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I’ve recently argued that Milo is not a provocateur. He is a Catholic guilt evangelist (before you disagree, read this — the actual evidence is pretty damning). Several have disagreed with me on my blogs on the subject, but the more I look into the issue, the more clear it seems to be that he is a Catholic evangelist. Although he flaunts being gay for laughs, he is on a mission to show that it is a sin, that it’s wrong, and that being heterosexual is superior — along with a host of other Catholic norms.

You can see this in some of his earlier work, like the time he debated Boy George on gay marriage for ten minutes. He was arguing that it was wrong.

You see, before Milo bleached his hair, wore designer clothing, and began to present his words as comedy routines, he was a writer for the Catholic Herald who was a vocal opponent of gay marriage, and quite serious about his stance. In a 2011 post entitled “Why I’ll Never Be A Parent” (which has since been removed, but is accessible via The Wayback Machine), he made clear that he would never have a child because “it’s wrong to expose an innocent child to the possibility of gay influence.”

He states that gay people, somehow, deep-down know that what they’re doing is wrong. He states that this feeling that they are doing something that is wrong is the reason for several phenomena:

The feelings of alienation and rejection it engenders are responsible for the sorts of repugnant tribal posturing you see on the streets of Soho on a Friday night, as bitterly unhappy queers engage in degrading and repulsive behaviour, simply because they want to feel a part of something after a lifetime of marginalisation.

They see themselves as faulty, so they exaggerate their imperfections in the company of others they see as similarly defective. Ironically, it’s precisely that profound feeling of being somehow broken that means a gay man’s sexuality often comes to be the defining characteristic of his personality. Who wouldn’t want to protect a child from a path that leads to such destructive self-loathing?

Some of us in society think that churches and other religious institutions have impeded on the free expression of homosexuality by reinforcing cultural norms through preaching, shaming, and societal backlash. This is extremely common. The church’s attempts in the United States, for example, to successfully ban same-sex marriage in several states before 2015’s Supreme Court decision is one of many examples of the very silencing of homosexual expression that many of us outside the church have been fighting against.

So you have two sides. One side is trying to expand and validate the free expression of homosexuality, and the other is attempting to limit it and invalidate it. And in spite of the fact that he is gay himself, Milo Yiannopoulos is clearly in the second group. That’s why he was opposed to gay marriage.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm8QCUpFPrg[/youtube]

Before you tell me I’m wrong, remember that he said this in the above debate with Boy George (6:03):

I think that gay marriage is another one of those things that helps to reinforce to people that it is a perfectly acceptable, normal, possibly even desirable lifestyle choice and I don’t believe that. [emphasis added]

That’s why he’s against it. And here, he’s serious. He’s not jovial or joking. Being gay, in his mind here, is wrong, and he is against gay marriage because he wants to protect the concept that it is wrong.

There is a distinct choice we can make here regarding the marginalized individuals in our culture. The side of Milo Yiannopoulos is profoundly pessimistic. It surveys our current situation and postulates that we can’t really change it, so we should enforce it. The discomfort with currently marginalized lifestyles that we have in culture, due to a long history of Christian norms, is something that needs to validated, protected, and strengthened in order to protect children.

For all the talk regarding “free speech,” the goal here is not free speech, but censorship through public ostracization of lesbians, of transgender individuals, and the protection of the status-quo of race relations in this country. You can see this, for example, in serious articles he writes about the need for both a mother and a father to raise a child. For example, in a serious article written in 2015 entitled “Kids need a mum and a dad,” he mentions a study that purportedly says children raised by same-sex couples struggle with emotional problems as evidence that same-sex couples should adopt children. There are two noteworthy items here. First, by saying same-sex couples shouldn’t adopt children he is further stigmatizing these couples and thus reinforcing any damage social prejudice may enact in the lives of their children. Second, and even more troubling, is the fact that the link Milo uses in the article is not to the study itself, but to an article entitled “Kids of gay parents fare worse, study finds, but research draws fire from experts” (emphasis added), and more than half of the article is about the problems with the study — the small sample size, the fact that the study relied mostly on stats from lesbian households with at least one parent who had been divorced from a previous heterosexual marriage, the fact that the study was funded by conservative groups, and the fact that the person who conducted this infamous study himself — Mark Regnerus — admitted to its flaws and unreliability. This was in the article that Milo read to write his article, and he ignored all of that in order to defame same-sex marriage.

This is a person with an agenda. He is actively opposed to progress that legitimates transgressions of the church like same-sex marriage; he wants to further invalidate these things and protect church morality.

It’s like this: instead of reinforcing Christian norms, as Milo seeks to do, we are choosing to escape from the norms of the church — a church that says how you have to act, who you can marry, what gender you have to be. And for awhile, we have been opening the door.

Today, no one is slamming the door shut in “pop culture” more than Milo Yiannopoulos. And that’s why I care about this fight so much. I want to keep that door open. I don’t want homosexual people to be forced back into the closet, as Milo claims is his endgame in a 2015 article. I don’t think people should think, as Milo stated in mid 2016, that homosexuality is evidence that people have original sin and thus need Catholic Christianity.  I don’t want transgender people to be even more ostracized and bullied, as one was by Milo late last year, just because the head of Milo’s church calls them an abomination. Unlike Milo, as an atheist I don’t want to hobble people and limit people by using Christian bigotry in culture to shame them. I want them to be free to express themselves without being limited by overmoralizing individuals who intimidate them on the Internet to reinforce Pope-policed morality.

I’m an atheist, and that’s why I believe human beings, and the love we have for each other, should not be restricted or governed by the lies constructed by the Pope’s puppet God. We’re trying to get away from that, not validate it or enforce it — as Milo Yiannopouolos is so strongly attempting to do.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. If you want to help me keep writing articles like this, consider supporting this blog on Patreon.

Sargon of Akkad’s account has been suspended on Twitter. To hear Sargon of Akkad talk about it, the reason is a mystery.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBt0YNbrXWQ[/youtube]

But, as YouTube personality shoe0nhead noted in a recent tweet, there’s a damn good reason for it. He was suspended for tweeting an image of a black man sucking off a white penis to a twitter account entitled @yung_domon.

You can see shoe0nhead confirm this story with picture evidence here (the part that is cut off reveals the black man sucking a white man’s penis).

The account Sargon tweeted to belongs to the twitter handle @yung_domon, who reported him for the picture and got him suspended. You can see the tweets he’s put out here.

The Amazing Atheist (who has previously asked me, a black man, to “suck a big, fucking white dick” while rebutting my claim that he’s racist) is, unsurprisingly, defending Sargon of Akkad for tweeting this picture of a black man sucking a white man’s penis to another account.  His retort is that porn accounts exist on Twitter, so what Sargon of Akkad did was fine.

Porn all over twitter. Porn accounts on twitter with a ton of followers. Selectively enforced policy. Bullshit. https://t.co/EcX0tbKG8h

— INTO THE FRAY (@amazingatheist) January 27, 2017

This is different, though. As several pointed out in replies to TJ Kirk, there is a BIG difference between tweeting porn on your own Twitter account, and sending a picture of a black man performing oral sex on a white man to someone else, especially if the other person doesn’t appreciate it.

That’s harassment. Twitter did right to enforce the policy here, obviously.

Same-sex attraction is a beautiful thing, as is interracial attraction…but using it as an insult is not.

I have to say, additionally, I’m a little eyebrow-raised at this, as word is that this isn’t Sargon of Akkad’s first offense. Behind his pseudo-intellectualism, he seems to hide a strong propensity to adolescent bullying that gets exposed, wide open, on Twitter. Here’s hoping that this episode wakes people up to that fact, and that such harassment is discouraged.

At the same time, I’m not holding my breath.

Thank you for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, if you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

I’ve found it strange that so many atheists — even many anti-theists — strive to protect and hail Milo Yiannapoulos, considering the fact that Milo is the leading Catholic evangelist of the modern era. It can be difficult to see this, due to what is, on the surface, an irreverent provocateur image. But a look at what Milo actually criticizes, what he extols, and when shows that he is very strategic about a completely different agenda: reinforcing Catholic guilt.

One of the reasons that people say he can’t be a serious Catholic is his own seemingly proud homosexuality. However, Milo Yiannapoulos takes advantage of spaces in which he is allowed to discuss his homosexuality to talk about how evil homosexuality is, right in line with the Catholic Church.

Someone asked him once: “How do you reconcile being a Roman Catholic and a homosexual? That is something that I never really understood.”

