Since this is becoming Accommodationism Week on Daylight Atheism, let me turn to the latest piece hushing atheists, written by Quinn O'Neill on 3 Quarks Daily. It plays a familiar tune, so I'll strike a few well-chosen notes of discord.

Suppose you could choose either to maximize human rationality or to maximize human happiness. For most of us, even for the most strident advocates of reason and critical thinking, I suspect the choice would be happiness or well-being.

I deny, other than in extraordinarily rare circumstances, that these two things are separable. On the contrary, I think it's obvious that when you list the most notable evils of human history, nearly all of them were caused by irrationality, dogma, and superstition. This ought to be expected, since basing your decisions on irrational criteria means not basing them on tangible facts of human welfare, which is the only means of moral reasoning that consistently produces happiness. When people make choices based on delusions, any side effect of improving human well-being is purely coincidental, so poor reasoning usually produces bad results.

O'Neill uses this as a jumping-off point to suggest that "Delusions can provide comfort", and it would be mean and horrible of us to take away the superstitions that people rely on. But when it comes to the actual benefits of delusion, her list seems, shall we say, a little thin:

Superstitions can improve athletic performance, and psychics and astrologers can help people deal with the discomfort of not knowing what the future holds.

That's it? Atheists shouldn't debunk superstition because it makes people better at sports, and because psychics make people feel temporarily better with soothing lies? This hardly seems worth comparing to vaccines, genetic medicine, space exploration, biotechnology, and the Internet. If these are the biggest benefits that irrationality has to offer, then O'Neill has made my point for me: We are more than capable of doing without it.

We are predisposed to delusional thinking because our brains have evolved this way; it was evolutionarily advantageous. It is human nature to be somewhat delusional. To expect people to be perfectly rational is to ask us to defy our own nature. It isn't reasonable.

This is the kind of unfounded, baseless just-so story that gives evolutionary psychology a bad name. How on earth could O'Neill or anyone else know that at some point in humanity's past, there was positive selection for being delusional?

Let me suggest another hypothesis. Contrary to O'Neill's assertion, I would argue that all else being equal, more accurate perception of reality is always an improvement. However, evolution, being a blind watchmaker, tends to produce good-enough solutions rather than theoretically optimal solutions, and as such, has settled on the most accurate level of perception that could reasonably be achieved. Like the appendix or the inverted retina, the human tendency toward irrationality is a lingering imperfection; it remains either because the right mutations haven't arisen or because we're trapped on a hill of adaptation where making things better would require first making them worse.

How do we know which of these is the truth? We don't. But that simply means that O'Neill and others should refrain from basing arguments on unverifiable claims about what psychological traits evolution has favored.

Up until now, O'Neill's arguments have just been flawed and weak. But the next part is where it takes a turn into scary:

Freedom of religion can be a confusing term that people on both sides of religious debates can wrongly think they advocate. Religious freedom means that individuals have the right to embrace religious beliefs of their own choosing... Personal and vitriolic attacks on religious individuals are also inconsistent with religious freedom. If we value religious freedom, respect for people's right to hold irrational beliefs is in order...

Got it? People like us "wrongly think" we understand what freedom of religion means. In fact, to uphold freedom of religion, we must cease - and, apparently, outlaw - any speech that offends or upsets believers, because such behavior is "inconsistent" with respecting religious freedom. Let me suggest a few of the more likely ways this might play out:

• Many Christians consider same-sex marriage to be extremely offensive and contrary to their religious beliefs. Should we outlaw this so as to respect their religious freedom?

• Many Christians are offended by generic prayers that don't mention Jesus. Should we require all ceremonial invocations at public events to include a reference to Jesus?

• Many Roman Catholics (and some Protestants) are offended by the widespread availability of birth control and abortion. Should we restrict the availability of these technologies so as to respect their religious convictions?

• Many Muslims consider it extremely offensive to depict Muhammad in drawings or art. Should we outlaw such depictions? If so, what should be the penalty for people who defy this law?

