Water of life

Are you thirsty?  Is plain old water just not doing it for you any more?  Would you like to try a new kind of water, special water, that is different from the regular kind mostly because it costs lots more?

Well, allow me to introduce "Starfire Water."  But let's let the manufacturers speak for themselves:

...Starfire Water™, a proprietary alkaline, performance, bio-holographic “living” water produced using breakthrough, 21st-century quantum water technology. Starfire Water™ is treated with ultraviolet, ozonation, infrared stimulation and electromagnetism for a negative ion charged water, as in nature, allowing deep, cellular intake through aquaporins, the floodgates to hydration. 

Wow.  "Quantum water."  And it's also "bio-holographic."  Doesn't that make you want to drink up?  But tell me, how is "Starfire Water" different than tap water?

Structured Water - Water is naturally structured, but water from the tap is not and neither is most water sold in the store. Unstructured water goes right through you, while structured water removes toxins from your body.
Energized Water - Even structured water on the market, isn’t energized. When you taste our water, you’ll feel a tingle on the roof of the mouth. That’s the energized water. It gives you energy for life.
Infused Water - Most water is just water. But we infuse our water with Etherium, a trace form of liquid gold, known to facilitate higher awareness.

"Etherium?"  I checked the periodic table, just to see if I'd missed something last time I looked, and I couldn't find any "etherium."  But they said it's just "liquid gold," right?  Why on earth do we need gold in our water?

In car stereos, they use gold plated ends to provide a crisp clear connection. In the human body, we use gold too! We cannot just eat any old gold off of our wedding ring or the wires of our stereo. This gold must be small enough to enter the human cell with out digestion. If the gold is in flakes or too large like colloidal gold, it must be digested, or broken down. Some times large minerals like these do not stay in the digestive tract long enough to be digested and pass through with out much benefit. A better choice is to get the gold in a form that is all ready in it's (sic) smallest form. What is the smallest form of gold? It is Angstrom gold. Angstrom gold is the smallest form of gold available today. It is so small it can enter the human cell without digestion. Angstrom gold does not have any fillers or other excess baggage with it like colloidal gold can carry with it. Angstrom gold is pure gold infused into Pure water using angstrom's special process.

"Angstrom" gold, eh?  Isn't an "angstrom" just a unit of length, equal to one ten-billionth of a meter?  I would much prefer my gold measured in units of mass, not length.  And large ones.  "Kilograms of gold" would be something I could get excited about.  But be that as it may: what can "Starfire Water" do for my health?

(It is) The Most Hydrating Water on the Planet. That's because Starfire Structured Water is infused with Hydrogen Structuring Technology introduced by a syndicate of water enthusiast, and making it the most energizing, detoxiying (sic), anti-oxidizing and hydrating water on the planet. Using [hydrogen fortification] vortex technology, we’ve created hexagonal water that quenches your thirst from inside out.

Oooh!  Hexagonal water!  My favorite kind!  Trapezoidal water is kinda pointy and hurts going down,  ya know?  And how awesome that it's "introduced by a syndicate of water enthusiast."  Whatever the hell that means.  But in any case, how can you folks manage to make such an amazing product?

Our process utilizes a centrifugal vortex to implode the water and set the water in motion for several hours. This reorganizes the molecular order into a receptive state to receive high frequency vibration. The water is then passed through a chamber where magnetic resonance imprints a series of frequencies in an infinitely modulating sequence. Molecular order and frequency loading mutually reinforce each other to maintain the transformation of the water. The result is a liquid with the water formed into small, biocompatible water crystals that resonate at a designed and predictable frequency. The specific frequencies of the crystalline structured water solution are designed to be amplified by the cells of the human body, and transferred through resonant paths to tissues in need of "tuning".

Oh, really?  I... I see... I... um...

