Secular Students and Skeptics Society

An Evening with Mikey Weinstein at CU Boulder

2012-02-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

$10 General Admission. Students FREE!
Get your tickets online here!

Michael (Mikey) Weinstien, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, will be speaking at CU Boulder on March 2nd in Math 100! The event will begin with a book signing from 6:30 to 7:20. The doors will open for seating at 6:30, with the talk starting at 7:30p. After the talk, from 9:00-10:00, there will be one more opportunity to get a book signed. Copies of his newest book, No Snowflake in an Avalanche, will be sold at the event. He will be talking about the "extremely critical consequences of the destruction of the constitutionally mandated wall separating church and state and the technologically most lethal organization ever created by humankind that is the US military".

Mikey is a 1977 Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. A registered Republican, he also spent over three years in the West Wing of the Reagan Administration as legal counsel in the White House. In his final position there, Mikey was named the Committee Management Officer of the much-publicized Iran-Contra Investigation in his capacity as Assistant General Counsel of The White House Office of Administration, Executive Office of the President of the United States. Mikey has held numerous positions in corporate America as a senior executive businessman and attorney. Mikey has appeared innumerable times on all of the major cable and terrestrial TV news networks and is a frequent guest on national radio networks as well. His constitutional activism has been covered and profiled extensively in the print media including the Associated Press, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, the Denver Post, The Guardian and many other national and international newspapers and periodicals including Time magazine. After stints at prominent law firms in both New York City and WashingtonD.C., Mikey served as the first GeneralCounsel to Texasbillionaire and two-time Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and Perot SystemsCorporation. He left Mr. Perot's employ in 2006 to focus his fulltime attentionon the nonprofit charitable foundation he founded to directly battle thefar-right militant radical evangelical religious fundamentalists: The MilitaryReligious Freedom Foundation

St. Martins Press in New York released Mikey’s book, “With God On Our Side: One Man’s WarAgainst an Evangelical Coup in America’sMilitary” in October 2006. The paperback version was released in February 2008with the Foreword being written by Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV. The book is anexpose on the systemic problem of religious intolerance throughout the United Statesarmed forces.

Reviled by the militant radicalevangelical fundamentalist Christian far-right, Mikey has been given many namesby his enemies including Satan, Satan's lawyer, the Antichrist, That Godless,Secular Leftist, The Antagonizer of All Christians, The Most Dangerous Man inAmerica and, most recently and perhaps most colorfully, The Field General of theGodless Armies of Satan. One such example of hate mail he receives is:

"Christians are sweet, loving, gentle, caring, spirit-filled spreaders of the light of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and, thus are blessd with eternal life.
Mikey Whinstein the jew-lawyer and his evil MRFF demons are sour, hateful, brutal, callous, satan-filled sewers of the darkness of the Devil and, thus are condemned to eternity in the fires of hell." - Email withheld.

Mikey was named one of the 50 mostinfluential Jews in Americaby the Forward, one of the nation’s preeminent Jewish publications. He also hasreceived a nomination for the JFK’s Profile in Courage Award and received theBuzzflash Wings of Justice Award. In addition Mikey was honored by adistinguished civil rights organization Jews for Racial and Economic Justicewith the Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer Risk-Taker Award, for those who have takenextraordinary risks in the pursuit of justice.

On October 15, 2009, the MRFF was officially nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Shortly thereafter, another anonymous Qualified Nominator submitted a second official nomination for MRFF for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. On October 13, 2010, for the second consecutive year, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation was officially nominated again for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

You can Like and Share the event on Facebook here
Check out the Boulder Atheists Meetup for the event here

Darwin Day and the Rest of the Week

2012-02-08T16:12:00.001-08:00

Darwin Day - 10:00a on Feb 18th at CU Museum of Natural History

Come celebrate Darwin Day with SSaSS! This year we are hosting a full day of lectures by some of CU's finest professors. The event will be in the museums dinosaur room all day with the exception of the movie, which will be in Hellems 199. The event is FREE and open to the public, so invite your friends! Our speakers include:

10a - Carol Cleland "Scientific Theories of the Origin of Life: Puzzles and controversies"
11a - Vic Stenger "Is the Universe Designed for Us?"
12p - Phillip Gilley "The Evolution of Language"
1p - Lunch and Kids Activities
2p - Matt Young "How Morality Evolved"
3p - Herbert Covert "What the Fossil Record Reveals about Human Evolution"
4p - Doug Duncan "Life on Other Planets"
5p-7p Movie in Hellems 199

We are attempting to better educate the public and CU students about evolution and the science that has developed from it. We hope to bring in a crowd of people who accept evolutionary theory already, but are aiming it even more to people who either outright do not believe in it or drastically misunderstand it. The topics have been tailored to answer the most basic objections presented at evolution, such as how humans evolved and where morals come from an evolutionary standpoint. We've also included lectures that address objections that are not directly related to evolution but are still affiliated with it, such as how life, the universe and everything could have been created naturally. We will be showing "Darwins Dangerous Idea" from the "Evolution" documentary series by PBS from 2001.

Shambhala Meditation Center Site Visit - 1:00p on Feb 12th at Shambala Mediation Center
This is the first official site visit for SSaSS! This Sunday, Kelly MacLean of the Boulder Shambhala Meditation Center will be guiding us on a Q&A tour of the meditation center. She will be answering questions about Buddhism, and giving us an introduction to the spirituality and practice of meditation.

1:00 - 1:30 : Introduction to Buddhism and Spirituality
1:30 - 2:00 : Q&A
2:00 - 3:00 : Center Tour + Meditation instruction and practice

All members of SSaSS are expected to uphold a manner of respect. We are visitors, there to learn about the world from a different perspective. Intolerance will not be tolerated.

An Evening with Neil deGrasse Tyson - 7:30p on Feb 15th at Macky Auditorium
The CU Distinguished Speakers Board is proud to announce that renowned astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson will be speaking at the University of Colorado's Macky Concert Hall Auditorium on February 15th, 2012. Dr. Tyson will be speaking on the collective expectations of humanity's progress in space exploration and the geopolitical, cultural, and economic obstacles that must be overcome to achieve them. The talk will be followed by a half hour question and answer session with members of the audience. Doors are scheduled to open at 6:45pm, and the speech will begin at 7:30pm. Tickets are $2 for CU students with valid student ID and $15 dollars for community members. Community tickets can be purchased at macky.colorado.edu.

A Reason to Believe - 6:30p on Feb 16th at Eaton Humanities 250
Come watch our own Angus Bohanon and Connor Dozois debate Jordan Ballard and Chad Ellison on the existence of the Judeo-Christian god. The debate will go on for a bit more than an hour, with Q&A for the debaters to follow.

Happy Hour - 5:00 on Feb 17th at Connor O'Neil
Every week SSaSS hosts a Happy Hour at Connor O'Neils. Come hang out with your fellow skeptics in a more casual environment.

קֹהֶלֶת

2012-01-25T23:38:00.000-08:00

The book of Ecclesiastes, also known as Qoheleth, is the sixteenth book of the Protestant Old Testament, and one of the shorter books of the Bible. The second verse of the fifth chapter of that book says, in part, “let your words be few,” and though that is not an option that has been left open to me, I will at least attempt to take the advice of an Indian yogi of legend and consider whether my words are an improvement upon silence. First, I must profess that I love certain aspects of the book of Ecclesiastes. The poetry and beauty of the words is a welcome break from the unfortunate drudgery of much of the Old Testament, and it tries to examine deep philosophical questions in a way that most of the rest of the tome seems unwilling to address. It must be freely admitted, though, part of the reason I love it is that it seems startlingly unreligious for a religious text, and it is that very quality of it that has made Ecclesiastes one of the most debated books of the Bible in scholarly circles. For centuries, people have wondered why it’s included in the Bible, where it came from, what it means, and why it sounds so different from its Old Testament companions. In the next few pages, I hope to address those questions.

As anyone in any literary field can tell you, context is important. Historical framing and knowledge of language are both crucial, but most important is the author of a work. If we don’t know who put pen to paper—or chisel to stone or quill to parchment, as the case may be—we have no grasp of the authority or lack thereof possessed by the author to speak of the things in his writings. Luckily, Ecclesiastes gives us an answer. The first verse of Ecclesiastes tells us that these are “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.” (Eccl. 1:1) That sounds important, further emphasized with phrasing like “I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem,” (Eccl. 1:12) and verses 1:16, 2:7, and 2:9 all unabashedly boast of a man with great wealth and power. The problem is that the author provides no specifics at all as to where in Jerusalem he ruled, and since the word “Israel” refers to the Jewish people in general, we remain woefully uninformed. We might think that “son of David” would help us narrow our search, but the Book of Chronicles lists a total of twenty sons of David, leaving us another dead end.

It was common in the early years of the Church to ascribe the words of Ecclesiastes to Solomon, but many modern scholars have deemed that to be unlikely. For one thing, the book switches between the first and third person, implying that the narrator and the “speaker,” as it were, are separate people. Some have suggested that the speaker makes no claims to be the author, but is rather used by the author as a character of sorts to convey messages of wisdom. In addition, people much more educated than myself have asserted that the style of the original Hebrew is much too recent—dating from around 200 BCE—to belong to Solomon. It’s possible that the book is intended to be an account of the things Solomon said, transcribed by a later author as an example of how even a man with all the material wealth in the world cannot be satisfied without God, but again, it’s simply not clear.

Another intriguing theory put forward by Nicholas Perrin is that Ecclesiastes is intended to point to the Messiah. He points out that in every other context, Solomon is named rather than referred to as simply “son of David.” It’s true that the phrase “son of David” appears 21 times in the KJV, and in every other context a name is given or very clearly implied, but to say that this implies the Messiah is an argument by elimination, and thus a weak one. And if it’s true that this book was taken down centuries after the life of Jesus, it seems unlikely that the author would have used such ambiguous terms to “foretell” events that had already happened. Perrin also references the use of the phrase “one shepherd” in 12:11 as messianic, but most scholars identify the shepherd as God, since it supports the closing lines of the book and since God has been referenced as a shepherd before in similar contexts. Either way, I’ll refer to the author of Ecclesiastes in the manner that scholars do—as “Qoheleth”—from now on.

Regardless of who wrote the book, its contents are fascinating. It starts with the famous exclamation, “…vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” The NIV replaces “vanity” with “meaningless,” and the text goes on to proclaim the actions of man to be "vain", "futile", "empty", "meaningless", "temporary", "transitory", "fleeting, or "mere breath", depending on translation. The most common explanation that I’ve found is a message that earthly things and desires are unimportant, and that only the pursuit of the knowledge of God can have any real relevance or lasting purpose. Take for example chapter 1, verses 4-11. In the NIV, they read as follows:

Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.

This opening paragraph, though exquisitely poetic, seems to be asking, what’s the point? Everything just gets recycled, no one will remember you, nothing is new, and all will eventually crumble. Why even try? It’s a bleak picture, and one that is not improved when we get into verse 12 and Qoheleth’s personal accounts of his life. In 1:17-18, Qoheleth tells us, “And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” But we’re modern thinkers, we’re intelligent, educated beings living in the most enlightened age there has ever been. Are we meant to believe that knowledge is a bad thing? Are we intended to think that to pursue wisdom is a pointless endeavor? That seems to be what Qoheleth is implying here, but any thinking person rebels against the idea of abandoning knowledge or the pursuit thereof, especially just because someone told him to. It’s a contradictory message as well, since by telling us the lesson’s he’s learned throughout a very full and variegated life, Qoheleth is imparting wisdom. By his own rules, if wisdom is grief and the pursuit of wisdom is madness is folly, we should ignore him. That can’t be right.