• Many Muslims consider it very offensive for women to go out in public with their hair uncovered. Should women be required to wear headscarves in public places so as not to offend them?

• Many Muslims consider it offensive for non-Muslims to use the word "Allah", even if that word is the correct term for "God" in the speaker's own language. Should Muslims be allowed exclusive use of this word and all others banned from saying it?

• Many Hindus consider it offensive to eat beef. Should we ban McDonald's and Burger King so as not to offend them?

• Many Orthodox Jews consider it offensive to drive or work on the Sabbath. Should we ban people from doing this in majority-Orthodox neighborhoods?

O'Neill might say that eating at McDonald's isn't a "personal attack" on a Hindu, or using condoms isn't a "personal attack" on a Catholic, but why should this matter if they provoke the same level of offense? Isn't the point of her essay that we should respect religious freedom by not offending people's deeply felt and sincere religious convictions? If protecting from offense is the goal, then surely the relevant factor is whether an act causes offense, not how that offense is delivered.

And for that matter, why should religious beliefs be the only ones deserving of special protection from offense and ridicule? Political beliefs, for example, are equally central to many people's conceptions of self, and the right to hold them is indisputably protected by law. Should we outlaw negative campaign ads and forbid politicians to debate each other, in order to respect the right of their opponents' supporters to hold their own beliefs? Should we ban political cartoons and censor the editorial sections of newspapers?

What lies down this road is a balkanized society, divided into hermetically sealed compartments whose members are forbidden to speak to each other, lest they cause offense by inadvertently exposing someone to an idea they don't agree with. I can't seriously believe that anyone, even O'Neill, considers this a desirable vision of the future.

People being offended isn't like car crashes or muggings, a harm that should be prevented as much as possible. Rather, it's an inevitable consequence of the testing of ideas that's a vital part of the democratic model. The only way our society makes moral progress is by challenging and criticizing dominant beliefs, even though this is certain to anger and upset people who benefit from the status quo. Having freedom of belief means only that the government will not interfere in this process by using its coercive power to force people to believe something. It most certainly does not mean that people have the right to be free of criticism. It amazes me that so many otherwise intelligent and perceptive people are incapable of grasping this distinction. The way we exercise our freedom of belief is by criticizing and, yes, even attacking beliefs. That's what freedom means, and it's O'Neill and her allies, not us rabble-rousing atheists, who don't understand that.

In this section, Collins poses the questions of whether the near-ubiquity of the search for the existence of a supernatural being represents "a universal but groundless human longing for something outside ourselves to give meaning to a meaningless life and to take away the sting of death" (p.35). The search for meaning in one's life is an important question, but I don't think the search for the divine stops there. We have a curious approach to the world, and we like to understand why things happen. When we don't understand why things happen, we have throughout history tended (sadly, some still do) to invoke gods. Don't know why the sun goes around in the sky? Oh, that's Apollo's chariot. Not sure why there's thunder and lightning? It's due to Ah Peku, Inazuma, Karai-Shin, Lei Kung, Ninurta, Orko, Pajonn, Tien Mu, Thor, Zeus, or several others. Let's get more modern: Not sure where the universe came from, or why it seems so finely-tuned? Yahweh did it.

Back to Collins' point here: God gives meaning to a meaningless life and takes away the sting of death. I will grant that humanity has no ultimate purpose in the universe; in another five billion years, our sun will die and our planet with it. (I use "humanity" loosely here knowing that, since it took about three billion years to go from single-celled organisms to humans, our descendants five billion years hence will most likely look nothing like us.) Furthermore, some physicists theorize the universe itself will die a sort of heat-death; it's not a rosy picture for ultimate purpose. But just because there is no ultimate purpose does not mean life is without meaning. Many atheists find meaning in life. For me, I find meaning in: raising my son, sharing my life with my wife, enjoying time spent with friends, caring for my neighborhood, a chance to play golf, a good scotch. And that list is certainly not exclusive.

