Heina Dadabhoy speaks at the Atheist Community of Austin

At her pre-atheist-bat-cruise lecture, an ex-Muslim and atheist activist Heina Dadabhoy was rather critical of westerners stereotyping Muslim women. Her tone was gentle and playful, but the message was sharp.

Heina gave many examples of how Westerners like to fetishize Muslim women's presumed powerlessness and oppression. That doesn't really help the women, just like the memes that compare burqa-covered women with garbage bags don't either. It's not just conservatives: progressives do it too. And they should know better.

Western people like to not acknowledge that Muslim women have agency. It comes across in patronizing comments, such as when little old ladies would come up to Heina back when she wore a headscarf, and say "Dear, you know you don't have to wear that here." Heina was tempted to answer, "Here? Where else would I wear it? I haven't lived in any other country than US."

When she first got on the internet as an adolescent, and some men online found out that she was a Muslim, with a headscarf, trapped at home (I don't know if she meant that last part sarcastically or genuinely), they objectified her as an oppressed princess that needs to be saved. And there was an undercurrent of "you better be grateful and keep your bitch mouth shut". Heina pointed out that it happens in the atheist movement to, cough cough (I guess she meant Richard Dawkins, though he is not alone in that). She had people say to her: it's so great you left Islam! Are you still pure? Do you still have your headscarves? Can you wear one for me? The weirdos just keep coming out of the woodwork.

But Muslim women are not without agency, and Heina bristled against being portrayed as a helpless, isolated girl in need of rescue and liberation. Even as a teenager, growing up in a very strict fundamentalist environment, Heina and her friends found ways to have fun. For example, they used religious phrases to rate boys by hotness, e.g. "Look what the God has created!"

Heina Dadabhoy gives a lecture before the Atheist Community Austin bat cruise in September of 2015. More pictures from the 2015 Atheist Community of Austin bat cruise are in my photo gallery.

Heina pointed out that all societies have patriarchal structures oppressing women. While there is no "law" in the West that women should shave their legs, the societal pressure is there nevertheless; the fact that no one is going to throw you in jail for refusing can make this norm even harder to get rid of. Whether you think that the less clothing a woman is wearing the more immoral the country is, or the freer it is, it's the same thing: you define women's sexuality as only in relation to men.

Later in her speech she gave a bunch of trivia about Islamic rules that govern dating, sex, relationships, and marriage. Not surprisingly, most of them don't take women's wishes into account. Oh, and she assured us that the myth that "virgins" (as in 72 virgins that await a man in heaven) is mistranslated "raisins" is completely wrong. The guy who said that just didn't understand language. Speaking of which, what do women get when they get to heaven? Apparently, in some corner of Islamic mythology it is written that women will be reclining on couches, eating, and they will be served by beautiful clear-eyed servant boys. There is a lot of discussion between Muslim women to what extent those boys are used. "So there is kind of some forward thinking there," says Heina.

(I already forgot if all women were supposed to get these boy servants in heaven, or only particularly virtuous ones, or maybe just the ones who died as martyrs.)

Some people from the audience asked her how, with all the gender segregation, are you supposed to meet a person you're going to marry? She replied that it could be someone you met at a mosque, or it might be someone your parents knew all his or her life. There is also a lot of halal flirting going on in the hallways of Islamic association gatherings: "Can I have your dad's email?" Oh, and Islamic men and women who are unmarried are called boy and girl, even if they are in their 40s.

As a takeaway message, she said we should champion an attitude of female agency. We should not buy into Islam's erasure. We should not agree when Westerners say, oh, Islam women are oppressed and have no agency. The most important thing, the most pragmatic thing is harm reduction. We should not try to deconvert them all, its not going to happen. A person from the audience asked her for ideas on how to support progressive Islam. Heina replied: "For one thing, western people should not be smartass and condescending: 'ha ha, you are a Muslim feminist? How do you do that?' Progressive Muslims are eager to get involved, but nobody even notices that they exist." When Heina points out to someone that she is an ex-Muslim, someone inevitably tells her that all ex-Muslims are dead.

