Universal Tolerance

I am going through Sean Faircloth's new political strategy for atheists. I have already covered his 6 principles for such a strategy. Now, I am ready to start looking at the 10 policy goals that this strategy is meant to achieve.

He expressed the first of these policy goals as follows:

Our military shall serve and include all Americans, religious and non-religious, with no hint of bias and with no hint of fundamentalist extremism coloring our military decisions at home or abroad.

Faircloth illustrated his point with the story of Stephen Hill, ". . . a gay serviceman who was booed at that Republican Tea-Party Debate"

I want to start by saying that there is nothing about being a serviceman that gives one an automatic immunity from criticism for one's words and behavior. Whether or not it was appropriate to boo this person has nothing at all to do with the fact that he was a serviceman.

Let us assume that somebody created a video to ask a question at a Republican debate in which he claimed to now have four under-age brides, or he claimed to be the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

We would have booed.

Well, I would have.

It would not have been, in any sense of the word, an "unpatriotic" act to have done so. In fact, I would consider booing such a person to be the more patriotic act. It communicates the view that American service personnel should meet a higher moral standard than this person represents. It says, "America is - or strives to be - or should strive to be - better than this."

It is not at all difficult to imagine that those who booed Stephen Hill were expressing just such an attitude.

Of course, an instant response likely to pop into the minds of most of my readers is, "How dare they say that Stephen Hill or atheists do not meet that standard?"

Indeed. How dare they? Doing so is objectionable.

The point of this post is to point out that this is where the discussion starts. This is the claim to be made.

A military that "serves and includes all Americans" does not even make sense. We would have to include the American who takes four underage brides, or who asserts freely his contempt for all "niggers". We would have to include the religious fundamentalist who holds that America should engage in a new crusade to drive the infidels out of the Holy Lands, and one that holds that all apostates are to be "fragged" at the first opportunity. It would include the truly militant atheist who holds that we should clean religion out of the meme pool by euthanizing anybody who shows even the slightest symptoms of being infected with this virus.

No sane person actually wants a military that serves and includes these kinds of people. Nobody is actually advocating that the military serve and include "all Americans".

I am confident (though I could be wrong) that not even Sean Faircloth would literally advocate such a policy.

Instead, each of us has a mental list of who we would include and who we would exclude - who we would boo and who we would cheer. None of us cheers everybody and boos nobody.

We understand that, whenever somebody speaks about tolerating everybody, they are really talking about tolerating the people on "our list" while excluding the people not on "our list". That is why we applaud - we are cheering "our list" of people to include or exclude.

The further away the speaker gets from mentioning any specifics as to who he would include or exclude, up to the point where he destroys the assumption that he is not literally talking about including everybody, the more freedom the listener has to insert his or her own list into the speech. Thus, the greater the political appeal that such a claim can have.

Even the religious fundamentalist can cheer such a statement. He will likely interpret the world as one in which his brand of religious fundamentalism us not being tolerated or included. People keep forcing him to treat atheist and gay service personnel with dignity and respect. What about treating the person whose religion teaches contempt for gays and atheists with dignity and respect? Where is your love of tolerance then?

So, Sean Faircloth's first policy objective meets our criterion of political utility. It is vague nearly to the point if meaninglessness, allowing each person to fill in the gaps with their own prejudices, allowing everybody to cheer, even though they have different and conflicting ideas of what they are cheering.

In truth, Faircloth's use of the principle is not entirely empty. While he speaks about including "all Americans", the context makes it clear that he is advocating that gays and atheists be put on the "approved" list. This is not empty, and some people might object.

In a different context, somebody advancing nearly the same claim could understood as including those who hold that gays are not fit to serve and atheists fit only to take orders and never to give orders are on "our list". He would be seen as advocating tolerance for such people.

Faircloth offers no real defense of his proposal. Technically, his argument is that everybody should be included, gays and atheists are a part of "everybody". Therefore, gays and atheists should be included. However, everybody knows - including Sean Faircloth, I wager - that nobody accepts the first premise as literally true. Therefore, Faircloth is not actually offering a defense of his claim that gays and atheists be put in the "included" group.

