06.26.08

Interview with John Loftus, author of Why I Became an Atheist

Posted in Interviews, Friendly Atheist at 8:00 am by Hemant Mehta

John Loftus served in the ministry for 14 years, first as a youth minister, then a minister, then a senior minister for a number of (conservative) Christian churches of Christ. He studied under the likes of Dr. William Lane Craig and has degrees from Lincoln Christian Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He’s taught apologetics classes at Christian colleges.

And now, he’s an atheist.

He’s also the author of the soon-to-be-released Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity.

He recently answered questions via email:

Hemant Mehta: How “strong” of a Christian were you in your earlier life?

John Loftus: For a long time I had no doubts whatsoever about the Christian faith. I was a believer, not just to the bone, but to the very marrow. I was as passionate as one could get about the faith. That passion was what motivated me to want to study about my faith, to share it, to preach it, and to defend it.

HM: Was your change to atheism sudden or gradual?

JL: Perhaps the more entrenched one is both emotional and intellectual, the longer of a process it is. The process for me took about six years, perhaps due to the fact that I suppressed my doubts, perhaps because I was involved in the church, perhaps because of my education. After six years I became a liberal existential deist, who simply chose to believe in God and the afterlife. Then I became an agnostic. I wrote my first book as an agnostic in 2004. Then I became an atheist shortly afterward.

HM: When your doubts began to form, how did you justify your religious faith before finally abandoning it?

JL: Out of ignorance; at least, that’s what I think now. I was blinded by my upbringing to believe. I was raised to put on God glasses, which only allowed me to see the world through Christian eyes. I discounted disconfirming evidence. I didn’t understand Biblical archaeology. I didn’t understand the nature of historical studies when it comes to supporting a historical religion like Christianity. I didn’t understand the true nature of the ancient superstitious and barbaric writings found in the Bible. I didn’t understand science. I didn’t understand that philosophy can be used to confirm what I wanted to believe, but that what I believed could not be sustained by a true reading of canonized Bible. I simply read the wrong books. Because of a blinding faith I just could not see things differently.

HM: What were some of the reactions you received when you told others you were no longer a Christian?

JL: “You need to seek counseling.” “I feel very sad for you.” Most of the Christians I knew simply asked me what happened, “why did you change your mind?” That’s what prompted me to write my book, to help them understand. Christians who never knew me while I was a believer drill me with questions looking for anything that might evidence I was never was a true believer in the first place.

HM: Do you think a Christian audience will read this book or will it just reiterate to atheists what we already know? How do you get Christians to take a look at a book like this?

JL: I think many Christians will read this book, because I wrote it with them in mind, not the skeptic. I treat their beliefs respectfully, too, without demeaning them for believing, because I myself believed what they did with all seriousness. I have a unique pedigree among evangelical thinkers as I studied under some of the best of them, like Dr. Craig, Dr. Strauss, Dr. Paul Feinberg, Dr. Kenneth Kantzer, Dr. Stuart C. Hackett, and Dr. Ronald Feenstra. There are many books written on both sides of this great debate that merely “preach to the choir.” Mine is not one of them. Most skeptics who read it will see, for perhaps the first time, how Christian apologists defend their faith. I don’t think most skeptics understand Christianity enough to be able to deal effectively with believers. So skeptics will learn some valuable lessons and arguments if they want to convince believers they are deluded.

HM: How could you convince someone to become an atheist if they’re not quite religious anymore but not yet ready to abandon their faith?

JL: I don’t know what will convince any particular person to become an atheist, since that which is considered convincing to people is person-related. There is an irreducible personal element involved in whether an argument is convincing or not, in the absence of a mutually agreed upon repeatable scientific experiment. That being said, I think the arguments in my book will push the reader in that direction. The major goal in my book is not to convince people to become atheists, though, although I do argue for this. My major goal is to do the hard work of pushing Christians off of dead center. I aim to dislodge them from their certainties, to provoke them to doubt; intensive doubt if possible. Where they end up after I get them to think for themselves, without reliance on dogma or an authoritative inspired book, will be up to them. But I show them the way if they wish to follow in my path.

HM: What changed the most for you when you became an atheist?

JL: Well, I didn’t become a serial-killer, if that’s what you mean I’m the same person I was when I believed. Nothing much has changed in that department, except I don’t go to church activities and I no longer feel guilt for the lack of tithing or prayer or evangelism or unforgiveness, and so on and so on. I feel, well, human!

HM: Where do you agree and disagree with the New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc)?

JL: I am grateful for the awareness these men have created among the English speaking world. Just like the gays had to grab our attention by being obnoxious, so also Dawkins in particular, had to treat religion in demeaning ways to provoke believers to really think about what they believe. He treats the monotheistic religions just like everyone else does to dead gods like Zeus or Apollo or Poseidon. We easily dismiss these mythical characters. Sam Harris reminds us that the sole difference is that the majority of people alive today believe in the God of the Bible. Now that these “New Atheists” have accomplished this rise in consciousness I want to treat the arguments of the believers seriously, and show why they are deluded to continue believing in a non-threatening, respectful manner.

HM: Are you optimistic about the future of atheism?

JL: Yes, very much so. I think it’s the wave of the future, even if it is sloughing along at a slow but steady pace. There will always be believers, of course, but skepticism will continue to rise in the polls.

Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity is slated for release on July 15^th.

If you have any questions you’d like to ask him, leave them in the comments and I’ll pass them along.

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06.04.08

Interview with Christine Wicker, Author of The Fall of the Evangelical Nation

Posted in Interviews, Friendly Atheist at 8:00 am by Hemant Mehta

Christine Wicker was a feature writer, columnist, and religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News for seventeen years. She’s also author of a New York Times bestseller Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead.

Her new project gets right to the heart of all we’ve been told about Evangelical Christians.

The numbers we have been given are all wrong, says Wicker.

The tag line on the book’s back cover? “What Evangelicals Don’t Want You to Know.”

And if you need any further convincing to check this book out, here is what she writes in the opening pages:

“Let me stop here and define what I meant by evangelicals… I meant those people who have accepted Jesus as their personal savior and as the only way to heaven, who accept the Bible as the inerrant word of God, and who are scaring the bejesus out of the rest of America.”

So true…

Her book is called The Fall of the Evangelical Nation.

Wicker was kind enough to answer a number of questions about her book and research:

Hemant Mehta: What percent of the country is evangelical Christian, by your definition?

Christine Wicker: Seven percent. That’s opposed to the 25 percent that we’ve been lead to believe are evangelicals.

HM: Speaking of which, what is your definition of “evangelical”? (You put both Rick Warren and the National Association of Evangelicals outside that label — calling them shifters — for example.)

CW: I define evangelicals the way the public perceives them.

I’m basically talking about the most conservative evangelicals who have dominated the public discussions of morality and been seen as politically potent forces, the ones the media quotes and helps define by giving them far more coverage than any other religious group (despite the fact that other Christians outnumber them by 5 or 6 to one.)

So I’m talking about the Religious Right.

My seven percent is actually higher than the 20 percent of self-described evangelicals who say they are in the Religious Right.

I identify these evangelicals by membership in churches, attendance, behavior, and beliefs.

HM: What percent of the country regularly attends a church? How does that compare with the percentage of people who are explicitly non-religious?

CW: The best anyone can tell, 19 to 20 percent of Americans are in church on a given Sunday.

The number of people who don’t believe or don’t put themselves in an institutional religious group more than doubled from 14 million to 29 million from 1990 to 2001. As a percentage of the population, they grew from 8 percent to more than 14 percent.

They are the fastest growing “spiritual” category in the country in percentage and numbers.

HM: You noticed a discrepancy between the cited number of members of the National Association of Evangelicals and the actual number. Ditto with the Southern Baptists. How drastic were these “shifts”?

CW: The NAE has said they have 30 million members. They actually have 7.6 million, tops. That’s the number of members their churches claim. So the actual number is almost certainly half to a fourth of that.

The SBC says it has 16 million. Five to eight million of them don’t even live in the same towns their churches are in. Insiders count SBC church health by how many attend Sunday School on average. That number is about 4 million for the entire denomination.

