Engaging with Religious Fundamentalism

so please join with me as we welcome Danny Jarmon vice president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia we've got a few of our other members here as well first off I've just been really impressed with today the Atheist foundation of Australia think you guys do such a great job brisbane skeptical society cue skeptics what you've done with you know bridge skeptic camp and even the skeptics in the pub I've been to a few of those as well no it's just they're really really good grassroots movement type things where you've got people on the ground and you can get together and form those communities and really really make a difference you know on a day to day basis apart from what goes on sort of up in the the sky I'm going to be talking a little bit tonight about engaging with religious fundamentalism so probably the first thing when I think about this is should we should we always engage with religious fundamentalists and put up your hands if you say you think yes no maybe okay so we've got a cross-reference there but why would it be in the camp of the maybes because it really depends on the situation we get you know contacted by people not just in Australia but all over the place in various situations and you know it could be someone that's still living at home with what full-on fundamentalist parents and they don't believe in God anymore and they want to be able to be honest about who they are but they can't because if they do there's a chance that they're actually going to get thrown out of home they'll be homeless there's no support structure there for them so it's not always the best situation to really engage in religious or engage against religious fundamentalism in every every possible in a situation that you encounter it we get contacted by people you know from Pakistan or from Saudi Arabia or some of these other countries where they don't necessarily have the freedoms that we do here to even do this like if you were to do this in certain countries there'd probably be a mob outside we'd all get dragged off you know either sent to jail for whatever we might disappear in the middle of the night when half a dozen people bang down our door we don't necessarily have that problem here maybe you know with a another election or that sort of thing it might get a little bit worse but you know we're seeing a lot of different aspects of how religion does impact our society here in Australia through policy and an influence from lobby groups and those sorts of things but we we don't see the real extremism to a large extent we do it occasionally but not on a wide scale like theocracy like some countries have so on a personal level if I was speaking to say a young you know teenager and they said you know I I just don't believe in God anymore now my parents do and you know I want to I want to be honest I want to say to my dad or my mum you know look I just don't believe this stuff anymore how should I go about doing it I would really be cautious about giving advice to someone in that situation without having a good understanding of how their parents are going to react to that and sometimes that's a very difficult thing for you to even determine and so often it's the best policy is actually to to urge caution in those situations if you can't guarantee your safety and security and the roof over your head sometimes you know you just it's better to pull your head in a little bit if you look at sort of a larger scale where you've got the larger family unit we've recently come out as atheists over the last few years so we were test and I were leaders in a Christian Church and obviously everyone that didn't agree with us you know they were they were wrong and we were right we had the truth now to clarify it was a Protestant Christian Church so all the other Christians were also wrong wait we were an evangelical protestant christian yeah we were a Pentecostal Evangelical Protestant Christian Church and all the others were wrong hang on will a fundamentalist Pentecostal Evangelical Protestant Christians and we had the truth that was that was it why we were dominionist fundamentalist Pentecostal Evangelical Protestant Christians that's it yes and all the rest were wrong we had the truth and anyone that didn't agree with our particular version of Christianity which was I guess just one of 30,000 different versions of the truth though they were wrong and and we would you know I was very active in trying to teach people where they were wrong but you know sometimes I just didn't listen they were just too skeptical but I knew I was a skeptic if as a Christian I was a skeptic and I if anyone asked me I would say yeah I'm skeptical I'm skeptic well about all of what you believe but I had this little walled off and Martin you know brought it up he wasn't his ID he stole it from someone else so I can't remember who he stole it from so it's my idea and the concept of sacred ideas we had a sacred ID and that sacred idea was not so much that the Bible you know is the literal word of God but our interpretation of the Bible was the Word of God because this thousands of dominant denominations that all believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God they just cut and dice different bits you know we'll believe this one we won't believe that one was interpret it this way we'll deserve it that way it's like cafeteria Christianity you know you walk down in this ayah it is good at that you know I don't like the pumpkin in Leviticus and you form this belief system and in reality it's just your toilet and you know we sometimes sit there on our balcony and go we get freakin roped into this thing and it's when we might put up a thing with you know here's the relationship between the Bible and then that has all of these other things it isn't like that once you accept this initial premise you start going down the rabbit hole and then you you're accepting this and because that's true then I that must mean this is true and then if that's true that means this is false so you end up in this place where you're trying to defend the indefensible in a lot of cases and we still have family members that are in that situation and when we came out as atheist they were not happy not happy at all we had you know people in our lounge room screaming at us in front of our kids that we're all going to hell it's not a nice it's not a nice thing at all you know it's psychological abuse but they don't see it as that they don't see that they're psychologically abusing it what they see is they're trying to help you because you're deceived in some way you're controlled by Satan or you are Satan in my case so ni I'm in control test she doesn't have a mind of her own you know and we've even told test was an atheist two weeks before I was it's