Tomorrow, I am going to look at the issue from a different angle. This angle will reject the idea of including "all Americans", and take seriously the idea that we need a list of who to include and who to exclude - who we may cheer, and who we may boo. It will put gays and atheists on the "accepted" list. However, it will ground this on the false assumption that we are going to include "all Americans". It will take seriously the fact that a list is to be made, and some people are not going to make that list.

Unfortunately, this means that the principle will be more substantive, which means it will also be less useful in a political strategy.

Principles - Vague vs Specific

After spending four weeks discussing Sean Faircloth's new political strategy for atheists, I am going to start looking at his list of policy objectives.

However, before I do, I would like to make some general comments about policy objectives.

It is politically useful not to make them too specific. The more specific you make them, the smaller the audience you can appeal to in defending them. Every specific claim will peel off a set of potential supporters who do not like that interpretation, but who thinks a different interpretation still fits the general principle.

By keeping one's policy objectives vague, one can continue to appeal to a larger audience. People will tend to fill in the gaps with their own ideas. This means that different people with incompatible beliefs can all claim to be obeying the same vague principle.

We find an excellent example of this in the Bill of Rights. These items are vague - intentionally so. That is how the authors got the votes to get these amendments passed.

"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech."

What does this mean?

I have given and defended an interpretation in my last post. However, nothing of that interpretation shows up in the First Amendment itself. Somebody else could offer a different interpretation with key elements that conflict the one I gave, and can still claim to be defending a right to freedom of speech. Both of us may have reason to vote for the vague and general principles, even though, in practice, we would be at odds on a number of issues relevant to that principle.

One relevant point to make is that only an absolute purist defends the idea that the First Amendment implies that Congress shall make no law abridging libel, slander, or revealing military information to the enemy. Nor does the right to freedom of speech invalidate all laws against fraud and misrepresentation when spoken or written.

None of these points are covered in the principle itself. There is no way either I, or the purist, can appeal to the principle itself and say, "This is how it must be applied". We must bring in other facts - facts outside of the specific wording - to make our case as to what the wording actually allows or prohibits.

Some people believe that we can examine the words and actions of the original authors - in this case, the founding fathers - to determine its meaning. This option fails for three reasons.

First, it follows from what I have already written that the vagueness of the Bill of Rights allows people with different and conflicting views to support the same bill. To use the intentions of the original author is to use a conflicting mix of attitudes, each of which the holder could somehow shoehorn into the principle that was passed. The idea that all of the founding fathers had exactly the same thoughts in their head regarding each of these principles, and that we can determine what that common shared belief was, is simply absurd.

Second, nothing can be more clear than the fact that, for the founding fathers, there is sometimes a huge gap between principle and practice. Slavery and the denial of voting rights to women provide the clearest examples of this. When their practice deviated from their principles, we have a question we need to answer. Are we going to follow their practices and abandon their principles? Or are we going to preserve their principles and adopt a more consistent set of practices?

Third, the founding fathers believed that there were moral truths independent of the opinions of mere humans. This is an opinion that I share. There exists, in the objective world, certain moral rights and a just government is one that respects those rights. When the Bill of Rights says that certain rights may not be abridged, they are not saying, "My opinion of what these rights are shall not be abridged". They are saying, "The rights that exist must not be abridged". From which it follows, "If my opinion about these rights deviates from the truth - because I am mortal and prone to error - the Constitution tells you to ignore my opinion and go with the moral facts."

All of these elements leaves open the possibility of different people, with different political and moral beliefs, supporting the same vaguely worded general principle. These elements allows each of them to draw the conclusion that, "In the end, through debate and discussion, my interpretation will win out. So, yes, I can support this principle."

It is politically useful to have a set of vague general principles.

However, this is not a political blog. In the confines of these blog pages, I care nothing about political advantage. I wish to report on the moral facts of the matter - even where some if those facts might be politically unwise.

I will leave it to the politicians to denounce any politically harmful elements, as they see fit.

Starting tomorrow, I will look at Faircloth's policy objectives, and examine, specifically, what they should allow and prohibit.

Freedom of Speech and Freedom to Criticize

I spent the first four weeks of his year - a presidential election year - discussing the six points of Sean Faircloth's new political strategy for atheists.

Faircloth followed up his presentation of these six points with a second list – a list of ten political objectives.

Whenever somebody presents such a list, there is an irresistible urge on the part of those who would comment on such a list to counter with their own “improved” list. Then the discussion gets bogged down in a trivial debate over the fine differences between each list.