I find Collins' statement about removing the sting of death to be puzzling, especially given that it seems religious people are still rather afraid of dying. There are plenty of web sites addressing the Christian fear of death, so it leads me to think that there really isn't much sting taken out by a belief in God. If anything, there is an added fear of going to Hell, even if one thinks one's done the right things to avoid Hell. I think the frank and honest acknowledgement that there is no god, no heaven, and no hell, and that nothing other than death happens when you die is rather liberating. Furthermore, in addition to taking the sting out of death (or at least reducing that sting), this acknowledgement has the added bonus of provoking me to do the best I can in this life, rather than treating this life as a proving grounds for some afterlife.

I've told you all the story of how I became an atheist. But I've never written about what came before that: what made this a topic of interest for me, what first motivated me to think about these issues at all. Well, today I want to tell that part of the story.

This was around my last year of high school. I was surfing Internet chat rooms when I saw someone in one of them give an offhand reference to the site Things Creationists Hate by Bob Riggins, a sarcastic list of things that contradict creationist belief - everything from sand piles to the apostle Paul.

I read the whole page the first time I saw it, and I was hooked. I went back several times in the following weeks, reading new things as the author added them, and then branched out into exploring other websites, including some with a snarky and irreverent attitude towards religion (there was one I remember called Fade to Black, now defunct). I wasn't yet an atheist at that point, but it got me to realize that claims made in the name of religion could be questioned, even mocked - and that was what set the stage for my subsequent deconversion.

I bring this all up because, yet again, there's an ongoing tiff with an accommodationist - in this case the astronomy blogger Phil Plait - who's chastising the skeptical and atheist community for being excessively vitriolic and insulting:

"How many of you here today used to believe in something - used to, past tense - whether it was flying saucers, psychic powers, religion, anything like that... [and] no longer believe in those things and became a skeptic because somebody got in your face, screaming, and called you an idiot, brain-damaged and a retard?"

It's hard to disagree with the point as he phrases it, but the problem is this: Plait never said who, specifically, he was talking about. In fact, he made it a point not to cite any specific examples. This makes it very difficult to evaluate the merit of his argument, and raises the suspicion that he's just throwing up an inflammatory straw man. I don't know very many skeptics whose approach consists of getting in people's faces and screaming insults at them. But I do know many skeptics who mercilessly mock ridiculous beliefs, who argue using snark and sarcasm, and who forthrightly call irrational nonsense what it is. Is Plait talking about them? Is he talking about me? Where, specifically, does he think the line is? His argument isn't helpful if it doesn't answer these questions.

Richard Dawkins penned a comment on Jerry Coyne's site in response:

As Jerry said, Plait quoted no examples of skeptics who scream insults in people's face. I don't think I have ever met, seen or heard one. But I could quote plenty of skeptics who employ ridicule, who skewer pretentiousness, stupidity and ignorance using wit. Listening to such ridicule, and reading it, is one of the great joys life has to offer. And I suspect that it is very effective.

My second point is that Plait naively presumed, throughout his lecture, that the person we are ridiculing is the one we are trying to convert. Speaking for myself, it is often a third party (or a large number of third parties) who are listening in, or reading along... when I employ ridicule against the arguments of a young earth creationist, I am almost never trying to convert the YEC himself. That is probably a waste of time. I am trying to influence all the third parties listening in, or reading my books. I am amazed at Plait's naivety in overlooking that and treating it as obvious that our goal is to convert the target of our ridicule. Ridicule may indeed annoy the target and cause him to dig his toes in. But our goal might very well be (in my case usually is) to influence third parties, sitting on the fence, or just not very well-informed about the issues. And to achieve that goal, ridicule can be very effective indeed.

