Daniel Dennett recently published a fascinating study on nonbelieving clergy: pastors and ministers from various denominations, both liberal and conservative, who've either lost their faith or hold beliefs that they know their superiors would condemn as highly unorthodox. Naturally, these people remain in the closet, often getting up before their congregations every week to preach beliefs that they no longer hold to themselves.

It's easy to condemn this as hypocritical - and indeed, one of the ministers freely applies that word to himself - but I also feel sympathy for these people. Imagine how wrenching their dilemma is: in most cases, they went into the ministry with the best of intentions, starting out sincerely believing the things they preached. But over time, and usually very much against their will, their beliefs changed. Now what can they do? Admitting their doubts and resigning would mean losing not only their current job, but giving up the prospect of every job for which they're qualified. Ministers who live in a parsonage would lose not only their job, but their home. Even more, a pastor's entire social circle tends to be within their church, so admitting how they feel could mean losing all their friends and their community. In some cases, even their wives and families aren't aware of their changed views.

What I found most interesting about the study was its glimpse into the psychological defense mechanisms used by pastors in this position. Often, they make a conscious effort to avoid spreading their doubts to others:

And I said, 'One of the fears is that I'm going to sway you, and you're going to lose your faith. If I see that happening, I'll back off.'" [p.15]

"Well, I'm not going to go on a campaign to try to convince people to become an atheist. It's my journey.... Everybody has their own journey; and this is my journey." [p.20]

Another is that most don't openly apply the word "atheist" to themselves, even when it's clear that that's what they are. Or they still prefer to use the word "God" in some manner, often just as a poetic metaphor (even while they know that their congregation will interpret it very differently).

"I think my way of being a Christian has many things in common with atheists as [Sam] Harris sees them. I am not willing to abandon the symbol 'God' in my understanding of the human and the universe. But my definition of God is very different from mainline Christian traditions yet it is within them. Just at the far left end of the bell shaped curve." [p.3]

"The difference between me and an atheist is basically this: It's not about the existence of God. It's: do we believe that there is room for the use of the word 'God' in some context? And a thoroughly consistent atheist would say, 'No. We just need to get over that word just like we need to get over concepts of race. We quit using that word, we'd be better off.' Whereas I would say I agree with that in a great many cases, but I still think the word has some value in some contexts." [p.5]

As Dennett and his coauthor, Linda LaScola, observe:

The ambiguity about who is a believer and who a nonbeliever follows inexorably from the pluralism that has been assiduously fostered by many religious leaders for a century and more: God is many different things to different people, and since we can't know if one of these conceptions is the right one, we should honor them all. This counsel of tolerance creates a gentle fog that shrouds the question of belief in God in so much indeterminacy that if asked whether they believed in God, many people could sincerely say that they don't know what they are being asked. [p.2]

I think all these traits - the reluctance to persuade others, the desire to keep using the word "God" symbolically - are an artifact of a time before the atheist movement. Many of these pastors, even though they're nonbelievers, seem to still believe at some level that atheism is a bad or blameworthy position, which is why they try so hard to avoid spreading their doubts to other people they know. And without a philosophical and social framework to claim as their own, they express themselves by using the language they've always been taught, since that's what makes them most comfortable.

As part of expanding the secular community, I think we in the atheist movement should offer a safe harbor for these people. If we can provide a more fitting social and philosophical context for them to define themselves in terms of, they'll be more comfortable calling themselves what they are and not clinging to empty god-talk. And if we can make it financially possible for them to walk away from religion, they'll have more incentive to be honest with themselves and their congregations. There are already niches like this - running a secular community center, working for an atheist-themed charity, writing books that defend freethought views, or lobbying on behalf of secular groups - and as the atheist movement expands, there will be more. In many cases, these former pastors will have organizational and rhetorical skills that we need, so this will be a win-win deal. Just look at how much good it's done us to have people like Dan Barker!

Editor's Note: Last month, 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, which will be posted each weekend. Please welcome Ergo Ratio!

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

This is actually my most private moniker, so I'll just say I'm a former neuroscientist who is currently in marketing, which is both fitting and ironic, given I am completely numb to advertising. You see that big red "CLICK HERE" button on that website over there? I don't.

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?

My grandfather was a minister and I was raised in a Christian family, so faith was just assumed and never brought up. As both my parents are educators who value knowledge, growing up I also just assumed that everyone secretly knew it was all nonsense. Realizing I was an atheist was just a gradual process that came with my education.

