Ron Williams and his solicitor, Claude Bilinsky, announced today that Williams will challenge the legislation recently enacted to 'work around' the High Court's decision in Williams vs the Commonwealth and Others, otherwise known as the 'chaplaincy challenge'.
I don't think most people realise the seriousness of the action taken by our parliamentary representatives in their haste to throw yet more tax payers' money at the likes of Scripture Union and Access Ministries.
Ron Williams needs $300,000 to cover the cost of the challenge. That would be $75 for each of the 4000 atheists who attended the Global Atheist Convention. So that's how much I donated. If you dug deep and paid out for the GAC, you should dig just as deep for this! It's important. You can donate at http://www.highcourtchallenge.com
Great Scott! This is Eugenie Scott at the Global Atheist Convention. I am ashamed to admit I missed her talk because I slept in a bit, having been at the pub the night before. At least I still get to see it :)
Sam Harris’s talk from the Global Atheist Convention is up. He talks about experiences that can be achieved by anyone with practice but remain mostly in the domain of the religious – and that doesn’t have to be so. He got 4000 atheists to close their eyes and talked them through what’s called mindfulness meditation. It was a pleasant experience, I haven’t tried it again yet, but maybe now that I have the audio of Sam to talk me through it again I might.
So anyway you might want to watch/listen to this somewhere you can close your eyes without being disturbed for a little while.
There were some Muslim protesters at the Global Atheist Convention yelling and chanting about how we’re all going to hell. They were all male of course, and for a while the crowd of atheists, myself included, started chanting back at them; “Where are your women? Where are your women?” But later on I got to thinking about it… where were our women? Sure, there were hundreds of women among us, but there’s no denying it – the Global Atheist Convention was a bit of a sausage fest. And I think that’s reflective of the atheism/skepticism movement as a whole. Why is that? It’s the source of much cognitive dissonance for me whenever I think about it. Whenever I’m beginning to settle on a conclusion I’m pulled in a different direction by another train of thought. That might be because there are many different factors at work here.
One factor, as fellow heathen FearBlandness suggested, (if you’re not subscribed to her youtube channel you should be) might be that women are more heavily involved in family matters, and if their atheism disrupts that, they would tend not to ‘come out’.
[Update: FearBlandness has since posted a video with her take on the issue, click here to watch]
I’ve got some weak evidence for what I think is another big factor; the internets, and how its use varies between the sexes.
I think it’s safe to say that this fast-growing movement of outspoken atheists was born on the internet. Sure, there was the collection of atheistic books that the so called Four Horseman of the Anti-Apocalypse (the late Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett) published, which sparked the term “New Atheists“, but I think most people found out about those books and authors through the internet, and the controversy they stirred therein. There are countless hours of content on youtube for each of these authors. And there is a veritable hoard of atheism themed youtube channels. Not to mention the huge atheism subsection on sites such as reddit.
So what I’m getting at is that if the movement was born from the internet following, and the internet following is unproportionately male, then it’s no wonder we end up with a sausage fest at our gatherings.
So then, is the internet following indeed mostly male?
Some U.S. data I found from 2006 does suggest a majority of male users:
Recent figures from Nielsen Netratings and comScore Media Metrix indicate that YouTube’s gender ratio is approximately 60% male, 40% female.
“Men are 20 percent more likely to visit YouTube than women… Visitors between 12-17 years old index the highest among the various age groups… They are nearly 1.5 times more likely than the average Web user to go to YouTube.”
It indicates that while female users dominate social networking sites, males hold the majority on sites such as Slashdot, Reddit and Digg, which are all arenas in which the news and controversial issues of the day are discussed, which would include the topic of atheism, especially so on Reddit.