I am going to struggle to resist that urge - and fail in at least one respect.

It is, after all, an irresistible urge.

The principle that I would put at the top of the list - a principle on which all of the others depend - is that the right to freedom of speech includes the right to criticize and condemn what other people believe. Governments shall not infringe on this right, but instead shall organize its institutions to protect speakers from private violence.

It is argued in some circles that a prohibition on criticism is required to "keep the peace". Somebody's beliefs get criticized, they become maniacal and violent, and the next thing you know you have suicide bombers in the shopping malls, on the busses, and interfering with airline traffic in various ways.

This strategy – that of banning criticism of groups who respond to criticism with violence – will fail to keep the peace for at least two reasons.

First, it teaches people that they can control speech just by threatening violence against those who say anything they do not like.

Have the American Astrological Society threaten suicide bombers any time somebody says anything critical of astrology, or have Steven Spielberg fans threaten to blow up the head offices of any company that prints a negative review of one of his movies. According to this philosophy of banning criticism to keep the peace, criticisms of astrology and Stephen Spielberg movies would have to be banned.

After all, we cannot possibly blame the astrologers or Steven Spielberg fans for threatening violence. That is out of the question.

We can imagine a group of scientists who accept a disease theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs threatening to detonate bombs in any classroom where a professor advances an asteroid impact theory. Using the idea, teaching that there are flaws in the disease theory would have to be prohibited.

In fact, those who accept the theory of evolution could put this philosophy to use. Just threaten to kill people any time somebody criticizes evolution, and criticizing evolution would be banned.

Except, scientists (and science as a practice) thrives on criticism. Remove criticism from science, and science itself will come to an end.

The flaw in the philosophy of banning criticism when those criticized threaten to respond with violence is that it gives political power to those who threaten violence. As such, it becomes a source of violence, not a way to prevent violence.

We can see from these examples that the organizations that control speech are those that are willing to use violence against its critics. We do not expect prohibitions on criticisms of astrology and Steven Spielberg precisely because these are not organizations prone to violence. How are we going to decide what to prohibit and what to permit? The answer that this philosophy provides is to identify groups willing to respond to criticism with violence and ban criticism of those groups – to “keep the peace”.

One of the effects of this philosophy will be expand the number of groups that decide to respond to criticism with violence. While I doubt that astrologers, Steven Spielberg fans, or scientists will likely take up the practice, there are a lot of organizations that might find it tempting.

Second, ultimately if you follow this philosophy, the state as to choose a set of beliefs and defend it from all criticism by threatening to punish all critics. Assume that you have a group that believes X. Well, then, everybody else who believes Y - where Y implies not-X – is necessarily “critical” of the belief that X. If one group believes there is only one God and Mohammed is its prophet, then anybody who does not accept this must hold that it is not the case that there is only one God and Mohammed is its prophet. To refuse to believe X – or to at least announce that one does not believe X – can be taken as an insult to everybody who believes X. It says to all believers, “I think you are wrong. I am better than you because my belief is true and yours is false.”

The state will have no option but to choose a set of beliefs and to prohibit anybody from denying the :”truth” of those beliefs.

I want to add that, while I have used religious examples in this post, everything I have written would apply to atheistic political movements as well. I have known Ayn Rand Objectivists who spoke passionately in favor of the use of violence against the state. Atheistic anarchists and communists have taken this route. It is not impossible for an atheist organization to take the position that claims made critical of atheism and in defense of religion are socially destructive and should be met with violence. From which it would then follow that, in order to "keep the peace", criticism of atheism should be prohibited.

I also suspect that, if there were a successful movement to ban the criticism of beliefs in order to "keep the peace", that it would not take long for some atheist group somewhere in the world to start threatening violence against its critics while making reference to this prohibition on criticism.

What is the first item on my list of political objectives?

Government shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, which includes the freedom to criticize other beliefs through words and pictures. And instead the government shall establish its institutions so as to protect critics from those who would respond to criticism with violence or threats of violence.

The Fate of Alexander Aan

What are we going to do for Alexander Aan?

Aan is a 31 year old Indonosian civil servant who wrote on his Facebook page that God does not exist. This resulted in some heated exchanges with some posters. Some of those who were offended by his words formed a mob that intercepted him on his way to work. They beat him. When the police came, they arrested Aan for blasphemy. He now faces five years in prison.

