Monthly Archive for June, 2009Page 2 of 5

Problems with Pascal’s Wager

Published
by
reasonnotfaith
on June 25, 2009
.

Is there an advantage to believing in God?

Ever since the days of Blaise Pascal in the 17th century religionists have used the ‘Pascal’s Wager’ argument to claim that believing in God has a distinct advantage over non-belief. It goes like this:

Even though you might not be able to prove God’s existence, you’re still better off hedging your bets – or waging – as though God does exist because, if true, you have everything to gain and have nothing to lose.

Sound’s entirely reasonable, right?

Well, before you answer that question, consider these points…

  • Exactly which God do we believe in? There are literally hundreds, in not thousands, of conflicting conceptions of God (and gods). We would have to factor them all into the wager
  • At the very best, only one conception of God could ever be correct. But the odds of anyone choosing the correct one are extremely low. Hardly anyone living today is even aware of all the different conceptions of God. (According to some religions, believing in ‘false gods’ carries the most severe punishments)
  • Furthermore, for all we know, all of the existing conceptions of God could be utterly wrong. God may be malevolent or not reward belief. He may even punish people for belief – including those who believe in Pascal’s wager
  • God may even be ‘rational’ in the sense that he rewards honest attempts at objective reasoning and not care about beliefs. In which case, Pascal’s wager would be entirely pointless and possibly damaging
  • An omniscient God would presumably see through the deception – which, again, might be punishable.

Religionists, then, have no assurance that they stand the best chance of avoiding the wrath of  God. Sure, they can conjure up a God who would reward them in a future life for their own particular religious beliefs. But it would be just as easy for the next person to conjure up a very different (and equally unprovable) God with a very different set of attributes.

Neither should religionists be content with ‘generic’ deism because that itself may invoke the wrathful anger of a jealous God.

But, the religious may ask, if any God exists then surely atheists will be in for a rough ride? Even this isn‘t certain. Again, if God actually rewards critical thinking and punishes belief, atheists may well be the ones on the receiving end of God’s blessing at having passed the earthly ‘reason test’, while the religionists will be the ones losing out for having abandoned their God-given capacity to think rationally.

But there’s an even more fundamental consideration that ought to concern religionists – what if there is no God at all? Furthermore, what if spending your life believing in a God that doesn‘t actually exist is not simply a harmless delusion?

Think about it. To genuinely believe in a God – such as the God of the Bible or the Koran, for instance – you would have to act and think in ways that satisfies the desires of that imagined God. This omniscient God would presumably be judging your every move and monitoring your every thought, both awake and asleep.

You would also have to shun any scientific knowledge that conflicts with your religious doctrine. Equally, you would have to give up your capacity to make moral judgements based on reason.

Unfortunately for others, your belief in God may have consequences beyond your own personal experiences. No doubt you would have to teach your children to believe in the same falsehoods as you do. You would need to condemn those who choose not to believe as you do.

As a believer, you would also probably vote for the party or the presidential candidate who appears to be ‘closer to God‘. You may even join, fund or support a group to prevent life-saving stem-cell research or abortions. You may even preach hate against perfectly decent people for being unrighteous, ungodly, homosexual, atheist, rational.

In a sentence, you would have to believe in superstitious bronze age mythology at the expense of your reason, all with the imagined approval of the creator of the universe.

That’s a huge price to pay for something for which there is no definitive evidence or even a likelihood of actually being true.

So yes, you do have something to lose by believing in a God that doesn’t exist. You lose the fullness, the enjoyment and the reward of living a life seeking genuine knowledge. You also miss the true wonder and pleasure of discovering how the real world actually works, freed from bronze age superstitions which, however comforting, are just plain wrong.


Lev

Published
by
possum_momma
on June 25, 2009
.
Thanks, Lev! I normally hate using blogs as messengers, but I didn't have another contact method. :)

The Chaplains of Hate

Published
by
Anna Lemma
on June 25, 2009
.


The Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC) has been in the news lately, and not in a good way. They endorse approximately 270 chaplains in the United States military. Jim Ammerman runs the CFGC out of an office in his house. They seem to exist only to endorse chaplains, they do not serve any specific religious sect or congregation. This violates several of the rules regarding chaplain endorsing agencies. Talk2Action author, Chris Rodda, and MRFF have been investigating this story for the past month. The story finally bubbled up to Newsweek. MRFF weekly briefs also cover some of the articles. The MRFF also has sent a letter with 55 pages of supporting evidence to Secretary Gates and others.

From MRFF's letter:

1. The Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC), headed by retired Army Col. E.H. Jim Ammerman, which, according to its website, currently has over 270 chaplains and chaplain candidates in all branches of the military, habitually denigrates all religions and religious denominations except Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity. This denigration, which includes virulently anti-semitic and Islamophobic statements, as well as the deprecation of Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism, occurs in the CFGC's chaplain newsletters, as well as in the speeches, media appearances, and videos of both Mr. Ammerman and a currently serving CFGC chaplain, Army Maj. James F. Linzey.

