Why are You Atheists So Angry - Greta christina skepticon 4 with transcript

>>Greta Christina - Skepticon 4 So why are you atheists so angry? This is a question on a lot of people's minds these days. In the last few years the atheist movement has moved into overdrive. Uhm....We've become much more visible, much more vocal, much more activist, much better organized and much less apologetic. And this increased visibility is putting atheist anger into the spotlight. Um...And a lot of non-atheists are really baffled and disconcerted at what they see as a sudden torrent of atheist anger from apparently out of nowhere. I know - if only they knew. Uhm... And frankly a lot of atheists ourselves are not sure what to do with this atheist anger, either with the anger itself or with the perception of our movement as a fundamentally angry one. Uhm, And so today I wanna talk about atheist anger. I wanna talk about whether this perception of this so called 'New Atheist' movement as a fundamentally angry one, whether that's even an accurate perception. Uhm...I wanna talk about why many atheists are angry. I wanna talk about whether or not that anger is valid and I wanna talk about whether this anger helps or hinders our movement. Uhm...OK so first of all I need to point out - not all atheists are angry about religion. No. Most atheists I've known do have some anger about some of the specific ways that religion plays out in the world but the atheist movement, the atheist community is very diverse and one of the things we differ about most is how we feel about religion. You know, many atheists would be perfectly happy to coexist with religion as long as religion was happy to coexist with us. Other atheists have a more confrontational attitude towards religion. They, or perhaps I should say we, uhm, we think that there are qualities in a very nature of religion that make peaceful coexistence unlikely and we are actively engaged in trying to persuade people out of it. Uhm... And in fact one of the things I find most interesting about this whole angry atheist image that the current atheist movement has is that atheists are often seen as angry and confrontational, disrespectful, intolerant and bigoted simply for existing. And simply for being open about who we are. Uhm, When atheist groups simply put up billboards saying "You could be good without God" or "Don't believe in god? You are not alone" people go coo-coo bananas. Uhm, It's actually, ironically, one of the things that make those billboard campaigns so successful. Uhm...Is that they generate a lot of media attention cause people go nuts about them. Uhm, If you go, really good source for this is if go to the Friendly Atheist blog I know, welcome Hemant Hemant on the friendlyatheist blog keeps the record of a the different atheist billboards and bus-ads campaigns and people's responses to them. And the frequency with..witch people just really freak out about them or even vandalize them or try to get them taken down, succeed in getting them taken down, succeed in getting stopped altogether - it's really astonishing. Uhm, and so when you hear all this talk about all these angry atheists it's really important to remember this, you know, yes, absolutely, some atheists are angry about religion. Many atheists are angry about religion. Uhm...Y'know, with this image that people have of the atheist movement is this raging mob with torches and pitchforks who wanna burn down all the houses of worship and personally dig up Jesus Christ so we can crucify him all over again, uhm. I mean...Really, I know. That would be awesome, but... You know, but really - this image of us is not warranted. It's really important to remember that atheists get painted as angry and confrontational simply for existing and simply for being open about who we are. Uh... I also think it's really important to point this out: Those atheists among us who are angry about religion - It's not like we're angry all the time, it's not like we're in a constant state of rage. I mean, I definitely and proudly count myself as an angry atheist. And yet most of the time I'm not an angry person. Most of the time I'm actually a very happy person. Ask anybody I know, there's lots of people here who know me pretty well. Ask them: Is Greta in an constant state or rage all the time? Or is Greta in an actually pretty good mood most of the time? Uhm...You know, really, to assume that that me or that Richard Dawkins or P.Z. Myers or any other famously angry atheist is angry always because the only writing that they've read of us is our angry writing about religion, it makes about as much sense as assuming that the only thing Roger Ebert ever does in his entire life is go to the movies. But, there are things about religion that I'm angry about. Uhm, and that other atheists are angry about and I do think that that anger is valid Uhm... you know. A lot of people are asking these days Why are you atheists so angry? And a lot of these people seem to have never considered the possibility that a lot of atheists are angry because we legitimately have things to be angry about. So... So that's I wanna talk about I little bit, I want to talk about why, specifically, many atheists are angry. Or rather because I don't, in fact, presume to speak for the entire atheist movement I wanna