There are less than two days left to raise money for the Pathfinders Project—a year long humanist service trip sponsored by Foundation Beyond Belief. The Pathfinders Project director, Conor Robinson, is a good friend of mine, and I can’t stress just how great a project this is. If you have some cash to spare, and want to help support humanist efforts abroad, consider making a tax-deductible donation.

Vlad Chituc is a lab manager and research assistant in a social neuroscience lab at Duke University. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was the president of the campus branch of the Secular Student Alliance, where he tried to be smarter about religion and drink PBR, only occasionally at the same time. He cares about morality and thinks philosophy is important. He is also someone that you can follow on twitter.

A little more than two years ago, I invited Sean Faircloth to speak to members of the Yale and New Haven nonreligious communities. At the time, he was the executive director for the Secular Coalition of America, and he struck me as one of the most compelling and persuasive political advocates for issues such as Church-State separation and countering the religious right. ¹ He’s since published a book, Attack of the Theocrats!, and joined the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science as the Director for Strategy and Policy.

Faircloth published a lengthy essay this morning, asking “Are liberals finally going to get it this time about Islam?” The idea being the (at this point somewhat familiar) refrain that liberals ought to condemn Islam; that beliefs are not deserving of respect or protection, but rather believers; that open criticism is necessary for liberalism; and so on. Faircloth pleads, “My fellow liberals: please stop ignoring reality.”

It’s worth noting that I largely agree with Faircloth here, but the small bit where we disagree matters a lot and largely colors our respective attitudes towards Islam. There’s a subtle shift in Faircloth’s language throughout the piece, and I think this is rather emblematic of this difference. Faircloth says:

If liberals can – with great vitriol – condemn the Christian Right (as they do constantly), then liberals can treat Islam like any other ideology — because Islam is just another ideology – like the Tea Party, like the Christian Right. Islam must be subject to the same rough and tumble of ideas as is any other ideology.

And this I think is the main problem. Faircloth doesn’t discuss liberal condemnation of “conservatism” or “Christianity,” as if they were unified and broad ideologies. He references specific and narrow branches—the far right Christian radicals like the Westboro Baptist Church, or the extreme mix of misguided libertarianism and Christian theology that is the Tea Party. Faircloth is right that liberals often, and ought to, condemn these ideologies. But notice how quickly his language broadens, and how easily specific language lapses into generic language. Faricloth references Islam, not as a diverse mix of ideologies that’s often as varied as its billion-and-a-half adherents, but as one, monolithic, unified thing. 

We can very easily and conveniently talk about how the Tea Party’s policies might be anti-women, but Faircloth goes too far by suggesting that, therefore, Islam, writ large, full stop, should be the proper target of our criticism, too. As if Islam, writ large, full stop, is a violent ideology that is anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-liberalism. Or that Islam, writ large, full stop, has been the cause of terrorist activities.

I’ve written before that one of the most blatant and troublesome aspects of Islamophobia ² is that we generalize about Islam in a way we don’t with any other ideology or religion. It seems that any muslim can stand in for a radical (as we’ve seen with the FEMEN protests and Everybody Draw Muhammed Day); any behavior of a radical generalizes to the ideology of the moderates in a way that doesn’t hold in reverse (no one looks at peaceful or charitably acts by Muslims and goes on to say that they’re the result of Islam, even if they fit the same criterion Faircloth wants to apply in terms of “expressed religious motivations” following a “religious path that has become familiar”); and any behavior by radicals has to be swiftly and loudly denounced (whether or not you’re listening) by the moderates, or they’re somehow implicated in the action.

So I largely agree with Faircloth—we ought to, and very loudly, protest human rights violations by Islamic extremists. In fact, I don’t know many liberals who would disagree. ³ But a failure to go and criticize Islam, writ large, full stop, is not moral cowardice on the part of liberals. It is not PC gone mad. And that’s I think where Faircloth gets it wrong.

