Journal of No. 118

Great article on the history of Elevatorgate and other episodes of misogyny and the war about misogyny in the atheism/skepticism movement - on Buzzfeed of all places. [See also my earlier journal entry]

In related news, I'd also like to point out, for the local Southern Californians, that there is an art exhibit opening up at the Center for Inquiry Hollywood tomorrow night (Sep 13).

A Woman's Room Online:

"A Woman’s Room Online is an installation art exhibit created by Amy Davis Roth in conjunction with The Los Angeles Women’s Atheist and Agnostic Group (LAWAAG) and hosted at CFI-Los Angeles.

This installation consists of thousands of real sexist and threatening messages sent to only a handful of women who work in online arenas. The viewer enters a small freestanding room, an office space that has been completely transformed and plastered with messages, a paper-trail of hate, sent electronically to the contributors starting in July of 2011 until today."

The full subtitle is: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

The book tells the story of Thomas Day, an 18th century Rousseau-fanatic and abolitionist, focusing on his experiment to obtain a foundling and train her up to be a suitable wife. This idea came after several failed marriage proposals ("He would later describe Margaret as 'a toad, which I would not injure, but cannot help beholding with abhorrence.'"

Rousseau had written a novel outlining a radical unschooling idea (it also inspired Montessori) that a friend of Day's had adopted for his son. The kid turned into a brat. This didn't stop Day from trying his own hand at perfecting a suitable wife.

Day actually acquired two foundlings under the false pretense that he was getting domestic servants for a friend. While the girls did cook and clean, they also received educations of a sort. In addition to philosophy and science, they were also subjected to physical privation to toughen them up, with mixed results.

"'His experiments had not the success he wished and expected,' Anna Seward would later write. 'Her spirit could not be armed against the dread of pain, and the appearance of danger. . . . When he dropped melted sealing-wax upon her arms she did not endure it heroically, nor when he fired pistols at her petticoats, which she believed to be charged with balls, could she help starting aside, or suppress her screams.'"

While Day appears to have been scrupulous about not taking advantage of the girls (except for that melted wax fixation...) the whole thing would have scandalized the nation... except that Day was mega-wealthy and connected, and could do as he pleased, more or less. Perhaps(?) one sign of this scrupulousness is that he never told the girls of the real goal of his experiment (though several friends were well aware of it).

One girl was dismissed (with a nice pension) when Day finally decided which of the two he thought would be suitable. To make a long-but-fasinating story short, when Day finally got around to explaining the experiment to Sabrina, she freaked and refused him. He gave her a nice settlement as well, and she ultimately married a mutual acquaintance, and lived a fairly long life, working in a school after the death of her husband.

Some more tasty quotes, jotted down from my Kindle notes:

And the classicist Elizabeth Carter was so revered as a linguist that Samuel Johnson believed her Greek translations were superior to those of any male scholar, although he was quick to point out that she could also make a pudding.

He soon teamed up with Sir Francis Blake Delaval, a gambler, drunkard and libertine notorious for his wild antics, whose idea of a good time included contests to ride horses up a grand marble staircase and party games to bite the heads off sparrows suspended on strings in a macabre version of bobbing for apples.

In one painting, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, he portrayed girls and boys watching a demonstration of a bird, a white cockatoo, being deprived of air in a vacuum flask with a mixture of fascination and horror.

[Speaking of the founder of the foundling hospital]: "But most shocking of all, as he walked to London and back each day, was the sight of abandoned babies “sometimes alive, sometimes dead, and sometimes dying,” dumped on rubbish heaps by the side of the road.

[Entries from the Foundling Hospital records] - One child was described as “a Mear Skirlinton Covered with Rags with a hole in the Roofe of the Mouth,” while another was simply “The most miserable object Ever Received.” Mortality rates leapt from an already tragic 45 percent to more than 70 percent...