I cannot find any news of what has happened since then.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been looking at Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy. Faircloth works for the Richard Dawkins foundation, and has been selected as the opening act for Richard Dawkin's upcoming book tour. His task is to put the secular and atheist community in America on a new - and hopefully more effective - track.

His strategy contains six components that I have covered this month.

The first item on that list was to focus on stories that have a deep human impact.

Well, here's a story of a man who defended his beliefs and was accosted by a mob and beaten. Furthermore, instead of being helped by the police, he was arrested. He now faces the prospect of five years in prison - where he will be surrounded by people with a demonstrated lack of concern for the welfare of others, some of whom no doubt share the passions of the mob that beat him, as do some of the guards whose duty would be to protect him from other prisoners. Even if he it is decided that he is innocent and allowed to go free, what type of future can he expect to have? What type of security can he expect in that environment?

This should not be a story about political strategy. This is a story about a human being.

One of the questions I am asking is, "How is Alexander Aan. Is he (relatively) safe?"

I, personally, want to know.

I would appreciate it if the Richard Dawkins foundation - or some secular or atheist organization - would make a point of finding out, of providing regular updates, and make the relevant Indonesian government officials aware of the fact that the situation is being monitored.

This ties in with Faircloth's third and forth items on Faircloth's list - a secular coalition of organizations pursuing different ends, and innovation in the pursuit of those ends.

Here us an idea. How about a web site that focuses on collecting and reporting on atheist and secular stories around the world? Its focus will be to learn about people like Alexander Aan and make sure that their cases are not forgotten and that their security is assured.

In monitoring the situation that these people face, this organization also would direct the attention of the secular and atheist community to any situation where it may do measurable good.. An organization with the end of monitoring and reporting on religious violence against atheists would be a valuable part of such a coalition.

The sixth item on Faircloth's list was to reclaim moral language.

Aan's story exemplifies a moral principle - that it is wrong to respond to words (or pictures) alone with violence. The only legitimate response to words are words. They may be harsh words. They may be words of condemnation and outrage. However, the line beyond which this response must not cross is that of violence or threat of violence.

Does your religion call for responding to words alone (or pictures) with violence? Then you have an immoral religion.

This is a vital principle for us to be defending. Without it, society risks disintegrating into violent chaos. Without it, all sorts of political, social, and religious factions take up arms to dictate what others may or may not say. The violence ends only when a society finds itself in unanimous agreement - or at least the appearance of unanimous agreement. But it is an agreement reached solely through force if arms.

And when has any society as large as a nation been in unanimous agreement about anything?

If we want peace, and if we want the type of culture that thrives with the constant comparison of ideas and the influx of new ideas, then we want a society that condemns responding to words with violence.

This leads to another issue - which seems to have been swept under the rug.

Has anything been done to identify, arrest, and convict those who are guilty of assault against Mr. Aan? Or is the message being spread throughout Indonesia that acts of violence against theists are acceptable and shall not be punished?

We should be demanding that action be taken of those guilty of assaulting Aan, at the very least to establish a precedent and to give a warning, for the sake of all atheists, that these forms of violent response to atheist beliefs are to be shunned. The fifth item on Faircloth's list is to promote a diversity.

I fear that we are going to find it easy to forget about Alexander Aan, and to leave him to his fate in an Indonesian prison or a vengeful and violent Indonesian mob, because he is a dark-skinned man in a distant land. This is the type of situation in which we must make sure that our learned prejudices do not cause us to unfairly discriminate, and to base decisions on criteria that are irrelevant to the principles we defend. It is exactly these types of cases that we are inclined to ignore and forget about that we need to put an extra effort into including and remembering.

Will it be the case that we forget about Aan and leave him to his fate, only because our prejudices cause us to lack concern for the fate of such people?

So, in conclusion, I would like to ask again.

What are we going to do for Alexander Aan?

Atheism as Lacking a Moral Foundation

On the issue of reclaiming moral language - the sixth component of Sean Faircloth's new political strategy for atheists - atheists should learn to react to the claims that they lack a moral foundation the way Jews react to the phrase "Christ killers."

