Two long years ago, I decided that I wanted to start a periodical journal or magazine filled with interesting articles about reason that could motivate and pique the curiosity of readers who were either hardline atheists or moderate fence-sitters, with the goal of perhaps being one of the many rational activists who makes a little bit of a difference in a world that has been overrun by an oppressive religious regime.
Well, that didn’t happen.
What I did, instead, was to start this blog, on October 31, 2007, mostly as a way to gain some readership before I tried for the physical publication, and I ended up liking this format and the dynamics of online production so much that I didn’t want to try to bother with paper production. My readership started off with maybe 15 devoted followers, most of whom were people I knew indirectly from my various ventures into atheist forums. It helped a lot that I had some friends volunteering their time and energy to write some outstanding articles. They also helped pass around the blog URL so that others might read, and readership increased to about 35 followers.
Then, things started to pick up when one of my early articles caught attention (perhaps on Reddit), and I got my first taste of a hit spike when visitors to my page started exceeding 100. I was psyched. I couldn’t believe 100 different people were reading what I have been writing. Then it spiked again, and I stood unbelieving at 1000 people, 5000 people, 10,000 people, and, recently, 50,000 people within a two-day span. That’s insane. Sure, it’s not Pharyngula insane, but for a guy who is perhaps too self-critical and thinks his work generally sucks, it’s like getting hit on the head with a squid-wrapped brick. Of course, I don’t have 50,000 regular readers, nor 1000. Those were just daily hits in various spike periods when I had a particularly popular article. Current readership is actually closer to 200, plus or minus. I’m not sure if that’s satisfactory, but it is what it is, and I’m grateful to everyone who visits and reads what this site has to offer, and I hope they at least get some info or humor out of it.
Being so self-critical, and constantly being without a comfortable span of free time, I have repeatedly thought about just closing the blog down and sneaking away. When I express such sentiment, my closer friends tell me I should absolutely not do that. Apparently they like this place and what it does and represents. Sometimes I have to go back and read some of my old articles and say to myself, “hey, this isn’t that bad, it’s actually pretty good,” in order to re-motivate myself. Troubles with the server hosting also produced obstacles that I nearly considered unworthy of my effort. However, I have overcome those and my reticence to continue this venture. At least for now.
So, for this second anniversary of State of Protest, I’m doing a kind of State of Protest carnival where I’ll link to what I think are some of the best and most popular articles on the blog from the past two years, with my standard Carnival of the Godless format, which includes an excerpt and commentary. I hope you’ll take the time to read some of these articles, as I think they represent the focus and spirit of this blog. And thank you again for reading. You make this all worth it.
State of Protest Second Anniversary Carnival
One of my most popular posts that isn’t satire was something inspired by an ad for fast food that I saw, and my thought that America was happily advertising to and feeding itself stuff that you could barely live on. I then immediately saw an analogy between that and religious people feeding themselves fabrications with no factual substance in order to keep themselves artificially satiated, but perpetually malnourished. Thus, Being Religious is Like Eating Sand, written in December, 2008.
It fills you up, tricks you into not being hungry, but has no nutritional value. When religious people argue that the lack of God or religion leaves an empty hole that cannot be filled by anything other than religion or spirituality, they’re mistaken or being misleading, perhaps because they’re so full of sand that they cannot make room for that very obvious thing that can, and does, fill that hole — good food. What your mind and body need is sustenance – real sustenance, which can take many different forms, but always has something in common — it passes the honesty test.
Of interest is a much more recent video ZOMGitsCriss posted on YouTube, practically stating the same thing:
You think the food is real and that it nourishes you. In fact, you can even feel how it satisfies your hunger, because this is the kind of power the mind has over the body when strong beliefs are involved. You are perfectly happy with your invisible food, but the thing is, in reality, you’re not okay at all.
