Blog Archive

In a place with very few non-believers, I had some sheisty company. The most likely people to express an atheist or agnostic lean were also likely to espouse libertarian political positions. They were the kind of guys that sound completely assured of their superiority, talking down being the only kind of talking they ever did. Real world class shitheads. I was passionately in favor of keeping drugs illegal back then, and I was poor enough to have been the beneficiary of the kind of social programs they oppose, so we didn’t get along. But clearly, I was of a kind with them. We were the face of atheism, and it was the face of a heartless, arrogant scumbag.

How did we become atheists, and how did that relate to being a pack of two-bit megalomaniacs? We had never met each other before, we didn’t receive this wisdom from a common cultural institution. We came by it of our own thoughts, as a reaction against the culture in which we were raised. And given this situation… …It comes as no surprise to me that dudebro-styled atheism is pervasive, endlessly replenished despite defections, and capable of arising spontaneously from nothing. Were all of the dudebros of the world winked out of existence in a moment, more would be born to replace them. They are an inevitable aspect of the human condition.

OK, to say that is to claim certainty where there is room for doubt. I am far from an expert. This is all my uneducated guesswork on display, but consider it if you will. Over and over again we are seeing that much of the human condition is a combination of nature and nurture – genetic and epigenetic causes, if I’m not using that incorrectly. Someone may have biological predisposition to depression and low self esteem, but they’re more likely to have a terrible problem with it in life if they have a neglectful and abusive childhood. Various cancers might be more likely by merit of genes, but the odds are increased by poor life circumstances (or alternately the affluence to spend too much time in airplanes).

So if we imagine dudebroism to be a condition with various symptoms – atheism, grandiose self-esteem, libertarian inclinations – then we can wonder at the cause. And if the answer is the same as it is for issues like depression and cancer, then there may be inborn inclinations that flourish in certain circumstances. Divide one by the other, carry the five, square root of talking out my ass, and it equals this: A dudebro is a type of human that will always be among us, always espousing atheism more vocally than the sensible nice person down the hall, always making closet atheists and compassionate human beings turn away from atheism in disgust.

If this is true, the only way to fight it is to make atheism so mainstream that it no longer appeals to the antisocial instincts of the hoary yellow-spotted throat-warbling dudebro. On that glorious day, we may just be able to reclaim the pride they have drained from us like filthy leeches. We’ll be able to think, “Damn it’s good to be an atheist,” without reddit-colored second thoughts, doubts, and qualifiers. On that day, we can say, “Atheism, fuck yeah!”

–As usual, do not take anything I say to represent the position of A+ as a whole. Have a nice day. :-)

-

Either it doesn’t matter if I worship god or god is evil. Therefore, there is no compelling reason for me to try to beat my brain into an altered state where it can accept faith in the supernatural. This should be a simple enough thought, but if it goes unexplained, it will be easier to dismiss. Allow me to make it more clear...

There are premises to that which I haven’t spelled out yet: 1) God exists, 2) God makes atheists. One is a blatantly false premise, but one that can be safely acquiesced to for discussion with theists because they believe it, and because – if true – the reasons for being a theist are still easily destroyed. The second premise may be more controversial. While theists will admit god makes everyone and some people are atheists, they will likely not admit what I am asserting: That god makes people – like myself – who are constitutionally unable to believe in the supernatural. But if they won’t admit to that, they aren’t respecting my knowledge of myself, and I have no reason to respect their opinions either.

So, granted the premises, we have a god that created people who do not believe in it. If there are consequences for a lack of belief, be they damnation or merely delay of entry into paradise, this god has intentionally created people who must suffer those consequences, and is evil. The only other possibility is that there are no negative consequences for a lack of belief, in which case, there is no compelling reason to believe.