Milo did not defend homosexuality. He said that homosexuality was a sin, and that he was a sinner and thus needed the blood of Christ. No, really. Look:

If you think I’m a bad Catholic, imagine how bad I’d be without God. To ask this question — and I don’t mean to attack you in the least bit, I’m just trying to be completely honest with you — I think to ask that question requires a level of…I won’t say ignorance, I’ll just say a lack of understanding about the Catholic Church and about homosexuality; both of those things.  The fact is that, pragmatically speaking, the Catholic Church has protected and harbored more gay people in history than any other institution. It welcomed them into the priesthood when they were being murdered by the state, and this happened for, in some cases, centuries in places like Ireland. The Catholic Church has always been somewhere that protected gays, even if it didn’t always approve of what they were up to at night.

But also, the Catholic Church is different from the Anglican strain of Christianity, not just because the Anglican strain is wrong, but also because Catholicism is — I can’t remember who said this, but people are Anglicans, they’re Baptists, or Methodists, or whatever because they believe they’re good people. Well, Catholics are Catholic because they know they’re not. We have this thing called original sin. We go to church because we know we’re not good. And I think that, for me at least, certainly living the lifestyle I do, that’s a more honest approach to theology than other sorts of Christianity have to offer.

So here’s the thing. Progressives will sometimes demand all manner of complex and weird acknowledgments themselves. They want to be a gender-queer bleh, bleh, bleh. Whatever. But what they can’t understand is other people asking for the same acknowledgement that life is messy and complicated, and that some things aren’t fully recognized or realized or, um, put together in your own mind. Sometimes it takes a lifetime of study, of prayer, [intelligible, video skips] myself, and I don’t see why anybody else should, either.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UYJ2nP68_c[/youtube]

Now, let’s break this down. Milo Yiannopoulos sees much of the Western world trying to proclaim itself as good and accepted. But for Milo, this isn’t straightforward. We’re flawed, and we can’t put ourselves back together ourselves. He needs Christ to do that. He is a walking embodiment of the need for Christ, and he sis determined to show that the rest of the world is filled with “original sin” and thus has a fundamental need for Christ, as well. There is a sympathetic part to it, yes. But underneath it all is the sentiment that he, and others, have a fundamental Catholic guilt to work with, and he works to heighten it, to get that acknowledged.

His mission is to reinforce Catholic guilt. What he preaches from the front of the university — if you look at the substance behind the deceptively off-color humor — is straight from the morality of the Catholic Church.

I’m going to do more to prove that, but first I’d like to show you a clip showing his belief that the morality he appeals to, the one he sees inherent in culture, basically comes directly from the Bible. The clip below is worth watching in its entirety, but I’m going to pick out a few telling points.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AHjsSdapI4[/youtube]

This is from a conversation Joe Rogan had with Milo, but each of the quotes below are from Milo.

6:17

Even if you believe that [the Bible stories are a myth] they say something deep and profound about who we are and about what we care about most — about our anxieties, about our beliefs, and about our sympathies.

7:50

You [Joe Rogan] are too smart to fall into this habit — and it’s a leftist thing, this militant atheism crap — where you dismiss the central importance of religion to our culture and who we are.

8:05

Most of our laws are based on religious prescription, when you get down to it. Most of the ways society is organized is based on what’s ultimately religious prescription.

9:05

You [Joe Rogan] are not acknowledging the extent to which religion has made you who you are, from the speech codes that you grow up with, your moral code, the whole basis — the whole basis — *crosstalk* no, be an atheist! Be an atheist! But your sense of right and wrong comes from a Judeo-Christian tradition. It makes you very angry, but your sense of right and wrong comes from a Judeo-Christian tradition. It’s obviously true.

10:43

Everywhere that doesn’t have a good Christian heritage is a fucked-up place with bad morals.

11:24

Ultimately our sense of right and wrong comes from the Bible. It does. Ultimately our sense of right and wrong comes from the Bible.

12:01

The specific set of values that you have is influenced more than you would like to admit by your Judeo-Christian heritage.

Clearly, in light of the above quotes, Milo thinks and relies on Bible-based values to make his points, and he is strongly interested in protecting much of the power within the social tenets of Bible-based morality (homosexuality included, as we saw earlier). As a Catholic, his mission is to halt societal progress that ventures away from Bible-based Judeo-Christian values, and his ally is the shame inherent in our culture due to the influence and prejudices of Christianity (which often remain after deconversion, because humans don’t automatically revise their beliefs). He is on a mission to show people that they are not good, in themselves. They are depraved; they are flawed and need Christ. Milo may seem new and fresh, but he is the strongest tool that the Catholic church and Bible-based values has at its disposal.

Let’s run through a partial list.

Abortion rights? Milo Yiannapoulos not only is in favor of the church’s stance; he thinks the church is not strong enough on it. As he complains in a 2015 Brietbart op-ed:

You rarely see anyone in Britain stating the pro-life position with any ferocity. It’s normally done apologetically in newspaper columns and in Catholic magazines. Even less frequently do you see anyone take to the streets with placards. I wonder why that is. Is the reason we don’t even talk about this subject that there’s no strong religious conservatism in our public life?

Because there really isn’t, is there. The Catholic Church is almost as bad as the Church of England when it comes to speaking plainly about God. Our bishops would much rather bleat on about climate change — driving away thousands of young people, who come to the church seeking spiritual enlightenment, not green propaganda.

Our religious leaders are spineless…. Whether they’re religious or not, plenty of people feel, but are too scared to say, that they consider abortion is never all right, except perhaps in the case of extreme deformity.

And, more recently, on the 21st, he said the following:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9nJ3VnJu6I[/youtube]

Let me give you an excerpt:

Any women in the audience who have had abortions, I apologize for offending you. But if it helps, my roasts are nothing compared to being plunged headfirst into a lake of hellfire, which is what awaits you after your inevitable cat-assisted suicide in lonely middle age. But that is a topic for another day, and another speech; really none of my business.

A joke? Well, he seems afraid it might all be interpreted that way, so he reinforces the point:

It’s wrong, it’s murder, don’t do it.

Couched in humor, the appeal to Catholic guilt is real.

Transgender identity? Milo is following the Pope, who has called transgender people the result of “ideological colonization.” His argument is an appeal to current Judeo-Christian, Bible-based Catholic values when he does not appeal to science but, rather, to cultural norms in his declarations that “nobody believes that transgender women are women.”

Feminism? Pope Francis has said: “We must not fall into the trap of feminism, because this would reduce the importance of a woman.” What he meant by that is that women are to be “wives and mothers, receivers and nurturers.” There is a specific role for them, and that role is best. That correlates perfectly with the Bible’s prescription. There is guilt in culture felt by women who don’t sign up with that prescription, and Milo is trying to help the pope press that guilt.

In an article he wrote entitled “How to Make Women Happy: Uninvent the Washing Machine and the Pill,” Milo stated the following:

The role of the housewife has been thoroughly and ritually humiliated by successive waves of feminism — as if raising well-adjusted children, keeping a beautiful home and marrying a loving husband is worthy of derision and ridicule. In fact, it’s one of the most important things a woman can do with her life and may be one of the only things women can actually do better than men.

This implies that if you are doing something other than this, you may not be reaching your potential as a woman. Milo goes on to nail in the Catholic opposition to the pill (and promiscuity among women!) with arguments that seem humorous on their face but are also strategically designed to instill guilt for taking it — you’ll gain wait, you’ll be attracted to “feminized males” (reinforcement of Catholic-based male gender roles there), you’ll be more likely to cheat, and you’ll get cellulite. No, really, he said all that. Read the article.

On atheism? He sees them as an enemy to his ideology. Like feminists. As he stated in an interview with David Rubin:

The reason I have a go about atheists is because it’s fun. They’re so thin-skinned. They’re like libertarians, or cyclists, or liberal democrats in the UK, or feminists. They’re so easy to wind up.

But he has a different attitude towards Christians. In the same interview:

I’ve been very ashamed of my fellow homosexuals and the way they have behaved towards Christians in some of the media circuses that have gone on recently. Deeply, deeply horrified to watch gay people treat Christians as gay people were treated barely two decades ago. Horrible.

….

I don’t think gay people deserve any time to be bullies to settle into their position of authority and I think it does gay people a lot of damage to see these bitter, hysterical, nasty queens bullying and lecturing and hectoring ordinary people of faith.