What, then, about a life of earthly pleasures? If we’re meant to avoid the quest for knowledge, perhaps we should devote ourselves to baser motives. But “behold,” Qoheleth assures us in 2:1 (for he has already sampled such endeavors), “this also is vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?” Having convinced himself that laughter and mirth themselves were useless and base, Qoheleth turned to a life of absolute freedom from self-restraint. He drank wine, built houses and vineyards, and planted gardens and parks and fruit trees. He bought slaves and collected livestock, more than anyone had ever amassed before. He hoarded gold and silver and kept the constant company of singers and concubines. “Whatsoever mine eyes desired,” he assures us, “I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy” (2:10). And yet after all this indulgence and luxury, the conclusion is the same. In a line so repetitive it might as well have been copied and pasted were it not for the fact that such means did not exist at the time, Qoheleth muses, “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun” (2:11).

You can see how this starts to get repetitive. 2:18 starts a section about giving up to despair and how sometimes one doesn’t get to enjoy the fruits of one’s labors, and therefore they are all vanity and vexation. In fact, the words “vanity” and “vexation” appear 47 times between them in the book of Ecclesiastes, never mind the references to “folly” and “striving after wind.” A reader who was only skimming the pages would be forgiven for thinking that this Qoheleth character was just a whiner, a beat poet at a poetry slam in some Seattle coffee shop (or its ancient Middle-Eastern equivalent) whining about how angst-ridden he is and how life is meaningless and we’re all just rats in a race, slaving away for no reason. He starts to come off as petulant and easily ignored.

But a closer read turns up verses that must cause us to stop in our metaphorical tracks and examine them closer. Take verses 2:24 through 2:26. They read as follows:

There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.
For who can eat, or who else can hasten hereunto, more than I?
For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Most of that is standard fare; God rewards good people and punishes sinners. We get it. And the last sentence about vanity and vexation is starting to become tiresome by this point. But when they’re combined, a different picture starts to make itself visible through the fog of irritating ambiguity. Firstly, Qoheleth says that there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and enjoy his labor, because it comes from the hand of God. But the whole first part of chapter 2 was just spent telling us that those specific things are vanity, so what are we supposed to take away from this? Either food, drink, and hard work are worthwhile pursuits or they’re not; you have to pick one. And that last line, though far from original at this stage, has a very different implication in this context. It seems impossible to avoid the insinuation that striving to be a good person and please God is also vanity. If that’s true, and everything (so far) of this world and any other is vanity, then we’re walking a dangerously thin line between religion and nihilism, and I don’t think that’s the line that most modern theologians want us to be walking. Verses 3:10-14 do nothing to assuage our confusion over whether religious pursuits are meaningful or not, as they revert to flowery language about how food and drink are God’s gift to mankind, and verses 3:16-17 are reassuringly judgmental for an audience that just read the rest of the Old Testament.

But then comes a showstopper, and one that has plagued theologians for centuries. Ecclesiastes 3:19-22 read as follows:

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.
All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

That’s blasphemy, and unequivocally so. There is not a major Christian sect on this earth that would say that animals have souls, or that they are privy to the same eternal salvation to which humans can make themselves entitled. Conversely, there is no major sect that would consider for a moment the idea that humans are resigned to the same earthly fate—that of base decay and inglorious disintegration—as animals are condemned to. Now, I personally don’t believe in a soul in the sense of some aspect of human consciousness that exists independent of our physical selves, so I don’t think humans or animals have one, but for those that do believe in a soul, this is a serious problem. Our ability to connect with God is supposed to be our covenant, a unique connection that only we can make, and to let animals in on it is unacceptable.

This kind of boat-rocking pops up dozens of times in Ecclesiastes in a variety of forms, and it is at this point that I start to like Ecclesiastes, seeing it as the rebellious teenager of the Biblical canon. Most of the Bible is dry and shallow, stating the same rules over and over. Follow the rules or you’ll be punished. Follow the rules or God will be mad. Follow the rules or your family will be forced to kill you or, at the very least, banish you. It’s flat and boring, and with a few rare exceptions, no one ever asks questions. If they do, they’re killed (see Numbers 21). I thought Ecclesiastes was the brave book, the one that dared to suggest that there was something more to the question of how to live the good life than just following the rules without contestation. I thought I had stumbled upon an oasis of free inquiry in a desert of dogmatic obedience. I was wrong.

You see, the final two verses of Ecclesiastes nullify the 220 that precede them. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 reads like a strict teacher cuffing a child out of his daydream. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter,” it snaps. “Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” Remember all that philosophy? All those questions about purpose and labor and love and life that we were having such an interesting discussion about mere chapters ago? They’re irrelevant now. All you, the reader, have to worry about—your whole duty—is to fear God and keep his commandments. W.B. Eerdmans says that to “fear” God means to “respect, honor, and worship the Lord,” but I’m not buying that. In the KJV, the word “respect” appears 38 times. “Worship” appears 198 times, and “honour” appears 210 times. Whoever wrote all this down knew damn well how to say any of those things, and they didn’t. They went with “fear,” which appears 78 times more than the three aforementioned verbs combined. We can argue about the nature of man’s relationship with God all we want, but these authors knew exactly what they were saying. Fear means fear. It means you are a servant without negotiating power, and that God can do whatever he wants because you don’t have the right to question him (see Job). It means there is a massive power disparity, as is clearly laid out in the last verse, “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” God decides, not you. This is not a democracy.

It’s commonly put forward that these final lines—which most scholars believe were added distinctly later than the rest of the book—are the only reason that Ecclesiastes even got into the Bible; they silence the wandering mind of Qoheleth and ground him in the unwavering mental subservience of the rest of the tome. Another theory for Ecclesiastes’ inclusion is that if Solomon wrote it, his reputation alone would have been enough to force it into the canon, but as we’ve shown, the veracity of its authorship is far from solid.

So what are we left with? Is life meaningless? Are humans no better than animals? The last two lines attempt to put a stop to that line of questioning, telling us to move along, there’s nothing more to see here, but the questions nag at us nonetheless. A substantial percentage of people think that the Bible is not only infallible, but beyond questioning, and such a person has only one possible conclusion to turn to. All worldly pursuits, all the pleasures and the pains and the toil, are meaningless. They are vapor. This physical world that we inhabit is meaningless and purposeless without the end goal of being near to God. A person who believes in the truth of the Bible above all else is forced to accept such an explanation, but a non-religious person such as myself is not, and I do not see the bleakness in these words that some seem to read into them. I see a humility regarding the human position that echoes the words of some of the recent great scientists of the world. In his “Pale Blue Dot” speech, Carl Sagan said that “Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light,” and I cannot help but agree. Almost without exception, every scientific discovery throughout history has hammered home the idea that we are not special. Our planet is not special. Our star is not special. Neither is our part of the galaxy, or the galaxy itself, or the Local Group in which it resides, or the Local Supercluster that houses that. In fact, there’s no reason at all to think that the 13.4 billion-light-year-wide sphere that constitutes our observable universe is special, and modern quantum physics is pointing to the idea that our universe itself is not special; it’s just one of an infinite number of random fluctuations that populate higher dimensions beyond our understanding. That’s a fundamentally repulsive idea to religious folk—the idea that we are not important by any metric we care to hold ourselves up to, and that when we are gone, as stated in Ecclesiastes 1:11, no one will remember us. But to me, it’s beautiful. “What is the meaning of life?” is the wrong question to ask, because it presupposes an inherent meaning where there is none. We are just a speck of dust in a sunbeam. We make the most of the lives we have and when they’re over, they’re over. And to quote the Australian beat poet Tim Minchin, “Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable natural world? How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to furnish it with the invention of cheap, manmade myths and monsters?”

For me, it is enough. For me, it’s enough not only because it’s true—even if I wished with all my heart that there were a grand overseer, an unmoved mover watching over me, I know there’s no reason to think that’s the case—but because there are so many mind-blowingly astonishing things in the universe that it seems unfair to reduce them to the level of the Biblical God. It makes me sad, even as I write, to think that there are literally billions of people who can learn that there are white dwarf supernovae in the universe—planet-sized balls of white-hot carbon that suddenly fuse into oxygen in their entirety and for a few short weeks outshine the combined fires of all of the hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy that harbors them in a ferocious death throe that can be seen from unfathomable distances—and attribute them to the same petty and childish God who cares on a personal level what kind of fabric you wear and whether you’re allowed to eat insects. To hold the God of the Bible alongside the glory and majesty of nature is an injustice to nature and an undeserved privilege to God.

And for a brief few pages, for a few thousand words, I thought there might be some glimmer of that humility in the Bible. I thought, reading Ecclesiastes 1:4 through 1:11, that there had been someone in the history of shaping this thing we call Christianity that was willing to acknowledge the power of the world and, jut for a moment, set aside the trivial and ridiculous rules that someone else made up. I had hoped that there would be one book, one coherent chunk of the canon, that the authorities let slip through without trying to hammer the inquisitiveness and the curiosity out of it like they do everything else. But all that hope, alas, was simply vanity.

SSaSS This Week (1/22-1/28)

2012-01-24T20:26:00.000-08:00

Our first event of the semester, Between a Man and His God, happens this Thursday, the 26th, at 7:00p in Wolf Law 205. SSaSS, in conjunction with the ACLU of Boulder County, is hosting an educational panel on the separation of church and state. Gordon Gamm, Boulder attorney, will discussthe history of the philosophy of keeping religion out of government and visaversa from the Enlightenment to date. Judd Golden, attorney and Chair of theBoulder County ACLU, will talk about how the ACLU defends First Amendmentreligious rights and liberties. Marvin Strauss of the ColoradoCoalition of Reason (COCORE) will talk about some cases that formedchurch/state separation as we know it today. Walter Plywaski of the Boulder Atheistswill discuss his case of being denied US citizenship because he was an atheist. After the panelists speak, there will be a Q&A for the audience. Refreshments will be served at 6:30p. The event is free and open to the public.

SSaSS will also host it's weekly Heathens Happy Hour at Connor O'Neil's this Friday, the 27th, at 5:00p. If you are underage, don't worry! You can still come and hang out, you just won't be able to order alcohol. Don't miss this opportunity to meet fellow skeptics!

Atheist blogger Greta Christina will be giving a talk at Colorado State University's West Ballroom about Atheism and Sexuality this Friday, the 27th, at 4:00p. Greta has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is on the speaker's bureaus of the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry. You can see more information about the event here .

Office Hours

2012-01-19T12:40:00.001-08:00

As you may or may not know, we now have an office in UMC 330. The office will be manned a fair bit during the week, but only officers have access to it, so if you want to check out books or come use it for homework or whatever, you have to come up during office hours or make a special arrangement. Office hours will be posted on the calendar.

Carry on.

Why I'm Not Surprised At The Vitriol Towards Jessica Ahlquist

2012-01-17T23:12:00.000-08:00

I want to start with a word. It's a simple word; it's only four letters long and not at all difficult to pronounce. It's anatomical in origin, it's almost 800 years old, and yet it still is considered by some people to be "one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock."

The word is "cunt."

