A few months ago, I wrote a post about the uses of ridicule and the role it played in my own journey to atheism. I want to say some more about this subject, and a Daylight Atheism reader (thanks, Peter!) pointed me to this white paper from the Institute of World Politics that I'll use as a jumping-off point. It's titled "Ridicule: An instrument in the war on terrorism", but it has some broader lessons that the atheist movement - or any other underdog group fighting a battle of ideas - can usefully employ.

The paper opens with an observation from an unimpeachable authority:

Used as a means of positive persuasion, humor can be an important public diplomacy tool. "If I can get you to laugh with me," said comedian John Cleese, "you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge the truth."

Following this, there's a discussion of the many dictators and tyrannies that banned jokes and satire which poke fun at the powers that be - both ancient, such as the Roman empire and Talmudic rabbis, and modern, from Castro's Cuba to Vladimir Putin's Russia to Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. But the gold medal for lacking a sense of humor must surely go to the mullahs of Iran, who, in the 1980s, went so far as to have foreign humorists who lampooned the regime assassinated. (The paper doesn't name the targets, and I haven't been able to find other sources referring to these events. If anyone knows more about this, please let me know.)

This is just what we should expect. Most actual or would-be tyrants try to pass themselves off as infallible - they claim to be flawless, to possess limitless strength and wisdom, to never make mistakes and to always know what's best for everyone - or, in the religious case, they simply claim to be servants of God. Laughter is highly effective at dispelling this fog: by magnifying and exaggerating the leaders' flaws and foibles, ridicule punctures their pretensions and cuts them down to size. It's all but impossible to think of a person, or a government or a text, as perfect and flawless when you're laughing at them.

By humanizing leaders and authority figures, ridicule clears a path for more substantive criticism. The authors write that, in pre-revolutionary France, constant ridicule "stripped away" the moral legitimacy of the church and the monarchy, paving the way for their overthrow. It "arguably motivated and radicalized the public more than the high-minded philosophies of the revolutionaries" - something that should strike a chord with all assertive modern atheists. Religious institutions usually aren't afraid of philosophical criticism, because their members have been trained to wave away rational argument through faith. But a good laugh is something that anyone can understand, and it hits at the same emotional level where religious faith usually resides.

Another telling point is that, in addition to banning humorous displays by others, cruel leaders and autocratic governments tend to lack a sense of humor themselves. They generally require "either adulation or fear", no other response in between. This description ought to sound familiar to atheists who notice that the Bible contains a distinct absence of humor. Ironically, as the paper points out, Adolf Hitler in particular was known to take pleasure in playing cruel jokes on others - similar to the way the Bible always depicts God's laughter as merciless mockery of the doomed, never as genuine merriment.

Ridicule cracks this brittle facade and brings all clay-footed idols crashing down to earth. Against opponents who take themselves absolutely seriously and have no room in their worldview for irony or ambiguity, it's a highly effective weapon. Religious texts also teach their followers to expect hostility and persecution - in fact, they thrive on it - but ridicule and satire are harder for them to deal with. For all these reasons, ridicule is a uniquely - and asymmetrically - powerful means of persuasion, which is why it should be an essential part of the atheist movement's strategy.

I don't usually write posts that are just quotes, but sometimes it's nice to take a stroll down memory lane. Back in the day, this guy used to be one of the sharpest pro-science writers around, and I used to really love reading his stuff. I wonder whatever became of him.

"At its most basic level, the modern Right's tension with science springs from conservatism, a political philosophy that generally resists change. The dynamism of science - its constant onslaught on old orthodoxies, its rapid generation of new technological possibilities - presents an obvious challenge to more static worldviews. From Galileo to Darwin and beyond, this conflict has played out repeatedly over the course of history."

—Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science, p.5. Perseus Books Group, 2005.

One of the first posts on Daylight Atheism, "A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep", was about the pathetic levels of Biblical knowledge in a nation that's theoretically 85% Christian. Well, thanks to a widely reported new survey, we can add another fact to that picture: not only do Americans not know much about the Bible, they don't go to church very often either.

