Headline of the Century: Secular Men Lament Dearth of Secular Women, Stupidity Ensues

The socio-cultural machinery behind the gender divide in religion vs. nonbelief is fairly well researched and rather broadly understood to be the likely result of women’s socialization toward meekness, obedience, and submission….Try talking to women. Try to actually listen to what we have to say. Don’t become incredulous and try to tell us that our reasons for not participating more are invalid. Don’t assume that one woman’s opinion invalidates another’s. …

Very interesting and timely post, please go check it out.

I normally would have put this here on The X Blog but I wanted it to get more exposure so I put it on Science Blogs, but if you are one of the three or four people who follow X Blog but not Scienceglogs.com here is a link: What is Camp Quest and why is it important?

Camp Quest is a summer camp for “freethinking” children (or, more accurately, children of “freethinking” parents). Depending on where in the US you live, summer camps for children may be very secular, very religious, in betweeen, or more or less oriented towards science and technology vs. sports and so on and so forth. There is a lot of variation. Here in Minnestoa, the majority of camps (by count of camp and I’m guessing by count of “spots” at camp) are affiliated with a religion or have an explicitly religious mission. Having said that, the majority of those camps are linked to “The Y” which is probably the least religious of the religious organizations running camps here. But that is only from looking at the camp literature. I have no idea if within a camp that is not explicitly religiously affiliated there is an assumed internal undercurrent of religiosoity. There often is.

I’m reminded of a story told to me by an old friend. She went to camp for the first time when she was 12. On day one, the girls in her dorm got to know each other in part by exchanging information about what their religions were, and what churches they were members of. She remembers being baffled by this as she came from an entirely secular background. She told the other kids she did not have a religion.

That night she woke from a deep sleep in a state of panic. She had the sense that there was someone sitting on her chest trying to smother her. You may know about so-called “Old Hag Syndrome.” This was not that. She struggled and kicked and freed herself from beneath a pillow and cried out, and this brought people running. Someone turned on the lights.

A fellow camper was trying to smother her. A young Christian girl was trying to kill the demonically possessed atheist. What a way to go.

Anyway, Camp Quest is not like that. Camp quest is the only camp I know of that is explicitly secular. All the other camps are either explicitly religious or potentially kinda quasi religious, although there are a lot of name-brand camps (usually named after a shoe brand) that are very sports oriented. But given the degree of religious activity that happen in the locker room, I would not assume that those camps are secular either.

Anyway, my friend Sarah just spent a week at Camp Quest, and wrote up a blog post about it.

Well, I spent the last week at Camp Quest Michigan. What is CQ, you ask? Well, it’s an awesome summer camp for children of freethinking parents– no, this is not an atheist summer camp, just a camp where kids can learn about science, critical thinking skills, and also do all sorts of fun summer things, like swimming, rock climbing, horseback riding, etc.

Read her account, My Week at Camp Quest, here. If you are thinking of sending one or more of the little ones off to camp, consider Camp Quest, especailly if you are avoiding camp because everywhere you look, instead of some great nature and science studies and some challenging athletics, there’s…something else going on.

George Kane notes in “Board Adopts a New Anti-Harassment Policy” …

Everyone is looking forward to the Regional Conference that we are co-sponsoring with American Atheists in St. Paul on August 11. It prompted one of our members to write to our board on a very serious matter, however. She noted that it is becoming standard for atheist and skeptic organizations to adopt anti-harassment policies for their conventions.

The member provided a list of models for a conference anti-harassment policy. These models were designed specifically for conferences, and American Atheists was already drafting a policy for our joint event, which our board would review. It pointed up a need, though, for a Minnesota Atheist policy to state the board’s position regarding harassing conduct by members at any event we sponsor. To this end, the board adopted the following policy at our June meeting.

The policy is here.