So if I’m right, why is this so? I found some possibly outdated data that might give some hints:
American research http://www.cpsr.org/publications/newsletters/issues/2000/Winter2000/herring.html found that in online discussion groups women are more likely to thank, appreciate and apologise, and to be upset by violations of politeness. Predominantly female groups may have more, and more strictly enforced, posting rules designed to ensure the maintenance of a civil environment. In contrast, men generally appear to be less concerned with politeness. They post criticisms and insults, violate online rules of conduct, tolerate or even enjoy flaming, and tend to be more concerned about threats to freedom of expression than with attending to others’ social face.
In mixed-sex public discussion groups, females were found to post fewer messages, and to be less likely to persist in posting when their messages received no response. Even when they persisted, they received fewer responses from others (both females and males), and did not control the topic or the terms of the discussion except in groups where women made up a clear majority of participants.
So basically, it might be because men (not all, of course, but it only takes a few) are being complete dicks in online forums, so that women find themselves uncomfortable and don’t participate, and therefore don’t get caught up in the movement.
And this problem that hinders women getting involved might be on top of another much bigger problem, the fact that we’re mostly, in some way or another, nerds. And I’m heavily generalising here, but nerds tend to be mostly male (and white) as well. Why? For me, it’s mostly my interest in science that makes me a nerd, and as far as I’ve seen there’s a lot more science nerd blokes than ladies. This article from livescience address why that might be the case:
In elementary school about as many girls as boys have positive attitudes toward science. A recent study of fourth graders showed that 66 percent of girls and 68 percent of boys reported liking science. But something else starts happening in elementary school. By second grade, when students (both boys and girls) are asked to draw a scientist, most portray a white male in a lab coat. Any woman scientist they draw looks severe and not very happy. The persistence of the stereotypes start to turn girls off, and by eighth grade, boys are twice as interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) careers as girls are. The female attrition continues throughout high school, college and even the work force. Women with STEM higher education degrees are twice as likely to leave a scientific or engineering job as men with comparable STEM degrees.
So, ultimately, the cause may be the sexism ingrained in our society. PZ Myers wrote here about sexism in the atheist movement. It does exist. But I don’t think we’re more guilty than than society as a whole.
And like I said, we’re nerds. Not usually credited with social skills, especially not with the opposite sex. It might be that we’re either too nervous around women to even talk to them, or get so excited by their rare presence that we fawn over them. Both cases are not equal treatment. Control yourselves, nerds! You want the nerd girl yes, but the best way for you to get a nerd girl is to encourage more girls to be nerds! And the current tactics obviously do not work.
Us bloke nerds need to raise our consciousness as a whole. Be aware and reflective of how you are treating women. Would you have acted that way toward a bloke? If not, why not? Make women feel welcome, but don’t fawn over them. That will just make them uncomfortable. And don’t ignore them either. Don’t talk over them in conversations, let them speak. And without violating the ‘putting them on a pedestal’ thing, give them credit where credit is due. The more female atheists that rise to prominence, the more that will be encouraged to get involved.
Basically, in conclusion: Don’t be a dick!
I’m quite possibly wrong or ignorant about many things in this post, if I am let me know in the comments.
Gathering atheists together, it has been said, is like trying to herd cats. We think for ourselves, and don’t need to go to the equivalent of church to be told what to think. Criticisms of the Global Atheist Convention from outsiders often went something like “What are you all going to do, get together and talk about how much you don’t believe in god?”.
But god wasn’t what we talked about. God may not exist, but religion does. To generalise, the speakers highlighted issues in our society where religion is having a negative influence, and what we can do to fight back against that. How do we get people to realise the harm being done? How do we get these people on our side? The fact is that being organised is an advantage, and religion is organised. And to fight it effectively, we’re going to have to be organised too. And I think as religion tries to encroach on politics more and more, atheists are starting to realise this, which explains why there were 4000 of us at the GAC.
And there’s no need to throw out the baby with the bath-water. I’ve never been religious, but I can see how it might benefit one to go to church. A sense of belonging to a community, a sense of comradery, and the social aspect of it, meeting people, doing activities together, doing charity work together and getting the self-satisfaction that comes with that. Except we don’t have to mistake that feel-good for being touched by Jesus or some such nonsense. There’s no reason a group completely separated from religion couldn’t have all of those benefits.