It’s unfortunate, though, that she’ll never see the message I sent her regarding this, because she generally has to filter through the 2500+ comments from the 109,000 viewers, many of which focus not on the substance of her message, but rather the fact that she’s an attractive young woman making videos on the interwebs. Hey, I’m not complaining. I mean, I got 34 comments and over 11,000 views. That’s pretty good for a blog run by an ugly, angry, old guy. Kudos to her, though, for coming up with the analogy as well. I’m about 99.9% certain she didn’t steal it from me. (because it’s doubtful she’s ever had the pleasure of visiting State of Protest, but she certainly has an invite)
The most popular comic on this site is related to an article regarding one of the last-minute efforts on the part of outgoing president G.W. Bush to diminish women’s rights:
Opposition is growing quickly to a Bush administration proposal which seeks to grant sweeping protections to health care providers who oppose medical procedures, such as abortion, based on their religious beliefs. The proposed rule would prohibit entities that receive federal funding from discriminating against health care workers who refuse to assist in performing abortions or other procedures because of their religious beliefs. It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and pharmacies from requiring any employee to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services, if that employee refuses because of religious or moral objections.
The comic:
Thanks to Laura for her hilarious depictions of human suffering. See all of State of Protest’s comics here.
In 1999, Jerry Bergman, at Answers in Genesis, argued that we should be teaching Creationism in public schools, and he used very twisted studies on popular opinion to support that view. This is a provocative issue that just won’t go away. It didn’t die in 1925’s Scopes Monkey trial, and it apparently survived the 2005 Kitzmiller trial. In Why Stop at Creationism?, I argued that if we were to teach Creationism in schools based on the argument that we should teach the controversy and address ideas that differed from the Big Bang Theory, we shouldn’t stop at the Christian version of events (called simply “Creationism”), and I made an example curriculum to fill the day of our soon to be inspired students. Here’s an excerpt:
Monday…
3rd Period: Mangala was an entity made up of four divisions, and two sets of dual gendered twins. Being tired of keeping it all inside, Mangala compiled all the matter into a seed, which was the world. And the seed exploded, disappointing Mangala, who destroyed it. Then Mangala tried again with two sets of twin seeds, which, after having been planted in an egg-like womb, along with other sets of seeds, emerged as fish, representing fertility. One of the male twins tried to escape from the egg. This trickster, Pemba, stole a piece of the womb’s placenta and threw it down, creating the earth. He then tried to refertilize the remainder of the womb. Mangala castrated and killed Farro, Pemba’s brother, to save creation, and then Mangala raised Farro from the dead. Mangala then took the remainder of the placenta and transformed it into the sun, leaving Pemba for the darkness and night. Mangala transformed Ferro into a human, and was taught the language of creation. Farro’s newly created twins came and joined him on the earth, and they all propagated humanity.
4th Period: Lunch…
I didn’t address every alternate theory, of course. There are far too many.
Every so often (too often, really) in the news, we hear about a child who dies because the parents are religious fundamentalists who, in some way, refuse proper treatment for their child’s illness. Time has an article covering this issue, “When Parents Call God Instead of the Doctor,” focusing on a child who died in March, 2008:
On Easter Sunday of 2008, 11-year-old Kara Neumann of Weston, Wisconsin, suffered waves of nausea as she lay motionless on her deathbed, too weak to walk or speak. Kara’s parents — both followers of the Unleavened Bread Ministries, an online church that shuns medical intervention — knelt in prayer beside their dying daughter. They did not call a doctor for help. A few hours later, Kara died of diabetes, a relatively common — and treatable — condition….
Under current Wisconsin law, a parent cannot be convicted of child abuse or negligent homicide if they can prove they genuinely believed that calling God, instead of a doctor, was the best option available for their child. The law is part of the legacy of the 1996 Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, which included a landmark exemption for parents who do not seek medical care for their children for religious purposes.
My article, Why is there a Legal Provision Allowing a Lighter Sentence Based on Religious Beliefs?, focuses on another death by religion based in Oregon:
Carl and Raylene Worthington, the killers (should we really call them parents?) happen to belong to the same church, the Followers of Christ Church, as Jeffrey and Marci Beagley, who were indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide in October, 2008, after they attempted only prayer healing for their 16-year-old son, Neil Beagley, instead of medically treating him for what was an easily treatable illness. Apparently, this church as been the catalyst for at least twenty other child deaths as a result of applying faith healing techniques, when every one of them could have been easily cured with proper medical treatment.