What I want to point out here is that Milo is, clearly, a person with a double standard. He is not interested in merely making fun of people, because he’ll say in one breath that atheists should be mercilessly laughed at and in the next moment spend a substantial amount of time seriously arguing that Christianity needs more reverence or respect. He is interested in protecting Catholic Christianity and protecting the hold its influence on our sense of morality has on our culture. He is not just a comedian; he is a driven evangelist. And if you go down the list regarding his social positions, you will see that the positions he strives to highlight and underline, however comically, are strategically presented to advance Catholic guilt onto his listeners, like the individual discussed in my previous blog post. As an atheist, I have no interest in advancing his strident efforts to protect the guilt inherent in Christian, Catholic rules, and very little respect for atheists who do try to support them. I’m not a Christian anymore; I’m a humanist.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5q4u1nE6tI[/youtube]

It’s time to move on.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me do what I do.

Milo Yiannapoulos should not be speaking on college campuses, so campuses are right to cancel or deny him any speaking engagements. Where they do not, students are within their rights to protest and do what they can to block his speech.

It’s not because Milo Yiannapoulos is the embodiment of many of the worst strains of his Catholic religion’s prejudices. It’s not because I disagree with him. It’s not because many students and professors do not like his views. That has absolutely nothing to do with it, because college (as Milo supporters often rightly state) is not there for you to be insulated in your own viewpoint; college is a place to learn, to be challenged, to expand your viewpoint. So you should hear liberal views and conservative views. In colleges, you should hear and be heard. You’re part of a community of learning, developing scholars. The process of being in this community is called “education.”

Universities are here to educate students.

University are not here to bully individual students. That’s not why the exist. That gets in the way of education, because it’s hard to go to class, study, and involve yourself in campus affairs when you are singled out and bullied. To spell it out, the consequences of you being bullied — up to dropping out of a university for your own safety — contradicts the purpose of a university’s bottom line, which is, again, to get you educated.

That doesn’t seem controversial.

Education and bullying are two different things. And if someone comes onto campus and bullies an individual student in front of thousands of people — picture, name, asking if anyone knows the person, etc. — they are interfering with the purpose of the university, which is education. Especially if they clarify later, when the student drops out, that they accomplished their mission.

Let me give you an example. You may have heard of a transgender student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was made fun of by Milo. Let’s walk through what happened.

After Milo, in his speech, finished making fun of criticism over the phrase “man up” he said:

“I’ll tell you one UW-Milwaukee student that does not need to man up, and that is (Student’s name).“

Here’s the horrifying thing: this trans student was in the crowd. Called out. And then your picture — which was, as the trans woman stated later, earlier in her transition — flips up on the screen. Right there. In front of the auditorium. On the big screen. And in front of thousands of other people watching online.

It gets worse. Milo then says:

“Do you know about (Student’s Name)? Have any of you come into contact with this person?”

Hold it. This student is in the crowd, probably with her friends, and now the friends have been shamed for being in contact with her, too. They did not ask for this. They did not know this was coming. They’re sitting there, stunned. He keeps going.

“This quote unquote nonbinary trans—you’re not laughing now, are you, you know him—this quote unquote nonbinary trans woman forced his way into the women’s locker rooms this year. Who knows about this story, any of you? I see you don’t even read your own student media.”

It. would. not. have. been. a. big. deal. Most apparently did not even know. No. Big. Deal. So what? Now she goes into the locker room that matches her gender. She’s able to concentrate on her education — because if she looks like a woman and goes into the men’s locker room, there’s harassment there. So she goes to the bathroom that matches her gender, and everything is fine. Again, most of the students didn’t even really know. She’s been able to get educated in peace. But after this, every time she walks into a classroom, she’s that trans woman Milo made fun of in front of thousands of people. Every time she walks into a locker room, she now may have to watch her back. Before she had decent job prospects, presumably. Now, her name is out there, and she has to worry whether her possible employer or coworkers will realize she is that trans woman Milo made fun of in a front of thousands of people — and now millions, as several have seen the story since.

She did not ask for this. All she wanted to do was go to the bathroom that matched her gender.

And here’s the thing — this would have been in the realm of simple “free speech” (however disturbing it is) if it happened off campus — like Milo’s Catholic church. But it’s happening at a university whose express and only real jobs are to conduct research and to educate students. This is ruining her education. It is not the place for this bullying. It goes fundamentally against the goals of the university.

I want to underline this point.

This is not about being a social justice warrior or an anti-social justice warrior. This is not about liberal vs. conservative ideology. This is not about partisan social politics. That’s all in the arena of a debate that we can definitely discuss on a college campus. I support that debate and I think it needs to happen for the benefit of students’ education. Nor is this about a vague random case he threw out anonymously as an illustration of a point he was making.

This is about the fact that individual students, regardless of their backgrounds or political views, should not be personally abused by having their picture surprisingly put on a large screen in full display for thousands of people, and their full name used, to bully them and disrupt their education.

Then he says:

“He got into the women’s room the way liberals always operate, using the government and the courts to weasel their way where they don’t belong. In this case he made a Title IX complaint. Title IX is a set of rules to protect women on campus effectively. It’s couched in the language of equality, but it’s really about women, which under normal circumstances would be fine except for how it’s implemented. Now it is used to put men in to women’s bathrooms.”

Maybe you’re conservative and you think misgendering a transgender person blatantly and proudly in front of thousands of people is fine. OK, look at this objectively. Studies indicate that it’s traumatic for many transgender people. So he is traumatizing this student even more here…and he doesn’t need to do it (and, given his history with the LGBT movement, he knows exactly what he’s doing). It’s unnecessary bullying. This isn’t about education. This isn’t about a general point — he could have kept her anonymous. This is about bullying. And, lest there be any doubt on this, he then says:

“I have known some passing trannies in my life. Trannies—you’re not allowed to say that. I’ve known some passing trannies, which is to say transgender people who pass as the gender they would like to be considered.”

In case you don’t already know, “tranny” is like the word “nigger.” Milo knows this. To add insult to injury, he switches from calling her a nonbinary trans woman, and calls her the most insulting name you can call a trans woman. To bully her. As she is there in the crowd, watching.

But he’s not done. He then gestures at the picture, evaluates whether the person is passing (again, the picture was taken months earlier, while she was still trying to look more female, making the picture even more mortifying for her) and says:

“Well, no.”

Which is further unnecessary bullying. And the audience laughs. But that’s not enough. One step forward:

“The way that you know he’s failing is I’d almost still bang him. It’s just…it’s just a man in a dress, isn’t it?”

Think of this from the student’s perspective. This person has been insulted by this man, bullied by him…and then she is evaluated for whether she is a sexual object for him to bang, on top of it.

OK, you say. That was unnecessarily cruel. Maybe a bit. But he’s only done it one time. He has so much to offer regarding his unique perspective — why not give him another shot?

While I disagree with that sentiment — I strongly think that universities should be more zero-tolerance about this, not because they are trying to be “politically correct” but because bullied students perform worse academically and are not educated as well — I’ll grant it for the sake of argument. Let’s say that if this is a one-time thing, we should forgive him for it.

Except…it’s not.

As the student wrote to the university president after dropping out of the university due to the bullying that took place after Milo singled her out, she originally protested Milo’s coming to campus, along with several other students, because she anticipated such harassment:

“Don’t act like you didn’t know this would happen. You knew goddamn well it would. I lost track of how many people pointed this out to you. And what the hell did you do when students tried to organize and deliver a petition to cancel Milo’s event? YOU FUCKING CALLED THE COPS ON THEM. LIKE WHAT IN THE LIVING FUCK. Your asshole level is off the charts, especially because you feign concern about this with one hand while backhanding all of us with the other. Because there’s nothing like the threat of state violence to keep people in line.

“Seriously, you FUCKING CALLED THE GODDAMN POLICE on students at your office who were raising extremely valid concerns about Milo, you forcibly threw students out, and then you want to turn around and act like you didn’t see this coming? How fucking naïve do you think we are?

“This also isn’t just a case of a speaker going off an a tangent like that, like some random occurrence. It was not a case where you had no way of knowing he would do this. Quite the contrary: Milo has a supremely extensive, highly-documented track record of doing precisely this. As I’ve already said, YOU KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN. WE TOLD YOU IT WOULD. AND WE TOLD YOU AGAIN. AND AGAIN. But you brushed this off under “muh free speech” bullshit.”

But maybe, you’re saying, he’s apologized. That way, he could speak his mind — just so long as he didn’t bully individual students inside the university.

But Milo was proud that he got the student so distressed, so upset, so bullied that she had to leave the university. As he said in a later speech.:

“He created a terrible fuss, an awful fuss, when I put his name up there and so did the president of that university. But it turns out, he’s going to quit the university. So I have become a sort of second wave feminist icon, protecting women from men in their locker rooms. Well, you’re welcome, feminism.”

He’s actually proud of it.

He is proud that he bullied this trans woman so badly that she cannot get educated effectively at the school that was supposed to educate her.