As usual, Dawkins is correct, and I offer myself as Exhibit A. The whole reason I'm an atheist, the reason that Ebon Musings and Daylight Atheism exist, is because of those websites which made me realize that religious beliefs could be poked fun at. Ridicule has its uses: If skillfully deployed in an argument, it can be more persuasive than anything else - nothing gets someone on your side like making them laugh. It helps break down the stifling aura of solemnity and respect that religions have convinced themselves they deserve, and that they use to smother legitimate criticism. And it communicates, more eloquently than any cool and dispassionate argument ever could, that it's okay not to believe this stuff!

Unlike some people who are receiving honoraria from the Templeton Foundation, I credit Phil Plait with good faith. I think his words were intended to remedy what he sees as a genuine problem, not as a cynical ploy to shut atheists up. But, again, by failing to identify any real instances of what he sees as unhelpful behavior and instead beating up on a straw man, he doesn't offer any guidelines even to people who might have been persuaded. I'd much rather err on the side of too much criticism of religion, rather than too little, and for all that his remarks were intended as a helpful nudge, they're a nudge in the wrong direction.

So, I've finally joined the 21st century by buying my first ever 3G smartphone, a Motorola Droid 2. I've been getting a lot of use out of it and I'm happy with the network coverage and connection speed so far. There's also the Android Market, which lists thousands of user-developed applications you can download, everything from games and news readers to compasses and metal detectors (no kidding).

I do have one important complaint, though. There aren't nearly enough atheist-themed apps!

The Market is aswarm with Christian apps: Bible references, daily devotional readings, Christian chat rooms and bulletin boards, phone wallpapers, streaming apps for Christian radio and TV stations, and so on. But atheist- and skeptic-friendly apps are few and far between. Just about the only ones I've found are a pocket debater's guide from the anti-climate-change-denialist site Skeptical Science and an amusing quote database from FSTDT.

So, where are all the atheist app developers? Are they all iPhone users? Or do any readers know about ones I've somehow missed? We need some parity here!

• President Obama signs a law to fight British libel tourism by barring such judgments from being enforced in the U.S.

• My esteemed guest author, Sarah Braasch, has an article in the latest issue of The Humanist on the French burqa ban.

• After a scary brush with mortality, everyone's favorite squid-loving atheist professor is back in action. Visit his blog and leave some get-well-soon comments!

• Did a Catholic priest carry out an IRA bombing? And if so, did the church help cover it up and shield him from justice?

• Susan Jacoby contemplates the theodicy of the bedbug.

• And last but not least, An Apostate's Chapel has this outstanding example of the eloquence, wit and wisdom of Robert Ingersoll, written in response to a Salvation Army-organized vigil of several thousand Christians praying simultaneously for his conversion. (Spoiler: It didn't work!)

When America's founders ratified the Constitution, they created something that arguably had never existed in the world before: a republic where freedom of religion was explicitly enshrined in the charter, where toleration wasn't just the whim of a benevolent ruler but the immutable law of the land. As George Washington wrote in his famous letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

This was a radical break with history. At the time America was founded, all the great powers of Europe had state-supported churches and monarchs who claimed to rule by divine right, and religious wars and persecution were the order of the day: Catholics persecuting Protestants, Protestants persecuting Catholics, and both Catholics and Protestants persecuting those within their own sects who strayed from established dogma. In fact, the Spanish Inquisition was still executing heretics at the time of Thomas Jefferson's presidency.

In Great Britain during the Elizabethan era, the houses of prominent Roman Catholic families were known for having secret rooms, called "priest holes" (see also), where Catholic priests could be hidden away at a moment's notice when inquisitors came calling. Can you imagine what living in that society must have been like? Can you imagine living in a country where your freedom of belief hung by a thread, where the whim of a king made the difference between being grudgingly tolerated and an enemy of the state, and where literally at any moment you might have to abandon everything and go into hiding for your life - and that this happened so often that people planned for it?