HM: With all the money brought in each week and the power of the megachurches, why isn’t that number growing?

CW: The megachurches are growing. By last report they are increasing twice as fast anyone thought they would.

If they continue to grow, they could be the salvation, no pun intended, of the Evangelical Nation. But signs indicate the growth may be slowing.

Lots of insiders believe they’re doomed.

Here’s why: big buildings, big debt, shifting demographics, dissatisfied members, and retiring founders.

Let me unpack just one of those problems: dissatisfied members.

These churches are constructed to attract so-called seekers. That builds attendance.

But they don’t give their most dedicated, generous and hard-working core members the kind of environment where they feel that God is present and that they are growing in their faith, according to a study by Willow Creek, a huge church that has cloned itself all over the country. One evangelical thinks the most dedicated evangelicals are being so poorly served by church that they are already leaving and 20 million will eventually be out the door.

Willow Creek ministers are completely changing their approach to try to retain and satisfy these core members. But the change has many dangers. Churches that serve core members’ need for spiritual growth typically don’t serve new members and therefore fail to grow numerically.

HM: In an article from 2000, you wrote about how Christians divorce at a higher rate than non-Christians. Is that still the case?

CW: Yes.

Evangelicals also have similar rates of drug, alcohol and pornography addiction. They seem to engage in extra-marital and pre-marital sex at the same rates that others do.

Faith doesn’t appear to have impact on moral behavior.

HM: What is the biggest mistake that churches make?

CW: If you take a look at the Dallas Morning News article that I wrote and is on my website… you’ll get a taste of the attacks coming from inside and outside the church.

One I don’t mention is among of the biggest: they teach members that they are the only ones saved and the only ones who have the Truth.

Those contentions seem more and more arrogant and even un-Christian to outsiders.

HM: How do cultural issues (like the recent gay marriage decision in California) impact the church?

CW: The culture has clearly changed the evangelical church more than it has changed the culture. Preachers have said that for years, and they’re right.

Opposing gay rights is a good example of how evangelicals have tried to keep a behavior from becoming normalized. But they’ve failed with premarital sex, parenthood outside of marriage, dancing, divorce, abortion and alcohol consumption.

One scholar believes gay rights with be as damaging to evangelicals as supporting slavery was to Southern Baptists after the Civil War.

HM: How politically entrenched are the megachurches with the Republican Party?

CW: It’s rare to find anyone in evangelical megachurches who will admit to being a Democrat. Megachurch preachers are unlikely to push particular candidates from the pulpit but they tie Republican policies to Biblical truth regularly.

And these churches give out Christian voter guides that elide the boundary between Republican issues and Christian issues by putting lower taxes and support of the war, for instance, right next to issues like abortion and gay rights.

HM: Are churches hurting or helping themselves by taking a more literal view of Scripture?

CW: For 20 years they were able to say that literalism built great faith and drew crowds, but that worm is beginning to turn.

Princeton scholar Robert Wuthnow recently published a book that challenges whether biblical literalism has been helped churches grow. He thinks rising income and education, which usually mean lower birthrates, have hurt mainline Protestant churches more than lapses in doctrine, as evangelicals claimed.

Now evangelicals are beginning to feel the impact lower birthrates that come along with their own rising income and education. It’s no accident that they are starting to tell women that having lots of children is what God wants them to do.

HM: When people leave (evangelical) Christianity, where are they going? What are they becoming?

CW: Perhaps a thousand evangelicals leave their churches every day and most are thought to leave faith altogether. Others drift into more mainstream Christian churches.

HM: How big of a role will evangelical Christians play in the upcoming presidential elections?

CW: The 18 percent of self-identified evangelicals who aren’t Religious Right supporters are a swing vote. They seem likely to go with the Democrats this year. The 7 percent who are dedicated and likely to be Religious Right members won’t. But they may not go with McCain either. That’s why he’s been courting such right wing preachers.

But he made the right choice to distance himself from them. Even the core 7 percent doesn’t go as far as Hagee does, and even some die-hard, nonevangelical Republicans might pull back from him if he and Hagee were too closely aligned.

I’d say the Republicans will do a bit of race baiting this year to keep those RR folks and others awake and afraid and running to the polls.

Democrats have to capture the swing vote, but I’d say it’s pretty much theirs. Check out my piece on Huffington Post for more analysis.

HM: How much influence do the non-religious have on national affairs?

CW: Hard to say.

Quietly? Probably a lot through individual efforts that don’t focus on faith specifically. But in a democracy the organized tend to be heard and have power in the media and at the polls. And the rich tend to get what they want through donations and lobbying. Nobody cares about their faith.

HM: (I ask this for the atheist audience:) If you were an atheist, how would you capitalize on the failings of the church?

CW: This is a great time for people with other ideas about moral and ethic behavior to assert themselves. I hope they will flood into the public square and begin a national discussion about who Americans are and want to be morally, spiritually and ethically.

As ideas about spirituality have changed, an atheist might be seen as a spiritual person even without belief in God. Merely being seen as “spiritual but not religious” is a good thing in this country and will open a lot of doors that being an out-of-the-closet atheist wouldn’t.

As the new atheism has struck chords with people who claim no religious title at all, we’ve realized that non-God-based ideas have a constituency.

But atheists have the same problem I’m having with publicity on my book. Mass media are afraid of the Religious Right audience. They don’t want to offend anyone.

Alternative media and the Internet are the best opportunity for the spread of new ideas.

HM: How should the church respond in return?

CW: I hope mainliners (Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists and Episcopalians) will be more aggressive about their ideas. They’ve been doing the hard work of trying to serve a changing country’s real needs. So they are in a great position.

Evangelicals are already changing. Some are giving up the idea that only they are saved and going to heaven. Others are focusing on environmentalism and poverty. Others are going the other direction and becoming even more conservative.

HM: What are your thoughts on the recent Evangelical Manifesto that criticized the politicization of the faith?

CW: It’s one of the clear signs that evangelicals are in trouble. Their politics have hurt them tremendously. So much so that even the word evangelical is now in bad odor and many don’t want to claim it.

HM: What has been the Christian response to your book?

CW: Christianity Today tried to demean it by making it sound as though it was nothing new. But of course they would. Image is everything and if the word gets out that evangelicals aren’t so powerful, Christianity Today won’t be either.

Many evangelicals know that I’m right. Of course, they would. I got most of my information from evangelical churches.

Some of them even think the truth of the book could help the cause of Christ.

Others tell me I’m wrong. But new evidence comes in every day. Those people just aren’t plugged in enough to know what’s happening.

Some send me Bible verses. When I was a kid in the Baptist church we had “sword drills,” which were our name for Bible verse recitation. Those who send me Bible verses are generally stabbing me with their swords.

HM: As a former religion reporter, what do you like and dislike about religion or “Faith & Values” pages across the country?

CW: They cover groups – denominations, organizations, theological schools. Media are good at that.

But the real action in American spirituality is not organized. So reporters have a hard time getting a handle on the most important stories.

You can read another interview with the author at Conversation at the Edge.

The Fall of the Evangelical Nation is in bookstores now.

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04.29.08

Interview with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi

Posted in Interviews, Friendly Atheist at 6:00 am by Hemant Mehta

A lot of you may have already read the excerpt from Matt Taibbi’s new book The Great Derangement in the current issue of Rolling Stone or throughout the atheist blogosphere.

If not, you at least owe it to yourself to read a couple of his Campaign 2008 articles for RS.

Taibbi is also a frequent correspondent on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

He recently spoke to me about his new book, religion and politics, and the New Atheists.

Hemant Mehta: In your book, you go undercover to a Christian church retreat and share anecdotes of the people who attended; you say they’re “beyond suggestible” when it comes to thinking differently from what their pastor tells them. Do you think there is any “cure” for them? Is there any way to teach them to think critically at that stage in their life?

