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.

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.

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.

In an old essay on Ebon Musings, "Finding Beauty in the Mundane", I wrote in a contemplative mood:

Have you ever considered the trees? Though their kind of life is far grander, slower and more patient than ours, they are each individuals, as different as human beings are. They add beauty to the world, give peace in their dappled shade, freshen the air and enrich the earth, and turn even the most hard-edged urban environment into a blossoming garden. We humans grew up beneath the trees, and we love them still...

Several years later, I still find this to be true. Whether I'm depressed or whether I'm already feeling good, it's almost always the case that visiting a botanical garden or a nature preserve, or even just going for a walk on a tree-lined street, noticeably improves my mood. The sight of sunlight slanting down through green leaves never fails to give me a sense of calm and peace. I tend to think the cause is that looking up at a tree reawakens one's sense of perspective: it's hard to see your own troubles as so serious in the presence of an organism that measures time only in years and decades.

But trees have more than just aesthetic benefits. Human beings feel an instinctive attraction to nature and wilderness, what E.O. Wilson called biophilia, and we flourish in its presence. For example, in one famous study, surgical patients who could see trees outside their window recovered faster and required fewer painkillers than patients whose window looked out on a brick wall. Other studies have found that greener urban areas have lower crime rates and that being in green environments lessens the symptoms of ADHD and improves schoolchildren's academic performance. (And that's not even to mention the many environmental and economic benefits of trees, either.)

The most likely explanation for this is that millions of years of evolution have instilled in us a built-in preference for certain kinds of environments, namely those most similar to our species' ancestral habitat. Wilson argues that this is the savanna, an open grassland broken up by patches of forest. This is the habitat we evolved in, the one we're best adapted to, and when we're placed in such an environment, we tend to fare better both mentally and physically. Urban environments, by contrast, present very different stressors that the human species never evolved to deal with.

I wonder if this feeling of displacement from nature is something that plays a role in religious conversions. When people live only in cities, surrounded by concrete and fluorescent lights, separated from nature, they do feel a sense of isolation and loss, and most of them don't know why. Religious proselytizers, of course, claim they can offer something to fill that void, and to people who don't know the true cause of these feelings, it's probably an effective sales pitch.

But when you know the true source of these feelings, the imitation can't compare to the reality. As I found for myself, the feeling of awe induced by direct contact with nature at its most spectacular is an ecstasy that easily compares to anything offered by any church. That's a piece of knowledge we ought to spread more widely. If more people understood the true, natural roots of human spirituality, the artificial attractions of religion might not prove so resilient.

Are there any circumstances under which an atheist can support a religious group doing social work, even if doing so may advance a religious message we disagree with?

This is on my mind because of the post I wrote last month about the Foundation Beyond Belief supporting a Quaker charity, and because I just finished reading Nomad, Ayaan Hirsi Ali's excellent second book, which serendipitously touches on similar ideas. Nomad is about the closing of the Muslim mind: the way that Islamic immigrants to Western countries often form isolated enclaves, rather than assimilate into their new society and absorb its values. The result is that barbaric practices like honor killing, female genital cutting, and violent jihadism that were once confined to third-world theocracies are appearing in Western countries, rather than immigrants taking up our ideals of tolerance and secularism.

To turn back this tide, Hirsi Ali proposes that the institutions of Western civilization need to make a greater effort to reach out to immigrants. This appeal, to my surprise, includes a section aimed specifically at Christian churches, encouraging them to make greater efforts to proselytize, and urging atheists to support them in this:

I hope my friends Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens... will not be dismayed by the idea of a strategic alliance between secular people and Christians... [p.240]

That is why I think we must also appeal to other, more traditional sources of ideological strength in Western society. And that must include the Christian churches... We should bury the hatchet, rearrange our priorities, and fight together against a much more dangerous common enemy. [p.243]

Even though Hirsi Ali stresses that she intends us to work together with "mainstream, moderate denominations" and not the fundamentalist "freak-show" churches that oppose women's rights and science, I was taken aback by her argument initially. After all, it runs against the grain of what atheists tend to believe.