Four years ago, I couldn't pretend anymore, and I formally announced it to my family during Christmas, sending them each a copy of Sam Harris's "Letter to a Christian Nation" with a hand-written letter to deliver the punchline. Since then, I have urged atheists to open up to their families, the people who are most likely to grant us an audience.

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

Talkislam.info (not IE-friendly) is a community blog hosted by one of my best friends, Aziz Poonawalla, for sharing and discussing Islam-related world news. If it's happening, they're talking about it.

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

FFRF.org has been my staple for a while. I have also donated to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and various children's hospitals.

What membership level did you join the Foundation at?

I started at $50 a month as well.

How do you plan to divide your initial donation?

Right now I'm allocating it all to education.

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

One percent of your income can do more good than any ten percent tithe.

Today, I'm excited to report that I have some breaking news to share with Daylight Atheism readers.

From a highly placed anonymous source inside the Vatican, I've received a letter containing proofs for a new advertising campaign that the Roman Catholic church has been developing for the past several years. The ultimate goal was to run these ads on billboards throughout the world. The bishops in charge described these ads as "the most compelling argument ever made for Holy Mother Church's supreme moral authority and sanctity", and anticipated that they would provoke millions of conversions to Catholicism in the first few days after they went up.

However, due to recent news events and the perceived sensitivity of some of the unfortunate facts thus disclosed, the ad campaign was delayed and ultimately dropped. The concept art and proofs, most of which were already finished, were shelved in a secret Vatican archive. They've never been seen by the world - until now. It's my privilege to be able to show them to you. I think you'll agree with me that they do indeed make a convincing case!

The Case for a Creator, Chapter 9

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

—attributed to Isaac Asimov

Although science progresses through reason and experiment, it's fundamentally driven by curiosity. The impulse that motivates science is the same one that motivates explorers to trek into uncharted wildernesses and climb unconquered mountains, the same one that spurred ancient tribes to paddle over to the next island or cross the next river: the human desire to know, to grasp the totality of the natural world and understand the patterns and connections that flow within it. This sense of curiosity, the urge to explore for exploration's sake, inspires a range of human activities from children digging in the dirt to astrophysicists sending probes to the outer reaches of the solar system.

This is a trait that's noticeably lacking in the creationist movement. Rather than form hypotheses and run experiments, rather than do research and discover new evidence, the dominant attitude among creationists seems to be: it's too hard, you'll never be able to figure it out, don't even bother. I earlier called this attitude "strategic pessimism", but I think it runs deeper than that. In chapter 9, Stephen Meyer shows why.

In this part of the chapter, Meyer is talking with Lee Strobel about the Cambrian explosion. He insists on describing it as a sudden appearance of radically new, fully formed body plans, and asserts, with zero evidence or even a footnote, that the period of the Cambrian explosion was "far too short to have allowed for the kind of large-scale changes that the fossils reflect" [p.240]. I've already discussed Jonathan Wells' similar confusion about the Cambrian explosion, so I won't repeat those remarks. Instead, I want to focus on one remark in particular that Meyer makes.

"The big issue is where did the information come from to build all these new proteins, cells, and body plans? For instance, Cambrian animals would have needed complex proteins, such as lysyl oxidase. In animals today, lysyl oxidase molecules require four hundred amino acids. Where did the genetic information come from to build these complicated molecules?" [p.240]

Now, if you were a scientist, this is just the kind of question that could spur a research program. You could ask questions like: Does lysyl oxidase show sequence similarities to other proteins from which it plausibly could have evolved? If so, do these similar proteins exist in bacteria or in other species that predated the Cambrian explosion, and what are they used for in those species? You could draw a family tree of all the living species that have genes for lysyl oxidase, and see if there are any commonalities that point to the protein's being inherited from a single common ancestor. Given this family tree, you could see if the genetic sequences that encode the protein are different in related species, and from this, you could use molecular clock methods to estimate how long ago the protein first evolved.

Answering all these questions would be a major feat of scientific legwork. Here's most of what we know about lysyl oxidase - you can see for yourself how much effort it took just to work out the molecular structure of the protein, what types of tissue it's expressed in, and what it does in the cell. Meyer is asking a much more difficult question, one which would require a correspondingly greater amount of effort to answer.