It’s telling that there are only two groups of people who blame 9/11 on Islam—far right Christians and a certain brand of atheist. Few political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, liberals, or anyone else studying religion, really, ⁴ says “Islam caused 9/11.” Yet Faircloth and many other atheists present it as established fact. So why the disparity between modern scholarly thought and the anti-theist position?

It could very well be that a conspiracy-like story is true—liberals know Islam is responsible for these atrocities but don’t have the brass to say it, and the liberal academe, poisoned by postmodern multiculturalism, is too afraid to point out what atheists and Christians see so obviously. Or it could be that liberals, like me, might have a better view on Islam than atheists like Faircloth and the religious right do. It’s us who “get it” — Islam is not a broad, unified ideology; politics and social factors seem to be much more relevant in explaining suicide and terror attacks than Islam; proper criticism should be specific and not whitewash an entire ideology; and so on.

Now someone like Faircloth might sensibly object that Islam as an ideology, writ large, full stop, is to blame for these things. That the commonalities in the ideology shared by all 1.5 billion Muslims on Earth is the problem. Now they might have trouble squaring that with contemporary scholarly thought on the topic, but it’s a fair point they could make. But note that this isn’t a conversation about moral courage anymore, or whether criticism of Islam is islamophobic, or whether liberals need to be consistent. This conversation isn’t about when liberals will finally come around to reality (or why they might be hesitant to), but instead about what reality is. Disagreements are about the nature of Islam—if there can even coherently be one—and what the proper attitude we should take towards that is.

And there, I think, Faircloth falls somewhat short. Faircloth mentions some statistics (and there are some good ones coming out of this recent Pew survey), and references a few cases of terrorism, but I’ve gone on long enough for this post. I’m not convinced and I’ll address them shortly in a follow-up.

I’d just like to note ⁵ that I think Faircloth and I agree a lot, and I don’t mean to imply that I think he’s racist, or bigoted, or that his motives are insincere. Faircloth is largely right: liberals should condemn anti-liberal practices and policies, and this includes swaths of radical Islam. But whether Islam is an appropriate target for that condemnation is unclear to me, and I haven’t seen a good case for it yet.

Vlad Chituc is a lab manager and research assistant in a social neuroscience lab at Duke University. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was the president of the campus branch of the Secular Student Alliance, where he tried to be smarter about religion and drink PBR, only occasionally at the same time. He cares about morality and thinks philosophy is important. He is also someone that you can follow on twitter.

There was a great profile of Daniel Dennett in yesterday’s New York Times. The famous philosopher, cognitive scientist, and atheist discusses the comfort he finds in sailing, some of his views on life, and his somewhat-idiosyncratic philosophical positions. Though there’s a lot I disagree with Dennett on (as far as Dennett seems concerned, if science can’t explain “qualia,” that is, the subjective experience of something as it’s perceived (e.g. the “redness” of red), then qualia is simply an illusion), there’s something about his writing and personality that strikes me as nonetheless magnetic and engaging.

I recommend you read the entire piece, but if your attention is limited, the quote in the image above is where I most agree with Dennett. I don’t actually exclude things like dualism or theism from a scientific—specifically neuroscientific—perspective (even though I think they might be wrong; this is practically heresy, I know). But I’ve never understood the idea that materialism or atheism somehow robs life of its meaning. I think Dennett captures that point really beautifully.

Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking will be available on May 6th. Until then, you can read up on a (more fair and charitable) summation of Dennett’s arguments against qualia, as well as an introduction to the concept of intuition pumps, on Wikipedia.

Vlad Chituc is a lab manager and research assistant in a social neuroscience lab at Duke University. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was the president of the campus branch of the Secular Student Alliance, where he tried to be smarter about religion and drink PBR, only occasionally at the same time. He cares about morality and thinks philosophy is important. He is also someone that you can follow on twitter.

This guest post comes to us from Melanie Rucinski, a Harvard sophomore and outgoing leader of the Harvard Community of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics (our undergraduate secular student group), formerly the Harvard Secular Society. This piece was originally published on Melanie’s blog, musique et chocolat, in July 2012.