NO!  I CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE!  PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!  MY CELLS ARE ALL VIBRATING AT THEIR MAXIMUM BIO-HOLOGRAPHIC QUANTUM RESONANT MODULATION FREQUENCY!   I CAN'T READ ANY MORE!  NOT ONE WORD MORE!!!  *does faceplant, directly into his keyboard*

*several minutes pass*

Whoooo, sorry for that outburst, folks.  I've gotten a handle on myself, now.  In fact, I think what I really need, right now, is a nice big glass of...

Scotch.  But being that it's 5 AM, it might be a little early for that, so I'll settle for coffee.  Made with plain old, ordinary tap water, unpotentiated and un-bio-energized.  Which, to be clear, is the only kind of water there is. 

And, allow me to point out, it is also far, far less expensive.

We're having an apocalypse. Again.

I remember reading some years ago, although I've forgotten the source, about a theory that connects the degree to which people engage in apocalyptic thinking with how godawful the conditions are at the time.  The author pointed to the decades following the Black Death in Europe, and 250 years later the misery that attended the Thirty Years' War, as spawning a resurgence of focus on the End Times -- and, interestingly, an increased persecution of individuals perceived as collaborating with the agents of evil.  It's almost as if people said, "Wow, this is some awful stuff we're going through right now, wouldn't it be nice if the powers-that-be would just press 'Reset'?  But until then, let's amuse ourselves by burning some witches."

I have been mystified recently by how much attention has been given to end-of-the-world scenarios, and not just by the religious.  Besides the Christian Rapture crowd, led by such luminaries of critical thinking as Harold Camping and Ronald Weinland, there has been the Mayan Apocalypse crowd, the Planet Nibiru crowd, and (to bring it into the realm of the marginally plausible) the Death Asteroids crowd.  And what has struck me, each time, is how enthusiastic everyone seems to be about these various scenarios.  You very much get the impression that these folks really would love nothing more than to see a giant rock turn downtown Baltimore into a humongous crater.

Which, I suppose, is why new and different proposals for bringing down Civilization As We Know It keep cropping up.  I ran into a new one just yesterday (described here), in which a Russian scientist, Alexey Dmitriev, goes into his own personal take on how we're all gonna die.

We are (Dmitriev says) about to run smack into an "interstellar energy cloud" that will propel us into "2,000 years of light."  This sounds good until you read a little more, and find out that Dmitriev blames the leading edge of this cloud for massive animal die-offs, hurricanes and tornadoes, climate change, and solar coronal mass ejections.  He includes this map to illustrate what's happening:

So, anyway, I'm looking at the diagram, and I'm thinking, "I see where we supposedly are, but who are all of those other folks... Electra, Celaeno, Alcyone, and so on?"  And then I thought, "Wait, those names are familiar..."  And finally I figured it out.  Those are the names of the Seven Sisters from Greek mythology -- the Pleiades.

Interestingly, the article I linked above doesn't mention anything about the Pleiades -- it goes on and on about how NASA is covering the whole thing up so as not to cause mass panic, but never explains that the map is showing the solar system orbiting around one of the Pleiades.  This is probably because, given that the Sun does not, in fact, orbit around the Pleiades, anyone who knows even a smattering of astronomy would then look at the article and say, "This is complete horse waste."

Interestingly, the article gives a link to a NASA press release (here), and only quotes one line:  "The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist."  This, of course, makes it sound mysterious and scary.  The article doesn't mention, however, that in the very next paragraph of the NASA story, the author states that information from Voyager gave physicists the information they needed to figure it out -- and in any case, the cloud is a "wispy mix of hydrogen and helium" that is being held in place, far outside Pluto's orbit, by a bubble of stable magnetic field.  So, as usual, the apocalyptic woo-woos quoted just enough actual science that, taken out of context, it sounded scary.

What is more interesting, however, how... cheery the author sounds about the prospect of worldwide cataclysm:  "...this strange nebulous cloud of energy (will cause) the sun to become more excited than ever before... fueling the sun to erupt into one final burst of energy that could not only destroy everything we know about our society, but also herald in a new wave of consciousness as a new generation of highly advanced and technologically minded people attempt to put the pieces back together and the infrastructure sends humanity back to a level of technology comparable to the turn of the 19th century."