According to the unwritten code of conduct that constrained Georgian society like a corset it was strictly taboo for a respectable woman to be left alone with a man under any circumstances unless they were formally engaged; and even then a chaperone was usually mandatory. Even exchanging letters between a single man and a single woman was frowned upon. The entire plot of Fanny Burney’s novel, Evelina, hinges upon the heroine’s horror at her (mistaken) belief that her hero asks her to collude in a private correspondence.

[Day was also an ardent abolitionist] - Published as an anonymous pamphlet at the end of June 1773, The Dying Negro related the true story of a slave who had escaped the previous month from the London house of his master, a certain Captain Ordington, and been baptized in order to marry a fellow servant, an English maid, with whom he had fallen in love. Marriage to an Englishwoman would automatically have made the African a free man. But before the couple had time to say their vows, the slave was seized on the London streets and taken on board the captain’s ship moored in the Thames and bound for the West Indies. Desperate to avoid being sent back to a life of bondage, the slave shot himself in the head with a pistol.

Discussing the vexed question of independence with American friends in rowdy debates in Middle Temple Hall or the smoky taverns nearby, Day announced that he could not support the Americans’cries for liberty while they denied that same right to thousands of slaves.

“The Dutch ladies are, to my taste, not a little disagreeable,” he solemnly informed his mother. “They are so intolerably nasty and gluttonous, stuffing themselves all day with bread and butter and tea, then retiring to discharge their superfluities at the little house, without any decency, or even taking the trouble to shut the door.”

This post has been a long time coming. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it's particularly good, informative, or insightful.

jimhines' cartoon has been flying around recently:


While this was about science fiction cons, it applies perfectly well to atheist/skeptic/secular cons. That community has had some recent high-profile incidents, and some longer simmering arguments. I've been mostly watching from the sidelines; not because I don't care, but because I haven't been directly involved. I haven't been to any of these conventions. I don't really know the people involved, and certainly have no knowledge of the actual incidents. So I didn't think I had much to add other than a huge chance of foot-in-mouth disease.

( essentialsaltes more than likely puts his foot in his mouth somewhere in here )

Colleague and friend of Dr. Tiller works to reopen his Wichita abortion clinic:

“We can’t let fear rule our lives,” Ms. Burkhart said, her cowboy boots clopping loudly as she walked through the clinic.

Society Without God presents the results of Zuckerman's yearlong stay in Denmark, interviewing Danes (and a few Swedes, and a couple miscellaneous) about their religious beliefs and the religious culture of Scandinavia. Although Zuckerman is a trained sociologist, he's also a secular person himself, and admits here and there that he has an axe to grind. Nevertheless, the result provides some great straight-from-the-horse's-mouth information on a culture that is overwhelmingly secular, and ranks highly on any number of socioeconomic factors that contribute to happiness and stability.

He spends some time discussing why the Scandinavian countries have turned out so secular. I think the most convincing to me is the idea that these societies take care of their people so well, that this stability and support obviates not only material needs, but spiritual ones as well. Another more interesting idea that gets explored a little bit is the idea that the Scandinavians were just never very religious in the first place. With Christianity being largely imposed from above for political reasons by kings or arbitration, one can wonder about the depth and sincerity of belief in the countries, even after 1000 years.

In any event, belief in one or more gods is a minority position. However, many of his subjects profess a belief in 'something'. And it's also clear that many of the subjects just don't want to talk about it. Possibly they are 'hiding' the unpopular view that they actually believe in god. Or possibly it's just that their culture seems to be very reticent to talk about religous matters. I think one subject said it would be much easier to talk about sex with his grandparents than gods. Here's another example:
"Q - If I were to ask you, “Do you believe in God?"—and I‘m not going to say what that means, just that question—how would you respond?
A - It’s none of your business. [laughter] No, I would be polite, but I would kind of want to talk about something else."

