Monthly Archive for August, 2009Page 3 of 5

UBS process, ecumenicalism at its best

Published
by
CD-Host
on August 21, 2009
.

The United Bible Society publishes the most heavily used Greek text the Novum Testamentum Graece. Now like everyone else who gets involved in translation discussion I disagree with their choices, their are times I would have made gone the other way. But what I think is fantastic is how they have created a successful ecumenicalism, providing a model that is truly able to cross the divide and get a major complex religious issue resolved in a way that everyone can stand behind the final product. Roman Catholics participate in the UBS process the same as Protestants. Jehovah’s witnesses and Adventist translations are pulling from the same UBS text. And not only across denominations: from the ESV (conservative) to the NRSV (NCC) to the very liberal scholars version to even atheist translations like Price the UBS/NA is the standard. Asian and African churches are pulling from the same source. The Jewish Publication Society is a member of the UBS and the NJPS (1985) is pulling from the UBS Hebrew which means that even the Jews are part of this ecumenical unity. This is one of the great ecumenical triumphs of this century that doesn't get appreciated nearly enough.

This didn't have to happen. Had the IBS/Zondervan stuck with the MT or the TR for the NIV we could have had a very situation today where Christians wouldn't even have agreement on what the original texts say.

But more than this I’ve argued that this process is a model for ecumenicalism that actually worked and continues to work. I’m not sure why people who are interested in ecumenicalism don’t pay more attention to an area where the goals were achieved, full Christian unity. Think about that for a second, at least in one example humanity was are able to publish unified collection of books on an important topic which is authoritative to all Christiandom! We don’t have this breadth of consensus on the creeds.

What makes it work is the focus on consensus. Essentially the system looks like
  1. A scholar makes a proposal about a verse based on manuscript evidence.
  2. If that proposal gains wide acceptance as a variant in the academic community it will become a textnote in the UBS. For a new one that probably be around the NA29, but this is one going back a long time.
  3. Some translators will start to incorporate it, generally as a possible variant which will draw larger debate and discussion.
  4. If that proposal continues to draw a consensus it will become the default reading in the Greek.
  5. At that point essentially all translations will attach a note similar to the one for 1John 5:7-8 that you see in Protestant bibles. This creates awareness of the issue and builds consensus among the whole community.
  6. Some translations will start to move the older variant to an appendix which will again widen the debate. If there are strong objections the process may stop here.
  7. Most translations will move the older variant to an appendix
  8. Some translations will start to drop the appendix.
  9. The older variant will be dropped entirely across the board.
Which is to say everyone is treating everyone respectfully and consensus emerges. At every step their is a check back. The system is very conservative but is open to discussion and reason inside the system.

Panstupidity and Jumbo-Mumbo

Published
by
Arcanum
on August 21, 2009
.
Christopher Hitchens used (coined?) this delightful variant of "mumbo-jumbo" to denigrate Fred Hoyle's ridiculous panspermia argument that abiogenesis by chemical evolution is "as likely as a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and spontaneously assembling a Boeing 747 airplane".

Specifically, Hoyle asked:



A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?*

Considering the clever twist for which his Jumbo-assembly, junky analogy set his argument up, Hoyle, who sarcastically coined the term "Big Bang", was doubly ridiculous in this irrelevant misrepresentation of the probabilistic realities of chemical evolution of life (biopoiesis).

Of course, chemicals actually self-assembled in accordance with simple, still operational, chemical reactions over an extensive period.

Although Hoyle presented the jumbo-junk argument to promote the notion of panspermia, intelligent-design creationists have eagerly misapplied this jumbo-mumbo as an argument against biological evolution by natural selection. Hoyle's remarks are particularly popular to creationists because they also provide for a fallacious appeal to authority based on Hoyle's reported atheism. The creationist fallacious appeal to authority runs: Hoyle was a brilliant atheist and he said something useful to the cause of creationist delusions.

Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe concocted the panspermia (exogenesis) theory to counter theories of chemical evolution of life (abiogenesis), and were responsible for another idiotic statement much loved by creationists:

"No matter how large an environment considers, life cannot have had a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on typewriters could not produce the words of Shakespeare, for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong attempts. The same is true for living material."

Hitchen's response to the jumbo-junk argument:

"We know the answer in all cases: these were painstaking inventions (also by trial and error) of mankind, and were the the work of many hands, and are still "evolving." This is what makes piffle out of the ignorant creationist sneer, which compares evolution to a whirlwind blowing through a junkyard of parts and coming up with a mumbo jet. For a start, there are no "parts" lying around waiting to be assembled. For another thing, the process of acquisition and discarding of "parts" (most especially wings) is as far from a whirlwind as could conceivably be. The time involved is more like that of a glacier than a storm. For still another thing, jumbo jets are not riddled with nonworking or superfluous "parts" lamely inherited from less successful aircraft. Why have we agreed so easily to call this exploded old nontheory by its cunningly chosen new disguise of "intelligent design"? There is nothing at all "intelligent" about it. It is the same old mumbo-jumbo (or in this instance, jumbo-mumbo)." ¬ Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto (2007), pp 85-87.

* F. Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York (1983), p. 18.

For a video of a thought experiment that demonstrates that clock components could indeed self-assemble into clocks, provided only that they could mutate and undergo natural selection, see Tick Tock.

Elsewhere: Are IDiots Creationists?

Atheist Genius...DEBUNKED!



, , , , , , panspermia, Fred Hoyle, Chandra Wickramasinghe,
A-Deism describes a rational view based on all the evidence that points to the nonexistence of supernatural entities.

More Food for Unthought

Published
by
Arcanum
on August 20, 2009
.


The creationists have something else to deny – Darwinius masillae.





Ida is a beautifully preserved, 47 million yr-old, almost complete, transitional primate fossil from the Eocene.

Undoubtedly, this will prove upsetting to those who resort to challenging taunts of "give me proof", but who, in their eternal love affair with argumentum ad ignorantiam, deny all evidence presented.





Having thus exhibited their profound self-obsessed bias toward obdurate ignorance, creationists will almost certainly proceed on to whining that we atheists are "mean" to them for noting that they are more often less "bright" than atheists.

Why are they?

We are almost all raised within one religious tradition or another. Those who think rationally about the utter lack of evidence are more likely to deconvert than are those who do not think critically.

The IQ discrepancy would be even greater were it not for the fact that some individuals adopt atheistic attitudes for purely emotional reasons.

Since creationists repeatedly, publically demonstrate their poverty of logic, lack of education, or blatant intellectual dishonesty, they have no reasonable grounds for accusations of unfair labelling as being less intellectual than most atheists. End of story.

I make no apologies for the fact that I do not respect ill-founded, prejudiced, opinions that reflect an obsession with personal salvation, but which are typically accompanied by hypocritically anti-social attitudes.

People are entitled to their own opinions only in so far as it is impossible to alter the opinions of a person who is immune to evidence and logic. That is, the reality is that we are stuck with religiously-motivated ignorance. This does not mean that we must afford unwarranted respect to stubborn manifestations of a cognitive disorder. In fact, I think that we should not even feign respect for ignorant, biased opinions. Society can no longer afford to mollycoddle stupid ideas.

This is not to say that believers should be personally disrespected. It is to say that their uninformed notions should be refuted. Even though creationists almost never admit, let alone see, that they have been refuted, bystanders might benefit from having light shone on someone else's cognitive errors.


Ida: official website . Darwinius masillae . Poor, poor Ida, Or: "Overselling an Adapid" . Darwinius masillae - The Panda's Thumb . Introducing Darwinius masillae . wiki .

Franzen JL, Gingerich PD, Habersetzer J, Hurum JH, von Koenigswald W, Smith BH (2009) Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology.

PLoS ONE 4(5): e5723. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005723. abstract .

A-Deism describes a rational view based on all the evidence that points to the nonexistence of supernatural entities.