Of course, he isn't volunteering to carry out this research himself. But what's striking about this passage is that he's not encouraging anyone else to do so either. Instead, he's actively discouraging people from trying to find out. His question - where did the genetic information come from? - clearly isn't intended as an honest question in search of an answer, but as a rhetorical query meant to paralyze us with the sheer overwhelming complexity it implies. It's impossible to figure this out, he's saying, so why even try? Just say that God did it in a miracle and then call it a day!

This is the exact opposite of the impulse that gives rise to science - not the enlightening spark of curiosity that drives us to make new discoveries, but the desire to remain in the dark and stay ignorant, to be easily discouraged by anything we don't already understand. I don't think English has a good word for this, so let's call it "anticuriosity".

Anticuriosity is the hallmark of the creationist movement. They believe that they already have a one-size-fits-all answer for any question - God did it, it was a miracle, impossible for us to explain or understand - and naturally, that mindset doesn't encourage scientific exploration. Why would you encourage people to be skeptical and ask questions if you already possess Absolute Truth? Why encourage them to explore if you already have all the important answers that anyone ever needs to know? Why bother doing research or experiments if you already know ahead of time what the conclusion has to be? At best such activity will accomplish nothing, and at worst, it will inspire people to doubt and to undermine the all-important social order.

I'm not saying this is how Meyer consciously thinks, but I am saying that this is the attitude his interview conveys. And he's by no means the first Christian apologist to take this position. John Milton's Paradise Lost expresses the same view several hundred years earlier, as in this section from book 8, where the angel Raphael explains to Adam that it would be hubris for human beings to try to figure out whether the Earth orbits the Sun, or vice versa:

"This to attain, whether Heaven move or Earth
Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest
From Man or Angel the great Architect
Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge
His secrets, to be scanned by them who ought
Rather admire. Or, if they list to try
Conjecture, he his fabric of the Heavens
Hath left to their disputes - perhaps to move
His laughter at their quaint opinions...

Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there. Be lowly wise;
Think only what concerns thee and thy being;
Dream not to other worlds, what creatures there
Live, in what state, condition, or degree -
Contented that thus far hath been revealed
Not of Earth only, but of highest Heaven."

You couldn't ask for a more concise description of anticuriosity. In every era, there are religious apologists urging us to stop exploring the natural world, to stop pushing back the borders of our knowledge. Thankfully, in every era there have been freethinkers who ignored this advice and followed their curiosity - and so far, our exploration has been more than repaid every time.

Other posts in this series:

• Rebutting The Case for a Creator

John Hartwig was the principal of a private elementary school run by the conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Last month, he was fired by a church council. The reasons for his dismissal are murky, but they appear to have something to do with this:

Hartwig's father, a former pastor, authored a document years ago questioning Lutheran doctrine that says women shall not have authority over men. Church members say Hartwig, who has been principal since the summer of 2003, was accused of distributing that document to some members of the congregation.

This interpretation is supported by what happened at the church meeting where Hartwig was fired. Over 300 people attended the meeting, many of them concerned parents who supported Hartwig, to voice their opinions - but not all of them got a chance to do so. By decree of the council president, none of the women who attended the meeting were permitted to vote or even to speak:

Women who wanted to ask questions at the meeting were told to write them on a piece of paper and have a man read them aloud. But some, including Hartwig's own daughter, said their questions were never read.

Doubtless, the church leaders got their inspiration from some of the more viciously sexist passages in the Bible commanding women to be silent and subservient to men. In particular, they were probably thinking of this one:

"Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church."

—1 Corinthians 14:34-35

Ironically, these verses may not have been part of the original text of the New Testament. As Bart Ehrman points out in Misquoting Jesus [p.183], we have several surviving NT manuscripts in which these verses are shuffled around: in some they appear after verse 33, in others they appear after verse 40. This is usually a dead giveaway that the verses in question were originally added as a marginal note by a scribe, then interpolated into the text by later copyists.

But whether they're original or not, it hardly matters. These verses are accepted as part of the canon, believed to be the inspired word of God by millions of Christians, and invoked - as they were invoked in Wisconsin last month - to justify disgusting and regressive bigotry against women. These verses still motivate millions who believe that women are unfit for authority, that their assigned role is to be subservient, that they should have no voice in the decisions of society.

How are we not past this? Since these verses were written, women have been heads of state, prime ministers, powerful diplomats, brave soldiers. They've excelled in law, medicine, business and literature. They've even been the heads of churches. Yet to the fundamentalists with their eyes tightly shut, none of this matters in the slightest. To their minds, morality has no relation to reality, and the success of women at governing is irrelevant to the question of whether women should govern.

