Chick fil-A, Still Assholes

Since the publicity last year about Chick-fil-A's^[1] donations to hate groups^[2], I've heard a variety of things about the issue.  Some friends have tried to say "it's just a sandwich".  But enough people stood up to  Chick-fil-A^[3] that they promised to stop the donations^[4].

Last week, Think Progress reported on their 2011 donations to these ant-gay hate causes^[5][6].

In 2011, the group actually gave even more to anti-LGBT causes. Its contribution to the Marriage & Family Foundation jumped to $2,896,438 and it gave the same amount to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and National Christian Foundation as it had in 2010. In total, the anti-LGBT spending exceeded $3.6 million — almost double the $1.9 million from the year before.

...

In essence, Chick-fil-A’s “charitable” contributions in 2011 were no less hateful than in 2010 — just less transparent.

This spike in donations occurred before the promise for them to cease.  I wish I expected us to see anything different when the information on their 2012 donations comes out.

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1.  Chick-fil-A Does Not Want Your Money
2.  http://www.advocate.com/business/2012/07/02/chick-fil-donates-2-mil-antigay-groups#.T_H5UqpmN6R
3.  http://news.change.org/stories/yes-chick-fil-a-says-we-explicitly-do-not-like-same-sex-couples
4.  http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/19/business/la-fi-mo-chickfila-gay-moreno-20120919
5.  http://www.facebook.com/beingliberal.org/posts/434487519960515
6.  http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/14/1722631/chick-fil-a-foundation-anti-lgbt-spending-nearly-doubled/

Saturday Morning Shares - 03-16-2013

Here's the links & tweets to share from the last week.  Please add any fun or informative stories I missed in the comments.

Not At All About Religion:

Meet the woman with the world’s strongest VAGINA (via Todd N Tyler Radio Empire)

designed-for-life: Invisible Farm (via @ZacharyNelson)

Seals Yelling Like Goats Yelling Like Humans (via @mashable)

R2-D2 Papercraft  (via @MattersofGrey)

(via @thinkgeek)

Don't Be Offended. Seriously, Don't. (via @SethMacFarlane)

Secular Coalition of America's Weekly Update:

National Secular Movement Update Call (03/14/2013)

About Religion:

Young, Sick and Invisible: A Skeptic's Journey With Chronic Illness (via @jteberhard)

Humanist Essay Contest (via @Teresamacbain)

(Thanks to Kevin, fellow fan of Atheist Experience & Non-Prophets)

(via @hemantmehta)

My father, the hate preacher: Nate Phelps on escaping Westboro Baptist Church (via @OuRR_World)

Petition Interdiction: Tenn. Legislator Seeks To Make It A Crime To Protest Church-State Violations

CIA Director takes his oath of office the right way. (via @jteberhard)

Last Year, Atheists Raised $430,000 for Cancer Research; Let’s Do Even Better This Year (via @hemantmehta)

Next Week Is ‘A’ Week (via Omaha Atheists)

Pope Stuff:

Who Is Pope Francis? (via @hemantmehta)

New Pope, Same Old Homophobia (via @hemantmehta)

Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires Rages Against Abortion “Death Sentence” (via @hemantmehta)

All Of These Pope Twitter And Facebook Accounts Are Fake  (via @Alyssa_Milano)

What a New Pope Means for Atheists (via @hemantmehta)

Pope Francis in 92 Seconds (via @mashable)

(via Satan, thanks to Sarah for sharing)

Asshole Of The Week:

Making The Case For Marriage Equality

I've said for a long time that there's more truth in comedy than anything else.  It's why The Daily Show is what it is.  This video may have been meant as humor, but it presents one of the best cases for marriage equality I've seen.

Opponents of marriage equality should pay attention.  But I doubt they will.  After all, if bigots were smart, they wouldn't be bigots.

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1.  18+ Humour (Thanks to Sarah for sharing)

Has Recovering From Religion Helped You?

Has Recovering from Religion^[1] helped you?  If so, they'd like to hear about it^[2].

We get "hate mail" all the time, but let's focus on the positive! If you'd like to share how Recovering From Religion has helped you, we'd love to hear it! If you'd like us to consider your comments for inclusion on the website, please email a brief comment to admin@recoveringfromreligion.org and include the first name and last initial you would like listed. Thanks for being a part of our world!

If they haven't already helped you, and your life is negatively impacted by religion, they probably could^[3].

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1.  http://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/
2.  http://www.facebook.com/RecoveringFromReligion/posts/474679855915219
3.  http://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/pages/rrgroups
4.

Harlem Shake - Apostacon Edition

With so many versions of the Harlem Shake^[1] out there, The Omaha Coalition of Reason^[2] decided to get in on it^[3] and do one to support their upcoming conference, Apostacon^[4].

Omaha has a fun bunch of atheists.  Apostacon is going to be good times.  It's definitely worth registering now^[5] so you don't miss out.

