Not believing in the existence of deities
Image: Official government portrait of Mike Johnson superimposed over a photo of a Bible.
In today’s story on Medium, I write about the Christian bigotry of House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republican Party members who elected him.
Here’s a friends link to bypass the paywall:
Pax at age 10 (summer of 1980), with their hair in two braids and wearing a Bassett Wild Animal Farm T-shirt, sitting in the grass and being happily nibbled on by baby goats.
In today’s post on Medium, “Mixed-Race and Rootless”, I reflect on my Black and white Jewish ancestry and failure to fit in. This is the first part of a series of reflections on last month’s Creating Change Conference.
Here’s a friends link to bypass the paywall:
Generic atheism symbol next to the words “Atheism Explained”.
Today’s post on Medium is “Atheism Explained: One atheist’s perspective on the nature of deity”.
Reverend Roland Stringfellow speaks outdoors in San Francisco at a podium displaying the sign “Love is never wrong”, surrounded by other religious leaders. Photo © 2013 Pax Ahimsa Gethen, Funcrunch Photo.
Today’s post on Medium is about the decline of Christianity in the U.S., and why actions matter more than affiliations.
[Image: Entrance to St. Dominic’s Catholic Church, San Francisco.]
Today’s post on Medium is, as the title says, about gods, atheists, and comfort in crisis.
[Image: Protesters at the 2017 San Francisco Tax March hold a caricature of Donald Trump clutching fistfuls of money.]
Today’s post on Medium, “What it takes to be president“, discusses the dominance of money and religion in US-American politics.
[Image: March for Science San Francisco attendees hold up a large banner for the event.]
On Saturday, I attended the March for Science San Francisco, one of many March for Science rallies held on Earth Day throughout the world. Unlike some recent political protests I’ve attended, this event appeared to be very well-funded, with a professional sound system for once. Between the multiple speaker arrays, giant video screen, coordinated T-shirts, and laminated passes for the speakers and volunteers, it almost felt more like an industry trade show or rock concert than a rally.
[Image: The crowd at the March for Science rally fills Justin Herman Plaza.]
[Image: The crowd moves through Justin Herman Plaza for the start of the march.]
The pre-march rally was held at Justin Herman Plaza, which was already filled with people when I arrived half an hour before the 11 a.m. start time. By the end of the rally, the plaza was so packed that it took me 45 minutes to get from the far side of the stage out to Market Street for the actual march.
[Image: Rally emcee Kishore Hari shares a moment backstage with Adam Savage.]
[Image: Dr. Leticia Márquez-Magaña speaks at the rally.]
[Image: Baratunde Thurston speaks at the rally.]
[Image: Two children hold a sign reading “Science has no borders”.]
The lineup of speakers was diverse, and support for immigrants was a recurring theme. ASL interpretation was provided, and a pre-recorded talk by a scientist paralyzed with ALS, Eric Valor, was shown . While I appreciated that scientists were in the spotlight, the speaker I was personally most excited to see was Adam Savage from Mythbusters, who billed himself as an inventor, not a scientist. I also enjoyed the talk by comedian and futurist Baratunde Thurston, who was a last-minute addition.
[Image: Rally attendees sit and stand on the steps, holding various signs and banners.]
While advertised as non-partisan, many considered this to be another anti-Trump rally, and brought signs accordingly. Speakers did not call out the current administration exclusively, however. Many emphasized the need for funding and for assertions based on evidence rather than opinion, needs which transcend political parties. The rallying cry, as seen on several signs, was “What do we want? Evidence-based science! When do we want it? After peer review!”
I’ll be the first to admit that science is not a strong area of aptitude or interest for me. Science and math were the subjects I had the most difficulty with in middle and high school, though I still took Advanced Placement courses (in order to look good on my college applications) and managed to get passing grades. I’ve done computer programming, but have little formal computer science training, and struggled greatly in this area even when employed as a full-time web developer.
[Image: A rally attendee wears a jacket with the badges of various science and nature organizations, and the word RESIST.]
So my motivation for going to this rally was mostly to continue my documentation of the resistance. Resistance to willful ignorance is part of this effort, and ignorance comes from people of all political persuasions. While science and religion are not necessarily incompatible, science is absolutely not itself a religion, a claim I’ve heard made not only by fundamentalists, but also some very left-wing, “new age” people. (It’s ironic that just the night before the rally I’d attended a sing-along benefit showing of Jesus Christ Superstar, a movie I’ve always greatly enjoyed despite being an atheist.)
Regardless, ethics also plays a large role, especially from my stance as a vegan animal rights activist. I can’t simply ignore vivisection and animal testing, no matter how much these practices might benefit humans. Though I do look for products that are not tested on animals, my reliance on some medications and medical procedures is beyond my reasonable ability to control at this time.
Ethics applies to the hot-button issue of GMOs as well, concerns about which one of the rally speakers dismissed in the same breath as vaccines causing autism. While I agree that the latter has been thoroughly debunked, I am still not convinced GMOs are a great idea. This is not primarily because of concerns about the safety of the humans consuming them, but concerns about capitalism and patenting. I also believe that ending animal agriculture, not engineering more higher-yield or pest-resistant crops, is the ultimate solution to world hunger. But again, I am not a scientist.
