It's July and it's hot but it's about to get hotter. Just because we won't have a meeting this month doesn't mean we aren't doing a little butt kicking in the background. Darrel has returned from (probably) the largest skeptic conference in the world (The Amazing Meeting - Eight) only to find the same local columnist, Steve Worden, smearing our group with, as one of our university professor founders put it, "a pile of incontinent goo." It really is some nasty stuff.
Make some popcorn, pour a tall glass of ice tea and enjoy these rebuttals. First is Doug's shorter and more formal response (which the paper has so far declined to print) and following this find Darrel's longer and more through roast of Dr. Steve Worden's claims.
This is will be distributed widely, posted in our forum, facebook, websites etc.,. Feel free to send us your thoughts or post a response in our freethinker forum here.
See you at our August 28 meeting!
D.
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p.s. Steve Worden has not responded to our request (see below) that copies of his column be allowed to be distributed or made available online.
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Doug Krueger's response:
Steven Worden’s rhetoric-laden Op-Ed articles from 4/15 and 7/15 claim that lack of religious belief makes one much more likely to believe in the paranormal, and that since the local skeptics group, the Fayetteville Freethinkers, are not religious, they are likely to believe in Bigfoot, astrology, etc. I am a co-founder of the Fayetteville Freethinkers. We strongly promote disbelief in Bigfoot and the paranormal.
Why is Worden so wrong? He cites a 2005 Gallup survey as his evidence. But page 45 of that study, “American Piety in the 21st Century,” shows that those without religion have less belief in the paranormal than the average religious believer, not more. So when Worden says that that the irreligious are much more likely than the religious to believe in the paranormal, he’s wildly inaccurate.
Worden’s field is sociology. Interpreting sociological data is his bread-and-butter. He should know better. So is Worden intentionally misrepresenting the study?
Worden also promotes the falsehood that all freethinkers are atheists. They aren’t. Does he do this to capitalize on the stigma of the word “atheist”? Church authorities have spent millennia spreading fear of atheism, so the word “atheist” has many negative, false connotations. In fact, Worden appeals to
stereotype, suggesting that the Fayetteville Freethinkers are communists because many of us are atheists. But saying that since all communists are atheists that therefore all atheists are communists is like saying that since all Arkansans are human therefore all humans are Arkansans. It’s absurd. (And not all
communists are atheists anyway.) The number of American atheists that are communists is miniscule. Worden has no idea what he’s talking about here. And he’s a sociologist?
Worden also misunderstands surveys on levels of nonbelief in Europe. He pretends that the number of atheists in Scandanavia and England is in the low single-digits. This is false. In “Atheism: Contemporary numbers and patterns,” (2007) Phil Zuckerman writes “even when people directly claim to not believe in God, they still eschew the self-designation of ‘atheist.’” Questions without the buzzword “atheist” show high levels of European nonbelief in God―Sweden: 64%, Denmark: 48%, France: 44%, Germany: 42%, England: 39%. So one can’t rely on the single word “atheist” to interpret results, as Worden does. Zuckerman
also cautions that when citing studies, “response rates of lower than 50 percent cannot be generalized to the wider society.” The Gallup study Worden favors has a response rate of less than 50%.
But paranormal belief and nonbelief? Several studies show a correlation between belief in religion and in the paranormal: the more of one, the more of the other (Buhrmann & Zaugg, 1983; Orenstein, 2002; Thalbourne & Hensley, 2001).
Worden should reexamine his methodology and use multiple sources for his research. In fact, I invite Worden to attend one of our Fayetteville Freethinker meetings and interview freethinkers personally. This might lead to his writing having more accurate claims, fewer falsehoods, and may improve his understanding of why freethinkers are less likely to believe in the paranormal than religious believers.
Doug Krueger
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Darrel's response:
In his July 15 column, Dr. Worden again devotes about a thousand words in the Washington County Observer to attack our local freethinker groups. He admits we “took him out to the woodshed” the last time he did this, but apparently that wasn’t enough, and he would like to a return trip with our Truth Paddle of No Mercy. We are happy to accommodate him.
Incredibly, Dr. Worden is still trying to sustain the ridiculous notion that "irreligion is positively associated with belief in UFO's and Big Foot" and that this would have something to do with our local freethinker groups. As we gently pointed out last time, the Fayetteville Freethinkers are a skeptics group founded for the express purpose of teaching people to think critically about such claims. Dr. Worden insists that his claim is "plain old scientific evidence" which trumps our first hand knowledge of our own group. Rather than admit his error, he doubles down and again refers to a "Gallup survey of a national sample of 1,721 carried out in 2005." We freethinkers love scientific evidence so we'll take a look at Worden's reference with a little skeptical scrutiny.
It turns out his main claim fails in at least four different ways. It's not easy to be that completely wrong, but - do remember - Dr. Worden is a professional. He misrepresents the data, his reference actually does more to refute his main claim than support it, he relies upon a special self-serving definition of paranormal for the purpose of shielding religion, and if that weren’t enough, his study isn't really a scientific poll anyway.