(People from the other side tell her she's been bought and paid for, but she is still waiting for that check.)

Parenting Beyond Belief: a Dale McGowan seminar

Dale McGowan gave a seminar "Parenting Beyond Belief", hosted by the Center For Inquiry in Austin on May 3, 2008. A lot of things he said were common sense advice for secular parenting. Expose your children to as many religions and myths as you can. Talk about baby Jesus in the same breath as about baby Hercules. Don't shield them from religious ideas, because if you do, some day in their teens they'll hit a confidence crisis and may be receptive to their peers' suggestion to seek help in Jesus. Let them hear all sorts of religious stories, so that no one religion will seem uniquely believable.

Interestingly, Dale McGowan is the second person (the first was Nica Lalli) who said that their kid, when told the story of birth of Jesus, said, wait, wait, I know this story -- God came down from above and put a baby in a woman -- that's Life of Brian! (Hmm. It makes me wonder if I'm showing my daughter the right movies. ;-))



Dale McGowan. More pictures from various Center For Inquiry events can be found in my photo gallery.

It must be said that despite exposing his children to all sorts of myths, there are two religious notions Dale McGowan does not give equal air time to: the concept of hell (because it has a potential to scare young children very badly), and demonization of doubt (as in, you are only a good person if you don't question authority). He says he wants his kids to develop these three things: an ability to think well (critical thinking), self confidence, and a deep love of reality. If they develop these 3 things, they probably won't seek comfort in the supernatural.

When his 9-year-old daughter came home from school and said three of her friends told her she's gonna burn in hell, his stomach sank. He asked the daughter, how did it make you feel? She said, bad, but also silly. She already thought burning in hell was unlikely. Exposure to many religious ideas over the years inoculated her against fear of hell.

So, common sense advice. But the way he says it is very entertaining. He has a ton of wonderful little phrases and anecdotes to illustrate his point.

Who will lay a blankie on my grave?

It is tradionally thought that it's the role of religion to address questions of death and morality.

Regarding death, Dale McGowan's position is this. If you want your child to develop a love of reality, you need them to consider the question of death. The fact that our life ends is the most profound fact of our existence, rivaled only by the idea that it begins. Engaging with this fact can lead with the most profound engagement with life. We need to talk with kids about death as if it is normal, which it is. A 150 years ago this wasn't a problem; all children were exposed to death. And children won't have trouble accepting the notion of death if they are told about it early, because we have a limitless ability to accept the weirdest things as normal, if they are presented to us in the daily life.

"Here's a strange thing we accept as normal, says Dale. "We emerge into the world from our mothers. My mother is visiting us in Atlanta right now. I'm having coffee with my portal to the world. And I think it's normal, whereas the whole time I should be..." (his jaw hits the floor in an exaggerated expression of astonishment).

"So when a young child asks "who will put my blankie on my grave when I die?" don't start bawling "you're not gonna die!" If you do, you are not respecting their question. And the 4-year-old was not even crying when she asked that question! She just wanted to know. So I assured her I'll be the one to do that."

Teaching kids morality the secular way

Then there is the concept of a child's moral development -- another area where religion is widely considered indispensable. Dale says questions of morality are no harder for atheist parents than for religious parents, simply because those questions are hard for everybody, including religious people. It's just that secular parents have a different set of tools for addressing those questions.

We know a lot about moral development, says Dale. No matter whether kids go to church or don't, most kids reliably hit the salient points of moral understanding at about the same age. There are small exceptions for children who had experienced childhood neglect, such as in orphanages. In those cases they reach that understanding later, but not by much.

There is one exception. If kids are raised in an authoritarian moral situation -- if they are told to act a certain way because mom or dad says so, God says so, police says so -- it impedes their moral development. So instead of appealing to an authority such as God, you teach the child about consequences of their immoral behavior. For example, when his 6-year-old hit a lying phase (which happens when children develop a "theory of the mind" and suddenly realize that other people may not necessarily know everything, so it's possible to lie to them!) he asked her: you know why is lying bad? Because next time I won't trust you. Next time she said she washed her hands, he said, but you lied to me yesterday, so now I'll have to check.