talk about why I'm angry. And based on my experiences, and writing and speaking a lot of my anger is anger that a lot of atheists share. I'm angry that according to a recent Gallup poll only forty five percent of Americans would vote for an atheists for president. I'm angry that it took until nineteen sixty one for atheists to be guaranteed the right to serve on juries, testify in court or hold public office in every state in this country. I mean I was born in nineteen sixty one, it wasn't that long ago. And in nineteen sixty one, the year I was born, my parents who were nonbelievers were not guaranteed the right to serve public office, serve on the jury or testify in court in every state in this country and that pisses me off. I'm angry that atheists in the United States are frequently denied custody of their children explicitly on the basis of their atheism. That's not nineteen sixty-one, that's not the year I was born - that's happening now. Judges deny custody of children to atheists explicitly because they are atheists. I'm angry on behalf of the atheist blogger in Iran who told me that they have to blog anonymously because if they're discovered they'll be executed. I'm angry that school boards all across this country are still, eighty plus years after the Scopes Trial, still having to spend time and money and resources on the battle to teach evolution in the public schools. School boards, in case you haven't noticed, are not exactly loaded with time and money and resources. And the time and money and resources they're spending fighting this stupid fight It's time and money and resources that they're not spending teaching. Uh... and in a similar thing - I'm angry that science teachers in these public schools often don't teach evolution even when teaching it is permitted and indeed required by their school because...or they either don't teach it or they give it only a cursory mention because they don't wanna start angry arguments with fundamentalist parents of kids. Y'know they don't wanna start controversy. I mean, evolution is the foundation of the science of biology. Biology literally does not make sense without it. And kids who aren't being taught the theory of evolution are being deprived of one of the most fundamental ways that human beings have learned to understand ourselves and our place in the world. I'm angry that people are dying of AIDS in Africa and South America Because the Catholic Church convinced them that using condoms makes Baby Jesus cry. I...I..I'm...I'm angry at preach...I'm angry.. I'm angry at preachers who tell women in their flock to submit to their husbands because it's the will of God even when those husbands are beating them within an inch of their lives. I'm angry that the belief in karma and reincarnation gets used as a justification for the caste system in India. I'm angry that people, people who are born into poverty and despair are taught that it's their fault, that they must have done something really bad in a previous life and the misery that they were born into is their fault. I'm angry that people in Africa are being terrorized, driven from their homes, maimed, tortured and killed over accusations of witchcraft. Not in the middle ages, not in the sixteen hundreds, today! Actual literal witch hunts are happening today. Uhm...I'm angry that so many parents and religious leaders terrorize children with vivid, traumatizing stories of eternal burning and torture to ensure that they will be too terrified to even question religion. I'm angry that children get taught by religion to hate and fear their bodies and their sexuality and I'm especially angry that girl children are taught to hate and fear their femaleness and that *** children are taught by religion to hate and fear their queerness. I'm angry that...I'm angry that in fundamentalist Mormon polygamous cults girls are raised from birth to believe that they will be tormented for eternity in the afterlife if they don't marry whatever man they're told to marry by their preacher. In most cases when they're teenagers. In some cases as young as age thirteen. In some cases younger. And I'm angry that in the non-fundamentalist, non-polygamist, entirely mainstream Mormon church girls are raised from birth to believable that they'll be tormented for eternity in the afterlife if they don't marry, bear lots of children and be obedient to their husbands. And that *** children are raised from birth to believe that they will be tormented for eternity in the afterlife if they don't suppress and deny their sexuality. Uhm...And on a related topic On a related topic I'm angry that in Salt Lake City Utah forty percent of all homeless teenagers are gay. Most of them kids who have been kicked out of the house by their Mormon parents. Yeah it's some really great family values you guys got there. Uhm, I'm angry that in public taxpayer paid high schools around the country, and this is the United States, atheist students who are trying to organize clubs, something they are legally allowed to do by the way, are routinely getting stonewalled by school administrations. Talk, Talk to J.T, and uhm. Yeah, if you wanna find out more about that talk to J.T Everhart and to the Secular Student Alliance, people, they'll tell you more about it than you ever wanted to hear cause it sucks. Uhm, I'm