An excerpt from the Oregon law:
[W]hen a person is convicted of … manslaughter in the second degree … the court may impose a sentence according to the rules of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission that is less than the minimum sentence that otherwise may be required … if the court, on the record at sentencing, … [Finds] on the record by a preponderance of the evidence… ["That the defendant treated the injury or illness solely by spiritual treatment in accordance with the religious beliefs or practices of the defendant and based on a good faith belief that spiritual treatment would bring about the victim’s recovery from the injury or illness"]… and finds that a substantial and compelling reason under the rules of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission justifies the lesser sentence.
Utterly insane.
My all-time most popular article is also my most controversial, because it’s satire wrapped in a “This is news” shell. When I read a news story about people who were complaining somewhere in Florida about an abstract sculpture representing nude human fleeing refugees, I was disgusted that, again, we find that people just cannot stand to look upon that which God (nature) made. Apparently to see nudity is to be forced into impure thought, and to display anything of nudity is to be perverse. I’d really like that trend to reverse. Covering up David’s dangly bits should be more embarrassing than exposing them, especially for someone who sincerely believes that their version of God created those dangly bits in a bit of inspired perfection.
Well, my analogy in the form of satire meter jumped off the scale that day when I thought about how to present this aversion to nature as being as stupid as it really is. So, I asked myself, what idiotic human bits could they possibly find offensive next, and why? And I thought “DNA.” Every time you look at a human, you see it, it’s a fundamental part of being human, and to find an aversion to its mere existence would be just incredibly stupid, right? Well, that’s how I feel about nudity, and I wanted to try to get people thinking about it in terms of Peter Singer’s “ick” factor having no logical grounds — nudity isn’t icky! The satire: DNA Sculpture is “Vile and Offensive.”
In addition, I wanted to see what kinds of reactions I’d get when I presented the satire as “news” (but with what I felt were plenty of clues for the skeptical-minded folks to recognize that it was, indeed, satire). What ended up happening was that just about every skeptic who read it believed it to be true — believed that there were actually people on this earth who thought the sight of a sculpture of DNA was repulsive based on their religious beliefs. I was blown away by the responses and the hits. The reactions varied greatly. Many thought I had hit the nail on the head and created some truly funny and insightful satire. Others thought I was being intentionally misleading, or that the satire didn’t work, or that it wasn’t funny enough. I addressed many of those issues in a follow-up article called “This is Satire.” It also became quite popular. You should read it, since it talks about a much more famous person who fell into the same pit I had.
In any event, I learned a few things. First, America is in bad shape if literally tens of thousands of skeptics honestly believe that religious nuts would oppose a sculpture of DNA on religious grounds. That shows an increase in the overarching stupidity of religious trends while also suggesting that even skeptics might need to calibrate their bullshit meters. Second, no one likes the truth unless it has pizzazz. I wrote another article about women in Sudan being beaten for fighting for the right to wear pants. It was straightforward, and the facts showed how detestable the men were to those miserable women. About 170 people read it. Over 51,000 people read my satire about DNA. Sometimes I just don’t get it. If you like the satire stuff, check out the others.
Of course, I’m not the only author here. I have some very good, albeit infrequent, writers.
JNTB, for instance, recently wrote an article about hypocritical contradiction in our classification of “terrorism,” “Only Muslims can commit terrorism.”
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 24, a convert to Islam, is under arrest for allegedly murdering Pvt William Long and injuring Pvt Quinton Ezeagwula at a military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas. Is Mr Muhammad being charged with murder and attempted murder? Yes, of course, but guess what else? He is being charged with “15 counts of engaging in a terrorist act” as “investigators believe there were ‘political and religious motives‘ in the shooting”.
I don’t know if Mr Muhammad has engaged in multiple acts of violence toward the same or similar targets, but with at least this one episode of violence toward these two men, Mr Muhammad is labeled as a terrorist. Really? Is it because he is a “darkie”? Is it because he is Muslim? Is it because he objected to the actions of the US military? Is it because he used to be named Carlos Bledsoe and likely engaged, although unclear and unknown, in some form of Christianity before converting to Islam?