This is intolerable. His pride shows that it will happen again, and this is why he should not speak at universities. He can speak conservative views or liberal views, but when he calls out a member of the student body, puts a picture up on the screen for thousands to see, gives her full name, proudly misgenders her, calls her the most vulgar slur in his arsenal, mocks her appearance, shames people for being friends with her, states she might be attractive enough for him to put his dick up her ass, disturbs her attendance by making light of a little-known Title IX compliance case that had been scarcely heard of by most in the university, and then boasts with a proud “mission accomplished” when said student drops out of the university due to the ensuing bullying, he is interfering with the university’s job of protecting and enhancing the safe education of its students. He is not educating; he is bullying. And apparently they knew he would do it. And we know, based on his reaction, that he will probably do it again.

The privacy of individual students has strong importance in such public speeches. And I’m not just saying that because I’m a liberal; if a liberal did anything close to that to a conservative far-righter, the same logic would remain: Is this bullying the student, or enhancing their education? I would never condone, under any circumstances, someone speaking at a university to proudly bully individual students out of its walls.

This is not rocket science. This is not a partisan issue. This is about the purpose of a university, which is education. Some spaces outside the university may have different purposes. When Milo is in his transphobic Catholic church down the street he can rant and rail against individual transgender people all he wants, so long as he is not using my tax money to do it. I may not like it, but that’s his right. But the purpose of the university is education, and if a speaker is keeping individual students from being effectively educated because of his outrageous, proud bullying of individual students he names, he’s in the way of that purpose.

And his speaking engagements at these places of education should be cancelled, regardless of his ideology. The students and their education come first.

Thank you for reading.

P.S.: I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me do what I’m doing.

It is clear, from White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s press briefing today, that Trump is trying to control the press. The constant assailing of the press for telling the truth about Trump has been systematic, and today it reached bizarre proportions.

Several people have been puzzled about why Trump is doing what he is doing. What does he hope to gain? Is there a method to the madness?

Yes. In short, this is exactly what Trump would do if he were trying to abolish the free press. Like Putin’s Russia or Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea. Yes, it could really get that bad, if it works.

The method is simple. Rationalize cutting the press off from access to your activities, except for your puppet press. Your puppet press is then the only one that can really report on you, and they make you sound awesome. You gain popularity. And the other starved outlets, increasingly denigrated for the quality of their reporting (which is affected by their lack of access), start to change their reporting to gain access, as well.

And then you control the press. Doesn’t necessarily take long, especially if you hit the ground running. And once you control the press, you control public opinion. And in a democracy (or, if you wanna be technical, this republic), you can then do whatever you want.

I’ve noticed that anti-SJW insults tend to be, oftentimes, missing the point. They seemed designed to disparage parts of individuals that they cannot change. Rather than merely pointing out erroneous parts in another person’s argument, anti-SJWs tend to insult the other person’s appearance, mental abilities, and other circumstantial data.

This is a very effective strategy, because these insults permanently mark people. If someone says your face is ugly, there’s really no escape. If someone says you’re fundamentally stupid, that’s not an attack on a particular instance of bad logic — that’s a commentary on all your thinking abilities. These insults permanently categorize individuals — sidelining them and making them unheard.

One side effect of such insults is that they reinforce norms. So if someone says something, they are seen, automatically, as dismissable not because you’ve proven them wrong, but because, to cite a recent example, they have a dick-shaped nose. Or because of the way they laugh, smile, or talk. There’s power there. You don’t have to respond to someone’s argument; just leave a comment saying “you’re ugly” or “you’re an idiot” or something similar, and you’ve won. Maybe you wouldn’t win in a class on logic, but other people “like” the comment, and then the conversation is closed.

What are you going to do? Rebut? You can’t. These judgments are entirely subjective. They’re not arguments about facts. They are professional cyberbullying arguments.

Let me give you a recent example. From your side.

A popular anti-Feminist who goes by the handle ShoeOnHead on YouTube recently made a feminist parody video. And the parody was mistaken for a serious video and attacked by an anti-SJW named “the Satirician.”

So she made a video about “The Satirician’s” criticism of her parody video (got all that?). It’s a decent video. Check it out:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ2PGyeQQ64[/youtube]

Here’s an example of the Satirician’s insults:

Let me just say I’m fully in favor of getting rid of you. Something spectacular, like a public drowning.

ShoeOnHead bangs her head on the table in exasperation and exclaims:

Why don’t you just link the original video for us to laugh at, if you’re not going to add anything else other than: “You’re ugly and kill yourself.”

She notices the same thing I do. These insults are thoughtless. They are irrelevant. They aren’t arguments. And that’s why they work — they make us hate people instead of critique arguments thoughtfully.  They are based on subjective judgment and not on objective argumentation. They’re worthless.

Later, the Satirician adds this insult:

I hope you choke on your hair.

ShoeOnHead’s reaction:

You could have added some FACTS or SOMETHING!

But it’s not about facts. Facts can progress the debate. Facts can continue the conversation and make it genuinely helpful. Telling someone that you hope they die is an undebatable subjective position that adds nothing to the argument and ultimately ends it, because it’s impossible to argue with someone’s subjective opinion.

Then the Satirician AGAIN hopes ShoeOnHead’s parody character kills herself, again fully missing the fact that the character is a parody:

You know, I don’t really condone violence, but if this girl was hit by a bus I can’t help but feel I’d bust a gut laughing.

ShoeOnHead reacts:

He’s not even trying. He’s not even debunking or criticizing anything…. [he basically just says] “I hope you die. I hope you drown. I hope you get hit by a bus.”…

People told him it was me and he apologized, but honestly that makes it ten times funnier, because it’s like, “Oops! I accidentally told someone I agree with to go kill themselves, not someone I disagree with XD!”

But honestly, to turn into Mother June for a second, if “Nikki” [the character in my parody video] was a real person, that’s actually kinda fucked up that every other thing you said to her was like, “Go kill yourself. Go drown. I wanna see you die. Hey, who’s with me? This girl should die.”

ShoeOnHead is absolutely right. And it’s not OK when SJWs do it, either. But these days, it’s coming a whole lot more from the other side. For example, The Satirician, before he showed ShoeOnHead how terrible he was, released a slew of videos in the above style on a long list of people.

Being on the receiving end of an attack from a major YouTuber hoping that you die or kill yourself is fucking scary as hell. When a bunch of men “like” a comment that says something along the lines of “I hope you die,” that’s intimidating. It silences people. It feels like these people are part of a Charles Manson cult, and if they want you to get death threats they do not have to rebut your arguments — because if it was really about the arguments, we’d have more of a conversation than threats of violence. It’s that they want to feel that they’ve won. It’s because it’s fun to make you make you cry and shut down your channel. Really.

It’s fucking scary. And it’s frustrating, too, when every attempt you make to explain your position is proudly disliked by a disliking gang regardless of what you say, just because their Dear Leader said that you were ugly and that he hoped you died.

That’s not debate. And it hurts people. It demolishes the attempts by people to have a conversation.

But on the anti-SJW side, it’s becoming the norm. They don’t tend to criticize behavior and arguments, opting instead for critiques on appearance and wishes that a person dies. Which hurts peoples feelings.

Yes, people have feelings, and yes, it’s “actually kinda fucked up” when you ignore that to cyberbully them instead of engage them in conversation.

Not all anti-SJWs do this. ShoeOnHead generally doesn’t do it, for example. But others do, regularly. And they ruin people, systematically, through their unskeptical cults that dance around them in glee.

There seems to be a thin veneer of distancing from cyberbullying among some of them, but…it’s not entirely convincing. Take the YouTuber Bearing, for example, who puts these sentences in his harassment notice:

It is not my intention to cause the original video publisher to receive any kind of harassment or abuse. My intention is to provide a counter argument to claims they have made in a civil and courteous manner. While I have no control over the feedback you choose to provide, I d kindly ask that you avoid any forms of harassment or abuse. Thanks!

OK. But this harassment notice is in the small-print description of a video that is ironically titled: “Dick nosed feminist strives for world record in double standards!”

Even worse — the insult “Dick nosed feminist” actually came from a comment on said feminist, Kate Smurthwaite’s, original video — a comment the feminist was criticizing as an example of uncivility comments. So not only did Bearing create a title that was uncivil and uncourteous — he repeated and thus endorsed the very commentary he encouraged his fans to avoid.

And in that same title, as ice on the cake, he accused someone else of double standards! And the crowd does not care.

Here is more of his commentary:

You spend the second half of this video pissing and moaning about how horrible bigots call you a cunt online. Well, I don’t think they’re bigots. I think you’re just a cunt.

Maybe [we’d listen to you] if you were much, much hotter, and much less annoying.