angry about the girl in the Muslim family uhm... who is told, and this is in her school, in her public taxpayer paid school by her teacher, by her public, taxpayer paid teacher, that the red stripes on a Christmas candy cane represented Christ's blood, that she had to believe and be saved by Jesus Christ or she'd be condemned to hell and that if she didn't convert there was no place for her in his classroom. Yeah, uhm, I'm angry... Okay, anger is not the word here, I am enraged at priests who *** children and tell them that it's God's will. I'm angry at the Catholic Church that consciously, deliberately, repeatedly for years acted to protect these priests who *** children and deliberately acted to keep this as a secret! I'm angry that they placed the Church's reputation as a higher priority than for *** sake children not being ***! I'm angry about nine eleven and I'm angry that after nine eleven happened people of middle eastern descent were attacked and their businesses were vandalized because they were Muslim or because they were believed to be Muslim even if they weren't and people blamed all Muslims for the attacks. And...And I'm angry that after nine eleven happened Jerry Falwell blamed nine eleven on let me get this list right: pagans, abortionists, feminists gays and lesbians, the ACLU and the People For The American Way. That covers pretty much everybody here, right? I'm...It sounds funny..and...it sounds funny because it is funny but it also makes me furious, I mean this theology, this whack-job theology, this theology of this wrathful God, who's exacting revenge against pagans and abortionists by sending fundamentalist Muslims to fly an airplane into a building full of secretaries and investment bankers? I mean This was not some fringe theology, this is not a theology hold by some bizarro out there with a dozen followers picketing funerals. This was a theology hold by a powerful widely respected religious leader with millions of followers. Uhm...I'm angry that the Bamiyan Buddhist statues in Afghanistan - it is magnificent monumental works of art over fifteen hundred years old - were dynamited by the Taliban because they were idols and because idolatry was considered to be an affront to God's law. Uhm...I'm angry that little girls are getting their clitorises cut off because their parents' religion teaches that it's necessary. And I'm angry that many people try to defend religion against the charge of female genital mutilation by saying "Oh! That's not what the religion really teaches" "If you look at these original, what the original text says, this is being misinterpreted!" LIKE I CARE! The reality is....the reality is that the Islamic religion as it is actually widely believed and practiced, and not just the Islamic religion but other religions as well, this teaching is not restricted to Islam alone, that religions as they are actually believed and practiced in the real world teach that little girls' clitorises have to get cut off. And I am enraged that people respond to this by defending the religion and not the children. Uhm, I'm angry about honor killings. I'm angry that in Islamic theocracies women who have sex outside marriage, women who date outside their religion, women who spend time with male friends, women who disobey their male relatives are executed. I'm angry that in Islamic theocracies women who have been *** can be and are executed for the crime of adultery. I'm angry that the ones who only get beaten and imprisoned are the ones who get off lucky. Uhm, I'm angry that in Islamic theocracies girls as young as nine years old can be married against their will... I'm angry that when a nine year old girl in Brazil was *** the doctors who performed an abortion on her and the family who approved the abortion were excommunicated by the Catholic Church And I'm angry that there was no excommunication for the man who *** her. And I'm angry...I'm angry that in thirteen states in the United States childcare centers operated by religious organizations don't have to adhere by law, do not have to adhere to basic standards of health and safety and don't even have to be licensed. Uhm...I'm angry that children in these childcare centers have been harmed and have even died because of poor or nonexistent staff training, because of grossly unsafe conditions, and the operators are immune from prosecution. I'm angry that seriously ill children needlessly suffer and die because their parents believe in faith healing or believe that medical treatment will anger their God. And I'm angry that I'm angry that in thirty nine states in the United States these parents are protected from prosecution for child neglect. I'm angry about what happened to Galileo. Still! I am still angry! I realize it happened in sixteen thirty three - I'm still mad! And I'm angry that it took the Catholic Church until nineteen ninety two to apologize for it. Uhm...I get angry when religious leaders opportunistically use religion and people's trust and faith in religion to steal, to cheat, to lie, to illegally manipulate the political process, to take economic advantage of their followers, to take *** advantage of their followers, to generally behave like the *** of the earth. Uhm... I get angry when this happens over and over and over again. I get angry at the fact that