Matt Taibbi: The reason many of these people turned to this kind of religion in the first place is because critical thinking turned out to be not such a positive experience for them. The very appeal of the religion is the surrender of that tiresome responsibility. The only way these people are going to reject that lifestyle is if it turns out to be ineffective in helping them negotiate the logistical problems of their lives. It’s similar to being a drug addict — until you run out of money/come down with AIDS or liver problems/develop too high of a tolerance, why stop taking the drug? But generally speaking I think the way to approach the problem is to get to people before they join these churches. These pastors find people who are miserable and lost and alone and get them to join their ranks; if there were more opportunities for people, or if people had more of a say in running their lives, I think they wouldn’t turn to these religions so much. One of the premises of the book I just wrote is that people have so little input into our national politics — a system that really only works for the monied insider class — that people have become alienated from the secular/political world and have retreated into various conspiratorial doctrines, on both the left and the right. We fix that, and maybe this goes away a little.

HM: Are there any Christian churches that support the notion of questioning what is said by the pastor?

MT: Well, there are certainly some religions that encourage intellectual curiosity more than others. Catholics are at least encouraged to be educated, to read books other than the Bible. You don’t see that in these fundamentalist churches.

HM: Do you think that pastors like John Hagee and the late Jerry Falwell are rising in popularity or are even Christians getting sick and tired of them?

MT: I think there are a few things at work. Overall, young people are less and less religious every year. The numbers for 16-29 year-olds go something like this: about 60 percent now call themselves Christian, and that compares to about 78 percent of Americans over 60 who call themselves Christian. But I’d bet that of those who are religious, relatively large numbers of them are going to megachurches of this sort and foreswearing the less extreme forms of the religion. I remember visiting southern Ohio on a story about the congressional race between Jean Schmidt and Victoria Wulsin and finding most of the small protestant churches in the district — a district that had a booming population thanks to high numbers of carpet bagging out-of-towners flocking to new corporate campuses — rapidly losing parishioners to the giant, McDonald’s style megachurches newly erected in the area. The population is now increasingly suburban and you have more people moving from place to place to chase jobs. For those people, it’s easier to just slide into a generic giganto-church with a big local TV presence than it is to root out some smaller church. It’s like anything else — if you’re in a strange place, are you going to shop at Home Depot, or will you take the time to find the mom-and-pop hardware store? And the megachurches are built around charismatic leaders of this sort. So I’d say it’s half-and-half — they’re losing popularity as a share of the whole population, gaining as a share of the religious demographic.

HM: What role should religion play in the political arena?

MT: Well, I’m an atheist/agnostic, so I would say none. People should stick to solving the problems they have the tools to solve. If you have a budget crisis, well, human beings can do the math, work out a new tax/spending strategy, and fix that. But we don’t have any tools for [divining] the will of God as it relates to, say, a new problem like high school shootings, the Iraq war, or the AIDS virus. All we have are the opinions of religious leaders whose motives may or may not be pure, and whose grasp of logic may or may not be of the highest quality. If you inject religion into the equation, the debate is necessarily going to be subjective, emotional, and inconclusive. It’s also very easy for unscrupulous people to use religion to further various ends for other reasons. Hagee’s humping of Israel is a great example. How do you get fundamentalist Christians to support the financial subsidy of/military aid to a Jewish state? Easy; you convince them the world is going to end soon, and that we’re going to be on the wrong side of Armageddon unless we support Israel.

HM: How strong will the Christian support be for John McCain in the upcoming election?

MT: Yeah, I don’t know. I’ve heard some ugly stuff about McCain in those circles. Then again, Hillary isn’t too popular either. In my church they taught us that Hillary’s first act as president would be to tax the churches. So McCain may get some support by default. As for his relationship to Hagee — that’s purely an AIPAC (Israeli lobby) relationship. Both are heavy AIPAC guys. It has nothing to do with religion.

HM: If McCain won the presidency in 2008, what sort of role would the Religious Right play in the next administration? Would it be any different from its current role in the Bush administration?

MT: I suspect it would be greatly reduced. McCain isn’t a true believer like Bush. McCain can barely conceal his annoyance at certain concessions he has to make to political reality, and religion is one of the things that seems to annoy him. I can’t imagine him having prayer breakfasts and that sort of thing a la Bush.

HM: Following up on that, if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama won the presidency, what role would religion play (politically) over the next several years?

MT: Let me put it this way — I doubt Jeremiah Wright will have much of a role. If Obama gets in, one of his first actions will be to get NASA to shoot Wright into space. Hillary will believe whatever the polls tell her to believe. Her real religion will be the church of the Pew/Gallup survey.

HM: What comes to mind when your read each of the following?

The “New Atheism”

MT: I used to agree with it wholeheartedly. The idea of making belief in God socially unacceptable made sense to me. Now I’m not so sure. The real crime of religions, it seems to me, is the arrogance religious leaders display in being so confident about the nature of the universe. Atheists can display the same arrogance about their beliefs. When people ask me what I believe about God, I tell them the truth, which is that I have no fucking idea. Obviously there are aspects to the human experience that are beyond our comprehension. Otherwise we wouldn’t all be so miserable/ridiculous all the time. I think the best thing to shoot for is a situation in which people are simply comfortable with the fact that life is a great and endlessly confounding, often very (painfully) funny mystery. The New Atheism sometimes seems to me to reject the idea that anything is unknowable — which, to me, if it were true, would be very sad.

HM: The Bible

MT: A hilarious and deeply twisted book, which in parts is poetic and in other parts so disturbed as to be almost incredible. The first time I read about those guys knocking on Lot’s door and demanding sex with those angels — and Lot offering his virgin daughter to them in their place — I wondered if the people who wrote this stuff were sane at all. Some of that stuff is pure comedy and it’s amazing to me that people don’t see through it. For instance, the subsequent scene where Lot is in the cave, and his daughters get him drunk and bang him in order to (they think) propagate the species — how can you read that and not see it as some elaborate story cooked up by Lot later on? “Well, we were in this cave and we thought the whole world had ended and I was the last man on earth, and I was drunk… It’s not like I was molesting my daughters or anything! After all, they came on to me!” I wonder even more about the people who read, say, the story of Abraham and Isaac and commend Abraham for being willing to sacrifice Isaac. What sane person doesn’t read this and wonder why anyone would worship a God who pulled such vicious and sadistic stunts? That stuff flips me out.

HM: Richard Dawkins

MT: Yeah, see above about the New Atheism. I get what he’s saying. I’m just not sure about the tone.

HM: Intelligent Design

MT: An intellectual absurdity. What’s odd to me about Intelligent design is that belief in it requires Christians to accept so much science that they might as well just accept the theory of evolution as a whole. I never understood the hostility toward evolution — except insofar as religious leaders always condemn anything they can’t really understand.

HM: The Pope

MT: Can’t stand it when the Pope comes to America and everyone goes gaga over him. Last week they preempted a Lakers game in my area to cover his sermon in Yankee stadium. That was enough for me to hate him forever.

HM: Ben Stein

MT: A paranoiac and a yahoo. Calling evolution an inspiration for Nazism is like calling physics an inspiration for Charles Whitman’s campus shootings.

HM: How soon will it be until we see more openly non-theistic people (such as Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA)) get elected to higher public office?

MT: I’m not holding my breath. Atheism is the last taboo in American politics. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it probably won’t be soon.

HM: What should atheists groups (like the Secular Coalition for America lobbying group) be doing to get a seat at the table in American politics?

MT: Hard to say. The problem atheists have is the same problem everyone has — there’s a monopoly on power held by the Republican/Democrat clan, and it’s been hard for any outside group to break that cycle. I think atheists probably need to work on the concept of dissenting parties getting a voice before they can get their specific agenda on the table.

HM: Should atheists be respectful, if not accepting, of Christian beliefs?

MT: That’s a good and difficult question. In the end, I think the answer is no. You can be kind to a person who, say, reaches forty and still believes in Santa Claus. But you don’t have to respect his beliefs. Religion for quite a long time has benefited by the respectful acquiescence of nonbelievers. I know I’m getting close to the views of the New Atheists I just criticized, but I think it might help if religion were made more generally ridiculous.

HM: What would Jesus do?

MT: He would puke into his cloak if he could see how things turned out.

The Great Derangement comes out on May 6^th.