2. Both Mr. Ammerman and Maj. Linzey have made numerous statements against the government of the United States and certain government officials and departments, promoted civilian militia movements, and disseminated many conspiracy theories in an attempt to foment disloyalty to the government of the the United States among both civilians and military personnel. This type of activity has previously led to an investigation of Ammerman and CFGC, called for by Air Force Lt. Gen. Normand Lezy in 1997.

DoD Directive Number 1325.6, "Guidelines for Handling Dissident and Protest Activities Among Members of the Armed Forces," cited in Lt. Gen. Lezy's 1997 memorandum, states that "Military personnel must reject participation in organizations that espouse supremacist causes." The Prophecy Club, an organization for which both Mr. Ammerman and Maj. Linzey have made videos, unquestionably espouses a supremacist cause. In addition, various statements made by both Mr. Ammerman and Maj. Linzey in their Prophecy Club videos, as well as in other forums, such as radio appearances and speeches, incontrovertibly violate one or more of the following statutory provisions found in Enclosure E1.2 of DoD Directive Number 1325.6.

3. According to the definition of a "Religious Organization" found in DoD Directive Number 1304.19, "Guidance for the Appointment of Chaplains for the Military Departments," CFGC is not eligible to be authorized as an ecclesiastical endorser. CFGC is not an "entity that is organized and functions primarily to perform religious ministries to a non-military lay constituency." CFGC, which is operated out of a house located in a residential neighborhood of Dallas, Texas zoned for single family homes, did not have a "non-military lay constituency" at the time of its founding, but was founded for the sole purpose of endorsing chaplains, and this continues to be its primary purpose to this day.

4. In a clear and blatant violation of CENTCOM's General Order 1-A, which absolutely prohibits the proselytizing of any religion, faith or practice in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, a network of forty CFGC chaplains has engaged in the organized distribution in Iraq of Arabic language Bibles and other Arabic language fundamentalist Christian evangelizing materials to the Iraqi people. The violation of this explicitly prohibited activity by these forty CFGC chaplains was initiated, encouraged, and aided by Mr. Ammerman.

According to US Army Regulation 165-1 :
4–3. Professional status of chaplains
a. Army chaplains have a dual role as religious leaders and staff officers. Their duties are prescribed by law, DOD policy, Army regulations, religious requirements, and Army mission. In performing their duties, chaplains do not exercise command, but exercise staff supervision and functional direction of religious support personnel and activities (title 10, United States Code, section 3581).
b. The chaplain is a qualified and endorsed clergy person of a DOD recognized religious denomination or faith group.
c. Chaplains are noncombatants and will not bear arms.
d. The proper title for a chaplain is “chaplain” regardless of military rank or professional title. When addressed in writing, the chaplains rank will be indicated in parentheses (see AR 25–50 and AR 600–20).
e. Commanders will detail or assign chaplains only to duties related to their profession. Chaplains may perform unrelated duties in a temporary military emergency. Chaplains may volunteer to participate or cooperate in nonreligious
functions that contribute to the welfare of the command. Commanders will not—
(1) Detail a chaplain as an exchange, athletic, recreation, drug or alcohol, graves registration, welfare, morale, dining
facility, personal affairs, information, education, human relations, equal opportunity, next-of-kin notification, suicide prevention, or survivor assistance officer. However, in the event of the death of a chaplain, chaplain(s) will be appointed to assist Summary Court Officers in review of confidential records and personal effects when next-of-kin is present.
(2) Assign a chaplain as military judge, trial counsel, defense counsel, investigating officer, member of a courtmartial, or member or adviser to investigative boards of officers. Chaplains may be required, however, to conduct inquires into chaplain-related activities or incidents.
(3) Require a chaplain to serve in a capacity in which he or she may later be called upon to reveal privileged or sensitive information incident to such service.
Section 4b states that Army chaplains must come from a DoD recognized faith group. If the Wiccans can't have an official chaplain in the Army, then some group operating from a guy's home office shouldn't be able to endorse chaplains either.

It starting to look like some of the worst offending chaplains have been endorsed by the CFGC. Our old friend Gordon Klingenschmidtt is still endorsed by this agency despite having been drummed out of the Navy with a courts-martial. Since 1993, this agency's chaplains have participated in the following:
  1. Violated numerous service members' constitutional rights.
  2. Made up conspiracy theories.
  3. Called for the violent overthrow of the United States government.
  4. Pushed white supremacy.
  5. Advocated for military members to ignore military rules.
  6. Denigrated other religions and those who are non-religious.
  7. Called for the execution of those they disagree with politically.
These chaplains have a virtual cornucopia of skills. [A virtual cornucopia of skills - Inside joke warning. Yes, I've actually used this phrase as a joke when writing officer ratings back when I was in the Air Force. We would try to see if we could get this phrase in an OER without anyone noticing. HehHehHeh]. CFCG chaplains have violated numerous service members constitutional rights regarding religious freedom. The CFGC seems only to exist as a chaplain endorsing agency according to the MRFF. What religious group to they represent? They seem to advocate a Christian Identity Militia type of religion, where white Christians are the "real Chosen people".