...On reflection, I notice that I omitted positive consequences from this argument. But if I don’t believe in god and my life is better for it (true), then what positive consequence can there be? Answered prayers, a shorter road to heaven? For which I’d have to ignore my nature and reason? Then they are actually negative consequences – I was made to be an atheist, I was arbitrarily placed a square back from those benefits, and while that is a far lesser evil than suffering eternal torture for being true to myself, it is still evil.

My sig on A+ has been a mashup of Nietzsche and Voltaire, “If God was not already dead, it would be necessary for someone to kill him.” (Recalling the GAS Pledge, this was expressed by Mikhail Bakunin as “If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.”) I believe that. Unless heaven is some squishy feelgood hippy club where every creature that ever suffered except Hitler gets to wallow in its given bliss forever regardless of earthly metaphysical beliefs, then god is my enemy.

There is a common belief among theists that atheists are rejecting god. The counter is that the god premise doesn’t even rise to the level of being worth rejecting. But granting the premise that god is real, then I do reject it. Damn me, I don’t need to live forever with the kind of bastard who would make the evils of this world. If hell is real, I will go into it with a pride that will burn eternally. (Humility!)

-

I’m not going to mirror my atheist opposites’ mistakes and claim they are a monolith, even though their beliefs line up better with the unjust status quo of the USA. I’m just going to keep poking holes in this ridiculous meme. The progressive side of the divide is not a monolith. We have our disagreements, and these are not small ones. Some of us continue to work with or promote people like Richard Dawkins, some have joined in the masses ridiculing his ignorance and his strange grudge against Rebecca Watson. Some of us want to find common cause with theists to promote the secularism that can protect us all, some want to keep eviscerating the foundations of faith at the expense of potential allies. Some of us don’t have a decided stance on one more of these essential issues, and some people who generally come down on the progressive side are professional fence riders. All of this can be found within one blog network – Freethoughtblogs – if you look long enough. On the common cause vs. evisceration issue, you can find dischord even within the A+ forums, and I am personally riding that fence at the moment.

One of these important areas of dispute – and the topic of this post – is the legitimacy of the term “islamophobia.” On one side, there are people like Taslima Nasreen and Maryam Namazie, who have personally experienced the hardship of cultures dominated by political islam and the capitulation of European liberals to islamist demands, and on the other side are people like Ed Brayton who have seen the climate of fear and violence muslims have to live with in the USA. (Articles against the use of the term here and here, in favor here and here.) And I’m certain there are others who are undecided about this issue. I can understand the confusion and difficulty in deciding how to respond to this, but I have a position, and unsurprisingly it is the same as the other white guy I mentioned. But allow me to both qualify and justify that...

I have been told that I should not, as a privileged party, criticize the political stances taken by the oppressed. If that is true and those stances are wrong, it would be best for the oppressed person to be criticized by someone in their own situation. This is, I think, a good ideal, even if it is not always possible in practice. To that end, I want to make clear that Maryam and Taslima are in a far better position to judge the religion whose defenders have directly oppressed them, to judge the situation in their parts of the world (a sad turn of phrase for Taslima, sorry) than I am. They may be right regarding the use of “islamophobia” in Europe by agents of theocracy and their fake progressive political allies, and I will not claim that what follows is applicable outside of my (stolen) part of the world.

But they cannot know the truth of my culture as well as I or Ed Brayton can. Personally, I know islamophobia is real because I am a motherfucking islamophobe. You can’t read my mind to tell me that I am not. I am as islamophobic as I am racist – that is to say, I do not want to be either of those things, but implicit bias is working against that intention.

What do I mean by islamophobia here and how can I tell it is distinct from racism? Islamophobia is a prejudice against muslims based not on race, but on their faith & culture. Certainly most islamophobes are also racist, but not all. I can suss out the truth in my own feelings – my racism is mainly against black folks. Those feelings are not stirred by middle eastern people, but a different and interesting feeling is. I will feel a sense of relief if such a person says they are not a muslim. Why is that?