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04.16.08

Interview with Rudis Muiznieks, Creator of Cectic

Posted in Interviews, Friendly Atheist at 4:00 pm by Hemant Mehta

Rudis Muiznieks is the creator of Cectic, the webcomic with an atheist/skeptical bent.

I have some favorites… like this one. And that one. This was good, too. Don’t forget this one. Or the topical ones.

Cectic is quickly growing in popularity, with each new comic now immediately followed by a flurry of links to it from the atheist blogosphere and beyond.

At least that what it seems like in my feed reader.

Rudis graciously answered some of my questions about his comic, background, and future plans.

Hemant Mehta: Who are you…?

Rudis Muiznieks: I’m a Canadian-born computer programmer and skeptic (now living in the USA), who also happens to draw comics in his spare time — some of which are even considered to be kind of funny.

HM: What’s your own background with atheism?

RM: My family was not very religious, and growing up in Canada you don’t get exposed to as much religion in the media as you do in the States, so it never really played a role in my life at all. I was aware of the concept of God, and I knew that there were people who liked to get together at churches and dress funny and sing about him and stuff, but it all just seemed so silly and uninteresting to me.

I can’t remember what triggered it, but when I was around 11 or 12 years old I prayed to God for the first time. I told him that if he really exists, and really cares if I believe in him, to just give me some kind of evidence that I can use to justify the belief. My suggestion at the time was to materialize a Bible or Quran (or whichever book was the right one) while I was praying. Needless to say, nothing happened. After that, I became more curious about how so many people could believe in a God that couldn’t be asked to do even a simple little thing like that. A few days of Internet research led me to the conclusion that agnostic atheism was the only position that made any sense. That’s pretty much still my sentiment today.

HM: What on earth do you really look like?

RM: That’s me in comic #26, and a younger me in #72.

HM: How did Cectic begin? Did you draw comics in the past?

RM: Cectic is my third webcomic.

My first one was called MikeyComics, which I started in the late 90s, and sporadically updated for several years while I was going to the University of Calgary — I believe it even did a short stint in the student newspaper there. It was mostly random violence, odd humor, and inside jokes shared between me and my friends. After I graduated and lost touch with most of the people who read it, I slowly lost interest in updating it and eventually shut it down.

I don’t own the domain they were hosted on anymore, and I haven’t had a reason to put the archive up somewhere else yet, but here’s an example of what they were like for anyone interested.

I started my second webcomic, called Psience, while MikeyComics was winding down. It was a single-panel gag strip that reflected my long-lasting obsession with the paranormal (ghosts, E.S.P., alien abductions, astral projection, and so on). The ideas and mythos around paranormal beliefs have always fascinated me, and at the time I was watching X-Files reruns and listening to Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM on a nightly basis.

Again, the archives aren’t available online anymore, but here’s a sample.

Eventually I decided to stop updating Psience as well, in order to focus more on the home business my wife and I were starting up at the time. A couple years ago I toyed with the idea of turning it into a skeptical-themed blog/webcomic combo, but ultimately decided that I didn’t have enough time to keep up with both a blog and a comic. I also decided that the single-panel format was too limiting, that I wanted to do things from a more skeptical angle, and that I wanted to take jabs at all unscientific beliefs — not just the paranormal. Cectic was the result.

HM: Where did the name Cectic come from? What does it stand for?

RM: It’s an acronym that I made up, but I can’t say what it stands for yet. It’s all part of my secret plan to take over the world.

HM: Can you tell us about Net Authority?

RM: I made Net Authority several years ago (2001, according to Wikipedia) because I had way too much free time on my hands. It was a spoof of religious fundamentalists trying to censor the entire Internet in order to “protect our children.” It included what I called the “Internet Acceptable Use Policy” — a list of rules that everyone who ever puts anything on the Internet must implicitly agree to, including “Thou shalt not post blasphemous materials,” and “Thou shalt not post pornographic materials.” The catch was that the definition of pornography was so loose that pretty much anything at all would qualify. I tried to make it as ridiculous and offensive as possible, including lumping interracial relationships and bestiality together as a single offense.

Originally, there was a form on the site where you could report people for violating the site’s policies, and it would automatically email the offender, warning them that they are under investigation by the Net Authority and must stop their porn-mongering ways. A couple popular blogs and news sites got reported and posted about it, which spawned tens of thousands of people being reported within a matter of days.

I was getting hundreds of emails and even phone calls (since my cell phone was the contact number for the domain name) from people who genuinely believed that I was a religious nutjob trying to censor the entire Internet. I even got a few threats of violence and legal action, including one which claimed that I “endangered the life of an unborn child” because the expectant mother was so shocked and horrified by the email she got. That last legal threat looked legit on the surface (though very poorly written), so I took it to the lawyer who worked for the company where I was a summer student at the time, and he recommended that I stop sending out the emails. Go figure.

After that I watered the site down a bit — it no longer sent out emails, instead keeping a database of offending websites (basically every site that ever got reported would be added to the database). It still got little spikes of notoriety here and there, but never anything approaching the insanity of when it first went up. I finally shut it down a few months ago because it had pretty much been universally outed as a prank, and maintaining it was starting to feel like a chore. Now I can put that time and energy toward Cectic instead.

HM: Word on the street is that you’re a young female.

RM: In my experience, I have learned that if it’s on the Internet, there is almost certainly at least a kernel of truth to it.

HM: Which Cectic comic is your favorite? Which one has generated the most controversy?

RM: Right now, I’d say my favorite comics are the ones that tied in with EDTheFuture.com from around Christmas last year. It was a lot of fun doing those ones and seeing all of the responses they got around the ‘net.

As for generating controversy, I would have to say that the very first comic is the one to beat. I still get comments from people who tell me that I screwed up and made a pro-creationism argument. Sadly, my application for fellowship at the Discovery Institute was denied, so I guess it still needs a little work.

HM: When did you realize Cectic was becoming popular?

RM: Occasionally seeing the comics pop up on the blogs that I regularly read is always pretty neat. Pharyngula, Bad Astronomy, RichardDawkins.net… and I think there was some other atheist one that’s linked to them before… The Amicable Atheist? The Affable Atheist? Something like that…

HM: I’m still awaiting the Friendly Atheist comic… That’s not a question. I’m just sayin’.

RM: Oh, the FRIENDLY Atheist! Yeah, that was it!

HM: When’s the book coming out? (There *is* a book coming out, right?)

RM: I don’t have any definitive plans yet, but there will be one at some point. By the way, if there are any publishers reading this out there that are dying to throw their money at me, then get in touch!

If you have any questions you’d like to ask Rudis, leave them in the comments, and I’ll pass them along!

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02.15.08

Interview with Jessica Hagy, Author of Indexed

Posted in Interviews, Friendly Atheist at 3:00 pm by Hemant Mehta

Jessica Hagy is the creator of Indexed, the webcomic that is thought-provoking, brilliant, and so deceptively simple that you wonder why you didn’t think of it first.

Until you realize Jessica has a unique mind that is difficult to imitate.

Her creations are not always about religion, but her notecard canvases includes these personal favorites of mine:

Jessica’s book, also titled Indexed, will be coming out on February 28^th.

She was kind enough to answer my questions about her creative process, religious background, and dangers associated with the job. She even made a special card for Friendly Atheist readers!

Hemant Mehta: What is your day job (and when are you going to leave it…)?

Jessica Hagy: I’m a freelance writer. I wouldn’t want to leave that, as much as I’d like to morph it from corporate to humor work. I’ve been picking up more random projects—and the more random they are, the more fun they tend to be. Hooray for that.

HM: When did you know Indexed had made it big?

JH: When it ran in the BBC magazine last year.

HM: Which Card has generated the most acclaim? Controversy?

JH: The 7 Sins card has been the most forwarded around. The most controversy, well, that depends on who you ask.

HM: Where do you get the inspirations for the Cards?

JH: Mostly just by watching very ordinary life go by and by eavesdropping (online and off).

HM: What is your thought process in creating a Card? (As in how do you decide the best graph/chart to use, which words to use, etc.)

JH: I draw way more than I post, and usually, it’s the graphs with the most interpretations that I post—the ones that act like Rorschach tests tend to be the more interesting to me.