Well, maybe listen to criticism. Have you ever thought that someone left that comment [the comment was “you are shit”] because you actually are shit, and not because he’s a misogynist woman-hater who’s out to get you because of your horrible vagina?

I like that guy [who said to the feminist, “You’re not funny. You’re not smart. You’re not pleasant to look at or listen to. PLEASE FUCK OFF]. Knows exactly what he wants to say and doesn’t waste any time saying it.

This [comment on the feminist] is fucking awesome [the comment was: I think that thing was going to poke my eye out with its massive facial limb. I’ve not seen a big fat cock on a face before, but it’s hilarious].

Readers, if you really think he is behaving “in a civil and courteous manner” and doesn’t encourage “harassment or abuse,” I’ve got a Bridge in Brooklyn I wanna sell ya. In spite of his statement that the threat to rape her and that she would raise the “rape baby” by herself was over the top, he clearly is encouraging some abuse here.

Her argument is that misogyny is a major issue in the election of Trump, and Bearing isn’t helping the defense’s case.

But it doesn’t matter. Bearing’s video got seen like crazy. Kate Smurthwaite’s video, by contrast, got less than a tenth of the views, and 5,640 dislikes to only 42 likes. Why? Because Bearing sent his fans to bury it. He got them to dislike her as a person, and didn’t even discuss the entirety of her argument, which I’ll put here:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwgKnd4crPQ[/youtube]

Also, Bearing earns up to $556 per video for this disturbing content. The problem is not him, so much as his mocking supporters.

We’re not going to have a conversation this way. If you attack people’s appearance and intelligence levels instead of their actions, and if you rely on subjective judgment rather than objective facts and empathy, discussion will die. Because you’re really not contributing anything. You’re just trying to hurt someone else’s feelings, which isn’t part of the argument.

Am I saying that you need to care about these snowflakes’ feelings?

Yes, partially (I guess it’s controversial that you shouldn’t be trying to psychologically annihilate somebody, unfortunately, but yeah — that’s a really fucked up goal).

But even better would be to actually concentrate on the argument. It’s how we’re going to move forward and be a stronger society. You don’t make society better by rebutting arguments by saying someone is ugly or you hope they kill themselves. To state the obvious, those kind of statements make the world worse, not better. If you’re going to insult someone, do it through something that is relevant to the argument and an objective argument; this business of shutting down conversation by encouraging irrelevant personal subjective insults in the interest of “pwning” the other person is hurting conversation, not helping it, and those actions make you a misogynist when they are insulting someone based on their sex, a bigot when they are insulting orientation or gender presentation, and a privileged racist when it involves the color of someone’s skin.

These are insults based on what you do. Rebutting by repeating those actions…isn’t helping your case. As ShoeOnHead encouraged, let’s have on objective conversation based on the facts on the actual ground instead making fun of people when they aren’t consenting to be playthings whose emotions you can liberally wound.

Gravy?

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

I’ve got to apologize before this one.

I’m sorry that I’m wasting my time on this bullshit. Really. This is a wad of ridiculousness that I tried staying away from for a few weeks, since I came across this guy, but I gotta do something about this bullshit, with his embarrassingly bad logic and all. This is worse logic than any Youtuber I’ve discussed up to date. It’s just…really, really bad. Not even just because I disagree with it. It’s just terrible. And, for some reason, it has over 180,000 views and 10,000 likes, and only 106 dislikes. I don’t understand this.

Here’s the original video by this guy named Michael Rowland. This one is really good. Seriously, you should check it out. And leave him a nice comment, will you?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIWHGUGgy5w[/youtube]

The Youtuber Bearing basically sabotaged the video and flooded it with negative comments by making a horrendously terrible rebuttal here, but I can save you time by summing it up. Basically, he argues that although there may be multiple genders, there are only two sexes, and that any deviations at the chromosomal level from these two sexes are abnormalities and not a sex in themselves because they’re too rare.

His rationale? He says that if we’re making a bunch of guitars and one comes off the production line abnormally, that’s not a new type of guitar — it’s just a guitar with an abnormality.

Do I have to point out the flaw in this argument? Really?

Human beings are not guitars. We’re…people. We got here because of “abnormalities” in the first place. It’s not like Nature is some God with a design, trying to put people neatly into two genders, and makes an “oops.” Nature has no agency; it is not a personal entity that can make “mistakes.” WE are the ones who decide how we want to organize our worlds.

There is an argument he then makes that there’s a difference between sex and gender. While people may pick any gender they like, Bearing argues, they are not free to pick any sex they like. Science determines sex.

But here, again, SCIENCE IS NOT A PERSON. Science is not a god. It can’t decide who is a male or a female; those are labels that we invented. We invented them, in the field of biology, for convenience — so that we could identify the genders of individuals in order to properly treat them and thus prevent harm. And I think that is what Bearing is missing, and I don’t know if I or anybody else will ever get it through his skull.

Science is not the dictate of what people feel, of what they wish to be called in the world, of the desires in the innermost recesses of their brain and the pain that is felt when others assault it. Science only gives us a map without labels. The labels are owned by humanity.

Bearing is attempting to get his believers to believe in God again. His God is named “Nature,” and he is intent on breathing intention into it, and saying that it is governed by his prejudices. But the fact of the matter is that whether Bearing or a hundred thousand, or a billion people say that Nature is God, that does not breath life into Nature. Nature is passive. Nature is merely there. It is up to us to characterize, to embody parts of it, to give it names. And if we decide to give a part of nature a name that causes harm, we cannot, without violating clear logic, pass that decision onto some “God” of nature, as if it washes our hands clean. No. We are responsible for it. To deny this is to deny clear logic in order to irrationally confirm our own prejudices.

Science does not determine gender, and it does not determine sex. It does not speak the names “male” and “female.” These are words that we made up, not “science,” which can’t talk. What we refer to when we use the words “male” and “female” may be physical features that operate in different ways, and the ways they operate are features of science. However, the words themselves are not created by science, they are created by us, and thus can be changed by us as necessary.

The weird thing here is that this isn’t really what Bearing is upset about. He’s not annoyed that people might be able to choose gender; he thinks that protecting biological sex will prevent us from multiplying the genders we expect people to identify as. No; at most, biological sex will help us in the physician’s office (where, by the way, they are recommending that transgender people be allowed to change their sex assignment. Why? Because they’re fucking doctors and they know that this makes sense). So…Bearing is being pretty dishonest or, at the least, ignorant with his statement. Either he doesn’t know that biological sex belongs in the medical field and that gender is the relevant category 24/7 when dealing with everything outside they physician’s office (even if you take the most strident conservative views on sex) or he is intentionally conflating the terms so that he can use the category of “sex” to invalidate the category of “gender.”

Which is all ridiculous. We’re playing semantics; these are words that we made up. If someone wants to be called a “she,” call her a “she.” If someone wants to be called a “he,” call him a “he.” This isn’t complicated. If you think that there is something wrong here, stop basing that wrong on a semantics game and start basing it on harm. We already know about harm from our side.

For starters, several studies actually indicate that gender in the mind does not automatically correlate with assigned gender decisions that are made based (rather invasively) on genitalia. Take this one, for example. Also, there’s this one. Another relevant study is here. In addition, you might want to consider this one, conducted by a half-dozen researchers.  Then there’s also this one, conducted by a baker’s dozen. And this one, as well. Another recent study also indicates this is the case. And in addition, there’s this one. And then there’s…well, I could go on, but The Wall Street Journal gives a good overview of the issue if you need a summary.

So the separation between the gender felt in the mind and that assigned to the individual actually has consequences that can make people experience actual pain. There’s statements that say this is an actual phenomenon by several organizations that would know, including the very authoritative American Psychological Association in a thoroughly-cited, strongly worded statement.  Here is its description of the harm transgender and non-binary people can face when people like Bearing intentionally misgender them:

Discrimination and prejudice against people based on their actual or perceived gender identity or expression detrimentally affects psychological, physical, social, and economic well-being (Bockting et al., 2005; Coan et al., 2005; Clements-Nolle, 2006; Kenagy, 2005; Kenagy & Bostwick, 2005; Nemoto et al., 2005; Resolution on Prejudice Stereotypes and Discrimination, Paige, 2007; Riser et al., 2005; Rodriquez-Madera & Toro-Alfonso, 2005; Sperber et al., 2005; Xavier et al., 2005)….