In a more recent study, Hadaway estimated that if the number of Americans who told Gallup pollsters that they attended church in the last week were accurate, about 118 million Americans would be at houses of worship each week. By calculating the number of congregations (including non-Christian congregations) and their average attendance, Hadaway estimated that in reality about 21 percent of Americans attended religious services weekly — exactly half the number who told pollsters they did.

As the article notes, the most striking fact is how often Americans lie to pollsters about attending church. America is an outlier among the industrialized nations not in the number of people who actually attend religious services, but in the number of people who say they do. Sociologists can pin down this deception in several ways: for instance, when Americans are asked, "Did you attend religious services in the past week?", high percentages say yes. But when people fill out "time-use surveys" which ask them to list what they were doing throughout the day, without priming them with the idea of attending church, the percentages in the pews are much smaller.

This should be greatly interesting to the New Atheists, since it both validates our basic approach and suggests a strategy for our future efforts. What these findings show is that in America, "being religious" is still synonymous with "being a good person", and vice versa. Whether because they don't have the time or out of simple disinterest, millions of nominally religious Americans skip church each Sunday. But when a pollster asks these people if they went to church that week, they hear the question as, "Are you a moral person?" And since no one wants to think of themselves as immoral, they often answer yes anyway.

What this means for atheists is that it's less important to convince people that their religious beliefs are false. Between their lack of church attendance and their lack of biblical knowledge, the actual teachings of religion are already irrelevant as far as tens of millions of Americans are concerned. What's more important is to break the perceived link between religion and morality that motivates people to claim religious membership as a marker of good character. That link is a vestigial trait: a holdover from the days when, for better or for worse, religion genuinely could claim to be the only source of moral guidance.

And that, in turn, suggests a strategy. The most effective way for atheists to sever that link is to come out! When we're known to our friends and neighbors as friendly, generous, compassionate people who are also nonbelievers, it will be far more difficult for them to cling to the prejudice that the godless are all wicked misanthropes. This also suggests that when we criticize religion, we should focus less on its factual claims (which, again, are irrelevant to most theists) and more on its moral claims. When we argue strongly that religious books condone horrible practices like slavery, genocide and the oppression of women, we can attack that link from the other direction, proving by example that belief in God doesn't automatically make one a good person.

It's no wonder that so many believers react with outrage and try to censor us when atheists unapologetically stand up and proclaim our existence - especially if the message is that the godless can be good people too. As peaceable as that is, from the standpoint of religious culture warriors, it's the most dangerous message we can possibly convey.

I have a short update on the atheist ad campaign running on Fort Worth buses. In my last post, I mentioned that a coalition of city pastors were furious over the ads and tried to organize a boycott. (Would it help to tell them that this is how atheists feel all the time? Probably not.)

The boycott appears to have gone nowhere fast, but something else did happen: another Christian group paid for vans displaying a religious message to follow the buses around town all day. Personally, I think this is hilarious. Do the Christians really have that much faith in the power of a two-second glimpse of an atheist message to change people's minds? Maybe they're imagining that the atheist bus emanates some kind of irresistible persuasive power, turning everyone it passes into a nonbeliever - but then the Christian van comes in its wake and changes them right back!

Take that, atheists!

In reality, what they can't seem to recognize is that the atheist ads aren't intended to change minds in the spot. They're aimed at people who are already atheists, or who are leaning that way, encouraging them to come out of the closet and to join local groups like DFWCOR. Surveys consistently show that there are far more atheists in America than most people realize; the goal of ad campaigns like this is to collect this low-hanging fruit. By contrast, it's safe to assume that everyone who wants to join a Christian church has already done so. But if the Christians want to waste their money on foolish stunts like this, I say more power to them.

I'm also pleased because the ridiculous bus-stalking idea is only going to draw more publicity and attention to the atheists. As this article points out, DFWCOR only paid for ads to run on the sides of four buses, out of about 200 in the city. But the frenzied reaction from bigoted Christians has enormously multiplied the impact of the campaign and ensured that far more people have seen or heard about it than otherwise would have. So, again: Thanks, Christians!