I’m quite sure there are many people who have grown up with religion, and have since become atheists, but dare not tell anyone and still regularly attend church because to stop would be to abandon, or even be ostracised from their entire community, and there is no other community for them. We should let those people know they are not alone, that there are others like them, and that we need their help to free more minds from the matrix and bring them into the real world.
So since the Global Atheist Convention, I’ve been riled up, and hungry for more of similar. I’m keen to get our coordinated hunting pack together, as my favourite blogger PZ Myers said in his speech. And I loved being embroiled in intelligent conversation with everyone I spoke to there, so the idea of micro-GAC’s that I don’t have to travel to Melbourne for are quite exciting to me.
So after a bit of internet trawling, I eventually found out about Townsville Humanists (and friends), and I went to a meeting tonight. And I’m glad I did. The meeting was largely about building up the group, presenting atheism in a positive light, being welcoming and not just religion bashing, getting registered as an official non profit group, getting organised, website, tshirts, etc. and how to win hearts and minds. Along with some not necessarily on-topic intelligent conversation. Exactly what I hoped.
The majority of atheists, I would say, are mostly apathetic toward religion, and I reckon it’s because they don’t realise just how poisonous it is to society. I forget where the quote is from, but “If you’re not outraged by religion, you’re not paying attention.” So that’s our challenge, we have get people to pay attention, and to show why religion is not a good thing, whilst at the same time giving people a much better option.
Or you can reply to this post and I’ll be glad to get you the details of the next meeting as they emerge.
If you’re not from Townsville, then wherever you are, have a look around on google and see if there’s a similar group in your city, help make our voice louder.
Last week, while debating some christians at the “Undeniable” event at Federation Square in Melbourne, I was given this pamphlet:
Nearly every question in this pamphlet is a demonstration of the absolute ignorance of what the actual facts and implications of evolutionary theory are. Actually, I think they are trying purposefully, through the framing of these ignorant questions, to misrepresent evolutionary theory to those who have not studied biology in high school or bothered to spend any time learning about it. They should be ashamed of themselves for using such dishonest tactics, and I think they owe an apology to those they have misled.
Here’s the thing about learning about science; it takes effort. You may have to actually read some books, which you might not find entertaining. It takes a lot longer to explain a scientific theory, and the evidence for it, than it does to utter the sentence “God did it.” It’s not something easily condensed to the size of a pamphlet.
But thanks to the wonders of youtube, we can meet you half-way. We can bypass some of that tedious reading nonsense for you. There is a user called cdk007, who has made an excellent series of videos explaining evolution, and debunking misinformation about it. They offer some of the most concise explanations concerning the topic that I know of, so I’ll be using some of the videos to augment my answers for some of these questions. But I would highly recommend watching all of his videos. Yes, that would take a while, but as I said before, complex concepts take time to learn.
Funnily enough, their first question isn’t actually about evolution. The theory of the origin of life is known as the theory of abiogenesis. The theory of evolution explains how life diversifies and changes over time, not how life was formed.
Secondly, notice the language used; Paul Davies “admitted”. As if he is conceding something. As if scientists have been asserting that they do know how the first living cell came about. They do not. But they have a good and plausible idea.
The rest of the question dishonestly implies that we think the first living cells came about by being fully formed from the chance collisions of already functioning proteins. This is not the case.
You can read all about abiogenesis on the internet, and here is cdk007′s video on it:
DNA was not the first type of genetic code, before that was RNA, and in the origins of life, there was probably something even simpler than that. The video I posted in response to the first question also addresses this question.