We react as if it is a mere intellectual error - requiring a rebuttal in terms of reason and evidence. However, it is more than that. Like the term "Christ killers" it is politically and socially useful. It serves to marginalize a group of people - to promote religious animosity and to brand followers as "morally superior" to the target group.

When people make certain mistakes, we have reason to ask why they make those mistakes and not some other. Religion is mostly make-believe.

So, why make-believe that some target group lacks a foundation for their moral beliefs and attitudes? Why make-believe that, at any minute, they run the risk of breaking out in an orgy of political and social violence because they have no moral constraints?

They could have easily invented a fiction in which the universe contains certain moral truths built into it by God, but which are available to everybody an discoverable. They could have invented a religion that holds that moral facts are like scientific facts in that even an atheist can determine and assent to the laws of motion and thermodynamics.

Atheists and theists may disagree on the fundamental origin of these laws. However, theists do not assert the because the atheist lacks belief in the author of the law of gravity, he is in danger of floating away (and of causing those he convinces of floating away with him.) It isn't argued that some people choose atheism because they seek to flaunt the second law if thermodynamics or live life as uf it were not the case the E=m*c^2.

So, why choose not to believe that moral facts are facts available to atheists and theists alike, allowing us to have intelligent discussions as to what those facts are?

A theist may object to some of the premises in this argument - that religion is mostly make-believe and that this leads us to the question, "Why make-believe that atheists lack a foundation for their moral beliefs?" However, I am not seeking arguments convincing to theists. I am seeking arguments that are demonstrably sound.

It is a demonstrably sound argument that the belief that atheists lack a foundation for moral beliefs is not merely a mistake. It is a foundation is malicious and discriminatory. It is a mistake that has found favor substantially because it grants those who hold it an unprincipled claim that they may look down their noses on others.

Some may claim that the reason they believe it has nothing to do with a desire to establish and maintain a social order in which those who accept it claim for themselves an exclusive right to stand at the upper tiers. They believe it because they find these ideas in scripture. But how did it get written into scripture to start with? And why is it that this specific interpretation became popular? We have little reason to doubt that it is because this interpretation not only feeds the go of those who adopt it, but gives them an excuse to cast others down onto the lower tiers of he social order.

In America, it casts atheists as untrustworthy, as least likely to share American values, and as being likely to establish a Stalinesque totalitarian regime complete with programs to round up and execute all believers if it should come to pass that atheists get political power.

This type if attitude deserves more that, "Pardon me, but i do not think that reason and evidence properly supports the conclusions you are asserting."

It deserves, "If your fraking religion grants you such a strong moral foundation, why didn't it teach you about the evil of promoting hatred and fear of others for the purpose of harvesting social and political power? Where is that in your moral code and why don't you start practicing it?"

Because this - in fact and in practice - us what the claim that non-believers lack a moral foundation is all about. It is about preaching hate and fear for the purpose of harvesting social and political power.

Reclaiming Moral Language

Today, I come to the sixth of Sean Faircloth's principles for a new secularist and atheist political strategy. In this principle, Faircloth calls for secularists to reclaim the word 'morality'.

Faircloth asserts that the religious right has turned "morality" into a word for sexual trivia. Yet, not to long ago, it applied to such things as concern for the poor and the dispossessed.

It had to do with, as the ancient Greeks said, taming the savageness of man and making gentler the life of this world.

It has to do with making into a world a better place.

As can be expected, I wholeheartedly endorse this principle.

The very heart of this blog is an interest in reclaiming moral language and to presenting the idea that morality is a set of social institutions that aim at making the world a better place.

Morality is not about sexual trivia. It is about killing and maiming, and torture. It is about the plight of those who do not have enough food to eat, clean water to drink, and about those who stand helplessly and watch their young children die from diseases that could have been treated for mere pennies, while others spend billions of dollars on games and entertainment.

It is about rape. It is about slavery. It is about being used solely for the pleasure of others while one’s own interests are regarded as irrelevant.

It is about breathing unpoisoned air and drinking unpoisoned water. It is about not being lied to or defrauded out of one's savings. It is about having control over one's own creative works. It is about being denied opportunities not because if one's character or abilities, but because of the color if one's skin, where one was born, or some other quality that is entirely irrelevant to the work being done.