Of course not all of the offending chaplains have come from the CFGC. Capt. Robert Nay was accused of making anti-Semitic remarks against Jewish chaplains in 2001. He was also accused of hanging up Nazi uniforms at a prayer breakfast where chaplain attendance was mandatory. The Army investigated and found Rabbi Goldman's complaints were valid. I did a Google search on Chaplain Nay and found he is a member of the Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church. It can also be seen that instead of being courts-martialed, this man was promoted. This is not surprising since the chaplain leadership is almost exclusively extreme right-wing evangelists.

Here is a very long and detailed reading list for this story. These stories have to be read to be believed. The CFCG advocates the same type of conspiracy theories espoused by an insane co-worker I worked with during the mid 1990's.
The chaplains of hate indeed.

Gay marriage debate chart

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 24, 2009
.
Gay marriage debate chart

Gay marriage debate chart

/hattip: The Good Atheist & @almightygod.

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Method versus Metaphysics

Published
by
faithlessgod
on June 24, 2009
.
We are all born ignorant. We do not like being ignorant and (most of us) seek to alleviate ourselves of ignorance. We also do not like to be mistaken in our knowledge that we gain in alleviating our ignorance.

However there are two ways to alleviate this ignorance. One approach is to assume as many answers as possible about the world and assume the world fits these answers. The other is to assume as little as possible about the world and see what the world says first.  The former approach emphasizes metaphysics (or ontology- what there is) over method. The latter approach emphasizes method over metaphysics.

These are two poles in a continuum, of course. It is useful to look at these extremes in emphasis to clearly see the difference between them.

The metaphysics first approach provides answers, the method first approach provides questions. The metaphysics first approach protects answers, the method first approach questions questions. The metaphysics first approach seeks methods to support its answers. The method first approach seeks methods to challenge its answers.The metaphysics first approach rejects methods that deny its answers. The method first approach encourages methods that challenge its methods. The metaphysics first approach assumes certainty in its answers. The method first approach seeks errors in it's answers. The metaphysics first approach discourages questioning its answers.  The method first approach encourages questioning its answers.

The distinction becomes more highlighted when looking at methods. The method first approach seeks reliable, repeatable, reviewable, revisable, replaceable, robust, independent methods that converge on the same answer. It rejects methods provide divergent answers. It has found these latter methods not to be reliable, repeatable or robust. When subject to review, revision, replacement or rejection such methods have been rejected with no replacement being required,

Such rejected methods are typically subjective methods - those based on authority, texts, personal revelations, inner experiences. These have been repeatedly shown to to be unreliable, not robust and lead to divergent entailments with no independent means of selecting one entailments over another. These are some of the most popular methods to support extreme metaphysics first approaches. But this indicates there is no way to know if any of those metaphysical approaches are correct. They usually insist they are but are contrary because they make divergent claims of the world and they cannot al be correct and could all be false. There is no way of knowing.

In stating the above I have been employing the method first approach which some might argue is question begging. However since the metaphysics first approaches - such as popular religions and some extreme political ideologies - can offer no independent means to determine which, if any, are correct, then there is nothing else but such a method approach to help distinguish them and, possibly, eliminate them all. So it is no surprise that many of these metaphysics first approaches are opposed to method first approaches and seek to tarnish, devalue or deny the validity of such methods.

Now, sometimes, selectively, when the results of such methods could support the presumed answers of a metaphysics first approach, then such methods are used and encouraged. However this only goes to confirm a the problem with such metaphysics first approaches. If a method is only used when it supports the pre-determined answer and rejected when it does not, then there is no way to know whether the answer is correct. So there is no way to know whether one's ignorance has been alleviated or just deceived. The whole project that metaphysics first approaches were meant to answer - the alleviation of ignorance about the world - collapses. No true knowledge can results unless there are methods that can independently show this.

We are lucky to live in the 21st century where there has been some much progress in the development and refinement of methods based approaches that have not only demonstrated in far greater scope and detail what the world is like far beyond the imaginings of any metaphysics first approach - old and new. And we rely on the results of such knowledge in numerous ways on a moment to moment and day to day basis. There is no longer any excusefor seek a metaphysics first approach given the huge success of the methods first approaches that we cannot stop using and relying upon. We have no excuse, as in the past, not to seek methods that independently converge on similar answers - which are called and usually are  objective methods and to reject methods that independently fail to converge and provide divergent and incompatible answers. We have no excuse that is if we wish to free  ourselves of ignorance about the world. We know that subjective methods used in support of metaphysics first approaches have repeatedly failed to give us accurate knowledge of the world  and can only be used to provide comfort not truth.

The choice is yours, do you prefer comfort over truth or truth over comfort? Do you prefer an illusory certainty or over an actual uncertainty. Can anyone justify sacrificing truth on the altar of comfort if you aspire to knowledge of the world? Not without contradicting themselves they cannot. Is it not sensible to choose method over metaphysics?

Science Centre Promoting Pseudo-Science?