According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the word has been avoided in public speech since the 14th century, and considered obscene since the 17th. Any news anchor in the country would be fired immediately if they were to use it to describe someone, and yet recently that particular word has been leveled at an unassuming 16-year-old from Cranston, Rhode Island. Here's a taste:

Well that seems reasonable.

The person they're talking to there is Jessica Ahlquist, who has been in the news a fair bit recently.

Here's why:

The Story

Basically, there was a banner at Cranston West High School in Cranston, Rhode Island, that looked like this.

The issue there is that Cranston West is a public high school and thus, pursuant to separation of church and state (SOCAS) laws, is not allowed to use public funding to support one religion over another or the presence of religion over the lack thereof, and thus phrases like "our heavenly father" and "amen" are problematic.

Jessica went to the school administration and informed them that the banner was unconstitutional, and could they kindly take it down. They ignored her. She then went to the ACLU and told them about it, and the ACLU told the school that the banner was unconstitutional, and could they kindly take it down because the ACLU was willing to sue to have it removed. The school administration decided, mainly because the district owed the city more than $6 million, that they would "research the issue further." The superintendent, Peter Nero—also a practicing Catholic—seemed open to the idea of taking the banner down.

“If people want to express themselves religiously, I would advise them to go to church,” said Nero. “I see a lot of empty pews next to me.”

But the banner stayed up by a school board vote of 4-3. That was in December of 2010. In April of 2011, the Rhode Island ACLU filed suit against the city of Cranston with Jessica as the lead plaintiff. In the suit, she said:

The prayer’s presence in the school promotes and endorses the ideals of Christianity and the concept of a single “Heavenly Father”. I firmly believe that it should not be on display in a public school and is in direct violation of my and other students’ civil rights. As an atheist, I do not feel included in the message of the prayer; in fact, I feel excluded. And the public hearings that I have attended have added to that feeling — that my views and beliefs don’t count, or have less value than those of the Christian majority. I don’t feel that I or anyone else should have to feel that way at school. The prayer does not belong in a public school and that’s why I have come forward to challenge it.

She is, of course, absolutely right. The law is the law, whether a majority of people decide that it should be broken or not. Now, finally, the banner is down. More specifically, it's covered up.

So that's that, right? It's over.

And then the insults started rolling in.

Over the past few days, Twitter and Facebook have lit up with horrific insults, responses to those insults, responses to the responses, etc. The worst of them, not by its content but by its source, came from Rhode Island State Representative Peter Palumbo, who called Jessica Ahlquist "an evil little thing" and followed it with, "Poor thing. And it’s not her fault. She’s being trained to be like that…she’s being coerced by evil people.” That's an elected official at the state level saying, essentially, that atheists are evil.

But it gets worse. I either took or compiled 56 screenshots of abuse directed toward her, and they seem to fall into a few categories.

Outright Insults

I know what your first question is, and the answer's no. I do not know why none of these people is capable of taking a photo standing upright. The point is that this is your typical angry outcry, ad hominem attack. Not really any substance to it, and it's the kind of insult that just rolls right off. Not too far from what's been leveled at me. Anyway.

Threats

These are slightly more concerning, and I'm under the impression that disciplinary action is being taken. These people aren't exactly criminal masterminds—I'm counting eleven people's real, full names—so I hope that was adequately addressed. Threats of throwing shit, punching, beating up, stabbing, drowning, holocaust, cannibalism, crucifixion, and yes, ass-rape—those are serious. That's not ok.

Missing The Point

These people aren't really a threat, they're just the entire reason this case came up in the first place. Let's see what we've got here.

Infinitysidewaysheartmusicalnote Squaresquarecheckmark has a point. I mean after all, what's the harm? Why can't atheists just ignore the fact that they're being ostracized? I mean, it's not like the people at the school are openly hostile…toward…atheists…umm…

Cammie Giarusso (here's her Facebook page) is falling into that usual trap of thinking that public opinion should decide whether the law is upheld. Should we journey back to another historic court decision? One that was almost universally disagreed with by the student body and state officials? Let's do that.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that schools could no longer be segregated by race. In Little Rock, Arkansas, nine black students decided that they wanted to go to school with the white students. Not only did several segregationist groups blockade the front of the school, not only did the governor support them, but he called for the Arkansas National Guard to blockade the front of the school. One of the students recounted that day:

They moved closer and closer... Somebody started yelling... I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd—someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.

In the end, President Eisenhower not only federalized the entire 10,000-strong Arkansas National Guard, taking them out of the command of the governor, but he called in over a thousand paratroopers to break up the crowds and escort the students to class. Sometimes the majority is wrong.

Well, this is pretty simple. Being an atheist is not illegal, nor is being ugly (which she's not). Go through that last status and replace "atheists" with "Jews" and tell me how you think that would go over.

Again. It's illegal. I know you poor Christians only have 80% of the country's population, more than 95% of its government officials, every major holiday you want, billions in tax subsidies, and a mention of your God in the Pledge of Allegiance and on the money…it must be hard to be so oppressed. I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA.

This Guy

Steve Jazz. Steve has a question.

But that's not all. When Steve's not being imbecilic, he also teaches history!

Sorry, that was still imbecilic. My mistake. But wait, Steve's still got his most salient point left to go.

I THINK that what he's trying to say here is that since the years of the calendar are based on the year of birth of Jesus, Jessica is secretly religious. Or something. So that's Steve.

Christians Defending Jessica

I don't have any screenshots of this, because as far as I can tell, they don't exist. I went through the first ten pages of Google results and found atheists defending her, objective news reports, and bigots attacking her, but nothing from Christians saying, "You know what? I love Jesus, and I love praying to him, but I respect that my religion is a private manner that should stay out of the public square, and that the Constitution mandates as such." Not once have I seen that said, about any case like this. Just like you never see moderate Muslims saying that suicide bombers are extremists who've gotten it wrong.

Here's Why I'm Not Surprised

A lot of the people who have reacted in Jessica's defense to this have taken the tack of trying to tell the Christians, "What's all this vitriol? Shouldn't followers of Jesus be nice to everyone? Didn't Jesus say 'love they neighbor' and all that awesome stuff?"

That's the mistake here.

You see, by Christian standards, Jessica Ahlquist is doomed. She's blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, and there is no greater sin. Not child abuse, not rape, not genocide (actually, the Bible seems to be ok with all that). Nope, let's turn to Mark 3:28-29:

Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.

See what that means? That means that all those horrible things that everyone's saying are not only justified, but totally forgivable. God'll be fine with them. But when Jessica speaks against it, she can't be forgiven.

And that's not a unique verse. Shall we see if the Bible addresses blasphemy elsewhere?

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying ... he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him. - Leviticus 24:13-16

Well that's not encouraging. What about the New Testament?

All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men ... whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. - Matthew 12:31-32

And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. - 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9

And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. - Matthew 10:21-22

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. - Matthew 10:34-35

He that is not with me is against me - Matthew 12:30

The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. - Mark 16:16

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. - John 3:18

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. - John 3:36

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me - John 14:6

If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned - John 15:6

But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. - First Corinthians 2:15

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? - Second Corinthians 6:14

So I think that covers that. All those people who are surprised at the way Christians are reacting need to get their heads out of the sand. The New Testament and the teachings of Jesus are not books and sayings of love, nor do they preach tolerance. They espouse hate and bigotry. There are vile words spoken about homosexuals. Parents are encouraged to beat their children. Jews are blamed for the deaths of the prophets. Jesus denies the right of a son to bury his father, and introduces the idea of thought crime—a man who even thinks about another woman in a sexual way has effectively already slept with her, and a man whose mind fills with anger is as guilty of violence as if he had raised a hand himself. Women must be subservient to men, and silent in church. Non-believers must be shunned.

And above all, a message of faith. When I say "above all," I don't use that lightly, as some lazy conclusion. I mean that the absolute most important thing in the entirety of the New Testament is that one hold the belief that Jesus is divine. There is no sin that cannot be forgiven if one believes, and no good deed that can earn one any credit without faith.

Do you see the conclusion we've come to? It's ugly, to be sure, and might cast your naive ideas that Jesus was a great moral teacher into a slightly dubious light. But it is the only conclusion to be drawn.

The fact is that this hatred toward non-believers isn't out of character. It isn't un-Christian, and it isn't forbidden by Jesus.

It's required.

Further Sources (read the comments if you want to see more of this stuff):

http://goo.gl/lrThK
http://goo.gl/cN0En
http://goo.gl/AU9Tv
http://goo.gl/vvksa

For the full decision by the judge, see here.
For an interview with Ahlquist, see here.

Jed Diller, Signing Off

2012-01-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

This post is something of a regurgitation of the “speech” I gave at my final meeting as President. I thought it would be suitable to share again for those who were not there that night, and as my first and possibly last SSaSS blog post.

This group has come a long way since I first did the paperwork for it. I think many don’t know the story of the first meeting, so it’s worth sharing. The first ever SSaSS meeting was the week before finals and summer break of 2010. It was so poorly timed because that was when I finally got the paperwork done. I put up flyers with something along the lines of “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone” and the crappy SSaSS galaxy logo, email, and website I had come up with. Because I had put up the flyers so late and was extremely busy myself, I hoped, but didn’t expect anyone to show up.

To my surprise, a whopping four people showed up. One of the attendees was someone I knew from Christian group meetings, at which we were the token atheists in the discussions. Another was a member who still comes around now and then and I think would prefer to remain anonymous. The other was a quiet guy who disappeared not long after, Todd I think his name was. Most importantly Scott was there.

Many of you never got to meet Scott Mclean, which is itself tragic. He was utterly excited about the group (you know how he is when he’s excited, talking at about one thousand miles an hour) and we talked about everything the group could be and do and about podcasts and videos. To some extent we were just excited to be in the presence of like-minded people. So the meeting ended and that summer Scott, Laura, Kate, and I hung out, hiked, and casually discussed what we could do with SSaSS. When the next semester rolled around we did the flyer thing again and Scott told me that we should be happy if only four people show up again.

Well, you can imagine our surprise when more than twenty people showed up! Holy shit was I nervous. I had some prepared material on what the group would stand for and do, and I gave a little oral presentation about what it means to be a skeptic. Scott recalls that I was shaking reading from my little outline, and I don’t doubt it. After the meeting we couldn’t believe it. It has felt similar since, a sort of whirlwind of disbelief at what we have been able to achieve. Since those rather humble origins, SSaSS has had more than 50 people show up to some meetings and over 100 show up to events. We have nearly 400 people on our emailing list, the website doesn’t suck anymore, we have a sweet logo, we have our own office, and shit, we got the 2011 Best New Group of the Year Award from CFI.

Relinquishing my position is bittersweet. At this point I have lost a lot of the motivation, the fire that allowed me to found this group in the first place, and for reasons I am not totally sure of. I think to some degree I have just been worn down by school. I have for a long time, since shortly after founding this group, been wanting to give up my leadership because I knew that I would be holding this group back. With my major I just was never able to put in the hours that I should have, and that I really wanted to. So I did what I could, often in the wee hours after finishing what I had to for my classes. While I am still nervous about handing my baby over and wishing I never had to, I am glad to be handing SSaSS off to capable and motivated people who will take this group beyond what I ever could.

