Atheists need better PR

 

The other day, PZ Myers posted that he’s at the Project 42 Freethought Convention in Fargo, ND September 24, 2011.

I went to the Project 42 web site (screen capped above). I looked at the graphics and I thought, this is the marketing for this event?

PZ Myers is on the splash page? Why? Because he’s the sexy face of free thought? The idea and the image don’t bother me. But take a good look at it.

I can see what they did there with graphics. They gave it a 3D feel. That’s cool right?

But look closer. His hands look like he’s crushing a mouse skull. His hands look mangled. It’s borderline horror film. All his digits aren’t represented and the ones that are there might give me nightmares.

Here’s the church, here’s the steeple. 

And Michael Shermer?

Who shot that photo of Shermer? It looks like he’s professor Gandolf or Dr. Palpatine doing a Jedi mind trick just before electrocuting you with lightning fingers. Did the designer think it looked cool to drop that shadow so far away so it looks like Shermer is holding his hand like the Pope over some child’s head?

And those “Imma badass eyes … believe everything I say.”

Can you say, “Creepy.”

The lighting says, I’m two-faced. I have an enlightened side and a dark side. Would you like to fondle my dark side?

Do we really need to make ourselves out to be silly?

I want to stand behind atheism, but these graphics disturb me. If we stand for bettering the world, we should have better graphics behind us and in front of others.

Surely within our ranks there are photographers and graphic designers who can offer better art than this. I’ve heard of a photographer or two in my day. I know we’re grassroots and splintered in personalities, but this is somewhat dumbfounding.

Atheists need better PR.

Badly.

Have I lost track of my vision?

At my about page, I wrote:

My personal goal is to help American Christians finally accept evolution as fact.

Recently, someone found this blog by searching for the term “Jeremy Witteveen personal goal to help American Christians finally accept evolution as fact.”

About a week ago, Café Witteveen friend and Christian Julie Ferwerda started a closed Facebook conversation between a few of her more open-minded, believing friends, regular-reader George W. and me regarding Intelligent Design vs. Evolution.

Since I had family and friends here non-stop for about a week, I decided to postpone my attention to the ID vs Evolution conversation. You remember? Blogging came to a halt too.

As I have been formulating some of my ideas about what I would write about when I jumped in to the conversation, I thought how hypocritical it is that I’m not more active promoting evolution to those of you who oppose it. I feel badly about it, and I hope you will forgive me.

Especially when those near and dear to me say things like, “Well, Darwin recanted on his death bed” and “Evolution is only a theory,” which are two of the silliest responses any believer can say. I think a close third is “Why are there still apes if we evolved?” or “Why aren’t there any ape men walking around?”

I wanted to post some of what I wrote here, and hope you’ll pipe up  in the comments with any recommendations for things to present to believers who might be a touch more open to accepting evolution if given the chance.

Below is what I wrote. I wanted to include hot links, because Facebook doesn’t allow it. I was particularly happy with the line about the naked man. I’ve written more about that here:

I wanted to recommend a few starter books that I’ve found aren’t extremely long, but they are well cited and researched with lots of branches of recommendations.

Top recommendation:

“Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body” by Neil Shubin — excellent book on a recent fossil find of a fish-to-land animal species. Shubin shows in lay terms how DNA evidence shows our connections through development back to plants.

“Why Darwin Matters” by Michael Shermer. A short, excellent primer with good sources and reading recommendations on basic evolutionary understanding.

Also, please refer to PBS.org for lots of resources like NOVA: Science NOW! These shows are jampacked with beginner information for exploring science literacy.

Moving from evolution to The Big Bang and astrophysics — A couple books from Brian Greene: “The Fabric of the Cosmos” and “The Elegant Universe“.

I’ve found Greene to be very good at dumbing down the language of physics to my level. I have a good working knowledge of calculus which helps, but is not required.

My view of this discussion is that we can talk about it all day long. However a general working knowledge of evolution (whether you accept it or not) must be achieved. George — nor I — are anything close to approaching professionals on the subject. I would hope you would go to a pastor and theological professionals for information on God and to a scientist on information about science.

Because Christianity makes claims about origins, I feel it’s incredibly important to be moderately versed in the claims you’re opposing. I think it’s a truism to some degree.

Here’s a thought:

Visualizing a grown, naked man, unshaven from head to toe, with a thin layer (sometimes thick layer) of hair and placing that image next to a chimp or gorilla reveals observationally a similar model of creature. Maybe it’s a blessing and a curse that as an artist, this is so obvious to me.

It’s not far off within certain levels of imagination. Dissect the two creatures, and everything from bone structure to its anatomy are spot on similar, in many cases exactly the same.

Does that reveal Intelligent design? Perhaps.

It’s rather uncreative.

When you trace our bone structure and anatomy back to fish with only minor differences along the way, evolution makes for a very convincing argument.

When we carry vestigial structures like the possibility of third and fourth nipples, an occasional thirteenth rib, a coccyx, wisdom teeth, an appendix, body hair, a non-operational third eyelid, good bumps, etc. etc, it’s no wonder that we are directly connected with animals and fish.

Why would “Intelligence” connect us to the rest of the animal kingdom in blatant ways? To confuse us?

What intelligence left the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve to travel from our brains around our heart and up to our mouths in the most inefficient possible track? It was efficient in fish ancestry perhaps. Yet, this same nerve is found on a giraffe. Think about the distance that information must travel for the giraffe brain to tell the giraffe mouth to open and shut.