Published
by
HumanistDad
on June 23, 2009
.
I recently came back from a trip to Dynamic Earth in Sudbury, Ontario with my daughter's class. Great facility and a fun tour into a inactive mine!

However, while perusing the Gift Shop I came across some magnetic jewelry. However, under the display was a bunch of cards from the manufacturer of the jewelry that was extolling the virtues of magnets and how researchers are finding health benefits from them.

Wait.

Pseudo-scientific claims at a Science facility?!?

I've sent off a letter to them and will post their response. The letter is below:

On June 11th, I was a parent volunteer with a Grade 5 class visiting Dynamic Earth. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the facility and enjoyed learning about the science of mining, rocks and minerals.

As always, the gift shop is a fun place for the children to browse and find science-related gifts and memorabilia. However, I was shocked and deeply disappointed to see a small card on display near the magnetic jewelry that was promoting the 'health benefits' of wearing magnetic bracelets. Although I misplaced the card, I remember it saying something about 'researchers have found benefits of magnets for health'.

I am a teacher, skeptic and staunch defender of science. How could a 'science' facility actually promote pseudo-science about magnetic jewelry?

I've taken the liberty to give you a website that looks at the research done on 'magnetic healing' here:

http://skepdic.com/magnetic.html

However, I'm sure you have real scientists at your facility that could look up research into 'magnetic healing' and form their own opinions.

Please, for the good of science, remove any and all claims that magnets might heal people. A scientific facility has an obligation to promote real science and never, ever, promote pseudo-science that is permeating our culture and standing in the way of valuable research. If people want to buy jewelry that is magnetic, fine, but don't promote non-scientific nonsense.

Pride 2009 — San Francisco — Stand With Us

Published
by
Eclectic Infidel
on June 23, 2009
.
Join San Francisco Voice for Israel as we march in the 2009 San Francisco Pride Parade on Sunday, June 28. We’ll be honoring the memory of our friend and brother, Dr. Dan Kliman, a tireless advocate of equality for all.

BACKGROUND:

As a democracy, Israel protects the rights of its minority citizens including its Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) population. In fact, Israel's record on LGBT not only rights ranks head and shoulders above its neighbors, but is one of the most progressive in the world. The LGBT Pride Parade allows us the opportunity to reach a large audience who are largely unaware of Israel’s record of tolerance.

Just as the LGBT community wants equality, we strive for equality for Israel amongst the family of nations. We want Israel to be treated as an equal in the United Nations, treated fairly by the international news media, and to be recognized by its neighbors with normalized relations.

Tolerance extends both ways and just as Israel protects and respects its LGBT population, Israel also respects and protects its religious groups who freely and legally protest Israel’s LGBT parades and whose neighborhoods are avoided by Israel’s LGBT Pride parades. We understand that not all of our supporters will feel comfortable participating in the SF Pride Parade.

EVENT DETAILS:

While our exact contingent number and line up location has not been determined at this time, meet us on Beale St. between Mission and Folsom. We will be easily identifiable by the presence of Israeli flags! Assemble at 11:30, Sunday June 28. We will be part of a larger Jewish community contingent marching with the theme that all human beings are created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of G-d.

Wear comfortable shoes, bring sunscreen, and bring some water.

Our previous entries into the parade were met with a great amount of love form the crowds and we expect this year to be no different. This is San Francisco’s largest parade and is a way to reach a massive number of people with a San Francisco specific positive message about Israel!

StandWithUs/ San Francisco Voice for Israel
www.SFVoiceForIsrael.org
www.StandWithUs.com

Dear Annabel Croft

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 22, 2009
.

Dear Annabel Croft,

Just FYI:

Homeopathy is full of shit

/hattip: @bengoldacre

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The Telegraph: BBC supports Islam and attacks Christianity, says whinging git

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 22, 2009
.

Yeah, it’s from The Torygraph.

The BBC supports Islam and attacks Christianity, according to Don Maclean, the former Radio 2 religious programme presenter.

Maclean, who hosted Good Morning Sunday for 16 years, claimed that the corporation is biased against Christianity and had embarked on a movement to “secularise the country”.

Translation:

Bwaaaah boo hoo boo hoo! Nobody loves Jesus’n'Mary’n'Mo — oops, not Mo — anymore but me! Waaaah boo hoo hoo! Sob sob! etc.

If you can be arsed, the rest of it’s over there, but I wouldn’t bother if I were you.

Actually, I shouldn’t have bothered with this post. Pah, too late now—might as well press “publish”.

P.S. Why was “git” not in my computer’s dictionary? Had to remedy that pronto! Oh, look, there was a good outcome of posting this tosh.

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Creationists admit lying for Jesus

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 22, 2009
.

From the William Crawley’s blog over at the BBC:

On today’s Sunday Sequence, the CEO of Creation Ministries UK responded to claims by one of the world’s leading authorities on evolution that he was duped into appearing in an anti-Darwinian film.

Professor Peter Bowler, the author of a biography of Charles Darwin and many other books on the history of evolution, said he was interviewed for theThe Voyage That Shook The World without realising that the film was being made by a Creationist [sic] group.