I also wanted to share a few pleasant surprises from along the way. When I founded this group it never really even occurred to me that SSaSS would mean something to people. I figured that there had to be people out there that thought like I did and would want to discuss the topics we do, but once meetings were over I expected everyone to just go back to their lives outside the meetings. I never anticipated the group itself would be the source of so many friendships. To look around meetings and see people who might have otherwise never known each other smiling and laughing and enjoying each other’s company - that is something that I will treasure.

This was never more obvious to me than in the week of Kate’s death, when Lynsey and Scott flew out from Texas to support everyone out here. It was amazing to me to look around and think that these people, again, may have never even known each other, but here they were sacrificing to support their friends. Being pulled aside and thanked, in the midst of that tragedy, for the mere existence of this group still makes me teary.

Another thing I will treasure that is more accessible to all, are the times while we were tabling that people would swing by just say to thank you for being here. The mere existence of this group means something to people, even people who are too afraid to or simply don’t have time join us. They are nonetheless happy to have our presence on campus. That is pretty cool and something I hope all of you keep in mind.

To the new leadership, I challenge you to make SSaSS even more of a presence on this campus, to be more activist like, to piss people off (One of my naive original goals was to get on Fox News - in a classy way of course.) and to get the ever-elusive t-shirts done.

If you’ve read the constitution you will already know this but I find it necessary to repeat. I never want SSaSS to be strictly an atheist group. I always want it to be what is in the name, secular and skeptical.

I want you all to remember, while being skeptical is unpopular and rarely rewarding, we are doing a good and a necessary thing here. While it is ridiculous and tragic that groups like this even need to exist, they do.

So I urge you, keep up the good fight and do not hang your heads. This may forever be an uphill battle but so be it.

Thank you all, it has been one hell of a ride.

-Jed Diller

In Memory of Kate Sims

2011-11-29T16:08:00.000-08:00

On Monday, November 28, our group and the world at large lost one of its best and brightest. Kaitlyn Elizabeth Sims, or Kate to her friends and family, died after stepping in front of a semi truck in Longmont at the intersection of Highway 66 and Lake Park Drive. For many months, she had been fighting schizophrenoform disorder, which is known to inflict women around the age of 22, and severe clinical depression. After many different varieties of medications were tried, one showed promise, and gradually she began to show signs of improvement. In her last weeks, after being transferred to Warner House in Boulder, she was practically free to roam as she pleased, and got to see some of her closest friends and family. After returning from a two-day trip to Austin to visit her family during Thanksgiving, she relapsed and tried to run into a semi truck on the highway to Golden. However, she ran out of gas and was returned home. Before she was able to be hospitalized again, she managed to leave her home and made her way to Highway 66. Posing as a hitchhiker, she jumping into an oncoming semi-truck, which killed her instantly. She was pronounced dead upon her arrival at the hospital.

I got to spend a great deal of time with her during her last days of clarity. During all of it, I only ever saw her laugh and smile, while trying to put her life back together. I know how powerful the brain is, and how susceptible to misdirection one can be when it is damaged or sick. The woman who died was not the Kate I came to know and love, but a troubled girl who was physically unable to help herself by no fault of her own.I will remember her the way she was before all of that. The way she smiled, her toothy laugh, how she always wore a ponytail, and never matched her socks. She was a tremendously talented singer and poet, extremely beautiful, and immensely kind. She loved Walt Whitman, going so far as to name her puppy "Walt Seusical Whitman", or Walt for short. She had a fondness for music, especially dubstep and Bob Dylan. She loved running, women, white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, and American Spirit cigarettes. She was my best friend. I was her confidant, and she was mine. We loved and trusted each other unconditionally. I've had many good friends, but had never felt closer to any other human being outside my immediate family until I met her.

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I can get no comfort from that thought that's she's "in a better place." However, as long as I and the people who also knew and loved her live, she will never die. She lives in our hearts and minds. As long as we can remember the times when we were with her, no matter how exciting or monotonous, a piece of her will remain alive. There will not be a day that goes by, from now until the second of my death, where I will not take a minute, an hour, or a whole day to remember her and her impact on my life. To those family and friends of hers, I know you will do the same.

- Peter Zupan

Kate Sims
April 3, 1989 - November 28, 2011
Not all who wander are lost

Things Atheists Should Know About 'Merica [Part 1]

2011-11-18T18:30:00.001-08:00

A part of SSaSS' mantra is that it is a group that promotes scientific skepticism, critical thinking, and the separation of church and state (SOCAS). This last part, especially in America, is of the utmost importance to me. Why? Because while the Tea Party and Glenn Beck would love to have you believe that we are a Xian nation, we are not. America is not any religion's nation. Not Islamic, not Hindu, not Mormon, and not even atheistic. It is secular, and very explicitly so. Don't believe me? Then there are three very important documents you should know about.

For starters, there is the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which you should memorize if you haven't already. Here's a reminder:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The part in bold is called the "Establishment Clause," which for this blog post, and in general, is a very important vocabulary word (well, two). Now as 'politicians' like Christine O'Donnell love to point out, the exact phrase "separation of church and state" is not mentioned anywhere in the 1st Amendment, yet we godless liberals always attribute that phrase to it as if they were the same thing. Is this coincidence, or something they (we) made up just to get Jesus out of the public schools? No. It comes directly from the mouth (or pen rather) of Thomas Jefferson, whom most of us know as the writer of the Constitution and 3rd President of the United States.

It's also who you talk about when you want strippers to pay attention to you

The specific phrase come from his Letter to the Danbury Baptists (yes, religious people), who were concerned that without such a clause keeping the state out of the church and vice versa, another theocracy would arise. Keep in mind that at this time, the Church of England was the official state religion in Britain, and it did not like the presence of any other Xian denominations. That's a big part of the reason the Pilgrims came here in the first place. The Pilgrims, being Puritans, sought refuge from the religious persecution in England, and so came to America to practice their beliefs in peace. This remained true for many religious sects in England who were also not a part of the Church of England.

The Danbury Baptists were no exception. They remembered the atrocities committed against dissenters when a single church got hold of state power and wanted to ensure that it did not happen again in this new land. They insisted that the church not be allowed to be conjoined with the state, and that the state stay out of church affairs, essentially demanding that it be kept a totally private affair. Jefferson, in response, wrote this:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

See the correlation? The Establishment Clause was specifically designed for the purpose of keeping the churches and state powers separate.

Still not convinced? Wasn't 'Merica founded on Xian principles at least? Not according to Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, a document ratified by the senate unanimously after being submitted by 2nd President of the U.S. John Adams and signed in agreement on 1/3/1797. That's right, yet another Founding Father and another President denied America being founded on Xity. The specific article reads as such:

Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen*; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan** nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

*Muslims
**Islamic

The event behind this treaty has come to be known as the First Barbary War. The important details in regards to this article are that the Barbary States were an Islamic nation in North Africa, and this issue of whether or not this was going to become a religious war needed to be settled (and we all know how fun those are). Obviously, America did not want that, and so came out of the closet as secular.

Despite these historical truths, a battle has raged since America's founding between those trying to get religion into schools and public office and the HEROES trying to keep it out. The next post by me will be about the court cases and events that defined separation of church and state as we know it today, as well as the conflicts that still exist today. In the mean time, we put our 'faith' into our elected officials, who we know, as America-loving Americans, will surely want to keep our country in the secular state that our founders obviously intended for it.

I feel safer already...

When in Doubt, Shout!

2011-11-18T11:12:00.000-08:00

Putting down the megaphone and putting on a thinking cap

This blog by Laura Shiley is reposted from the Friendly Atheist. Just because I figured we could use another new post. If anyone is tired of hearing from me and wants reprieve, write to Angus Bohanon with your ideas or completed blogs and you'll be our next featured author.

If you shout for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would produce enough energy to

warm a cup of coffee. Yelling is inefficient. Save some time and just use a microwave.

Have you ever noticed how debates tend to turn off the critical reasoning abilities of your opponent? (Although, certainly, never in you.) This is not just your imagination. David Gal and Derek Rucker examined this phenomenon in their article, “When in Doubt, Shout!: The Paradoxical Influences of Doubt on Proselytizing.” According to this study, people whose confidence in closely held beliefs was undermined went on to engage in more advocacy of their beliefs.

Leon Festinger was the first to popularize this theory in his book, “When Prophecy Fails,” in which he infiltrated Dorothy Martin’s cult which predicted the apocalypse on December 21, 1954. Festinger observed how the followers reacted when doomsday failed (yet again) to arrive. At first they were shocked. Then they began crying. And then cognitive dissonance kicked in and they realized that they had saved the world through their dedication. Where before Martin and her cult were quiet and reserved about their beliefs, afterwards their encounter with doubt fueled them to go on and proselytize to anyone who cared to listen and to many who didn’t care to.

These observations led Festinger to develop the cognitive dissonance theory. This theory predicts that people modify their beliefs in order to resolve inconsistencies with their attitudes, beliefs, or actions. Blaming, justifying, or denying are some of the most popular ways to lessen cognitive dissonance. Consider the fable of the “Fox and the Grapes” by Aesop.

Hoity fox says, “I’m sure they are sour.”

In this story, the fox comes across some grapes dangling high above the ground. He tries every way possible to reach them, but to no avail. To cope with the frustration of failing to attain his goal, he justifies not being able to eat them by concluding that the grapes are probably sour anyways.

To quickly summarize Gal and Rucker’s study (see Ed Yong’s blog for a more in-depth summary), they examined how people advocate for their beliefs after being induced to experience doubt. Those in the doubt-condition wrote more on essays advocating for their beliefs on animal testing, eating preference, and computer preference (Mac or PC) than did those in the confident-condition.

Yet these effects are lessened when the subjects affirm an important value prior to entering the doubt-condition. For example, if people first write about an unrelated value with which they self-identify, (e.g., “I am a good student/parent/friend/musician/etc,) then their self-esteem will be bolstered against the biasing effects of the incongruent information. This affirmation is a means of offsetting the threat and convincing the person that, while they may not be perfect at everything, they have other positive traits or values.

This is referred to as self-affirmation theory and it begins with the premise that people are motivated to maintain the integrity of the self (Cohen, 2006). In one study, participants who were threatened with negative feedback on an intelligence task showed more stereotyping of a gay male than those who received neutral feedback (Fein & Spencer, 1997). Yet these effects disappeared in the affirmation condition. This is because the people no longer felt the need to make downward comparisons in order to raise their self-esteem since affirmation inoculates people against threats and allows them to view information more objectively.

These results should not be surprising to anyone who’s ever found themselves in a debate with a stubborn adversary. After all, you are bringing to light flaws within a concept that is important to their self-identity. Their reaction is a normal one, caused by the need to maintain their integrity. The underlying hope here is that they will be able to convince you of their merits and you will switch to their side. This is because there is comfort in numbers. If others also believed, their internal conflicts would lessen.

So what can we take from this study? Simply going into a debate armed with logical artillery will not work. With the first logical fallacy you attempt to destroy, the person in your line of fire will recoil behind their cognitive dissonance barricade. View them as more than just an idea with which you disagree. View them as a human. Take the time to pause and get to know them or they will just attack with more fervor and less logic. Find out their merits until you discover something that you can appreciate. Compliment it, genuinely and truly. Maybe then you can continue with the debate in an effective way after creating this background of respect and (subtle) affirmation.

No matter how hard you try, this will not work. It’s time to reconsider our strategy.