Also, according to development psychologists, it is important to tie identity to morality, says Dale. So you tell children: I know you are an honest person, and your lying doesn't make any sense, it's out of character for you. Children become protective of who they are. If they self-identify as an honest person, they don't want to violate the sense of what they are.

There were many more things he said, which I have to omit, because I didn't take very thorough notes. He seasoned his talk with many funny personal stories. It all made for a memorable seminar.

Richard Dawkins at UT Austin

I have updated this blog post with correct link to an article on my new website.

On March 19, 2008 Richard Dawkins gave a public lecture at the University of Texas in Austin; it was preceded by a reception hosted by the Center of Inquiry Austin. Though I didn't have a chance to exchange more than a few sentences with Dawkins at the reception, I formed some kind of impression of him as a person.

Dawkins speaks in very well-turned phrases: complete, spare, witty -- pretty much the way he writes. He speaks that way even when he extemporizes, for example when answering questions. No meaningless interjections such as uh's, um's or like's, no trailing thoughts. But, while this may make him seem old-fashioned, his prowess with technology overturns that impression. At the Center Of Inquiry reception he seamlessly combined socializing with working his iPhone and MacBook; for a moment that made me feel validated, as I too like to tap on a keyboard while socializing (but perhaps a VIP is exempt from the gander/goose comparison :-)); later I realized he wasn't idly surfing; he was looking up the Texas Bill of Rights for a quote to include in his speech. How did he quote it in his presentation? You can read about it in this Susan Brown's blog post.

Later a UT student asked him a question: why hasn't the freethought community organized to create a response to the creationist movie "Expelled" -- for example, by raising money and making a movie debunking "Expelled"? Dawkins responded that making an "official" movie and trying to get it into theaters might not be the most effective way. These days, with everyone having a video camera, any one person can make such a movie, and the best way to distribute it might be simply by posting it on YouTube. There it may get more views than it would in movie theaters.

Yay for the older generation scientists who know how to leverage internet for political change!

An entire report on this event can be found on my SFragments web site. Here are some of the highlights (all the links point to various parts of the same article).

I found Dawkins' lecture topics familiar, even though I haven't read his books where he expounds on them. I guess I've absorbed his ideas by osmosis. The questions the audience asked revolved around whether atheists should adopt an in-your-face or a conciliatory tone with general public; some of the questions were more unusual. (Would you ask a well-known skeptic to support his reasoning with astrology? :-)) Then someone asked what Dawkins thinks of transhumanist visions. Finally, a concept he wanted us to take away from this lecture, if it was the only thing we would take away: why evolution is NOT equal to random chance.

Pictures from the reception and the lecture can be found in my photo gallery

I could have sworn I was reading "The Onion"...

if I didn't know this was ABC news:

Because the Bible Tells Me So? During Private Museum Tours, Denver Children Learn About Creationism

A company called BC Tours ("BC" stands for Biblically Correct) "take paying customers on tours of such places as the Denver Museum, the zoo, and fossil sites, giving an explanation of nature, biology and paleontology with a strictly Biblical interpretation."

Here are some examples of how they "interpret" paleontological evidence:

"Standing in the lobby of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Bill Jack and Rusty Carter pointed to the enormous teeth on the reproduced skeleton of a Tyrannosaurs Rex, and told a group of children and their parents that the fearsome T-Rex was really a vegetarian.

They said the T-Rex was vegetarian because at the time of the Creation, there was no such thing as death, so a T-Rex could not have eaten meat. There was no death until Adam and Eve ate forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, they continued, and God's revenge was to curse the world with death."

And this is how they dance around some uncomfortable evidence:

Out on the museum floor, Jack and Carter stopped the group in front of a window display that contains samples of sandstone that have ripples created by water and fossils of ancient life. Bill Jack asked his group, "How do they date the fossil? By the layer in which they find it. They date the layer by the fossil and the fossil by the layer," he said. "That's circular reasoning."

In the next moment he stepped past and turned his back to a display on radiometric dating, the method by which scientists determine the age of rocks through the rate of decay of their natural radioactivity.