Whether or not one's sexual partner is the same gender of oneself is as much a matter of sexual trivia as whether or not one’s partner has the same hair color as oneself. What does matter in the moral is that a committed couple be allowed to take advantage of the institutional safeguards that would allow them to build and to live the one and only life they have with the person of their choice - so long as the person of their choice can and does give informed consent to the arrangement.

There is a substantial portion of the Republican party today that is willing to forego all concern over climate change, medical care, famine, and war, and base their whole political decision on their interest in denying a certain percentage of the population the benefits of institution of marriage to the partner of their choice. We can certainly use moral terms where these people are concerned. They are blind and unthinking bigots who have been raised on such nonsense that their political life is now devoted almost exclusively to that which harms others.

Perhaps they are victims of their culture – a claim many have made in forgiving the racism and sexism that many of our nation’s founding fathers embraced without question. However, they are more like the last holdouts of (hopefully) dying primitive bigotry, than they are like the first thinkers in the generation that first comes to question what a previous generation took for granted.

Like Sean Faircloth, I have been criticized for using moral terms on the basis that morality is the realm of the religious. In addition, I have heard it said often enough, that the realm of description falls to science, while the realm of prescription needs to be assigned to the realm of morality.

I reject this entirely.

First, I reject it because religion is almost entirely the realm of myth, superstition, and fictions invented by tribesmen (and, yes, they were almost exclusively men) whose understanding of the moral universe was as primitive as their understanding of the physical universe. Declaring that some centuries-old text is the final word on morality is as absurd as declaring Hippocrates to be the final word in all matters of medicine - not only in terms of its assault on reason but in terms of the disastrous consequences of acting on that belief.

Second, I reject separating morality from science because issues of the quality of life are certainly a part of objective fact. At the age of 13, I accidentally put my hand on a hot metal plate. In an instant I had 2nd degree burn blisters all across the palm of my hand and my fingers. I did not need to believe in a god to know that I did not want that to happen again. Even today, I do not need to believe in a god to have reason to direct social institutions to reducing the chance that others might do such a thing to me on purpose – or to anybody that I care about. Nor do other people need to believe in god to have reasons to cause me to be concerned about their welfare – to object to them being subject to this kind of behavior.

Also, the animal kingdom is filled with examples of creatures that care their offspring, their mate, and others in their community without a belief in a god. There are good biological explanations for these facts that make no reference to a deity.

The idea that we need to invent a god to account for the facts that underlie morality is as primitive as the idea that we need to invent a god to explain the motion of the planets. It is another "god of the gaps" argument, and the gap is closing rapidly.

Having said this, I will add that a substantial number of atheists and secularists make some significant mistakes in drawing relationships between morality and biology. However, these mistakes appear to be disappearing from the academic field (though they are still common among bloggers and others who discuss these issues in more casual settings).

Long time readers of this blog will know some of the objections that I have to the relationships others have drawn between biology and morality.

However, the fact that people make mistakes in drawing relationships between biology and morality does not prove that there is no relationship - any more than mistakes made about the relationship between swamps and malaria (that malaria is caused by "bad air") does not prove that no relationship (independent of divine power) exists.

According to Faircloth:

Now it is time for us . . . Secular Americans - to step up and offer hope and a specific plan to change our society for the better.

Actually, it is long past the time for this maneuver. Claiming that religion is the realm of morality was and continues to be a significant mistake. It has put myth, superstition, and primitive thinking in control of human well-being, and yielded some predictably poor results.

In saying that these results are poor, one is capable of making a claim as objectively true as any claim in science.

Of course I endorse Sean Faircloth's six principle for a new atheist strategy. Around here, the principle is not all that new.

A Diverse Atheist Community

I have reached item 5 on Sean Faircloth's new atheist strategy, which is a call for greater diversity in the secular movement.

It is quite obvious that the current rise of atheist activism has been dominated by white males. Faircloth's response to this is to call for an outreach program as a part of his strategy that aims to create a more diverse atheist community. He spoke about making an intentional effort to include women at a conference in May, 2011. He also reported that the Richard Dawkins foundation will seek to provide forums for Black atheists and Latino atheists among others.

There us something odd in this maneuver. I once saw Richard Dawkins give a speech in which he ridiculed the idea that science was like religion. If science were like religion, he argued, then we could put up a map of the world and note, "This part of the world is dominated by the view that an asteroid impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. While in this other region the dominant view is that they fell victim to a plague."