HM: What’s the time frame for a Card from conception to blog?

JH: That depends on where I’m doodling. If I’m drawing in front of my computer, it’s just a few minutes. But sometimes a stack of cards will hide out in my backpack for a week before they make it to my scanner.

HM: What do you do with the Cards after they’ve been scanned and published?

JH: I’m on my 3^rd shoebox-type box, I think I’m up to 1300 cards now. They actually make boxes specifically for index cards, which tells me that I’m not the only compulsive card hoarder out there.

HM: Papercuts. A job hazard?

JH: Indeed! I have undertaken quite the dangerous profession.

HM: Some of your Cards seem to have an atheistic bent (like in the Faith section of your site). What are your own beliefs regarding religion?

JH: I think that a person can be a “good” person by learning from after-school specials or Grimm’s fairy tales, and religious stories are just another way to tell morality stories. I consider myself a secular humanist, and have since I escaped Catholic School when I was 14.

HM: What’s the deal with the self-portrait on your site…?

JH: I really never thought anyone would find my weird blog, and that’s just a little doodle I tossed out. Now, it’s sort of my elf icon. There are knitting sites that offer instructions on indexed hats(!)—and to answer the five emails I’ll get this week about it in advance: no, those are not underpants on my head.

HM: Does everyone you know just get you notecards for Christmas/your birthday/every-occasion-*ever*?

JH: Nope, but I have made friends with some cool guys at Staples who sell index cards to me in bulk. I expense that stuff on my taxes! I did get a spiffy new scanner for Xmas, though.

HM: How has this attention impacted your life?

JH: I actually kept indexed a secret from my real-life friends and family for at least 6 months, because the whole thing came out of nowhere and sorta freaked me out. Now, I’m just trying to have fun with it, to roll with the craziness.

I’ve met and gotten to work with so many great people through this blog—the biggest thing I think I’ve learned is that everyone (everyone!) is just an email away. And yeah, that’s what spammers have known for years, but it’s really a little fact that’s made me feel a lot less creatively isolated (I live in Ohio right now).

HM: Marry me? (Pretty please?)

JH: Sorry, I’m already married—but I do have some very friendly (and cute, don’t forget cute) atheist friends.

HM: 3×5 versus 5×7… Discuss.

JH: 3×5: quick, simple, visually easy to digest, fits in all pockets

5×7: long narrative or big net of info, also good for grocery lists

HM: What topics do you enjoy drawing about the most?

JH: I think the most fun is starting with one topic in mind and bouncing by tangents until that topic and another one align neatly. Structure helps with deadlines, but free-form association is like solving a puzzle. And cannibalism is always funny.

HM: What is the ideal response to someone reading your cards?

JH: I want my readers to smile.

And just for us, Jessica created this card:

Go get her book before it’s sold out everywhere

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01.02.08

Interview with Becky Garrison, author of The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail

Posted in Interviews, Friendly Atheist at 1:54 pm by Hemant Mehta

Becky Garrison is the author of the just-released The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail: The Misguided Quest to Destroy Your Faith (Thomas Nelson, 2008). She is also Senior Contributing Editor for The Wittenburg Door, an online Christian satire magazine.

The book’s description (on Amazon) is this:

… Garrison steels her pen and takes on the ungodly program of the New Atheists, skewering each argument with her sharp satiric wit. Garrison turns aside the atheists’ assault without ignoring its real criticisms, namely, the church’s inadequate response to war, evolution, medical ethics, social justice, and other important issues in the post-9/11 world.

Reading through the book, I didn’t think it responded to most of the New Atheists’ arguments, much less “each argument.” Garrison says that she wants the book to “build bridges” between atheists and Christians, but I just became more and more incensed as I read it. It wasn’t because she was attacking the New Atheists. It’s because I thought she was getting a lot of things just plain wrong.

To her credit, she did offer to answer my main questions (all of her responses are below).

And in full disclosure, after her diatribe against the New Atheists, she features a full-length interview with me (a.k.a. a “friendly” atheist) in the appendix. I’m appreciative that it was included and I like how I was portrayed.

That said, the rest of the book didn’t do anything to make me think the New Atheists are misinformed. Garrison is not an apologist or scientist, so she can’t take on a number of the New Atheists’ claims in certain areas (nor does she try to). But that leaves her with only her sense of humor to criticize them and I don’t believe atheists will be swayed by that.

You can judge for yourself.

Before we get to the interview, Garrison wanted to mention this:

I want to note that as the Senior Contributing Editor for The Wittenburg Door (www.wittenburgdoor.com), I am a religious satirist who takes aim at sacred cows. As I stated in The New Atheist Crusaders and Their Unholy Grail, I do not claim, nor do I desire to claim, a position as an apologist. There are many talented theological types that can tackle that beast. So, please don’t take everything I say at face value. When fellow satirist Jonathan Swift penned “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public” back in 1729, he never intended that the poor actually eat their own children as a means to alleviate poverty. Rather, as an Anglican clergyman living in Ireland, he employed his satirical skills to address the massive ills he saw before him. Likewise, while I make my statements with my tongue firmly implanted inside my cheek, buried beneath the literal text are golden grains of truth.

Here is my interview with Garrison:

Hemant Mehta: You say this early on:

“With so many people seeking spiritual solutions to our contemporary crises, how do we account for the recent rise of these New Atheists (’Brights’), a group that tends to define the ideological conflict as being ‘between the Brights and the Dims, the Rationalists and the Superstitious?’ In dishing their dirt, anti-God gurus Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett have succeeded in grabbing the media spotlight and the New York Times Best Seller List by ridiculing people of faith.”

(p. 3)

You say a lot of things in this paragraph that are inaccurate. This includes: saying New Atheists are the same as Brights (a lot of Brights would disagree with you), citing the opposite of a Bright as a Dim (instead of a Super), saying Dawkins/Harris/Dennett are anti-God (when that label could only correctly be applied to Christopher Hitchens), and saying they are ridiculing people of faith (rather than faith itself).

Becky Garrison: My sources for the term “Brights” were Gary Wolf, “The Church of the Non-Believers,” Wired, as well as Daniel Dennett’s ongoing use of the term. My suggestion to those who don’t want to be called “Brights” is to take it up with those that taught me the term. [bg] Also, unless a New Atheist turns into another Anthony Flew, the satirist in me will continue to call them anti-God gurus. BTW- The quote you cited is listed in the endnotes as follows: “The New Atheism,” Front Toward Enemy.

HM: You equate Sam Harris to Ann Coulter:

“For Harris, 9/11 was the spark that started the fire that led to The End of Faith, while Coulter used this tragic day as a license to spew racist remarks. Both are deplorable.”

(p. 7)

Do you actually think spewing racial hatred is the same as criticizing religion?

BG: To quote Sam Harris, “If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion” (See “the Temple of Reason,” Sun Magazine) and “Since 20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage, God is, quote, ‘the most prolific abortionist of all.’” (Letter to a Christian Nation, 38). Even though I have never been raped nor had an aberration, as a woman I find these two statements on par with Coulter’s most racist rant. Simply put, both are deplorable.

HM: You say this about Daniel Dennett:

“[Daniel Dennett] must be brilliant because no one can understand what he is talking about.”

(p. 7)

What is so difficult to understand? I found his books among the easier to read and most informative out of the New Atheist crop of books.

BG: My description of Daniel Dennett as a Monty Pythonesque philosopher, who reminds me of Dr. Jenkins in Animal House, represents my satirical take on philosophers. I would take Dennett semi-seriously except that when he replied to Orr’s review, he bragged that he only devoted a scant six pages of Breaking the Spell to the arguments for and against the existence of God. Apparently, he found almost all of the theological research on these topics to be “so dreadful that ignoring it completely seemed both the most charitable and most constructive policy.” (See “A Mission to Convert”). How can anyone pen a book critiquing God and yet refuse to engage with contemporary theological thinkers such as N.T. Wright, Jürgen Moltmann, and Walter Bruggeman? Using this illogic, I could stroll around the International UFO Congress in search of “scientific” data.