Gender variant and transgender people may be denied basic civil rights and protections (Minter, 2003; Spade, 2003) including: the right to civil marriage which confers a social status and important legal benefits, rights, and privileges (Paige, 2005)… and the right to fair and safe and harassment-free institutional environments such as care facilities, treatment centers, shelters, housing, schools, prisons and juvenile justice programs…

Transgender and gender variant people experience a disproportionate rate of homelessness (Kammerer et al., 2001), unemployment (APA, 2007) and job discrimination (Herbst et al., 2007), disproportionately report income below the poverty line (APA, 2007) and experience other financial disadvantages (Lev, 2004)….

Transgender and gender variant people may be at increased risk in institutional environments and facilities for harassment, physical and sexual assault (Edney, 2004; Minter, 2003; Peterson et al., 1996; Witten & Eyler, 2007) ….

Many gender variant and transgender children and youth face harassment and violence in school environments, foster care, residential treatment centers, homeless centers and juvenile justice programs (D’Augelli, Grossman, & Starks, 2006; Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, 2003; Grossman, D’Augelli, & Slater, 2006)….

You see all that bold? OK. Think about what a nightmare that would be. And you could erase much of that — much of that — in well-documented reports, according to the authoritative American Psychological Association, merely by granting people the gender they want to identify as. What’s on your list of harm? The inconvenience of changing the way that you think a bit? Really? How well does it match that list? Take your biases out of it for a second. Look at your list. Now look at the list above. Now think, carefully, about who gets hurt more. Think about which one is more considerate. And think, furthermore, about how much transgender people and those who are on their side — their friends, their family members, their advocates — are going to fight for the people they see hurt.

And just fucking call them by their fucking preferred pronoun. If you think that’s too much to ask, stop pretending you have logic on your side and just admit that you don’t want to change when faced with the evidence right in front of you.

Moving on…the American Medical Association has also taken these studies into account in a strongly worded statement discussing Gender Identity Disorder, which can (but does not necessarily) occur when someone’s felt gender does not match their assigned sex:

Gender Identity Disorder (GID) is a serious medical condition recognized as such in both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th 5 Ed., Text Revision) (DSM-IV-TR) and the International Classification of Diseases (10th Revision), and is characterized in the DSM-IV-TR as a persistent discomfort with one’s assigned sex and with one’s primary and secondary sex characteristics, which causes intense emotional pain and suffering and, if left untreated, can result in clinically significant psychological distress, dysfunction, debilitating depression and, for some people without access to appropriate medical care and treatment, suicidality and death.

As does the National Association of Social Workers, in a 9-page, well-cited, similarly strongly worded statement.

Transgender people encounter difficulties in virtually every aspect of their lives, both in facing the substantial hostility that society associates with those who do not conform to gender norms and in coping with their own feelings of difference. Considerable verbal harassment and physical violence accompany the powerful social stigma faced by transgender people (Clements-Nolles, Marx, & Katz, 2006; Lombardi, Wilchins, Priesing, & Malouf, 2001; Wyss, 2004) and may be accompanied by racial and ethnic discrimination (Juang, 2006). Transgender people also experience dismissal from jobs, eviction from housing, and denial of services, even by police officers and medical emergency professionals (Xavier, 2000; Xavier, Honnold, & Bradford, 2007). Restrooms, the most mundane of public and workplace amenities, often become sites of harassment and confrontation, with access often denied (Transgender Law Center, 2005). Transgender and transsexual people are often denied appropriate medical and mental health care and are uniquely at risk of adverse health outcomes (Dean et al., 2000; Xavier et al., 50 2004).

The statement goes on to say that surgery and being recognized as the gender the transgender person identifies as can rectify these negative symptoms. Furthermore, the American Public Health Association has taken these observations into account in their policies since 1999.  Finally, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an authoritative body of 55,000 physicians, has a committee opinion supporting these observations that is also fairly clearly written.

You don’t have science on your side, and the people using the terms — like, all of them who are really in the know — are changing their use to fit transgender concerns, because they aren’t just interested in preserving the harm in the status quo, but in combatting it. I know it’s inconvenient for you to change, but it’s much more inconvenient for transgender people to put up with being intentionally misgendered. Just…can we all agree that we shouldn’t do it? Yeah, I know that it sounds really social justicey, like I’m making much ado about nothing in order to make some people feel bad, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the issue. But it’s not that. It’s simply trying to get rid of the very real harm some people are going through. I mean, every organization out there interested in diminishing harm is concentrated on this issue. We should pay attention to it, too, don’t you think? At least, as long as we’re not just trying to keep ourselves from changing, and actually interested in promoting a healthier world.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

So…Benjamin Corey, what’s up?

Anyways…yeah…having recently said that I’m not concentrating on fulfilling an anti-theistic role anymore, but rather concentrating on preventing harm perpetuated by religion, I went over to your Progressive Christian Channel on Patheos for some…inspiration. Can we work together? I was interesting in the possibility.

But I have to admit…there are things I’m seeing there that are pretty disturbing. Very harmful. And I think you might want to work on prompting Christians to think harder about how harmful some of these stances are.

Take your recent post, Benjamin Corey, that asks atheists to stop “doing and saying” certain things.

It gets off to an awkward start between us right off the bat, when you tell us to “please stop saying or insinuating that we’re a bunch of uneducated or unenlightened idiots.”

I don’t have a problem with the “uneducated” part. Yeah, there are some educated Christians out there. I don’t have a problem with your statement against the “idiot” part — I think using that term might be insulting to those struggling with mental health. But the “unenlightened” part…um, sorry, but if you’re Christian and I’m an atheist, I’m going to think you’re unenlightened. You’re going to think I’m unenlightened. That goes with the territory of having a different position. And there are reasons we think, in each of our minds, that we come to differing conclusions. So I’m partially in agreement with you. But…you slightly lose me.

If you’re wrong about the best course of action for humanity, you’re unenlightened. Same goes for me. Preventing that insinuation may have the end result of silencing people who have very real grievances about how progressive Christianity works that, if you listened to them, could actually make the world a better place.

Here’s my counter-request: Don’t get so concentrated on whether or not my view that you are “unenlightened” is offensive that you miss the question of whether or not my argument could actually make the world a better place.

Second, you state, “Please stop insisting that we read our Bible like right-wing fundamentalists.”

Hold it. Hold it. Hold it.

You’ve got to stop the brakes here and think about this reaaaaal carefully. Calm down. And…………realize that a straightforward reading of the Bible has problems. It just does. Now, I’m sure you can chop it and dice it and make it sound better. But you have to realize that some of the Bible licenses some really disturbing views. Because if you don’t, you’re holding up a book that is going to, and is, doing real damage in the world. Open your mind to the fact that right-wing fundamentalists might be getting their message from the same Bible you’re reading, and question the use of those verses.

It is amazing to me the way both conservative fundamentalists and many atheists insist on reading and interpreting the Bible with the same rigid literalism that takes into account almost nothing regarding literary genre, authorial intent, context, original languages, etc.

With all due respect, Benjamin Corey — and this is not a personal attack on you….I gotta call it like I see it.

This. Is. Bullshit.

Literary genre is a matter of debate. And most Christians — progressive and non — don’t think about it until a non-Christian points out what, exactly, their Bible says. What are the Gospels, for example? Are they a myth? Are they history? Are they informal accounts that got changed through the generations? Etc. These questions are not easily answered, and you’ll find widespread disagreement over them. Same with the Old Testament, with the laws from God. Are they accounts of laws from God? Or did Moses make them up to keep the Israelites in line? Or was there ever even a Moses? Etc. Like…the literary genre thing is filled with debate. My own take is that the Bible is a record of people’s attempts to organize their world using the God-concept. With that viewpoint, it behooves us to be honest about how they failed, so we don’t repeat the same mistakes.

Now, you may have figured out a way to twist the scripture so that it doesn’t say, for example, that same-sex marriage is a sin (although the gymnastics you use to do this are astounding, and tend to say that the good of love outweighs the sin of same-sex marriage, or that gay marriage is a sin just like other sins so that it’s a wash, without roundly and unequivocally saying straight out that same-sex marriage is a personal decision that has no sinful elements at all and is cause for celebration). Congratulations. And a part of me wants to ensure that you don’t convert over the the Westboro Baptist Church’s interpretation.

But a major part of me also wants to underline that these parts are in your book — that most translations of the Bible do have a God who once commanded stoning for men who had sex with men, and mention homosexuality as one of many sins. And it looks really, really, really dishonest for you to pretend that it’s not there when those verses are actually hurting people. Could you, at the least, rip them out of your Bibles, maybe? Just have that nice stuff about love and stuff, and take out the whole Old Testament? Or just say that those people got it wrong? Or ban certain passages of the Bible from being transported from the west to third-world countries, perhaps looking at the good science and values like “love one another” without the hellfire verses can do instead?