not my fault it's not me but if you've got a family situation like that where there is no issue with safety and security and those sorts of things you have the choice where you can engage in with the religious fundamentalist and you can stand your ground you can choose to either continue on and live your life as a lie and put this veneer on to keep peace with the family and so that Christmas dinner is pleasant and all of this sort of stuff but if in that process you're constantly being psychological abuse and your kids are being psychologically abused every time they go and visit you know they go for a sleepover and they come back and they say dad why are they saying if you believe in evolution is stupid and these are these are scientific concepts we had never brought up with our kids because we thought well they're too young to really understand it anyway but it forced our hand in having to address it because if we didn't address it and they know that I'm on YouTube defending science and teaching people about evolution and engaging with you know people on Facebook or the AFA forums or those sorts of things and they see that their cousins are saying off your parents are wrong because of this that actually impacts how I view us so we you know after a fair amount of time and about to do it and then pulling back and that sort of thing we we had to bite the bullet and we had to say look if we don't do something here this is going to impact our kids relationship within the family it's going to impact how our kids view us and we would rather our kids see us standing up and fighting against this stuff and fighting for what there's evidence for and that was tough for us we we're pariahs at the moment anyway we was going all right up until about a week ago again and yeah then the phone calls started and normally saw the stuff started happening but we're used to it now you know it's it's tough it may not ever change but it's sort of out of our control what we've done is we've drawn a boundary and we've said look we're happy to go to your place we're happy to do your things but if you cross this line there is going to be a consequence to it and so we've attached a negative consequence to it and now they have a choice and one of the things we had found is that they had pulled back because they know if they say this or they say that I'll say it's like okay let's go let's have a chat but you've got to make sure you're in the right situation to do that again some families you may be able to do it some you may not but sometimes you just got to put your own integrity upfront when you look at the larger sphere and you're talking about public public engagement with religious fundamentalism it's a very very different story because they are in the marketplace of ideas what you see in religious fundamentalism is a quest to really control the narrative control how terms are used how things are framed perfect example is what we see with climate change how they frame at how they demonize science and try and reduce the the integrity of science and the way that the general public that doesn't have a good scientific understanding views science you know 50 years ago 100 there are probably not hundred but I'd say 50 years ago I just after DNA was discovered science was really at a high in terms of its public perception now you've got this white anting going on with these institutes and think tanks and those sort of things and their whole job is to discredit science because if you can discredit science then whenever you've got a product that you need to sell or if you own a big company that needs to change its business processes and it's going to cost us 10 billion dollars over the next 10 years to do it we would rather spend five million dollars on a think tank to change public perception to let us continue to do this and keep breaking in an extra 10 billion a year which is you know not a very good situation I must say does anyone ever heard of the seven mountains before okay whew yeah seven mountains strategy as its promoted in churches and really promoted in a lot of churches these days is a concept that started in the u.s. chris has got a really good blog post which outlines quite a lot of it but basically it's it's almost like a conspiracy theory thing where Satan is control and Society and we need to take it back for Jesus and so there try they try and say okay how can we get people in business government media the arts and entertainment education family and religion and put people in place where they can influence policy decisions in those areas and but most most things like Catholic Church and all that sort of stuff they're not involved this is the extremists and these are the Pentecostals the evangelicals you know a lot of the Baptist's and all the little fringe churches that are like you go in and it's like happy-clappy - then you know we'll get healed something that you know we never had in the first place there's an angel on my shoulder there's a demon in my heart what do we don't want point this okay this is really cool this is a Australian religiosity now I won't use this because that's not a point and I know a lot of the guys earlier on girls used a laser pointer I brought a more traditional point of view so what I want to show you is this is this is from all of this data is from the Australian Bureau of Statistics so it's all the census data and go back to say in 1901 where ninety six point one percent of people on the census indicated that they were Christian a few little changes happen the introduction of we're really down here was the ability not to answer the question which was important so you see a bit of a drop there and then around about 1971 you see the no religion gets introduced yes so what we see here is this big decline in Christianity down to 61% on the last one you see a big rise in no religion up to the last census which is twenty two point three now we've our statistician in the in the premises will be able to tell us that when you see this line going down like this and this was like going up like that that's called the awesome effect and we really want to keep it going in that direction because this is actually this one here the Christianity one that's actually made up of a whole range of different groups and by my you know projections I'm thinking and feeling the good energy that is going to gun it put this this bottom one as the single biggest single biggest demographic category in this particular question on the census if not it the next one definitely the one on top so next year we've got a census year after we've got another one the reason it's important is because these numbers are factored into government studies and how they go about their planning and that sort of thing and it also indicates who they need to pander to when