Religion is to blame for preserving this unbroken thread of bigotry and sexism through the generations. In the 1500s, misogynists like John Knox wrote about why no woman should ever be permitted to hold any position of authority. In 1869, a preacher named Horace Bushnell wrote Women's Suffrage: The Reform Against Nature, arguing that women were "not created or called to govern":

What now is the general result to which we are brought by this review of the Scripture, but that women are out of place in the governing of men... there is clearly never a thought that women have a claim, on any score, to be set forward as campaigners in the state with men. The assertion of their political equality with men would have shocked any apostle, or other scripture writer, and an agitation by women, based on such equality, to secure the right of open contest with men for political office and power, would have been looked upon even as an offense against nature itself — an outrage on decency and order utterly abominable.

Such writings are doubtless why Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, "In the early days of woman-suffrage agitation, I saw that the greatest obstacle we had to overcome was the Bible. It was hurled at us on every side."

If there's any evidence at all that religious sexism is bowing to the tide of progress, it's this: Although many believers defend the unequal treatment of women, they seem embarrassed by it and are increasingly trying to argue that it's not motivated by prejudice or hatred. Consider this page from the evangelical site Got Questions?:

God has ordained that only men are to serve in positions of spiritual teaching authority in the church. This is not because men are necessarily better teachers, or because women are inferior or less intelligent (which is not the case). It is simply the way God designed the church to function. Men are to set the example in spiritual leadership — in their lives and through their words. Women are to take a less authoritative role. Women are encouraged to teach other women (Titus 2:3-5). The Bible also does not restrict women from teaching children. This does not make women less important, by any means, but rather gives them a ministry focus more in agreement with God’s plan and His gifting of them.

Got that? Men aren't better or smarter than women. It's just that God gives them different roles: men have all the leadership, the authority, and the power, and women stay home, make babies and do what men tell them. They're not unequal, just different! It's the exact same logic that was used by slaveholders to argue that Africans were ideally suited by God's design to be laborers and servants, while the superior Europeans were intended by God to rule the world.

As ridiculous as this argument is, the fact that they even feel compelled to make it shows that they're feeling the sting of embarrassment over their own beliefs. If women are just as intelligent as men, then why shouldn't they be allowed to teach men? Of course, these evangelicals close with the only answer that's available to people defending the irrational and the indefensible: "Because God said so!"

You've probably heard of Constance McMillen, a lesbian student at a Mississippi high school who wanted to bring her girlfriend as her date to her senior prom this year. The school officials, not even attempting to disguise their bigotry, refused to grant permission - and then canceled the entire prom rather than face a discrimination lawsuit which they'd be certain to lose. (In fact McMillen and her family did bring a suit, and the judge did rule that she had been discriminated against, but he held that it wasn't in his power to force the school to hold a prom.)

In a brilliant move, the American Humanist Association responded by offering to hold a private, LGBT-friendly prom for Constance's school in which everyone would be welcome, regardless of sexual orientation. This was made possible by a $20,000 grant from Todd Stiefel, an atheist philanthropist who serves on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America.

As I said, this was a brilliant move. Not only does it reaffirm that atheists and secular humanists support the civil rights of LGBT people, it shows the students at Constance's high school that, after their bigoted school board was prepared to deny them a prom, it was a group of nonbelievers who made it possible after all. It was clearly an excellent idea, winners all around - and everyone agreed, it seems, except the Mississippi ACLU.

To avoid further controversy, the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi has rejected a $20,000 gift intended to underwrite an alternate prom replacing one canceled by a local school district after a lesbian student demanded that she be allowed to attend with her girlfriend.

..."Although we support and understand organizations like yours, the majority of Mississippians tremble in terror at the word 'atheist,'" Jennifer Carr, the fund-raiser for the A.C.L.U of Mississippi, wrote in an e-mail message to Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the humanist group.

...Ms. Carr wrote to Mr. Speckhardt: "Our staff has been talking a lot about your donation offer and have found ourselves in a bit of a conflict. We have fears that your organization sponsoring the prom could stir up even more controversy."

Obligatory snark: The ACLU - not afraid to defend the free speech rights of Nazis, but too scared to take money from a bunch of atheists!

But I'm being unfair, because this isn't where the story ends. First, the ACLU didn't actually have the authority to decline the AHA's gift, because a different group, the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, is organizing the private prom. Second, it appears that this message didn't represent the sentiments of the ACLU as a whole, because they swiftly apologized and announced that they had no objection to the gift. This is a much better decision, and I command the ACLU and accept their apology with no hard feelings. I assume the AHA will do likewise.