Professor Bowler, who has spent most of his academic career at Queen’s University, Belfast, researching Darwinism, says he is unhappy to be appearing in what he regards as an “anti-Darwinian” film which offers an historically distorted portrait of Darwin. He claims that the film’s narrative implies that Darwin’s theory led him towards racism, whereas recent historical work by James Moore and Adrian Desmond shows that Darwin’s scientific work was partly motivated by the naturalist’s passionate opposition to racism.

Professor Bowler says he, along with his colleagues Sandra Herbert and Janet Browne, only discovered that they had inadvertently contributed to a Creationist [sic] film a month before the film’s release. Peter Bowler also raised concerns about how the editing of his own interview could leave viewers with a false impression of his own perspective on Darwin.

Phil Bell, CEO of Creation Ministries UK, acknoweged that his organisation established a “front company” called Fathom Media, because they were concerned that experts such as Peter Bowler would not agree to take part in the film if they realised it was an “overtly Creationist [sic]” production. “At the end of the day,” he said, “[when] people see ‘Creationist’ [sic], instantly the shutters go up and that would have shut us off from talking to the sort of experts, such as Professor Bowler, that we wanted to get to.”

My emphasis.

One of the commentators, korotiotio, makes this point:

The producers intention for this documentary was to create a film that would be attractive to secular broadcasters and NOT an “anti-Darwin creationist polemic”, thus the production company Fathom Media was set-up to produce and market the film. Which by the way, is standard practice in television land.

While this is true, the admission from the producers as to their reasons for setting up a “front” is in spite of the fact that it’s standard practice, not germane to it.

Crawley filed this under “religion” and “ethics”. Obviously he’s using the “ethics” category as a shorthand for “gross violations of ethics”.

Read the full text of Crawley’s post over at the BBC: “Creationists defend Darwin film”

/hattip: RD.net

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How to get a geek into the woods, or Geocaching

Published
by
Bjorn
on June 22, 2009
.

Last year, after our wedding, we hauled ourselves up to Duluth to get away for a day or two. On our jaunt, I wanted pie and had heard of Betty's Pies, which is on the way to Two Harbors. So, we get pie, but have time to kill, so we stumble into Gooseberry Falls State Park. At the visitors center, there are displays of stuffed animals in the area, birch canoes, etc. But, there are also brightly colored signs advertising Geocaching at the State Parks (sponsored by Best Buy.)

We wander over to the info desk, check out a Garmin eTrex GPS, received a sheet with instructions for the GPS and headed out of the door.

We did get lost, but wandering around a state park isn't boring, even if you are lost. We eventually followed the right path to lead us to the "cache." We hiked on well established trails to an outhouse which overlooked Lake Superior. It was a great view and something we wouldn't have found on our own.

We were hooked. When we came back home, I plugged in coordinates to a few caches in Como Park and one that was stuck in a train on Energy Park into my car's GPS. We had no luck finding anything and stopped looking. We started up again about a month ago, because our friends, Crystal and Vic, started Geocaching. They were actually finding things like Geocoins, and Travel Bugs. It sounded really interesting, so we headed out with the Mio DigiWalker c310x. We didn't find anything.

We found a Garmin eTrex Venture HC for about $85 refurbished to up our game a bit. Still, the caches we tried to find were elusive. It looks like the Como area is more difficult then we would like and was probably a bad place to start out.

Since then, we have crawled over Central Park and Villa Park in Roseville, Crosby Park in Saint Paul and Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. We have left a bunch of Travel Bugs we purchased to leave in caches, a handful of geocoins, and some trinkets. It's been fun, even if we've both been soaked, exhaused, muddied, pricked, bit and frusturated.

For more information on Geocaching, visit www.geocaching.com.

Peep Show Puzzles Series

Published
by
Daniel DiRito
on June 21, 2009
.
BugEyeBrigadeInBlue.jpg
BugEyeBrigadeInTerraCotta.jpg
BugEyeBrigadeInYellow.jpg
DevilInDuplicateInBurgundy.jpg
DevilInDuplicateInGreen.jpg
FaceFlipInBrown.jpg
FaceFlipInPurple.jpg
FaceOffOnTheFly.jpg
FaceOffOnTheFlyInOrange.jpg
ForayInFaceBuildingInBlackAndBrown.jpg
ForayInFaceBuildingInBlackAndBrownII.jpg
ForayInFaceBuildingInBlackAndGray.jpg
ForayInFaceBuildingInBurgundy.jpg
ForayInFaceBuildingInLavender.jpg
LipServiceLegion.jpg
LipServiceLegionsInPlastic.jpg
MasksAreMirrors.jpg
MasksAreMirrorsInTandem.jpg
ParasolParanoia.jpg
ParasolParanoiaII.jpg
PortraitsAndPalettesInBeige.jpg
PortraitsAndPalettesInBlue.jpg
PortraitsAndPalettesInGold.jpg

Confessions of a Lapsed [Person Who Doesn't Believe In Gods]

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 21, 2009
.