[Image: A woman with long braided hair and glasses walks while holding a cat with jaguar-like markings.]
During the short time I was on the march, I encountered someone marching while holding a cat, an unusual sight. We spoke briefly, and she commented that the cat would not exist without science, because domestic cats have been specially bred. This raised another animal rights issue, but I didn’t want to get into that discussion at the time, so I just snapped photos, thanked her and moved on.
[Image: Musicians sing and play instruments alongside the march route.]
Shortly afterward, I saw some people on the sidewalk playing live music, so I headed over and joined in the singing. By the time we finished the song, the end of the march had caught up to us, and I was peopled-out, so I headed home. Science-related activities continued for the rest of the afternoon at Civic Center.
My full set of photos from the rally is available on Flickr. I’ve also uploaded the photos to Wikimedia Commons, alongside those from other contributors. Please credit me as Pax Ahimsa Gethen if you use any of my photos, thanks!
[Image: Screenshot from NBC News of Donald Trump speaking in Iowa, with the caption “What did Donald Trump think of the third night of the DNC?” A quote from Trump reads, “I wanted to hit a couple of those speakers so hard… so hard their heads would spin they’d never recover.”]
Last night, along with the rest of the world, I watched the election returns come in with a growing sense of dread and disgust. Unlike many of my friends reacting on Facebook with shock and horror, however, the result was not entirely surprising to me. This country was built on a foundation of exclusion and oppression of everyone except for straight cisgender white Christian men, and those are the people who Trump correctly predicted constituted the “silent majority” that would carry him to victory.
Although I did not endorse or vote for Hillary Clinton, I don’t want to talk about her flaws, perceived or actual. I don’t want to talk about e-mail servers or Wikileaks or Russian interference or what might have happened if Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic candidate. And I definitely don’t want to talk about third party “spoilers”. Anyone blaming or shaming progressives who voted for third parties, or who didn’t vote at all, needs to keep your comments out of my space.
The only thing I want to address right now is that millions of US-Americans voted for a man who ran on a campaign of unbridled bigotry, bullying, and blatant dishonesty. The people who say they want to “Make America Great Again” are thinking of a time when people like me—a queer black trans atheist—were invisible and openly oppressed, and ridiculed with impunity without any fear of repercussions. A time when joking or bragging about sexually harassing women was more socially acceptable, inside or outside of locker rooms. A time when religious freedom applied only to people practicing different flavors of Christianity.
This oppression and invisibility and rape culture never actually went away, which is what many of those who were shocked with the election results didn’t understand. You all need to understand it now. Donald Trump is the product—the very embodiment—of white supremacy. His people have spoken, and they want to “take back” a country that they never actually lost in the first place.
I am not willing to take this result quietly. I am a pacifist, but not passive; I support loud, angry protests and civil disobedience. Last night, people in a number of cities took to the streets, and that will continue today and likely for the forseeable future. This will not be a peaceful transition of power.
In the meantime, for anyone in the LGBT+ community who is feeling suicidal, please know that there is help out there. You can call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 or the Trevor Project at 866-488-7386. Our community is under attack, but we are resilient, and we will get through this if we have each others’ backs.
[Image: CeCe McDonald speaks at the Trans Day of Remembrance, SF.]
I had already planned to spend time with fellow black trans people (and our allies) over the next two days, tonight at the Black Excellence Tour with CeCe McDonald and Joshua Allen, and tomorrow night at the Free CeCe documentary that opens the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. I will have to miss the Trump protests in San Francisco and Oakland tonight, but it’s important for me to be with some of the people who are most impacted by his bigotry.
I am not OK. I was not OK before the election, and I don’t know if I ever will be OK in the future. If you want to support me, please amplify the voices of the marginalized people who have been speaking out against institutionalized oppression all along. Make our country great, for the first time.
[Image: Bishop Gene Robinson speaks into a microphone, accompanied by four other ministers.]
Back around 1990, I took a class called “Religion and Politics” from Professor Garry Wills* at Northwestern University. The man—a practicing Catholic—was so unassuming that I mistook him for a janitor on first encounter; I only found out later that he was actually rather famous. I learned from his class that the USA was one of the most religious—Christian, specifically—countries in the world, second only to Ireland in regular church attendance. Twenty-odd years later, I read Society without God by sociologist Phil Zuckerman, and learned that the USA was still far more religious than most other Western countries.
I had these facts in mind when reading an article in The Guardian about the Wikileaks revelation of an apparent DNC strategy to discredit Bernie Sanders based on his supposed atheism. As the article states and as I can verify from my own experience, many Jews in the USA are atheists or agnostics; one can claim a Jewish identity without a belief in God. (Green presidential candidate Jill Stein is an agnostic Jew, for example.) The same cannot be readily said of Christianity, although from reading Society without God I learned that there are many “cultural” Christians in Europe who are actually atheists. (In fact, the countries Zuckerman visited that had official state religions had far, far fewer religious adherents than the USA, where we supposedly have separation of church and state.)
