Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

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Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Dardedar »

This is the first response of two (so far) to Steve Worden. Our response to his second article can be read here. There will be a third.

Last week a friend passed along an article published on April 15 in a little paper out of West Fork, the Washington County Observer. The article was written by Dr. Steve Worden, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the U. of A. He wrote it in response to the billboard which was put up along the bypass by local freethinker groups with funds from the National Coalition of Reason. He titled his article:

"The Billboard: A Beacon for Big Foot?"

As co-founder of the Fayetteville Freethinkers, the largest and oldest freethinker group in Northwest Arkansas, and the spokesperson for our local billboard campaign with the Coalition of Reason, I thought it might be useful point out a few of the errors in Dr. Worden's article.

He begins by referring to "recent surveys" which claim: "...the 'irreligious,' compared to conservative Protestants, are far more likely to believe in astrologers, fortune-tellers, the Loch Ness Monster, and Bigfoot."

Perhaps Dr. Worden's survey was taken at a New Age convention. Those who believe in the things he mentions may consider themselves "irreligious" in the sense that they are outside normative Christianity but he should be careful not confuse them with our local freethinker groups, which are, without exception, devoted to using and teaching critical thinking skills for the specific purpose of debunking all of the examples of gullibility to which he refers.

It would be funny if it weren’t a little sad that Dr. Worden is so misinformed about this issue that he tries to accuse the very same skeptic groups that actively work to help educate people about the irrationality of believing in Bigfoot, with, actually believing in Bigfoot.

About ten years ago, when our local TV media was breathlessly providing report after report on local Bigfoot sightings, (predictably, the more you report, the more sightings you have) I contacted our local TV station and told them that the Fayetteville Freethinkers would offer a reward of $50,000 to anyone who could bring Bigfoot in, dead or alive. We did this as part of our regular education campaign to teach people to think critically about such nonsense. We also did it to show how confident we were that there is not an undiscovered hominid sneaking around North America.
Ironically, every one of the fringe beliefs Dr. Worden mistakenly tries to apply to us, has been specifically debunked by our group in presentations at our public meetings, in material we hand out at our annual Springfest booth, at our website and forum, on our TV shows on local cable access and on radio shows we have aired on our local NPR affiliate, KUAF. Is there any other local group that has worked this hard in the last 12 years to teach critical thinking about such matters? I don't think so.

Dr. Worden surmises: "...apparently religion tends to make people less gullible rather than more gullible, in terms of werewolves and leprechauns."

Certainly belief in werewolves and leprechauns could be believed only by the gullible, but are such claims really more bizarre than what religious people are routinely taught in one third to one half of American churches? The evangelicals and fundamentalists who take their Bible at its word are taught to believe in the reality of witches (Exod. 22:18), talking animals (Num 22:27), demon possessed people and pigs (Luke 8:26-39) and even a pack of zombies who rise from their tombs and walk around town (Matt 27:52-53). While the religious people to whom Dr. Worden refers may select which bizarre claims they are going to be gullible about, we freethinkers are more consistent in that we treat them all with equal suspicion.

It's also worth noting that the American Religious Identification Survey, the most comprehensive survey of American religious beliefs, shows that the irreligious are less likely than Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Black Protestants, and "Other" to believe in the paranormal. Dr. Worden does not cite a survey, but considering this, perhaps he can explain how church steeples are not a more likely beacon for Bigfoot. (Link: http://www.isreligion.org/research/surv ... _piety.pdf)

Referring to some unreferenced survey Mr. Worden continues: "...only 4% of all respondents identify themselves as atheist. This statistic hasn't changed in the last 70 years."

Dr. Worden should be careful to not confuse the small number of people who choose to go by the narrow and much maligned title "atheist" with the much larger group of people who choose a more broad and affirmative label such as freethinker. If he had done a little checking, he would have noticed that none of the local groups involved with this billboard campaign consider themselves "atheist." They are all freethinkers and clearly say so in their titles. You can see a list of seven of these local freethought groups here: http://nwa.unitedcor.org/node/7

What's the difference between atheism and freethought? Atheist simply means "not theist" ("a" comes from the Greek meaning "not"). That isn't much to form a group around, although some have tried. I don't drink Diet Coke but that doesn't mean I want to join a club of people defined only by the fact that they don't drink Diet Coke. In contrast, freethought is a positive, affirming approach. Freethinkers do their best to form their beliefs about religion based upon reason and rational thought, specifically without appeals to faith. They work to do this independently of authority, tradition, or the established beliefs of the society around them. Freethinking is not about having a particular belief, but rather about reasoning and considering the best methods of obtaining your beliefs.