It's also interesting that, although belief in gods or an afterlife is very rare, Danes typically still consider themselves Christian, and I think about 80% of them belong to the national church (which collects taxes from them). Zuckerman makes a very apposite analogy with modern American Judaism. Many American Jews are very secular, but nevertheless carry out the various rituals. Many have bar (and bat) mitzvahs, despite a lack of actual belief; the Danes are similarly Confirmed in the church.

But it is so interesting to see what 'being Christian' means to them:
"From Annelise, a 47-year-old manager at a telecommunications company: Being an okay person, being nice to people, not hurting anyone, helping when help is needed, that sort of thing. But nothing spectacular, you know. Just being nice."
"From Anika, a 36-year-old stay-at-home mom: Being Christian means to look out for the poor and the challenged in our society . . . to feel compassion, to be able to think of other people than yourself . . . to look out for the weak, the poor . . . to not discriminate . . . but to think that everybody has the same value."

There's precious little mention of Jesus, or sins, or redemption.

There's a lengthy, but not very insightful, interview with a believer in Asatru.

But the most interesting interview is with a guy who at first identified as a Christian and a (somewhat tepid) believer in God. Then he was interviewed again after having lived in the US for several months...
"And that puzzled me because I thought the United States would be more like Denmark—believing in, you know, rationality."
"And I was just like, what is Hillary Clinton praying?! I don’t know. It’s just scary—that even the Democrats are so religious. So if I was to live here I would have a problem voting for a president, because I don’t want a religious leader."

Ultimately, the experience of bumping into American-style Christianity destroyed his belief in God:
"Yeah, because when I came here I believed in God and I was Christian—but in a Danish way. So there’s a lot of stuff in the Bible that just doesn’t make sense, but—you know—sure, I thought God was up there and he helped us, he tried to make a book and we tried to behave according to the book, and you know, humans make errors so maybe the book isn’t 100 percent correct, but you can kind of do it. But when I came here and saw all the people being so—explicit—like Jesus died and he was the Son of God and he was born by a virgin. And I added it all up and said, okay if I need to say I‘m a Christian, then I need to believe in all this stuff. Because there’s so much that you have to buy into in order to be Christian. And I didn’t buy into it. I don’t believe it."

And what will he tell the people back home?

"I think I would say to them, maybe you don’t believe me, but the American society is—all politics and media discussions—is based on that everybody is very devoted Christians. Meaning that you cannot hold an office, you cannot be a president, you cannot be whatever, if you don’t publicly say that you believe in God and all of your sentences end with God bless America or whatever. That we, as Danes, have to be very, very careful with joining the United States when they want us to go to war or they want us to join them in whatever endeavors they want us to join with them, because the religious fanatics in the United States have a very, very high influence on what’s going to happen in the United States, and I don’t think Danes know that. I think that if Danes knew that, they would be very—I don’t think they would be afraid—but I think they would say, “No, no, we don’t want to be a part of that.” And I don’t think they know. But I‘m going to tell them."

American Patriarchy Association: Todd Akin is 'Absolutely Right'

Hark! A Vagrant wins again. Do yourself a favor, click on the link down below for 'satirical cartoon'.

I know feminism has become a dirty word, so there may not be many among the Republicans to get offended, but it was still odd to see Mary Matalin on GMA discounting the Cain mutiny:

"I’m not condoning harassment, and I don’t want to get these ridiculous emails – but we did go thru this period of this grievance industry for feminists who want to be offended find a way to be offended."

I'm sure the radical feminists' heads blew apart at 'but'. Mine made it to 'grievance industry'.

Anyway, I think if Cain has to walk back his most recent and emphatic denial the way he walked back some of the circumstances of the earlier NRA personnel matters, his gander is cooked.

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Apropos of nothing, when I picture ladyeuthanasia at work, I imagine Lily Tomlin's fantasy from 9 to 5.

The Sun provides a thoughtful, in-depth review of the new film "The Ledge," which "centres on a difference of philosophies between a fundamentalist Christian and an atheist that escalates into a deadly battle of wills."