The point being that, while people draw their religious beliefs from their culture (which gives us regional-cultural differences in religious beliefs), scientists draw their beliefs from the evidence, which prevents it from being "regional".

Would it not be equally strange for impact theorists to have an "outreach program" to draw more women and minorities to the view that the dinosaurs died out as a result of an asteroid impact? This sounds a lot less like science, and a lot more like religion.

And since atheism is a hypothesis about what exists or does not exist, it would seem most appropriate to focus on simply presenting the evidence and letting that be the sole foundation for the beliefs.

However, even though science may be blind to matters of race and gender, scientists are not. Scientists are human. A scientist raised in a culture that dismisses the intellectual accomplishments of women can dismiss a woman's contribution to a scientific field out of hand before even viewing the evidence - or giving the evidence a slanted interpretation that conforms to his prejudice. A scientist raised in a racist culture can easily favor his white colleagues in terms of tenure, professional honors, and in awarding grants and funding.

As a counter to this, it is useful that a lot of scientific peer review is anonymous. This allows even a young child to submit a paper for review and get it accepted without prejudice against her age affecting the review decision. There is no need to include information about the age, race, or gender of the author - that is irrelevant to the quality of the argument. Yet, the scientific community recognizes that humans tend to let themselves be persuaded by these factors. It does not ignore prejudice. Instead, it designs procedures that reduce the effect of prejudice.

The atheist community is made up of humans, and also needs to adopt procedures that address these types of biases. One if the most abhorrent features of the atheist community to date has been a willingness at times to use sexual language - and, in particular, remarks of sexual violence - against female participants. This was exhibited recently in an incident on Reddit Atheism in which a female contributor was treated to sexual remarks, some of them of a violent nature, when she posted about a gift she had gotten from a religious family member. There is no dismissing this as "boys being boys" or even blaming our biological heritage. This behavior can be molded by social forces, and we have many and good reason to muster these social forces against this type of behavior. While desirism does not allow for moral absolutes, I can not think of a real-world situation that would provide an exception - and no reason why these types of comments can or should be tolerated.

However, bigotry neither begins nor ends with blatant acts or even threats of violence. By far its greatest expression is in small day-to-day decisions where it has its influence substantially without being noticed. It is found in the teacher who views a black student's paper as "just not being good enough", or in an employer who thinks that the woman in his office does not quite qualify for a raise. These decisions are not backed by explicit racism, "You do not get the job because you are black". They are backed by implicit racism, "I feel more comfortable with the white applicant than the black applicant because . . . um . . . because the job experience is more relevant. That's it. Yeah. There is just something about this applicant that I was not comfortable with. It has nothing at all to do with race. I despise racism."

I will confess that I am racist, I grew up in an environment that taught me to have a strong averse reaction to blacks. Intellectually, I know that this emotional reaction is not only irrational but one that good people would not have and people generally have reason to condemn. However, emotions do not respond to reason, and the emotions planted in childhood are not so easily changed.

This ties in to my condemnation of "under God" the Pledge and National Motto that identifies community membership with trust in God. These practices aim to generate in children a strong aversion to atheism that will carry them through adulthood and affect their behavior - independent of anything we may do to affect that person's beliefs. Bigotry, planted in a child, is very persistent.

This also ties in to the objections that I have made against basing moral conclusions on "feelings" - a common practice, even among atheists and secularists. "Feelings" do not provide a special mental access to moral truth. They provide a special mental access to one's current learned likes, dislikes, and prejudices.

These types of issues cannot be dealt with by ignoring race and gender. One must confront the psychological fact of casual and comfortable discrimination with a conscious and deliberate effort to correct for its influence. If you are driving a vehicle that pulls to the right, you are best advised not to ignore it, but to make a conscious effort to correct for it, if you want to actually reach your destination.

So, I agree with Faircloth that an outreach program should be a part of the strategy. Furthermore, I would like to see the atheist community make a conscious effort to acquire and apply a sound scientific understanding of these types of biases and their influences on behavior, as well as a sound scientific understanding of the types of social institutions that might eliminate or mitigate its influences.

It would be great if the secular and atheist community could tackle the fact of these biases in an objective, open, and straight-forward way, and provide a model for the rest of the world to avoid prejudices and responsibly handle those that were not successfully avoided.