Hardly any atheists are willing to aid religious groups that proselytize, and it's easy to come up with good reasons why. Doing so means that our contributions, directly or indirectly, will be used to advance religious beliefs that we don't agree with - and history has shown over and over again that churches which accumulate secular power, even the mainstream ones that are allegedly more enlightened and tolerant, tend to use it to restrict the freedom of nonbelievers. In most cases, there are secular competitors that do just as much good without spreading unreason. And even more important, there's a growing humanist and secular community still establishing itself, one that needs our support to build an infrastructure and could put our aid to worthier use.

All these arguments are good ones, and I think they offer convincing reasons why atheists shouldn't support religious groups under most ordinary circumstances. But there's a counterargument that I find more difficult to dismiss.

Although I think atheists should evangelize, we can take it for granted that we're not going to reach everyone, no matter how vigorous our effort. Becoming an atheist is a big leap, one that a lot of people just aren't ready to take. There are many who still need the comforts of religious belief, illusory though they are, and won't even consider our arguments in good faith. Given that this is so, isn't it better for us if those people join a moderate, liberal faith - one that respects secularism and teaches reasonable moral ideas, one we can easily coexist with - rather than a fundamentalist cult that attacks science, opposes equal rights for women and gays, and fights for theocracy?

This is a similar dilemma to the one that faces American freethinkers in the voting booth. For the most part, open atheists don't stand a chance of winning elections, which means our choice is usually between a Democrat who panders to religious voters but by and large respects separation of church and state, versus a Republican who courts the religious bigot vote and is an active supporter of theocracy. Given these choices, I believe it's better to support the religious progressive - even if I have to hold my nose and ignore insipid, god-drenched campaign rhetoric. Admittedly, this boils down to choosing the lesser of two evils. But withholding our votes in protest means only that the fundamentalists and theocrats, who definitely aren't going to sit an election out, become that much more influential.

That's why, on balance, I do agree with Hirsi Ali that there are cases where alliance with religious moderates, even evangelical ones, pays strategic dividends. Whether we should underwrite Christian efforts to convert Islamic immigrants, I'm not so sure. But I think it's worthwhile to, for example, support courageous reformers like Irshad Manji who are trying to liberalize Islam from the inside. This is basically the same argument I made in "The Soft Landing": we want the world's transition away from religion to be as calm as possible, not a world where the moderates fade away and leave only belligerent fundamentalists. When we can further that aim by tactically supporting religious moderates and reformers - shifting the overall tenor of a religion in a direction that's friendlier to us - we can and should.

I do want to stress one point: we shouldn't ally with believers when doing so requires us to give up our own voice. (This is how my argument differs from that of the accommodationists who tell us to pipe down and stop criticizing religion.) Our alliance will be most effective when we unite in pursuit of a common goal, not a common message. We'll always have differences of opinion and we should be free to air them. And we certainly shouldn't enter any alliance that's conditioned on our subservience.

Editor's Note: Back in March, I wrote an essay encouraging atheists to join the Foundation Beyond Belief, a new charitable group doing good for human beings and the world in the name of freethought. I also offered to write a front-page post interviewing anyone who agreed to join the Foundation as a result of hearing about it on my site. This is the next in that series of interviews. Please welcome Petrucio!

Tell us a little about yourself. Who are you, where do you live, what do you do?

I'm Petrucio - that's not my name but I don't really go by my real name anywhere. I live in Florianopolis, Brasil, with my wife, our 6 month fetus, 3 dogs, and a lot of other non-invited smaller living beings. I'm a jack of all trades - I work some hours as a software engineer, I run a garage game company, and I play poker semi-professionally.

If you're an atheist, when did you first become an atheist, and how long have you been one? If you're not an atheist, how would you define your beliefs?

It all started when I had doubts about the many names that seemed relevant in the Bible stories - Jesus, Moses, Noah - and I didn't really make sense of all that. So being the inquisitive little fella that I was, I decided to go on reading the Bible from start to finish to answer all that. I didn't really got to reading all of it - because frankly, I think the Bible sucks worse than any book I have ever read sucked, despite what most atheists politely say about it being good literature.

But I went from interested theist to disgusted theist, to agnostic, and then to atheist in a slow process that took some 8 years. Reading ebonmusings some five(ish?) or some years back was the closing nail on that coffin.