Citations

Fein S, Spencer SJ. Prejudice as Self-image Maintenance : Affirming the Self Through Derogating Others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1997;73(1):31-44.
Gal D, Rucker DD. When in doubt, shout! paradoxical influences of doubt on proselytizing. Psychological science. 2010;21(11):1701-7.

Sherman D, Cohen G. The Psychology of Self‐defense: Self‐Affirmation Theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 2006;38(06):183-242.

Sagan Day at Fiske Planetarium: The Sagan Saga

2011-11-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

Join SSaSS next Wednesday, November 9th at 7pm in Fiske Planetarium to celebrate the life of the legend, Carl Sagan. As if I need to say any more than that to convince you to come, I will anyways.

Carl Sagan: Where science meets joy meets hope

So, why should we care about Carl Sagan?

Because he played a leading role in the inception of the American space program. He even briefed the astronauts of the Apollo before their ascension to the moon.
Because he helped solve the mysteries of high temperatures of Venus (spoiler alert: greenhouse effect), the seasonal changes on Mars (windblown dust), and the reddish haze of Titan (complex organic molecules).
Because he published more than 600 papers in his lifetime. He probably also mastered the art of time travel somewhere in there, in attempting to find enough time to do it all.
Because he received more awards for excellence than you'll ever receive even for participation. (Shall I make a list? I'll get a good start: NASA awarded him the Exceptional Scientific Achievement and Distinguished Public Service, the American Astronautical Society awarded him the John f. Kennedy Astronautics Award, the Explorers Club awarded him their 75th Anniversary Award, The Soviet Cosmonauts Federation awarded him the Konstantin Tsiolkovsy Medal, the National Academy of Sciences awarded him the Public Welfare Medal for "communicating the wonder and importance of science... his ability to capture the imagination of millions and to explain difficult concepts in understandable terms," and I could go on.
Because he was editor-in-chief of Icarus, the leading professional research journal devoted to planetary research.
Because he was a cofounder and President of the Planetary Society, a 100,000-member organization that is the largest space-interest group in the world.
Because he's a Pulitzer Prize winner for the book The Dragons of Eden: Speculations of the Evolution of Human Intelligence. It went on to become the best-selling science book in the English language. And don't forget about his
Because his TV show, Cosmos, was Emmy and Peabody award-winning and has been broadcasted in over 60 countries. (And because you can see it Wednesday, November 9th in Fiske Planetarium at 7pm.)
Because he has more degrees than you ever will. (He received 22 honorary degrees.)
Because he can drop a mean beat.
Because he can make you tear up with nothing but wonderment.
Because he can make even cleaning the cat shit a thing of wonderment.

And also because I could make a list that long and be impressed by each and every thing on it.

Not convinced? Why should we, as skeptics, care about Carl Sagan?

While this alone should be enough to convince you that he's a friend to skeptics,

I'll supply three more simple reasons, directly from his mouth.

"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."
"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."

Do you love Sagan enough?

Is CU Haunted?

2011-10-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

I'll spare you the suspense and tell you that it's probably not. For the long answer, come to October's big event featuring Bryan & Baxter of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society as they focus on the numerous "hauntings" of CU's campus. (Bonus to anyone who follows the link above because they have a password for free tickets to a special advance screening of Paranormal Activity 3 on October 20th.)

Bryan & Baxter make neon ties look good.

The event will be this upcoming Wednesday at 7pm in Hellems 199. Bring all your friends, skeptics and paranormal enthusiasts alike. This event is free and open to the public.

Rocky Mountain Paranormal is the sort of group that keeps people honest. When they went to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, they were told that the hauntings there were caused by the geological makeup of the property (specifically an unusual amount of quartz), they decided to test this claim. A few phone calls later, the U.S.D.A. got involved and conducted both a satellite survey and a soil test--both of which reported nothing strange. Just some crumbled schist and no large deposits of quartz, limestone or magnetite. But, of course, The ghost tours at the Stanley still continue to claim ghost hauntings caused by crystals in the soil.

To better understand why we are bringing this group to campus, read the following discussion of skepticism, pulled straight from their website.

*****

A Small Discourse on Skepticism

Since I got involved in the research of the paranormal the word skeptic keeps coming up with more and more frequency. It appears to have taken on a whole new meaning a skeptic is someone who already has made up their minds and will not allow facts to change their minds. This definitions totally wrong. The context in which this statement is used is based on misunderstanding, ignorance and arrogance.

I will start this discussion with the basics. The American Heritage College dictionary defines it as follows: "Skeptic also sceptic n 1. One who doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions." There is nothing here that states that a skeptic has already made up their mind or that they are unwilling to change their minds.

The skeptic received its negative reputation because it was a form of heresy. The position of the Catholic Church at the dawn of the enlightenment was that God's power was absolute and the bible (as interpreted by the Catholic Church) explained everything. Anyone that dared question, doubt or disagree with any of these precepts was guilty of heresy and became candidates for persecution. Those accused were some of the greatest thinkers and dare I say most open-minded scientists and philosophers Skeptics everyone of them. They saw that truth was not a social, institutional or an absolute construct. Truth is an amorphous paradigm that is best defined as a pursuit rather than a destination.

Unfortunately, the positive implications of being skeptical have been forgotten. It is used as an an anthem against anyone who questions certain paranormal assertions. Historically the world of the paranormal has had more than its share of frauds and phonies. There are also those who will grab for the most tenuous instances of proof and then proclaim these as facts. They offer absolutely nothing of substance except their self-proclaimed keen insight, profound open-mindedness and years of experience. When challenged they dismiss any inquiry for validation as being close-minded.

Research into the paranormal should be treated like any scientific endeavor. Skepticism is the most important ingredient. All assertions should be questioned. Clear, rational and repeatable procedures should be followed. Experimentation and documentation showing how one reaches a conclusion should be open for all to scrutinize. Without this process the assertions become dogmatic, not scientific. Most of us became interested in the paranormal because of a profound belief that there is life after physical death.

There is nothing we would like better than to find some tangible evidence. We will never do so if those who for reason of greed and/or ego refuse to embrace skepticism and constantly misguide us. I beseech all who are true investigators to become strident skeptics demand to know the how and why. Provide documentation of experimentation that proves that yours or anyone's devices or procedures are sound. The most important thing to remember is this--anyone who uses the term "skeptic" yet who already has his mind made up and will not allow the facts change their minds is hiding something.

*****

For more paranormal skepticism fun to tide you over until their presentation next Wednesday, see The Skeptic's Dictionary entry on Ghosts.

Event Photos!

2011-10-04T19:09:00.000-07:00

Here's all the photos that were taken at both the Spaghetti Dinner and Blasphemy Day. They're all mixed up for probably-time-stamp-related reasons, and I think they're fairly well related as well, so here you go. If you want originals for any of these, talk to Laura. Check the Contact page if you don't know how to reach her. Otherwise, enjoy the photos and thanks to everyone who made both events happen.

Does Skepticism Imply Atheism?

2011-09-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

This is a guest post by Matt Reichenbach. As with all individually authored posts, the opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of the group or its other members.

Many skeptics also identify as atheists, to such an extent that these two groups often look indistinct. But the relationship between the two philosophies is not one of equality, and treating them as such can be detrimental to the cause of skepticism. Skepticism is a mode of thought, whereas atheism is an actual claim about the universe. And as is true with all such claims, atheism can become dogmatic. This is the danger it poses to skepticism through its association, because skepticism inherently gives no validity to dogma.

Imagine a hypothetical skeptic. She's a paragon of rational thought, and probably a scientist to boot (since the skeptic's tools are so similar to those of the scientist). Assume further that she has seen no evidence for a conscious higher power in the universe. Due to her skepticism, this person is an atheist. Being otherwise would mean she's claiming something about the universe that, as yet, has no observational support.

But one day, perhaps on the way to Damascus, something blinds her and strikes her down. Now a voice says, “I am God”. Our skeptic is surprised, but because this God, like so many throughout history, is insecure, it truly wants our skeptic to believe it's real. So this God goes on to say “The next time you get sick, pray to me. Ask for help and you will be healed.” The skeptic, because she's a scientist and a tester-of-hypotheses, gives it a try. Sure enough, she's cured of her illness the moment her prayer is over.

So far, the evidence to this skeptic for a God is strong; there were initial observations (the voice), and then an experiment to further test God's existence. This skeptic and atheist now tacks strongly to theism because of the mounting personal evidence she's collected. An outside observer, also a skeptic, would probably roll their eyes at the claims of “he spoke to me, and then cured me of my sickness”. And isn’t it more likely that the person on the road to Damascus had a visual and auditory hallucination, followed by a coincidental cure from sickness? Absolutely—in fact the probability of these is far higher than the probability that God exists, so atheism is still the more likely choice.

But what person would explain away what happened to them in this way? If we can't trust our senses to a certain extent, can we really be skeptics? The outside observer will place very little credence in what's happened to our theist, but she can hardly be blamed for changing her beliefs, and is still absolutely a skeptic, though no longer an atheist.

I use this conversion example not because it's common. In fact, it's exceedingly rare. There are also many examples of people who have heard voices claiming to be God, and later seen evidence of the power of prayer. Assuredly, most of these people were religious before, and probably weren't true skeptics. But the fact remains, my conversion example is not impossible, which means that skepticism cannot imply atheism.

Additionally, an atheist could certainly pick her belief in the non-existence of god irrationally. In fact, if our skeptic above still clung to atheism after his experience on the road to Damascus, saying “my father was an atheist, and how could he be wrong?”, then she's not much of a skeptic. This would be dogmatic atheism, something clung to even in the face of overwhelming evidence. But as skeptics, we must reject dogmatism, no matter how close to our personal beliefs the underlying issue is. It's a counter-intuitive point, but the religious person on your left might be more of a skeptic than the atheist on your right.

Refuting Woo

2011-08-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

First off, what is Woo? For our purposes it's going to include just about any example of pseudoscience or superstition that you can think of, like homeopathy, anti-vaccination, and religious claims. Because most of these groups basically use the exact same arguments in support of their brand of woo, the term should be interchangeable.

The purpose of this blog post is to educate the reader on quick and efficient ways to refute common woo claims. While you probably have some experience in defending your beliefs (or more properly, lack thereof) there are still occasions where opponents will catch you off guard. Maybe it's your first time hearing the argument, or maybe you don't quite know how to properly respond. In either case, it's my hope that after reading this you'll be better prepared to go up against defenders of woo. Before the specific claims are addressed, however, there are some basic precautions that apply in all cases.

First, there are two main mediums where these debates will take place: in person and online. When you are encountering a person face to face, you should always be the more level-headed one. It can be tough to hold in your emotions, especially if you feel you're getting nowhere with the other person or they've touched a nerve. However, no one has ever been deconverted by being yelled at and called stupid. Phil Plait outlines that principle in a great talk here. When online, the same protocol of calmness applies. It's far too easy to forget that the emotionless profile picture of the wooer (person who believes in woo) is an actual person. If you wouldn't say it to their face in that way, you shouldn't say it online. Certainly a level of sarcasm and mockery may be appropriate, so long as it's to the belief rather than believer. Another necessity of online debating is that spelling and grammar matter. Ur n0t gunna B takn srsly if ur ritn in internetz speek LULZ :DDDDDD.!!!!!1!!

Secondly, you should have a thorough understanding of logical fallacies. Though I will specifically list exactly what fallacy is occurring in the Wooer's argument, this knowledge serves a broader purpose of being an "ace in your sleeve" for just about any confrontation, woo related or not.