How is Abdulhakim Muhammad a terrorst but Scott Roeder isn’t? How is Osama bin Laden a terrorist but Randall Terry isn’t?
Laura wrote multiple excellent analyses of the Proposition 8 issue, which culminated from her first, “Proposition 8, the Mormons, and the New “Separate But Equal”“:
Speaking of the Mormons, they deserve special attention in this article. On June 29, 2008, the First Presidency of the Mormon Church released a letter calling on its 770,000 members located in California to give their full support and to donate as much money as they can within their means to the Prop 8 campaign.3 A complete list of Mormons who have donated $1,000 or more, with a running tally, can be found here. This is particularly sickening to me in that there are many people on this list whom I know personally. Mormons currently account for 31% of pro-Prop 8 donations, although that number is expected to rise dramatically as more data is collected.4 The Mormons’ opposition to gay marriage is quite ironic when you consider their history. They themselves have endured incredible persecution due to their own unorthodox views on marriage, i.e. their previous practice of polygamy. They were also much slower to react than the rest of the nation in treating blacks as equals. It took them until 1978 to give black males the same authorities that white males enjoyed.5 (Women still currently are given no authority at all.) Just because the mainstream Mormons no longer practice polygamy and now give blacks equal status, they would do well to remember their history.
Laura is also the author of the excellent series “Religion Unearthed,” and she also illustrates most of State of Protest’s comics (she has the distinct big-eyed bobble-headed hilarious characters).
Philadelphic is our resident book and other media reviewer, recently having tackled The Power of Premonitions by Larry Dossey.
There is a calming, nonsensical balm to the idea that “everything happens for a reason.” If your child dies, it’s for a reason. If you have a dream that saves the child’s life, that’s for a reason too. But what about those who take a closer look at this? What about the grieving parent who wonders if lack of divine intervention means that “God” is punishing them? Or what about those of us who see no value in calling divine intervention a “miracle” when, by definition, any god who could intervene in the death of a child, but refuses, would essentially be a killer? Is it justice to look down on the unlucky, then, because they must either be ill-favored by God or refusing to heed their natural-born psychic abilities?
For the mentally unstable, this magical thinking might prove to be seriously dangerous. Dossey goes as far as to acknowledge this (p. 169) in a section called “cautions,” where he tells people to “think twice before intentionally cultivating premonitions” if they have any kind of mental illness, childhood trauma or maltreatment, any mood disturbances such as major depression or neuroticism, history of substance abuse, or even in the case of someone who is abnormally sensitive. Isn’t a person who has prophetic dreams being “abnormally sensitive”? Or is Dr. Dossey simply covering his legal bases in case someone who has read his book decides that doing the bidding of their intuition, their God, or their Rice Crispies requires killing someone (as in the case of Deanna Laney)? Oddly enough, most of the Oprah viewers I know have been known to take the Prozac at some point or another.
Mutha graced us with a more accurate history of winter celebrations while we yet again await another accusation that we’re committing some sort of “war” on Christmas. Stealing the Solstice for Christ’s Sake!
Some authors have not contributed as much in volume, but their work is greatly appreciated. Please click their links to see their unique and interesting contributions.
Velkyn has authored a few reviews and “Unearthed” posts, as well as the great article “A Culture of Lies.”
Noumenon compares life to a poker tournament and firmly establishes that he is a god.
Absinthium has written a few insightful movie reviews.
Steve-Doug describes how we share the epiphany of disbelief.
FormerFundy exclaims that personal responsibility is paramount, especially in politics.
Jim Gardner criticizes Answers in Genesis’ abject refusal to consider falsifiable peer reviewed evidence.
Urs examines the origins of morality.
Ivy helps to clarify atheism.
Spider covered Catholic Youth Day 2008.
I think that’s a pretty good history for only two years in, and infinity to go.
Thanks for stopping by.
-Procrustes
Virginia Governor elect Bob McDonnell issued a statement today that once in office he would pursue a referendum in Virginia to reject the constitutional amendment that lets women vote.