Do you have a blog of your own, or another site you'd like us to know about?

I have something that I do not really call a blog, despite it being hosted on blog format and on blogspot. It's more like a repository of more complex articles I intent to post a few times a year at best. Kinda like ebonmusings.org, but without the proper care to organize it in a proper site and with proper formatting. And with more humor and some images to go, in an ebonmusings meets Greta Cristina sorta way. The idea behind it is that there's so few good sources of information on critical thinking in portuguese, and so many intelligent people falling for all the woo out there that could be thinking differently if only they had access to more information, that I wanted to make my own critical thinking corner in portuguese, if only to make the people close to me understand my views a little better.

At the moment it only has a post on Homeopathy and the translation of your article on The Problem of Evil (hurray, I finally made it!):
http://www.tuvene.blogspot.com

All the portuguese speaking readers out there can add it to their feeds - it will have no filler or off-topic posts, only the good stuff. But it will have very infrequent postings, so be sure to follow it.

I also wanted to plug in my game, it's something of a 'Magic: The Gathering' meets 'Age of Empires' card game, check it out at:
http://www.bellatorus.com
I've made some coupon codes for any readers to pay any price they feel like paying:
DAYLIGHT15 - 25% off for $15 bucks.
DAYLIGHT10 - 50% off for $10 bucks.
DAYLIGHT5 - 75% off for $5 bucks.
DAYLIGHT2 - 90% off for $2 bucks.
DAYLIGHT1 - 95% off for $1 buck.
DAYLIGHT0 - 100% off - $0 bucks, free, gratis, nada.
These codes are good until the end of August.

I hope I can make a skeptically themed game in the future. I think it can be such a great learning tool, with good potential to reach and influence much farther than our usual audience. You can flood my inbox with suggestions if you have any - petrucio at bellatorus dot com.

Have you given to other charities before joining the Foundation Beyond Belief? If so, which ones are your favorites?

I have mostly donated larger amounts to Doctors Without Borders on the "Oh my FSM, the shit has hit the fan!" basis. I have considered donating to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and the James Randi Educational Foundation, but I don't remember ever getting to it. And I also subscribe a small amount to Mr Deity - not really a charity, but very high quality outreach, and I'm a sucker for edutainment.

What membership level did you join the Foundation at?

I started at 10 bucks to get the ball rolling, but I intent to donate at least 1% of all income in the future as the dust settles.

How do you plan to divide your initial donation?

I don't remember now what the division was, but it's more skewed towards education, since education is the solution to all life's problems (like alcohol, but without the hangover).

Is there anything else you'd like to say to atheists who are considering supporting the Foundation or other charitable groups?

Get yo ass out that chair and do it now; with such a great Foundation doing the middle work, you've run out of excuses.

I have a confession to make: I'm one of the New Atheists.

You know the type. Our reflexive, unjustified hatred of all religious people is matched only by the venom of our arguments against them. The mere thought of religion of any kind makes us irrationally furious, like waving a red flag at a bull. We ignore the existence of real religious people because we find fundamentalists easier to attack, and when we're not ignoring them, we're driving them away with our hostile, intemperate rhetoric. One thing's for sure, we're certainly not interested in making alliances with any kind of church to do any genuine good or work on solving any real problem in this world.

That's why, this month, I'm making a charitable donation to a church that's trying to do some genuine good and work on solving a real problem in this world, and I hope you'll join me.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a member of the Foundation Beyond Belief, a meta-charity helping atheists and freethinkers to do good in a visible way. Each quarter, the FBB chooses ten charities each addressing a different area of need, all of which must have a proven track record and a commitment to refrain from proselytizing. But it's always been part of the FBB's intent that a member charity could be founded in any worldview, as long as it meets those requirements.

This month, the Foundation's board is putting that principle to work. Their choice in the Peace category for the third quarter of 2010 is Quaker Peace and Social Witness, a branch of the Britain Yearly Meeting and the flagship organization of Quaker peace work worldwide, as well as a past recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

If we're going to support any religious charity, the Quakers are a good start. Quakers are nominally a Christian sect, but they don't have rituals, sacraments, or a formal creed. Their most important belief is the "Inner Light" - the idea that God exists within every person and speaks to them on an ongoing basis. As a result, they generally believe that the Bible is at best secondary to this process of continuing revelation, and that every person is equally free to interpret the will of God for themselves. (Like Unitarian Universalists, some Quakers also consider themselves nontheistic.)

