In praise of kindness

As someone who considers himself a de facto atheist -- I'm not certain there's no God, but the facts as I know them seem to strongly support that contention -- one question I've been asked rather frequently is where my moral compass comes from.

The answer for me is that I like being kind.  Treating other people well makes them feel good, and in general makes my own life better.  Times that I've been mean or uncharitable, on the other hand, leave me feeling sick inside.  I still remember with great shame times I've been nasty to people.  It didn't, then or now, make me happier to be unpleasant, even when on some level I felt (at the time, at least) the person might have deserved it.

I agree with the wise words of the Twelfth Doctor:

Being asked why I'm moral if I don't think there's a deity watching has always brought to mind the riposte -- although I've never said it to someone directly -- that if the only reason you're moral is because you think some powerful entity is going to punish you if you're not, then maybe you are the one whose ethics are suspect.  As Penn Jillette put it:

The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what's to stop me from raping all I want?  And my answer is: I do rape all I want.  And the amount I want is zero.  And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.  The fact that these people think that if they didn't have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.

This is why I was intrigued by a study that came out this week in the Journal of the American Psychiatrical Association, by Jessie Sun, Wen Wu, and Geoffrey Goodwin, called, "Are Moral People Happier?"  And this -- finally -- provides an exception to Betteridge's Law: an article title in the form of a question where the answer appears to be a resounding "Yes."

The authors write:

Philosophers have long debated whether moral virtue contributes to happiness or whether morality and happiness are in conflict.  Yet, little empirical research directly addresses this question.  Here, we examined the association between reputation-based measures of everyday moral character (operationalized as a composite of widely accepted moral virtues such as compassion, honesty, and fairness) and self-reported well-being across two cultures.  In Study 1, close others reported on U.S. undergraduate students’ moral character.  In Study 2, Chinese employees reported on their coworkers’ moral character and their own well-being.  To better sample the moral extremes, in Study 3, U.S. participants nominated “targets” who were among the most moral, least moral, and morally average people they personally knew.  Targets self-reported their well-being and nominated informants who provided a second, continuous measure of the targets’ moral character.  These studies showed that those who are more moral in the eyes of close others, coworkers, and acquaintances generally experience a greater sense of subjective well-being and meaning in life.  These associations were generally robust when controlling for key demographic variables (including religiosity) and informant-reported liking.  There were no significant differences in the strength of the associations between moral character and well-being across two major subdimensions of both moral character (kindness and integrity) and well-being (subjective well-being and meaning in life).  Together, these studies provide the most comprehensive evidence to date of a positive and general association between everyday moral character and well-being.

What I find fascinating about this -- and relevant to the question about religion's role in morality -- is that these findings were robust with regards to such factors as religiosity.  The sense of well-being that comes from acting ethically doesn't appear to come from the belief that God approves that sort of behavior.  (At least not across the board; clearly different people could experience different sources of well-being from moral behavior.)  The fact that just about everyone is happier when they behave with kindness and integrity indicates there's something inherent about good moral character that fosters a positive experience of life.

For me personally, I think it's a combination.  As I said earlier, being nice to people and behaving fairly means the people around me are more likely to be pleasant and fair in return.  But there's also an internal component, which I can sum up as "liking who I see in the mirror."  Shame has to be one of the most deeply unpleasant emotions I can think of, and realizing I've been awful to someone -- even remembering those times years later -- leaves me feeling ugly.  Perhaps I'm not motivated by the idea of some deity watching me, but I know that I'm watching me.

And that's enough.

Or, it usually is.  I'm certainly far from perfect.  I can act uncharitably sometimes, just like all of us.  But I try like hell to treat people well -- even those who seem not to deserve it.  I guess I'm aware that all of us are big messy morasses of competing motivations, emotions, and drives, and all of us have years of experiences that have shaped who we are in good ways and bad.  It's usually best to give people the benefit of the doubt, and not to judge others too harshly.

After all, who knows who I'd be if I had their past and lived in their present situation?  I might not even handle it that well.

It reminds me of something a dear family friend named Garnett told me when I was something like six years old.  I had my knickers in a twist over something that had happened at school, and I was complaining about a classmate to Garnett.  What she said flattened me completely, and I've never forgotten it.

"Always be kinder than you think you need to be, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."

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The empty pews

Today I'd like to look at two articles that are mainly interesting in juxtaposition -- and a third that is as horrifying as it is enlightening.

The first is from Christianity Today and describes a one hundred million dollar ad campaign designed to bring the uncommitted, undecided, and "cultural Christians" -- what the people running the campaign call "the movable middle" -- back into the fold.  The money is being spent for television and online advertisements, billboards, and YouTube videos, all designed to make Christianity look appealing to the dubious.  The program is called "He Gets Us," and focuses on Jesus's warm, human side, his struggles against people who judged him, and his commitment to dedicate himself to God's will even so.

I'm perhaps to be forgiven for immediately thinking of the "Buddy Christ" campaign from the movie Dogma.

The reason for "He Gets Us," of course, is that in the last ten years Christian churches in the United States have been hemorrhaging members, especially in the under-30 demographic.  A 2019 study found that 66% of Americans between 23 and 30 stopped going to church for at least a year after turning 18; most of the ones who left didn't go back.  The main reasons they gave for leaving were church involvement in politics (especially support of Donald Trump), issues of contraception and women's bodily autonomy, and policies and attitudes discriminating against LGBTQ+ individuals.

Haven, the group running the campaign, summed up the problem thusly: "How did the world’s greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate group?"

The second article is a paper in the Journal of Secularism and Nonreligion, and attempted to quantify the degree of in-group favoritism and out-group dislike amongst various religions in the United States, agnostics, and atheists.  Contrary to the common perception that "atheists hate the religious," the researchers found that the converse was closer to the mark:

Atheists are among the most disliked groups in America, which has been explained in a variety of ways, one of which is that atheists are hostile towards religion and that anti-atheist prejudice is therefore reactive.  We tested this hypothesis by using the 2018 American General Social Survey by investigating attitudes towards atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and Muslims.  We initially used a general sample of Americans, but then identified and isolated individuals who were atheists, theists, nonreligious atheists, religious theists, and/or theistic Christians.  Logically, if atheists were inordinately hostile towards religion, we would expect to see a greater degree of in-group favouritism in the atheist group and a greater degree of out-group dislike.  Results indicated several notable findings: 1). Atheists were significantly more disliked than any other religious group. 2). Atheists rated Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Hindus as favourably as they rated their own atheist in-group, but rated Muslims less positively (although this effect was small).  3). Christian theists showed pronounced in-group favouritism and a strong dislike towards atheists.  No evidence could be found to support the contention that atheists are hostile towards religious groups in general, and towards Christians specifically.