they're going out to try so what policies are we going to have to put in place to get people to vote for us as its number declines this group up here becomes less influential when we look at the last census this is this is pretty cool as well in some respect in other ways it's a bit sad but what we have is all of the various categories of religion and religion and that sort of thing broken down by the age of the person so what we see is the people up here you know 75 85 or whatever really committed Christian group and that sort of really drops down to this group here which is sort of the lowest that's just under 50% now that's pretty cool up here it's obviously bajji data because there's not the you know four year old that's filling in the census form but we're seeing the younger generation is coming through the younger generation that's been brought up on the Internet outside of that cloistered environment of the four walls of their church in the global marketplace of ideas this is rising and you're gonna see a continue to rise - I really like that unfortunately people sort of drop off the end which you know and let well see this is where I guess there is an advantage to homeopathy and those sorts of things because it's the non skeptical people that are going to actually be dropping off the end which is not very good just ask my family okay so we've got some numbers here this is it's pretty cool now actually with this and thanks to Cassandra earlier I was tossing up whether to you know use TTS or ANOVA Pearson's correlation significant probability effect size I went back and forth and all of that sort of thing and then I went no I might just press the some button on Excel and that seemed to give me a pretty good response but this is a comparison between the 2001 census and the 2011 census and over that ten-year period there was pretty significant interesting things now obviously a lot of this is my opinion and anecdote and I've got a good feeling about this but what I see when I look at this sort of data is number one the population grew by fourteen point six percent in that ten-year period but all the Christian I can't break the other ones down too much because they only have one category of it but the entirety of say Christianity only grew by three percent so population grew by fourteen Christianity the major religion in Australia only grew by three percent so they're not keeping up with the population growth in Australia by definition the longer this sort of trend goes on the less influence that group has on social you know social structure it's it's interesting when you have a look at some some of the the individual categories - because while some grow at a rate higher others don't some actually go backwards you know we sell about 15% less salvos why is that I'd have to think as well with all of the child abuse scandals and that that have come out with the Royal Commission that's probably going to have a hit on the Catholicism number and you know there's a couple of things that we can probably guarantee one is over the next ten years they're still going to be no evidence for the existence of God no demonstrable evidence anyway there's evidence in how I feel but and there's probably going to be more scandals whether it's child abuse well this pastor raping that parishioner or whatever and all of that is a marketing nightmare for the churches and look I understand that you know not all skeptics are atheists not all atheist skeptics and that sort of thing that there's a cross section in the cross over in there in the room G cross over standard Loudon but if you and this is a subjective thing I went through and obviously in each of the denominations you you will have an extreme ascend and you'll have a more moderate end but in just the people I've talked to over time I sort of got an indication and put certain certain denominations are really more conducive to the fundamentalist in and so when you look at like Baptists and Brethren and all of that sort of thing and you actually split the numbers out into those categories based on fundamentalists or more moderate ones you end up with some PI's and fundamentalist back in 2001 if you just use the categories I've used you can pick your own and being a sceptical group - I expect you all to go back and double-check those numbers that I had up there which are downloadable from the ABS but 7.8 percent would be considered fundamentalist out of the whole group a lot of people that markdown religion on the census they're not really that religious they might go to church once in a while they don't think about God in their day to day lives or they just mark Catholic down you know to make mum happy you know what I mean but in 2011 even though they didn't keep up with the population the fundamentalist section is actually becoming a bigger piece in the pie so you've probably got more of the moderates that are dropping out losing their religion becoming atheist which is great news but what it means is there's going to be a growing group within Christianity my prediction my prophecy I'm a prophet actually my wife was a prophet that was pretty cool I enjoyed having a prophet a ton you try and get something passed a prophet even when they're wrong they know they're right but yeah thank you so as that grows it's like a remnant I mean we there was a thing up earlier on about Flat Earth and that sort of thing and you think ah no one believes that stuff anymore I was on a Facebook group only a few weeks ago arguing with flat earthers and then I had Geo centrist defending me which is pretty cool it's like these people believe this stuff because of obviously a fundamentalist belief in their version of the Bible and that sort of thing but they they they disagree with each other and they'll argue with each other because they're taking certain scriptures literally whereas others arts but the thing about sage es interests in flat-earthers they've got no social equity when it comes to policy they can't influence anything you get a politician run for office so yeah I believe in a flat earth like thank you for playing game over that's it but we've still got a very very strong presence out there we've religious fundamentalism where they do influence public policy because they're they give the perception that they own the Christian vote when they don't you know one of the biggest ones you know each who shall not be named is a private company funded by a few groups prepare ports itself to be the representatives of Christianity has the Weddell will be at the end but they don't represent Christians as a Christian they never represented me but politicians think they do because they're a voice that's in their ear all the time they have full-time lobbyists they're constantly in the in the politicians he is you don't if you