Quakers have played a formative role in American history and in the separation of church and state. The Quaker William Penn founded Pennsylvania, whose charter gave a strong guarantee of religious freedom to all of its citizens. I've been to the Arch Street Meeting House in Philadelphia, the oldest Quaker church in the world, which was built on land donated by Penn:

The meeting room inside looks like a church hall, except that it doesn't have a pulpit, or for that matter, a minister. A Quaker service consists of all the members sitting together in silence for an hour, except that if any member feels they've received an inward revelation of God's will, they can stand up and speak it at any time.

Besides religious liberty, Quakers have been pioneers in abolishing slavery, in prison reform, and in equality for women and GLBT people. (That said, there are also conservative Quaker denominations that are more like evangelical Christians, and whose views on same-sex marriage and other issues are far less enlightened. Needless to say, the FBB isn't supporting any of their charities.)

As opposed to the accommodationists who claim that we can only cooperate with religious people if we totally cease criticizing them, the Foundation's choice points to an obvious alternative: we can work together with religious groups in areas where we find common ground, without surrendering our right to disagree with them on other subjects. But promoting peace in the world, I would hope, isn't a controversial goal, and it should be one where atheists and theists alike can work together to build bridges.

If there's any religious denomination whose work deserves the support of freethinkers, it's the Quakers. That's why I support the Foundation's choice. I split my monthly donation four ways, and this quarter, one-fourth of it is going to them. Of course, the great virtue of the Foundation Beyond Belief is that members choose how their money is allocated, so if you disagree, you can shift your donation to other charities. But why pass up a chance to prove that we can work together with theists if the cause is just?

It's been a few weeks since any Serious Person told us atheists to shut up, so we're overdue. Well, Chris Mooney doesn't disappoint, writing a gushing post on a recent "science/faith dialogue" held by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and funded by the Templeton Foundation. As you'd expect from anything underwritten by Templeton, the AAAS panel was carefully chosen to contain several vocally religious scientists, but no one who believes that science and faith are incompatible. As you'd probably also expect, it had plenty of flowery proclamations on how scientists and theologians should "learn from each other", but no concrete examples of any verifiable truths that religious people can teach scientists. (See also Russell Blackford and Jerry Coyne's respective takes.)

Here's why Mooney was so pleased:

...the idea is to find new ways to bring science and religion into a humble, nonjudgmental dialogue, and break down the barriers between the two. It is not to drive toward a particular conclusion.

Mooney thinks scientists shouldn't be judgmental of religious claims. But the role of science is to be judgmental. That's what science does; in fact, that's what science is: a means of judging factual claims. And religion, whatever its apologists claim for it, clearly does make a broad range of factual assertions about the true nature of reality.

To plead with scientists that certain kinds of claims be kept off-limits from their scrutiny - that they be sanctified, set apart, exempted from skeptical examination and judgment - is to ask them to stop being scientists. Mooney doesn't seem to have a problem with scientists scrutinizing and judging other aspects of the world, yet he demands that religious claims be protected, as if they were an endangered species and had to be sheltered in some sort of wild game preserve.

The lesson of this is that you don't need to be a religious believer yourself to fall into the corrupting delusion that society needs religious beliefs and so they should be protected from criticism. As Daniel Dennett puts it, Mooney is one of the ones who "believes in belief" - and he clearly does so more fervently than many people who are actually theists.

At the close of the session, I rose and posed a question. One can never remember exact words, but in essence, it was this: "I'm glad you're trying to foster dialogue between scientists and the religious community, and I'm sure you'll succeed. But here is a harder question – how will you foster dialogue with the New Atheists?"

A very good question, and it's interesting that Mooney, the self-proclaimed communications expert, feels the need to ask this of others. Because, as far as I know, he's never offered a single suggestion in this vein - other than the repeated drumbeat of assertions that atheists need to be quiet and not offend religious believers by existing visibly.