As a result, while we have many members who may be agnostic and others who believe in God, probably most of them don't believe in God. We're really not very concerned about it. If we were, we would take a poll. Maybe we’ll do that some day.

In reality, our freethinker group more closely aligns with the "no religion" category. Has this category had much change in the "last 70 years?" Yes it has, and Dr. Worden must know it has. Consider that in 1968, Gallup found 3% of Americans had “no religious preference.” By 1990, this percentage grew to 8% (14 million people). In 2001, the American Religious Identification Survey found that 14%, more than 29 million adults, did not identify with any religion (Link: http://tinyurl.com/6bmavw). The extensive "Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life" survey finds 16.1% in the "unaffiliated" category. (Link: http://religions.pewforum.org/reports)

So, we find that this growing group now outnumbers the membership of Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans combined, making it America’s second-largest life stance. That is indeed a change.

Dr. Worden continues:
"supposedly atheistic Europe" [is more] "unchurched rather than atheistic." He cites a "World Values Survey" (2002) which finds: "only 5% of Norwegians claimed to be atheistic; in Sweden: 6%, Germany 7%..."

Is this true? Again, we see the simple mistake of confusing those who embrace the title “atheist,” with those who may choose to use a different title even though they don't believe in God. What matters on the God question is whether the people in question believe in God, not what label they prefer.

Sweden and Germany typically rank very high in lists of nations lacking a belief in God, so if these countries have unbelievers only in the single digits, then Mr. Worden has a powerful point indeed. But he doesn't have a powerful point, he's just plain wrong.

According to the Eurobarometer, (a standard source of statistics regularly published on behalf of the European Commission), only 23% of Swedish citizens responded that "they believe there is a God." This means that the great majority of Swedes, 77 percent, whether they like to call themselves atheist, agnostic, freethinkers, free spirits or whatever, chose to not to affirm they "believe there is a God."

Germany and Norway are very secular like Sweden. According to the same Eurobarometer poll, (2005) only 47% of German citizens responded that "they believe there is a God." In Norway only 32% affirm that "they believe there is a God." So, in Mr. Worden's example countries we see majorities who chose NOT to take the "believe in God" option. I doubt that many in this group are interested enough in the subject to call themselves "atheist" but that doesn't matter in the least. What matters is the belief, not the popular label. Incidentally, Germany is very similar to the rest of Europe in this regard. Only 52% of citizens in the entire European Union choose the "believe in God" option.

http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/arch ... ort_en.pdf

Dr. Worden claims: "...statistics show that nearly all Europeans believe in God."

It's astonishing that Professor Worden could be so profoundly misinformed about this topic. If his claim that "nearly all Europeans believe in God" were true one is left to wonder why, when asked, only 52% of Europeans choose to say they believe in God. To be sure, the word "God" is a nearly vacuous term, and the poll I cite above has a considerable percentage of those who say, while they don't believe in God, they still believe in some kind of "spirit or life force." But even if we set that group aside we still have large percentages who broadly affirm that they “do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force." It doesn't get any more hardcore non-theist than that. In Germany this is 25% of the population. In Sweden it's 23%, in Norway it's 17% (other countries are higher). The data is all lined up nicely in the chart here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_i ... pean_Union

Dr. Worden continues:

"religious people have a higher probability of living longer and happier" and are "less likely to be involved with crime, drugs and alcohol..."

This is a favorite canard used against nonreligious people. When religion can't be sold on the strength of its ideas, on the plausibility of its faith-based claims, it is suggested we should consider signing up for reasons that have nothing to do with whether its claims are actually true. We are told that even if we don't like the main course, perhaps we should join up for some of these “side benefits.” This may include something like an increased likelihood that we will have shinier teeth, taller children, and tidier houses.