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1.  http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/harlem-shake
2.  http://unitedcor.org/omaha/page/home
3.  http://youtu.be/ek7FMLkgEt0
4.  http://www.apostacon.org/
5.  http://www.apostacon.org/registration-options/

Dishonesty About Honesty, Again

The subject of my last post^[1], read it and responded on the Twitters, where we were already conversing.

@tycapitalism @aparticulara Robert Fuller believes that atheism begins and ends with Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) March 10, 2013

I, of course, said no such thing.  It's difficult to tell if he really doesn't get it or if he's intentionally lying.  He went on to say:

@tycapitalism @aparticulara BTW, I love that passage from Pale Blue Dot. But I don't share Sagan's cheeriness about the message.
— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) March 10, 2013

I already knew he didn't, by what he wrote in the article in question^[2].

If atheism is true, it is far from being good news. Learning that we're alone in the universe, that no one hears or answers our prayers, that humanity is entirely the product of random events, that we have no more intrinsic dignity than non-human and even non-animate clumps of matter, that we face certain annihilation in death, that our sufferings are ultimately pointless, that our lives and loves do not at all matter in a larger sense, that those who commit horrific evils and elude human punishment get away with their crimes scot free — all of this (and much more) is utterly tragic.

But, as anyone who read his article probably knows, he's twisting the views entirely backward.

Learning there's no god doesn't take away the answers of prayers that we already know don't get answered.  It takes away the threat of Hell.  It takes away a tyrant who makes mundane so-called "sin" punishable by death.  It takes away the idea that we're all inherently deserving of eternal torture.

Learning there's no afterlife does not mean our lives are meaningless.  It does the exact opposite.  The promise of an afterlife is what would make this life ultimately meaningless.  An eternal afterlife would make this short life, as Matt Dillahunty has put it, nothing more than a place to wipe your feet.

The knowledge that there's no afterlife means knowing this life is all we have.  It means having to get all we can out of this life, as there's nothing after this life is over.  That's far from meaningless.

And the idea that the absence of a god means "those who commit horrific evils and elude human punishment get away with their crimes scot free" is utter nonsense when said by a Christian, who believes believers in Jesus will get eternal bliss no matter what crimes they committed in their lives.  His religion not only states the evil will not be punished, it states evil will be rewarded.

So it's not the absence of his tyrant of a god that is "utterly tragic".  It's that god, and all the evils that come with it that is tragic.  It's the complete disregard for honesty many of that god's followers have that is tragic.

It's their unwillingness to have an honest discussion with anyone who doesn't agree with them that is tragic.

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1.  http://aparticularblogbyaparticularatheist.blogspot.com/2013/03/dishonesty-about-honesty.html
2.  http://theweek.com/article/index/241108/where-are-the-honest-atheists

Dishonesty About Honesty

Damon Linker seems to think the only honest atheist is a nihilist^[1].

If atheism is true, it is far from being good news. Learning that we're alone in the universe, that no one hears or answers our prayers, that humanity is entirely the product of random events, that we have no more intrinsic dignity than non-human and even non-animate clumps of matter, that we face certain annihilation in death, that our sufferings are ultimately pointless, that our lives and loves do not at all matter in a larger sense, that those who commit horrific evils and elude human punishment get away with their crimes scot free — all of this (and much more) is utterly tragic.

Honest atheists understand this.

This assertion is as absurd as it common. It assumes that without a god, there is no beauty in the world. No hope. No happiness. Nothing worth appreciating anywhere.  I wonder if Linker has ever heard of Carl Sagan^[2] or Neil deGrasse Tyson^[3].  He could not honestly suggest they do not believe what they say about the wonders of the universe.

When reading the article, I was not sure if he had ever actually talked to an atheist at all about their beliefs. I suspected not but also realized he could be one of those theists who, after having their misrepresentations of atheists corrected by atheists, simply ignore it in favor of continuing the strawman.

After a brief conversation with Linker via Twitter^[4], I'm left thinking he's the latter.  When pressed, and when he apparently thought it was giving him an edge over me, he recognized that atheists aren't all the same.  In other words, he knows we're not all nihilists like he claimed in the article.  He knows this, yet he still wrote an article suggesting we are.  He lied.

He also displayed an interesting level of arrogance, telling me the obvious^[5], as if between the two of us I'm the one who doesn't understand that truth is independent of perception.  It's still amazing to me that people can get so close to getting it and still actively misrepresent atheism is such a drastic way.

It's almost as if they're actively avoiding an honest discussion because they know it wouldn't turn out in their favor.

Well, if they're not going to participate in anything honestly, I guess we're only left with the option of calling out the liars for what they are.  It's a shame.  Honesty would be so more productive.  Which is probably why Damon Linker was pretending to revere it.

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1.  http://theweek.com/article/index/241108/where-are-the-honest-atheists
2.

3.

4.

@aparticulara Um, yeah. I teach courses on it at Penn. There are more kinds of atheism in the world than you realize. (1/2)
— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) March 9, 2013

5.

@aparticulara Remember: I said atheism is *terrible.* I didn't deny it's *true.* Those two things can be separated. (The good and the true.)
— Damon Linker (@DamonLinker) March 9, 2013