Finally, it amuses me to note that, in response to the campaign, the transit authority decided to ban all religious and atheist advertising in the future. (According to this report from Friendly Atheist, one of the board members ranted about how messages like this shouldn't be permitted in America.)

I'm not upset, exactly, but I'd be willing to bet that religious ads have run on these buses many times and no one ever complained. It was only when groups who aren't in the majority want to exercise their equal rights that people get angry - as I mentioned in my original post, Dallas did the same thing to block the atheist ads from running. Still, as hypocritical as this is, I'm not bothered as long as the new policy is applied equally and fairly. Atheists have plenty of other places to advertise, and if that's what it takes to make our government a little bit more secular, I'm happy about that too!

Nothing fills my heart with Christmas cheer like seeing atheists' holiday ads, so I was glad to hear of a new campaign starting up in Texas, courtesy of the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason. Starting this month, they'll be running ads that read "Millions of Americans Are Good Without God" on Fort Worth city buses.

But it didn't happen without a struggle. Just look at how far the city of Dallas was willing to go to keep our ads off its buses:

"We'd have run these ads on Dallas buses as well," noted DFW CoR Coordinator Terry McDonald, "but when we approached DART, they chose to stop running all religiously-related ads rather than include ours."

And even in Fort Worth, where the ads are running, city officials have made clear their desire to censor them:

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief said Friday that although the city does not fund the transportation authority, he disagrees with its decision to allow what he calls "these divisive ads"....

Granted, this may just be media posturing; proclaiming outrage and then doing nothing is a standard item in any elected official's toolbox. Even so, it sends a strong message that atheists are political outsiders who can't expect to get the same support or representation from their government as everyone else. But what really tips the scales of absurdity is the response from the local Christian churches:

The Rev. Kyev Tatum, pastor of Friendship Rock Baptist Church, said not only the community but also some bus drivers have been offended by the ads... Tatum called for a boycott, saying about a dozen churches would try to provide rides for anyone who refused to ride a city bus over the atheist ads.

Tatum accused the transportation authority of putting "profit over principle."

"So why would you support an enterprise that's trying to demean the Christian principle?" he said.

Apparently, a message that atheists can be good people is an offensive insult to Christianity. (Another theist quoted in the article calls the ads "hurtful"). The implication, it would seem, is that Christians believe themselves to be the only good people in the world, and that no one else is permitted to act morally without their permission.

And it's not just in the Bible Belt that atheists face condemnation and censorship for proclaiming their existence. In Pennsylvania, the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia's annual "Tree of Knowledge" display was banned from the county courthouse lawn. This comes after several unsuccessful attempts by the county to exclude the freethought display by confusingly changing the application process. Finally, the county commissioners changed the rules to disallow all non-county-owned displays - and then, remarkably, the displays that did go up were virtually identical to the ones that had been there before.

Even in Hawaii, a local freethought activist was roughed up, forcibly removed, and arrested after voicing a brief, non-disruptive complaint over official prayers in the State Senate. (The judge took less than an hour to find him not guilty.)

In all these stories, we're hearing the shrill screams of Christians who've discovered that they're not the only ones allowed to speak in public, and are furious over the perceived loss of that privilege. It doesn't matter what the actual message atheists are promoting is. No matter how meek, how inoffensive, how conciliatory we make it, its mere existence will draw hatred and fury from religious bigots, because they really want is for us not to exist. Nothing less will satisfy them.

It happens all the time. Two years ago in Colorado, a billboard campaign which simply said, "Don't believe in God? You are not alone," drew a flood of hate mail and threats directed at the Colorado Coalition of Reason, which paid for the ads. How can you get less offensive than a mere statement that atheists exist?

And in 2006, when the freethinking student Matt LaClair recorded a popular high school teacher threatening his students with hellfire if they refused to convert to Christianity, he, and not the teacher, became the target of threats and harassment. As he later said about the experience, "The nicer you are, the more they hate you."

We'll never appease religious people by being nice enough, and in fact, it will only encourage them to attack us more if we give the impression that we can be cowed. What we should do instead is speak boldly, refuse to apologize for our existence, and make it clear that we're not going away and that we intend to claim a voice in the marketplace of ideas. When society gets used to our existence, when they accept that we're not going away, the threats, harassment and censorship will naturally diminish and die off.