Doesn't this sound the same as what the Rapture folks and the Mayan apocalypse folks are saying?  "Okay, it'll be rough for a time, but don't worry, everything will be amazingly wonderful afterwards!"  You have to wonder why this kind of thinking is so popular these days -- everyone and his dog seems to be coming up with a new and improved version of how modern civilization is going to collapse.  And I started to wonder: "Is it because things are kind of cruddy now?"  I mean, we don't have anything as catastrophic as the Black Death to try to recover from, come to terms with, and explain; but there are hundreds of more ordinary bad things -- economic woes, wars, terrorism, unemployment, hate crimes...  It did cross my mind to speculate that some of this neoapocalypticism (to coin a new, and almost unpronounceable, word) might be fueled by people looking around them and thinking, "This is dreadful.  Maybe we should just start over."

I also wonder if it might be fuel to the fire of the hypermoralistic wingnuts who are currently trying to promote government intrusion into women's rights and every facet of human sexuality, despite that it is these same folks who chant the mantra of "small government" with no apparent awareness of a break in the logical chain.  To listen to Rick Santorum, contraception, gay marriage, and pornography are going to lead directly to the fall of the United States; and if you look at folks like Brent Bozell (not directly!  Wear protective eyewear!), you'd come away with the impression that movies with scenes showing people having sex are going to destroy the moral fabric of the entire society. 

It's the same thing, isn't it?  The world is facing some pretty serious problems; day-to-day life can be kind of depressing; and we have a sudden resurgence of apocalyptic thinking and persecution of people on the basis of morals and beliefs.  In so many ways, we haven't progressed much with comparison to our ancestors from the 14th century -- a thought that is not all that reassuring.

Happy St. Patrick's Reincarnated Alien Etheric Ascension Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Time for everyone of Irish descent to celebrate their heritage by drinking Guinness, wearing green, having parades, singing "O Danny Boy," and celebrating the fact that we're all actually reincarnated aliens.

This last part comes from noted wingnut Theresa Thurmond Morris, who calls St. Patrick's Day "Spritual Fey Day."  It's not that she scoffs at the traditional meaning of St. Patrick's Day; in her article (here) you will find that she is highly ecumenical in her woo-wooism.  She seems to have no problem with all of the drinking of green beer and wearing of shamrocks, and also gives a pleasant nod to the Catholic Church's ritual blessing of missionaries on March 17; but she also says that because of St. Patrick's Day's connection with pagan symbolism, it is a day of "Spiritual Understanding of both Good and Bad as Dark and Light Fey on Earth."

Whatever that means.

Ms. Morris talks about her work as a "White Lighter," which is a reincarnated alien sent here to do good.  Lots of us are reincarnated aliens, she said, only most of us have forgotten it, and her job is to reawaken that memory so we can go help reawaken others, kind of like a giant woo-woo game of "Tag."  And St. Patrick's Day is the day to begin it all: 

Those who are on earth will be given a day on earth from 2012 forward to choose as adults. Normally, those who come to earth are trained in the spiritual ways of the creation of both the alpha males and the omega females to exist inside the omniverse. Those in the past on earth who found themselves on the dark areas and chose their parents before coming may have had to stay in their area or community.

Now we have an annual cross over from the dark fey to the light fey. In the past, there was a choice made ace the age of sixteen earth years to choose to be good spirit light or bad spirit light and to work on one side or the other. Now from 2012 forward all those who come to earth that desire to change will be allowed to do so.

This is one of the reasons for the Ascension Age is change! What does all of this have to do with me being visited all my life with those from above to share that they exist and so I would not forget them in my human form?

I had been an experienced avatar ascension master in past lives and decided to come back in an agreement I made with the Advanced Beings and the Alpha God and Omega Goddess realms. This was due to my prior choices in past lives.