The fact is, it's not the atheists who have a hate problem to address.  I find Haven's disingenuous question about Christianity and hate groups wryly funny, especially since they have also run ad campaigns for Focus on the Family, one of the most virulently anti-LGBTQ+ groups in existence (they are on record as calling LGBTQ+ marriage and parenting equal rights as "a particularly evil lie of Satan").

Maybe the first thing to do before trying to market a kinder, gentler Jesus is for the Christians themselves, as a group, to confront the Religious Right's ongoing campaign of persecution against queer people.  (And if you think I'm overstating the case by using the word "persecution," allow me to remind you that only six months ago, a pastor in Texas told a cheering congregation that anyone identifying as queer should be stood up against a wall and shot; only two months ago, a right wing nutjob went to a nightclub in Colorado Springs and did exactly as told; and shortly afterward, a different pastor told a different cheering congregation he was glad it had happened.)

And they wonder why people are looking at the church, shaking their heads, and walking away.

The last story I probably wouldn't have bothered commenting on if it hadn't been for the first two; in fact, when I first saw it, I thought it was a joke.  It's about former United States Representative and current complete lunatic Michele Bachmann, who since her failed attempt at re-election has turned herself into a spokesperson for the evangelicals.  She was on the Christian radio program Lions & Generals a couple of days ago, and proudly told the interviewer that she had spent Christmas day warning her grandchildren about the fires of hell.

No, I'm not making this up.  Here's a direct quote:

I was with two of my grandchildren this weekend, a two-year-old and a six-year-old, and I was just compelled to talk to them about, when we die, it’s judgement," she said.  "We talked about what heaven is, and we talked about what hell is.  That hell is just as real as heaven.  And in hell, there’s eternal fires and damnation and it’s a real place, we do not want to go there, that’s where the wicked will go.  And then I explained how they don’t go — that they receive Christ and confess their sins … [Jesus] cleanses them and then because of his righteousness, they go to heaven...  And so my little granddaughter immediately started saying, ‘I don’t want to go to hell, I want to go to heaven.’ I said, ‘Bella, can I pray with you? Let’s pray.  Do you want to pray?’ … And I think, why miss an opportunity?

Or, more accurately, "why miss an opportunity to subject a six-year-old and a two-year-old to religiously-justified emotional abuse?"

And once again, they wonder why people are looking at the church, shaking their heads, and walking away.

Look, I know, "not all Christians."  Not, perhaps, even most Christians.  As I've said many times, I have lots of Christian friends, as well as friends of various other belief systems, and mostly we all get along pretty well.  But unfortunately, in the United States, Christianity has allowed itself to get hijacked by the loudest, ugliest, and most vicious minority, and those are the people who are creating the image American Christianity has.  Until the Christians who really do stand for Jesus's command to "love thy neighbor as thyself" -- and that includes thy brown neighbor, thy immigrant neighbor, thy homeless neighbor, thy queer neighbor, thy Muslim neighbor, and thy atheist neighbor -- stand up and shout down the bigots and extremists, no multi-million-dollar ad campaign is going to do a damn thing to stop the pews from emptying.

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Christmas cheer

It sometimes comes as a shock to my friends and acquaintances when they find out that even though I'm a staunch unbeliever in anything even resembling organized religion, I love Christmas music.

Well, some Christmas music.  There are modern Christmas songs that make me want to stick any available objects in my ears, even if those objects are fondue forks.  Abominations like "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" leave me leery of entering any public spaces with ambient music from November 15 to December 25.  In my opinion, there should be jail time associated with writing lines like, "Little tin horns and little toy drums, rooty-toot-toot and rummy-tum-tum," and whoever wrote "Let It Snow" should be pitched, bare-ass naked, head-first into a snowdrift.

Each year I participate in something called the Little Drummer Boy Challenge, which is a contest to see if you can make it from Thanksgiving to Christmas without once hearing "The Little Drummer Boy."  So far, I'm still in the game this year, although it must be said that I've done this for nine years and have hardly ever survived.  I've never been taken out as ignominiously, though, as I was a few years ago, when I made it all the way to the week before Christmas, and stopped by a hardware store to pick some stuff up.  And while I was waiting to check out, a stock clerk walked by jauntily singing the following:

Come, they LA LA pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
A newborn LA LA LA pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
LA LA LA gifts we bring pah-rum-puh-pum-pum
LA LA before the king pah-rum-puh-pum-pum, rum-puh-pum-pum, rum-puh-pum-pum

Dude didn't even know all the damn lyrics, but I had to play fair and admit I'd been felled by the Boy one more time.  Before I could stop myself, I glared at him and said, "Are you fucking kidding me right now?" in a furious voice, which led to a significant diminishment of the Christmas cheer in the store, but I maintain to this day I had ample justification.  The alarmed stock clerk scurried off, clearly afraid that if he stuck around much longer, the Batshit Crazy Scruffy Blond Customer was going to Deck his Halls but good.

I know this makes me sound like a grumpy curmudgeon.  I can accept that, because I am a grumpy curmudgeon.  But even so, I absolutely love a lot of Christmas music.  I think "O Holy Night" is a stunning piece of music, and "Angels We Have Heard On High" is incredible fun to sing (as long as it's not sung like a dirge, but as the expression of joy consistent with the lyrics).  Speaking of doing things the right way, check out Annie Lennox's stupendous music video of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen:"

Despite the impression I probably gave at the start of this post, the list of Christmas songs I like is way longer than the list of ones I don't.  I grew up singing wonderful French carols like "Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant" and "Un Flambeau, Jeanette Isabella," and to this day hearing those songs makes me smile.