A Rationalist Reviews: The Holy Bible

Published
by
Menocchio
on August 20, 2009
.
It’s one you have to tackle eventually. It’s not so rare in this age of screaming superlative taglines to see a story labelled as “the best ever told”, but on the basis of sales alone The Holy Bible is head and shoulders above its competitors.

It’s not strictly speaking a book, but rather a clumsy stitch-job of two completely different stories. We all remember the runaway success of The Old Testament and quite rightly thought the series was over when the original authors died centuries ago. Now though, a bunch of amateur script-doctors have leapt upon the opportunity to tack their own novella onto the original, calling it The New Testament in a shameless attempt to curry favour with longtime fans. The whole package is called The Holy Bible, after that Manic Street Preachers album.

The deluxe version of The Holy Bible, exclusively on sale in Starbucks


Regular readers will recall that at the time I lambasted The Old Testament for its po-faced take on the epic family saga, calling it "Twin Peaks without the laughs". Come back Moses, all is forgiven! This latest addition to the canon manages to retain the dry genealogies and lists of rules and regulations that made the OT so hard to read, and ditch the parts that made it interesting. They take the best character from the OT – the vindictive and deliciously fickle ‘God’ – and utterly change his character. This time round, you half expect to see Him hugging a tree, rather than setting it on fire and shouting from inside it. Replacing such a popular, in-your-face fan favourite with a proverb-spouting liberal deadbeat might be the kind of thing that goes down a storm in the literary world, but you can’t see die-hard fans in Dead Squaw, Alabama taking it quite so well.

This ‘Jesus’ is somehow both the ‘God’ we remember and an entirely new character altogether, in a lazy move that is never fully explained. He spends his time dithering around the Holy Land, throwing out glib speeches about equality and justice, all the while followed by a dozen irritating literary props collectively called the ‘disciples’. I cannot begin to express my frustration at this gaggle of faceless drones, whose sole purpose seems to be asking asinine questions so that Jesus has yet another opportunity to sermonise and patronise his audience. Considering this guy is supposed to be recruiting for some radical breakaway sect, the fact that his right-hand men seem unable to tie their own sandal-thongs without his supervision stretches the credibility of the plot somewhat.

At times it seems as though the authors haven’t even read each other’s contributions. Luke and Matthew are the only authors who can be bothered to describe Jesus’s supernatural birth, John completely omits the exorcisms that in other accounts make Jesus look like the fifth Ghostbuster, and Paul doesn’t even seem sure that the character he’s writing about actually exists in the book's setting. I know that authors are often under a lot of pressure, but I don’t think a weekly meet up over coffee to swap notes would have been too much to ask.

Overall, there are some good scenes, and some engaging characters, but the NT suffers from the same flaws as its predecessor. Promising dramatic scenes are utterly squandered almost without exception. The authors are adept at creating perfect set-ups for action scenes that would make Michael Bay weep tears of pure adrenaline, but consistently fail to deliver anything but bitter disappointment. One minute Jesus is kicking ass in the temple and the next he’s wandering around in the desert doing nothing, or healing the sick. It brings to mind the depressingly anticlimactic battle for Jericho in the OT and I’d hoped we’d seen the last of it.

Although not strictly relevant to the quality of the book, you have to wonder who authorised such loose brand control. The dizzying array of spin-offs, continuations and reinterpretations are enough to give any new reader a headache. It’s bad enough having a single story told from four often wildly different perspectives, but poorly thought-out fan fiction like the Book of Mormon and the dozens of near-contemporary Gnostic gospels hardly improve matters. It’s as though the publishers let any idiot with a pen have a stab at writing a gospel in the race to make money off the franchise. People really love these books. I mean, really love them. Harry Potter fanatics have nothing on some of these ‘Christians’. Letting so many people dash off their own non-canon spin-offs is at best irresponsible, but at worst pretty damn dangerous.

Overall score: 2/5

Verdict: if you somehow find yourself trapped in a literary vacuum then reach for The Holy Bible with a happy heart, but there are so many superior fantasy novels out there it’s hard to see why you’d bother with this lacklustre effort.