Firstly, this ’3 billion letters of DNA information’ is not all information, much of it is non-coding DNA. Going along with the cookbook analogy, it would be like if there was large sections of jibberish interspersed with each recipe. The jibberish is not information. It is only the coding information, or in this case the sentences of the actual recipe, that you could consider information. If life did not evolve but was intelligently designed, why would there be jibberish/non-coding DNA? There wouldn’t, the cookbook/DNA would be nice and neat and contain only the relevant information, just like real cookbooks that are intelligently designed.
Yes, mutations can have destructive effects, but most of them are harmless or do not cause enough harm to hinder the individual. On average, each human has about 128 mutations in their DNA.
Evolution works because those individuals that suffer from a harmful mutation either will not reproduce or be less likely to reproduce, and so their genes will not be carried on. Those with neutral mutations are not affected and will probably reproduce at the normal rate. Those who happen to gain an advantageous mutation will reproduce much more successfully, so those genes will become dominant in the population.
The rest of the question implies more misinformation about evolutionary theory; that complex functions or structures come about wholly formed from 1 random mutation. This is not the case. The notion is debunked in this video:
Another blatant misunderstanding. Although I find it hard to believe the person who constructed these questions is actually so ignorant, more likely they are again purposefully pushing misinformation. Their intellectual dishonesty should tell you something.
The process of evolution is not driven by natural selection alone. There are other forces, such as mutation, genetic drift, genetic hitch-hiking, and gene flow. It is all these forces acting together that causes evolution. Mutation provides the ‘creative process’ by introducing or modifying genes. Natural selection then acts upon this variance. Only the life that can survive will survive.
Beaks evolved in exactly the same way the variations in beak sizes did. Mutations will happen all the time that effect the shape of the skull. A certain shape of skull is more beneficial than another. A mutation will eventually occur that moves part of the skull toward the shape of a beak. This trait will allow the creature to reproduce more successfully, and its genes will dominate the population. Then, following generations will incur further mutations toward the shape of a beak, and they’ll dominate, and the same thing will continue to happen until an optimal beak shape is reached.
The finch itself evolved the same way every other bird did, through speciation.
Modern, complex cells have complex pathways and functions, yes. But the earliest cells did not. Evolution predicts simple life will become more complex, so we shouldn’t be surprised that this has happened.
This question is similar to question 3, as it brings up the “Irreducible Complexity problem”, and is addressed by the video I posted in response to it.
The existence of ancient pottery is best explained by a designer, because we know humans were around to design it, we know humans were in the habit of designing all kinds of things, and can infer a reason for why a human would have designed a pot. The existence of life is not best explained by a designer because it only invokes the question of “Who designed the designer?”
At this point the likely answer from a theist will be “God is eternal, he has no beginning.” Well then, if it’s possible for something to have just always existed, why complicate things by saying it was a God that always existed, and that he created the universe, rather than just that the universe has always existed? Which is much more plausible, that from simple physics and energy the universe expanded and evolved complexity, rather than an infinitely complex being somehow existing from no cause.
And when you look closely at life, you find we are not so perfectly designed at all. Creationists like to point at how complex the human eye is and say that it couldn’t have evolved, so I’ll take that as an example. In the human eye, the nerve fibres that carry information from the retina to your brain, actually run in front of the retina, so light has to travel through these nerves before they get to the light sensitive cells. Then, these nerves cells bundle up and go through a small hole in your retina to get through to the other side and along to your brain, which actually results in a small blind spot. You would have to be an idiot to purposefully design it this way. But evolution doesn’t purposefully design things; whatever works good enough for the organism to survive is passed on. This design is good enough, but any engineer that designed a camera this way would be fired.
Another example is a nerve that runs from your brain stem to your throat. It runs straight past your throat, does a little twirl around your heart, and then runs back up to your throat. This is fine for the corresponding nerve in something like a fish. But through the gradual changes, the movement and transformation of organs, this becomes a stupid way to have the nerve in a mammal. In a giraffe, this corresponds to an unnecessary detour of nearly 5 metres. Any electrical engineer that designed a robot giraffe in this way would be ridiculed.