In the article about Sanders, a Jewish supporter of Hillary Clinton states, “I’m gay and America would have less of a problem with a gay president than an atheist president.” I wouldn’t be surprised if this were true. Our country is and always has been overwhelmingly religious, and overwhelmingly Christian. Outside of progressive hubs like the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, atheists are still looked upon with distrust.
Some Christians are becoming more tolerant of the LGBT community, and I’ve spent a lot of time around queer religious people as part of the fight for marriage equality. I took the photo at the top of this post at a Eucharist ceremony (the only one I’ve attended to date), just prior to the 2011 San Francisco Pride Parade. Gene Robinson, pictured speaking, became the first openly gay Episcopalian bishop.
[Image: Jerry Peterson and Reverend Roland Stringfellow embrace at a marriage equality rally.]
I was hired to shoot the parade by Reverend Roland Stringfellow of the Coalition of Welcoming Congregations, pictured above in 2012 with his now-husband Jerry Peterson. Yes, in San Francisco we have plenty of openly gay interracial couples. But we still have respectability politics, and a dark-skinned black man with locs like Stringfellow is still at risk of police profiling, even if he is a Christian minister. (He and his husband-to-be had actually just been released from police custody when I took this photo, but their annual Valentine’s Day marriage equality sit-in at City Hall had been conducted with the police department’s prior knowledge and full cooperation.)
Religion and respectability politics are part of why I’ve heard nearly as much mention of God at the Democratic National Convention as I did at the Republican event. President Obama might have thrown a crumb to atheists by acknowledging “non-believers” in his inaugural address, but we’re still not fully trusted by the US-American public. Religious institutions get tax breaks, God is on our currency and in our Pledge of Allegiance (though the latter only since the 1950s), and most public officials swear in on Bibles. People who don’t care much about religion might not notice or be bothered by it, but when you’re a committed atheist, religion—and Christianity specifically—is very much in-your-face.
Our theistic, Christian foundation is part of why I don’t think our government can be reformed, even by third parties, to my satisfaction. What viable candidate is really going to call for complete pacifism? We now have a pair of vegan candidates in the Humane Party’s Clifton Roberts and Breeze Harper, but I’m still not convinced that continuing with our current system of government is a good plan.
Hearing Democrats at their convention compete with Republicans for who could praise our “great country” and military might the most just crystallized for me how unpatriotic I’ve become. I don’t agree that we’re the greatest country on Earth. I don’t have a better one in mind because I haven’t traveled abroad much. I’m just not into this “us versus them” mentality. I’m a US citizen by accident of birth, not by choice. And I’m questioning more and more every day whether or not I really want to stay here.
*ETA: Interesting analysis (from 1995) by Wills of the right to bear arms, in light of our country’s current debate over the Second Amendment.
[Image: Assorted kitchen knives on a magnetic strip.]
I’m having trouble coping in a world that seems resigned to the inevitability of killing. Deliberate, premeditated killing. Whether of our “enemies” in other countries, “thugs” on our streets, or “livestock” on our farms, there always seem to be exceptions to the commandment that billions of people claim to live by: “Thou shalt not kill.”
As a pacifist, I don’t want guns “controlled,” I want them gone. All of them, not just “assault weapons” but handguns, rifles, and every other tool designed for the specific purpose of killing another person. I include animals as people, so I’m not interested in exceptions for killing a charging bear in the wilderness (for example). Humans—with the possible exception of the few remaining indigenous groups that have kept mostly to themselves—have encroached on the territory of other animals far too much already. (I’m not opposed to using tranquilizers and other non-lethal means to fend off attackers, however.)
The abolition of guns and other lethal weapons cannot and will not take place through legislation alone. Even without guns, humans will just kill each other with cars or knives. Eliminating murder completely might be impossible, but I have to believe that we can evolve beyond this culture of killing, even if it will take what seems like a miracle.
As an atheist, I’m not praying to any gods for a miracle, but I leave open the possibility that help might arrive through extraordinary means. I recently re/watched the entirety of Star Trek, from the original series through Enterprise. The one episode that stuck with me the most was “Errand of Mercy“. This was not because it was the episode that first introduced the Klingons, but because of another species: The Organians. Disguised as humans, they revealed themselves to be powerful beings of pure energy. Without violence, these pacifists neutralized the weapons of both the Klingons and the Federation, bringing on a (forced) peace treaty.
Of course, this morsel of Gene Roddenberryesque idealism was isolated; fighting and killing continued throughout the television series, and the Organians showed little regard for human life in a prequel episode. Still, I sometimes can’t help but think that intervention from an outside source is the only thing that will stop humans from being such a murderous species. Though the idea of a Supreme Being that created and rules over the world makes no sense to me, I’m entirely open to the possibility of other lifeforms that are so powerful that some humans would worship them as gods. In fact, I would find it very depressing if humans represented the most intelligent beings that the universe could come up with.
Some say that philosophizing about “big picture” things like this is what separates humans from our fellow animals. Even if that’s true, it’s no justification for killing them or treating them as property. If we won’t even stop murdering the most defenseless among us, what hope do we have to stop murdering each other?
I don’t have all the answers here, and I’m suspicious of those who claim they do. I only know that I want the violence to end.