Originally published in the first issue of Secular Future, the quarterly magazine of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies

A Rationalist Reviews: The Holy Bible

Published
by
Menocchio
on August 20, 2009
.
It’s one you have to tackle eventually. It’s not so rare in this age of screaming superlative taglines to see a story labelled as “the best ever told”, but on the basis of sales alone The Holy Bible is head and shoulders above its competitors.

It’s not strictly speaking a book, but rather a clumsy stitch-job of two completely different stories. We all remember the runaway success of The Old Testament and quite rightly thought the series was over when the original authors died centuries ago. Now though, a bunch of amateur script-doctors have leapt upon the opportunity to tack their own novella onto the original, calling it The New Testament in a shameless attempt to curry favour with longtime fans. The whole package is called The Holy Bible, after that Manic Street Preachers album.

The deluxe version of The Holy Bible, exclusively on sale in Starbucks


Regular readers will recall that at the time I lambasted The Old Testament for its po-faced take on the epic family saga, calling it "Twin Peaks without the laughs". Come back Moses, all is forgiven! This latest addition to the canon manages to retain the dry genealogies and lists of rules and regulations that made the OT so hard to read, and ditch the parts that made it interesting. They take the best character from the OT – the vindictive and deliciously fickle ‘God’ – and utterly change his character. This time round, you half expect to see Him hugging a tree, rather than setting it on fire and shouting from inside it. Replacing such a popular, in-your-face fan favourite with a proverb-spouting liberal deadbeat might be the kind of thing that goes down a storm in the literary world, but you can’t see die-hard fans in Dead Squaw, Alabama taking it quite so well.

This ‘Jesus’ is somehow both the ‘God’ we remember and an entirely new character altogether, in a lazy move that is never fully explained. He spends his time dithering around the Holy Land, throwing out glib speeches about equality and justice, all the while followed by a dozen irritating literary props collectively called the ‘disciples’. I cannot begin to express my frustration at this gaggle of faceless drones, whose sole purpose seems to be asking asinine questions so that Jesus has yet another opportunity to sermonise and patronise his audience. Considering this guy is supposed to be recruiting for some radical breakaway sect, the fact that his right-hand men seem unable to tie their own sandal-thongs without his supervision stretches the credibility of the plot somewhat.

At times it seems as though the authors haven’t even read each other’s contributions. Luke and Matthew are the only authors who can be bothered to describe Jesus’s supernatural birth, John completely omits the exorcisms that in other accounts make Jesus look like the fifth Ghostbuster, and Paul doesn’t even seem sure that the character he’s writing about actually exists in the book's setting. I know that authors are often under a lot of pressure, but I don’t think a weekly meet up over coffee to swap notes would have been too much to ask.

Overall, there are some good scenes, and some engaging characters, but the NT suffers from the same flaws as its predecessor. Promising dramatic scenes are utterly squandered almost without exception. The authors are adept at creating perfect set-ups for action scenes that would make Michael Bay weep tears of pure adrenaline, but consistently fail to deliver anything but bitter disappointment. One minute Jesus is kicking ass in the temple and the next he’s wandering around in the desert doing nothing, or healing the sick. It brings to mind the depressingly anticlimactic battle for Jericho in the OT and I’d hoped we’d seen the last of it.

Although not strictly relevant to the quality of the book, you have to wonder who authorised such loose brand control. The dizzying array of spin-offs, continuations and reinterpretations are enough to give any new reader a headache. It’s bad enough having a single story told from four often wildly different perspectives, but poorly thought-out fan fiction like the Book of Mormon and the dozens of near-contemporary Gnostic gospels hardly improve matters. It’s as though the publishers let any idiot with a pen have a stab at writing a gospel in the race to make money off the franchise. People really love these books. I mean, really love them. Harry Potter fanatics have nothing on some of these ‘Christians’. Letting so many people dash off their own non-canon spin-offs is at best irresponsible, but at worst pretty damn dangerous.

