PZ Myers responds to Charlotte Allen’s anti-atheist bigoted rant

Several days ago, Charlotte Allen wrote a vitriolic attack against atheists that was published in the LA Times. It seems she’s no fan of the atheist and she wants everyone to know it. Well, after many atheists wrote responses, PZ Myers decided to jump into the ring too, and it is superb. I particularly like his opening:

Charlotte Allen is very, very angry with us atheists — that’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from her furious broadside in The Times on May 17. She can’t stand us; we’re unpopular; we’re a problem. What, exactly, is the greatest crime of modern atheists?

We’re boring.

I can’t actually argue with that. It’s true. We’re all just ordinary people — your neighbors, your friends, your relatives. I know atheists who are accountants, real estate agents, schoolteachers, lawyers, soldiers, journalists, even ministers (but don’t tell their congregations!). Our leading lights are college professors, scientists, philosophers, theologians and other such pedantic, scholarly riffraff. For entertainment, they read books, and if they want to do something ambitious and dramatic, they write books. I’m one of them, so trust me, I know — we don’t exactly live the James Bond lifestyle. Calling us boring is a fair cop.

But still — why would anyone get angry about that?

PZ definitely hits all the most important points and does so in good humor. So I’d just like to say, great job PZ!

News From Around The Blogosphere 12.14.08

ATHEIST DISCRIMINATION:

Apparently marriage is defined as a union between a religious man a woman – Yeah, that’s right. In SIN City, along with the rest of Nevada and in other states, you must belong to a congregation to get married. Oddly, self-proclaimed Humanists can get away with saying they’re part of The Humanist Society, which has tax status as a religious group. But many atheists like myself don’t consider that a viable option. And this isn’t just some old law on the books that nobody even knows about let alone enforces.

Michael Jacobson, a 64-year-old retiree who calls himself a lifelong atheist, tried this year to get a license to perform weddings. Clark County [Nevada] rejected his application because he had no ties to a congregation, as state law requires.

So Jacobson and attorneys from two national secular groups — the American Humanist Assn. and the Center for Inquiry — are trying to change things. If they can’t persuade the state Legislature to rework the law, they plan to sue.

. . .

“… I’m not going to do it by saying I belong to a religious organization,” he said. “That’s a sham, because atheists are not religious.”

The awesome Massimo Pugliucci rips tears the L.A. Times a new one for their recent opinion piece on the rise of superstition – I’d briefly touched on this story here. Massimo, who I had the fortune of meeting at a recent lecture, goes off on this poorly reasoned story that criticizes materialism (creationists’ favorite boogyman) and points out something I didn’t even notice when I’d originally skimmed the article:  according to the byline at the bottom of the page, the author, David Klinghoffer,  is:

. . .a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author of “The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy” and “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History.”

Ugh! That explains SO MUCH.

Scientists ‘baffled’ again – CNN uses the old cliche to sensationalize science news again. They said:

“Scientists are baffled by mysterious acorn shortage.”

But according to Steve Novella:

In turns out that scientists are not baffled at all. Acorn crops run in cycles. Last year there was a bumper crop – much larger than normal. Bumper crops tend to be followed by lean crops as the trees now need to conserve resources. This cycle may have been exagerated by a wet spring, which also tends to decrease acorn production.

Mystery solved.

AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:

Warm Plasma Cloak Surrounds Earth – “A detailed analysis of the measurements of five different satellites has revealed the existence of the warm plasma cloak, a new region of the magnetosphere, which is the invisible shield of magnetic fields and electrically charged particles that surround and protect Earth from the onslaught of the solar wind.”