DVAU hosts Secular Coalition's Lori Lipman Brown, March 11, 2pm
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DVAU Program Meeting: Sunday March 11, 2007, 2pm – 3pm
Speaker: Lori Lipman Brown, Secular Coalition for America
Lori will tell DVAU about the Secular Coalition for America, its work on church-state separation issues, and its agenda for the year. Americans United for Separation of Church and State participates with the Secular Coalition for America.
Location: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 2125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103, in Griffin Hall
Parking: Parking info will be posted on DVAU.org’s Event page; see site for details. http://dvau.org/AUEvents.htm or call Janice Rael at 856-863-3061.
Refreshments will be served after the meeting. Free and open to the public.
This DVAU event is listed on the Church and State Meetup calendar. To RSVP, click: http://churchandstate.meetup.com/48/calendar/5530517/ The Church and State Meetup has a regular meeting on the second Wednesday of each month at 8 pm in Philadelphia.
DVAU President Janice Rael is also on the Board of Directors of the Secular Coalition for America, as the representative of the Internet Infidels, Inc. The Secular Coalition for America is a new 501(c)4 advocacy organization whose purpose is to amplify the diverse and growing voice of the nontheistic community in the United States. http://www.secular.org/
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Brian,
I just wanted to make sure that I didn't leave you with the wrong impression at the DVAU meeting. I loved the David Mills video (pile of shit vs. crock of shit); I sent it to everyone on my YouTube list, and I even posted a link to it on my blog. The point I wanted to make was that as soon as I saw it, I knew that it would be controversial and cause offense--even within the atheist community (even though it shouldn't). Unfortunately, I've spent enough time arguing with "nice guy" atheists (including earlier today over at Pharyngula) to recognize what sets them off. Ironically, they're the ones who are intollerant of us. They think we should just shut up because we're "hurting the cause." I've never told them to just keep quiet or to get more aggressive; I'm a big believer in a multi-pronged attack.
The other thing I said that may have sounded "anti-Mills" was that I said that I'm not ready (yet) to make a statement as strong as David did (and it was a strong statement--even though it shouldn't have been). That's all.
Good luck with the new house.
--Javier
ps--I know you expressed reservations about this before, but now it seems that like myself, Brian Flemming is also a minister in the Universal Life Chrch. When can we expect to see the Reverend Sapient?
I understand man. I wouldn't have even thought anything of it, had you never brought it up. I wasn't left with the wrong impression, but it never hurts to clarify.
I hear that man. They are radical moderates.
I too never tell the nice guy atheists that they have to get tougher. In fact if you overheard a convo I mentioned on Sunday, I sometimes ask nice guy atheists to continue being nice guy atheists (I'm speaking of the ones who lobby in washington and fight in courts).
Yup, as Sam Harris says...
I think this is a war of ideas that has to be fought on a hundred fronts at once. There’s not one piece that is going to trump all others.
But I think we should not underestimate the power of embarrassment. The book Freakonomics briefly discusses the way the Ku Klux Klan lost its subscribers, and the example is instructive. A man named Stetson Kennedy, almost single-handedly it seems, eroded the prestige of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s by joining them and then leaking all of their secret passwords and goofy lingo to the people who were writing “The Adventures of Superman” radio show. Week after week, there were episodes of Superman fighting the Klan, and the real Klan’s mumbo jumbo was put out all over the airwaves for people to laugh at. Kids were playing Superman vs. the Klan on their front lawns. The Klan was humiliated by this, and was made to look foolish; and we went from a world in which the Klan was a legitimate organization with tens of millions of members—many of whom were senators, and even one president—to a world in which there are now something like 5,000 Klansmen. It’s basically a defunct organization.
So public embarrassment is one principle. Once you lift the taboo around criticizing faith and demand that people start talking sense, then the capacity for making religious certitude look stupid will be exploited, and we’ll start laughing at people who believe the things that the Tom DeLays, the Pat Robertsons of the world believe. We’ll laugh at them in a way that will be synonymous with excluding them from our halls of power.
Understood. I don't have a problem with someone being anti-mills. It's a little frustrating when nice guy atheists use the platform that RRS and Mills gives them to rip on us, but I roll with the punches. Your cool by me Jav.
I'll make sure you get an invite.
Can I just say that I have two close friends that are Reverends?
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