Overall score: 2/5

Verdict: if you somehow find yourself trapped in a literary vacuum then reach for The Holy Bible with a happy heart, but there are so many superior fantasy novels out there it’s hard to see why you’d bother with this lacklustre effort.

Originally published in the first issue of Secular Future, the quarterly magazine of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies

Furor over Stupidity

Published
by
Arcanum
on August 19, 2009
.
Poster for Inherit the Wind -- America has not progressed very far since the Scopes Monkey Trial.It's high time that scientists and the educated organize against attempts by the dogmatically ignorant to undermine education in America. AiG's deceptive junk-tank monument to stupidity, aka the Creation Museum, has squandered $27 million in order to promote their LIES against scientific fact.

YECs appear not to be a particularly bright group, so it seems unlikely that many budding geniuses are being misled into ignorance. However, this is no reason not to decry the damage done to average children by causing deliberate confusion about science and reality.

The Founding Fathers were wise to separate Religion and the State, though not necessarily for prescient reasons. Whether or not they foresaw the likelihood that organized stupidity would attempt to undermine education, the Constitution should be used to protect education from superstition and ignorance. The mere fact of "scientists'" having signed a document against Darwinism demonstrates the desecration of science, critical thinking, and logic wrought by religious dogmatists. Polls indicate that far too high a percentage of Americans are so ignorant of the facts on which scientific theories are based that they hold a strict creationist view of origins.

Modern politicians, concerned more for their political ambitions than for truth, are all too aware of the vocal agitators who sway religious dogmatists on voting day, so they abrogate their responsibility to uphold the Constitution. To make matters worse, the most stupid president ever not-to-actually-be-elected resorts to claims of communication with God. It's intriguing to ponder how America came to be a nation that largely reviles knowledge while protecting organized stupidity. America has not come very far since 1925!

Statement of Concern
"We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis."

National Center for Science Education petition: http://www.sciohost.org/states

"One of the petitions, started by the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a Washington, D.C., group that focuses on church and state issues, says the museum is part of a "campaign by the religious right to inject creationist teachings into science education."'

Campaign to Defend the Constitution: http://www.defconamerica.org/

Elsewhere: Gallup Poll on Evolution, which reveals that the overwhelming majority of religious fundamentalists are ignorant of the fact of biological evolution : comment on Pharyngula : Religion—our maelstrom of ignorance: "Maybe we need to start picketing fundamentalist churches. Maybe it's about time that we recognize religious miseducation as child abuse."

A-Deism describes a rational view based on all the evidence that points to the nonexistence of supernatural entities.

Their eyes were holden that they should not know him

Published
by
DocMike
on August 18, 2009
.
According to the , ' closest friends didn't recognize him after the resurrection. John tells us (in 20:14) that , a woman Jesus had a questionable past with, looked right at him but didn't know who he was. In Mark 16:12, two of Jesus' disciples didn't recognize him because he "appeared in another form." And according to Luke 24:16, their eyes were "holden" so they wouldn't know him.

Assuming there was ever a historic Jesus and that the were even loosely based on actual events (which I greatly doubt), I think there is a much simpler explanation. Maybe it wasn't him at all! Maybe the disciples didn't recognize him because it wasn't the same dude! Maybe they wanted so much to believe that he had risen, that they voted in a new Messiah.

"Sure, he looks different and walks with a limp, but he knows all the scriptures and what a great story this will make! He rose from the dead! Praise the Lord!"

What do you think?

John 20:14 And when she [Mary Magdalene] had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

Mark 16:12 After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country.

Luke 24:16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

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Their eyes were holden that they should not know him

Published
by
DocMike
on August 18, 2009
.
According to the , ' closest friends didn't recognize him after the resurrection. John tells us (in 20:14) that , a woman Jesus had a questionable past with, looked right at him but didn't know who he was. In Mark 16:12, two of Jesus' disciples didn't recognize him because he "appeared in another form." And according to Luke 24:16, their eyes were "holden" so they wouldn't know him.