Thirdly, ask the wooer for their best argument in support of the woo. If you can beat the best claim, then logically there is no reason to examine any more, except to beat a dead horse for the hell of it. Part of this includes forcing your opponent to admit when they are wrong on a specific point. Do not let them change the subject. Until they have said the claim is invalid, the issue is not settled, and should continue to be addressed until it is. The same applies to you if it's obvious that you've been bested.

Finally, it's important to remember that the side with the best, not necessarily the most, empirical data will always be the stronger side. The more independent research you do by yourself, especially concerning the reasons behind pro-Woo claims, the better off you will be.

Now for the actual substance. While these will certainly not be all the pro-woo arguments you will hear, they are (by my experience at least) the most commonly used by the average wooer.

1) You can't prove that woo isn't true.

This is certainly not the case all the time, but it is also not your responsibility to do so. What the wooer has just tried to do is shift the burden of proof onto you. However, you are not the one making the positive claim. By this, I mean the person proposing that something is true has the burden of proof to show that it is.

However, if you do make a positive claim (ex: there is no god, or homeopathy does not work) then you have to provide evidence for your proposition. In the case of pseudoscience woo, this can be pretty easy. Homeopathy, for instance, has been shown to be equivalent with a placebo in regards to its medicinal value, since it's just water. For these, you just need better scientific data from as many unbiased sources as possible. However, for religious claims it is much harder to show negative evidence, so it is advisable to simply debunk the positive claims of the wooer. As Christopher Hitchens is famous for saying: "that which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence." If there is no evidence for the deity, then there is no reason to even humor the thought of it possibly existing. If they don't accept this as a valid reason, make up something on the spot and ask them if they believe in it. When they say "no" and inevitably "because there's no proof for it" you've got them.

2) Dr. Pro-woo of Prestigous University with a BA, MA, and Ph.D says woo is true in his new best selling book

This is known as an argument from authority, and often is also an argument from false authority. While university degree's can add to the credibility of the person, the fact that just because they said it does not make the woo true. Rather, the woo itself has to be addressed. Even in the case of skepticism, if we were to cite something being true just because someone like Richard Dawkins or Phil Plait said it was, we would be committing the same fallacy. Rather, we also look at the claim itself, such as evolution, and the mountains of evidence that support it. If it isn't backed up by empirical data, it doesn't matter who is supporting the woo. It's still wrong.

It's also important to remember that while pointing out that a speaker may have no business talking about a particular subject because it's one they have no knowledge on (for example, Victoria Jackson on the subject of TV depictions of homosexuality), that says nothing to the validity of the claim they are making. To assert this is to commit both a circumstantial ad hominem, and the straw man fallacy. It is always the claim that must be addressed, not the person making it.

3) As it says in the Book of Woo...

A holy book saying to believe in a woo doesn't mean you should. For the same reason as above, if there isn't any evidence to support the claim then it can be dismissed. This is a different case from Dr. Pro-woo because the authenticity of religious texts are often held in higher regard than earthly experts, and usually blindly as well. If they're going to cite a holy book, then both the claims and authenticity of it need to be looked at. Most religious texts make their own extraordinary claims, and as it's often said, those require extraordinary evidence.

So first off, what makes that particular holy book more legitimate than all the others? Holy texts begin with the assumption that what they are saying is true, and occasionally bastardize skepticism, preferring faith to proof. Usually it's postulating the existence of a deity, and that deity is also usually the one saying the book is true. This is known as circular reasoning, or begging the question, in that the conclusion is supported by the premise because the conclusion is true. Since most religous texts fall prey to this, we are still no closer to the validity of the particular book, and thereby the particular claim in question.

In some cases, archeological evidence is provided to show the texts validity. However, that says nothing to support the supernatural claims of the book anymore than the Harry Potter series citing the very real location of Kings Cross Station in London provides evidence for Hogwarts.

Sometimes it's claimed that because there are a lot of followers of that books woo that makes it true. This is also fallacious as it's an appeal to popularity. What one is usually able to see is that this is purely circumstantial, given either the woo's past of evangelism or cultural geography.

Many of these books also make prophecies, and sometimes members use the 'fulfillment of prophecy' as proof for it's validity. After all, if the it knew X event would happen, then it must be true, right? Well, no. A lot of people have made numerous prophecies throughout history, like Nostradamus and every astrologer that's ever lived. What really needs to be examined is not how often they are interpreted (yes, interpreted) to be right, but how often they get it wrong. Most people disregard the 'misses', but remember the 'hits' when it comes to prophecies. That's how cold reading works. Furthermore, most are very poorly interpreted from purposefully vague language so that the reader is able to apply the prophetic statement to just about anything.

The last claim I'll list, though it certainly isn't the last, is that the level of sacrifice made by believers of the woo on its behalf means that it's true. However, killing yourself or others for any belief does not make it more valid than one where it's believers do not. If this were the case, the 9/11 terrorists, Charles Manson cult, and 1978 Jonestown Massacre victims did a number to validate their religious beliefs.

Scientific books like On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, on the other hand, can be taken as legitimate as a case is built from the ground up (again, using evidence) which can be scrutinized under peer review. What's more, science is not dogmatic, so when it gets something wrong it comes out and says it, and does what it can to correct the error. We are also not just postulating that the book of woo is wrong because it's old. George Washington's writings are also old, but we don't dispute that he existed. Why? In large part because supernatural claims were not made about George Washington by others or himself, and any myths surrounding him have been debunked.

4) I had a personal experience with woo and it changed my life

You can't do much to make a person doubt their own personal experience, though there are several examples where you can show that it probably didn't happen. If a person's life is changed in a positive way (or at least they say it is) because of the woo, there's no disputing that. All you can really address is the validity of the experience itself.

In some cases of woo, the phenomenon of pareidolia can occur, where we see faces or special significance in everyday things, like cheetos and grilled cheese sandwiches. This phenomenon is also how we distinguish actual faces, which is a very useful survival tool, but has an unintended consequence of also interpreting things with face-like or human-like qualities to be actual faces or humans, respectively. This could account for woo experiences like ghosts, religious visions, bigfoot, aliens and a plethora of other things.

Some claim to feelings of euphoria from their experience. This can be attributed to the placebo effect, where something that has absolutely no ability to cause any physiological changes within a person does so on a purely psychological level. It is a well documented phenomenon, and as such is the standard in medical practices to determine if a proposed medicine has any real effects or not. But such feelings don't just occur after taking a sugar pill. Literally anything could potentially cause this effect if the person receiving the 'treatment' believes so hard that their body will, by itself, produce the effects.

Finally, there is confirmation bias. This occurs when we want something to be true so badly that we will make the jump in believing that because X happened it was caused by the woo. In the anti-vaccination movement, this is exemplified when someone claims that they haven't been vaccinated but also haven't caught the disease, so the vaccination is fraudulent. In reality, they are more likely being protected by herd immunity from the people who have been vaccinated for the disease. Illnesses that had previously been eradicated, such as polio, are starting to come back as a result of the vaccination scare.

It happens all the time in religion when everything from finding ones car keys to surviving an emergency situation are attributed to the deity in question rather than ones ability to remember or the trained hands of professionals. This has lead to a rise in faith healings, such as exorcisms, which prevents many people from getting the medical treatment they desperately need.

5) If you don't believe in woo, bad things are going to happen to you

This is a blatant threat. At this point you would be fully justified in ending the conversation right there. This is usually a last resort, be it damnation or jeer that you're contributing to a global conspiracy, when the wooer has nothing more to add to the conversation and thinks they can scare you into seeing things their way. However, you can still argue against this if you feel like it. Again, evidence is key. If you've debased all of their beliefs in any of the above categories, they basically have no foundation to stand on to claim that this is valid. In religious cases, this is known as Pascal's Wager, a philosophical thought experiment concluding that one should believe in the Judeo-Christian Jehovah to reap the benefits of Heaven rather than possibly risk the pains of Hell. But at this point, they probably have still not proven the existence of their particular deity over all the others. This brings into question not just if you're wrong, but what if they are. With thousands of religions dead from the past or not yet made in the future, as well as hundreds existing currently, how could they possibly know theirs is right? Without proving their beliefs to be correct, they are committing the fallacy of special pleading. Furthermore, they are possibly risking their lives on a false religion. What if the Flying Spaghetti Monster is true? Shouldn't they accept it so that they can go to a heaven with a beer volcano and a stripper factory, rather than the FSM hell, which only has a stale beer volcano and an ugly stripper factory? This example applies to any and all religions until the right one is discovered (if it ever is at all).

Certainly these don't cover the more complex arguments such as the Kalam Cosmological argument, nor all of them that exist, but they are the ones the skeptic/atheist will probably come across in casual conversation with a layman wooer. I hope you've found this helpful, and are able to use them practically in your day to day. If not, well, that's your own bloody fault, isn't it?

Feed our Freethought

2011-08-15T15:37:00.001-07:00

Have you ever dreamed of having your own corner office? If so, this is for you. (And if not, do it for SSaSS.) It's that time of the year again when we try to earn some office space. Where we fell short last year, we shall excel this year.

With this office space, we hope to create a community center where people can either come socialize or get away from the hustle and bustle of the UMC in order to quietly do SCIENCE! (Or writing, philosophy, tetris, etc.)

But the question was, "How do we convince the school that we're worthy of a 10 x 10 box?" Let's start with what the other officeod groups have. Typically, they offer services. Consider the Hiking Club which loans out gear or CU Recycling which (presumably) recycles. Or sometimes they just offer support.

So the best way to get what we want is to offer both things--both services and support. Obviously we're all about support, but what services? Our plan is to create a library.

Our stairway to "heaven"

The books to be included within the library will cover the broad scope of topics which we already address at our meetings. (Religion, science, morality, etc) Books will be available for check out to any of our members.

But how we get the books is up to you. Already, we've received donations from several members and SSA is shipping us a treasure trove as you read this. But if we're to do this right, we need everyone's help. Don't think you're going to read God Delusion for the 3rd time this year? Donate it. Couldn't make it through your text book on logic? We'll use it as a basis for our attack on logical fallacies. Or just tired of seeing that old bible on your shelf? Someone will appreciate having a bible on hand to quote when the street preachers come to town.

So go to your bookshelf (or Savers, where books cost 99 cents) and donate, donate, donate. Then prepare yourself to sit back on our SSaSS sofa and enjoy some tea.

The best we could hope for in sassy sofas.

Next in the news: SSaSS wins at everything

2011-07-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

This blog has been reposted from the Center For Inquiry On Campus blog, The Course of Reason. All opinions expressed here are expressly those of Laura Shiley and are not representative of SSaSS.

***

On June 22nd, I ventured out onto a Colorado interstate and didn’t stop until 26 hours later when I pulled up to the Center For Inquiry’s (CFI) Transnational Headquarters in Amherst, New York. On the drive there, I talked excitedly with my fellow CFI leadership conference attendees about what to expect—yet I was still unprepared. I knew that I would return to the University of Colorado at Boulder with the knowledge to organize bigger and better events through a greater awareness of fundraising, volunteer management, media broadcasting, etc. What I failed to anticipate was the wave of inspiration that would hit me with each passing presentation, each late night conversation, and each new network connection.