In my feelings – in my biases – I regard islam as different from and worse than other religions, as a faith that makes its adherents dangerous or threatening. Maryam and others will argue that this is true – islam is, to them, worse than other religions. But if you ask an atheist, a feminist, a queer person from the wrong parts of the USA how they feel about christianity, you will get the exact same response. It would be false to say that anywhere in the USA is quite as bad as the worst areas of the world’s islamist theocracies, but an FLDS compound can be as hot for baby raping as the Ayatollah – to go with a more extreme example. All around us in the USA are profound examples of how fundamentalist christians seek the same goals as islamists and – not content to oppress people in their homeland – influence governments from Africa to Russia to push the same antihuman agenda. Everything islamists are doing now has been done by christians,

And conversely, every position held by moderate or progressive christians is held by some moderate or progressive muslims. I’ve personally spoken with muslims who were in favor of gay and trans rights and unequivocally condemned murder and terrorism. The abrahamic holy books all equally advocate brutal misogyny, genocide, and more. The way they are “interpreted” (selectively ignored) are down to personal taste and culture in the same way. So where is the evidence that islam is uniquely harmful? It comes down to nothing but numbers. There is almost certainly a greater proportion of muslim theocrats and terrorists than christians, but you cannot extricate that from world history without a lot of handwaving. If Rome was sunni and Riyadh lutheran, you have to admit this proportion would be neatly upended. As it stands, you can get your head cut off or your family murdered by fundamentalists of any faith, so what is gained by singling out one religion for special criticism?

I can tell you exactly what is gained by singling out Islam in America. In my home and my culture, muslims really are victims of persecution. If I add to that while decrying the persecution of atheists, I become a colossal hypocrite. Some will say that islamophobia is not real, and that attacks on those perceived as muslim are motivated purely by racism. To that I reiterate my point above – I know that my emotional bias is against muslims and not brown people, because I am unreservedly fond of Middle Eastern and Indian atheists and skeptics. But there’s another obvious counterpoint someone just mentioned to me: Islamophobia is extremely similar to anti-semitism.

Both islamophobia and anti-semitism have a strong racial component. Islamophobes and anti-semites will often – but not always – have a notion of what a muslim or jew looks like, and treat the perceived enemy worse. However in both of these cases, if someone previously perceived as “safe” is revealed to be the “enemy,” they will also receive this scorn – for example, a small nosed blonde person with straight hair being discovered as jewish, or an African American or white person one was assuming to be christian revealing they are a muslim.

Also, islamophobes and anti-semites both have strange and false ideas about what muslims and jews actually believe. There can be a basis in fact for some of these misapprehensions (some terrorists are motivated by the weird virgin promise which actually does appear in islamic texts) but the islamophobe will be quick to exaggerate, distort, or over-apply the idea (“Every single muslim thinks that if they kill an american they’ll get a hunnerd five year olds to rape in heaven! Sez right in that koe-ran, I tell ya whut!”). Due to historical factors jewish people are disproportionately found among the very wealthy, but that quickly turns into, “No jew ever had to die in ‘Nam!” and so on.

Anti-semitism has a more deeply rooted and insidious history than islamophobia in the west, but islamophobia has been there since the Dark Ages, waiting for a properly motivated propaganda tool like Fox News to come into its own. It’s in America now and it is real here. Denying that empowers bad people, the same as ignoring any other axis of oppression.

That’s my take on things, and I could be wrong. Also, the judaeo-christo-islamic god is a big sack of shit, and abdicating your moral agency to its supposed dictates is foolish and evil. Make of that what you will.

-

Spidey had an excuse, with the alien underoos giving him ‘roid rage. But we don’t have that excuse and ought to own our bads. Otherwise, we might as well be Xtians. I’m not saying you must dwell on your guilt forever and be miserable lo until the end of time, but that when it is time to think about that part of your past, you remember it right. And hopefully, the pain you didn’t let yourself escape from will guide you to be a better person in the present.