But it fits with the theory of evolution. Each change was a gradual change in length, and never was there a mutation wild enough to completely overhaul the way this nerve ran.
And naturalistic causes are logical causes.
Finally, a legitimate question. This experiment gives us a good idea as to how it might have evolved.
All explained here:
I can’t believe creationists are still using the “missing links” argument.
Every fossil ever found is a “transitional form”. YOU are a transitional form. No creature ever gives birth to a species that is different from itself.
Speciation is a very gradual thing. A photo of yourself from when you were 5 years old looks radically different from one where you are 90 years old. But if you took a photo of yourself every day, you would not be able to see the difference in any two consecutive photos.
Fossils only form under the most generous of conditions, and it’s amazing that we have the ones that we do. We can’t expect to get a fossil of every single generation of every living organism. Or like in the analogy, a photo from every single day of your life. But if we have at least a few photos from throughout your life, we can determine that the end picture of the 90 year old is the same person from the picture of the 5 year old.
And fossils are only one of the many evidences for common descent. Even if we never found a single fossil, the evidence is still enough to prove evolution beyond doubt.
Firstly, fossils do not reveal everything about an organism. While an organism may appear unchanged over a long period of time according to its bones, plenty of other changes can happen genetically. The internal biochemistry of a ‘living fossil’ is likely to be different from its ancient ancestor.
Secondly, if an organism has adapted to its environment, and its form has become optimal for surviving, and its environment does not change, then there is no reason to expect that it should change significantly at all.
Two logical fallacies here, the Argument from Adverse Consequences, and a straw man argument. Evolution makes no statement about the existence of a god/s. There are people who believe in both god and evolution, like the catholic church for example. And philosophical positions such as nihilism are irrelevant to the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is merely the explanation for the fact that evolution occurs.
As for how morality evolved, that’s a complex subject. I go back to my earlier point about having to invest time to learn about complex things. Here is a playlist of a series of 5 videos which explain how morality evolves:
Wrong. Science is not in the business of telling stories. Unlike creationism, evolutionary theory does not assert anything that isn’t grounded in fact.
Evolution doesn’t explain any behaviour, only behaviours that actually exist.
Ok, now I’m getting angry. This is a flat out lie. Nothing in biology can be properly understood without understanding evolution.
Norman Borlaug, arguably the worlds biggest hero, saved an estimated BILLION lives through his work in genetics, which hinges on evolutionary theory, in developing semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties.
The ridiculous assertion that evolution hinders medical discovery is not supported by any example or evidence. In fact, there is whole field of medicine relating directly to evolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_medicine
Scientific theories are not dogma. Unlike stories about talking snakes, women made from ribs and incest, they are based in fact, and are testable. Evolution is not ‘stealing time’ from experimental biology. For instance, this experiment, which by itself proves evolution, is experimental biology.
We can’t expect to have a video camera trained on early single celled life for 4 billion years while it evolves into modern life. But just the same as we don’t need to observe a crime happening, we can infer what happened from evidence left at the crime scene.
How, in any way, is the theory of evolution religious or dogmatic? The stupidity of this assertion boggles my mind. There is a reason the creationist/intelligent design advocates lost the Dover case. There is a clear distinction between science and religion, and the court recognised that.
And again the argument from authority, they could have at least done it right, and not quoted someone like Karl Popper who later changed his views:
“I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation” (Dialectica 32:344-346).
And I’d like a reference to the Ruse quote, I highly suspect quote-mining.
In conclusion, if you think the questions in this brochure are actually good questions, then you just simply have not understood or have never even tried to learn about the theory of evolution. Evolution is a fact as much as gravity is. Not knowing about, or not understanding evolution is one thing, not all of us have access to proper education. But to actively argue that evolution is wrong despite not understanding it, in the face of overwhelming evidence, is astoundingly ignorant.