Just…if you’re really interested, as I am, in preventing harm, you have to, have to, HAVE TO be honest about how your book is coming across to the straightforward reader.

And authorial intent…is difficult to ascertain, and is a direct appeal to the intentional fallacy. What matters are the words on the page and their impact on culture. If you think that the author meant something else, you’re going to have to drastically change the wording of many religious texts. Like Exodus 22:18, a verse that is literally resulting in the death and horrendous torture of thousands of children.

What we’re tired of you doing is rationalizing away the most disturbing parts in the Bible and thus insulating the texts that are causing a great deal of harm around their world, due to their rather clear, straightforward readings. You need to realize the damage you are doing by exalting these verses and sending them out as-is, instead of joining us in tearing them down, along with all their disturbing implications.

Next on the list, “Please stop referring to our belief system(s) as fairy tales.”

Look, I’m gonna be real with you real quick: honestly, I think your belief system is a fairy tale. What? Do you want me to lie? The beliefs often function in your church as nontrue moralistic tales meant to help you live better lives. I mean, I’m an atheist. Do you really think I’m gonna believe that when the Bible talks about people going to hell for, among other sins, homosexuality unless they believe that some guy rose from the dead 2000 years ago to take away sin (as the Old Testament defines it), I’m gonna think it’s anything but a fairy tale?

I mean, in looking at the value of that honesty…here’s what you need to understand, Benjamin, with all due respect: Your Bible’s “fairy tales” hurt people. They have caused trauma in people. They have caused PTSD in people. They have resulted in the deaths of millions and the psychological devastation of millions more. These are facts.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIfABmbqSMA[/youtube]

So…us referring to these tales as “fairy tales” remind us that these things that harmed us so badly aren’t real. Is that really so bad? Can you get over it? If you really think God is real, maybe you can go to him with those grievances, but leave those hurt by religion alone. Try to explain to them how it’s not a fairy tale, instead of just declaring it’s not. Start opening up your ears a listening a bit more.

Do you realize, Benjamin, that as nonbelievers we get attacked by friends and family oftentimes as not part of a celestial country club and thus likely going to hell for eternity because of something that sounds patently ridiculous to us? Just try to look at it from our perspective for a moment. Imagine the rage. We can be told that we’re going to hell for eternity, and when we fight back with the much more inferior attack that those beliefs are “fairy tales,” we’re the ones that get raked over the coals by most of culture.

It’s time for you to try to stop making us look so bad, Ben. And I think you have a good heart, and could represent us here. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. Start thinking about why we might read the Bible we were often brainwashed by or have to fight so hard against and come away calling it a “fairy tale.” I don’t think you get it. But if you tried, I think you could. And honestly — c’mon, Ben. We both know that some beliefs based on the Bible are really harmful to human progress, as you demean fundamentalist Christians. So…try to advocate using rational thinking for our own good and the good of humanity as much as you can, and we’ll do the same. Sometimes, we’ll both find that this requires calling out false beliefs for what they are — especially if they are hurting people.

Then you say, “Maybe lay off the whole, “religion hasn’t done any good for humanity” type of argument, because it’s obnoxiously untrue.”

I would never argue that religious people haven’t done any good for humanity. I’ll even say that I’ve seen religion make various people’s lives better. But Ben…what’s frustrating us is that so many people ignore the bad that’s happened through religion. It’s important to pay attention to that so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes. And further, so many people (including you, in this post) ignore so much of the bad that religious organizations are doing now. I think that’s why we bring up the bad so much — religious people aren’t talking about it, giving people the false impression that religion does good when, oftentimes, it doesn’t. And when the bad things religion does to people’s lives are ignored, that hurts actual people. That’s not healthy, Ben. It’s not good. What you should do is be honest about the terrible things religious beliefs do to people, because your side often ignores that. It’d be appreciated much more than you joining the billions of religious people telling us “obnoxiously” to shut up about it.

Anyways, those are the high points. Good talk, Ben. Catch ya on the flip side, and thanks for reading y’all.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

One of the common points that a secular humanist has is the argument that God is more important than people.

That’s a good point, and one that I still have some affinity with. Prioritizing the concept of God over and above people is problematic for the secular humanist.

However, I’m not at all sure that agreement makes me an anti-theist if I am not prioritizing God over people, but rather examining the concept of God as something that a lot of human beings, who I am working so hard to help, constructed this being for their own reasons.

If I am a humanist, and dedicated to the well-being of individual human beings, I have to wrestle with the fact that human beings created God. God wasn’t invented in a vacuum of human desires, wants, needs, etc. It was built by them. The concept of God, as our creation, tells us a lot about ourselves.

What that means for me is that if I am going to prioritize human beings above all else, I can’t walk away from the question of what human beings see in God, and why billions of people seem to need this being they created.

Although theists may see God as personal, as a nonbeliever I see God as a philosophical construct that isn’t real. And as I examine that construct and try to figure out how it functions, it becomes hard for me to be an anti-theist and humanist, because I see God as a human construction that not just a stray few, but billions, of people have found necessary, for some reason or other, in carrying out their lives.

I’ve discussed, previously, how individuals such as Barack Obama have taken constructs even as problematic as the concept of “grace” in Christianity and turned them into messages that powerfully impacted me, as an atheist, because he treated these concepts as constructs of human beings — as a kind of language that human beings use to communicate — and in doing so he gave a message to a church that could also be given in secular language without really losing any of its points, although he used the words “God” and “Jesus.” It was fascinating, but not surprising, to see how this could be done, despite my discomfort with those words (the word “Jesus” still can put me in a bad mood, depending on context).

So yes. I see myself as a secular humanist, and I agree, in a sense, that God is not more important than people. However, God is an expression that billions of people find necessary for their lives, so if I care about these people, I think it may be important for me to know why the expression is important and necessary to them. This does not entail undue politeness while religious people run roughshod over our rights. It’s simply an attempt to understand the concept by asking why so many people believe it. And in answering this question, I’m also curious as to how we can fulfill those needs, as a secular humanist, while enriching human well-being.

Here’s the truth, in my mind. Our decision to prioritize human beings is a decision. It’s not a “just so” fact. It’s a decision that we’ve decided to make for our mutual well-being. Humanism isn’t a given; it’s a construct. The value of that construct is in the lives it enriches, but the decision to uphold that value is unnecessary and based on human preferences.

Think about it. Is it true that human beings are more important than animals? Maybe the reflex is to say “yes,” and leave it at that. And for the day-to-day life, that simple affirmative seems to be plenty good enough. But just for a moment, I want to push it further. I want to ask why. And when I do that in different places, I tend to get reactions of personal preference, personal hopes, dreams, aspirations, and desires. It’s not so much an objective fact that human beings are more important than animals as it is a subjective conclusion, albeit one I share.

There are many philosophical paths one may travel in humanism to privilege humans above animals, and one of them is the philosophical concept of God. As a secular humanist, I don’t think that concept is real, but I recognize that part (not the whole, of course, but part) of the reason the concept exists in many minds is to justify the importance they place on themselves and others as human beings. As a humanist, I don’t particularly think this prioritization needs any justification outside of a construction of human consensus, but I realize that this construction is done in different places in different ways. I don’t believe God is real, which means I see “God” as a mechanism, a function, a tool, an expression of the human beings I care about. And in some places, “God” fills in the gap for caring for other human beings. I, on the hand, might fill in this gap with something I call “love” or “a sense of connectedness” or something similar.

Now, to move on a bit from the anti-theism/non-anti-theism/theism debate for a moment, I’d like to point out that one of the major risks we take in prioritizing human beings above other living things is of making a “human” an exclusionary construct. To some extent this is obviously unavoidable; we have to distinguish human beings from other living things somehow. But in the past, people have indicated that, just as gorillas are subhuman, so black people are subhuman. They may be close to humans, sure, but they’re a bit less and thus can be treated like inferiors. This phenomenon is not limited to religion or the lack thereof; infamously, in the early twentieth century this criticism of black people was made by many nonreligious intellectuals and rationalized by theories in evolutionary psychology (and some may continue to make similar arguments today).

In many ways, our current dominant understanding that human beings are above the animals, and our definition of human beings as all equal, is a social construct. And it’s a construct that may take various means to preserve, in different contexts, for different psychologies, for different people. At the same time, it is something that I, as a member of a traditionally marginalized group, am very much interested in.

This, to me, is the bedrock of humanism. The harm to human beings, the inequality between human beings, is something that is, to me, the greatest moral wrong. And I’m willing to work to prevent that “by any means necessary.”