when you open up a newspaper and you see a headline that says religious leaders are the opportunistic lying ski..stealing, cheating scumbag that all reaction is "Yeah, must be Tuesday so what else is there?" And I get angry when people see this happening and still say that atheism is bad because without religion people would have no basis for morality or ethics and would just do whatever they wanted. Uhm.....I'm angry....I'm angry that when my dad had a stroke and went to a nursing home the staff asked my brother "Is he Baptist or catholic?" And I'm nut just angry on behalf of my atheist dad. I'm angry on behalf of all the Hindus all the Jews, all the Muslims, all the Wiccans who got asked that question. I'm angry on behalf of the Lutherans and the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians whose families got asked that same question. That question is enormously disrespectful not just of my atheist dad but of everybody at that nursing home who was not Baptist or Catholic. Uhm, I get angry when religious believers make arguments against atheism and make accusations against atheists without having bothered to talk to any atheist or read any of our writings. You know I get angry when they trot out the same old, you know, "Atheism is a nihilistic philosophy, with no joy or meaning and no basis for morality or ethics" when you know - if they spend ten minutes in the atheist blogosphere they would have discover countless atheists who experience great joy and meaning in our lives and are intensely concerned about right or wrong. I mean, I realize that it's really great hardship to type 'atheism' into Google and hit enter... You know, but, you know, if you're gonna be a bigot can you at least take that much trouble, you know? Uhm...I get angry when believers say that entire unimaginable hugeness of the Universe was made entirely for the human race when atheists by contrast say that humanity is this infinitesimal eye blink in the vastness of time and space, and then religious believers accuse atheists of being arrogant. I get angry...I get angry when believers argue against atheists by saying that we're intolerant, mean, superior, whiny, angry without making an argument for why we're wrong, and why they're right. I get angry that I have to know more about their damn religion than they do. I mean...Really, it's like believers will say the most bizarre, inaccurate, *** up *** about their own religion, about the tenants and texts of their religion and I have to correct them on it and I have to do the research on it. I mean that night that I spent six hours combing through the gospels finding all the places where Jesus actually did talk about hell because somebody was arguing on my blog "No, Jesus never mentioned hell!" "That's this made up idea that they made up later!" That's like, that's six hours of my life I am never getting back. I have things to do. Y'know, I could've been watching Project Runway, you know. Uhm... I get angry when believers treat any criticism of their religion as insulting and bigoted I get angry when they treat the very fact that we treat their religion as an idea, a hypothesis about the world in the marketplace of ideas that they can be questioned and criticized, as the most horrible form of intolerance. I mean I get angry whey they accuse atheists of being bigoted for saying things like: "I don't agree with you.", "I think you're mistaken about that.", "What evidence do you have to support that?". Uhm, I get angry when believers respond to..to some of these offenses or all of these offenses By saying: "Ooh oh that's not the true faith!", you know... "Hating *** and stifling science and, you know, stifling questions of descent that that's not the true faith. People who do that that's not true Christians that's not true Jews that's not true Muslims", I mean as if they...as if they knew. As if they had a pipeline to God, I mean as if they had any reason at all to think that they know for sure what God wants and that billions of other people who disagree with just clearly got it wrong. Uhm, I'm angry that when I wrote the piece on my blog about atheists and anger I got comments telling me, quote: "It's a pity your mother didn't have an abortion" Uhm..."I hope some guys bomb your house, ***" Uhm, "Just kill yourself, k?" Uhm, "What you need is to get laid, not with lesbian toys either, you need a strong men with some big junk and a strong will to set you straight". Uhm...Yeah, Some....somehow the the the the *** threats are a little more upsetting than the death threats for some reason. They're more personal. Uhm "I *** hate every single person who posted here and if there was some magical button that I could press which would annihilate your collective existence in an instant I would push it one thousand seven hundred and twenty eight times". I don't know why that number but... Uhm..."You're a fat ugly ***, your anger doesn't indres....impress me. Go drink bleach". Uhm...You know, okay you know, yeah that's funny but also this is really pretty *** scary, you know, and I'm really angry that writing my atheist opinions, I mean yes, granted, angry opinions, but opinions where I was actually pretty careful to distinguish between criticizing people and criticizing ideas... In any case opinions expressed on the blog that people