Phillips, the Methodist Nobel Laureate, had a very interesting answer. He essentially replied that if the New Atheists would get to know serious religious people – people who do not in any way represent the parody version of religion that is so frequently attacked – they could no longer maintain their point of view.

Please note that the hundreds of millions of theists worldwide who believe in a vindictive, anthropomorphic god who created the earth in six days, and who does miracles when his followers ask him to, are dismissed as a "parody". This is similar to the way that other high-minded apologists dismiss all believers whose view of religion is different from their own as "not serious", regardless of how numerous or how influential those people are.

With his next thought, Mooney dives deeper into the mire of accommodationism:

Still, surely the New Atheists must on some level recognize the critical importance religion plays in many people's lives – which implies that we can hardly expect believers to discard their faith based on philosophical considerations, no matter how persuasive these may seem to many secularists or scientists.

Granted, the social and emotional pressures in favor of religion are powerful. Yet we know people can break free, because we've seen it happen many times. Mooney's argument reduces to asserting that because something is hard, we shouldn't try to do it. Using the same argument, a pre-Civil-War slavery accommodationist could have said: "Still, surely the abolitionists must on some level recognize the critical importance that slavery plays in the South's economy - which implies that we can hardly expect slaveholders to release their slaves based on philosophical considerations, no matter how persuasive these may seem to many social progressives or reformers."

At the AAAS event, the pastor David Anderson told an unforgettable story underscoring this point – the story of a single mother who just lost her husband, and has two poorly behaved kids, disciplinary problems who keep getting in trouble at school. Does this woman care about the latest scientific discoveries about, say, asteroids? No, explained Anderson, "because an asteroid has just hit her family."

Science, alone, is no consolation in this context. Religion gives this single mother something she can lean on. Religion, explained Anderson, provides one with inspiration, whereas science provides information...

This is just an incredibly fallacious and dishonest comparison. The proper comparison would be to ask, would this woman care if a theologian lectures her on the differences between apophatic and cataphatic theology, or a lengthy analysis of the penal substitution theory of how Christ's death atoned for sin? Of course not, because those things don't help her, and what she needs is help. And leaving aside Anderson's highly contrived example about asteroids, if there are scientific discoveries about how better nutrition improves children's ability to pay attenton in school, or what kind of behavioral interventions are most effective, I would think that woman would have a very good reason to care about those findings.

What this passage shows is how apologists for religion conflate the communal aspects of religion with its factual claims. Yes, churches and religious groups build hospitals and schools, run charities and soup kitchens, comfort the grieving and care for members of the community. But they also make factual claims about God's will, the existence of the afterlife, the proper roles of men and women, and so on. The two are not at all related, or if they are, it's in the wrong direction: the false factual beliefs of religion often hobble its usefulness to the community and cause it to accomplish less good than it otherwise would have. These, again, are the beliefs that Mooney and others want us not to challenge.

[Anderson] said his church would certainly welcome scientists who wanted to come and visit, and talk to the attendees – and added that many churches, and many pastors, feel the same way.

But, Anderson added, that will not be the case if the scientists show up wanting to convert, or deconvert, or debunk, or whatever. Or if they give off an air of superiority, the sense that they are smarter than everybody else. That won’t fly. It will shut down dialogue, rather than encouraging it.

So, let me get this straight: scientists are welcome to visit his church and talk to the attendees, but only if they don't offend or disagree with anyone or contradict anyone's beliefs. (Notice that the pastor made no such promise in return.) So what, exactly, are they supposed to do there? Sit quietly and nod while the pastor expounds on his own beliefs? Stand up to praise the congregation for how wise and humble and wonderful they all are? He's not "inviting" them there for a free and equal exchange of ideas - he's inviting them only on the condition that they agree to become members of his congregation!

What Mooney and his faitheist allies demand is that any conversation must take place on their terms: scientists must be "polite" and "humble" and "nonjudgmental", must listen to believers speak without contradicting them, and must take care not to say anything that any religious person might disagree with. Does this sound like the recipe for a productive dialogue? I think not. When one side dictates in advance what the other is allowed to say and how they may say it, you don't have a dialogue at all. You have... a sermon.