When later asked why he skipped the display, Jack said simply, "We can't cover everything."

And to think that I was shaking my head when one fellow CFI'er told me what her creationist sister-in-law does when she takes her children to a natural history museum. Faced with dinosaur exhibits, she covers the explanatory plaque with her hands and says to kids: "oh look, dinosaurs! They are only 3000 years old!" She couldn't hold a candle to Jack and Carter. :-)

It's kind of ironic that I found this article today. Just yesterday I went to a public lecture by Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionary biologist and science popularizer. (I'll blog about a meeting with Dawkins later, when I organize my pictures.) I had to read this article to as not to get too comfortable in an illusion that reason will eventually triumph... :-)

Nica Lalli at the CFI Austin, March 15, 2008

Nica Lalli, author of "Nothing: Something to Believe In" met with the people of the Center For Inquiry Austin for a discussion on raising children without religion in a predominantly religious society. The meeting took place at a Unitarian Universalist church in Austin. Here are a few memorable quotes from the discussion.

"Your children will get religious education from their classmates. They will also get sex education from their classmates," said Nica Lalli. "[And they'll hear all sorts of wrong things.] If what learn from their classmates about sex is any indication, children need to get religious education from us [parents]."

When her daughter heard the story of Jesus' virgin birth, she said: oh wait, there is another story like that! uh... umm... Life of Brian!

Nica Lalli at CFI Austin, March 15, 2008.

At some point someone wondered what do young-Earth creationist parents do when they take children to a natural science museum, and are faced with dinosaur exhibits? One woman said her sister-in-law covers the explanatory plaque with her hands and tells children: oh look, these are dinosaurs. They are 3000 years old!

While adults had their conversation, children played in the UU church playground under the supervision of babysitters. Later that evening we took Nica Lalli out for dinner at the County Line barbeque restaurant.

"Infinity does not exist in our dimension"

A bunch of the ACA'ers went on a pub crawl last Friday. The crawl started out at Dog & Duck pub, the home of the ACA'ers happy hours; then we went on to 6th street. On the way there we were approached by folks who were handing out fake million dollar bills. It was some kind of Christian evangelist thing. Along the edge of a "bill" in small print there were questions such as "will you go to heaven"? Since most of us wore "Godless pub crawl: pubs, not popes" T-shirts made for this occasion, we must have been a tempting target for evangelists, and there seem to be quite a few of them hunting for souls to save in the nightlife district on a Friday night.

On the way to 6th street, the next destination in the pub crawl, some people felt they had to pose in front of a church. For irony's sake. Left to right: Justin, Matt and John.

Not surprisingly, two of them got into an argument with Matt, the then-president of the ACA. One of those guys told Matt he would prove there is a God in 30 seconds flat. Needless to say, their argument lasted a lot longer, and most of the ACA'ers got bored and wandered off to our next stop, the Darwin pub (no connection to Charles Darwin that I could tell!) It became tedious quickly, but not before I had a chance to hear this gem of an argument. The evangelist attempted to argue from the "first cause", to which Matt replied: if everything must have a cause, then who created God? The evangelist guy said, God doesn't have to have a cause or creator, he always existed. Matt said something along the lines of, you can't simply dismiss a question of whether God has a cause; just like it is meaningful to ask that question about anything else, it is also meaningful to ask it about God; you can't just arbitrarily declare that God has no cause. Matt tried to explain it by analogy: no matter how big a number you can think of, you can also imagine an even greater number, and so on all the way to infinity. The evangelist guy somehow felt existence of infinities threatened his beliefs. He said, no, I don't have to (imagine an even bigger number). I can stop any time. Infinity does not exist in our dimension, he added.

That last remark floored me. I blame science fiction. Seriously. I blame popular sci-fi shows and movies for putting terms like "infinity" and "dimension" into the vocabulary of people who cannot grasp these very simple and intuitive mathematical concepts. But that doesn't stop them from using them in a debate!

After the Darwin pub all the ACA'ers went on to their next stop, but I decided to save my liver and go home.