And I can include not only seasonal religious music, but religious music in general, in this discussion; one of my favorite genres of music is Renaissance and Baroque religious music, especially the works of William Byrd, Henry Purcell, J. S. Bach, William Cornysh, Giovanni de Palestrina, and Thomas Tallis.  If you want to hear something truly transcendent, listen to this incredible performance of Tallis's Spem in Alium ("Hope in Another"), a forty-part motet here sung by seven hundred people:

I know it might seem like a contradiction for a non-religious person to thoroughly enjoy such explicitly religious music, but in my opinion, beauty is beauty wherever you find it.  I can be moved to tears by Bach's Mass in B Minor without necessarily believing the story it tells.  And it also pleases me that it gives me common ground with my friends who do believe, for whom the lovely "Mary's Boy Child" isn't just a cool calypso tune, but a joyous expression of something near and dear to them.

I guess I'm a bit of a contradiction in terms sometimes, but that's okay.  I still deeply resent any attempt to force belief on others (or lack of belief, for that matter), and my anger runs deep at the damage done, and still being done, by the religious to members of the LGBTQ community.  The likelihood of my ending up back in church is minuscule at best.

Even so, I still love the holiday season.  It's a chance to give gifts and express my appreciation for my friends and family, and to enjoy the pretty decorations and sweet music.  Honestly, I think a lot of us godless heathens feel the same way, which is why I'm glad to see that this year -- so far, at least -- the Religious Right has backed off on the whole idiotic "War On Christmas" nonsense.  After all, it's been what, fifteen years or so? -- since Bill O'Reilly gave the clarion call that the Atheists Were Comin' For Your Christmas Trees, and if you'll look around you'll notice that everyone's still saying "Merry Christmas" and giving gifts and everything else just like they've always done, so the whole trope has finally fallen a little flat.  It couldn't have gone any other way, honestly.  A great many of us atheistic types are also pretty dedicated to live-and-let-live, and most of us don't care if you have Christmas displays in your front yard so bright they disrupt nearby air traffic, as long as you're not going to pull out your AR-15 when a non-believer says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

I do, however, draw the line at piping in "The Little Drummer Boy" over mall loudspeakers.  That's just a bridge too far.  I mean, what kind of stupid song is that, anyhow?  It's about a kid who sees a mom and dad with a quietly sleeping newborn baby, and thinks, "You know what these people need?  A drum solo."

In my opinion, Mary would have been well in her rights to smack him over the head with the frankincense.  Pah-rum-puh-pum-pow, you odious little twerp.

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The signature of the creator

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Chase" is justly revered by Trekkies, and also by people who simply like a good story.  The gist -- giving as little in the way of spoilers as I can manage, if you've not seen it -- is that there's a message implanted in our DNA and the DNA of alien species across the galaxy.  No one species has the entire thing, so to find out what it means requires getting tissue samples from all over the place, extracting the piece of the message, then somehow putting the entire thing together to decipher what it says.

A secret code dispersed through time and space, so to speak.

While the quasi-scientific explanation behind the whole thing was a little dubious for those of us who know something about genetics and evolution, it was a hell of a good idea for a story.  A mysterious, super-powerful someone left its thumbprint on life everywhere in the universe, and there the message has sat, waiting for us to become smart enough and technologically advanced enough to find it.

"The Chase" brings up a theological question I've debated before with religious-minded friends; how, starting from outside of the framework of belief, you could tell there was a God by what you see around you.  I often hear "natural beauty" and "love and selflessness" brought up, but (unfortunately) there seems to be enough ugliness, hatred, and selfishness to more than compensate for the good stuff.  Put simply, how would a universe with a divine presence look different from one without?  I've never been able to come up with a good answer to that.  To me, the God/no God versions of the universe look pretty much alike.

Which is a large part of why I'm an atheist.  I'm perfectly okay with revising that if evidence comes my way, but at the moment, I'm not seeing any particular cause for belief in any of the various deities humans have worshipped along the way.

What brings all this up is a paper released last week in arXiv called, "Searching for a Message in the Angular Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background."  The CMB is a relatively uniformly-spread (or isotropic, as the scientists put it) radiation that is the remnant of the Big Bang.  In the 13.8-odd billion years since the universe started, the searing radiation of creation has become stretched along with the space that carries it until it has an average wavelength of two millimeters, putting it in the microwave region of the spectrum, and that radiation comes at us from everywhere in the sky.

What the author, Michael Hippke of the Sonnenberg Observatory in Germany, proposed was something that is reminiscent of the central idea of "The Chase."  If there was a creator -- be it a god, or a super-intelligent alien race, or whatever -- the obvious place to put a message is in the CMB.  The minor fluctuations ("anisotropies") in the CMB would be detectable by a technological society pretty much from any vantage point in the visible universe, and so hiding a pattern in the apparent chaos would be as much as having a signature from the creator.

So Hippke digitized the most detailed map we have of the CMB, and then estimated what part of the signal would have been lost or degraded in 13.8 billion years due to quantum noise and interference with the much closer and more powerful radiation sources in our own galaxy.  After some intense statistical analysis, Hippke determined that there should be at least a one-thousand-bit remnant of sense somewhere in there, so he set about to find it.

Nothing.

"I find no meaningful message in the actual bit-stream," Hippke wrote.  "We may conclude that there is no obvious message on the CMB sky.  Yet it remains unclear whether there is (was) a Creator, whether we live in a simulation, or whether the message is printed correctly in the previous section, but we fail to understand it."

Despite how I started this post, I have to admit to being a little disappointed.  It was a clever approach, and no one would be more excited than me if he'd actually found something.  I don't honestly like the idea that we live in a chaotic, meaningless universe -- or, more accurately (and optimistically) that the only meaning is the one we create within it.  But if there's one thing I've learned in my sixty years on Earth, it's that reality is under no particular obligation to order itself in such a way that it makes me comfortable.  

But still, if there had been a message there, how cool would that be?  Even if, as the Cardassian commander Gul Ocett said in "The Chase," "it might just be a recipe for biscuits."