Assuming there was ever a historic Jesus and that the were even loosely based on actual events (which I greatly doubt), I think there is a much simpler explanation. Maybe it wasn't him at all! Maybe the disciples didn't recognize him because it wasn't the same dude! Maybe they wanted so much to believe that he had risen, that they voted in a new Messiah.

"Sure, he looks different and walks with a limp, but he knows all the scriptures and what a great story this will make! He rose from the dead! Praise the Lord!"

What do you think?

John 20:14 And when she [Mary Magdalene] had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

Mark 16:12 After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country.

Luke 24:16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

Thank you for subscribing to "By The Book Comics"

Start Happy

Published
by
Kilgore Trout
on August 17, 2009
.
I've got some ranting to do so before I get there I want to start with something cool. So here's a link to a living bridge.

Beyond that I'm closing one chapter in my life and hopefully starting a new one. This week is my last with the non-profit I've been working for these last 4+ years. It's been a great place to work but as anyone who knows me is well aware it was always a dead end job and I should have left about 3 years ago. So thats the chapter thats closing.
The new one (hopefully) is that I'll be going back to school full time at Elmira College. I say hopefully because I'm actually still in the process of applying, the transcripts should be in by now or very soon and so I'm hoping to hear if I'm in by the end of this week. Luckily the school starts a little later than most so I've still got a couple weeks.

So thats my news, I'll also warn that I'm going to have much less time to waste online so expect my posts to get even less frequent, although I can now blog from my phone so maybe I'll keep it up to date.

Start Happy

Published
by
Kilgore Trout
on August 17, 2009
.
I've got some ranting to do so before I get there I want to start with something cool. So here's a link to a living bridge.

Beyond that I'm closing one chapter in my life and hopefully starting a new one. This week is my last with the non-profit I've been working for these last 4+ years. It's been a great place to work but as anyone who knows me is well aware it was always a dead end job and I should have left about 3 years ago. So thats the chapter thats closing.
The new one (hopefully) is that I'll be going back to school full time at Elmira College. I say hopefully because I'm actually still in the process of applying, the transcripts should be in by now or very soon and so I'm hoping to hear if I'm in by the end of this week. Luckily the school starts a little later than most so I've still got a couple weeks.

So thats my news, I'll also warn that I'm going to have much less time to waste online so expect my posts to get even less frequent, although I can now blog from my phone so maybe I'll keep it up to date.

Sunday Blasphemy

Published
by
Velocity Inversion
on August 16, 2009
.

What Kind of Atheist Am I?

Published
by
Secular Planet
on August 12, 2009
.
After vacillating for quite some time between the terms atheist, naturalist and Humanist as my preferred label, I've settled on “atheist” because it's minimalist, unambiguous, and the most recognizable. Now I'm debating with myself whether in certain contexts I should add an adjective in order to indicate that I take an real interest in atheism and that it's an important part of my identity. I want people to understand it's something I actually care about rather than just another fact about me, like my height or my eye color. I'm going to consider a few adjectives commonly paired with “atheist” and see whether they fit the bill.

Militant atheist — I rather like this one because it suggests that I'm always ready and willing to stand up and defend my viewpoint at any moment and that I'm willing to accept the negative label of my critics in order to weaken it, but unfortunately it's misleading in that I never advocate physical violence as do militant religionists. I don't want to give people the wrong impression; atheists have enough misperceptions to combat already.

Fundamentalist atheist — The term isn't exactly meaningless, but it doesn't correspond to anything in reality. That is, it's technically possible to accept the non-existence of deities as an axiom of one's worldview (or a “properly basic belief,” as Plantinga might call it), but I've never actually encountered anyone who does. Weak atheism isn't even a belief, and strong atheism is always argued for with evidence and logic, never dogmatically asserted as unquestionably true.

Devout atheist — I've occasionally referred to myself as this because it's ironic and it actually describes my strong commitment to the idea, but it's also misleading in that it suggests that atheism is a religion. We have no dogma, no sacred texts, no moral code, no holidays, no priests, no saints, no temples, nor anything else that almost every religion has.