UPDATE: And as soon as I post this, another example comes along: In Texas, an atheist group joined the town's annual Christmas parade, playing "Jingle Bells" on vuvuzelas. Not to protest, not to attack believers - just atheists participating in a Christmas parade. The result?

"Wasn't exactly happy about the Christmas Parade this year, I spent many years teaching my children to love and respect other people and to love the fact that they were children of God and I don't feel that they should be influenced in any other way especially not at a Christmas parade," said Tina Corgey, who is a lifelong Bryan resident.

..."If you have younger children they weren't going to understand but I have older children, a teenager, 8-year-old and they were curious and they asked questions and it was hard for them to believe and understand that there are actually people out there that don't believe in God," Corgey said.

That poor, oppressed woman, having to explain to her children that there are people who believe differently. Won't someone shelter her from the burden of having to be in contact with new ideas?

The things I do for you people.

A few weeks ago, I was browsing in a used bookstore when I saw a copy of Chris Hedges' When Atheism Becomes Religion (retitled from the original, I Don't Believe in Atheists). Since it was only a few dollars, I decided to get it - it might be good for a laugh, I thought, or as posting fodder.

Well, I've slogged my way through it, and I do mean slogged. It seems as if this book was written as a rush job, hoping to cash in on the popularity of the New Atheists. For one thing, it's only 185 pages, and it's a small book, not much bigger than pocket-sized. But more to the point, Hedges' argumentation is embarrassingly sloppy. It reads as if he was making it up as he went along and couldn't be bothered to keep track of what he'd already said: there are places where he'll casually make a statement that completely undercuts a different statement he made in an earlier chapter, or even earlier in the same chapter. These glaring self-contradictions make me skeptical that this book could have received any serious editing at all. (More on those later.)

But in spite of its brevity, Hedges' book packs an incredible amount of venom and vilification between its covers. From beginning to end, it's literally one long frothing-at-the-mouth-furious rant. He accuses atheists of complicity in every evil you could imagine, and a few that he appears to have invented specifically for this book. This level of crazed vilification of atheists is one I've never seen before, not even in books by the most fanatical of Christian fundamentalists. It's clear that the existence of the New Atheists infuriates Hedges at some very deep and visceral level, enough to make it difficult for him to think straight.

You probably think I'm exaggerating. Well, if so, let me quote some representative passages to give you an idea of the cumulative effect this book produces:

[The New Atheists] embrace a belief system as intolerant, chauvinistic and bigoted as that of religious fundamentalists (p.1)... [They] have built squalid little belief systems that are in the service of themselves and their own power (p.7)... [They] are as bankrupt as the passions of Christian and Islamic fundamentalists who sanctify mass slaughter (p.20)... [They] are stunted products of a self-satisfied, materialistic middle class (p.22)... [They] are little more than carnival barkers (p.32)... [T]hey empower the demons of self-exaltation, greed and lust for power (p.40)... These delusions are part of a worldview... that places itself and its selfish desires and dreams before the protection of life itself (p.57)... [They] embrace a perverted idealism that is sadly familiar in light of all twentieth-century tyrannies (p.58)... [They] have become the high priests of the cult of science (p.64)... These atheists are suburban mutations. They are products of a moral and political landscape corrupted by too much television (p.86)... [They] urge us forward into imperial projects that are as foolish as they are suicidal (p.111)... They can no longer make moral distinctions. They are blind to their own moral corruption (p.154)... They forget what it is to be human (p.157)... They bolster our self-satisfaction, anti-intellectualism and provincialism (p.179)... [They] are deluded products of this image-based and culturally illiterate world (p.183)... They appeal to our subliminal and irrational desires. They select a few facts and use them to dismiss historical, political and cultural realities. They tell us what we want to believe about ourselves. They assure us that we are good. They proclaim the violence employed in our name a virtue. They champion our ignorance as knowledge. They assure us that there is no reason to investigate other ways of being. Our way of life is the best. They indulge us in our delusional dream of human perfectibility. (p.183)

If you're worried for my mental health after wading through this drivel, don't be. Hedges' ludicrous polemic bears so little resemblance to the actual views of any atheist I know, the overall effect was comedic - as in, he can't really expect us to take this seriously, can he?