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I've always had a fascination with how our brains work, part of which comes from the fact that we've only begun to understand it.  My dear friend and mentor, Dr. Rita Calvo, professor emeritus of human genetics at Cornell University, put it this way.  "If I were going into biology now, I'd study neuroscience.  We're at the point in neuroscience now that we were in genetics in 1900 -- we know it works, we can see some of how it works, but we know very little in detail and almost nothing about the underlying mechanisms involved.  The twentieth century was the century of the gene; the twenty-first will be the century of the brain."

We've made some progress in recent years toward comprehending the inner workings of the organ that allows us to comprehend anything at all.  And if, like me, you are captivated by the idea, you have to read this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation: neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett's brilliant Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain.

In laypersons' terms, Barrett explains what we currently know about how we think, feel, remember, learn, and experience the world.  It's a wonderful, surprising, and sometimes funny exploration of our own inner workings, and is sure to interest anyone who would like to know more about the mysterious, wonderful blob between our ears.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Ten questions, ten answers

I got an anonymous email yesterday, from an address I didn't recognize, with a link to a YouTube video called "10 Questions Atheists Can't Answer," and no other text.

Whenever I get something like this, I always get the feeling that the sender expects me simply to retreat in disarray.  I also have the impression that the people who put together videos like this are being disingenuous -- I wonder very much if they've actually talked to any atheists, or if they just came up with a list of things for which their explanation is "God did it" and they can't imagine anyone would have a different answer than that.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Notas de prensa, Confused man, CC BY-SA 2.5]

So I don't think the sender actually intended me to respond (although I might be wrong about that).  But in the spirit of being a good sport, here are the ten questions, along with my answers.  See if you find 'em convincing.


1.  Do people really believe that science is the only answer to all of life's questions?

Well, no, no one really thinks that, atheists included.  Atheists (and even worse, atheist scientists) don't spend their entire time doing science.  Like everyone else, they have hobbies, fall in love, get angry, play with their pets, feel sad, and experience all the other thousand things that are part of the human condition.  None of these are especially scientific, but it would be a rare person -- atheist or otherwise -- who would say they were unimportant.

And another thing.  The question, as it's phrased, embodies a misconception, and that is that science itself is a belief.  Science isn't a belief, science is a method.  It's the use of evidence, data, and logic to determine understanding.  And we atheists are hardly the only ones who do that.  The religious generally only have a problem with science when it leads to a different answer than their religion does on a particular topic; they're perfectly happy to use the scientific method every day, on everything else.

2.  Why do atheists care if I worship God?

Simply put: I don't.  I don't care even a little bit.  You can believe the universe is ruled by a Giant Green Bunny from the Andromeda Galaxy if you want to, and I still don't care.  What I do care about  -- a lot -- is when people start telling me what I'm supposed to believe.  Or using their religion to shoehorn unscientific explanations into public school science curricula.  Or pushing religion-based legislation that denies rights to a subset of people they think are "evil" or "an abomination in God's eyes."  Then you can expect me to fight like hell.

Otherwise, believe whatever you want.

3.  Can nothing create something?

I presume you're referring to the Big Bang Theory here, and I have some advice; don't frame scientific questions in such a way that makes it clear you haven't bothered to learn what the scientists are actually saying.  All that shows is that you can't be bothered to do even a half-hour's research on Wikipedia, but would rather come up with ridiculous straw-man arguments than have an intelligent, thoughtful conversation.

4.  How do you know that God doesn't exist?

I don't.  I find the lack of evidence in favor of a deity strongly supports that conclusion, but as with anything, I might be wrong.  That's the nice thing about a scientific approach; if the data contradicts your previous theory, you don't ignore the data -- you change the theory.

5.  What is the origin of life?

As with question #3, there are some really fascinating scenarios as to how this might have happened -- it looks like organic molecules are quick to form abiotically as long as there are raw materials, a source of energy, and no strongly oxidizing chemicals around to rip them apart as fast as they form.  After that, there are a great many scenarios that are possible, and biochemists are looking into them with great interest (one reason being that what they find out could give us a lens into the possibilities of life on other planets).  So once again, you might want to do a little research about the scientific explanations before you conclude science doesn't have one.

6.  Where does our morality come from?

My morality comes from a desire to care for the people around me, care for the environment, and in general, not to be a dick.  The reason I have those morals is because I much prefer it when the people in my life are happy and healthy and I have a clean and habitable planet to live on.  The interesting thing is that there's good evidence that a lot of other animals have at least the rudiments of moral behavior -- reciprocity exists in a lot of primate species, elephants, and even some birds (such as crows and ravens); dogs show an understanding of fair play; and a surprising number of species form strong emotional bonds, and go through profound grief when their loved ones die.  Social species, in general, do whatever it takes to make the social order cohere, so it's perfectly understandable that they wouldn't engage in lying, cheating, stealing, assault, and so on.  No deity required.

7.  If you had evidence of God, would you become a Christian?

Cf. question #4.  If I had incontrovertible evidence of the existence of God, I wouldn't have any choice but to accept that I was wrong and alter my worldview.  But you might want to ask yourself if you'd change your beliefs if you got incontrovertible evidence of a different god -- say, Odin or Zeus or Ra.  If the answer is "of course not, I'm a Christian and that's that," then this question is just more evidence that you're being disingenuous.

8.  If evolution is real, then why are there no transitional forms in the present?

What does this even mean?  From the perspective of someone ten million years from now, all of the life forms on Earth today would be transitional forms.  If you're asking about transitional fossils, then this once again shows you need to do your research.  There are thousands of transitional fossils.  Go talk to a paleontologist, and then we can have the discussion. 

9.  Do you live according to what you believe, or do you live according to what you lack in belief?

Okay, at this point I think you were just running out of ideas, because once again, I have no clue what the fuck this question is asking.  How can you live by a lack of belief?  Do you live according to your lack of belief in unicorns?  Because frankly, I don't give my lack of belief in unicorns much thought, and I suspect you don't, either.