You might have first heard that expression from Malcom X. But the truth is that Malcolm X was quoting Jean-Paul Sartre’s character Hoederer, who said, “I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.” In my mind, even though the myth of human superiority may, indeed, be a myth or “lie” in a sense, in order to prevent harm I’m willing to protect that myth and insulate human beings from harm.

While a more accurate picture of the world may empower us to produce better results for all concerned, the language, feelings, and concepts we use to navigate this accurate picture are based on us; they come from us. We’re fundamentally in charge of them. There is no God — there is just the need some need that human beings feel for the concept. And when I say I am not an anti-theist, what I mean is that I am trying to understand that need and that I am not necessarily in favor of eradicating the world of it. Indeed, I am not sure such a thing is possible; it is extremely difficult to determine what another person does and does not need.

What I am against — as a secular humanist who has brought into, as a just-so and uncompromising subjectively constructed fact, the concept that all human beings are equal — is any concept that leads people to treat some people as less valuable or “human” than others. Insofar as the idea of God serves as a construct by human beings to protect the status of human beings as valuable (which some liberal theists claim it is), I have less of a beef. But where it – or any other concept – seeks to dethrone this status of human beings as equally valuable, especially if it is done in a way that takes away the rights of human beings in our current culture – I begin to have a problem. My focus is on harm to human beings, not on God for its own sake.

What I’m saying is that I suspect the concept of God is a construct by human beings to protect the status of human beings, and insofar as it serves this function it seems necessary for people who want to prevent harm to human beings to deconstruct this concept carefully. The concept of God as something that is wrong “just because” seems somewhat dangerous to me; if we are asking culture to make a radical change, it seems healthy for us to be somewhat mindful of the place that God currently takes up in culture. Not just what this construct of human beings is doing poorly, but also what this construct might be propping up or what desires in human beings it manifests.

Even though looking at God in this way is not anti-theistic, it doesn’t seem to prioritize God above people. It is to look at God as a manifestation of people, to examine what we can learn about human beings from the way their construct of God functions in culture. Because if we’re humanists, the ideas that human beings construct have some importance, insofar as we are pursuing the construction of ideas that protect equality, especially where these ideas necessarily lie outside the bounds of bare scientific fact – as the concept that human beings have equal value does.

Hopefully that makes a bit of sense. I may talk about this more later, but for now, thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2lNvgqQ8PM[/youtube]

I want to talk a little more about atheist prayer, and religion in general.

Penn Jillette states something in the video above that I really like — that many atheists are intent on throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Now, there’s a lot I disagree with Penn Jillette on, but I think I partially agree with him here. I’m not saying that everyone needs to seek out things that were working in their former religious practice after leaving religion. In many ways that’s liable to be unhealthy, because there are many aspects of religion that simply don’t work. What I’m saying is that it may be useful, at times, to access some of the parts of your religious life that you found worked while you were religious to cope with your own individual concerns and interactions with the community surrounding you. Your life, and your coping mechanisms, are a buffet; you don’t have to use mechanisms you formerly felt you had to use, but oftentimes they are available to you.

I hope it’s clear here that I am not trying to advocate further restriction for atheists here. I’m saying that if you’re thinking about becoming an atheist, you don’t have to throw everything away. If you’re an atheist who yearns for some of the religious experiences you used to have, you are free to experience that.

Now, I know that a lot of atheists are gonna think that you’re being weird, or that your mechanisms of getting through shit only show that you’re weak, etc…but fuck ’em. If a coping mechanism that you learned helps you get through life, and it’s not hurting anybody, I think it’s cool for you to use it. Why the hell not? It’s helping you, not hurting you and others around you.

Penn Jillette gets this when he says that he sees nothing wrong with praying to an imaginary friend, as long as you think it is imaginary.

Here’s something that may be controversial, but I really think it’s true: A lot of Christians don’t really believe in God. That’s not just me saying that, either. Almost every Sunday, the pastor of my megachurch would rail against Christians who treated their religion like a hobby, accusing people of just going through the motions. These are the folks who are going to church for a sense of community and use the image of an imaginary friend in God to get through difficult moments in their lives. But they don’t necessarily believe in God. They don’t necessarily think that God is going to solve their problems.

When I first left Christianity, someone contacted me from my local church, asking to take me to lunch. He was fairly prominent in the church, so I thought he was gonna rake me over the coals and shit about leaving Christianity, because back in that day that kinda seemed the way most people who were Christian wanted to deal with me.

So we’re sitting in the restaurant, eating, and I start by giving him the same old shit about why I left that I gave a zillion other people before. I mean, reviously, on Facebook, he had been pretty strident in his criticism of my decision, so I thought he’d do that here. I was prepared, y’know? Like when you gotta talk to one of those hellfire-and-brimstone Christians. Ready.

And then I’m done talking, and he says, casually, that he wants to keep this conversation confidential. I can tell other people that we had this conversation, but he works at the church and stuff, so I can’t tell other people I had it with him. And then he says that he has a lot of doubts about the Bible itself, from studying in college. He knows it has a lot of problems. And then he hesitates for a few seconds, and finally breaks down and says that he doesn’t really think that a lot of other people really believe it either. Or at least, they don’t take it seriously. It’s like a hobby; casual, y’know? You get up with your family, dress up all nice, see a great rock performance at the megachurch, sing at the top of your fucking lungs (which feels good, honestly, if you’ve ever tried it), see your friends, get a great pep-talk from a guy who gets paid six figures to give weekly pep talks and shit, and then you go to dinner and laugh at the Olive Garden till you come home with your buddies, flip on the TV and watch a bit of football. It’s just a lifestyle, like anything else. Routine. Something you do that balances your life out.

And that’s what I saw. But I still have to admit that these guys bugged the hell  out of me when I was a Christian in my final weeks, and they bug the heck outta me as an atheist sometimes. I mean, the book says some really radical, life-disrupting shit, if it’s real. It should turn people inside out. But it so often doesn’t, especially here in the West.

And this guy I’m eating lunch with — he saw that. And, to be dead honest, he didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

I saw that that same attitude in other people, too. People didn’t necessarily rake me over the coals; some of those people were curious about where I’d find community, or how I’d find people to hang out with or eat dinner with on a Sunday afternoon. Church was like a fucking celestial country club.

And then there were the practices that people felt really attached to. The prayer. The comfort and confidence in thinking you had some truth. The light feeling you had from being cleansed of crippling guilt. The prayers when times got rough, and the camaraderie you felt when people prayed for you and you prayed for other people.

But anyways, he’s saying this shit, and I’m just sitting there taking it in. Didn’t have time to process it then, but here I am, four years later, and I’ve had time to think about it. And I’m starting to think to myself that, maybe, for a lot of people, it’s not important whether or not God is real. These are often people who don’t want to argue about whether or not God exists, and haven’t looked into it. What gives them comfort is what gets them through the day — that whole collection of activities, community, and lifestyle that keeps their lives moving along, and they label that God.

I think that’s part of why I dropped the label “anti-theist.” I’m not against a lot of the activities, the community, even the hobby of hobnobbing with an imaginary friend — as even Penn Jillette said, an imaginary friend can even be helpful, as long as you think that it’s imaginary. So, I think that these “slacker” Christians aren’t necessarily too far off the mark. The problem is where their societies are too insulated with a really, really bad Bible that is an excuse, to protect a kind of country-club, exclusivistic mentality. And even though I’m not an anti-theist, I think there’s a lot of problems with that mentality (which, truth be told, I’ve seen a bunch of atheists embody, as well). One way to fight it is to fight aggressively against the harm these communities perpetuate, even more than fighting against the belief in God itself. The pursuit is less harm and greater love towards human beings.

So even though there are a lot of problems with theism as it’s expressed in most of organized religion, I don’t want to, as Penn Jillette put it, throw the baby out with the bathwater. If there are aspects, practices, routines, etc. that enrich people’s lives that they associate with church and God, I don’t think they suddenly have to give all that up, and it may be a waste of time to be overly broad about what I’m against in a way that indicates they have to. If I’m convinced an aspect needs to go in order to reduce the pain and harm in the world, I’ll be in line to protest. But I see that people obviously perceive something in this figure they label “God,” and I’m seeing that it’s made up of a host of components that differ according to different people, so I’m just trying to be careful to be exact about what I’m saying needs to go. My decision and arguments are careful pickings-out of what causes harm, rather than a blanket barrier on all things religious.

There’s just so much involved that people slap the word “God” on — and so much to doubt in the sincerity of a substantial number of Christians — that I’m not sure getting rid of God is the point, so much as pointing out the harm that communities do in the world. But if people find that some of the practices they associated with God once enable them to live happier, fuller lives, I’m not exactly the first in line telling them they need to quit unless they are harming others.

Hopefully that makes a bit of sense.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.