Social Derogation and the Approaching Ennui

It was with great reluctance that I withheld this long from writing. From a personal perspective, this has been highly draining. Surviving both an emotionally draining but entertaining trip to South Bend to watch my Alma Mater get an enema from Boston College, I returned to Newport with the nastiest flu I can remember, and followed it with an even meaner case of tonsillitis. An entire month+ and I’ve only managed to add another few pages to my very enjoyable essay on Hart. I had told myself I wouldn’t post until I was finished with the piece, but as the title explains, this has become an untenable situation in and of itself.

So much has happened in this short time. Greg Epstein has signed a deal to write about Humanism in a book tentatively called Good Without God. It is often difficult to explain to some of my peers why I like Greg so much, but talking to anyone in person changes your opinion of them, the one and quite possibly only issue I have with the technological curtain. I’ve always maintained in defense of Greg that Secular Humanism, in general, is the only imperative replacement for securing social traditions left in the absence of strict religious activities and observances. Greg has also given credit to us vocal atheists in bringing more attention to Humanism… I charge him with making sure it doesn’t enjoy the same apparent fall of the previous generation’s attempt.

Today marks the first celebration of a so-called Great American God-Out, which I’m guessing is a play of the Great American Smoke-Out. I had only recently heard about this, but some big players have signed on, including (Facebook-Hating) Rational Response Squad, Greydon Square, Michael Shermer, and Margaret Downey. The event calls for celebration around the nation for the 29 million people who consider themselves non-believers. With a slogan like “Help give theocracy the philosophical hammer!” I’m sure it will serve as a beacon of hope for those of us who are to be hanged in the next presidency.

I do have to revisit my comment about Facebook Hating. As a former user of Myspace, a peruser occasionally on the forums of Rational Response, listener of their broadcasts, and their home on Stickam, I’m struck with the noticeable failure of the entire group of usually insightful people to even investigate the potential of Facebook. I’ve been to all the places they get their message across on, and I’m generally unimpressed by the amount of involvement. I’m not saying this because of my loyalty to AANR, or my personal connection to it, it just seems that their is a tremendous amount more people involved actively with the forums on Facebook then anywhere else that I contribute. When this fact is brought up to Brian “Sapient”, it is usually followed by a very derisive scoff at the mere mention of Facebook. It should be noted the only reason I even maintain any Myspace accounts any longer, is for þL||2þΩ535 |<\>√Ω£√|<\>6 7#3||2 4[[355|8£3 4<\>I> þΩΩ|2 [ΩI>3. That really is how bad it has gotten. The forums on the “active” atheist group is comprised 4/5th of the time with advertisements, followed by HTML hacks. Occasionally, very occasionally, there is a taste of insightful debate.

No matter, AANR has just reached 13,000 members, a group which has no competition on Facebook. One would think I would be trying to avoid the Rational Response Squad’s presence, but I think the last thing we need in our battle for hearts and minds is that ancient Atheist independence rearing its’ ugly head, and as a result I am a adamant activist for cooperation on all fronts. What AANR offers is that sense of community ironically. Somehow, the group has become rather close, with some of the active members becoming friends outside the boundaries of technology.

Let’s see. Weapon of Nation Destruction, or WorldNetDaily (WND) as they like to call themselves, has yet another monstrous commentary on the position of non-belief. This one, lovingly entitled “The irrationality of atheists” (lower case intact) , is, to put it mildly, nearing the “fighting words” category of hate speech.

I can sum up the entire article in one sentence the Inkdribbler wrote, “You see, the problem that the atheists (and anti-theists) have is not an intellectual one but rather a moral one. It’s not a matter of the head but one of the heart; they don’t believe in God because they don’t want to believe in Him.“

Yikes. I can’t even muster up sarcasm for that. The Theists, and Conservatives in general, must always prove a point by declaration and affirmation. The last line of the commentary, “the evidence for God is so overwhelming that it takes far more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a Christian. That fact was demonstrated yet again, … as anyone who watched [the debate] objectively would have to conclude”, is the most egregious and disdainful attempt to undermine a group I’ve seen in my lifetime. Granted, I was born in 82′, and missing out on the various civil injustices of the prior generation, I am generally offended by this piece.

The WND is garbage. Most of us sit back and just acknowledge that this is the case, that there are in fact media outlets like this, and it’s best just to ignore them…

The problem is that these venues are new to America. You have to travel to the likes of old Soviet Russia and modern day Eritrea, to find this kind of distortion of reality. Our drive-by criticism is not doing the job, these groups, Fox News included, are distorting the public in a way that media has never done before in America. The supposed “liberal” news bias claims are unfounded. Liberal here literally means truth, in the case of the news organizations. If CNN reports on a death toll in Iraq, that’s liberal. When Fox News spends 3 minutes trashing the legacy of Kurt Vonnegut, that’s fair and balanced. When Weapon of Nation Destruction claims loudly and defiantly “Anything Not Christian is Irrational” that is the American way.

If you track the face time of the political candidates, you may notice that Fox does in fact spend a fair amount of time on most candidates (excluding the Red-headed stepchild of the GOP Ron Paul) , but how many of you actually see one bit of news that is fair to Obama or Clinton? Think about that, face time isn’t good if it is an hour long special on how you will ruin America. I just can’t sit back and believe that the American people are really falling for the obvious distortion of the some of the media. When a person is allowed to answer criticism sent their way, that is fair, when a news media that calls itself fair and balanced actively and willfully pushes the candidate of their own choosing… that is neither fair nor balanced.

Speaking of which, The New York Times seems to think that Fox has chosen their horse, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/us/politics/02FOX.html.

The question is, does this article seem excessively liberal or conservative, when compared to this: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,311838,00.html

Posted just an hour ago, I didn’t even have to look long for an example.

Sad… really sad. I’m ashamed to call myself libertarian when the movement gets even remotely associated with these neo-cons.

Edit: At the time of writing this, the Fox News Website also had this: Breaking News: Ball of Flame Erupts on Texas Highway After Truck Bursts Into Flames: Watch Live

*For the moral win.

This reminds me of the report that stated that Fox decisively shows more scantily clad women than any other news stations, in the guise of reporting on the failing standard of culture. Sensationalism…

Ayn Rand wrote about Fox News years before it was created… she called it The Banner.