There Are Four Lights

This month brings a very special Monthly Manga Doodle—two, in fact! Get a hand drawn ink of Jacques Cousteau by donating any amount. Your donations help support indie art and celebrates science! Explorer and inventor, Jacques Cousteau was born June 11th, 1910. Donate any amount and receive a Super Mario inspired Cousteau!

As a special bonus, you could get one of five manga doodles of Alan Turing, born June 23rd, 1912. The top five highest donations given until the 23rd will get the British mathematician in addition to the French explorer of sea life!

Get Jacques Cousteau with any donation amount!

The top five highest donors by June 23rd get a bonus Alan Turing!

Don’t criticize The Oprah Winfrey of Skepticism™.

Many Skepchicks and self-described feminists have bullied me. There are many other women who’ve experienced similar hatred from women like Watson, Hensley, Roth. The difference is that I don’t presume to speak for all women in secularism and skepticism. They do. They speak of “women in skepticism experience _____” and “women atheists” think X.

They dismiss the opinions of women who don’t agree with some of the things they do. These feminist leaders aren’t listening.

Rebecca’s brand was built on the idea that women in skepticism are chicks. She made a mess with bringing sexiness and partying into the idea of promoting women in skepticism, however well intentioned. It’s a mess that she isn’t doing a good job of cleaning up.

I’m sure in the early days of podcasting, a snarky skeptic chick was novel. It’s old now and the movement has grown; there are plenty of women who do real-world education, research, writing, outreach, organising and popularising who deserve the resources, attention, and speaking positions that are squandered by Waton to promote her stale self-serving pseudo empire.

This is a comment I left on Ron Lindsay’s post Watson’s World and Two Models of Communication

Atheism is a religion in the same way that not-stamp-collecting is a hobby. In a similar way, skepticism is an ideology about not using ideology. Not when we want to know the difference between what is true and what we simply want to be true. Mysticism is about answers; skepticism is about questions. It’s not so much criticizing your conclusions, as it is the methods you used to get to them. If you evaluate a claim using methods that decrease bias and account for error, you are being skeptical.

So, when I hear people who self-identify as skeptics say that “______” needs to be applied to skepticism, I wonder how they can so fundamentally misunderstand the point of skepticism (insert your worldview in the blank). The absolutely most important thing about skepticism is that it is doesn’t investigate through ideology. Claims about reality should be tested free from our personal views because reality has demonstrated over and over again that it doesn’t necessarily align with those worldviews.

But the world we live in is so devastatingly lacking in critical thinking skills that it’s necessary to band together and promote skepticism through local groups and organizations…a movement. What people like PZ Myers, who claimed to “divorce” himself from skepticism because he feels it is anti-atheist, don’t seem to realize is that there are going to be people in the skeptic movement with different philosophical, social, and political views from your own because skepticism is for everyone.

“Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.” —Peter Ustinov

Skeptics are united, not by belief, not by denial, but by doubt. We promote the fact that it’s even easier to be deceived by ourselves than by others. The hard part is actually applying this to ourselves (realizing we may indeed be deceiving ourselves, instead of simply noticing self-deception in others). But we all have different worldviews and sometimes these views make us purport ideas which are testable claims, and sometimes they are value judgments. The challenge for those of us who want to promote science-based thinking is to realize that the price we pay for having skepticism be for everyone is that we must work together, even with those we may disagree with.

What’s really going on when you want ideas from your social or political views added (+) to skepticism is that you want those ideas protected from skepticism. But the point and greatest strength of skepticism is that it is critical of all -isms. All of them. When you start wanting your ideas protected from criticism, that’s when you stop being a skeptic.

PZ Myers, a biologist who used to blog about science, announced he is “officially” divorcing himself from the skeptic movement. This is good news for people who want to promote scientific skepticism, because Myers doesn’t promote skepticism anyway.

The reaction he expected at this announcement:

The reactions he gets:

Myers, like many other FreethoughtBlog bloggers, has been spending most of his time fueling internet drama that most people don’t know/care about. I’m glad he’s making it clear that what he’s doing isn’t skepticism.

Richard Feynman was born May 11, 1918. This months’ manga donation doodle celebrates this Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist! As always, you can get your hand drawn and signed manga doodle simply by making a donation of any amount.

Buying these science themed drawings not only celebrates a love of great thinkers, but also helps fund an indie artist like myself to keep on creating. Your support means a lot to me.

Previous Months: Darwin Day, Einstein Day, Da Vinci Day

The Rising Star grant is my new fundraiser to send young talent (between ages 18-30) to the Amazing Meeting 2013. So far, it will be sending 6 rising stars to the event this July, in Las Vegas. Keep donating!

Jessica Castillo

Currently studying philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, Jessica plans on pursuing a career in education. She’s 29, has two lovely daughters, and many different passions in life all stemming from overwhelming curiosity and a genuine love of learning. Ultimately, she’s eager to become an advocate for skepticism and education.