I intend to do a more substantial post sometime soon, but it felt like random thought time. Enjoy.

-

I don’t have much to add to it. Greta Christina is one of the big voices of the online atheist community who exercises a level of care and craft in her writing that makes guys like me seem like organ grinder monkeys. But I do think there’s one aspect that could use more emphasis: Acknowledging that social justice issues are real and important means opening oneself to the pain of guilt.

That is a really brutal difficulty that many of us are desperately flailing to avoid, often to the effect of becoming far worse people than we would have been if the issue had never been raised at all. The crux of elevatorgate/deep rifts 2.0: “If what RW described could be termed harassment or was wrong in some ways, then that means guys like me are harassers and villains! NEVERRRRRRRRrrrr!” And in the process of dodging the possibility of feeling guilt, many people have turned themselves into the kind of bullies they would have decried not one week before.

You know what? I’ve been guilty of sexual harassment. Never been disciplined or faced legal repercussions, but I’ve made people feel really bad. I’ve been someone’s worst date ever, maybe more than one person. The more I became aware of the damage this behavior can cause, the more pain of guilt I’ve had to assume.

And there’s no atonement and no reprieve, except in that my mind allows me to forget the issues when they aren’t right in front of me. I cannot undo the damage I have caused, cannot make it right, cannot take that pain back from the world. I have to live with the fact that I have been one of the bad guys.

How hard is it to say these things? To do your best not to cause problems in the future? To accept your guilt and try to be a better person? Well, it is hard. It hurts. But it is a pain deserved. Take your medicine, guys. And move forward, or be left in the pit.

-

This is the comment:

“...Anyone who has legitimate concerns that PTSD is being overdiagnosed would be perfectly justified in writing a blog post about the evidence that points to PTSD being overdiagnosed. Making a specific person, a stranger who was diagnosed with PTSD, the focus of your 'concerns' because it kind of seems to you that their diagnosis, about which you know nothing, isn’t justified, is abusive. Shouting your 'concerns' at that stranger from a crowd of harassers is harassment.
 
“And if a person does the latter and not the former, there’s no reason to think that they have legitimate concerns or are acting in good faith. People with legitimate concerns and trolls: the behavior patterns are actually different.”

(I added boldface to the part I want to emphasize.) To me, this is a very simple and powerful argument against the hordes of philosophy dudebros who feel they have legitimate logical criticisms of various social justice movements. It’s quite possible some of you do have a legitimate concern buried somewhere in your convoluted statements. But you are not “voicing your concerns” in a vacuum where they can be judged independent of circumstances.

You are not the one special voice of clarity that will cut through the din and bring reason from chaos. A sad reality of our society is that many valuable voices self-censor. A person with a gentle disposition and modest self esteem may look at an online (or IRL) discussion, see that their viewpoint is not being represented and think to themself, “There must be a reason no one is saying this. No one wants to hear that view, or it is wrong.” So they don’t contribute, a truly original thought on the matter fails to become part of the record. Meanwhile, there’s you and I: people with good self-esteem and a feeling that – even though five hundred people said something similar to us – our voice is distinct and the world is entitled to our opinion.

When you voice opposition to an advocate of social justice now, you are part of a massive swarm of screeching hate-vomiting bullying creeps. You may not want this to be true and it may not be your fault, but the swarm created this circumstance, and you cannot escape it with your civil tone and erudite wisdom. If someone is receiving death and rape threats from hundreds of people because the threateners disagree with their stated position and you come in to oppose that same position, you have turned yourself into a voice of abuse. The words you use are irrelevant. In this context, you are part of a very bad crowd.

And this works against you even outside of that one post or hashtag where one given torrent of abuse is happening, because a broader context exists. The people who are being cyber-bullied are aware of the opposition. The swarm wouldn’t leave it at that. They have poisoned the internet against progress in every venue and every circumstance where they have license to spew. So let’s say you are trying to do it right and voice your quibbles in a blog post in your own space, or on a neutral forum, or whatever. Who do you think is going to appear out of nowhere to agree with you, like genies from a chamberpot?