As just one example: throughout the book, he accuses us of being dangerously naive idealists who believe that humanity is perfectible and that we're moving inevitably toward a utopia of reason. One of his chief villains is Christopher Hitchens, who's accused of being "rhapsodic about the future world made possible by science and human ingenuity" (p.30). Well, here's a quote from Hitchens:

Religious faith is, precisely because we are still-evolving creatures, ineradicable. It will never die out, or at least not until we get over our fear of death, and of the dark, and of the unknown, and of each other. (source)

Do these sound like the sentiments of a starry-eyed utopian? This example, which took me about five minutes to dig up, underscores the point of how sloppy, cursory, and shallow this book's arguments are. If I were going to attack the views of a group so devoted to reason as the New Atheists, I'd take care to accurately summarize their worldview and support each point with citations, so as not to be accused of beating up a straw man. Clearly, Hedges has no interest in doing that. But it does make me wonder what the real reasons for his hatred of us are, given that his stated ones are so plainly inadequate. Coming up soon, I intend to write a series of posts which will critically analyze the fallacies in Hedges' book, and hopefully, come up with an answer to that mystery.

Other posts in this series:

• Evolution Isn't a Moral Theory (Except When It Is)
• Atheists Don't Debate (Except When We Do)
• Chris Hedges Doesn't Believe In Moral Progress (Except When He Does)

I was happy to read that this week that atheist groups are launching a new ad blitz, with ads extolling the virtues of atheism on billboards, buses, trains and print media. Significantly, atheist ads are also hitting the airwaves for the first time ever - thanks to a $150,000 donation from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, which is underwriting a TV ad campaign by the American Humanist Association.

And the very best part of the AHA campaign is that the ads aren't just saying that atheists can be good people too. They're hitting the religious where it hurts - by quoting some of the more notoriously evil verses from the Bible and contrasting them with positive quotes from famous humanists and freethinkers. (See the quotes here - I'm pleased with their selections.)

The most important reason for advertisements like these is that we still have a lot of low-hanging fruit. Most atheist groups have membership only in the tens of thousands - not an insignificant number, to be sure, and many of them are growing rapidly. The FFRF, for example, has tripled its membership in just the past few years. But the number of Americans who explicitly identify as atheist or agnostic is in the millions, and the number who are nonreligious is in the tens of millions. Clearly, if we can reach even a fraction of these people and convince them to join up, we could be much larger and more influential - and we'd punch much harder against the incursions of the religious right.

Granted, when it comes to organizing, religious groups have a built-in advantage: they already have a hierarchy which they can use to communicate with their membership. This means we have to work harder to catch up with them, and both positive and negative ads have a place in this effort - positive, to emphasize the benefits of atheism and show our neighbors that we're good and moral people. But ads highlighting the cruelties and violence of the Bible are just as important, for the simple reason that they puncture the claim made by religious people that there's a single source of morality and that they have sole custody of it.

After all, just look at how absolutely terrified the religious right is of this campaign:

"They are trying to show that they can be good without God but that's ridiculous," said Dr. Craig Hazen, founder and director on Biola's MA program on Christian Apologetics, in an interview with The Christian Post.

...Although Hazen said humanists have no business interpreting the Bible [my emphasis], he concluded that the ads may have some resonance due to the biblical illiteracy among Christians today.

I find it vastly amusing to see religious bigots petulantly complaining that we're not allowed to be good and decent people if we don't believe in their god. Of course, they define "being a good person" as "believing in our religion", so in their eyes, atheists are immoral by definition. But that definition is what you'd call a "term of art" - a specialized meaning that's very different from the way people ordinarily understand the word.