Even so, this response says something about how atheists are still looked down upon. Even the ACLU - a group whose purpose is to defend the civil liberties of every American, a group that's more than willing to defend gays and lesbians even though that minority causes no small amount of trembling among Mississippi voters - even their first response was to turn down money from atheists, lest they be tainted by their association with us.

Of course, in a state as conservative-dominated as Mississippi, this may be less of a surprise than it would be elsewhere. Still, it shows how much progress we have left to make in terms of winning public acceptance. And the best way to achieve this is to make a splash, to bring light into the darkest of places - which means that Mississippi is one of the best places to start!

Editor's Note: Last month, 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, which will be posted each weekend. Please welcome Thom Wynn!

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

My name is Thom and I live in Byron, GA, though I'm happy to say I was not born here. I will forever claim my birth state of California (despite only living there a short time and only making it back out once to visit so far) because of the joy it brings me to not have what is commonly referred to as "southern pride". I feel the ideas one supports and the ethics one employs is a much better indicator of character than uncontrollable factors such as where someone was born or what religion they were born into. I have been married to my wonderful wife, Kristi, for 10 plus years and we have 5 beautiful daughters. We both have jobs and work mainly to pay the bills as this is what life is apparently supposed to be about. So, we do what we have to do to survive and continue to pursue our true passion of making the world a better place for others and for our children in the future.

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?

Well, let's see. We believe in equal rights for all - woman or man, gay or straight, black or white (and every shade in between). We believe that everyone has the right to pursue their own paths to happiness while striving to make others happy in the present as this life is the only one we get and we should appreciate it and do everything we can to make it a better place. We believe that religion belongs in the privacy of someone's home or in their church and never, ever in government or schools. We believe that we evolved through natural selection like every other living thing. We believe that the only way to gain any knowledge about the world we live in is through science and reason. We believe that the bible is a book of fairytales and find it so very odd that the religious can so easily dismiss every other religion while not noticing how ridiculous their particular flavor of religion is to everyone else. Hello Christians, what about the 4 billion people on planet Earth that disagree with you? So, the answer to the question would be most definitely yes.

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

No blog as of yet unless you count the ongoing social commentary in my head. You can check it out if you like at theworldaccordingtothom@brainspaceforrent.org.

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

We have given to other charities in the past, mainly in the form of donating to and helping with animal rescues. My wife has a habit of picking up lost or abandoned animals. We usually end up nursing them back to health then either finding their owners or finding a rescue that specializes in their particular breed (it also seems she has a habit of finding rare breeds). We would probably keep more if our family didn't already consist of the aforementioned 5 children, along with 3 dogs and a cat, not to mention the limited house and yard space. Also, recently we gave through the American Humanist Association to help in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti and were very pleased with their efforts and feel like they were really able to make a difference.

What membership level did you join the Foundation at? How do you plan to divide your initial donation?

We joined at the $30/month level and are eager to begin helping as many different worthy causes as possible. When I first started reading about the different charities, I was especially pleased with the "Big Bang" section as I've always been a fan of the smaller organizations that really have something to offer. What was really great about this quarter's "Big Bang" charity is that it is Smart Recovery, a science based addiction recovery program. Now, that's truly an effort worth getting behind and supporting. Addiction recovery is hard enough without having the added pressure of joining a cult.

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

It feels great to be a part of an organization that's going to make a difference; to be a part of something that will benefit many deserving causes and to be able to do it for all the right reasons. We should all do what we can because we can make a difference and we can do it without proselytizing. Let's show the world what it means to support worthy causes with no ulterior motives.

So, if this is the sort of thing that interests you, I've created a page for Daylight Atheism on Facebook. If you'd like to sign up as a fan, do so with my blessing, and help spread the word!

At the moment, the page contains nothing but the RSS feed for this site. That may change, if I can think of any worthwhile information about me or about the site to put there. Suggestions welcomed.

Every so often, I get a letter I just have to share - whether because it's so eloquent and insightful that I want more people to read it, or because the author deserves to be roundly mocked by as many people as possible. Here's an example of the latter.

I got this e-mail the other day. It starts out as seemingly thoughtful praise from someone who's obviously taken the time to read my website; then it abruptly takes a different turn:

Dear Ebon Musings:

Your front page essay is beautifully evocative; thank you. (You might want to change the word "miniscule" to "minuscule," however.)