Committed atheist — This is similar to the previous option but with less religious baggage. Unfortunately, I wouldn't really say that I was committed to atheism; I'm not even personally committed to promoting it.

Happy atheist — This could indicate that I'm a happy person and that I'm happy to be an atheist. Unfortunately, it seems to imply that many atheists are unhappy and that I need to distinguish myself from them; this is simply false.

Friendly atheist — This has similar problems as the previous option, and it might be even registered or trademarked by Hemant Mehta, who writes a very popular blog with this title. Even if not, it might lead to confusion if I used it.

Serious atheist — Since many atheists aren't serious about their atheism, this is a distinction that actually makes sense. It could mean, I suppose, that I have no sense of humor, but this isn't really likely since I've never encountered any atheist who was reluctant to laugh about both religion and atheism.

Active atheist — I don't know whether I qualify as one since my activity is currently limited to reading books, listening to podcasts, blogging and discussing atheism on a couple of internet forums. I used to attend some meetings of local atheist group, but as a married law student, I really don't have the time, and I'm also not a member of any non-theist organization. I'm certainly not nearly as involved as a lot of others are. I really want to indicate something other than my activity level with the description, but this is the least misleading of the group.

Of course, there's even less of a need or desire to use an adjective in addition to a label. If any readers have a suggestion which I haven't considered here, please post it as comment.

Comparisons

Published
by
nullifidian
on August 12, 2009
.

To even begin to consider oneself comparable to Galileo, one must fulfil two criteria:

a) actually be being persecuted; and
b) right.

Pharyngula -v- Ham

Published
by
possum_momma
on August 11, 2009
.
This post at PZ Meyers' place is gold.
The comments are a delicious bonus. Some of them have left my side aching and I'd like to share a few of my favorites...

Rev. Big Dump Chimp: "Now that we've brought out the sharp poking stick, when do we use the smashing rock?"

Lose the Woo: "...but since the whole "museum" is scientifically vacuous..."

Ham: But its got displays...really neat ones too. They proclaim the truth of the bible plain as day for everyone to see!

When Dinkum asks why Ham won't link to PZ, Warren says...They'll just drift over on floating mats of vegetation.

Humanistic Jones: As Chef taught us, if someone serves you and then you serve them back, then it's on. While PZ has twice served Ham today, does anything from Ham count for the technical definition of serving?




Pharyngula -v- Ham

Published
by
possum_momma
on August 11, 2009
.
This post at PZ Meyers' place is gold.
The comments are a delicious bonus. Some of them have left my side aching and I'd like to share a few of my favorites...

Rev. Big Dump Chimp: "Now that we've brought out the sharp poking stick, when do we use the smashing rock?"

Lose the Woo: "...but since the whole "museum" is scientifically vacuous..."

Ham: But its got displays...really neat ones too. They proclaim the truth of the bible plain as day for everyone to see!

When Dinkum asks why Ham won't link to PZ, Warren says...They'll just drift over on floating mats of vegetation.

Humanistic Jones: As Chef taught us, if someone serves you and then you serve them back, then it's on. While PZ has twice served Ham today, does anything from Ham count for the technical definition of serving?




A Biblical-Literalist Christian Thought Experiment

Published
by
The Jolly Nihilist
on August 11, 2009
.

The following thought experiment is designed for biblical-literalist Christians. Specifically, to partake in this thought experiment, it is necessary that (a) you believe Earth to be several thousand years old, rather than 4.54 billion years old, (b) you believe Earth’s biodiversity is explained by creationism/intelligent design, to the exclusion of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and (c) when referring to creation, both of Earth and of life, you credit the god of the Bible as the creator and ruler. If these stipulations coincide with your worldview, step right up and play along.