Accompanied by my fellow Secular Students and Skeptics Society (SSaSS) members, Trent and Steven, we feverishly took notes and excitedly reached out to each person passing by our dorm room during the long nights “networking.” Already upon returning I have condensed my notes into a presentation, which I passionately delivered to the other leaders of SSaSS, outlining the distance we have yet to travel if we want to be a major mover and shaker within the skeptic’s movement.

During this meeting, I also slyly presented them with a little something we picked up while in Amherst. Slowly, I unwrapped a plaque from a long piece of fabric. Proudly, I displayed the “Best New Group” award to my peers as their jaws audibly hit the table—or so I remember it, like some exaggerated cartoon in my head. That’s because winning this award seems so unreal. We never expected to be acknowledged for any of our work. In fact, walking into CFI late on Sunday and hearing we had won the award, I had a hard time figuring out what we had done that was worthy of the honor. So the following is as much for me as it is for those of you who are unfamiliar with our organization.

John Dewey: The real reason for our success

Our group formed at the beginning of the last school year. After the other two founding fathers hung 70 posters on campus, we attracted around thirty people to our first official meeting. Since then, we’ve managed to stabilize meeting attendance at around 25 people, during which time either a student presents on their favorite topic in skepticism/science or we bring in a professor to educate us on physics, philosophy, astronomy, etc. For one of our weekly meetings we even managed to bring in a former president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, Bad Astronomer Phil Plait.

Yet this was child’s play compared to our year’s first official event, Darwin Week. Modeled after the University of Northern Iowa Freethinkers and Inquirers’ (UNIFI) popular event, we worked hard to make our first event something worth noticing. Every academic building on campus had at least one Darwin poster staring thoughtfully at passersby. Our picture appeared on the front page of Boulder’s newspaper. The lineup included eight faculty members from CU-Boulder including Nobel laureate, Dr. Vic Stenger, and Dr. Matt Young, co-author of Why Evolution Works (and Creationism Fails) from the Colorado School of Mines. Throughout the week of lectures on evolution, we had nearly three hundred attendees.

Since then we’ve participated in various interfaith events and, after hearing about Illini Secular Student Alliance’s (ISSA) own interfaith involvement, we plan on expanding our efforts. In fact, the conference has motivated me to expand all of our efforts. And none of this could’ve happened without the help from CFI and all of its supporters. Our weekend with CFI and company provided us with invaluable skills and inspiration which we will apply as readily to our organization as CFI applies icing to their infamous cupcakes.

Infamous cupcake after six hours in the sun

The Skeptical Review [Issue #1]

2011-07-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

Bringing you the best in skepticism-related news since the last time I was bored

Welcome to the first issue of the Skeptical Review. What we'll report is the latest in news relating to skepticism, secularism and science. When a story pops up, we'll be the first to report it (after the original article, of course). We hope this won't be a singular venture, and would love to post submissions by our members. All we ask is that the article remain unbiased, courteous, and fact-checked out the wazoo, with sources clearly cited, and investigated for accuracy.

Last month, Braco the Gaze Healer came back to Colorado for another healing session. For those who don't know about him, Braco heals people by looking at them. There is literally nothing else that he does but stare at you and either your spiritual or physical ailments will be healed. Braco himself claims no supernatural abilities (how can he as he supposedly hasn't spoken in years), though he will not look at people directly for more than a few minutes or stare at women in their first trimester for fear that the baby will explode. The sessions were $8 per person, and held on June 28th and 29th. If any reader happened to go, we'd love a rendition of the experience. Bruco was one of the first subjects held at SkeptiCamp when it was last in Boulder.

Several atheist groups around the nation expanded their awareness advertizing to the heavens. On July 4th, the banner "Atheism is Patriotic Atheists.org" or "God-LESS America Atheists.org" trailed behind planes in 26 states. One such banner flew over Greeley in CO, to the chagrin of some onlooking theists. Many pilots refused to fly their planes with the banner based on their personal religious grounds. But like the bus campaign of England, there were those who would fly, letting closeted non-believers know that they are not alone. American Atheists also sponsors a nationwide billboard campaign.

Gay Marriage was passed in New York by 4 votes (33/29), becoming the largest of the previous 5 states and Washington D.C. to allow it. Some religiously based orphanages have closed down to avoid having to give children to gay couples, a protection now allowed to them nationally with a marriage licence. It was also a huge blow to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and the Family Research Council (FRC), both of which are Christian organizations that hold marriage should only be between a man and a woman based purely on scripture and hyperbole.

Matthew Chapman, the great-grandson of Charles Darwin, has released The Ledge, a movie which he both wrote and directed. Starring Charlie Hunnam, Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson and Terrence Howard, it's a movie where the atheist is finally the good guy. The basic synopsis is that the atheist has an affair with a fundamentalist Christians wife, and when he find out, he holds her hostage with the intent to kill unless the atheist takes his life. It will only have theatrical releases in New York and Los Angles, but oddly enough, is already availble for online streaming so that it can reach a wider audience.

A church in Oregon was vandalized with Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster graffiti last June. This caused an uproar of disagreement within the atheist community. Some claimed that the church deserved it, while others, such as Matt Dillahunty of the Atheist Experience, saw it as giving atheism a more negative image than it already has. Hemant Mehta, writer of the Friendly Atheist Blog, started a fundraiser which raised $2700 to help pay for repairs. The church refused, claiming they had it well in hand, and the money went to the Foundation Beyond Belief to be dispersed among secular charities.

SSaSS Specific News: The constitution for the group has been looked over once by a committee of peers (like, 6 of us) and will be made public for group members to look over. You can also send an email asking for a copy. In accordance with it's own rules, one more public meeting (to be determined) will take place to look it over before it's voted in.

We also won a plaque from the CFI conference for "Best New Group of 2011". You can see a picture of it at the bottom of the Accomplishments page, and hopefully in person if we manage to get an office.

Putting Coffee Aside

2011-07-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

*The following does not represent SSaSS as an entity and is the sole personal opinion of Laura.*

After a busy night of catching up on all the blog posts covering Coffeegate, I laid in bed thinking about how to remedy the damage done in the comment sections of blogs. (Who would've thought this battleground could cause so many wounds?) I got the bright idea to sum up all of the GOOD that has emerged from this feud. But then I awoke to a bright new world full of Friendly Atheists and I saw that Hemant Mehta had already suggested this exact thing in his blog that night. His insights always seem to be just a step ahead of mine. (Or perhaps this is just to say that he can function better without sleep, is less of a procrastinator, etc..)

Hemant Mehta—Keepin' the internet honest.

Alright, so let's put aside our negative feelings as best as we can and appreciate the past week for what it's been—a learning experience. (These rules are more for the benefit of the cyber community than they are for the either of the women who led to the beginning of this.)

1. Do not let emotions cloud your judgment—Naturally, this is more difficult than it sounds and it applies to more than just the original debating parties. Their audiences must also abide by this rule.

Rebecca Watson insisted in the beginning of her CFI lecture that on-line communities are judged by the competence of their commenters. Should it be that way? No. It's not a fair to represent the attitudes of a multitude with a few emotionally-driven and perhaps trolling comments. But since that's how it works, we must ALL be self-aware. Do you want to call someone names? Just hold off for a day. Respond later once you've calmed down. You will come off more intelligent and respectable. If you have a blog, you'll gain viewership for taking the time to show everyone some respect. (Mind you, I mean to say, respect everyone, not every idea.) You'll be a great role model. Everyone you love or wish to love you, will love you back. Only good things can come of waiting. (The worst thing that could happen is that someone brilliant, like Mehta, will beat you to the punch. But is that really so bad if someone makes the same good point?)

Let's not be so on-our-guard to start a fight. No one is trying to kill you. (Unless they are.
I don't know your situation. But it's probably not from within the movement.)

2. Read copiously and thoroughly in order to understand both sides of the issue— This also applies to the blog-consumers, as much as blog-producers. We're in this movement because we don't take anything at face value. We're skeptics. So why would you take someone's opinion at face value? Hell, I was with Stef when she was writing her original post and I even questioned her then. She showed me the original videoblog and I came to my own conclusion rather than just believing her version of “Coffeegate.”

Dr. Seuss understands this phenomenon

3. Don't brush people off due to careless remarks—I originally made the same mistake when I proclaimed some pretty bold and reckless things while at the CFI conference. But after calming down, I'll continue reading everyone's blogs regardless—we can all afford to give second chances.

4. Be open to the possibility that you could be wrong—And furthermore, keep in mind what it would take to convince you. Part of what makes our movement so great is our ability to debate and to adjust our opinions based upon new information. We are not dogmatic. We must make a point to demonstrate that wherever possible.

Seriously, at this point we are scaring people away with this combative attitude. (I've seen many people comment that THIS is why they don't join forums, groups,blogs, attend conferences, whatever.) But if we were to all just admit when we were wrong, perhaps they'd see that we're not just argumentative and dramatic—that we're instead humans who are capable of correcting our initial impulses and taking a higher road.

5. Do not make enemies of your allies—This was the initial problem. If Rebecca disagreed with Stef's form of feminism, she could've approached her and thoughtfully corrected her wayward sheep. (Because, mind you, Stef liked [/likes?] Skepchick.) Instead, she may have alienated her and many of her other potential fans. I'll admit, before the conference I had never read Skepchick. But I had heard good things about it and fully intended to start soon. Yet as soon as I heard her insult Stef, I too had an emotional response which closed me off to the rest of the talk—even though I'm sure it was good. I wanted to walk out. I wanted to call out. Yet I also wanted to listen to Rebecca—but I couldn't. That's because these sorts of attacks close people's minds. I'll admit, mine was closed. I'm doing my best to change that. Forgive me if I have not fully succeeded and my bias is obvious.

"Oh dear, is my bias showing?"

6. Always make sure to take a step back and take the good with the bad. Alright, so this lesson is really to just notice life's lessons. Perhaps it's a bit redundant but it's important that you are able to outline these things on your own. In order to do so, you must be able to step back and look at it objectively.

This controversy has brought the new leaders of skepticism into the cyber world. (Or at least that's what it did for me. Observe, my first blog post..) That's at least something. Along with these new leaders, have come their own voices of reason. And it taught etiquette to people who might otherwise be unfamiliar—once again, like me. (Although I'm still uncomfortable with “naming names,” I recognize that it's a good thing.)

This incident may have tarnished your opinion of many people—try not to let it. Take a moment to recognize our commonalities. You'll undoubtedly find that they outweigh our differences. If you address these differences with respect, you'll also undoubtedly find that people are receptive to constructive criticism. While you may wish to call someone“ignorant,” instead say, “Your post seemed to skim over this key point.” It means the same thing—it just allows the other person to address the problem without giving them cause to rally their army of commenters.

Do you disagree? I'd like to hear your opinion. But please, let's exercise restraint over our emotions and stay civil. We're all on the same side here. I'm not against anyone and I don't believe you are either. We're better than that.

Instead of bickering over the meaning of "coffee," ask your opponent aside for a cup of tea.

This message brought to you by human decency.

*Once again, bear in mind that this was all written by Laura and cannot possibly represent the diverse views of everyone in SSaSS.*

Skeptics—What The [Place Of Damnation Of Your Choice] Are They?

2011-06-18T02:02:00.000-07:00

Ted Burnham is a journalist and active SSaSS member who recently made a short documentary about skepticism. Guess who stars in it? If you guessed SSaSS, then you win a gold sticker*. Featuring Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy, it looks at what skepticism is, how one can be a proper skeptic, and how all skeptics are drunkards.