Your passage "From the sky at night, our planet is covered by a spiderweb of glowing lights, testament to our ability to invent and innovate...." was particularly thought-provoking. There are places on the planet, semi-continental in scale, where the human population is quite high, yet the face of the land is almost bereft of light. Satellite imagery makes this quite clear. It is very dark there. The inescapable conclusion is that human evolution has not proceeded equally on every continent.

Of course, it's very "politically incorrect" to notice this fact, as James Watson discovered. But I suppose I can discuss it with you, since you, as the author of the Ninth New Commandment, would find the very concept of "political correctness" to be repugnant.

With all good wishes,

Kevin Alfred Strom.

OK, here's all you need to know about Kevin Alfred Strom: He's a neo-Nazi, an anti-Semite, and the former head of a now-defunct white supremacist group called National Vanguard. He's also served time in prison after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography. (If you read his website, which I won't link to, you'll find a long screed in which he vehemently asserts his innocence and blames the charges on a vast conspiracy of enemies who've persecuted him for no good reason.)

So much for Mr. Strom's résumé. The only question I've got is: What makes this Nazi cretin think I want to be his friend? Seriously, is there anything on my website that might have had even the slightest possibility of giving him the mistaken idea that I have any sympathy whatsoever for his ideas? Or is it just that racists are so desperate to find support for their views that they can delude themselves into seeing it even where it doesn't exist?

In a way, it almost makes me feel sorry for him. (Note: I said "almost".) I'd imagine that most racists are deeply miserable and desperately lonely people - and Strom's child-porn conviction has probably alienated him even from other racists. Reaching out to some random stranger on the internet, in the hope that he'll be sympathetic to you, is the kind of thing a person might do under those circumstances. But I must admit that, given the circumstances, I enjoy dashing those hopes. I view all racists as beneath contempt, and I have special scorn for the ones, like this one, that lie and distort evolution in the vain hope of finding scientific validation for their bigotry. Nothing pleases me more than the knowledge that Mr. Strom and his kind are a dying breed.

By Sarah Braasch

In loving memory of my baby brother, Jacob Michael Braasch (01/28/86 – 02/02/10)

In an internet café in downtown Rabat in Morocco, a middle-aged, middle-class Muslim woman told me that her fondest wish would be to have all of the Arab nations rise up as one and slaughter every Jew on the planet. A young and brilliant male Chinese engineer and co-worker at a small high-tech firm in the San Fernando Valley in California told me that the Japanese are vastly inferior to the Chinese, and that the Chinese are vastly superior to any other race on Earth, as evidenced by all of their technological and cultural achievements at a far earlier date than any other race. My Chinese and Taiwanese colleagues derided me for my Tiger birth year. As a woman, I could not have been born on a less auspicious year. Tigers are ferocious and proud and aggressive. Woe to the Tiger woman. She will certainly never marry. And, I never have.

A Pakistani taxi driver in New York City told me that he hits Muslim women who proposition him for sex as a show of respect. He then propositioned me for sex. A family of Polish immigrants told me that they wouldn't vote for Obama, because blacks are lazy and entitled, and Obama's victory would only render them more so. They also told me that they hate Jews and believe them to have been responsible for 9/11. A German tour guide on the Cote d'Azur told me that the French hate the Italians for being stupid, and the Italians hate the French for being snobs. As a young Jehovah's Witness girl, I relished my secure knowledge that I would survive to enjoy an eternity of earthly paradise while the rest of humanity would suffer horrifying and well-deserved deaths at Armageddon for having rejected Jehovah God. I looked forward to the spectacle with genocidal glee.

Christians have told me that they hate Muslims. Muslims have told me that they hate Jews. Whites have told me that they hate blacks. Florentines have told me that they hate Sardinians. Sunnis have told me that they hate Shi'as. Ethiopians have told me that the Amhara hate the Oromo who hate the Amhara, all of whom hate the Tigrays. But, they really hate the Somalis and the Eritreans. Everyone tells me that they hate gays. And, women. Well, for the most part, no one says that they hate women, but they certainly act like they do.

There seems to be something about me that elicits honesty and trust. People open up to me. They reveal their true feelings. They seem to trust that I will not judge them. And, I don't. They seem to feel that I will not condemn them. And, I don't. They seem to think that I understand the darker sides of their natures. And, I do.

Perhaps I betray that trust. Perhaps I manipulate them. Perhaps I lure them into a false sense of security. Perhaps there is no perhaps.

