F the JREF

      As anyone who has been reading this blog regularly knows, last year, the JREF was asking for submissions for guest posts and I submitted one which was rejected. I posted it on this blog (Comfortable Accommodations - 2/26/11). I didn't totally buy the reasoning behind the rejection and the more I looked at it, the more I thought  I was sure of what the real reason was and I blogged about it (Burning Bridges - 4/20/11). This past Thursday, I saw something that seemed to me to be more evidence that the reason I was given for my post being rejected was BS. On that day (1/26), the JREF put up a post entitled "Loving A Conspiracy Theorist". It was about the author's relationship with his girlfriend who is a conspiracy theorist and his willingness to live with that and his overall attitude that it's ok for non-believers to have relationships with believers. Sound familiar?
       I'm not going to go over my whole argument again about why I think my post was rejected. You can read the "Burning Bridges" post if you're interested in that. All I'll say now is that I find the fact that this post (written by one of their research fellows) was put up while mine was rejected to be further proof that I'm right. Accommodation is ok with the JREF.......but only towards certain people. Screw them.

Burning Bridges

        As it says in the title, I may be burning some bridges today. The first possible bridge to be burned is with the JREF (and maybe other members of the skeptical community who are fans of it). Back in February, I responded to their call for open submissions with a post that I thought fit at least one of their criteria (either a topic that hasn't been covered much or a fresh take on a topic). It was about being a non-believer married to a believer and my thoughts on the "accommodation vs. confrontation" debate. I thought it provided a fresh viewpoint because I think it's safe to say that most non-believers married to believers (and probably all of the ones who read the JREF blog) are married to believers in more "mainstream" religions. I happen to be married to a Christian Scientist. The post was rejected.
        This is the reason I was given in the e-mail : "As for your piece,  it does a good job of explaining your position and it's one that a lot of people share. However we have to decline it because it's not really what we're looking for right now. The accommodationist/confrontationalist debate is an important one but we're looking for more fresh perspectives on the debate as a whole rather than posts that advocate for one side or the other."
        I thought I had provided a fresh perspective and as I said when I put the post up here ("Comfortable Accommodations", posted on 2/26), I don't quite see how you could post on the topic and be totally neutral about it. I just let it go at that, even though I had the thought that the reason I was given might not be the real one. Now, after some time and looking at what has been posted on the JREF blog since then, I feel like I have to express my real thoughts on the matter.
        I want to point out that the person who indicated that the post didn't work because it advocated for a certain side had recently put up a series of posts on her own blog where she and someone else had debated the topic and had asked for reader input. Granted, she did tell me that she had recently posted about the topic and directed me to her blog, so it's not as if she hid the fact. Still, I find it odd that it was ok for her to put up several blogs advocating for one side or the other on her blog, but not for mine to go up on the JREF blog. I'm not trying to throw this person under the bus. I'm sure it wasn't totally her decision not to accept the post, just saying that there seems to be some inconsistency there.
        Also, just a couple of weeks ago, the JREF blog had a post about ear candling. Ear candling ! Yeah, that's a topic that hasn't been written about much. Maybe they'll cover the barely trodden area of homeopathy next.
        So, if it wasn't rejected because I didn't provide a fresh perspective or cover a topic that hasn't been written about much, then why was it rejected ? Was it because the writing sucked ? I don't think so, based on the quote from above and the fact that I was encouraged to submit again. I was hoping by now to have another piece of evidence, but I don't. That's something that will be talked about when I get to burning another possible bridge later.
        Is it because they don't need that many guest posts ?  In March, I put up 5 posts. Yes, I know, I suck at updating regularly, we'll get to that shortly. There were 16 posts on the JREF blog in March. It looked like 8 of those posts were written by guest bloggers, which means that only 8 of the posts were written by people directly associated with the JREF, only 3 more then I posted in that month and as I've noted, so far, I've sucked at updating regularly. Seems to me that they definitely need as many guest posts as they can get.
        What is the real reason then ? I suspect that it's because of the specific religion of the woman I'm married to and the positive light I presented her and her family and friends in. I think it might have been ok if she were Catholic or Jewish or something like that. But a Christian Scientist ? I think in their eyes, I might have just as well said I was married to a "psychic". Think that it might have been just a little too much "woo" for them. To portray the people who are believers in that religion in any kind of positive way might have been more than they could stomach.
        Of course, I could be wrong about this. It would be nice if I could point to the responses I got when I put the rejected post up here. But, unfortunately, I don't have any responses for to that post. Which brings me to the other bridge I may be burning today, the one between me and you, the reader.
        You see, I can't point to the responses I got from this post on my own blog to show that it would have been worth putting up on the JREF blog, because I didn't get any responses. I almost never get any responses. Hell, I set it up so there are now Like/Dislike buttons at the end of each post. It's something that would take less then a second, just click on a button and you're done. You don't have to sign in and we're not talking about writing some well thought out response or criticism, just clicking a button. And yet nobody even does that. Either, the stuff I write is so boring or so poorly written that it inspires nothing but apathy or it's just too much to ask for people to even click a button.
        Either way, it means I will no longer get upset with myself if there's a long time between my posts. It used to really bother me. Yes, you can add this blog to your Google Reader (or something like it) and it will let you know when there's a new post, so you don't have come back to this site every day to check. Still, it bothered me. I kind of felt like I might be letting people down in some way. The more I've thought about it, though, the more I think, well, if people don't care enough about what I'm writing to even click on a button, then why am I going to care about how often I put something up ? Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'm not going to post any more or that I'm not going to make an effort to do it more regularly. I'm just saying I'm not going to beat myself up when there's a long time between posts, unless and until I'm given some reason to feel I should be more diligent in posting.