Jenn Q Public (”one part reason, two parts awesome” – LOL!) is apparently a lapsed atheist. Sorry, I meant Atheist. The capitalisation is important, you see, because that means that Atheists are Dogmatic, Militant, Intolerant, and all of those other extra-bad qualities that only atheists (sorry, Atheists) exhibit and is never, ever, ever found in religious people.

NEVER!

So she wrote it up.

I didn’t follow her point (if there was one) mainly because she was describing herself as an Atheist who followed the quasi-religious doctrine of Atheism, whatever that is. Is this where the “New” comes in in “New Atheists”? I’m still to understand what that means too.

So, in order to understand what she was saying, I translated it into words I could understand, seeing if it would make more sense to me and if I would see myself and other atheists/secularists reflected in the mirror of her concern:

Confessions of a Lapsed [Person Who Doesn't Believe In Gods]

Do you believe in God? Really? And you’re willing to admit it in public?

Oops. Sorry, for a moment I slipped back into the arrogant [Lack Of Belief In Gods] of my youth.

Before my parents had children, they decided to raise their kids in a secular home. We had gifts at Christmas time and chocolate covered matzoh during Passover, but there was no religion and certainly no God.

When I was in grade school, God was just a kind of nondescript character who popped up in Little House on the Prairie books from time to time. He seemed like a decent enough fellow, but was more or less a bit player who didn’t have much to say.

After my grandfather died when I was seven, his Baptist minister lifted me up in his arms and told me, “It’s all right, Grandpa’s with God now.” At that moment, I could feel my dress was hiked up in the back and all I could think about was pulling it back down. But later, I asked around and discovered that God was our Heavenly father, whatever that was supposed to mean.

I figured, who better to ask about my Heavenly father than my earthly father, but when I did he laughed.

He wasn’t amused in a “kids say the darnedest things” kind of way. He was laughing derisively at the idea that my mother’s family believed in God. And thus began my introduction to [A Lack Of Belief In Gods].

There are people who call themselves [a person who doesn't believe in gods] who are simply nonbelievers, and then there are the big “A” [People Who Don't Believe In Gods] for whom [Lack Of Belief In Gods] is almost a religion. This quasi-religious doctrine isn’t neutral on the existence of other religions; rather, [A Lack Of Belief In Gods] is a virulently anti-theistic creed characterized by sneering contempt for religion and a profoundly dogmatic bigotry toward people of faith.

Want to know how [People Who Don't Believe In Gods] see the rest of us?

I grew up learning from my father that [A Lack Of Belief In Gods] is rational, and therefore, religious belief is irrational; [A Lack Of Belief In Gods] is defined by logic, religious faith by fantasy; and science is real while religion is make believe. Faith, I was taught, requires a willful stifling of reason.

The Torah, the Gospels, the Qur’an? All woefully inaccurate, laughably inconsistent fictions used to encourage belief in an illusion for the purpose of social control.

My curiosity in religion surfaced again in seventh grade when several of my friends were planning Bat Mitzvahs. Surely my friends weren’t ignorant enough to actually believe in God, were they? The answer was no. For most of these reform Jews, this celebration marked the official end to the tedium of Hebrew school. Most of their families were Ethical Culturists with a recreational interest in preserving their Jewish cultural identity. In other words, they too were [People Who Don't Believe In Gods].

By the time I reached high school, having had little contact with religion, I was convinced that people of faith were credulous and unenlightened. They gravitated toward soothing tales of God and afterlife to help them deal with their own mortality. At best, I considered belief in God an anachronism, a quaint vestige of days gone by, on par with superstitions about wicked thoughts causing birth defects.

At my extremely liberal college, I was exposed to even more militant [Lack Of Belief In Gods]. It was there that I learned the mere whiff of religiosity is worthy of denigration. Many of the people I met approached religion with something between disdain and loathing, and considered all religious belief a form of fanaticism. Christians in particular were characterized as knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing fundies (and that was in polite company.)

Fortunately my mother taught me enough manners that I kept my bias to myself.

In this new environment, my [Lack Of Belief In Gods] was more than evidence of good reasoning, it was a socially desirable badge of intellectual superiority. Make no mistake: [People Who Don't Believe In Gods] think they’re smarter than you. [A Lack Of Belief In Gods] isn’t simple skepticism. It is a certainty that believers are wrong, and by extension, intellectually inferior. Religion, especially Judeo-Christian religion, is nothing more than a crutch for dupes.

But [People Who Don't Believe In Gods] aren’t content to leave religion as a mere object of ridicule. They want it cleansed from public life. And enlightened as they are, they’ve come up with quite the pretense for justifying the righteousness of their bigotry: they are defending the vision of our founding fathers from a dominionist conspiracy to establish Christianity as the state religion.

You see, for liberal [People Who Don't Believe In Gods], the only thing worse than religion is the Religious Right, a term they use to encompass all Christian conservatives. And what better way to siphon fuel from the Religious Right than to convince Americans that the government is perpetually on the verge of becoming a theocracy?

