Last night I attended a talk at UC Berkeley put on by Students for a Non-Religious Ethos (SANE), and the speaker was Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist fame. The talk was primarily about his eBay story — he is the ‘man who sold his soul on eBay’ —  but his overall message was that non-believers shouldn’t be so quick to throw up a wall and alienate moderate theists. Not only because the eucharist-in-the-garbage-bin approach is detrimental to our image as atheists, but  if we really want to work for the common good, we can’t erect imaginary barriers between ourselves and others who are essentially on our side.

I really dug that. I mean, I’ll admit that I gravitate to the more militant end of the spectrum, and it’s fun watching PZ Myers go at it. However, you can’t make it an all out culture war, and that kind of resonated with me. On the other hand, I could tell that some of the other people at the talk were just expecting more ammunition for their anti-theist rhetorical arsenal.

I’m all for inclusiveness, but there is one important caveat. We shouldn’t be afraid to stand our ground when the stakes are high. Abstinence-only education and creationism aren’t equally valid opinions, they are straight up wrong, and we have evidence for it. They shouldn’t even be granted consideration in rational discourse. In contrast, the morality of abortion and stem cell research should probably be open for discussion. These are hard questions.