Evidently, her home world is the Planet of Convoluted Syntax, because she goes on to say, "However, we prefer those who are now present on earth who have not caught up to the way our Supreme Council desires us to be for the future of all humanoid sentient intelligent beings who will be Taken to Terra-Form and begin new worlds to think."  To which I can only respond, "Has anyone ever really been as far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?"  To borrow a phrase.

Whatever her origins, Ms. Morris is pretty optimistic about the future of life on Earth.  She thinks we're headed into something she calls an "etheric ascension," which is due to happen this year.  St. Patrick's Day is only the beginning, she says; we're all going to become highly evolved beings.  I applaud her enthusiasm about this, given my general opinion that there are a good many people who could do with some evolving, and more than a few who richly deserve to be on the receiving end of natural selection.  "I do my part as the Oracle of this generation in the Akashic Field and what we now call cyberspace as the WEB of sharing the All that is known," she says.  "We are now going to enter a time when all are accepted into the sea of both waves and particles."

Well.  I'm assuming by this last bit that she's talking here about the dual nature of light, a purely physical phenomenon that woo-woos love to yammer on about because it sounds like some sort of Mystical Duality Of Being, when in reality it just a description of how photons of light behave (albeit a pretty cool thing in and of itself).  So once again, we have someone who seems not to understand the science throwing around buzzwords to give herself more credence in the eyes of the gullible.

But don't let me rain on your Spiritual Fey Day Parade; if you think you're a reincarnated Good Alien and are highly in touch with your Akashic Field, don't let me stop you.   Me, I'll probably stick to drinking Guinness and wearing green.  Don't expect me to sing "O Danny Boy," however.  I freakin' hate that song.

Clean sweep

It will hardly merit mention to regular readers of this blog that, given an odd circumstance, I will look first for a rational, scientific explanation.  Although my field is biology, I know enough of the basics of the other sciences to have a good shot at coming up with a plausible explanation for most of what I see -- or, failing that, at least to recognize when a proposed explanation doesn't make sense.

Which brings me to the strange case of the standing brooms.

Apparently over the last few months, there have been multiple reports of brooms staying standing up after being set on end, sometimes for hours.  People report that they were resistant to falling over even if bumped or pushed, and several folks stated that it felt like a "strange force" was keeping the brooms upright.

Naturally, once this sort of thing starts to be reported, we have a veritable explosion of silly explanations.  Here is a sampling of ones I saw on various websites:

• planetary alignment creating a change in the gravitational pull
• solar flares
• static electricity
• Mercury going into retrograde motion
• ghosts
• the position of the Moon
• the position of the broom relative to "ley lines"
• tapping into "psychic energy currents"

Reading the impassioned exponents of each of those so-called explanations made me want to weep softly and bang my head on my computer keyboard, but I decided to man up and see if I could find anyone who had a more sensible approach.  I found this wonderful site ("Common Sense Conspiracy: We Filter the Bullshit So You Don't Have To!"), which attributes the phenomenon to simple physics -- almost any object will stand upright if it has a flat surface of some kind, and you can get the object's center of gravity to stay over its base of support.  Voilà -- a standing broom!

Of course, woo-woos never give up that easily.  Or sometimes at all.  The "comments" section was filled with rants about how no, it wasn't simple physics, because the broom would only stand up on second Tuesdays when the Moon was full and the appropriate words were chanted.  It can't just be a simple explanation!  It can't!

It is a mystery to me why so many people don't find the world as it is sufficiently wonderful and weird -- they feel like they have to make stuff up, push natural phenomena into supernatural molds, turn everything into some kind of paranormal mystery.  Isn't what actual, reputable scientists are currently discovering -- especially in fields like quantum mechanics, cosmology, neurology, and nanotechnology -- awe-inspiring enough?  Why do you need to muddy the whole situation by making stuff up, or coming up with loony explanations for what you see?