Skeptics from Ted Burnham on Vimeo.

*No you don't.

Colorado Daily Article

2011-02-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

Some University of Colorado students are celebrating Charles Darwin's 201st birthday, this Saturday, with a week's worth of events and lectures discussing Darwinian theory and evolution . . .

So begins a recent Colorado Daily article about the group and Darwin week. Here's a link to the whole article.

We're On TV! Well, A Podcast. And It's Just Audio. Still . . .

2011-01-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

Recently, our beloved Angus went on the Amateur Skeptics podcast to plug the group and Darwin Week. The audio is below, and his part starts roughly four minutes in. UPDATE: the embedding isn't cooperating, I'm working on it. Here's a direct link to the mp3 file in the meantime. SECOND UPDATE: the embedding is in fact working, but it takes a minute to load. I'll leave the direct link anyway in case you want to save the dulcet tones of Angus' voice for later.

For more from the Amateur Skeptics, see their link on the list on the right.

Science Knows Some Cool Stuff

2011-01-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

So it's common knowledge, if you're like me and have taken three astronomy classes in the last two semesters and also help teach one, that big galaxies have giant black holes at the center. But black holes are . . . well, black, so you can't see them. And galaxies are really far away. So that begs the question, HOW DO WE KNOW?

Settle, down, life-forms. I'll tell you.

You see, black holes have a whole bunch of mass. And when stuff has a whole bunch of mass, other stuff is pulled towards it. And when it's not pulled directly towards it, it tends to spiral around it, bashing against other stuff, and it all gets REALLY REALLY FREAKING HOT and spins around ridiculously fast. Then it gives off light.

Now we have to talk about the Doppler Effect. You know when a car goes by really fast, and it makes that noise like
NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW?

That's the Doppler Effect. What happens is that the sound waves coming from an object that's moving toward you are compressed, so the frequency is higher and it sounds like a higher note. When it passes you, the opposite happens and it sounds lower. Give any three-year-old a toy car and he'll make that noise. We're familiar with it.

Turns out light behaves kinda like a wave. That's actually what got Einstein his Nobel Prize, not relativity or black holes or relativity or anything that any of you know him for.

Yeah, I'm actually even smarter than you think. Sorry.

When a light source is moving toward you, the equivalent of getting higher-pitched is getting bluer. Similarly, light sources moving away look redder than they actually are.

What that means is that when a cloud of matter is spinning crazy fast around a black hole, part of it is moving away from you really fast and part of it is moving toward you equally fast. You'd expect, then, that if you took a picture, stuff on one side would be much bluer than normal and the other side would be much redder. If you then plot the red- and blue-shift of either side of the cloud, you can tell not only that it's spinning, but how fast, how hot it is, and how massive the thing at the middle is. The image that was taken recently of the center of the M84 galaxy looks like this (colors and magnitudes greatly exaggerated):

Not only is that super pretty, but it holds a wealth of information. The numbers are staggering. First of all, before you complain about the resolution, M84 is about 6 light minutes across, or roughly a 30th the width of the full moon in the sky, and it's 352,700,000,000,000,000,000 miles away, so cut them some slack. Second, the gas that's orbiting the center of that galaxy is moving at 880 thousand miles an hour, some 26 light years from the center of the galaxy. That's absurd. For perspective, some rough math reveals that if something were orbiting at the same distance at which we orbit the Sun (which it can't, because that would be inside the event horizon), it would be moving at 1.7 times the speed of light. Obviously that can't happen. The mass of this beast? 300 million times the mass of the Sun, crammed into a space a bit bigger than Jupiter's orbit. [For an explanation of this strikethrough, see update below.]

And we can tell all that from a pixelated smear of color.

You think the Universe is an amazing and mind-blowing place? You don't even know.

UPDATE: The stuff above has been tentatively crossed out because it has been pointed out to me that the math doesn't make sense here. I'll walk you through it if you want to keep reading, otherwise feel free to move on.

What I did to calculate the radius of the event horizon is to type "escape velocity" into Wolfram Alpha. It gave me this equation:

So I took that and plugged in a mass of 300 million solar masses and an escape velocity of the speed of light (since that's what event horizon means), and of course "G" stayed as the universal gravitational constant, like so:

I made it give me a number for that result and got this:

So you can see that the second result from the bottom is 5.92 AU (1 AU is the radius of the Earth's orbit), and Jupiter orbits at roughly 5 AU, so I stuck that number is. The problem is that if you divide the volume of a sphere 6 AU across by the volume of the Sun, you get this:

That's 2.145 billion times the volume of the Sun, but if you're only putting 300,000,000 times the mass of the Sun in there, the overall density of the black hole with those dimensions turns out to be roughly 14% that of the Sun. That's clearly wrong, since a black hole inside the event horizon is at least a quadrillion (10^15) times the density of the Sun. That's the maximum density of a neutron star, and we know black holes have to be more dense than that.

In summation, I have no idea what's wrong with the math here, but at least now you know how I got the number. It's worth noting that if we work backwards assuming a 300 million-solar-mass black hole and a distance of 26 light years, we get 899,000 miles per hour, which is absolutely close enough to match the 880,000 mph figure I found, so it's not necessarily a problem with the original article I got that figure from.

I genuinely have no idea how to figure this out. Suggestions welcome.

You Know What's Wrong With Democracy? You. YOU ARE.

2011-01-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

See how far you can get through this three and a half minute video before:
a) catching on to what he's talking about,
b) dropping your jaw in shock, or
c) punching the bejesus out of something in pure, spluttering frustration and rage.

Ready go.

We Need a Christian Dictator
Uploaded by OnKneesforJesus. - News videos from around the world.

Truly Amazing.

2011-01-26T00:21:00.000-08:00

I am posting this because you all deserve a moment, every once in a while, whence your imagination is overwhelmed by the explosive beauty of the mighty cosmos. You have the right, now and then, to involuntarily drop your jaw in amazement as the sweet, sticky magic of the universe floods your every synapse with glorious fascination. I am posting this because when I saw it, that happened to me. I hope you feel the same.

Click on the photo for the 2766x1364 original.

That is a picture of Saturn, taken by the Cassini probe. The probe was launched in October of 1997, got there in July of 2004, and has been orbiting around Saturn taking pictures ever since. This particular picture was taken in 2006, and shows Saturn backlit by the sun. Keep in mind that the probe is, at this point, eleven times farther from the sun than we are, so it's a long exposure. Now let's zoom in on that photo.

At this zoom level, you can just barely see what I'm talking about, but you don't know it yet. It's literally a single pixel in this photo. Zoom in again.

Now you can see what I'm talking about. Again, barely. Some of you might have guessed where this is going. Zoom in one last time.

Do you know what that is? It's our home. That's the Earth, seen from the better part of a billion miles away. That is only the second farthest picture we have of our humble blue rock, and I know you want to see the first. Here you go.

See it? It's the tiny bluish speck about halfway down that bold band on the right (the streaks are artifacts of the camera lens). That photo was taken from a staggering 3,781,782,502 miles away by the Voyager probe, which was launched in 1977 and, thirteen years later when it had finished its mission, turned around from well outside the orbit of Pluto and snapped that shot. Here's one more.

It was Carl Sagan's idea to have the Voyager probe turn around and take that photo of its origins, and when he saw the result he wrote this (I know this is on our About page already):

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

There are those who say that science ruins the childlike wonder of the universe. They say that rational explanation destroys beauty. There are those who say that one who understands the refraction of light cannot appreciate the magic of a rainbow. That a snowfall is less sublime if one understands the condensation and crystallization of water. That a river is somehow less stunning, a forest fire less terrifying, or a shooting star less breathtaking once the mechanisms for their existence are revealed.

Those people are wrong. Science offers us a view of the cosmos that our ancestors could never have dreamed of, and to comprehend what we see only serves to thrill us even further.

After all, without understanding, that's just a grainy picture of a little blue speck.

John Stocke's Lecture

2011-01-25T19:21:00.000-08:00

The following is a description from John Stocke of his upcoming lecture. The lecture will be delivered on Tuesday, February at 5:30 PM in Eaton 150.

Charles Darwin lived in a period of history when religious belief was held as the highest truth even above the results of the scientific method; today this hierarchy is much less clear. Darwin himself wrestled with what his new ideas meant in the context of his religious beliefs and those of others (including his wife Emma). Modern scientists do not necessarily have to face this dilemma and so often do not wrestle with these same concerns. Therefore, the relationships between science and spirituality are much less often explored today than in Darwin's day.

In the context of modern truth-seeking, spiritual belief systems lack impact for many due to being partially or fully based on individual personal experience. These belief systems are also not easily amendable due to new discoveries and ideas and are not subject to falsification. But modern science has fundamental limitations as well including assumptions of causality, the subject-object duality and the presumption of the supremacy of logic and the rational mind.

I will use the opportunity provided by Darwin Week to explore the differences and commonalities between science and spirituality, their strengths and limitations (much like I imagine Charles and Emma may have explored similar ideas). I will conclude with an exercise designed to illustrate trans-rational
experience, a potential source of both mystical experience and scientific creativity.

I am delighted to dedicate this presentation to my friend Sophy Darwin.

A Party Trick That Everyone Loves!

2011-01-25T15:37:00.001-08:00

This is on the more aggressive end of debunking skepticism, but hey. It'd work.

Let me know how it goes.

UDOR: Dick Richards' (Messed Up) Thoughts On Atheists

2010-01-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

I follow a blog called "The Friendly Atheist," written by Hemant Mehta. He generally deals with the news stories surrounding atheism with tact and dignity, thus earning his self-appointed title. Today, he directed his readers' attentions to an article in the "Rant and Rage" section of the Daily Vanguard, Portland State University's newspaper. The article is written by Dick Richards (a fake name as far as I can tell (as far as Facebook and Google can tell me (and yes I realize I'm nesting parentheses))) and is titled "Believe it or not, this pisses me off." It's about atheism. Now, Mehta says that the entire article is ridiculous, and not worth his time rebutting. Well, my time is a lot less valuable. And I'm not nearly as friendly . . .

Read the rest of this post at Unreasonably Dangerous Onion Rings.

UDOR: It's Just F**king Water

2009-09-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

Showtime. Homeopathy. This post is intended to shed some light on the math and science behind homeopathy. If you're a believer in homeopathy, there are three groups you could fall into.

1. Involuntarily Ignorant
First is that you don't know how homeopathy works and thus have not looked into the math behind it.One wonders why you would trust your health to something if you don't know how it works . . .

Read the rest of this post at Unreasonably Dangerous Onion Rings.

UDOR: This Still Won't Work

2009-06-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Remember a while back when I found that thing that was supposed to take "wasted" energy from cars on the road and use it to generate electricity? That thing that won't work? Well someone's done it again, and it's basically the same idea.

Let's recap why the original idea won't work so I can more effectively point out why this new one is not quite as bad an idea . . .

Read the rest of this post at Unreasonably Dangerous Onion Rings.

UDOR: Brilliant, World-Saving Idea VS. Universal Laws Of Physics

2009-04-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing: this won't work. The idea in question is called MotionPower, from New Energy Technologies. NET won't tell anyone yet how it works, just that they have a working prototype designed to "harness some of the kinetic energy being generated, and wasted, by moving cars". Regardless of how they claim it'll work, it won't . . .

Read the rest of this post at Unreasonably Dangerous Onion Rings