HM: You don’t argue against Christopher Hitchens because his publishers did not let you excerpt any material from God is Not Great. Couldn’t you still have argued against his ideas? He makes similar arguments against religion in his writings for Vanity Fair and Slate.

BG: Articles and other material can supplement an author’s arguments but they don’t take the place of the primary source material. As I noted in my book, how anyone can publish a book filled with anti-God diatribes and then not allow the person who penned this poison to get into the ring and go the distance with a seasoned satirist remains a mystery. While Hitchens possesses the ability to pen poisonous sound bites that make me laugh despite myself, he doesn’t make any substantial arguments that aren’t made by Harris, Dawkins or Dennett.

HM: You write:

“If you don’t want to believe in God, fine. But why can’t these New Atheists give followers of the faith the right to believe in God if we so choose? I’d be happy to have us all play in our own respective spiritual sandboxes, except that religious extremists and now the New Atheists keep throwing sand in our faces.”

(p. 18)

When did the New Atheists ever say they wanted to take away your right to believe in God? Certainly they want to convince you that an actual God’s existence is not supported by any evidence, but I’ve never heard them say you shouldn’t be allowed to believe if you so choose.

BG: Here I would beg to differ. I see no difference in the New Atheists’ tone and tactics from that of say Focus on the Family. Both camps employ rhetoric that implies they want to create a monochromatic world that’s viewed through their own particular lens.

HM: You have a section in the book where you compare the New Atheists’ “game plan” to the Iraq War strategy and say the New Atheists have no way to “define victory.” You say:

“Doesn’t look to me like they’ve come up with any comprehensive anti-God evangelism campaign whatsoever.”

(p. 22)

To me, that’s not the issue. If people are going to agree with the atheists, it has to happen organically, after a long thought process, hopefully sparked by the atheists’ books. There is no organized plan. The books were written by people fed up with the irrationality of religion — some writing without knowledge of the others. You ask what they are fighting for (p. 23), but isn’t it obvious that they’re fighting for what they believe (and most atheists would agree) is the truth? You also ask if promoting atheism serves the common good (p. 25), but again, that’s beyond the question of truth. It’s also beyond the question of atheism, which is merely one answer to one question (Do you believe in God?)…

BG: I’ve been able to engage in civilized discourse with the vast majority of atheists I’ve met. Again, I am employing the tools of satire to target four New Atheists, who have chosen to go after God with all the tact of a Star Wars stormtrooper. To quote evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson in his book Evolution Is for Everyone, “[Darwin’s] interactions with people from all walks of life were primarily respectful and cordial. We can learn from his humility and good humor in presenting his theory to others, in addition to the theory itself.” (page 6) So, perhaps certain contemporary Darwinians could take a page from Darwin’s playbook and follow not just his methodology but also his manners.

HM: At one point, you attack the idea that religion could be a meme. You write:

“According to Dawkins, a meme spreads from one brain to another brain, like a virus. Hence, one can become infested with religion as though faith was a contagious and deadly disease… If you’re confused, that’s OK. Most other scientists don’t seem to get it either.”

(p. 41)

Did you look at any of the numerous scientific papers written about memes? What resources were you using? When writing about how religion could be a meme, you say, “While this isn’t a popularity contest, wouldn’t the entire scientific community embrace wholeheartedly a discovery of this magnitude?” That seems to be a misunderstanding of what a meme is. It’s not a scientific “discovery” at all; it’s just a theoretical way of looking at certain ideas.

BG: The section where you extrapolated this quote contained my scientific sources. Here’s the rest of the quote: “Lewis Wolpert, a developmental biologist, states, ‘Just what a meme is and how it is distinguishable from beliefs, I find difficult.’ (See Lewis Wolpert, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief, 30.) Also, Orr sees “no difference between saying that my morals derive from, say, Christianity and saying that my brain hosts a ‘Christian morality meme.’” (See “A Mission to Convert”.) As I am a satirist not a scientist, I took great care to quote those scientists who were well respected in their respective fields by their contemporaries. I brought this up because I found it telling that except for Daniel Dennett, I was hard pressed to find anyone who wholeheartedly supported Dawkins’ application of the “meme” into the religious debate. Meanwhile, this scientist ridicules the efforts of fellow scientists Francis Collins, Joan Roughgarden and [Kenneth] Miller when they discuss the intersection of science and religion. I, for one, would love to see reasoned and well informed debates on this topic instead of the truly god-awful “Christian vs. Atheist Celebrity Death Match” where the worst of both sides of the debate was on full display.

HM: You write:

“I fully understand why New Atheists like Sam Harris believe an event such as 9/11 proves there is no God.”

(p. 84)

When did Harris write that? Do you know the difference between saying there is no god versus not believing that one exists in the first place? The New Atheists never say the former, just the latter.

BG: If Harris believes the latter, then I’d suggest he refrain from penning articles with inflammatory titles such as “There Is No God (and You Know It)” (The Huffington Post).

HM: There’s a part where you quote someone saying “The scientific method… cannot measure love and joy in a family. But it can measure a growing bank account, larger cars, and increasingly sophisticated gadgets.” You go on to say “In the end, which matters more?” This is a false dichotomy. It’s not that atheists want science to be the end-all-be-all for everything. But it’s the best method we have of discovering the truth. By using the quotation, you seem to be implying that the reason people use the scientific method is for their own self interest.

BG: I am quoting from Ron Sider’s seminal book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Here you raise the question that has plagued scientists, philosophers and theologians throughout centuries – “What is truth?” We can’t explore this question in a meaningful manner dialogue as long as Christian fundamentalists or their secular counterparts choose to demonize the other.

HM: You write:

“But when these New Atheists show their true religious colors by viewing evolution (aka science) as their God, my satirical sense starts getting antsy.”

(p. 130)

Obviously, no atheist considers evolution or science to be a religion. Hell, with proper evidence, good science can be overturned, whereas God is always supposed to be perfect and never changing. When do the New Atheists treat science as a religion?

BG: In a nutshell, there are limits to every discipline, a point those with a humble heart recognize and accept. As an outsider looking in, “select” New Atheists seem to have proclaimed Darwin as their God. If that is not the case, then I suggest they dial down their rhetoric and allow for a more nuanced discussion instead of speaking in absolutes. These four horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse come off just as odious and obnoxious as the most obstinate “family values” fanatics.

HM: You call my group the Secularist Student Alliance! (Footnote 21, p. 209) It’s the Secular Student Alliance! That’s just unforgivable…

BG: Sorry bud – I put in a request for it to be included in the second edition. A libation of your choosing is on me whenever we meet in person. After all, my mantra is “you state your views, I state mine and then we go out for a drink.” Cheers.

…

Garrison also added this addendum:

Right after I sent off my questions to you, I got a review copy of The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andrew Comte-Sponville. As written on the book jacket “According to Conte-Sponville, we have allowed the concept of spirituality to become intertwined with religion and have lost touch with the nature of a true spiritual existence. In order to change this, however, we need not reject the ancient traditions and values that are part of our heritage; rather, we must rethink our relationship to these values and ask ourselves whether their significance comes from the existence of a higher power or simply from the human need to connect to one another and the universe.” While we all may reach a different conclusion as to the origin of these values, I pray those of us who are willing to engage the other can enter into this kind of a dialogue sans shouting. (My satirical self only rears its head when I’m unduly provoked by those who force fed their religious metanarratives on the rest of us like we’re some goose being prepped as their fois gras treat. [vbg])

If you have any questions for Garrison, she has agreed to answer them. Please leave them in the comments and I’ll pass them along to her.

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11.07.07

Interview with A.J. Jacobs, Author of The Year of Living Biblically

Posted in Interviews, Friendly Atheist at 12:06 am by Hemant Mehta

If A.J. Jacobs was curious about Christianity, I’m surprised he didn’t just build his own church.

I wouldn’t put it past him.

Jacobs is the author of The Year of Living Biblically, a memoir of his year-long quest to follow all the rules in the Bible.

All 700+ of them.

The book is hilarious. Go read it.