Ana Ruiz 

Ana was born in Miami Florida, with parents from Cuba. She grew up as a Catholic Christian, but converted to evangelical Christianity in her early teens. As a devoted evangelical Christian, she became disillusioned after attending University. She moved to New York when she was 12 and has lived there ever since, currently working as a freelance web developer, with the hope to go back to school after her daughter gets a bit older.

Sasha Halasz 

Sasha graduated in May from Moravian College with honors in Neuroscience. She was very involved as an undergraduate in many clubs and organizations including serving as president of her campus neuroscience club and volunteering for local community partners. She has been very engaged in research throughout her undergraduate career and recently completed a yearlong study of a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease for her senior thesis. She is a strong advocate for science research and outreach and has traveled to the past two Society for Neuroscience national conferences as well as Capitol Hill Day in D.C to promote a scientific perspective. She has a particular interest in health and medicine and will be attending medical school this August.

Kyle Sanders

Kyle is a C-130 Air Force pilot currently stationed in Little Rock, Arkansas, graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2008, and has since been engaged in local groups at each of his duty locations. With a passion for science communication, he is also an artist creating a new a comic strip, “Carbon Dating”, for web and print about science and relationships, written specifically for the skeptic audience.

Brandie Hesse

Brandie is a fourth year history student and the University of Calgary and upcoming president of the University of Calgary Freethinkers Club, which produces a club podcast and organizes local events. She intends to complete a double major in philosophy, obtain a PhD, and become a research professor and author of books on the history of religion. Her passion for activism focuses on humanism and the elimination of discrimination, and is interested in future involvement in politics to promote these goals.

Trent Brusky

Trent is a musician and the creator of Dropfox, a project dedicated to providing music to secular, freethought, science, and skeptic podcasts, having produced tracks for Oddments, Dogma Debate, Meet the Skeptics, The Skeptic Zone, and Skepticality. He is also an engineer technology student and State College of Florida and hopes to work in alternative energies in the future.

Albert Einstein, born March 14, 1879

After a very successful Darwin Day, and by popular demand, I present Einstein Day Drawings! You get a hand drawn manga ink of Albert Einstein when you make a donation of any amount. March celebrates Einstein’s birthday on the 14th. Support indie art and celebrate science at the same time!

The Church of Scientology ran an ad during the Super Bowl in several major markets. In it, they use the term “free-thinkers“.

To the rebels, the artists, the free-thinkers, and the innovators
Who care less about labels and more about truth

Yea, think for yourself and reject conformity—join a cult!

I’ve seen Strawman arguments made toward skeptic and freethought groups about how “science is just another religion” or “skepticism is just more group think”, despite the fact that science encourages the competition of ideas, skepticism promotes evaluating knowledge with evidence for falsifiable claims, and free-thought rejects judging the validity of facts on authority or popular belief. But this advert has an actual religious cult promoting itself as valuing all these ideas, even though the group promotes pseudo-scientific, new age religious dogma.

And the fuel of that power is not magic or mysticism, but knowledge
The things you see, the things you feel, the things you know to be true
Sure, some will doubt you. Let ‘em
Dare to think for yourself. To look for yourself. To make up your own mind
Because in the eternal debate for answers, the one thing that’s true, is what’s true for you

Notice how that last part—about the only thing that’s true is what’s true for you—That’s the complete opposite of what scientific skepticism and freethought pursue. Without science, we have no means to distinguish what is true from what we simply want to be true.

I posted this comment on a blog post “On Optimism” by Rebecca Watson in which she mentions Melody Hensley in a list of people who inspire her.

I received this response:

I’m not sure what was only semi-coherent about what I said. Near-libellous, gossip? Hensley speaks ill of other women, a fact.

I expressed all my thoughts and claims without vitriol or hyperbole. Why does Watson resort to ridiculous, immature insults, like this?

And then blocks me shortly after the malicious outburst. She ends with a bizarre tweet that implies I’m not a good or normal person.

What is going on? What has happened? How can people who work to promote reason and critical thinking act so ridiculous? This is irrational, divisive language. This comes from a woman who heads Skepchick, an org that speaks out against hate and bullying towards women online. A woman who dedicates an entire “page-o-hate” to the stupid, abusive comments she receives. But turns around and calls me the dumbest person on twitter.

What justification does Watson have for acting like an awful person, like this?

I can’t believe someone who calls themselves an artist would advocate making rules on how people express themselves using art. It made me angry! So I MADE ART in protest! GEEKY ART! (well, at least geeky enough that you’ve seen The Reichenbach Fall…)

Go ahead and make your own “fake” jewelry, because no one has the right to not be offended. (Especially at conferences centered around free-thought and critical thinking.)

Of course, this “Saramic” necklace is digital; but you still don’t need a kiln to make your own real fake!