Although America has seen (and practiced) its share of religious persecution, we've never had horrors like these. Instead, our founding document offered all comers a wonderful bargain: the freedom to live in peace, practice your beliefs as you see fit, even preach them to others. And in return we asked only, as President Washington said, that believers of all kinds be good citizens and obey the law of the land. We modern Americans have gotten used to this freedom, but that shouldn't blind us to how truly unprecedented it was, nor how liberal and generous it is to theists of every denomination.

But for members of the modern Christian right, it isn't enough. It's not enough for them that they have the right to practice their beliefs as they see fit, free of government interference. It's not enough for them that they have the unlimited freedom to fundraise, pray and preach as much as they like, in whatever media outlets they choose to publish. It's not even enough for them that they can stud the landscape with churches and staff and maintain them tax-free.

No, these dominionist believers want more than freedom: they want a special, privileged place in the laws of our country. They want the government to obey them, to issue official proclamations reminding everyone of their superiority, and to underwrite their evangelism with tax money from nonbelievers. They want their dogmas and only their dogmas to be taught in public school science classes, enshrined on courthouse lawns, and used as the basis to decide who should be allowed to marry, divorce, be born and die. In short, they want to be what our founders specifically sought to prevent: a state-established church, an arm of the government, with special rights and privileges granted to members and nonbelievers relegated to second-class citizens.

What selfishness! What ingratitude! All American believers, Christian or not, were given a priceless gift by the founders, and these ones throw it on the ground and spit on it. They don't want to be one religion among many; they want special privileges and special recognition. They think that freedom is worthless if it's granted to people they dislike - like a spoiled child who wants a toy because no one in his class has it, and then throws a temper tantrum when other kids get them because he's not the only one anymore. It's telling that these fundamentalists apparently can't just practice their religion on their own - they need constant hand-holding and head-patting from the government to stroke their egos and reassure them that they're better and specialer than everyone else. It's a clear sign of insecurity.

Benjamin Franklin had their number over two hundred years ago:

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

Think of this the next time some obnoxious theocrat is on the news, arguing that it's unfair to him if his sect doesn't get special rights. These people want us to think of them as proud, pious defenders of America's Christian heritage (a claim which is, needless to say, utterly false). Instead, we should think of them as spoiled and petulant children, ungratefully rejecting the pledges of liberty that our founding generation purchased in blood, all because they want to be treated as if they were better than everyone else. Keep that image in your head, and it may help you put the theocrats' demands in their proper context.

There's welcome news out of the U.K. this week: the government-established Charity Commission has ruled that the adoption agency Catholic Care must abide by anti-discrimination laws and therefore may not refuse to consider same-sex couples as prospective parents:

The Charity Commission... ruled that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is a "serious matter" because it "departs from the principle of treating people equally", and that religious views cannot justify such bias because adoption is a public matter.

..."In certain circumstances, it is not against the law for charities to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. However, because the prohibition on such discrimination is a fundamental principle of human rights law, such discrimination can only be permitted in the most compelling circumstances. We have concluded that in this case the reasons Catholic Care have set out do not justify their wish to discriminate."

Predictably, Catholic Care is now planning to shut down, since as is abundantly clear by now, this church would rather see children go homeless than deliver them into the care of stable, loving families whose lifestyle the Catholic church disapproves of. Eleven other Catholic adoption agencies in England have all closed down already for the same reason, and this is the last one still in operation. If it closes its doors, that will be the end of Catholic-run adoption services in the country - and I say, good riddance.

The closure of Catholic adoption agencies can be likened to the disappearance of an industry because technology has provided a new way to do the same work more cheaply or efficiently. Yes, in the short run, this causes pain and dislocation for people who used to perform a job that's no longer required and are now out of work. But in the long run, it's better for our economy that obsolete industries vanish, because that portion of society's resources can be redirected into more valuable and productive endeavors.

Just so is the disappearance of prejudiced religious charities. In the short run, it may cause pain and hardship for the people those charities were willing to serve. But in the long run, it's better for society that they vanish, because that slack will inevitably be taken up by new groups that cater to everyone, without fear or favor, and don't arbitrarily exclude or refuse to help people who don't fit a narrow set of prejudices. (See this post for an example of how this has worked in Washington, D.C.)