Now, mind you, I'm not saying that there aren't things that haven't been explained yet.  There are plenty, and good science is always pushing the envelope of what's known.  But I am confident that any real phenomenon is ultimately going to be explainable by science, because that's what science does.  It may seem supernatural now, but that's just because we don't yet comprehend what's going on.  As Robert Heinlein said, "Magic is science we don't understand yet."

But the brooms, alas, aren't even that; it's just simple mechanics at work.  No need to invoke solar flares or planets in retrograde.  I'm glad, actually; the whole thing brought up memories of Fantasia, which I'd really rather not think about.  That movie scared the hell out of me when I was a kid.

Here comes the sun

Well.  And I thought that the only thing we had to worry about, sun-wise, was the appearance of a Massive Unknown Object that was tethered to the sun and slowly draining it of energy.  As the responses of six regular readers of Skeptophilia to yesterday's post show: a lot I know.

Besides the game of cosmic tetherball currently involving our home star, we also have another thing to fret about, which is a giant triangular coronal hole.  Well, not the coronal hole itself, which is a purely natural phenomenon, but the reactions of thousands of woo-woos who, upon seeing the photographs, immediately started running around making terrified little bleating noises.  I mean, people seriously need to calm down, or someone's gonna get hurt.

First, let's take a look at a photograph of the phenomenon, once again courtesy of NASA:

 

Okay.  So, even I have to admit, it's kind of creepy-looking.  But, I assure you, it's harmless -- all it is is a place where the sun's magnetic field has shifted, changing the speed and direction of the solar wind.  A solar storm, so to speak.  It could cause brighter-than-average auroral displays, but here on Earth, that's about it as far as impacts.

Tell that to the woo-woos.  Here is a sampling of comments on posts, blogs, and websites regarding the phenomenon, which I replicate here verbatim:

"Could the pyramid be a sign of the new world order that's about to be achieved? You know.. like what's on the dollar.  The triangle.. the novos ordo seclorum.  (New world order).  HMMMMMM?"

"The first thing I noticed is that the configuration is the same as Orion's Belt.  That's significant."

"The SUN WARMS... the SUN WARNS!!!  The heavenly signs are up there for those that have EYES TO SEE!!!"

"The sun is crystallizing, or something.  It's turning into a merkabah."  (I had to look up what a "merkabah" was.  It's god's chariot, such as was seen in the visions of Ezekiel, an event that goes on record as the world's first known bad acid trip.)

"What's the possibility that all celestial bodies have this shape as their inner core, as opposed to the round core commonly considered?  If this was true, couldn't it account for the importance of this shape to every ancienct [sic] civilization so far discovered?  The properties attributed to this shape alone is remarkable, and, possibly applicable, if considered.  Think of it.  This shape creates energy.  It is said to effect force fields.  Think of the spin of round bodies.  The attributes of this triangular core might contribute to a cascade of complimentary forces that would keep a body upright and spinning.  Not knowing science to any degree, I still can't figure the magnetic pole parts, or, what happens in a pole reversal, yet, the properties of triangular bodies containing an infinite number of it's [sic] own kind, including those additional shapes formed by them, seems to make this idea worthy of a few moments of consideration, even if unusual, or, to mainstream thinking, implausible.  Well, that's what I posit, when I look at that anomoly [sic].  What is causing it to show itself is quite another matter. That I have no clue about...except to say that the energy that the Sun has been ejecting lately probably needs to build back up."


Oh, really?  You posit that, do you?  Even though you don't "know science to any degree?"  It never fails to amaze me that people who have no understanding of science whatsoever still think they have valuable contributions to make in the field just based on their "feelings."

But then, there's one last comment I saw that I just have to throw in:

"DEAR GOD IT'S THE EYE OF SAURON!!!!"


So, there you have it, folks.  A coronal hole leading to a massive outpouring of foolishness.  I know that correlation doesn't equal causation, but I think here we might have a pretty good case.