were free to read or not, as they liked, I'm really angry that doing this resulted in me fearing for my safety and my life. But...But perhaps most of all, but perhaps most of all I get SO angry, I get shatteringly, inarticulately, pulse-racingly angry when believers chide atheists for being so angry. "Why why do you have to be so angry all the time?" you know "All that anger is so off-putting", "If atheism is so great why are so many of you so angry?", y'know, Because here is the other thing I'm angry about, I mean, all this anger that I've been ranting about today - this barely scratches the surface. And I could write entire book about everything about religion that angers me, other people certainly have I could've write...yeah hahahaha uhm... I'm really, but really, I could write an encyclopedia about everything about religion that gets me angry and I could still not be done. And, any, I'm really angry that that's true and yet atheist anger about religion is just assumed to be a sign not that there's something wrong with religion but that there's something wrong with us. Now, I really and I wanna be fair here just for a second uh... many people will hear this litany of grievances and they'll even agree with with most of it or even all of it. And they'll still defend religion against it. Uhm, they'll argue that these evils aren't religion's fault, they'll argue that people do terrible things to each other for all kinds of reasons people come with all kinds of rationalizations for the terrible things they do, y'know. Religious believers will make this argument and in fact many atheists will make this argument. And they will have a point, y'know. Religion is very far from the only motivation for human evil. It's very far from the only excuse that we give for it. But I would argue that religion is unique. And I would argue that the things that make religion unique are exactly the same things that make religion uniquely capable of causing terrible harm Uhm, we have to agree here on a definition of religion and I realize we could be here all day arguing about that...uhm... so for the purposes of this talk I'm gonna stick with very pragmatic definition based on how religion commonly plays out in the real-world. Religion is a belief in supernatural entities or forces that have an effect on the natural world. It's a belief in entities or forces that are invisible, inaudible, intangible and otherwise undetectable by any natural means. We...we can debate whether that's really the best definition of religion but for the purposes of this argument that's a definition I'm using you know. It.. it might not be what religion means for this handful of modern theologians who have essentially abstracted religion out of existence. But that is undeniably what religion means...I know, you know, religion is...yeah I don't even wanna go there, Karen Armstrong - shoot me now. Y'know. This is what religion means for the overwhelming majority of people who believe in it. And here is why it is so uniquely capable of causing harm. So again - religion is the belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces and events and judgments that happen after we die. It therefore has no reality check. And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, against questioning and against self correction, It's uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning off into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality and extreme grotesque immorality. You know, the..the..this belief in unverifiable supernatural entities, the thing that uniquely defines religion, that makes religion what religion is - that is exactly what cranks up its capacity to do harm to an alarmingly high level, because there's no reality check. Uhm, and any other ideology or philosophy about the world it is eventually expected to pony up. You know, it's essentially expected to prove itself true or correct itself and modify it, make itself more true or fall by the wayside. You know, with religion that is emphatically not the case. Because religion is a belief in the invisible and the unknowable and it's therefore never expected to prove that it's right, it's never even expected to show good evidence for why it's right. This capacity to do harm can spin into the stratosphere. Uhm...I wanna make a comparison here to show my point, uhm I wanna compare religious belief with political ideology. I mean after all religion is not the only belief that's armored against criticism. It's not the only belief that ignores, that leads people to ignore evidence in favor of their settled opinion, that is a human trait we all do that at all the time. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking that we don't. Uhh... and very contrary to the popular atheist saying religion is not the only belief that inspires good people to do evil things. Political ideology can do that very nicely. Uhm... you know, people committed horrors to perpetuate soviet communism which was an ideology that many of these people sincerely believed was best. And, and horrors were committed by Americans in the last Bush administration in the name of the values of democracy and freedom. But uh... but even the most stubborn political ideology will eventually crumble in the face of it - what's the word I'm looking for here - not working. Y'know people can only be told for so long that under communism everybody will eat strawberries and cream and that, you know, an unrestricted free market the rising tide will lift all boats, y'know. A political ideology makes promises about this life and this world and and if the strawberries in the cream and the rising boats aren't forthcoming eventually people notice, y'know. The the two thousand election, the two thousand eight election was really good evidence of that as is the current Occupy Wall Street movement, y'know. People...people can and will rationalize a political ideology for a very long time but ultimately the proof is in the pudding. Religion is different. With religion the proof is emphatically not in the pudding. With religion the proof comes from these invisible beings, these inaudible voices, Y'know, the proof comes from prophets and religious leaders who supposedly hear these inaudible voices and are happy to tell the rest of us what they're saying. Uhm... it comes from these religious texts written hundreds or thousands of years ago again written by religious leaders who supposedly heard these voices. Uhm... it comes from the feelings in people's hearts, you know it's like I just feel god in my heart conveniently telling me whatever I already believe or what I want to believe. And the proof comes in the afterlife, after people are dead and gone and can't come back to tell us about it. Uhm...so again with religion even if the rules and promises that are supposedly made by God aren't working out, even if it's clearly "Gee, this is not happening...", the followers was still follow them. Because the ultimate judge and judgment are invisible. Y'know, there is no pudding, there's no proof, is no expectation that there be any. In fact in many religions the idea that you should expect proof y'know, the... this idea that you should expect evidence for your beliefs - that idea is blasphemy in many religions. Uhm... and so therefore there's no reality check when religion starts to go to really bad places. Uhm, so it drives me up a tree when people insist that religious wars and religious bigotry and religious violence and religious hatred and so on, it really drives me up a tree when they say "That's not religion's fault". Y'know...y'know of course not it's a fault of religious reader...leaders you know, greedy, selfish, power-hungry religious leaders y'know who manipulate the people. Or it's a fault of the people. Y'know it's a fault of the religious followers you know they're... they're driven by fear and ego and tribalism. They don't understand the true meaning of God. Or else the wars and violence and hatred and so on y'know they're really about something else, they're really about land and it's really about money, it's really about power and so on. I mean of course religious wars and hatred and so on of course they're complex, of course they're human, of course they have a lot of causes feeding into them... But to deny the role that religion plays in religious conflicts it...it's a textbook example of ignoring the elephant in the room. I mean it's like looking at an enormous, steaming pile of ***, of elephant *** in the room, and saying "My goodness where could all this elephant *** have come from?" "It must've been brought here by a greedy selfish power-hungry elephant trainer", y'know. Y'know, "Elephant?...I don't see any elephant here! In fact it's bigoted and intolerant of you to suggest that an elephant could have caused this pile of elephant ***! How dare you!" Y'know...so...when people say that it's not fair to blame religion for the terrible thing that is done in its name I must passionately beg to differ. And when you look at this litany, when you look at this rant I was ranting earlier, this litany of religious harms... If you look at them closely you'll find that every single one of them has at its core this unique nature of religion, the thing that makes religion different from every other human activity. Its fundamental unverifiability and its fundamental lack of any sort of reality check. So I think it is entirely fair to blame religion for the terrible things done in its name. What makes religion unique is what makes religion *** up. And I think, I think that our anger, I think that atheist anger about it is completely justified. But is it useful? Does anger about religion help or hurt our cause? Uhm, I will acknowledge and I will freely acknowledge that anger is a difficult tool in a social change movement. Uhm...It's even a dangerous one. Uhm...Anger can make people act rashly. Uh... anger can make it harder to think clearly. Uh...anger can make people treat potential allies as enemies, you know, anger can sub-fuel tribalism. Uhm, And in the worst case scenario anger can lead to violence. Y'know...Anger can screw up, and very contrary to popular opinion psychological research shows that expressing anger does not make people calmer and less angry. Uhm... this is a myth, this is myth about "Oh you you if you expr...get you anger out you'll feel better, you'll be venting it." That's not true. Expressing anger actually makes us angrier. Part of why I'm up here today. And so I but but seriously I don't want to be cavalier about anger. Anger is a difficult tool, and it is one that we need to be careful