And this is a fight we should be glad to have. I welcome the religious right's claims that they're the only moral people. After all, it will only increase the cognitive dissonance when people see our ads contrasting the vicious and bloodthirsty verses of the Bible with famous nonbelievers advocating conscience, reason, compassion, and other good things. It will make our ads that much more effective. So, to the apologists for superstition and prejudice, I say bring it on! And for everyone else, I have this friendly reminder: This holiday season, consider atheism - and if you're inclined towards our side, then please join one of these worthy groups, and help us spread the joyous and liberating message of reason.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation

The American Humanist Association

The Secular Coalition for America

Last week, I noticed a pingback on my blog from a post on Ms. Magazine by Monica Shores, "Will New Atheism Make Room for Women?"

There are some good things about this piece. I have to say that I'm glad to see the atheist movement making an impact in wider, more traditional media circles. The need to diversify the atheist movement and ensure that we encourage and fairly value the contributions of women and people of color is a valid one, and I've written about it before as well. I welcome more attention being paid to this issue and people being willing to point it out if we've fallen short.

However, Shores' post isn't written in the spirit of helping atheists improve on this issue. It's more in the style of a hit job, taking the stance that we must all be sexists whom no woman would want to associate with:

If you've been following the rise of so-called "New Atheism" movement, you may have noticed that it sure looks a lot like old religion. The individuals most commonly associated with contemporary atheism — Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Victor Stenger - are all male, white and, well, kinda old (69, 61, 68 and 75). Sam Harris, another popular figure who bears mention, has the distinction of being in his early 40s.

Ironically, she spends all her time focusing on the white men who are prominent in the atheist movement, and then at the very end bemoans the fact that atheist women lack "visibility and name-recognition"! Well, Ms. Shores, why do you think that is? Could it possibly be because mainstream, traditional media outlets - even ones as allegedly progressive and feminist as Ms. Magazine - refuse to give atheist women the space and fair coverage they deserve?

What makes this even more bizarre is that Shores is clearly aware of the existence of many atheist women. She references Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, and links to essays by Susan Jacoby, Ophelia Benson, Greta Christina and Jen McCreight, as well as a post by Sikivu Hutchinson right here on Daylight Atheism. Yet, again, she gives all these excellent writers and advocates only passing mention, so that she can continue to criticize us for the utterly inexplicable invisibility of women and people of color. (It kind of reminds me of this skit from the late, lamented Mystery Science Theater 3000.) To compound this, Shores writes that there's "little indication that atheists are receptive" to the idea of diversifying - and to support this assertion, links to two posts arguing the exact opposite! This is clearly a case of the established media narrative driving coverage of the facts, rather than vice versa.

There are a few other annoying inaccuracies in Shores' post I want to point out. She writes that atheists "can't abide by tolerance of religion", when what we actually say is that religion shouldn't get special privileges or be immune from criticism. She writes that we "dare not hope for eradication of religion outright", whereas many of us do hope for this (by victory on the battlefield of ideas, of course, not by coercion or violence) and have no fear of saying so. And she ridiculously and insultingly mischaracterizes this piece by my fellow blogger vjack of Atheist Revolution as "overtly sexist", when it's actually a thoughtful exploration of the reasons why women may not feel as welcome in the activist segment of the atheist movement as we'd like.

Thankfully, Ms. magazine gave a follow-up post to Jen McCreight, who corrected many of these inaccuracies and pointed out some of the atheist women who are making major, meaningful contributions to the movement. This was a much better piece that rightly highlighted the accomplishments of atheist women, rather than ignoring them and then inexplicably complaining that they're nowhere to be found.

Because we New Atheists haven't been told to shut up nearly often enough, Matt Nisbet has an editorial on BigThink this week. I was so glad to read it, because it had been a disturbingly long time - possibly as long as a whole day - since we'd last heard from someone saying we need to be shoved back into the closet (and the closet door nailed shut). Thankfully, this essay ends that worrying drought, calling it a "strategic blunder" that the Council for Secular Humanism gave a speaking spot to P.Z. Myers at its recent L.A. conference.

Nisbet begins with that much-used and much-loved rhetorical tactic, the false dichotomy:

On one side, "accommodationists" argue that non-believers should build bridges with others around shared values in order to work on common problems such as climate change and failing schools. On the other side, "confrontationalists" argue that they should close ranks and engage in relentless attack and ridicule against all forms of religion...