Space tetherball

New from the "Okay, Really, You Actually Believe That?" department: a gigantic UFO is moored next to the sun, and is sucking energy from it in the fashion of a leech.

At least, that's the claim of a guy who seems to have spent too much time in the sun himself, who based his conclusions on the following photograph from NASA:

There are apparently two theories currently going around to explain what the Massive Unknown Object is trying to accomplish by this.  (1)  It is a benevolent Massive Unknown Object, which is siphoning off energy from the sun to prevent a solar flare from deep fat frying the entire Earth.  The siphoning is keeping us at just the right temperature, and is responsible for the abnormally warm weather much of the United States is currently experiencing.  (2)  It is a malevolent Massive Unknown Object, which is draining the sun of energy, the ultimate result of which will be that the sun will fade out and the entire Earth will become a frozen wasteland, sort of like Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, but without any weird goat-things to ride around on and periodically disembowel to stay warm.

All of this has had the effect of making me want to shout at my computer, "Don't you understand the definition of the word 'unknown?'  It means you don't know!"  Of course, woo-woos never let a little thing like a complete lack of facts stop them, and there have been thus far a variety of videos that have showed up on YouTube, seemingly mostly made by people who really ought to be medicated, as well as impassioned posts on woo-woo websites imploring us to For God's Sake Do Something.  One of them urged NASA to try to contact the Massive Unknown Object and demand to determine its intent; another one, evidently posted by someone from the Woo-Woo Auxiliary Unit of the NRA, suggested shooting at it; and a third tied it to the upcoming Mayan apocalypse, which I suppose was inevitable.

But by far my favorite comment was one posted on a website that put up the photograph with an all-call for explanations from anyone who wanted to weigh in.  "Jesus H. Christ on a raft!" the poster wrote.  "A GIANT SPACESHIP is SUCKING ENERGY out of the SUN and people are UNSURE whether this is good or bad?  Wake up and smell the cold, dead planet!  People, people, people!  It's time to sell out and see if we can negotiate to at least keep Australia!  Madagascar!  South Central LA! Something!"

Oh, you silly folks!  It's gotten so I can't tell when you're joking!  So I'm just going to assume you are!  And hope that none of you know where I live!

Anyhow, that's the latest storm of controversy stirred up by the folks at NASA.  I'm sure that in a day or two, some guy at NASA will make a public statement to calm everyone down, assuring us that the Massive Unknown Object is actually a sensor artifact, which will have the result of making all of the woo-woos howl even louder that it's a conspiracy and a coverup and that we're all gonna die.  At least until they all stampede off, mooing wildly, toward the next blurry photograph that seems to show something that's actually not there.  In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the amazingly warm weather the northeast is currently basking in.  Whether or not it's due to the energy-siphoning work of a giant alien spacecraft, it's pretty nice.

Thoughts of a small-town atheist

Recently I was asked by a former student, who is now a graduate of Harvard University in the field of evolutionary biology, if I would write an article for The Harvard Humanist Community Project, a fine new organization supporting rationalists, humanists, skeptics, atheists, and agnostics in the Harvard community.  (You should check out their website, which has a great many interesting links.)  To say I was honored by her request is an understatement; the following was my contribution.

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

I am a high school teacher in a small, rural village in upstate New York. I’ve lived here for twenty years, and know pretty much everyone around here.

I am also an atheist.

It was some years after I moved here, from the safe anonymity of the big city, before I felt comfortable admitting my beliefs (or lack thereof). In fact, I actually attended the local Methodist church for a time, mostly on the prompting of my (now ex) wife, who felt that it was important to raise children in the social, ethical, and cultural setting that a church could offer. Contrast that with now, two decades later, when virtually everyone who knows me knows that I am an atheist.