with. Uhm...But all of that being said, yes, I think that anger in a social change movement is not only valid, but valuable and necessary.......Why? Because anger is always necessary. Because anger has driven every major s..movement for social change that I am aware of. Anger has driven the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the *** rights movement, the feminist movement, the environmental movement. Every single one of these movements has had as a tremendous driving force a tremendous amount of anger. A..Anger about injustice, anger about mistreatment and brutality. Anger about helplessness. We need to be very clear about this. Anger is not violence. Anger is not bigotry. Anger is not hatred. I'm not in favor of any of those things... but that's not what anger is. Anger is an emotion indicating displeasure and antagonism with a state of affairs. Anger is one of the ways that we know that things are not okay, y'know. Anger is how we know that people are being hurt unnecessarily. A..Anger is how we know that there is injustice in the world. And anger is how we know that it's not just in our heads, but in our hearts. And anger is what motivates us to do something about it. Y'know I'm thinking about Julie's talk earlier, it's like we can't make decisions unless we're motivated by something, and that motivation, ...often, is anger. I..really, seriously, why else would people bother to mobilize social change movements? Social change movements are hard! Y'know...Wasn't there a Barbie doll where you pulled the string and she said "Social change movements are hard!" Y'know really, but they are...they take, they take time, they take energy, they take work. Uhm, sometimes they take serious risks. They take risk of losing your family, losing your job... y'know they take risk of personal, actual physical safety. You know, we wouldn't be bothering to do social change movements if people weren't really furious about something. Uhm...So when people tell atheists not to be so angry, they are in essence telling us to dis-empower ourselves. They're telling us to lay down one of the single most powerful tools that we have at our disposal. Uhm...They're telling us to lay down a tool that as far as I know no social change movement in history has ever been able to do without. You know, they're, they're telling us to be polite and diplomatic when history clearly shows us that polite diplomacy, which is in fact effective and I don't dismiss it, that polite diplomacy is much more effective when it's coupled with passionate anger. Uhm and in the battle between David and Goliath, they're telling David to lay down the slingshot, y'know I don't know, just gnaw Goliath on the ankles or something. Y, that's, yeah, a really effective method of social change. Uhm...And in fact, Uhm, when believers tell atheists not so be so angry, or not to be so vocal about our anger, it's very difficult to avoid the conclusion that this dis-empowerment is exactly the point. The atheist movement, in case none of you have noticed, is doing rather well. Take a look around you! We're actually doing...We're actually doing extraordinarily well, especially considering that we've really only been seriously mobilized in the last few years, you know, it..we have made an astonishing strides in visibility in a very short time. Uhm..we've gone..we went from being on pretty much nobody's radar to being a major topic of conversation, a major topic of op-ed pieces and magazine articles and, you know, talk shows and and major topic of conversation at dinner tables and water coolers around the country and around the world. You know, we went from being zero to sixty very very fast. Uhm, many of our books are best sellers, our lobbyists have met with White House officials. The president of the united states openly acknowledged us in positive ways. Those are things that to my knowledge have never happened in the history of this country. Uhm... and rates of religious non-belief are going up at a very rapid rate. And and and and across the United States and and not just across the United States on average but in every single one of the fifty states in this country the fastest growing religious affiliation is NONE. And...an..and this trend is especially true among young people which is arguably the most important demographic for any social change movement. Clearly we are doing something right, y'know. Clearly ou..our anger, among many other factors of course, but clearly our anger has been very effective. It's been very effective at drawing attention to our movement from the outside. And it's been very effective at mobilizing and motivating people from inside the movement. And clearly this has a lot of people seriously freaked the *** out. Uhm, uhm, as a blogger I've received a great deal of advice from believers on how atheist should run our movement. Uhm, I got al..comments and emails all the time from believers saying "This is, you know" "it's like you just might wanna little, little word of advice on how you should run your movement" Uhm... it's very difficult to avoid the observation that this advice is almost always in the direction of telling us to tone it down. Telling us to be less confrontational less visible. Y'know, I have almost never seen a believer adv..advise the atheist movement to speak