10.  If God exists, will you not lose your soul when you die?

Again, I suppose that's a possibility, if I'm wrong.  Based on what I know, I don't think I'm in much danger, frankly.  And even if there is an afterlife, and the universe is being run by some kind of all-knowing power, I'd think he/she/it would be forgiving of someone who used the brain (s)he was provided with and came to the best and most consistent answers (s)he could.  Frankly, I suspect even the Christian God would prefer an honest, kind, compassionate atheist to a narrow-minded, bigoted, hateful Christian.  (Nota bene: I am in no way saying all Christians are like that.  However, a subset of them are, and I've found that those are the ones who are most convinced they're going to heaven.)

So there are my answers to the ten unanswerable questions.  To the anonymous link-sender, I hope you read my responses with thoughtful consideration.  Not that I'm trying to change anyone's mind, but a little mutual understanding goes a long way.  Certainly better than mischaracterizing an entire group based on faulty assumptions, then proceeding as if that judgment was the truth.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a really cool one: Andrew H. Knoll's Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth.

Knoll starts out with an objection to the fact that most books on prehistoric life focus on the big, flashy, charismatic megafauna popular in children's books -- dinosaurs such as Brachiosaurus, Allosaurus, and Quetzalcoatlus, and impressive mammals like Baluchitherium and Brontops.  As fascinating as those are, Knoll points out that this approach misses a huge part of evolutionary history -- so he set out to chronicle the parts that are often overlooked or relegated to a few quick sentences.  His entire book looks at the Pre-Cambrian Period, which encompasses 7/8 of Earth's history, and ends with the Cambrian Explosion, the event that generated nearly all the animal body plans we currently have, and which is still (very) incompletely understood.

Knoll's book is fun reading, requires no particular scientific background, and will be eye-opening for almost everyone who reads it.  So prepare yourself to dive into a time period that's gone largely ignored since such matters were considered -- the first three billion years.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

From the mailbag

Being a blogger means I get some interesting emails.

A lot of them, as you undoubtedly know if you read Skeptophilia frequently, are recommendations for future posts.  I appreciate these tremendously, even the ones of the "I think you're wrong and here's a link proving it" type.  Hey, if I wasn't willing to reconsider topics, and admit when I was wrong, I'd be a poor excuse for a skeptic.  So don't stop sending suggestions, and don't stop reading carefully so someone's keeping me honest.

Then there are the emails telling me what readers think of me.  Laudatory ones are lovely, of course, but I find the hate mail rather interesting.  Most of it seems to be generated because of my general disdain for pseudoscience -- by which I mean practices like astrology, homeopathy, auras, and (most) psychic/paranormal investigation.  (I emphasize the word most because there are groups that approach it the right way.  A good example is the UK-based Society for Psychical Research, which looks at such claims with a skeptical eye, and is perfectly willing to call out hoaxers when it's merited.)

Then there are the religious ones.  I got an interesting one in this category day before yesterday, and that's what spurred me to write this post.  I call it "interesting" not because I think the writer was right -- about pretty much anything (s)he said -- but because it brings up a few stereotypes that are all too common.  So here's the email in its entirety, with some interjected responses from me.

Dear Mr. Skeptic Atheist, 

I'm going to identify myself right away as a Christian.  I always have been and I always will be.  I know you'd like to talk me out of it, but it wouldn't succeed.

Well, you started off on the wrong foot.  I have no interest whatsoever in "talking you out of" Christianity or any other viewpoint you might have on which we disagree.  I'm a firm believer in something my mom taught me when I was little -- "my rights end where your nose begins."  So you can believe in God, you can believe in Allah, you can believe in Zeus.  Hell, you can believe that the universe is controlled by a Giant Green Bunny from the Andromeda Galaxy if you want.

I do, however, object when religion (or any other framework for belief) starts impinging on the rights of non-adherents.  An example is the virulently anti-LGBTQ stance of a lot of evangelicals.  You have every right to refrain from same-sex encounters yourself if you think they're sinful or repugnant.  What I won't stand by silently for is when you say, "I belong to the Church of XYZ, so you should be punished for being gay," or "I have a right to discriminate against you because my religion says I should."

Beyond that, I'm not trying to talk anyone out of, or into, anything.  I state my opinions -- rather strongly at times, I'll admit -- but I have the same right to do that as you do, and I have no more right to compel you than you do me.

I don't know why you feel like you have to trumpet your hate for Christians the way you do.  It isn't right. 

Asking me "why I hate Christians" is a little like asking "when did you stop beating your wife?"  In point of fact, I don't hate Christians.  I may disagree with them, but that's not the same thing.  And I'm happy to say that I am friends with people of a great many religions, and every gradation of faith, questioning, doubt, and disbelief, and honestly, we all get along pretty well.

Because I went to high school in rural southern Louisiana, you might imagine that I know a good many devout people -- and you'd be right.  Because of the wonders of Facebook, a lot of my classmates have kept in touch, and (surprise!) I can't remember any of us saying to another, "I don't like you any more because your religious views are different from mine."  Mostly what we do is argue about stuff like whose grandma had the best gumbo recipe.

And what made you hate God?  God shows nothing but love for his people, he wants the best for all of us, and you return nothing but spite.  Try looking at His creations without the fire in your eyes and you might be surprised.

Once again, I don't hate God, I just don't think he exists.  Which is hardly the same thing.  At the same point, being a skeptic (as I mentioned before), I'm perfectly open to being convinced, if anyone has credible evidence that I'm wrong.  (You may recall Bill Nye's comment during the infamous Bill Nye/Ken Ham evolution/creation debate that Bill was asked what would it take to convince him he was wrong, and he said, "One piece of evidence that couldn't be explained another way."  That's how I feel about pretty much everything.)

So if you have some evidence, let's hear it.  I promise I won't burn you up with the fire in my eyes.

The worst part is you're a teacher.  So you're influencing a whole generation of children who look up to you, inducing them to abandon God and putting them in danger of hell.  I can't think of anything worse.

This part made me think of how the author of this email must picture my classes.  What, do you believe that I run into my classroom every day, yelling maniacally, "THERE IS NO GOD!  WORSHIP SATAN!  BOW DOWN TO EVIL!  HA HA!" or something?  Let me tell you, with all of the actual science I have to cover, I simply don't have time to indoctrinate my students in Satan worship.