This story is a classic example of why I asked how much good religious charities really do. Catholic Care's refusal to abide by pro-equality laws shows that their main priority isn't helping people in need, but enforcing religious discrimination, partitioning the world into sets of people whom they judge as worthy or unworthy of their aid. A group like this doesn't deserve the support of the public or the state, just as we wouldn't tolerate a charity that refused to serve black people. It's better that they disappear so that they can be replaced by an organization whose only goal is to do good, rather than one that sees doing good as a side effect of promoting their archaic and narrow-minded worldview.

The Language of God, Chapter 2

By B.J. Marshall

Collins starts off this chapter noting that, if we've followed him this far, we've no doubt begun to form numerous objections. That's an understatement to be sure! He gives us some of his own: Isn't belief in God just a case of wishful thinking? Hasn't a great deal of harm been done in the name of religion? How could a loving God permit suffering? How can a serious scientist accept the possibility of miracles? We'll upack those questions in a few posts. But for now we'll focus on doubt.

Collins kicks off this chapter by stating that doubt is an unavoidable part of belief. He supports this with a quote from Paul Tillich: "Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith" (p.33). I doubt the existence of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. So would Tillich (and Collins) say then that my doubt is an element of faith in these beings? Collins tries to argue in favor of doubt by stating that an airtight faith would be a bad thing because "then the world would be full of confident practitioners of a single faith. But imagine such a world where the opportunity to make a free choice about belief was taken away by the certainty of the evidence. How interesting would that be?" (p.34). First, assuming there should be any religion at all, wouldn't having just one religion be a good thing? No more religious persecution, holy wars, or religious terrorism. No more cults leading to the Jonestown massacre, the Branch Davidians, or Heaven's Gate. Indeed, the Protestant Reformation would have never happened since there would be nothing to reform. According the the World Christian Encyclopedia, there were over 33,000 Christian denominations alone in 2001. If each denomination was represented by one Christian, that would be enough to almost fill Fenway Park! In the meantime, if you need help figuring out which religion you should follow, then this handy flowchart can help.

Secondly, an abundance of evidence (which many would claim gets us as close to certainty as we can get) does not prevent people from believing all kinds of crazy stuff.

• The confluence of evidential lines from geology, paleontology, biologic, genomics, and archeology still don't stop some people from believing that the Earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old.
• Despite numerous studies and articles in peer-reviewed journals refuting the point, people still think vaccines cause autism.
• Despite no credible evidence supporting them, and despite lots of credible studies in peer-review journals refuting them, people still believe homeopathy and acupuncture work. (This one is a little more contentious, so I link to a place that refutes pseudoscience nicely.)
• A large number of people still refute the general consensus among scientists that human activity is causing global warming.

I suppose I could also make the case that just because certainty takes away my freedom to choose something does not necessarily limit how interesting life is. I've come to realize that gravity will always pull me back down to Earth. I jump, I come back down; I fall off the bed during the night, I crash into the endstand and break a lamp. These things happen, and I have no choice in having gravity not work on me. And my life is pretty damned interesting, thank you very much.

I've been writing since the beginning of Daylight Atheism about the unique ways that religion harms women. Although men have also suffered innumerable harms from religious beliefs, they're not singled out, treated as an underclass uniquely deserving of condemnation, the way that women are in almost every major religion's sacred texts. That's why I wrote in posts like 2006's "Religion's Harm to Women":

There is only one realistic way to end religion's harm to women, and that is to cut it off at the source: every feminist should be an atheist.

I still stand by this. But over the past year, I've come to the realization that, if we're ever going to make progress rolling back the advance of fundamentalism, this equation also has to flow in the opposite direction.