But if there's anything that makes me feel good every time I write a post like this, it's knowing what a futile goal the accommodationists have set for themselves. They want us to be quiet, which means we win just by speaking up. The only way they can win is if they convince us to shut up, which, of course, they aren't going to. Of course, that doesn't mean they can't make a tidy profit from trying - witness how eagerly Mooney and the rest have lined up under the Templeton cash spigot - but in the long run, anyone whose goal is to have a particular viewpoint shut out cannot help but lose.

If you're a regular reader, you probably know that I got married last month. Until now, I haven't said much about the event itself on Daylight Atheism. But now that I'm back from my honeymoon (slightly sunburned, but happy!) and I've had some time to reflect, I wanted to put into words some of my thoughts on what marriage means to me, as an atheist, and explain why I chose to enter into it.

But first of all, let me address the most obvious question: Should an atheist even want to get married? Isn't marriage an intrinsically religious ceremony? After all, weddings usually take place in churches (yes, ours was in a church) and are conducted by clergy (yes, we had a minister - more on this in a minute). Doesn't that mean that a committed atheist should refuse to enter into one?

I do acknowledge that, for most of Western history, marriage has been performed in a religious context. However, I don't concede that this makes it an intrinsically religious ceremony. Rather, it's because organized religion has always tried to take exclusive possession of whole areas of human life, and proclaim that it alone owns these experiences which are common to everyone. Just so in this case: marriage is fundamentally an expression of love, and religion doesn't have a monopoly on love. Atheists seek companionship, fall in love, and pledge our commitment just as theists do. Why, then, should we not mark the occasion with a marriage ceremony? Why not take the ritual, strip out the religious trappings we don't accept, and reclaim it as a secular, human rite of passage that nonbelievers also participate in?

And that's just what my wife and I did with our wedding. We planned the ceremony to match our beliefs, keeping the traditions we accept, omitting or changing the ones we didn't. We've been attending a Unitarian Universalist church for the past year, an entirely dogma-free religion that emphasizes ethics and community and has no requirement that its members believe in God or anything supernatural. The ceremony was at Shelter Rock, a huge, gorgeous UU congregation on the north shore of Long Island, and was performed by our minister, Hope, a wonderful woman whom both of us respect deeply.

So then, back to my original question: Why did I, as an atheist, choose to get married?

First, there are the practical reasons. It sounds tactless to mention, but I'd be lying if I said I never thought of it: Marriage isn't just a religious rite, but a civil ceremony that brings considerable civil and legal benefits, including many that are impossible to obtain any other way.

Of course, these protections are held out as an incentive to couples like us, even as they're denied to gays and lesbians. That these civil benefits are denied to mature, consenting same-sex couples due to religious prejudice is something both my wife and I feel passionately is a grave injustice. That's why we chose the following passage to be read at our wedding. It's an excerpt from Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, the case where the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to forbid marriage to same-sex couples. Even in the dispassionate language of the court, this ruling was full of poetry:

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations.

The union of two people is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any.

Without question, civil marriage enhances the welfare of the community and is a social institution of the highest importance. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and a connection to our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.

But there was more to my decision than this. Although the civil benefits of marriage are non-trivial, even without them we would have gotten married anyway, and the last paragraph of that ruling hints at why.

I said that atheists feel love just like everyone else, but I want to say more than that. I believe that love is the quintessential human emotion, the one that most truly defines us, that inspires all our noblest endeavors, and that gives expression to what is best in humanity. But love, by its nature, demands to be shared. If kept secret, it stagnates into mere obsession; but if shared with others, it is multiplied. Like one candle lighting others, it spreads without diminishing its source, and brings greater joy to every person who partakes of it than any of them could have had alone.

This reasoning is both why I got married in the first place, and also why we had a ritual to mark the occasion. I believe that life's challenges are better confronted together, rather than alone, and a two-person partnership is the simplest and most stable way to accomplish that.