And so, they accuse local governments of trampling the Constitution in the name of God and they find subliminal Christian iconography in political ads. They wring new meanings from Thomas Jefferson’s notion of separation between church and state, and condemn our country’s motto and the status of Christmas as a national holiday. But above all, [People Who Don't Believe In Gods] stoke fear among religious and nonreligious alike that conservatives view government as a tool to force religion down your throat.

Pope-slandering buffoon Bill Maher, something of a patron saint among [People Who Don't Believe In Gods], has called religion “the ultimate hustle.” Last fall, Maher’s fellow liberal Chris Matthews, a self-described Catholic, roundly criticized Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for talking about prayer in a “secular environment” and complained that she made the Republican Party look more like a church tent than a big tent. In March, Matthews complained, “Why does everything sound like the ‘700 Club’ with this Party now?” Such examples of anti-religious bias can be found every day on cable news, network television, and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

As my politics strayed right of center after college, I realized I wanted no part of that Maher/Matthews worldview based in elitism and the ridicule of others. I made the transition from [A Person Who Doesn't Believe In Gods] to [a person who doesn't believe in gods] to agnostic, and have since discovered why it is often said that religion is experiential.

There was a time when I would have preferred any manner of torture to admitting the possibility of a higher power. These days, I’m proud to say I lost my faith in the [Person Who Doesn't Believe In Gods] creed.

Nope, still not getting it. Perhaps if I translated “secular” and “liberal” and “elitism” and “thinking” and “having a fucking clue” from their right-wing “meanings” I might have had more success.

Perhaps next time.

/hattip to The Barefoot Bum.

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Updated: Weekend Funnies – Funny Death Scenes

Published
by
Tommykey
on June 21, 2009
.
I haven't done a Friday funnies in a while. I meant to put this up last night, but didn't get around to it. So I guess I will call this one Weekend Funnies. The first scene is from Robocop, wherein one of the bad guys gets toxic waste all over him. The second is the great Samuel Jackson death scene from Deep Blue Sea. Enjoy.





Update! Here's another great scene, this one a classic from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

£75 of awesome sceptical activist WIN!

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 20, 2009
.

Now here’s an example of great sceptical activism, all centred around the ongoing BCA vs Simon Singh libel claim and recent ASA adjudication on chiropractic advertising.

Simon over at Adventures in nonsense has been busying himself recently:

For some time, chiropractic has managed to get away with being the acceptable face of alternative medicine. With some evidence to show that it helps with lower back pain, and many chiropractors only using the therapy for this purpose, it was seen by many as a legitimate therapy and largely escaped criticism from sceptics.

That all changed when the BCA decided to sue Simon Singh for libel. In a fine example of the Streisand effect, all the energy usually reserved for criticising homeopaths and reiki healers was redirected straight at those chiropractors making wild and outlandish claims to treat colic, asthma and a host of other problems unrelated to the spine.

With the BCA attempting to stifle debate over the bogus claims pointed out by Simon Singh, I was determined to do something.

Golly gosh, what did he do? What did he do?

[Don't you just love cliff-hangers?]

I don’t want to give the game away here, so pop on over and read what Simon and his chums have been up to from the man himself.

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Petition: Withdraw support for creationist zoo in schools

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 20, 2009
.

Over at RD.net today, someone has posted a petition:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to withdraw support for Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, and education focused, yet ardently creationist establishment.

Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm (NAZF) is a zoo just outside Bristol that markets itself to schools and is heavily focused on child education.

However, instead of teaching well-established science, it promotes creationism.

The literature displayed at the zoo is hostile to Darwin and his theories and attempts to debunk techniques such as radio carbon dating and interpretation of the fossil record.

Much of this literature – which is presented as fact – contradicts science on the national curriculum, thereby actively damaging a child’s education. This can be evidenced on their website; however, this is much diluted compared the ardent creationist material on display at the zoo.

NAZF also uses the VisitBritian logo to market the zoo.

The stated aim of VisitBritain (Britain’s national tourism agency) is to market Britain worldwide and to develop England’s visitor economy.

By promoting the NAZF, with its creationist agenda and harmful educational materials, VisitBritian is damaging the reputation of the United Kingdom.

I’m a little of two minds over this. On one hand, I feel people should be able to believe any bat-shit insane proposition they like. On the other, the fact that the wingnuts behind this zoo are making inroads into schools (what the fuck does RE [religious "education" - a [s]tatutory subject with non-statutory programme of study] have to do with biology?) is not on for precisely the reasons that creationism isn’t already taught in science lessons: it’s not science.

As these two concerns are not necessarily mutually exclusive, the only reason that I’m signing this petition is for the second reason, and not the first.

I just wanted to make that clear.

I also think that the fourth paragraph (the one starting The literature displayed at the zoo…) is both superfluous and frames the petition badly. I do understand and appreciate why it’s there, although I wish it weren’t and think the petition would be better off for it.

Note: The petition is scheduled to close on the 26th June 2009 (six days [ha!] from the date of this post) so please sign it, and repost as far and wide as you can.

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unslavishly unenslaved

Published
by
Synthaetica
on June 20, 2009
.

Yes, “unenslaved” is a metaphor.