While it may be true that Mormons go to bed earlier, drink less coffee and have nicer breath, critical thinkers will notice that claims like these are all completely irrelevant to the truth of their religious claims. Our job as Freethinkers is to give careful scrutiny to the actual veracity of those claims, and to teach others how to do this. The Fayetteville Freethinkers have never promised to increase your longevity or make you taller and better looking. What we do offer is lessons in skeptical scrutiny, which as Carl Sagan once said: "...is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

Incidentally, these supposed side benefits are mostly false anyway. New studies, now specifically of non-believers, show that it is not belief or lack of belief in a god that tends to produce these benefits but rather the strength of belief. It seems that people with strong convictions manifest many of these side benefits, regardless of their position on God or other religious matters.
(Tom Flynn has an excellent article explaining this survey bias in the Oct/Nov 2009 issue of Free Inquiry, pg. 14)

Dr. Worden: "...don't expect big crowds at these [freethinker] meetings, because atheists are not 'joiners.'"

We started the Fayetteville Freethinkers in 1998 with three people. Now we have over 360 on our list and the billboard campaign helped to add a couple dozen. We are one of seven freethinker groups in the area (I don’t know of any atheist groups). Generally, 40-60 attend our meetings, which is pretty good considering there are many local churches with large buildings and budgets that wish they could have that many show up. Also, we have all of this interest without any appeals to a fear of hell or reward of heaven. If we grow much more we may need to break down and buy an abandoned church. That would be almost as ironic as some of the errors in Dr. Worden's article.

Darrel Henschell

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tim.lovett

rebuttal to worden article

Post by tim.lovett »

Darrel, that was an excellent rebuttal to the Worden article. any change that little paper would run your rebuttal?
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Re: rebuttal to worden article

Post by Dardedar »

tim.lovett wrote:Darrel, that was an excellent rebuttal to the Worden article. any change that little paper would run your rebuttal?
DAR
I certainly hope so but doubt they would run it as it is. I think Worden is a regular columnist for them (I've never heard of this little paper out of Westfork) and this is obviously strongly aimed at Worden's credibility. I will send them a copy and ask if they are open to publishing it, even a shortened edited down version.

D.
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by SherryH »

I'll always leave the 'heavy-lifting' of scholarly rebuttals to the Dougs, Darrels, Mikes, and other brilliant minds of our group - I'm just not qualified or confident of my abilities in those rarified areas. Sometimes, however, I do employ my smarty-pants commmoner's mouth (remember that brouhaha I had here on the forum with Hogeye a few years ago, Sav? :D ) in defense of freethinking and atheism. So I carefully read over Darrel's post about Dr. Worden's op/ed, "The Billboard: A Beacon for Big Foot?", then did a little research on Dr. Worden himself - trying to understand why an academic/scientist would produce such a steaming pile of misleading nonsense. I sent the following email to his UARK address yesterday:

"Dr. Worden,

Frankly, your credentials as an educator and scientist should be yanked. Surely you KNOW better - and yet you just couldn't stop yourself, could you? Your personal beliefs apparently got in the way of facts and objectivity, and you wrote an op/ed piece that was chock-full of distortions and utter nonsense . . . if not outright lies. You also failed to satisfactorily support your conclusions.

For shame, sir.

Sincerely,
Xxxxx and Xxxxxx X. Xxxxxxx
Springfield, Missouri"



I received a very brief (exactly as written) reply this morning:

"thank you.

SW"


Hmmm . . . :? . . . weird.
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Savonarola »

SherryH wrote:Hmmm . . . :? . . . weird.
His response to Darrel's article was very short and snarky as well. I can't help but wonder if he's planning a follow-up article in which he'll tell about how we uppity atheists had the gall to question a degreed professional like him and make him feel bad. (You know the drill: flame bait those you hate, then attack regardless of how civil the response was.) As we've seen that truth and reality are no hindrance to his writing, it could be interesting what would come out in such an article.
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Dardedar »

Now be nice folks. Mr. Worden wrote in his three sentence response to me that he had heard from some of our "members" and I was thinking... uh oh, I hope they've been behaving themselves.