Despite what a geometry teacher would tell you, getting from point A to point B seldom progresses in a straight line. I did not have a sudden “coming out,” where I went to the center of the village and made some kind of public proclamation of disbelief. It started out because, as a teacher of biology, I yearly face the daunting task of addressing students’ preconceived notions about evolution, and inevitably someone asks, “What religion do you belong to, Mr. Bonnet?” Even the phrasing of the question seems not to admit “None” as an answer; there is a tacit assumption of religiosity in this country, even in the relatively liberal part of it where I live, that makes a denial of faith seem almost like admitting to being some sort of pervert.

At first, I just dodged the question. “Why is that relevant?” was my standard response, mostly because few 10th graders had the wherewithal to come up with an answer to that question on the fly. The fact is, of course, it is relevant, just as the religions of the presidential candidates are relevant, however much we’d like to pretend as a nation that it isn’t true. And honestly, the deflection of the question was disingenuous, and left me with a sense of unease, a feeling that I had lost a teachable moment, not to mention left students with the impression that I was afraid to answer.

About twelve years ago, following a divorce, and perhaps feeling I had less to lose in the public eye after the very visible collapse of my marriage, I started answering the question by saying, “I’m an atheist. However, religion is outside the scope of this course – I’d be happy to discuss it with you another time, if you’d like.” This seemed to satisfy the majority of students, who (to be honest) probably had figured it out anyway. But it opened the door for the minority who were bound to see that as throwing down the gauntlet.

I’ve had letters written to me urging me to “confront my disbelief” and accept Jesus as my personal savior. I’ve been mailed piles of religious promotional materials. I’ve had a former student, once a skeptical rationalist but now a born-again, take it as his personal mission to save my soul. I’ve had parents who have asked the administration to place their children in the other biology teacher’s class, because she is “less hostile toward people with opposing views.” I even had, on one spectacularly frightening occasion, a man show up at my door and tell me that I was headed to hell because I “mislead young minds,” and he would be the one who would send me there, if need be. (I told the man to get the hell off my property, and called the police – and, fortunately, never saw or heard from him again.)

All of this has, on the one hand, made me more militant – my general reaction being, “I’ll be damned if I’ll be bullied.” On the other, it’s made me wonder why atheism is viewed with such hostility. It’s not like the majority of us are saying you can’t believe in god if you want to – by and large, atheists are a pretty live-and-let-live bunch. It more seems to be that people are bothered by someone calmly and rationally looking at all of the religious choices out there, and simply smiling and saying, “No thanks. I don’t want any of them, thank you.” It offends a lot of religious people, I think, because it implies that even given the smorgasbord of dishes, we atheists would prefer to forgo dinner completely.

In a well-publicized survey, it was found that when asked if Americans would vote for a person who was an atheist, a smaller percentage responded “yes” than did for almost any other stigmatized group. Muslims, homosexuals, even convicted felons garnered more “yes” votes than atheists did. When these results appeared in the press, I made a fairly aghast comment about it on Facebook, and a woman who was one of my high school classmates responded, “I agree! I wouldn’t vote for an atheist! How can you have any ethics or morals if you don’t believe in God?”

Well that, to quote Tolkien, needed a week’s answer or else none. Sensing a losing battle, I elected the latter, all of which goes to illustrate that I’m not as self-confident as I could be. It has been, and continues to be, a process of growth – toward, I hope, a position of respecting others while simultaneously never allowing myself to be browbeaten into silence again.

Toward that end, a little over two years ago I started a blog called Skeptophilia, intended to explore the rationalist’s view of life, with a bit of humor frequently thrown in. What at first began as a way for me to express myself in a public forum has grown to have a significant regular following – I am currently zooming toward 50,000 lifetime hits. More important to me personally is that I have a number of current and former students who are regular readers, and have contributed topics on many occasions. This gives me hope – that given exposure to rational, skeptical views, people will respond positively.

And also toward that end, I am here, at the invitation of another former student of mine. I hope to continue to contribute to the cause of humanism in whatever way I can. I may never be a Hitchens or a Dawkins, making headlines and fighting the big battles, but if I can in some small way add my voice to those championing the rationalist viewpoint, I will have succeeded.