I have read enough books about atheism and psychology to know that prayers do not have healing power, at least not to an extent that is statistically significant. Furthermore, the fact that I am an atheist kind of goes along with not believing in the power of prayer in general. In all of my years of sporadic church attendance, then, I’ve never asked for prayers for anyone I know. I’ve considered it multiple times, but if my skepticism weren’t enough, discomfort with asking congregations I’m not a consistent member of to pray for my sick or dying family members and music teachers would still hold me back.

In the past two years, I’ve seen more illness and death in my personal life than I’d experienced in all the years before. My maternal great-grandmother died when I was five and my maternal grandfather died when I was ten, but then everyone close to me was pretty much fine for a while. In the fall of my senior year, though, my oboe teacher was diagnosed with a frontal lobe disorder (the symptoms resemble Alzheimer’s), and since then both my paternal and maternal grandmothers, as well as my piano teacher, have passed away. So it’s not like there hasn’t been anything to pray for: my oboe teacher’s health is still going downhill. My maternal grandmother had had Alzheimer’s since shortly after I started high school, and my piano teacher had been diagnosed with cancer. There have been no truly sudden deaths.

Two weeks ago, I played piano in a service at the church I consider to be my church. It’s the church at which I sang in the choir when I was growing up, worked in the nursery when I was in middle school, and have always attended Christmas Eve services. I know many of the congregation members, and they know me. If I ever felt that I needed spiritual guidance, this church is where I would go. That said, my family is not the only one to refer to this church as a Unitarian church in disguise. I am not the only atheist who attends. The church is a religious community, but it’s the community part that’s important, not the religion.

At this point, my piano teacher had taken a sudden turn for the worse. She was in hospice care, and it was clear that the end would be soon. I had seen her a few weeks earlier, but I wasn’t really sure how to respond to the whole situation. I hadn’t taken lessons with her on a consistent schedule since my sophomore year of high school, and hadn’t studied with her at all since the spring of my junior year. Although I now respect her as a musician, I had a fair number of problems with her for most of the time I was her student. My mom was closer with my piano teacher than I was. Even so, I felt that if there was any time to ask for prayers from the congregation, this was it, particularly since my piano teacher would be leaving behind her husband and I thought that he, too, could use to be in people’s thoughts.

My mom came to the service, and after failing to read my lips during the ‘Concerns and Celebrations’ part of the service (I was sitting at the piano and she was in the third or fourth pew), finally made a reasonable guess as to what I was trying to say and stood up to ask for prayers for my piano teacher and her husband.

I do get chills sometimes during sentimental moments, and I do occasionally cry, or at least have tears in my eyes. I did not expect, though, to have the emotional reaction that I did in the moment after my mom finished her request. Nothing actually happened in that moment—it was followed just by a brief silence between my mom’s words and someone else’s concerns, unlike at another church I play at where the congregation gives a verbal affirmation after each joy or concern. Something about that moment, though, and something about knowing that at least some of the congregation members would be praying for my piano teacher and her husband, did get to me.

Even if I don’t believe in God or in the power of prayer, there is something truly powerful about knowing that there are people I know or people I don’t, people I’m close with or people I’ve never spoken to, who are thinking positive thoughts in the direction of someone I ultimately do care about. Maybe it’s the idea that positive energy is contagious and that if these people somehow try to send goodness out into the world, it will eventually reach the strangers they’re praying for. Or maybe it’s just the cliche that somebody out there cares, that in some abstract way, the people in the congregation are connected enough to each other—and to me—to take others’ concerns for their own.

Later that afternoon, we got a phone call saying that my piano teacher had passed away. I actually did cry about it for a few minutes, although it wasn’t until I was on my own and reflecting again on the church service. This is just something else religious communities offer that secular communities have trouble creating an alternative to: I feel comforted by the thoughts of the congregation members in a way I would not feel comforted by the thoughts of Harvard Secular Society members (if I even felt it was appropriate to ask for their thoughts on my piano teacher’s behalf). Somehow in that moment in church I felt the pervading love one is supposed to feel in the presence of God, and while at that point it was accompanied by sadness, it was still something beautiful.