Maybe it's because they sense my utter lack of group allegiances. I claim no membership in any tribe. Of course, I must function in a world in which more than a handful of group memberships are imposed upon me by accident of my birth, but I feel no particular pride or obligation or prejudice as a result. No one can be outside of your group, if you don't have an in-group.

I was raised in an abusive, lower middle-class Jehovah's Witness home in suburban Minnesota by white parents of Northern European ancestry, and, if family lore is to be believed, a dash of Native American. Those are my ostensible tribal identities by birth. One of the few positive aspects of being raised as a Jehovah's Witness was the fact that I grew up in a racially integrated religious community, even if my residential and academic communities were anything but. Nonetheless, I walked away from all of my tribes at the moment I turned 18. I rejected everything I had been. I decided to recreate myself anew.

I turned myself into a human rights activist and writer, intent on raising public awareness of the atrocities human beings perpetrate against one another in the name of their respective tribal identities. I seek the truth, but I have no desire to victimize anyone. I seek to expose and dismantle institutions and cultures of tribalism and oppression, not individual lives. I would never reveal anyone's identity. I reveal their bigotries, their hatreds, their genocidal desires, their misogyny, their ethnocentrism, their fascism and their racism. I see them as victims too, not just perpetrators. They are also victims of indoctrination, of their divisive group ideologies, perpetuated by their respective tribes, be they defined by race, religion, creed, ethnicity, class, nationality, culture or what have you.

Tribalism seems to be the defining characteristic of humanity. The adulation of one's own group and its defining attributes while also condemning and demonizing all outsiders and their respective groups, including their allegedly contrasting attributes. We will either learn to overcome this vestigial proclivity or be overcome by it, like an infected and inflamed appendix. Evolutionary sepsis, if you will.

And, does it really need mentioning that all of these tribal identities that we hold so dear don't actually exist? They are arbitrary and illusory social constructs. Man made. Artificial. Fake.

Racial distinctions? Not real. National boundaries? Not real. Religious affiliations? Not real. Cultural distinctions are nebulous and amorphous, fleeting and evanescent. Cultures rise and fall and twist and turn like the unrelenting and dispassionate vicissitudes of the turbulent seas. Efforts to protect and maintain cultures and to grant groups rights invariably lead to the most egregious human rights violations.

Many of my colleagues would recoil at such a claim. This approach ignores the wrongs of biblical proportions, which have been perpetrated against human beings because of their group identities. How do you go about seeking justice for the countless persons who were murdered or tortured or dehumanized in genocidal campaigns without addressing the fact that these atrocities were committed because of the victims' tribal identities, social constructs or no. Real or illusory though they may be.

What is the alternative? Sometimes when you act as if the circumstances are as you wish them to be, you can effect positive change via a self-fulfilling prophecy. We may just have to resign ourselves, as a species, to letting go of our lust for retribution, in order to create a world in which we all may live. We may need to shed our tribal allegiances in order to survive.

So, what's a well-meaning human rights activist to do? It seems positively hopeless. Never-ending cycles of oppression and victimization based upon artificial divisions within humanity or wish fulfillment.

Tribalisms, including religion, probably served important evolutionary purposes at one point. But, times have changed. Circumstances have changed. Our well-honed ability to distinguish ourselves from one another based upon imaginary distinctions no longer serves the purpose of perpetuating ourselves as a species. We are too many. We are running out of water and land and oil and other resources. We are destroying what habitable geography we now possess. We are no longer served by trying to outbreed one another into submission. We are no longer served by keeping women as sex slaves to generate a ready source of slave child labor. And, our well-honed ability to invent illusory group divisions is matched only by our well-honed ability to invent very real methods for killing one another on a massive, even global scale.

To grant credence to these so-called differences and group characteristics is to divorce one's self from reality. We no longer have the luxury of ignoring one another. We no longer have the luxury of isolating ourselves geographically or otherwise. All of our divisions have been rendered meaningless except in the id dominated portions of our minds. Global transportation, migration, and communication have eradicated any notion of difference.

We must either accept our new reality as a single global family of individual human beings, or destroy one another. It is really that simple. Anyone who avers otherwise is not willing to see the stark and bleak future confronting us.