Here’s Publishers Weekly:

… He didn’t just keep the Bible’s better-known moral laws (being honest, tithing to charity and trying to curb his lust), but also the obscure and unfathomable ones: not mixing wool with linen in his clothing; calling the days of the week by their ordinal numbers to avoid voicing the names of pagan gods; trying his hand at a 10-string harp; growing a ZZ Top beard; eating crickets; and paying the babysitter in cash at the end of each work day. (He considered some rules, such as killing magicians, too legally questionable to uphold.)

Some of my favorite parts include the moment he begins the journey:

Within a half hour of waking, I check the Amazon.com sales ranking of my last book. How many sins does that compromise? Pride? Envy? Greed? I can’t even count.

… and when he discusses the strictest Sabbath keepers:

You can’t plant, so gardening is off-limits. You can’t tear anything, so toilet paper must be pre-ripped earlier in the week. You can’t make words, so Scrabble is often considered off-limits (though at least one rabbi allows Deluxe Scrabble, since the squares have ridges, which provides enough separation between letters so that they don’t actually form words).

There are also the scenes where he out-Bible-talks a Jehovah’s Witness, goes to the Creation Museum in Kentucky, and attends a meeting of the NYC Atheists.

His wife, a good sport about all this, has to go along for the ride. She had already lived through his previous project, reading through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. When he tells her his new idea, she responds, “I was kind of hoping your next book would be a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt or something.”

There are a number of points that Jacobs gets completely right, like these:

For most of my life, I’ve been working under the paradigm that my behavior should, ideally, have a logical basis. But if you live biblically, this is not true. I have to adjust my brain to this.

…

The prohibition against mixing wool with linen comes right after the command to love your neighbor. It’s not like the Bible has a section called “And Now for Some Crazy Laws.” They’re all jumbled up like a chopped salad.

And I saved my favorite bit for last:

I asked [atheist group leader Ken] if it’s hard to lead a group of atheists. Like herding cats, he says. Atheists aren’t, by nature, joiners. “They’re individualists,” he says. Which perhaps explains why we had thirty separate checks for lunch.

A.J. Jacobs was kind enough to answer questions for this site:

Hemant: Why is your wife still with you?

A.J.: No doubt, my wife is a saint. She really did endure a lot. Consider the biblical laws of sexual purity. You’re not supposed to touch a woman during her “time of the month.” But if you take the Bible really literally, you cannot sit on a seat where a menstruating woman has sat. My wife thought this was incredibly sexist. So in retaliation, during her time of “impurity,” she sat on every seat in our apartment, and I had to spend much of the year standing.

Hemant: What was your process of writing? (Would you live Biblically all day and write about it the next day? Would you take notes while events happened?)

A.J.: I wrote most of the book as I lived it. I wanted to give the book an immediacy, so that readers could feel like they’re coming on the journey with me.

Hemant: What is your next project?

A.J.: My wife says I owe her big time after my last two projects – the Bible one and the year I spent reading the encyclopedia for my previous book, The Know It All. She says I need to do The Year of Giving Her Foot Massages. Not sure the publisher’s going to go for that.

I do have a couple of ideas – I love these immersion projects. But I want to be really sure before I dive in. Because they consume my life.

Hemant: Have you been criticized at all for being *too* objective? (i.e. Besides simply saying you aren’t a Creationist, why not attack that position more?)

A.J.: Not too much. I thought I might encounter that, but so far, I haven’t.

But to answer the question as to why I didn’t attack creationism more strongly: I figured you could find dozens of creationism critiques written by scientists more qualified than I am. What I hadn’t seen as much were anthropological explorations of the creationism movement. What is it about this six-day version that holds such allure? Why is it so comforting?

Also, I figured my whole book is, in a sense, a (gentle) attack on literal interpretation of the Bible. I show that if you take everything literally, you act like a crazy man.

Hemant: What are your views on “fundamentalist” Christians?

A.J.: Well, part of my aim was to become the ultimate fundamentalist for a year, to show that if you are too literal or legalistic when approaching the Bible, you are making a mistake.

So of course, that’s my main view. But I did enjoy learning more about them. Before my year, my view of fundamentalist Christians was black and white. Now it’s much more complex and filled with shades of gray.

First off, I learned that Evangelical Christianity is not synonymous with fundamentalism. Yes, there?s the Christian right. But there?s also a group of evangelicals called the Red Letter Christians.

Yes, there’s the Christian right. But there’s also a group of evangelicals called the Red Letter Christians. They focus on Jesus’ words – the ones printed in red in the old Bibles. Their argument is that Jesus never talked about homosexuality, so they don’t put any energy into opposing gay marriage. Instead, Jesus talked a lot about helping the poor and society’s outcasts, so that’s what they focus on.

I also visited [Jerry] Falwell’s headquarters: Obviously, the man held some truly reprehensible views (e.g. AIDS was the wrath of God, etc), which are presumably shared by some of his followers. At the same time, paradoxically, the Falwell churchgoers are some of the kindest people I’d ever met in my life. Genuinely kind. Not pretending. It was a study in sweet and sour.

One group I refused to embed myself with was the Dominionists — those who advocate a return to Old Testament theocracy (executing adulterers and blasphemers). There’s no arguing they are scary.

Hemant: Where on the spectrum of Christianity, from extremely-liberal to Pat-Robertson-Fundamentalist, do you think the Bible intends for a Christian to lie at?

A.J.: It’s an interesting question – but I think there’s a problem with it. The problem is, the Bible is not monolithic. It was written and edited by dozens of people over hundreds of years, so it’s hard to say, the Bible is X or Y.

There are some passages that are to the right of Pat Robertson – ones that encourage and the slaying of enemies (e.g. execute astrologers and rebellious children). but there are others that we’d consider liberal –the Bible contains what was probably the first welfare system. (You were not supposed to harvest the corners of your field, so that the poor could come and eat it).

The thing is, there is always picking and choosing when following the Bible. That was one of my big conclusions. Fundamentalists call this “cafeteria religion.” But I say, what’s wrong with cafeterias? I’ve had some great meals at cafeterias. It’s all about picking the right parts, the parts about compassion and loving your neighbor, not the parts about condemning homosexuality.

Hemant: Is there any rule you regret following?

A.J.: The Bible says to build a hut once a year to commemorate our forefathers. I live in New York, and couldn’t get permission to build the hut on the sidewalk, so I ended up building it in my living room. That might have been taking it too far.

Hemant: What has been your favorite question asked during a book signing?

A.J.: People want to know about my beard. Just for the record, I kept it in a Ziploc bag under my sink. In case anyone wants a souvenir tuft.

Hemant: Which Biblical rule is the most important for us all to live by?

A.J.: I know it’s the obvious answer, but it’s a good one: The Golden Rule. It really is a beautiful notion.

Oh, and also the one about if two men are in a fight, and the wife of one of the men grabs the genitals of the other man, her hand shall be cut off.

Hemant: Where are you on your spiritual journey now? Have you become any more religious (or perhaps more atheistic)?

A.J.: I started out as an agnostic. By the end of the year, I had become what a minister friend of mine calls a “reverent agnostic.” Whether or not there’s a god, I think there’s something to the idea of sacredness. That rituals can be sacred, the Sabbath can be sacred. I acknowledge that this sacredness could be human-made. But I still think it’s important.

(Someone at one of my readings called himself a God-fearing atheist, which I thought was a nice phrase as well).

Hemant: Did any rules contradict other rules? How did you reconcile that?

A.J.: Ah yes. As the great theologian Ned Flanders said, “Why is this happening to me? I followed everything in the Bible – even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff.”

It can be as simple as the command to love your wife, and the command not to gossip. My wife was dealing with a horrible client, and was looking for my support, but I refused to engage in “evil tongue.” She got really pissed. I think I made the wrong decision.

Again, it’s all about picking and choosing.

Hemant: What was your least favorite book of the Bible?

A.J.: Leviticus really is a tough one. It does have some wise laws (love thy neighbor) but you also have to plow through several pages describing skin ailments and mildew. It’s not edge of your seat reading.

Hemant: Did any book in the Bible surprise you in terms of content?