Nisbet has an enviable advantage when arguing against us: he's not confined by petty limitations such as the truth. Does he actually provide any citations of people saying this to substantiate the razor-sharp line he draws?

Let me see if I can straddle that line. I'll freely admit to the charge of being as fiery, uncompromising and New an atheist as you'll meet. I also attend a Unitarian Universalist church and, in the past, have given money to liberal religious charities. I can only presume that Nisbet, if presented with this contradiction, would start stammering "Does not compute" and then we'd see sparks shoot from his ears, like those androids in the original Star Trek whose computer brains couldn't cope with people doing things that didn't make sense.

Before the accommodationists' brains melt down entirely, let me solve the paradox for them: what New Atheists actually believe is that we can work together with good-hearted religious people on areas where we share common cause, but without surrendering the right to criticize them when it comes to other areas where we disagree. We can join with theists on, say, climate change, but still maintain - and advocate - the opinion that faith is more harmful than helpful. In Nisbet's black-and-white world, you're either someone's servile ally or their sworn nemesis, with no gradations in between.

The accommodationist mindset must be like being Tinkerbell from the original Peter Pan, who'd get homicidally jealous of any girl flirting with Peter because she was too small to contain more than one emotion at a time. Similarly, Matt Nisbet seems to think that because we criticize religious groups, it must mean we categorically refuse to associate with religious individuals. Fortunately, our brains seem to be just big enough to allow us to hold both those concepts in mind together.

The Council for Secular Humanism — and its parent organization the Center for Inquiry - erred considerably in giving Myers a forum. His appearance and remarks have gained news attention, but at what price?

This is not about censoring Myers, but about making wise choices relative to the public image of the organization and the future of the movement. There will always be a need for iconoclasts and pundits such as Myers who exceed the boundaries of civil discourse and who grab attention by saying foolish and embarrassing things. But that doesn't mean that major organizations should affiliate with him by making his remarks the news that comes to define their annual meetings.

An aside: Can we now put to bed, once and for all, the canard that accommodationists aren't just trying to shut us up? What is this if not a naked plea that secular groups not invite people who disagree with Matt Nisbet to come and speak?

It strikes me that if the Center for Inquiry erred by giving P.Z. Myers a platform, and worse, by making his speeches the news that defines them, then Matt Nisbet has committed that very same error, only in even greater magnitude. If you follow the writings of Nisbet or his ilk, like Chris Mooney, you'll soon see that practically their sole avocation these days is constant complaining and bellyaching about how impolite the New Atheists are. Reacting to us is the sole thing that's come to define them.

It's incredible how single-mindedly focused our critics are on us. Scan the headlines, and what do you see? Religious fundamentalists assaulting, murdering and terrorizing people who hold different beliefs; bombing buses and slashing throats; enslaving women and brutalizing gays; working to dismantle democracy and erase culture and history; and spreading ignorance about basic truths of life, the world, and human biology. And what have we, the New Atheists, done in response that's so terrible? Our catalog of crimes consists of the following: drawing cartoons, writing books, speaking at conferences, and occasionally being rude to inanimate objects.

Daniel Dennett asked why these people aren't "equal-opportunity sneerers", but I'd take it a step farther: their myopia makes them ridiculous. Their umbrage is wildly disproportionate to our actual deeds. It has nothing to do with what advances justice or freedom for humankind, and everything to do with whether they'll feel comfortable at cocktail parties.

Much like the current appeal of the libertarian movement and Reason magazine, the sharp iconoclasm of Myers and others appeals to young people seeking something novel and anti-establishment, an outlook easily captured in a T-shirt and expressed as an identity by way of a label such as atheist.

I'm sure P.Z. Myers, a happily married university professor with several grown children and a recent heart ailment, will be very pleased to find out that he's now numbered among the "young people". Doesn't this guy sound just like those snide, smarmy religious apologists who insist to our faces that our atheism is just a youthful phase we'll grow out of?

As I discussed in a Big Think video interview earlier this year, the Center for Inquiry and its magazine Free Inquiry were relatively slow to invest in Web-based content and applications. This in part created a vacuum online and the opportunity for bloggers such as Myers to rise to global prominence and gain a following.