Argue either way, but “Intelligent” design renders a mockery of intelligence. This will be very condescending, but I hope that one’s bar for intelligence is set much higher.

Symphony of Science – A Wave of Reason

I would like to associate myself among the atheists and lovers of science who criticize these videos (below). I’m not sure who they are targeting, but I would rather see a compilation of great quotes within videos from all these people. AutoTuning the vocals muddies the messages to an occasional indecipherability.

You may agree these are great. When you do stuff like this, people who disagree view it as if we’re trying to polish a turd. At least, that’s what I would think if I saw something similar from a religionista.

Just sayin.

Via The Daily Wh.at

Shermer: Sarah Silverman sucks. Me: You wish, Shermer!

Michael Shermer is a skeptic hero of mine. I read his books and sift through his mail when I can. He knows me, too. He just doesn’t know my name yet. I know. It’s not easy to introduce yourself to a guy like me when I’m going through your trash. I get it.

But someday, Shermer, we’ll shake hands.

Recently, Shermer was invited to a TED conference. On the docket were great minds like Bill Gates and Sarah Silverman. I posted a video from TED yesterday, so you should already know the quality programing these people put together. Silverman is prime angus kosher beef for shit like TED.

Sexy Sarah Silverman (image Wikipedia)

I mean look at her. Just look at her. God, she’s sexy. Dark, wavy hair. Beautiful mouth and smile. A button nose so cute you just want to bite it off. Dark eyes and brows. She’s got that gorgeous Jewish glow.

Well, according to Shermer (link) … and everyone else … Sexy Sarah Silverman didn’t exactly bring the pseudo-intellectual genius she brought to, say, her movie “Jesus is Magic.”

Using the word “retard” apparently isn’t good taste during intellectual talks. But Silverman is a trailblazer. She’s out there paving the way for crass, wannabe psuedo-quasi-intellectual dreamtards like myself to stomp onto the scene and lay down a TED talk kick-ass tsunami style.

While Shermer is criticizing Silverman, we all know what’s up. Silverman took one for the team. Thanks for getting your foot in the door, Sarah. Thumbs up.

Insert clicky mouth noise.

I’m working on my TED talk now. That way when Shermer finally reaches to shake my hand, and I wipe a brown banana peel from my open palm and shove my hand straight into Shermer’s, I can look him straight in the eye and say, “I’d be thrilled to stop stalking you. Please take that taser off of my rib cage.”

Honk.

Shermer: Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World

I enjoyed this article from Michael Shermer. You should read it. Here’s the first paragraph and a link to the rest.

Bon appétit.

Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspirators, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention are believed to haunt our world and control our lives. Why?

Read the rest of the article.

Shermer: The Cowardice and Calumny of Creationism

I read this editorial from Michael Shermer, and it got my ire up. I’ve studied the hell out of science. Even when I was told evolution was false as a wee teenager, I had a sneaking suspicion that I was being told it was false because of an agenda.

Intelligent Design. I get it. I really do. I get that if you consider the wonder of life, it seems too good to be true. It appears marvelous and amazing. I would like Intelligent Design to be true. But it’s not. There’s no proof. None. Nada. Zilch.

Yes, I understand that by “proof” you mean, how wonderful and marvelous the universe “appears”. But apart from an emotional connection to some photos you saw from Hubble or a picture of a flower, or the miracle of birth that’s been happening for millions of years — that don’t qualify as “proof” but rather an emotional response — there is no empirical proof for ID.

Intelligent Design attacks evolution from the standpoint that an Intelligent Designer created the universe, but ID proponents don’t have a particular god in mind who created the universe. This alone is a copout or admission to failure. This alone should be a breaking point for Christians. Because if Intelligent Design has no particular god in mind when it says it’s the truth, then how the fuck are you supposed to prove that the creator god is the one in the Christian bible? If this is an argument, than any old yahoo wielding a wand and spewing a creation story could be THE Intelligent Designer.

Why Intelligent Design proponents pat themselves on the back for this bogus bullshit option blows my mind. There aren’t peer-reviewed journals regarding ID “Theory”. There’s just a bunch of heavily-funded jackasses at The Discovery Institute whining that evolution is a big, bad, ugly monster that threatens “faith” in an “Intelligent Designer.”

Mr. Deity and Michael Shermer (woot!)

The Natural and The Supernatural, Michael Shermer

Over at Skepticblog, Michael Shermer discussed “The Natural and the Supernatural.”

It goes hand in hand with the visit to the Creation “Museum” last week. My favorite part of the post is (emphasis mine), “Unfortunately, religions routinely make claims about the natural world that are in direct conflict with the scientific evidence. Young-Earth Creationists, for example, believe that the world was created around 6,000 years ago, about the same time that the Babylonians invented beer. These claims cannot both be correct, and anyone who thinks the former is right has relegated all of science (along with brains) to the dumpster of life.”

I was taught young earth creationism. When a young earther forces ideas like The Grand Canyon was formed in less than 4 years, it’s time to revisit what you’ve been taught. If they claim that scientifically, a canyon could be formed in less than four years, this would be demonstrable. Why aren’t creationists demonstrating this proof? With all their claims that there is no proof of evolution, creationists claiming canyon formation in less than four years on some scale would be as easy boiling an egg.