At the most fundamental, our marriage isn't a civil ceremony or a religious rite, but a mutual obligation, a promise given freely and in awareness of its weight and solemnity. We pledged to make our partnership an enduring one, to remain faithful and true to each other, to share our happiness and support each other in times of trouble. And it makes this pledge all the more weighty that we made it not to each other in private, but before our gathered family, friends, and loved ones. We invited them to be there because we wanted them to bear witness to our decision, but also because we wanted to share our joy with them!

My wife and I have both found much good in our partnership: we complement each other's strengths, we comfort each other in times of pain and sorrow, we challenge each other to grow and mature, and we've each found that the things we love separately are even sweeter when shared. And that, more than any other reason, is why an atheist like me got married: because when you're in love, you want to tell the world.

And it's in that spirit that I'll close out this post. We wrote our own vows for the ceremony, and if you'll forgive me, I'd like to share mine:

Dear MissCherryPi,

Before we say our vows, I want to tell you why I'm here today.

You know that there are some things I don't believe in. But today, I want to tell you about some things I do believe in.

I believe in sunrises and sunsets.

I believe in hikes in the woods and walks on the beach.

I believe in traveling the world and exploring places we've never been before.

I believe in good books, good conversation and laughing at shared jokes.

I believe in picking pumpkins in autumn, decorating the tree for Christmas and drinking champagne on New Year's.

I believe in watching fireflies on summer evenings and stargazing on dark clear nights.

I believe in all the beauty, the mystery and the wonder of life, and I believe that these joys, like all joys, are multiplied when you have someone to share them with. And I'm here because I want you to be that person.

There's no one else I'd rather spend my life with. I love your shy smile, your sweet laugh, your sense of humor, and your adventurousness. And most of all, I love the way you make me happier than I thought anyone ever could. That's why I'm here, and that's why I'm marrying you today.

By Jennifer Filipowicz (aka Super Happy Jen)

I posted this a while ago on my blog.  This morning it occurred to me that it belongs here.

The other day I was at dinner with my family when my mother refered to me as a militant atheist. It bothered me. One because she waited until I was out of the room to say it (possibly to avoid a theological discussion). But really it was the word "militant". To me this describes someone who is agressive in forcing people into their way of thinking, maybe even using violence. Does my mother really believe I'm like this? If my mother doesn't understand where my beliefs stand, how can anyone?

Unfortunately I ended up making some throw away remark about the world being better place without religion. I don't really believe this! For a lot of people believe in some kind of supreme protector watching over them provides comfort through hard times, the ability to deal with death and despair. Belief can comfort whether God exists or not.

What the world would be better off without is dogmatic thinking. "God says X and you do Y so you're going to hell" type of mentality. This is what causes wars, it's what causes politicians to backpeddle on human rights issues, it causes intolerance for anyone with a difference of opinion. But this is true of dogmatic thinking even when it's not tied to a belief in a particular deity. Rigid adherence to political beliefs, for example, can be just as dangerous. A truly militant atheist could fall into this category too, if he looked down on others for having religious beliefs.

Perhaps what my mother meant, was that I am a proud atheist. I refuse to be ashamed of not holding any religious beliefs. I wear my "Atheist Angel" t-shirt all the time, because I want everyone to know that I'm an atheist. Not because I want everyone to be an atheist. I want people to understand that atheists are not evil people, and I think people that have met me will agree that I'm a nice person. Also I want people to understand that they don't have to cherry-pick a religion. You can just not believe in God and that's okay.

Yes, I do sell atheist t-shirts (to be fair, this was originally my husband's idea) but I don't force anyone to wear them. I don't even advertise them particularly aggressively. And I try my darndest to make sure the designs promote atheism, without denouncing religious faiths.

I don't personally believe in God. I think if there were a God, of the sort that is described in the bible, performing miracles all the time and interfering in everything from floods and hurricanes, to procreation and sporting events, then there would be evidence of Him everywhere. Science would already have collected all the data and put together a "God Theory" and I wouldn't have to "have faith" in order to believe. The lack of evidence for God, for me, is evidence for His non-existence. There could be supreme beings out there that don't interfere with our day to day lives, that don't answer prayers, and that don't decide who lives and who dies, but that's not the sort of being one builds a religion around, is it? That may be far from a persuasive argument for you, so please feel free to substitute your own logic for my own. I'm just passively stating my beliefs here, not being militant in any way.