up more loudly and more passionately. You know, to...to...to not be afraid of offending people if we think we're right. Y..you know to really be willing to get in people's faces about things that they don't wanna think about. I mean, I have gotten a lot of advice from believers on how atheists should run our movement and it is almost always in the direction of politely suggesting that we shut up. Uhm...Maybe I'm being cynical here I don't think that's a coincidence. Uh...Uhm...and again, when you look at the history of social change movements you see the same pattern again and again, it was true of the women's movement, the labor movement, the civil...civil rights movement, the *** movement. Uhm... as soon as a movement starts to get some real traction, as soon as a movement starts to get some real power, opponents start fear-mongering about how angry they are. They start fear-mongering about, you know, the angry blacks, the angry women, the angry communists in the labor movement, the angry ***, "They're gonna turn into this uncontrolled raging mob and they're gonna tear up your city!" Uhm, or else they start concern-trolling about how "Oh anger just alienates people and the movement needs to be sweet and diplomatic and, you know, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar". I don't need flies. And and really, I do not think this is a confidence. I don't think it's a coincidence that we're being advised to lay down our anger, one of the most powerful tools that any social change movement can have right at the time that we are beginning to get some real power. Uhm, and there's, before I finish, there's one more really important point I want to make about all this atheist anger. And that's that most of it is NOT about harm that's being done to atheists. Some of it is, and that's totally valid. There is real bigotry and real discrimination against atheists and it's absolutely legitimate to be angry about that. But when you look at the things that make so many atheists angry about religion, you know, when you look at my ranting litany from earlier - you realize that most of it is not about harm that's being done to atheists. Most of it is about harm that's being done to believers. It's anger on other people's behalf. Y'know, atheists are not angry because we're selfish, we're not angry because we're whiny, we're not angry because we have no joy and meaning in our lives. We're not angry because we have a god-shaped hole in our hearts. You know...A...Atheists are angry because we have compassion. We're...We're angry because we have a sense of justice. We're angry because we see harm being done to people, terrible, horrible harm that's being done to people and our hearts go out to them. Atheists are angry because we want to see this stop. Atheists are not angry because there's something wrong with us. Atheists are angry because there's something right with us. Thank you...I think I'm running out of the time here, uhm, and so I wanna leave you with a couple of quotes. Uhm, here's the first: "The supreme task is to organize and unite people so that their anger becomes a transforming force." And here is the second: "I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson - to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy even so our anger controlled can be transformed into a power that can move the world" Uhm...These aren't from Richard Dawkins, they're not from Christopher Hitchens, they're not from P.Z. Myers, they're not from any other famously angry atheist. They're not from Malcolm X, they're not from Betty Friedan, they're not from Abbie Hoffman. The first is from Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, and the second is from Mahatma Gandhi. Leaders, leaders who today are held up as icons of peaceful, diplomatic love-thy-neighbor activism. Leaders, who at the time they were leading, were not held up as icons of peaceful, diplomatic, love-thy-neighbor activism. Leaders who at the time they were leading were seen as dangerous, radical threats to the stability of society. And who only today are held up as these paragons of sweetness and good manners, who only today are being shoved in the faces of atheist activists, activists of all kinds. Who were seen as being too confrontational and too intemperate and too angry. So the next time somebody asks you: "Why are you atheists so angry?" - remember that. Don't just remember Galileo....I know. Don't just remember honor killings. Don't just remember the gay kids who are taught that they're going to burn in hell. Don't just remember the women who are being beaten by their wife and the preachers who are telling them to suck it up. Don't just remember people cheated and stolen from by religious frauds. Don't just remember the kids being *** by priests and the Catholic Church that's covering it up. Remember the words of King and Gandhi. Remember that anger can become a transforming force. Remember that anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world. And remember that the people who are trivializing our anger however concerned, however well-meaning are trying to take that power away. Don't let them. Thank you. Transcript prepared by AdamZielinski Atheism Community Of Google Plus (the earth-iconed - http://is.gd/googleatehism), translation to Polish - AdamZielinski