you know put these policies in place then we won't know jail followers to to vote for you and that sort of thing and that's where we can engage I mean I would assume that a skeptic camp on a Saturday on a cold winter's day that basically everyone in this room is an activist just being here makes you an activist because you've got a care you got to be interested and different people are gonna have different skills and how to deal with fundamentalism or science or homeopathy chiropractic any of the topics that we deal with there's different avenues and you know you can be on social media and just share things you can do a full debate where you go back and forth with someone you can debunk some form of creationism or Ken Ham and that did everyone see the Bill Nye Ken Ham thing did you enjoy it do you watch the whole thing who was before it really against Bill Nyes standing up and doing that yeah I was i I was I was very much not I think it's a really bad idea Bill Nye doing that because it just gives legitimacy to these things it's like on a stage in this - it's a 50/50 proposition like Fox News does it but I noticed something really different this time that I haven't seen in a lot of those creationist type debates creationist versus scientist type debates and that was the reaction within the Christians after it and I saw so many Christians on social media distancing themselves from Answers in Genesis and saying wait wait wait wait we don't believe that can I say yeah can I use the f-word know whatever see what okay how I mentioned Chapel today but a lot of them moving away from it and that was to me that was a turning point that's where young Earth Creationism is actually losing some of its luster it's losing some of its influence it's now almost heading towards the geocentrism tide pools I mean there's a great example of people that engage with religious fundamentalism is actually sitting in this audience tonight and what I often see is someone will do this big posts on Facebook and it'll be God says this and he means this in a scripture that it up and he'll thoughtfully go through it all and then he'll just go and then I get flustered and you said and again he'll thoughtfully go through it all and then okay you're making it up and even something like that if we all did stuff like that even if we don't have the expertise to deal with you know anything that comes out in there you know the comments in the papers or you see a Facebook post or whatever you just challenge it put the ball back in their court you've got to justify this how do you know that is there any evidence for that yeah necessary have to be a theologian or a scientist to be able to go through that you're now rubbish when you you see it I mean if it's in that gray area you know where know it could be true or something like that live brain right brain or you know learning styles all this sort of thing then you know you could put a little bit more thought to it but if it's someone saying that Jesus wrote a dinosaur you know I mean have fun have fun with it it's so much so much better and so much better for the audience because you're not really dealing with them they're the fundamentalists they believe this they got the sacred idea have fun with it because there's 400 people watching it on some forums or on some Facebook pages if they see that these people can't back up their claims they go home but what does happen with the fundamentalist when they do get beat down enough they can change I still get messages today on YouTube I got DJ m67 YouTube channel and I've been doing you know evolution and science and all that sort of stuff I had originally started that as a Christian and then became an atheist which made it interesting I didn't lose many subscribers because most of my subscribers are atheist I think I might have lost a hundred but I'll get a message in my inbox and it'll be like deej I'm not sure if you remember me we spoke a while ago I was a bit of a dick on my now atheist now and I just wanted to apologize now I go as hell's is and I'll look back through you know the Google emails and that sort of thing I go that's I remember that two years ago I had a big back and forth with this person and they were a full-on creationist the full Ken Ham Kent Hovind stuff you don't necessarily have to you know break them now today all you got to do is crack the eggshell and the eggshell with these people is biblical literalism and it's not necessarily the scripture itself for where it came from it's how do you interpret it do you think that's moral do you think it's more like I don't get how a God that commands some of the things in there you could class him as good I mean I'm a father if someone rapes my daughter and you're probably all heard this and the rapist comes up to me and says well here's fifty shekels he now gets to marry her and she can never divorce him that's a command from this God in the Bible that fundamentalist belief they try and justify old testament this and that something but it doesn't get away from the fact that that is an immoral act and that any God that commands that can't be moral so you must be interpreting it wrong and that messes with them and it doesn't they try and justify it and their cognitive dissonance and this and that they'll go away and they'll try and come up with an explanation and I'll go to their apologetics websites and that you've just cracked the egg shot it may take a year it may take two they may repair the eggshell because of the cloistered environment they're in but if we can just keep chipping away at these sort of things it does make a difference it really really does I've seen it we or that I would never have thought would come around and walk either either moderate their beliefs to the point where they've been nine and so you know they accept science but definitely get them away from that fundamentalist edge okay now really important slide coming up question time anyone got a question there are there any got time for one question so if anyone wants to pop pop to the back mic there we can configure the question there I must have done a great job okay what's really informative thank you very much again Danny it's only actually going through sort of internet forums and things like that I often start to think that idiocracy might actually be a documentary and not not a movie but you know these kind of slides are obviously quite encouraging so you know it's always nice to know that we're sort of winning at least one battle

Channel: Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc

Views: 4,454

Rating: 4.8198199 out of 5

Keywords: religion, atheism, skeptic, skepticism, fundamentalism, christianity, debunk, christian, islam

Id: TYJl6ub0Y2w

Length: 36min 37sec (2197 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2015