Month: August 2008

My Petition to the AP Stylebook Editor

Editorial Staff,

I was recently flipping through the 2007 AP Stylebook, and I came to the entry for “agnostic, atheist” on page 9. The stylebook definition given for atheist is, “An atheist is a person who believes there is no God.” It is my opinion, that this is not an accurate definition. According to Merriam-Webster, theism is the “belief in the existence of a god or gods”. The prefix “a-“, meaning without, only adds that atheists are without said belief. Atheism does not make any positive assertions nor does it represent a belief. It represents a lack of belief.

While your definition reads, “An atheist is a person who believes there is no God,” I believe it would be more correctly stated as, “An atheist is a person who does not believe in the existence of God.”

Furthermore, in your definition of “agnostic” you omit the key defining element of agnosticism, i.e. an unwillingness to commit. Merriam-Webster defines “agnostic” as “a person unwilling to commit to an opinion”. While your definition states, “An agnostic is a person who believes it is impossible to know whether there is a God,” I believe it would be more complete if read as, “An agnostic is a person who is unwilling to commit to a belief of the existence or nonexistence of God.”

It should go without saying that where “God” is used in these contexts, it could and should be substituted with “a god.” Your stylebook dictates the capitalization of ‘God’ “in references to the deity of all monotheistic religions” (pg 106), but atheism and agnosticism are not exclusive to monotheistic religions.

I appreciate your time and attention to these discrepancies. I hope that you will consider corrections to these entries to prevent any potential misconceptions among your publications’ users. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

My Name
My Email @ddress

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theism
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agnostic

Ignorant Indianapolis Woman Confuses Inertia for ‘God’

Indianapolis wackaloon Charlotte Thompson recently had the misfortune of stray gunfire tearing into her car. Worse yet, her two great-granddaughters were in the car with her. Luckily, no one was killed in this incident.

As illustrated in the story, let me describe the path of the bullet: through the car door, through her great-granddaughter Shyann, through a purse containing a Bible, and into a watermelon.

Keeping that path in mind, absorb the following quote from Thompson.

Came through the door, hit her, then it went to the Bible, she said. The Bible was sitting on the seat between the two girls. It went in here and come out here and it shredded my Sunday School book. The word of God slowed the bullet so that it didn’t kill anybody.

Right in the watermelon. Didn’t come out of the watermelon, Thompson said. The word of God and the Lord’s power saved. He sent the bullet into the watermelon.

The little girl recovered from her injuries, and I’m very glad of that. However I hope she has a better physics teacher than her ignorant great-grandmother had. In keeping with the principles of inertia, friction and resistance created by the door, the Bible, and a human abdomen slowed the bullet, not “the word of god and the lord’s power”. The fact that this woman even toys with the notion that there was any divine intervention is laughable or infuriating, depending on how much you have to deal with this sort of bullshit on a daily basis.

To falsely teach her great-grandchildren by reinforcing this nonsense is a form of neglect. She is failing to properly educate these children by attributing physical occurrences to the supernatural. Telling kids that ‘thunder is actually angels bowling’ is harmless enough, because I don’t know that the tellers of such tall tales actually believe the stories, and the children will eventually learn about the temperature differential caused by a bolt of lightning. To lead them to believe that God slowed down a bullet to keep anyone from getting killed is plain stupid, and may lead to resistance when the time comes that someone tries to teach them what really happened that day.

By the way, wouldn’t it have been a little more convenient if God had slowed the bullet down before it pierced poor Shyann? Why didn’t God make her carry the watermelon? I know why. Because God doesn’t exist. He is a phantom. Acts are attributed to him when the attributee is too ignorant to know the real cause.

If you haven’t seen the movie Pulp Fiction, watch the clip below for a theatrical replay of this scenario. There is some harsh language, so it’s not quite work safe.

God for a Day

Mr. X over at Why I Hate Jesus made a stunning observation. To paraphrase it would do it injustice, so I present it to you in its entirety.

If you were god for a day, what would you do with this power? Maybe you would cure cancer? Invoke your power to create world peace? Create enough resources for all so that people don’t die of starvation and malnutrition? Create a world where we can all live without killing it through polluting fossil fuels? Maybe you would show yourself to everyone so that we could all believe and all could be saved? Or, better yet, abolish hell altogether? These are just some of the potential things that you could do with this power.

So, the question is: why hasn’t god done any of these things?

So, Christians, what’ll it be this time? A defense of god’s inaction based on free will? A defense based on the prevention of dependence? I’m all ears.

Religious Intolerance in the Military

Gov’t wants atheist soldier’s lawsuit dismissed

I know this news is a bit old, but I feel it should not stop being discussed until it is resolved. Being made to feel uncomfortable in society because of my differences in beliefs with my peers is nothing I am a stranger to. Annoying, yes, but I forge on. When you are in the military though, you should not have to endure the demeaning nagging of evangelical fundamentalists.

With the impending repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy concerning openly gay individuals serving in the military, I think added significance should be given to Spc. Jeremy Hall’s situation. Obviously, people are starting to realize that one should not be forced to hide their sexuality to serve their country in the military, so why should someone have to hide their lack of religiosity in order to serve (without harassment)?

I realize they are different situations. Atheists are not forbidden from serving in the military, but you are almost certainly in for a rough ride. If you decide that you want to join the military and potentially give your life in its defense, it is not too much to ask that others keep their noses out of your business.

This reminds me very much of the story of a British sailor who faced unnecessary media criticism for wishing to be recognized by the Royal Navy as a Satanist. Leading Hand Chris Cranmer, had to make his case before a panel to achieve religious recognition in order to ensure that his funeral be carried out in accordance with his beliefs. Luckily for him, the Royal Navy is a tad more progressive than the United States Navy.

I was affiliated with the U.S. Air Force at the time this story broke. My detachment displayed a bulletin board with current events related to military units around the world. Leading Hand Cranmer’s story made it to the board. I happened to be reading the story at the same time as another individual in my detachment. Upon completing, she shook her head and made a throaty, guttural sound as if to say, “the nerve of these freaks.” I immediately engaged her, though I had to choose my words carefully, as she was a higher-ranking and I was a closet atheist.

She seemed to think that proper funeral practices should only be extended to people from “normal” religions. I tried to explain to her that LaVeyan Satanism was not the baby-killing, goat-sacrificing belief system that she thought it was. She rebutted that she had written a paper on Satanism, and that I was wrong as well as naive.

Unfortunately, I had to end the conversation at that point. But why? Why did I feel that I had to stifle my First Amendment right to freedom of speech. I would have loved to have continued to have a civilized conversation on this topic (though I’m quite certain Ms. Thang would have introduced incivility rather quickly), but the fear of being seen as insubordinate and the fear of retribution silenced me.

Thus is the plight of the most hated and reviled minority in the United States.