I have no delusions, illusions, or conclusions that the type of “slavery” I refer to when using this metaphor in any remote way correlates to the various forms of tribal, racial, and societal forms of slavery which have been committed upon people throughout humanity’s inglorious history. By using the word “unenslaved”, my intention is not to demean anyone who is, or has ever been, subjected to the crime we commonly refer to as slavery.

That having been said, I want to apologize for the dearth of posts over the past nine days. for what it’s worth, I was in the hospital with pneumonia from June 11-15, and sick for several days before that. It was the first time—ever—that I have been brought so low, and that’s including being quite sickly as a toddler, shot in combat in Panama, and having sustained back injuries during Desert Storm, along with the relatively typical respiratory issues from the same. At 42 years of age, I’m still young enough to be grossly opposed to feeling helpless. It was not a fun week, and I’m still not at 100% yet.

Now, why my guest bloggers didn’t do anything, I can’t tell you. Lazy bums they are, off with their own domains and such! Bums, I tell you! BUMS!

Anyway, let me take a moment hear to explain what this site is REALLY about.

When I started unenslaved.com, the thoughts in my head revolved around many subjects, ranging from a simple celebration of not being bound by traditionalism, religion, and other forms of social oppression through to wanting to be a resource for people who are in the process of freeing themselves from the various forms of institutionalized social repression (which includes some forms of education, religion and sociological circumstances). Ultimately, I think I’ve settled on the former, with a willingness to help those who want it, in terms of the latter. As well, if something I manage to bust out happens to pique someone’s interest to the point that they begin to at least toy with changing the way they think, then I would be a happy man indeed. This is also why I’ve invited others to post here: more opportunities to get more neurons firing, after all.

You should be aware that I, and my guest-bloggers (at least I believe I can safely speak for them on this level), are all smart-asses, but we are are passionate about the things we have come to know as true. For myself, as a “de-convert” of original Christian upbringing, I often have a difficult time not belittling those whose thinking is woefully clouded by delusion, because my de-conversion was a function of my personal maturation process. While I have every intention of continuing my patented smartassery, I also intend to improve upon not talking like a smarmy asshat, or even internally believing that I’m “better” than someone else who lives under the veil of delusion. I doubt I’ll be perfect at it, but I’ll honestly try.

Anything else, after all, would be me imposing a particularly insidious form of mental slavery on myself: a belief that I am “better” simply because I corrected an error. Such things don’t truly make anyone better, they just make one less gullible. Just as many bad things can happen by virtue of one’s transfixed skepticism as by virtue of one’s gullibility, after all.

So here’s the challenge: I hope that those of us that blog here will continually challenge ourselves and each other to be true to the premise above: We are not inherently better than anyone else. Now, we might be better at some things than certain other people: things like critical thinking, analysis, etc. But we’re not inherently better, or more superior at least I don’t believe we necessarily are. Let us educate without belittlement, and let us communicate without condescension. I realize this is no easy task. The easy stuff isn’t really worth doing, though.

The challenge for those who come here to read these things is to at the very least attempt to be non-judgmental. You are neither expected to nor desired to agree with everything we put out to be read. You are certainly not expected to think like we do, believe what we believe, or frankly to be as self-reliant as we are.

Some are going to read that as a sidelong put-down, but that’s not the intent of that statement. Most people who believe in a deity are actually not quite as self-reliant as they tend to envision themselves. This is precisely where communications tend to get bogged down. The only thing I ask is that we make honest attempts to communicate as opposed to simply vociferating, pontificating, and jumping feet-first into the ad-hominem grab-bag of oneupmanship.

Thanks for your time.

Revelations in Ireland Disclose Yet Again the Rotten Structure of the Catholic Church

Published
by
Devout Atheist
on June 19, 2009
.
This news is of course no longer current, since the revelations, in Ireland of all countries, of the sexual abuse by Catholic priests of young boys in orphanages and schools, occurred a month ago. On the other hand, I have not posted to this blog for an even longer period, so I suppose there is a certain symmetry here.

I am not particularly attracted to any of the major or minor superstitions- oops, religions- that have ever existed. But I particularly despise the Catholic Church. Not the millions of devout Catholics in the world, who of course have, under our wonderful First Amendment, the right to worship the deity(s) of their choice. The putrid odor instead emanates from the sanctimonious hypocrites currently in charge of the decaying Catholic organization, who have chronically condoned and concealed the sexual abuse of innocent children (mostly boys) by Catholic priests.

It is bad enough that the malignant leadership of the Catholic church has failed to punish and/or expel priests known to be guilty of the terrible sin of having sex with trusting children. But far worse, these spiritual “leaders” have instead transferred the guilty priests to other flocks of innocent doves, permitting these fiends to continue feasting on new young victims.

The current Catholic church hierarchy clearly qualifies as one of the foulest pestilences that God (if there were a God) has wrought upon the Earth. One wonders what sin Humanity has committed, great enough to justify the visitation upon us of such a putrescent plague. Only God in his infinite wisdom knows!

Here endeth today’s lesson.