If you have a problem with the way social justice advocates are doing things right now, you are going to have to try very hard to distance yourself from the abusers to have anything close to an air of legitimacy. If you are not willing to denounce cyber-bullies and their smirking friends, if you are not willing to state clearly that what you desire is betterment of and equal opportunity for all people, then your opinion on social justice is just another howl in the trollstorm. Do better.

-

As it stands, most people who commit acts of cruelty don’t want to feel bad about it and are very skilled at absolving themselves of guilt – in their own minds, at least. This kind of thing has got to go. We won’t get anywhere fast with people only embracing progress to the extent it lets them never question their own actions or motives.

Here is where A+ parts ways with the other supposed lobes of our hivemind brain. We are more willing and/or able to try to do right by everybody. Others are holding fast to the use of certain ableist slurs – “stupid” and “crazy” and the various synonyms and euphemisms for them. We are trying to get past that.

Well, those don’t sound so terrible – rude but sometimes necessary language, not a slur, right? Well, what is a slur? In the context of social justice, it’s a term used to describe a group of people in a derogatory way. “Stupid” means “of abnormally low intelligence (cognitive function)” – which many people are – and it is universally regarded as insulting. Being of low intelligence should be regarded as a value-neutral condition. People who have below average cognitive function are that way through no fault of their own, and this trait in itself causes no one any harm. Read this way, “stupid” is the comparatively mild but still toxic cousin of “retarded.”

Progressive people aren’t using the latter, so why are they still using the former? The exact same reasoning applies to “crazy.” The neurodiverse shouldn’t have to be slurred every time you are making an argument and find the other side’s position irrational or poorly reasoned.

Atheism Plus people are trying to change these sorts of issues in our own language. We are not always successful, but we are absolutely amenable to being corrected if we err. And this is quite different from the other supposed lobes – certain Freethought Blogs and Skepchick. We can set aside our egos because of our commitment to reducing the oppression of the world – advancing toward a less cruel future. We can admit that we sometimes don’t get it right, because we demonstrate with efforts like this our desire to improve is real.

And what is the end goal of this improvement? To come up with a simple standard that is easy to understand and follow, and show everyone that you don’t have to be harmful to the oppressed to make your position felt, to make a positive difference in the world. It is a much simpler thing to do than it is made out to be, and the inclusion of marginalized people is worth the effort.

-

Comment Policy for NoGodsNoMasters’ Posts:
Everyone gets exactly one chance to mess up. Mess up bad enough and I reserve the right to kick you out/delete your posts. Since I mostly write about things that pertain to my life, I know that I know more than you do on that subject and all you are trying to do is say that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Comment Policy for Great American Satan's Posts:
Until I get bored of it, I will edit sexist/racist/ableist/heterosexist/cissexist/etc. comments and approve them in an unrecognizable form, because I’d like to turn your poop into something positive. When I give up this lark, new comments will just disappear.

-

The scene: I was attending a sheisty diploma mill that – at best – prepares one to enter the sheisty and lo-fi video game industry, while promising starry-eyed youths that they could some day work for Disney or Pixar. You know the kind of place. “Can you draw the pirate? You might be an artist! Make a bank full of money in the glamorous entertainment industry!”

I thought I was cooler than that. I was in the top three or four people for drawing skill in my high school of two thousand. I believed the jobs would go to the people with the best talent coming in and arrogantly assumed I’d be hot shit there.

And I didn’t embarrass myself. I wasn’t the best in the school anymore, but in a few classes, I still was the coolest in the room. In the more important technical classes, I’d be more slow to get the technology than many others, but one of the lines of BS they used to tell us is that “traditional art skills are the hard part, a studio will be willing to help train someone who has those down.”