A nice fellow from the Washington Co. Observer called me this morning and said they had received my rebuttal and said something about it being well put together (I don't remember exactly, I was driving). He said they would be open to printing an edited down version of it in their LTE section but didn't want to do the editing. Understandable. At around 2,000 words it is obviously very long. He said about 500 words would be workable so I'll shorten and revise and chop three fourths of it. I can get the job done in 500 words. We also had a little chat about possibly having some regular freethinker articles/columns in their paper. I didn't mention this but perhaps we could run an ad or two for our group. We have the money and this would go along nicely with our published letter. He also made a point of noting that Dr. Worden's opinion column (religious section) did not necessarily reflect the opinion of their paper which he pointed out is perhaps the last independent paper in the area (all of the others being owned by the same company). Duly noted.

He says Marvin's IGA on La Fayette has a box where copies of their paper are available.

D.
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Savonarola »

Darrel wrote:Now be nice folks. Mr. Worden wrote in his three sentence response to me that he had heard from some of our "members" and I was thinking... uh oh, I hope they've been behaving themselves.
Don't worry; I'm pretty confident that the vitriol spewed by the average Christian in response to dissent is much, much worse than the vitriol spewed by the average freethinker in response to disinformation, even though it ought to be the other way around.
Darrel wrote:He said about 500 words would be workable so I'll shorten and revise and chop three fourths of it. I can get the job done in 500 words.
Sounds standard. Can I recommend using bit.ly or tinyurl to make a very easy, non-intimidating link to the full version on the forum so that readers can easily check out the original with only a few keystrokes?
Darrel wrote:We also had a little chat about possibly having some regular freethinker articles/columns in their paper.
It would be awesome if you could follow up on this. If I had some guidelines (mainly word count), I'd start working on some in my spare time.
Darrel wrote:I didn't mention this but perhaps we could run an ad or two for our group. We have the money and this would go along nicely with our published letter.
I like this idea better than trying to bring in a speaker.
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Dardedar »

Savonarola wrote: make a very easy, non-intimidating link to the full version on the forum
DAR
Yep, planned on it. Already asked about links.
SAV
It would be awesome if you could follow up on this. [column idea]
DAR
I plan to.
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Bad Earl »

Worden's response appeared today in theJuly 15 edition of the Washington County Observer. It is unbelievable. I looked up the Gallup poll which he seems to be hanging his hat on ("Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal"). It is the 2005 poll, and my google search linked it to sandiego dot edu

This poll says that three out of four Americans hold some kind of belief in the paranormal, and that Christians are more likely than non-Christians (75 percent versus 66 percent) to hold some paranormal view. Of course, they excluded belief in biblical magic in the definition of paranormal (talking snakes, etc.)

It is ironic that the article begins by quoting George Carlin, who was an atheist, and liked to ridicule those who believe in "an invisible man who lives in the sky"

I hope you will respond to this latest article, which is shown as an op-ed.

Sincerely,

Bad Earl
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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Bad Earl »

I don't know if my post yesterday got through. Just to recap: This week's Washington County Observer (July 18) has an Op-Ed by Worden, in response to Darrell's well-written letter. Worden's diatribe is so dishonest it makes my head want to explode. He claims a 2005 Gallup poll proves that non-religious people are more likely to believe in astrology, etc. The poll he relies on is called: "Three Quarters of Americans Believe in Paranormal". The survey states that Christians are more likely (75 percent) than non-Christians (66 percent) to believe in some form of paranormal activity. This directly contradicts Worden's assertion. I hope you will respond to this load of bullcrap. The Gallup poll link I found was through sandiego dot edu.

Sincerely, Bad Earl
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Dardedar »

Thanks for the heads up Bad Earl. I'll pick up a copy today and post the text in this thread this evening. If Dr. Worden want's to continue the tango, we'll show him how to begin.

UPDATE (8:00 pm):

Okay, we have a copy. And you're right Mr. Earl, it's even worse than his original. He has made some truly astounding and most elementary blunders which could have been avoided had the professor taken a moment to do a little homework. Watch for a thorough rebuttal which will be along shortly. If Dr. Worden enjoys being "taken to the woodshed" (his correct characterization of our first rebuttal) then we will surely indulge him again with our gentle corrections. Maybe he'll learn that when you poke freethinkers, freethinkers poke back.