I absolutely love that paragraph; you can practically taste the bitterness seeping through the page. It must be anathema for Nisbet to consider that people have flocked to P.Z. Myers or Richard Dawkins' banner because they agree with them, because they're saying the same things that many more people were already thinking and doing it loudly and fearlessly. No, it couldn't possibly be that - it must have been some sneaky, underhanded New Atheist trick we pulled to hypnotize people into agreeing with us! If only they'd listened to their betters, like Matt Nisbet and the Templeton Foundation, they'd be in their proper place: sitting quietly at home and not making any trouble.

Young people are also deeply supportive of science, especially when science is connected to progress, a system of values and ethics, and the solving of social problems. Secular humanism can offer a positive message about science as progress. In contrast, confrontationalists tend to celebrate the "poetry of science" while simultaneously using it as a rhetorical bludgeon against religion.

Yes indeed! It's a very efficient and clever strategy called "killing two birds with one stone". Although it must come as a grave shock to Tinkerbell over there, we can celebrate the beauty and the transcendence of science while also firmly believing that it tells against ancient and primitive religious superstitions, which are, by comparison, laughably small, simplistic and human-centered.

The bitterness and resentment evident in this column are proof of one more thing: this is a fight the accommodationists have already lost. Since their goal is to silence us, they can only win if they persuade us to stop talking or other atheists to stop listening. Given the evident popularity of the New Atheist movement which Nisbet decries, they've failed on both counts. All they have left is insult and jealous sniping, neither of which will accomplish anything more than make themselves look foolish.

This week in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof has a column titled Test Your Savvy on Religion, discussing the American religious knowledge survey which found that atheists were better informed about faith than believers. Kristof has a pop quiz of his own, and I'm guessing that regular readers of this blog will know the answers and see where he's going with this:

1. Which holy book stipulates that a girl who does not bleed on her wedding night should be stoned to death?
a. Koran
b. Old Testament
c. (Hindu) Upanishads

5. Which holy text is sympathetic to slavery?
a. Old Testament
b. New Testament
c. Koran

11. Which holy scripture urges that the "little ones" of the enemy be dashed against the stones?
a. Book of Psalms
b. Koran
c. Leviticus

Of course, Kristof's quiz is meant to showcase the many moral atrocities of the Bible - and to be fair, most American Christians are ignorant of these, so bravo to him for pointing them out - to disillusion people who believe that Christianity is morally far superior to Islam. I have no quarrel with that, but I object to his conclusion:

And yes, the point of this little quiz is that religion is more complicated than it sometimes seems, and that we should be wary of rushing to inflammatory conclusions about any faith, especially based on cherry-picking texts.

I don't agree with this. I don't think the conclusion that should be drawn here is very "complicated" at all. In fact, I think it's simple: nearly all religions contain violent, brutal, morally unacceptable teachings in their sacred texts. Therefore, we should reject those texts as a guide for morality. What's so complicated about that?

Kristof writes that "The most crucial element is perhaps not what is in our scriptures, but what is in our hearts", but that sweeps crucial historical facts under the rug. It makes it sound as if modern churches and believers just searched their consciences, realized that these verses were wrong and stopped following them. In fact, the Bible's teachings about sexism, about slavery, about absolute monarchy, about holy war, and about the oppression and destruction of differing ideas (to name a few) didn't just dissolve in spontaneous, society-wide enlightenment. All of these were hard-fought victories won by determined freethinkers in the teeth of intense religious opposition (and the same battle is playing out today over gay rights). To put it another way, this moral progress was made by convincing people that the Bible's teachings were wrong - and this process of enlightenment is still ongoing.

The only real difference between Christianity and Islam is that a higher proportion of Muslims interpret the Qur'an literally than Christians interpret the Bible literally. I'm in agreement with Kristof about the dangers of drawing unfounded generalizations about whole groups of people, but where we probably diverge is in the proposed solution - because I think the fastest way for any society, Christian or Muslim alike, to make moral progress is to simply discard these wicked and antiquated writings, put superstitions about gods and demons aside, and rely on conscience and compassion as the guiding beacon for their moral decisions.