Let's start at the top. Worden claims "atheists are much more likely than church members to believe in... UFOs, Big Foot, astrology, [etc]..." Much more likely? Even if we were to believe his reference (which doesn't even reference "atheists" or “freethinkers” for this claim) we find that on page 45 of this study, “American Piety in the 21st Century,” those who have no religion (“Nones”) have less paranormal belief than Catholics, Black Protestants, Mainline Protestants, and “Other.” In this "study" there are two categories of believers, fundamentalist Christians and Jews, who had a slightly lower rate of paranormal belief than the “Nones” but the difference was less than 2%. That's less than the error range of his reference (4%). This is the thin reed upon which Worden rests his claim that “atheists” are "much more likely” than church members to believe. Worden is misrepresenting his own reference which says nothing about freethinkers anyway!
The purpose of Worden's exercise here is to somehow defend his pet belief that finds irony in the notion that fundamentalists might be less gullible than the non-religious. If this seems counterintuitive, it should. This is because the claim is false. Even if we were to accept the credibility of his poll (and we don't), it relies upon giving special consideration to religion and asks that we not consider the beliefs of Bible believing fundamentalists to be "paranormal." Does this make sense? Last time, I gave Worden four examples of bizarre and paranormal claims in the Bible (out of hundreds) which included talking animals, demonized pigs and the zombies of Matthew 27:52. Worden would like to exempt these paranormal beliefs because they are sacred or based upon faith. Worden doesn’t know freethinkers very well, it seems. Refusing to give free pass to claims made under the guise of religion or ‘faith’ is what we do. It’s right there in the definition of freethinker (see dictionary). If you want to believe that putting a drop of goats blood on your right big toe cures leprosy (Leviticus 14), or that laying sticks in front of a pregnant animal can change the color of its offspring (Genesis 30:37), or that sticks can turn into snakes and vice versa (Exod. 4:2-4), and that the Sun can go backward in the sky (Isaiah 38:8), knock yourself out… but don’t expect critical thinkers NOT to put these things in the paranormal category just because they are found in an ancient anonymous book and hide under the banner of religious tradition.
Incidentally, we have a perfect example of this in Dr. Worden’s July 22 column. He tells us how he went to a “Holy Ghost Revival” where they “worked wonders,” had “laying on of hands” and “performed healings.” And it worked! He says his “shoulder does feel better.” Why, that doesn't sound paranormal at all does it? Perhaps Dr. Worden is not the best person to look to for advice about gullibility.
Now let’s look at his survey. Do we have any reason to even take his reference seriously in the first place? No. As published by the Skeptic Dictionary Newsletter in 2006:
“The Baylor Religion Survey
The folks at Baylor University call it "the most extensive and sensitive study of religion ever conducted....It plumbs all facets of American religion and spirituality in depth - nearly 400 items cover such matters as religious beliefs and practices, including religious consumerism, as well as nonstandard beliefs (astrology, "Bigfoot," alien visitors, etc.) and practices (meditation, New Age therapies, etc)....the Baylor Religion Survey is a nationally representative survey of 1,721 respondents." The latter is not strictly true, which is scandalous for a religious institution doing a survey on religion.
The study was conducted by the Gallup Organization from October 8, 2005 to December 12, 2005, for the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. It was funded by the John M. Templeton Foundation. It is true that the survey had 1,721 respondents. It also claims to have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. Gallup recruited potential respondents through a nationwide random digit dialing telephone survey. 3,702 potential respondents were contacted and 1,721 returned completed surveys (46.5% participation). Thus, it is inaccurate to claim that this is a "nationally representative survey of 1,721 respondents." A randomly selected nationwide sample of 1,721 people would probably be representative with a margin of sampling error of under plus or minus 3%. The sample in this survey is a self-selected sample. Whether there were 3,702 or 30,000,000 potential respondents is irrelevant to the issue of representativeness. Gallup calls this a mixed-mode sampling design. I call it a waste of time. Such a method might have value in some situations, but I don't think this is one of them. It does not give us reliable data from which we can confidently infer what people believe.
...If this is what passes for science today at Baylor University, then God help us all."
Let's review. Worden doesn't represent the claims of his source correctly, the data in question doesn’t refer to “freethinkers” or “atheists.” The study actually refutes his own poorly defined claim, and in the end we find his source is an unscientific poll put out by a religious foundation. Big surprise! Now just imagine if Dr. Worden was only an amateur at this sort of thing.