Suppose that, in just one instance, time travel was possible. For the sake of this hypothetical, assume that you—a biblical-literalist Christian—had the opportunity to travel far, far back in time and, of course, return to the present day after your trip. Further, suppose that a meddlesome secularist goaded you into traveling 100,000 years into the past, in hopes of proving to you that Earth, indeed, is far older than a mere several thousand years. For this hypothetical, let us assume that the time machine’s accuracy is 100% and, if there were no such thing as “100,000 years ago,” the machine would travel nowhere. (I deliberately spell out such prosaic assumptions because, to touch on the interesting issues raised by this thought experiment, I must close as many loopholes as I can conjure.)

You step into the time machine, which is set for 100,000 years into the past, and are whisked away. Moments later, you step out of the machine and find yourself very much on Earth. In fact, you are in what would now be called Western Europe. After mere moments of exploration, you stumble upon a species that is completely unfamiliar to you: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. You have never laid eyes on such a robust-looking hominid, and watch in awe as they ably hunt for sustenance. Later, to your shock, you stumble upon a burial site where the creatures place their dead. What a curious, curious creature—so seemingly skilled with tools and weapons and, more discomfiting to the biblical-literalist Christian, so similar to us while, at the same time, so unquestionably different.

You are about to step back into the time machine when you notice several woolly mammoths approaching. Needing little more encouragement, you return to the present day, where the meddlesome secularist anxiously awaits your report. Yes, you say, Earth is indeed older than a mere several thousand years. Having traveled to the very time in question, you can say with utter certainty that Earth, at the very least, is 100,000 years old. Obviously, this expedition could not prove Darwinian evolution by natural selection, but it would disprove Young Earth creationism. Old Earth creationism (hardly a monolithic school of thought) is not disproved; Darwin’s theory, of course, remains entirely in accord with the evidence gathered from the journey.

How grievous would the injury to your worldview be, if such an event were to transpire? Could you, as a biblical-literalist Christian, just switch from Young Earth creationism to Old Earth creationism and still leave the entirety of your worldview intact? Or, given your literalist interpretation of the Bible, would the absolute knowledge that Earth, at the very least, is 100,000 years old throw into doubt all you thought you had known? If the creation story, to some degree, must be read metaphorically, what else might be metaphorical? Jesus’ birth by parthenogenesis? The story of Noah and his ark? Jesus’ resurrection from the tomb? Would the shattering of Young Earth creationism poke too many holes in your worldview to be easily plugged? Or, again, would minor tweaks be sufficient to reinforce the edifice?

Let us not end the thought experiment there, though. Instead, let us take it a step further. Suppose, through some method I shall not bother to confect specifically, you came to the certain knowledge that Darwinian evolution by natural selection is true. For the purposes of the hypothetical, again, we are talking about utter and unquestionable 100% certainty. Additionally, let it be clear that microevolution—the process of small modifications occurring within the species level that can result in a new subspecies—is not the topic at hand. Rather, we are discussing macroevolution, which is exactly the type of which Darwin wrote and precisely the process through which our kind, Homo sapiens sapiens, came to be.

This would leave the biblical-literalist Christian with few appealing options. You could endorse a theory of Universal Common Descent, which has been espoused by Darwinians. Or, you could stand behind a theistic evolution/evolutionary creationism scheme, in which evolution has occurred precisely the way Darwinians say, but, essentially, the process was designed, and continues to be overseen, by god. It is not a random process, then, in the broadest sense, because its operating structure was designed by god.

If this were the case, and Darwinian evolution by natural selection was known to be true, how grievous would the injury to your worldview be? Would it throw everything you thought you knew about the nature of the universe (not to mention the nature of reality) into question? Would it lead to a crisis of faith and a newfound doubt in various metaphysical propositions proposed in the Bible? Or, as before with our time-travel trek, would a mere rejiggering suffice to patch up your worldview and make it solid once again?

All this rhetoric, at base, seeks to discover how central denial of Darwinian evolution by natural selection is to the biblical-literalist Christian worldview. Imagine your worldview as a Jenga tower. How important is the piece positing Genesis’ accuracy? If that piece were forced to be removed, would the tower topple?