In fact, every once in a while -- this comes up most often in my Critical Thinking classes, although the question is sometimes raised when we're studying evolution in my biology classes -- some student will ask me if I'm religious.  My usual response is, "My own religious beliefs aren't relevant here."  I mean, given that my background is in evolutionary genetics, it's a pretty shrewd guess that I'm not a fundamentalist.  But other than that, I suspect the majority of my students don't have a clue about my own beliefs or lack thereof.

And that's exactly how it should be.

It's not too late for you.  You can still dedicate your life to Jesus.  The lost lamb can be found.  But not if you persist in your hateful, God-denying ways.  I'm asking you to repent and beg forgiveness, for your own sake. 

I will be praying for you daily that you will come back to your Creator rather than having to face him at the End of Days and be cast away in despair.

Well, I suppose that's all nice enough.  I'm not a big believer in prayer, myself, but I'll never turn away well-wishes in whatever form they may take.  And it's nice to know you don't want me to burn for eternity.  (And I have actually gotten emails of the "When you die I'm going to laugh because I'll know you're being tortured in hell" variety.  But they're not very common, which is rather heartening.)

The email wasn't signed.  It just sort of ended there, without a "have a nice day" or anything.  Although I can see that given what went before, that'd be a little ironic.

Anyhow, I suppose it could be worse.  At least there were no death threats.  And like I said, the writer seemed to be coming from a generally compassionate point of view, even if his/her interpretation of my beliefs was a few degrees off of due north.  So keep those cards and letters comin', although I'd prefer it if the "burn in hell unbeliever" and "I'm going to track you down and kill you" people would find another hobby.

Oh, and it was my grandma.  My grandma clearly had the best gumbo recipe.  Thanks for asking.

******************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is from one of my favorite thinkers -- Irish science historian James Burke.  Burke has made several documentaries, including Connections, The Day the Universe Changed, and After the Warming -- the last-mentioned an absolutely prescient investigation into climate change that came out in 1991 and predicted damn near everything that would happen, climate-wise, in the twenty-seven years since then.

I'm going to go back to Burke's first really popular book, the one that was the genesis of the TV series of the same name -- Connections.  In this book, he looks at how one invention, one happenstance occurrence, one accidental discovery, leads to another, and finally results in something earthshattering.  (One of my favorites is how the technology of hand-weaving led to the invention of the computer.)  It's simply great fun to watch how Burke's mind works -- each of his little filigrees is only a few pages long, but you'll learn some fascinating ins and outs of history as he takes you on these journeys.  It's an absolutely delightful read.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Odd eulogies for a great mind

The Earth lost one of its most brilliant minds last week -- British physicist Stephen Hawking, who expanded our understanding of everything from black holes to the Big Bang.

Hawking's death also attracted attention for another reason, which is that he was an outspoken atheist.  In an interview in 2014, Hawking said:

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe.  But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by "we would know the mind of God" is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t.  I’m an atheist.

As far as death and the afterlife, he was equally unequivocal, something made more interesting still because of his fight against the depredations of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.  You'd think that if anyone would have engaged in some wishful thinking about the possibility of life after death, it would be a man who was confronted daily with evidence of his own mortality.  But Hawking said, "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

And of course, the spokespeople for the God of Love and Mercy didn't even wait until the poor man's body was cool to start crowing about how he was currently roasting in hell.  I must admit that two people who are frequent fliers here at Skeptophilia -- Franklin Graham and Ken Ham -- at least had fairly measured and compassionate responses.  Graham, who is best known for his fiery vitriol and anti LGBTQ stance -- said the following:

I wish I could have asked Mr. Hawking who he thought designed the human brain.  The designers at HP, Apple, Dell, or Lenovo have developed amazing computers, but none come even close to the amazing capabilities of the human mind.  Who do you think designed the human brain?  The Master Designer — God Himself.  I wish Stephen Hawking could have seen the simple truth that God is the Creator of the universe he loved to study and everything in it.

Ham wrote the following:

A reminder death comes to all. Doesn't matter how famous or not in this world, all will die and face the God who created us and stepped into history in the person of Jesus Christ, to die and be raised to offer a free gift of salvation to all who receive it.

Which, considering some of their statements on other issues, is actually pretty mild.

But the response from other quarters wasn't even that measured.  The site Catholics Online claimed that Hawking had experience a deathbed conversion, similar to the (also false) claims made about Christopher Hitchens when he died in 2016:

Before he died, Stiph [sic] Hawkins [sic] who did not believe in God requested to visit the Vatican.  “Now l believe” was the only statement he made after the Holy Father blessed him.

Well, that may have happened to "Stiph Hawkins," but it sure as hell didn't happen to Stephen Hawking.

But that was far from the most outlandish claim made upon Professor Hawking's death.  That award has to go to Mike Shoesmith, of the conservative Christian PNN Network, who said that Hawking's amazing beat-the-odds lifespan after his ALS diagnosis was because Satan wanted to keep him alive long enough to fight against the message of Billy Graham:

So, in 1942, that is when Billy Graham’s ministry really takes off, and who do you think was born in 1942?  Stephen Hawking.  Stephen Hawking comes from a long line of atheists — his father and all these people — so I believe the devil said, "OK, this guy was just born and I’m going to use this guy. This guy is already primed to accept my message that there is no God. He is already primed for it, he is going to be awash, immersed in atheism all his years as a child, I’m going to take over this guy’s life." 

I believe Stephen Hawking was kept alive by demonic forces.  I believe that it was the demonic realm that kept this man alive as a virtual vegetable his entire life just so he could spread this message that there is no God.

Then when Billy Graham died a couple of weeks ago, I guess Satan just said, "Okay, I'm done with you," and let Hawking die as well.

Me, I'm kind of appalled that there are people who would try to score points off any person's death, much less an august personage such as Professor Hawking.  The whole thing gives lie to their claim of being on the moral high ground by comparison to us ungodly heathen slobs.  Be that as it may, I'd rather remember Stephen Hawking for his brilliance, his contributions to our understanding of the universe, his modesty, and his sense of humor.  As evidence of the last-mentioned, I direct you to this compilation of Hawking's amazing comedic chops, and encourage you to put aside all the people who are using his life and death for their own purposes and have a good laugh with one of the greatest minds humanity has ever produced.  I suspect that Hawking would really prefer our sending him on his way with a smile rather than a eulogy of pious platitudes in any case.