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Re: Religious News/Quotes of the Day

Post by Dardedar »

Bad Earl wrote: Worden's diatribe is so dishonest it makes my head want to explode.
DAR
It really is a sight to behold. Worden, apparently incapable of responding to my points, simply recycles his same false assertions and then adds a few new ones on the pile. He's so desperate he's making a fool of himself by throwing everything including the kitchen sink at us. When we're not trying to attract Big Foot with our threatening billboard (with seven words on it) we're communists? Anyway, Doug has a response ready to go. Worden is an intellectual embarrassment.

D.
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Dardedar »

From the mailbag, email responses to this first rebuttal to Steve Worden:
Wow. I was a sociology/psychology double major in undergrad & am now a PhD student in psychology. Both of these fields require heavy research, with particular attention to solid scientific research methods. Considering my history in these areas, I am just dumbfounded......disgusted even......that a sociology professor would propagate such nonsense & inaccuracies....& would use such terrible science (like the poor operationalization of terms, such as "nonreligious")! It weakens any faith (....<ahem>....) I potentially had in [a certain school's] sociology department. I'm going to have to look now to see if other professors in [my] department study religion (in hopes of some balance & good science). I read once (I don't remember where & am too lazy at the moment to look it up) that of all science fields, those in the social sciences had the lowest rate of belief in the supernatural. (This made sense to me based on the content of what I was learning & was bolstered by all of the nonbelief I've witnessed in the psych & soc departments at my undergrad university [U of... snip]. That makes it especially jolting that this letter would come from a sociology professor. Then again, it's possible that the desperation that drives a professor to employ such poor scientific methods is partially influenced by him desperately & defensively clinging to religious straws....in a department where his belief is in the minority. Whatever. So...this is a long, round-about way of saying that I hope like hell that you send your letter directly to Dr. Worden as well....not just the newspaper.
DAR
He received his own personal copy along with an explanation of how widely we were distributing it (webpage, forum, email to 360+, facebook, other freethought forums etc.)

...
When Henschell & Krueger focus it's a joy to read. That prof. will think twice before tangling you two again, and maybe even abandon public debates.

To Marin Gardner!
...
a KEEPER

darrel, an awesome response to dr. worden!!!!!!!!!! [... and I] are very proud of you! will this get into the op-ed section of the wash. co. observer? if it does, please let us know... you're dead on about europe's religiosity. we spent a week last summer with a top dog (german) at the european union and he barely knows anyone at all who is religious. he's a free-thinking scientist (PhD, crystal chemistry) whose whole family is the same way - and they're all brilliant.
we'll miss not having a july meeting. we enjoyed the june one. i don't know when you left [dinner] but we kept going until nine! we're making the best friends! thanks again for your hard work.
...
I looked around [for Worden's article], this is about the only thing I found, other than Worden's page at the UofA which was underwhelming.

These ratings really stink.

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRat ... 792&page=1
...
"The statements made in that article are just bizarre. How does one become a professor of anything using such sloppy (non existent) research skills? Has he even met one of us in his life? That said, the response was excellent! Good job!"
...
Maybe Worden ought to grant freethinkers the "social margin" of having a First Amendment-protected billboard in exchange for our "more pleasant" traits of not torturing and killing people who don't agree with us and not flying planes into buildings.

... Actually, not quite. As I said when I gave Darrel feedback on the article: we haven't *had to do* anything to deserve a billboard. We can have one because we live in a country that is supposed to protect us from persecution by blowhards like Worden.
...
Wow! Fabulous work. Fun to read. What a spokesman you are for Freethinkers.
...
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Re: Fayfreethinkers Respond to Distortions about our Group

Post by Savonarola »

Darrel wrote:
an emailer wrote:I read once (I don't remember where & am too lazy at the moment to look it up) that of all science fields, those in the social sciences had the lowest rate of belief in the supernatural.
I'd like to see this source. I would think that the natural sciences would tend to attract more non-believers than social sciences.
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