   Then there was the Dio Funeral.  He had both a private and public funeral from his gracious family.  The link is to a rather long article, but there are also photos and videos for those interested.  It may be worth the scroll to find out how gnomes, Thor and Muslim hell were evoked by one person.  Schools kids have also shown they are more than able to speak back to these fools. continue reading…