Quickies

Skepchick Quickies 5.3

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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14 Comments

  1. I love that little girl!! Amazingly articulate and well written, and at 10 years old too. Look out world here comes Eliza!

  2. One big reason is the lies told by the churches about the so-called “unchurched.” The Fundies are notorious for this.

      1. Good luck with that, we haven’t even been able to make them pay taxes for all of their representation. No wonder the rich cling so tightly to the church, birds of a feather.

  3. ‘Why do Americans still dislike atheists?’ — cuz we look so damn good!

    And man, I must give props to a 10 year old girl that writes with more skill and flair than many of my peers…and I work for a media website.

  4. Wow, some of the comments on that article about anti-atheism are really sad. I wish people would stop telling me that people wouldn’t dislike me if I would just keep my atheism to myself. It reminds me of bigots who claim they don’t have a problem with gay people, as long as they’re not all “in your face” about it.

          1. …or those Gnostics, or those Pagans, or those Jews, etc. etc.

  5. The social outsider article touches on something I’ve been wondering about for a while now:
     
    Does the stereotypical “dumb blonde” perhaps also stem from a similar origin? Where being popular in school and having grown up being able to get by on just your looks and nothing else, somehow turns you into an adult who doesn’t use (or at least not value) their intellectual abilities, because they’ve never had to?
     
    The human mind, by default, is very lazy and constantly looking for shortcuts and tricks to reduce the amount of effort it has to do. That’s what causes prejudice and other fallacies. Most likely, that process could also turn the “pretty people” into intellectually lazy adults because everyone forgives them their shenanigans, or at least isn’t surprised by them or maybe even expecting them. To the point where they lack certain basic bits of knowledge you’d expect the average adult to have already acquired because they don’t have the curiosity to find out.
     
    Anyway, just thinking out loud here. Feel free to jump in or ignore me …

  6. The article about Americans disliking atheists is very good, though bits of it do read a bit like ‘on what atheists consider the most important moral grounds, atheists are more moral than believers’. When religious people talk about atheists being immoral I think they’re more talking about the ‘having sex outside of marriage’ kind of morals, stuff that atheists dismiss as irrelevant. Which, for the record, I generally agree it is.

  7. I don’t like the social outsider article. It’s written very much in the tone of nerd wish fulfillment. And ignores a *very* important facet of high school, and any other social strata you occupy; how social *you* are.

    You can be a social jock/preppie (one of the popular kids), but you can also be an antisocial jock/preppie (think destructive hooligan or psycho bitch). You can also be a social nerd/geek (think the brainy kid) or an antisocial nerd/geek (the basement dwelling shut-in). In either case, being social is the factor that matters above all else. If you’re social, you have a *much* higher chance of succeeding in life, all other variables ignored, simply because you’re able to form a rapport with other people and maneuver your way through life. If you’re a social jock or preppie, you may end up as a blue-collar business owner or a white-collar executive. If you’re a social nerd, you may end up as a programmer, artist, designer, or whatever. If you’re anti-social, it doesn’t matter what clique you fit in you’re likely to end up in prison, subsisting on a minimum wage job, or living in your mother’s basement for the rest of your life.

    That’s not to say this is the only variable, but the article is basically lying to children by telling them they have a better chance at succeeding *just* because they’re a nerd when that doesn’t matter.

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