The problem is time. We don't have enough of it. Maybe if we had started the process of shedding our idiocies earlier, we wouldn't have found ourselves in such dire straits at the latest possible moment. Maybe if we had figured out a way to colonize other planets sooner, we could have established a Christian colony on Venus and a Muslim colony on Mars and a Jewish colony on Mercury. The Hindus could take Jupiter. No one would be able to keep Earth, as this would inspire far too much rancor over one or the other religious group being able to retain their earthly holy sites while the other groups would be forced to forego theirs. No doubt there would be much bickering over who gets which planet, over who has to share, and the astrological and theological implications of the assignments.

The problem is arrogance. We have too much of it. Arrogance and self-conceptions of victimization and persecution. Everyone thinks they are better than everyone else. And, everyone wants to be able to claim past grievances, past victimizations, which bestow upon them privileges not to be enjoyed by others. Here's the honest-to-god truth: You're shit. Not the shit. Just shit. And, so is everyone else. You're not better than anyone else. Your culture was not superior to anyone else's. If it were, it wouldn't have died. And, the current leaders will die out too. Your religion or prophets or whatever don't possess any truth that has been denied all others. You are human. You are nothing more and nothing less. You are just like everyone else.

But, being human is wonderful. Or, at least, it can be. It could be. And, it is enough. Or, at least, it should be. But, human beings seem to be too stupid to enjoy their extraordinary good fortunate to have won the cosmological super lotto. We exist. Woo hoo. We are here. Enjoy.

Is just getting rid of religion enough? The so-called New Atheists are often criticized for taking aim exclusively at religion. Attacks against religion as a divisive group ideology, which may lead to humanity's downfall, are derided as ignorant and facile. Opponents of the anti-theists claim political and territorial and national and military disputes as the real culprits.

In a sense, they are right. Religion is but one aspect of the greater problem. The problem is tribalism. Religion is a particularly virulent form of tribalism, because it also presupposes truths without evidence and demands uncritical devotion and impunity and immunity from criticism. The other tribalisms also have their respective dogmas. But, maybe not to the extent that religion does.

Sam Harris often says that he is not really attacking religion so much as dogma. He is attacking faith – belief without evidence. I would suggest a counterpoint to that position. I would suggest that we should broaden our attack to include all tribalisms, not just religion. We should attack all divisive group ideologies. This includes race, religion, class, creed, nationality, culture, ethnicity, etc., etc..

Even the relatively benign stuff disturbs me. The pride in artistic accomplishments or scientific feats of one's fellow in-group members. The riotous and bacchanalian celebrations over the sports victories of the team bearing the name of one's in-group, regardless of the actual origin of the players. The incessant retelling of military conquests by one's ancestors of long ago.

I am not suggesting that we destroy our cultural heritage or force everyone to conform to a homogenized and sanitized set of characteristics. Not in the least. I am arguing for the maximization of freedom. I am arguing for the maximization of anarchy. I am arguing for the maximization of individualism, including the individual choice to self-identify with whichever cultural norms one wishes. I am arguing against the absurd notion of group rights. I am arguing against the even more absurd notion of cultural rights. We cannot maintain or protect cultures. History, yes. But, cultures, no. Any attempts to protect or maintain groups or cultures or nations inevitably leads to oppression and human rights violations, especially of the most vulnerable members of any group, the women and children.

Groups wish to perpetuate themselves. A group is an entity, and, like any other entity, a group will seek out its own survival. Women and children are the means of perpetuating the group. Inevitably, the group leaders will seek to subjugate and control the women and children. Religion has been a particularly useful tool in realizing this aim.

In order for humanity to survive, the individual must rule. Only individual rights may have any political or legal currency. All group ideologies must enter the free global marketplace of ideas. No special privileges any longer for religion or nationality or race or culture. Sink or swim. The clergy and the other ideologues will have to win over their adherents like shop owners have to win over their customers, like intellectuals have to win over academia. An individual may choose or not choose to participate in whichever culture or religion or group, and, if it ceases to serve him or her, leave it just as easily without death threats and labels of apostasy.

But, in a sense, I am arguing for communitarianism, but only on a species-wide, global scale. Our in-group needs to include the entirety of humanity. Each and every single, individual human being is in our tribe.

A young Kazakh man I had met told me that he was really angry about a travel program he had seen on TV. The travel program described an ancient city in Uzbekistan, near the border with Kazakhstan, as an Uzbek city, not a Kazakh city. I asked him why this would bother him so much. He said that that particular city had always been a Kazakh city for millennia and millennia, and that the Uzbeks had stolen it from the Kazakhs about 1200 hundred years ago, and that it riles him each and every time he hears this city mentioned as an Uzbek city.

I suggested that it might be time to get over it.