Tying god's hands

Today, for what must be the tenth time, I saw the following image posted on social media:

The people who posted it apparently decided for some reason that it was acceptable to use the tragic murder of seventeen innocent people to lob some snark at the atheists, secularists, and others who believe in the separation of church and state.  But what I want to address here is the toxicity of the mindset behind the message -- apart from what would spur someone to think that this is an appropriate time to post it (and truthfully, I can't think of an appropriate time to post it).

First, I thought y'all were the ones who believed that god was everywhere, was omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient and omni-what-have-you.  What you're implying here is that a handful of people who think religion has no place in a public, taxpayer-funded institution have somehow overpowered an all-powerful god's ability to do anything to stop a crazed gunman.  (Probably explaining why the Florida State Legislature, having decided to do fuck-all about gun law reform, has decided instead to pursue a bill requiring "In God We Trust" to be posted in public schools statewide.)

So we're already on some shaky theological grounds, but it gets worse.  What the above message suggests is that somehow, god's attitude is, "if you won't pray in schools, innocent children deserve to die."  That given the choice of using his Miraculous God Powers to stop a massacre, he just stood there smirking and afterwards said, "See?  Told you something like this would happen if you didn't worship me all the time and everywhere.  Sorry, but my hands were tied."

Me, I think any deity that acts like this is a monster, not an all-loving beneficent creator.  That said, it's entirely consistent with the depiction of the Lord of Hosts in the Old Testament.  The Old Testament God was constantly smiting people left and right for such heinous crimes as gathering firewood on the sabbath, and when the Chosen People of Israel conquered a place, the word from above was "kill everyone, including children."

Don't believe me?  There are plenty of instances, but my favorite is 1 Samuel 15:

This is what the Lord Almighty says: "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt.  Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them.  Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."  So Saul summoned the men and mustered them at Telaim—two hundred thousand foot soldiers and ten thousand from Judah.

Long story short, Saul did as told, killing everyone up to and including the donkeys, but the Lord was still pissed off for some reason, and the Prophet Samuel told him so.  Apparently it had to do with the fact that Saul had spared the Amalekite King, Agag (like I said before, to hell with the children).  So Saul executed Agag, but the Lord still wasn't happy with him.

So what this shows is by posting bullshit like the above image, the people who think this kind of deity deserves worship are simply walking their talk.

The whole thing brings to memory a quote from Richard Dawkins.  I know his very name raises hackles, but it's so germane to this topic that I would be remiss in not including it:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

To which I can only say: touché.

The deepest problem, though, is the one the people who post this nonsense would be the least likely to admit; when they advocate tearing down the wall between church and state, they're absolutely adamant that it can only be for the benefit of one church.  Start talking about having Jewish prayers or quotes from the Qu'ran or some of the Ten Thousand Sayings of Buddha festooned about the walls of classrooms, and you'll have these same people screaming bloody murder.

So as usual, what we're talking about is a combination of ugly theology and complete hypocrisy.  And it would be hardly worth commenting on if it weren't for the power that these attitudes still have, and the degree to which they still influence policy in the United States.

Other than railing about it here on Skeptophilia, I'm not sure what to do.  Anyone who really believes this -- anyone, in other words, who wasn't just trying to score some points off the atheists -- has subscribed to a belief system that is very close to the definition of evil.

And people talk about us atheists being amoral.

Linda vs. the serial killer

There's a logic problem that's often nicknamed "The Linda Problem," and I hasten to state that by calling it that I don't mean any general criticism of people named Linda.  It goes like this:

Linda is a 30-year-old woman who lives in a big city in the United States.  She is single, has a master's degree in sociology, and is deeply interested in issues of discrimination, social justice, and addressing poverty and homelessness. 

Which of the following is more likely?

1. Linda is a bank teller. 
2. Linda is a bank teller who voted for Hillary Clinton.

The whole thing rests on what is known as the conjunction fallacy, and it's amazing how many smart people this one trips up.  The answer is that the first statement has to be more likely; the more qualifiers you add to a list, the fewer people will meet the whole list at the same time.  To give an illustration that is less likely to elicit a wrong answer, consider the following.

You see a dog.  Which is more likely?

1. It's a golden lab.
2. It's a golden lab wearing a red collar.
3. It's a golden lab on a pink leash wearing a red collar.
4. It's a golden lab sitting on a sidewalk while on a pink leash and wearing a red collar.

For this one, it's clear that each additional qualifier makes the pool of (in this case) dogs that fit the description smaller and smaller.

[image courtesy of photographer Eric Armitage and the Wikimedia Commons]

So why does the Linda Problem trip people up?  It's because in statement #2, the second qualifier -- that she voted Democrat in the last election -- is actually quite probable, given what we know about her.  Once people see that, they tend to grab on to it and ignore the bank teller part, thinking, "Well, I have no idea how likely it is she's a bank teller; but it's really likely she voted for Clinton.  So the second one must be the most likely overall."

Which is why I found the results of a paper that appeared last week in Nature: Human Behavior simultaneously so funny and so appalling.  The study, conducted by a team led by Will Gervais of the University of Kentucky, investigated biases against people based on their religious adherence (or lack thereof).  Test subjects were asked one of two versions of a question designed to see if people connected atheism with sociopathy.  They were given the following scenario:

A 45-year-old man, who tortured animals when he was young, later moved on to hurting people.  He has killed five homeless people that he abducted from poor neighborhoods in his home city.  Their dismembered bodies are currently buried in his basement.

Half of the test subjects were then asked the following:

Which of the following is more probable?

1. The man is a teacher.
2. The man is a teacher who does not believe in any gods.

The other half got a different question:

Which of the following is more probable?

1. The man is a teacher.
2. The man is a teacher who is a religious believer. 

Well, you can see that this is just the Linda Problem in a different guise, and that in each case statement #1 is more probable, regardless of the qualifier (or what the additional qualifier was in statement #2).  But Gervais found a surprising result -- a full 60% said that in the first case, the second statement was more likely, and only 30% said the same for the second scenario.  (For comparison purposes, one study found that the average number of people who miss ordinary conjunction-fallacy problems is around 48%.)