Dr. Worden worries that labels change over time and, as Carlin joked, "toilet paper" is now called "bathroom tissue." Worden adds “and atheists and agnostics became free-thinkers(sic)." Again, Dr. Worden is reduced to name calling and insists upon imposing his label upon us. If Worden knew enough about this topic to speak about it in public, it wouldn’t be too much to expect him to know that “freethinker” is actually one word and hasn’t been hyphenated in at least 150 years. He would also know that the word freethinker is older than the word “agnostic” so rather than us being, as he claims, “atheists and agnostics” hiding behind some new politically correct label of freethinker, we actually use that title because we are freethinkers. Although this distinction may be lost on the professor, there is a difference, as was explained to him in detail last time. Freethinkers have a different and distinct stance on religious matters, yet he continually and dishonestly refers to us as atheists although it was already explained to him that we are not an atheist group. He imposes this label on us eleven times, apparently so he can attack his strawman and pass along all the usual atheist canards and bigotry in which the uninformed have trafficked for centuries. It’s not too much to ask that Dr. Worden not use the privilege of his column to purposely misinform people in this way.
Dr. Worden also still struggles to minimize the number of those in Europe who don’t believe in God. He wants to count them as believers who are just “unchurched.” He does this with a word game so simple that no serious sociologist could possibly be fooled by it. Standard scientific references already provided, and many more available, show that those in Europe who affirm a belief in God represent about half the population. If Dr. Worden is allowed to require that those who don’t believe in God must only embrace the narrow and much maligned label of atheist, then he can show a very small number. But that isn’t honest. The honest way is to allow people to label themselves, otherwise it's just name calling.
Let’s look at an example. In 2000, Bishop John Shelby Spong was the highest ranking bishop in the Episcopal church. In 2002, he gave a series of lectures at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville. One of his lectures was about non-theism and how he, like other ministers at this Church, are not theists. This quite literally, is what the word atheist means (“not” “theist”). But Bishop Spong did not consider himself an atheist. He doesn’t claim that title for himself. Understanding the nuance of language he knows that the word atheist is understood to mean more than just not theist. Would Worden insist upon imposing the atheist label upon Bishop John Spong, too? If Worden was a better sociologist, he would know better than to resort to such word games. The honest way is to let people and groups define themselves.
Then he tries this insult: “I repeat: atheists tend to be young, unmarried, white and male (73%)… more like ESPN couch lizards.” Now Worden is making a fool of himself. It’s been shown he can’t be trusted to be a good sociologist and get his most basic facts straight even in his own area of expertise, but this attempted insult isn’t even interesting enough to check up on. If atheists are young and white and single, no doubt many of them will get over this by someday being old and married. Having a young demographic is actually a good thing. The children are the future. If this is Worden's best ammo against unbelievers, then they don't have much to worry about. Here is one he can use, atheism also tends to be particularly prevalent among scientists, and if you look to the very best scientists, The National Academy of Sciences, we find only about 7% holding a personal belief in God. Perhaps Worden would like to add "atheists are the top scientists" to his worn out stack of atheist insults.
Let’s just look at one more particular nasty example from him and then we’ll put the paddle away for now. Dr. Worden quips that if we did have our own church we would want to teach our little children to honor a mass murder of innocent people by having them do crayon drawings of it. What a horrible thing to say. What could inspire Worden to come up with such a vile notion? I think I know. It wouldn’t be nice to mention this in polite company, but since he brought it up… Isn’t this what many Christian churches regularly do to children right now? Why, yes it is. Even if it’s with the best intentions, children are taught to celebrate, remember and honor the lives of mass murdering Bible heroes like King David, Saul, Joshua and all the rest. As the song goes: "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands" (1 Sam. 18:7). Perhaps this is where Worden got his warped idea. In psychology, they have a name for this condition: it’s called projection.
The rest of Worden’s article is just an intellectual embarrassment unworthy of the penmanship of a professional sociologist communicating in public. In the space of a few sentences Worden has implied that we are communists who celebrate genocide and, by the way, that we’re Nazis, too. It seems, in retrospect, that Dr. Worden’s religious dogmatism was mightily slighted by local Freethinkers having the audacity to put seven words on a billboard for a month. Good.
Darrel Henschell
P.S.: If Steve Worden would like to try and defend his material publicly, we would be happy to give him a 15 minute slot at our August meeting provided he respond to questions. We encourage him and anyone interested in responding to this to send us a note or post it on our freethinker forum here.
p.p.s. Thanks to Sav and Tamara for helping me with proofreading.
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Here is a copy of the letter sent to Steve Worden Tuesday July 20.
Steve Worden has not replied.Hello Dr. Worden, Darrel with the Fayetteville Freethinkers here.
We have had some friends inquire about reading your latest (7/15) article in the Washington County Observer. We are happy to tell them to buy a local copy of the paper while it is available but some of them live out of Northwest Arkansas or live out of state. Perhaps you would like to post it on the web and pass along a link, or you could post it on our forum, (or I could post it for you). Or perhaps it would be permissible for us to pass along an unabridged copy to those who would like to read it? Just let me know your wishes in this regard.
all the best,
Darrel Henschell
On Sunday 25 he was sent a copy of our responses.