Comfortable Accommodations

     As I mentioned in my last post, I recently sent a post to a site calling for submissions. The site in question is the site of the JREF (James Randi Educational Foundation). They rejected it (although they did ask me to send other articles in the future) because they said they were looking for a fresh perspective on the accommodationist/confrontationalist debate as a whole,rather than a piece that advocates for one side or the other. As I said in my reply e-mail to them, I'm not sure how any post on the debate isn't going to come down on one side or the other. Anyway, since they decided they didn't they want it, I'm posting it here.

     There are two major factions among atheists. One side thinks a confrontational approach towards religion is needed. It isn't enough to get religious individuals to accept things like evolution while holding onto their religious beliefs. These "New Atheists" think it's necessary to destroy those beliefs, to get everyone to accept that there is no God. They say and write things that indicate that anyone who holds any sort of belief in a supreme being or an afterlife is an idiot. On the other side are the "accommodationists". They're ok with people having religious beliefs as long as they don't try to impose those beliefs on others or try to impede scientific progress and education because of their beliefs.
          I'm an agnostic. I'm also an accommodationist. I'm so accommodating, in fact, that I married a Christian Scientist.
          Let's be clear about a couple of things :
          1) Christian Scientists are not these extreme fundamentalist Christians who you've read the horrible stories about, stories where a child dies a slow, painful death from say, an easily treated ear infection, while the parents refuse medical treatment in favor of prayer. Based on my personal experience, they're more like the typical male, religious or not. They don't go to doctors for regular check-ups, but they won't hesitate to dial 911 if someone's in distress. I have visited Christian Scientists in the hospital and there isn't a Christian Scientist I've met who I believe would see a child suffering and do nothing but pray.
          2) While I won't say that there is definitely no God, I will definitely say that I think if God exists, he/she/it definitely isn't the God envisioned by Christian Science (if there is a God, I think the best case scenario based on the evidence is the Deist view of God expressed by many of the Founding Fathers that God made the Universe and then stepped out of the picture) and if I have a bad cold, I use Nyquil to get a good night's sleep, not prayer.
          My wife knows my thoughts on God in general and Christian Science in particular, yet it causes no problems. My in-laws, who are also Christian Scientists, know as well and they have no problem with it. In fact, my mother-in-law treats me like I'm her own son. And all of the Christian Scientists I've met at her church have accepted me even though they know I'm not a believer. Yes, I go to church with her. She likes having me go with her, it's not that early in the morning and I often get a nice little nap out of it. If you have a problem with that, well, I think you'd be amazed at how little I care.
          I realize that a non-religious person marrying a religious person isn't a unique situation, even if one of those people is an agnostic, skeptical cynic who wanted to be a doctor when he was a kid and the other is a member of a religion that believes the physical world is an illusion and that sickness can be healed through prayer.
          I also know that when it comes to religious people, Christian Scientists (at least in my experience) don't compare to Christian fundamentalists when it comes to ignorance (willful or otherwise) and intolerance. They don't seem to have any problem with the Big Bang, the age of the universe and Earth, evolution, etc. Where science is concerned, their only blind spot seems to be in the area of medicine. They don't aggressively proselytize. They won't tell you that if you don't believe what they do, you'll go to Hell for all eternity. They don't believe in Hell. And they are not hard-headed when it comes to science. A while back, I overheard a friend of my wife's family who's a Christian Scientist talking to my mother-in-law about seeing a TV appearance by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey where they were spewing their anti-vax nonsense. When she saw me rolling my eyes, she asked for my input. I told her that I wouldn't be inclined to take medical advice from a woman who's famous for getting naked and a man whose breakout film role involved him making his butt pretend to talk. A few days later, I offered her an article from Skeptic magazine about the anti-vax movement and how it was based on fraudulent, unethical "research" conducted by someone who was hoping to push their own alternative vaccine. She eagerly accepted it. I confess, I never asked her what effect it had on her opinion about it, but at least she was willing to look at it with an open mind.
          Still, we are talking about people who have what would probably be considered wacky beliefs by your average Christian. Even Creationists go to the doctor. When I was dating my wife and I found out about her beliefs, I could have just said "You're crazy, lady!" and ended it. That would have been a huge mistake. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me. We have a happy home where the mailman delivers the Christian Science Sentinel and the Christian Science Journal along with Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry. Granted, there are no kids in the picture yet and even though we discussed how we would handle religion with them before we were married, I'm sure issues will still come up, but I'm also sure we'll be able to handle them.
          If we can make our marriage work, I think non-religious people can make things work with those who have religious beliefs. It means being willing to be tolerant of those beliefs (within certain limits). It means not thinking that everyone who's religious is stupid. My wife isn't stupid. Her family isn't stupid and her friends at church aren't stupid. Constantly belittling the religious isn't going to allow you to make much progress in changing their minds about things. Not only are people not going to listen to someone who insults them, but people tend to be stubborn about these things. If you constantly tell someone that a long held, cherished belief is totally wrong, they're just going to hold on to that belief even stronger. You may say, "So what, I don't care if I change their minds as long as I'm able to make sure religion stays out of the schools, doesn't shape public policy, etc." The problem is, as with pretty much any other issue, you're always going to have people who are somewhere in the middle whose help you're going to need to accomplish your goals and they're not going to be very sympathetic towards you if you act like a complete asshole. If you're one of these hardcore, religion must be destroyed atheists, I really think you should consider changing your tactics and following the example of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (of which I'm a member) and reach out to the religious moderates. Being willing to be just a little accommodating could yield some pretty big benefits. It has for me.