They charged us obscene tuition and gave us industry salary information that was years out of date to justify that. “Why look, the average video game artist in 199x made 75k a year!” By the time I graduated, unpaid internships of several months or more were standard, and the typical starting salary was a third less than I was able to make as a security guard.

But I was never the type to do my homework, and still thought I was in control of my destiny. And more relevant to the issue at hand, I thought my art chops made me the master of that domain.

In my design class, circumstances led to me talking with this shy, quiet African American lady. She was young and had an uncertain optimism that was heartbreaking. Whatever we were talking about, she ended up showing me some drawings she’d made of Mickey Mouse – obviously hoping I’d say something encouraging.

Well, Mr. Expert thought, she is clearly someone who drew the pirate. If she thinks she has a chance in a place with hundreds of original artists who have been practicing more challenging fare than that for years before coming in, she should save her money and get out now.

I told her and while I can’t be sure that I am to blame, she stopped coming to that class and I never saw her again. This hurts me now, and I dearly hope it hurts me more than it hurt her, but I have no way of knowing, and I fucking doubt it. I did a very very bad thing.

The truth, as I have learned since then: People who applied themselves and learned the technical skills had a decent chance of getting a video game industry job – especially if they moved to California – with scant art skill. It might not be much, but it is waaay better than flipping burgers. And as far as art skills, new artists advance much faster than old hands like me. Even if all she knew how to draw coming in was Mickey Mouse, the sky was the limit on her potential and she could have graduated near to my level of skill – possibly better in many ways.*

And did I at least save her money, per my magical intention? Maybe a few bucks, but once the Income Based Repayment program was introduced, that excuse was blown out of the water. Currently, I am in crushing poverty and I don’t pay a dime. The most generous graduated repayment program offered before would have me paying $451 a month by now (or, in practice, defaulting on the loan completely). On IBR, I only have to repay what I can, and if I stay good with that for twenty years, the balance is forgiven. And so it would have been with her, even if she hadn’t become gainfully employed.

So it was for nothing. And why did I do it? Would I have said the same thing to a man? To a white man? I can imagine yes, but the fact remains that I never did say that to a white man, and I did say it to her. The fact remains that industry is overrun with the shittiest flavor of white dudes, strutting around the cubespace with replica assault rifles, or playing FPS while barking homophobic slurs and misogynist epithets and rape jokes, saturating games with racist stereotypes and objectification. No significant change in sight. No one like her in the room to make those fuckheads think twice with her mere presence.

Did I, on some level, not trust a woman to be capable? Or a black person to be intelligent? Why can I attach those adjectives in those ways so easily? What would my score be on Project Implicit?

Even if my intention was pure and not at all racist or sexist, the status quo being white male domination means that I should damn well have considered treating her differently. If the world is to change for the better, people like her need to be encouraged and helped a lot more than people like me who have the system stacked in our favor at every turn.

And that is, I think, the take home lesson. It is extremely difficult to check biases if you are not even aware of them. But an easy way around that in this situation – in the unlikely circumstance that I find myself there again – is to just consider who I am talking to, and if they are in an under-represented group, check my ass before I speak.

And to not assume superiority on the basis of the superficial. My art was shiny and hers was shaky. In four years, my art would be much the same. What could hers have been? I did a very bad thing. Damage was assuredly done. That makes me a part of the problem.

*I am certain there are millions of women and people of African descent who are far better artists than I will ever be, but this person would have been working up from Mickey Mouse in the space of a few years. Still, that should tell you how fast beginning artists improve. I think it is possible for a new artist to become better than me (25 years of practice) within several years of starting, depending on natural strengths and discipline, while someone more experienced will often have calcified habits and improve hardly at all in the same span of time. It’s never too late to learn if you’d like to. I do not recommend art school though, at the current tuition rates vs. job market. Maybe my next post will be about how to become a professional artist without student debt – things I wish I had known!

-