So that means that people's innate biases against atheists make them more likely to fall for the conjunction fallacy.  Unsurprisingly, when this test was carried out in highly religious countries -- like the United Arab Emirates -- the percentage who miss it was even higher.  In less religious countries, such as New Zealand, the percentage was lower, but the bias still exists, in that the percentage who got the question wrong was still higher than the average of 48%.

Most interesting of all, people who were themselves non-believers were less biased -- but not by much.  (52% of self-described atheists got the first question wrong, as compared to 60% average for the entire group of test subjects.)

As fascinating as this is, it's also pretty disheartening.  I know there's prejudice against atheists, but really... a serial killer?  And even my fellow atheists have that perception?  I do run into this kind of thing, usually in the guise questions like, "If you don't believe in god, how do you have any moral compass?  Why don't you go around committing immoral acts?"  My response usually is something like, "If your fear of punishment in the afterlife is the only thing that's keeping you from lying, stealing, and hurting others, then you're the one whose moral compass needs examination, not mine."

But I didn't realize how deep the bias goes.  Gervais et al. write:

The results contrast with recent polls that do not find self-reported moral prejudice against atheists in highly secular countries, and imply that the recent rise in secularism in Western countries has not overwritten intuitive anti-atheist prejudice.  Entrenched moral suspicion of atheists suggests that religion’s powerful influence on moral judgements persists, even among non-believers in secular societies.

Which is kind of terrible, really.  Any kind of unfounded prejudice is a bad thing, but judgments like this lead people to make some pretty hideous assumptions.  It'd be nice if the Gervais et al. paper might get people to reconsider their biases, but given the words the authors use -- "intuitive" and "entrenched moral suspicion" -- that's probably a forlorn hope.

In any case, I hasten to reassure readers of Skeptophilia that I have no dismembered bodies buried in my basement.

For one thing, my basement has a cement floor, which would make it kind of difficult.

Poll avoidance

I'm lucky, being an outspoken atheist, that I live where I do.  The people in my area of upstate New York are generally pretty accepting of folks who are outside of the mainstream (although even we've got significant room for improvement).  The amount of harassment I've gotten over my lack of religion has, really, been pretty minimal, and mostly centered around my teaching of evolution in school and not my unbelief per se.

It's not like that everywhere.  In a lot of parts of the United States, religiosity in general, and Christianity in particular, are so ubiquitous that it's taken for granted.  In my home town of Lafayette, Louisiana, the question never was "do you go to church?", it was "what church go you go to?"  The couple of times I answered that with "I don't," I was met with a combination of bafflement and an immediate distancing, a cooling of the emotional temperature, a sense of "Oh -- you're not one of us."

So no wonder that so many atheists are "still in the closet."  The reactions by friends, family, and community are simply not worth it, even though the other alternative is having a deeply important part of yourself hidden from the people in your life.  As a result, of course, this results in a more general problem -- the consistent undercounting of how many people actually are atheists, and the result that those of us who are feel even more isolated and alone than we did.

[image courtesy of creator Jack Ryan and the Wikimedia Commons]

Current estimates from polls are that 3% of Americans self-identify as atheists, but there's reason to believe that this is a significant underestimate -- in other words, people are being untruthful to the pollsters about their own disbelief.  You might wonder why an anonymous poll conducted by a total stranger would still result in people lying about who they are, but it does.  Jesse Singal, over at The Science of Us, writes:

So if you’re an atheist and don’t live in one of America’s atheist-friendly enclaves, it might not be something you want to talk about — in fact you may have trained yourself to avoid those sorts of conversations altogether.  Now imagine a stranger calls you up out of the blue, says they’re from a polling organization, and asks about your religious beliefs.  Would you tell them you don’t have any?  There’s a lot of research suggesting you might not.  The so-called social-desirability bias, for example, is an idea that suggests that in polling contexts, people might not reveal things — racist beliefs are the one of the more commonly studied examples — that might make them look bad in the eyes of others, even if others refers to only a single random person on the other end of the phone line.

As Singal points out, however, a new study by Will Gervais and Maxine B. Najle of the University of Kentucky might have come up with a way around that.  Gervais and Najle came up with an interesting protocol for estimating the number of atheists without having to ask the specific question directly.  They gave one of two different questionnaires to 2,000 people.  Each had a list of statements that could be answered "true" or "false" -- all the respondents had to do was to tell the researcher how many true statements there were, not which specific ones were true, thus (one would presume) removing a lot of the anxiety over admitting outright something that could be perceived negatively.  The first questionnaire was the control, and had statements like "I own a dog" and "I am a vegetarian."  The second had the same statements, with one additional one: "I believe in God."  Since one would presume that in any sufficiently large random sample of people, the same proportion of people would answer "yes" to any given statement, then any increase in the number of (in this case) "false" replies would have to be due to the additional statement about belief.

And there was a difference.  A significant one.  The authors write:

Widely-cited telephone polls (e.g., Gallup, Pew) suggest USA atheist prevalence of only 3-11%.  In contrast, our most credible indirect estimate is 26% (albeit with considerable estimate and method uncertainty).  Our data and model predict that atheist prevalence exceeds 11% with greater than .99 probability, and exceeds 20% with roughly .8 probability.  Prevalence estimates of 11% were even less credible than estimates of 40%, and all intermediate estimates were more credible.

So it looks like there are a lot more of us out there than anyone would have thought.  I, for one, find that simultaneously comforting and distressing.  Isn't it sad that we still live in a world where belonging to a stigmatized group -- being LGBT, being a minority, being atheist -- is still looked upon so negatively that there are that many people who feel like they need to hide?  I'm not in any way criticizing the decision to stay in the closet; were I still living in the town where I was raised, I might well have made the same choice, and I realize every day how lucky I am to live in a place where people (for the most part) accept who I am.

But perhaps this study will be a first step toward atheists feeling more empowered to speak up.  There's something to the "safety in numbers" principle.  It'd be nice if people would just be kind and non-judgmental regardless, even to people who are different, but when I look at the news I realize how idealistic that is.  Better, I suppose, to convince people of the truth that we're more numerous than you'd think -- and not willing to pretend any more to a belief system we don't share.