I used to feel it was disrespectful to ask for prayers from congregations I play for, almost subtly condescending—maybe taking advantage of their beliefs. Now, though, I don’t think I feel so negatively about it. In the same way that I don’t feel it’s disrespectful to sing hymns during services since I really do enjoy the group music-making, maybe it isn’t disrespectful to ask for prayers since they do ultimately provide some comfort. And even if there’s no scientific evidence that says it helps to think positive thoughts in the direction of people I love every once in a while, it certainly can’t hurt.

Melanie spent six years of her youth in a liberal Jewish suburb going to church and Hebrew school before she became an atheist. She tells people that she is studying education research and policy at Harvard because saying that she’s majoring in Social Studies makes her sound like she’s in middle school. In her spare time, Melanie finds something like God in running along the Charles River, playing Bach, and baking pies.

We have another guest post today from our blog’s favorite Norwegian, Andreas Rekdal. 

Disclaimer: this post draws heavily on an experiment that (much like the Reinhart-Rogoff study) was not subjected to peer review prior to publishing. I therefore advise you to take the data with a grain of salt.

Ich Bin Atheist shoe, Redchurch Street, Hackney, London, UK (Photo credit: gruntzooki)

The other day my friend Andrew sent me a link to an informal study done by Atheist Shoes, a German pusher of sleek (and expensive) handmade footwear and accessories. The study showed that boxes packed using their ATHEIST-branded packaging tape are, on average, 10 times more likely to disappear while being handled by the USPS, and that when they do arrive they take 3 days longer than their more subtly labeled counterparts.

The idea to conduct the experiment arose when the company caught wind from American customers that “[S]ometimes the shoes. . . take longer than they should to arrive, or even go missing.” After some customers asked them not to use their trademark tape, the company decided to test whether the tape might have something to do with their shipment trouble. In order to do so, they sent 178 packages to 89 customers in the United States (one box with, and one box without the tape to each customer). The packages were identical, apart from the tape, and they were all sent from Berlin on the same day. Yet the packages with ATHEIST tape took notably longer to arrive—the ones that did arrive, that is.

Of course, we can only speculate as to why the openly godless shoes took longer to arrive than their closeted counterparts. The USPS (or customs) might have special procedures for handling items which display religious or political symbolism, or the black on white writing on the tape might somehow throw off the USPS’ sorting robots. However, since control tests in Europe did not yield similar results, there is some basis for suspecting that the delays may have more to do with the handlers than with the technology (studies have found that atheists in America are looked upon with particular dislike and distrust).

If we assume for a minute that the findings are reliable, and that the outcome is not due to technological factors (remember that these are big “ifs”), could it be that the word “atheist” has become so loaded that it distracts postal workers from the task at hand? Could it be that some postal workers were so put off by it that they deliberately sabotaged the shipment? Or could it be that some neighbors or landlords took such offense from the tape that they kept the packages from reaching their final destinations?

And if so, what does this say about attitudes toward actual atheists?

It’s hard to know what to make of this bizarre phenomenon. To eliminate technological factors, the study should be replicated with control tape that is identical in design, but uses a different word (EVANGELICAL, or FREEDOM, for instance), to try and determine whether bias toward atheists is really the cause for the hold-ups.

In the grand scheme of things, it might not be a big deal that some Atheist shoes weren’t delivered in time for Christmas. But if the late deliveries can be attributed to systematic suspicion or discriminatory intent, then we should be having a serious conversation about whether similar tendencies exist within other public sectors too, and what we might do to address them.

At this point it’s hard to tell what’s really going on, let alone why. But these initial findings definitely warrant further study. Consider this my call for further research.

Hailing from the mild-wintered Norwegian west coast, Andreas braved the godforsaken tundra known to non-locals as “Minnesota” while obtaining his B.A. in political science and philosophy. After graduating in December 2012, Andreas went on to work for the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, proving once and for all that a liberal arts degree is only almost useless. While in college, Andreas founded an organization called the Secular Student Community (which was recently approved!). On his spare time he enjoys talking theology in bars, and getting way too into Facebook discussions.