A.J.: Two did in particular. First, Ecclesiastes. It’s a beautifully written book, and I believe it has the most modern sensibility in the Bible. It acknowledges the mystery of life — and its seeming randomness. The race does not go to the swift, as it says. In the face of life’s uncertainty, you should eat and drink and enjoy the honest labor. It’s almost got an Epicurian tilt to it.

Second, the Song of Solomon. Here’s proof that the Bible is not always anti-sex. The Song of Solomon is basically a love poem, and it can get steamy at times. Like this line: Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies.”

Hemant: What was your most creative loophole for following a “morally objectionable” or now-illegal rule?

A.J.: I’d probably say there were two.

First, stoning adulterers. The Bible doesn’t say the size of the stones, so I went with pebbles. This man came up to me in the park and asked me why I was dressed so strangely (I was wearing my sandals and white garments). I explained my project. He said, well I’m an adulterer, are you going to stone me? I said that would be great. So I took out my handful of pebbles. He actually grabbed the pebbles from my hand and threw them at me. So in retaliation, I tossed one back at him. An eye for an eye.

Second, the proverbs say to punish your child with a rod of discipline. That’s not my parenting style. So I went on the Internet and bought a Nerf rod and hit him with that. But he thought it was hilarious, and hit me back with a whiffle bat, so the whole thing was a fiasco.

Hemant: Were there any rules that sounded crazy at first but began to make sense once you started living them?

A.J.: Honestly, I did start to see the allure of some of the crazy ones. I’m obsessive compulsive, so the rituals dovetailed quite nicely with my OCD.

For instance, the food taboos turned out to be interesting. No pork, no shellfish (and no eagles or hawks or osprey either). The idea of being really aware of what you put in your mouth – where the food comes from, how it’s prepared – it made eating more of a mindful act.

Hemant: Did any rules turn you into a worse person?

A.J.: I don’t think stoning adulterers made me better. Also, telling the truth all the time isn’t really a good idea. I wrote an article on it for Esquire called Radical Honesty and the chaos that occurs if you never, ever lie.

Hemant: What were your impressions of the atheist group you visited? (You can be honest. We’re a thick-skinned bunch!)

A.J.: When I first heard about the atheist group, I thought it was paradoxical. Like an apathy parade. I didn’t think atheists were joiners by nature. I thought they were ultra-individualists. And in a sense I was proved right – at the meeting at the Greek restaurant, they asked the waiter for thirty separate checks, one for each atheist.

In truth, I think I underestimated the appeal of organized atheism. (When I wrote my book, the Hitchens and Dawkins books had yet to hit). I thought atheism would always be the David to the religious lobby’s Goliath. I thought it’d be hard to rally people around a negative, a lack of belief. But I think I underestimated that they could be rallied by reason and science.

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11.04.07

Interview with Eugenie Scott

Posted in Interviews, Friendly Atheist at 7:59 pm by Hemant Mehta

At the Atheist Alliance International convention, I had a chance to talk with Eugenie Scott.

Scott is the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education and one of the most vocal opponents to Intelligent Design. She is often quoted by the media as an expert in science education.

She is also the author of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction and Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools.

Thanks to all those who submitted questions for the interview.

The transcribed conversation is below:

Hemant: After the Dover case, are there any schools in the US having major battles with Intelligent Design (ID) proponents?

Eugenie: Yes, because even though the Discovery Institute has changed its strategy and is no longer promoting the idea that schools should have policies teaching Intelligent Design, they’re still out there. The Intelligent Design idea is still floating around among the masses, shall we say, so we fully expect to get school districts on their own, not being directed by the Discovery Institute… [saying,] “Gee, let’s teach Intelligent Design!” But I have a feeling that’s going to stop pretty quickly.

Hemant: Intelligent Design [is going to stop quickly]?

Eugenie: Efforts to try to get policies to try to teach Intelligent Design… now that’s not quite the same thing. I think the Discovery Institute figured out, actually a couple years before Dover, that they bet on the wrong horse. The phrase “Intelligent Design” is a bad one for their purposes, because any judge is going to say, “Hmm… who’s the designer?” And… it’s going to be clear that the designer is going to be God. And you can’t teach that in the public schools. So they’re looking around for an “agentless” form of Creationism.

Hemant: What will be the next incarnation of the Creationism/ID folk?

Eugenie: A [quick] answer to this is that, yes, ID is still going to be popping up in school districts… because they didn’t necessarily get the memo from the Discovery Institute to shift to the new strategy. But I’m sure the Discovery Institute is searching around for an agentless form of Creationism that doesn’t have the liabilities of the phrase “Intelligent Design,” which implies a designer, which implies God, which gets you in trouble with the 1^st amendment… sort of the equivalent of what the Creation Science people years ago came up with as “Abrupt Appearance Theory” which doesn’t have an agent… just “poof, there they are, and we can explain this scientifically!”

But what they are concentrating on is the “Teach the Controversy” approach which in translation means “Pretend [to students] that scientists are arguing about whether Evolution happened.” They have a number of euphemisms for this approach. The one they first practiced… was in the Ohio science standards fight of 2002. And that was the “critical analysis of Evolution.” Now these are all terms of art. “Critical analysis of Evolution” sounds very sensible. It sounds perfectly pedagogically correct; why shouldn’t you have a critical examination of anything scientific? That’s fine. But the context here is “critical analysis of Evolution” means “criticize Evolution”…

Both sides [in Ohio] claimed victory. The evolution side said they were just talking about analyzing aspects of evolution. So this is about looking at arguments about mechanisms or about the pattern of evolution… and, of course, the Creationists said, no, this is about whether Evolution took place…

…

Another euphemism they use is “teach the strengths and weaknesses of evolution”… somehow, we have to help the American public understand that when we talk about the “critical analysis of Evolution” or the “strengths and weaknesses of Evolution” or “teach the controversy” or “teach Evolution as theory, not fact,” all of these various euphemisms, what they’re really talking about is teaching bad science in the name of fairness. And it’s not fair to students to teach them wrong stuff…

Hemant: Should we teach ID in the classroom if only to say “Here’s why it’s not valid”?

Eugenie: No… just for purely practical reasons. In order to teach ID, a student has to know a great deal about molecular biology [and] about cellular biology. In order to understand [William] Dembski’s probability theory argument, students have to know a fair amount about probability. Now… how much background knowledge would students have to be given to get them up to the point where they can understand why these arguments are really invalid? It’s not that high school students are incapable of learning this, but teachers don’t have the time to do it.

Hemant: What should our next president do to advocate good science?

Eugenie: On the national level, there’s actually very little that can be done to affect the curriculum… education is very decentralized in this country… Schools boards have a tremendous amount of authority, far more authority than the president does. But that said, it’s a bully pulpit and a great deal more can be done just to change the tone and the mood about science.

Hemant: Where are the attacks on science coming from?

Eugenie: Attacks on evolution come in any state, but they’re more likely to take place in small towns than cities. And that’s a demographic phenomenon… In the small towns… you have less variability. You have less diversity of political entities that are vying for authority. And in a small community, it’s quite possible that religious conservatives might be a substantial minority. And they tend to be very concerned about education, more so than maybe some other pressure groups in the community, and so they will focus their attentions on the school board and who’s being elected and what policies are being followed… that can happen anywhere… small towns in the northwest, the blue states of Washington and Oregon… we’ve had Creationism problems there. We’ve had Creationism problems in upstate New York…

Hemant: Are there any schools that have managed to please both the scientists and the ID-proponents?

Eugenie: No. Because what scientists and teachers want is for the consensus view of science to be taught… you’re not dealing with fringe ideas… in fact, in high school science, you don’t have enough time to deal with all of the consensus science. The ID people want to [make] an idea that’s outside of science — that has not been incorporated into science – mainstream.

Hemant: Is there an epidemic of science teachers not teaching (or minimally teaching) Evolution because they don’t know it or simply to avoid any conflict?

Eugenie: We don’t have data on that… it’s my impression that a substantial number of teachers around the country just find Evolution too big a pain in the fanny to deal with. They want to avoid controversy so they just skip it.

Hemant: What should science teachers do when confronted with a student who does not accept