The feminist cause has made enormous strides over the past century, both in law and in fact, but we have to face up to the fact that our society is still far from true equality for men and women. There's still a persistent pay gap between men and women, and CEOs and other captains of industry are overwhelmingly male. Women are still judged on their appearance to an enormously greater extent than is true for men, and rewarded to the extent for which they're willing to conform and act accordingly. And then there are the direct threats to women's health and lives, including forced prostitution, domestic violence, honor killings, genital mutilation and rape, which are persistent in the West and endemic in the developing world.

And as atheists, we ought to have a particularly easy time recognizing the harm done to women in the name of God. Since our vision isn't clouded by theological biases that excuse sexist treatment as God's ineffable will, we can see the systematic degradation of women in the world's religions: barring women from positions of authority, forcing them to wear dehumanizing clothing, teaching that their proper role is to obey men, and more.

But for all that, the atheist community isn't completely free of sexism either. There's still too much tolerance of sexist insults, in a way that would never be countenanced for racist or homophobic language. There are still too many notable instances of women being demeaned as less intelligent or less capable of skepticism than men, or in some other way inferior. And then, of course, there are the atheists who are just flat-out stupid bigots, like this one who thinks that the only reason women wanted the right to vote was so they could take away men's right to drink:

Feminism has its roots in the Suffrage movement, which was a movement of radical Christian women who thought that giving women the right to vote was a necessary step in removing men's ability to buy alcohol.

All these things individually may seem subtle or trivial, not worth our time to address. But the overall consequences are obvious and readily visible: the atheist movement has a significant imbalance of men, and the most prominent and visible atheists - the ones who get the lion's share of media attention, the ones who are most often assumed to represent atheism as a whole - are all men. As Greta Christina says, when a situation like this arises, it's almost never an accident.

And there are plenty of people who've noticed this, even if they're not completely clear on the causes. Consider columns like this one, from Sarah McKenzie, calling for greater female participation in the atheist movement (HT: the always-incisive Ophelia Benson). Most of the column is excellent, but where I think she goes astray is this:

After all, girls are taught to be sensitive and emotional, to not cause trouble or be particularly forthright with their opinions. Women who dare to be aggressive or outspoken are often labelled as hysterical harpies, not worthy of being listened to and impossible to take seriously. We should hardly be surprised that some women might be reluctant to come out as atheists.

While I agree that women are underrepresented among prominent atheists, I don't think it's the case that it's because women are put off by confrontational skepticism (though her point about women being attacked for being outspoken is well-taken). Rather, I think it's because there is sexism, and tolerance of sexism, in the atheist community, to a greater degree than I'd like to admit - and women are quite capable of sensing that. It's small wonder that they don't always feel welcome. And what makes it worse is that this problem is self-perpetuating: often, men who notice this gender gap assume it to have some biological basis, as if women were "naturally" more prone to be religious than men - and this kind of baseless, unfounded just-so story exacerbates the problem still further.

This, of course, isn't to say that there are no female atheists. There are many - I've linked to some of them in just this post - and they span the spectrum from peaceful and nurturing to assertive and ass-kicking. It's not as if would-be female atheists are lacking for worthy role models. But more needs to be done, which is why I believe that atheists need to be feminists, both within our own community and in the wider world. We need to learn to recognize sexism, both overt and subtle, and to call it out wherever it appears. We have to be more diligent in recognizing and promoting the contributions of female freethinkers. And most importantly, we need to stop tolerating those among us who make ignorant remarks that stigmatize women and discourage them from participating.

The diversity of the atheist movement is its greatest strength. There will never be a council of elders or an infallible text dictating what atheists must believe, nor would I want there to be. But I think the atheist community can and should act collectively, by unanimous consent, to make it clear to sexists and other bigots that they are not welcome and that we don't want them associated with us - similar to the way Larry Darby was collectively cast out after he revealed his racist, Holocaust-denying beliefs. We should do this not because it's a decree imposed on us from above, but because we all recognize, using our own reason and best sense, that it's the right thing to do, and that we stand to gain many more friends and allies than we stand to lose.