Author Archive for nullifidianPage 3 of 4

“A different way of knowing”

Published
by
nullifidian
on July 21, 2009
.

I’ve often come across the idea that religious (and other non-evidence-based) ideas are “a different way of knowing”.

“A different way of knowing” what, precisely?

What does their “way of knowing” say about those materialistic things in the universe, like the speed of light? How about electron spin? The mass of Jupiter? Integral mathematics? The calorific value of set honey? The resonant frequency of quartz? The conductivity of copper? Allele frequencies in populations? The decay rate of 238U? Mass/energy conversion rates? Transistor energy barriers? Molar masses? The structure of DNA or diamond or dopamine?

How about something closer to home?

What’s the ideal sonic profile of a church for organ music? The aesthetics of a stained-glass window? The most comfortable shape for a pew? The ideal colour for priestly robes? The ideal number of choristers to sing a reasonably rousing rendition of Handel’s Messiah?

How about something a bit more metaphysical?

Why (according to them) is it wrong to kill or steal? Why shouldn’t homosexuals share a loving relationship? Why should sex be reserved for marriage, and marriage alone (which is of course only ever between one man and one woman)? Why are condoms “evil”? Why is ever-so-tasty bacon not allowed? Why are their favourite ancient stories considered as fact and all others of that ilk are just (and “obviously”) myth, or simply false? How does the doctrine of a “trinity” make any sense when, in every single other case that humanity has ever considered, 1+1+1=3?

Why is their particular interpretation of their scripture “better” or “more correct” than that of any of their heterosectarian neighbours? Why should they enjoy special privileges, often enshrined in statutes, that the rest of us cannot? Why are their opinions considered beyond criticism? What gives them the idea that they are entitled to judge the rest of us by their standards, especially when they often cannot live up to them themselves? What should we believe is true, without any evidence whatsoever, and why should we believe them over their competitors in the marketplace of ideas and opinions?

How can we use this different way of knowing? What is the process for acquiring new knowledge? How can we check that our results are correct? How can we test our newly acquired knowledge against alternate scenarios? What could falsify whatever we think we’ve gained from our different way of knowing, if we’re somehow completely on the wrong track? To what other domains can we apply this different way of knowing?

What things do they know—and how do they know them—that the rest of us cannot, and that isn’t simply an appeal to ancient manuscripts, traditions, personal experiences, authorities, popularity, flattery, fear or emotion, red herrings or hasty generalisations, or guilt by association, or cherry picking, or biased samples, or trying to shift the burden of proof, or straw men, or slippery slopes, or equivalent to just making-shit-up to suit their own preconceptions, preferences or prejudices?

Answers on a postcard (or perhaps just in the comments).

Praise Mithra! I won something!

Published
by
nullifidian
on July 21, 2009
.

The Evolution of God

Daniel Florien of the Unreasonable Faith blog recently ran a competition to win a copy of Robert Wright’s new book The Evolution of God, and I won!

Considering that one of the conditions of the competition was to pray to Mithra that I would win, I did so. However, not really knowing how to pray, mine went something like this:

Hi Mithra. I don’t know if you can hear me down here, but I’d be grateful if you somehow managed to wrangle it so that I could win Daniel’s competition for The Evolution of God. Thanks.

Well, it appears that my simplistic appeal for Mithra to rearrange the necessary matter and circumstance in the universe to ensure my winning was, in fact, successful. W00t!

Therefore it must be the case that Mithra exists (there may be other gods, but he’s my favourite now), as there’s no possible way that I could have won if I hadn’t petitioned Him. Nope, not a hope in hell. Filling out the form to enter the competition was just a formality.

So, cheers Mithra for doing whatever gods do to allow people to win competitions. Oh, and thanks also to Daniel for running the competition and Wright for donating the books as prizes.

Of course, this now means that I really should update my book list soon. Bugger.

Thanks again Daniel. And Mithra, obviously.

Project Tuva: Feynman online

Published
by
nullifidian
on July 20, 2009
.

I posted last month about Bill Gates having purchased the rights to a lecture series by Richard Feynman.

As a follow up to that, it turns out that the Cornell University’s Messenger Lecture Series are now (allegedly) available on the Microsoft Research web site under something called Project Tuva.

I say “allegedly” because I’ve repeatedly failed to access that web site all day1. Which is a bit crap for one of the richest corporations (and individuals) on the planet.

Oh, well—perhaps tomorrow…

/hattip to The Perplexed Observer

  1. Perhaps it’s because I generally use a Mac or Linux and haven’t touched Windowsboxen in absolutely ages, but YMMV

Sunday is fundieday!

Published
by
nullifidian
on July 19, 2009
.

It amazes me that, in the 21st century, people still base their lives around ancient myth. But that’s exactly what a bunch of christian loons in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland are doing.

What’s their beef? Well, it’s because a ferry company, to comply with European equality legislation is running ferries between Stornoway on the isle of Lewis and Ullapool on the (Scottish) UK mainland.

On a Sunday!

Shock! Horror!

Yes, that’s right: there are a bunch of fundies on an obscure (but pretty) little Scottish island in the Atlantic that think having a boat moving on Sunday will damn their eternal souls to ultimate doom. DOOM!

From the BBC:

The controversial first scheduled Sunday ferry sailing from Stornoway on Lewis to mainland Scotland has gone ahead as planned.

There has been strong opposition on the island, where the Sabbath day has traditionally been strictly observed.

A small group of protesters prayed and sang a psalm as cars boarded the boat, but several hundred people clapped.

Supporters said it would boost the economy of the Hebridean island and offer local people freedom to travel.

Of course, this is just another example of a bunch of narrow-minded religionists wanting special privilege to force others to follow their self-imposed rules under an appeal to “tradition”.

The BBC continues:

As cars lined up in the ferry terminal car park, protesters gathered in silence behind a banner.

It read: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”.

They sang Psalm 46 – God is our refuge and our strength – and prayed for the nation to “turn its back from sin and wickedness”.

A number of women wiped away tears as they prayed for a return to the Lord’s commandments.

Wiped away tears? Because a ferry is sailing on a Sunday? I can’t even begin to consider comprehending the “logic” that must be floating around in the heads of these people. Truly, it boggles my mind.

Indeed, they also try to make a secular appeal (sadly again to tradition) as a purely religious one would rightly be laughed out of Caledonian MacBrayne’s boardroom. Again the BBC:

A leaflet handed out by a group of local churches said that the peace and tranquillity of the islands was enjoyed by residents and visitors alike.

It said: “By and large we like it like this.

“We are not oppressed by a quiet Sunday.”

It wished tourists who came to Lewis by ferry a “happy and blessed trip to the islands”.

Yes, these tourists will of course be welcomed when they go to the island to do the touristy things that tourists do. Just not on a Sunday. Because being a tourist (or a resident that has things to do on a Sunday) is obviously going to interfere with the tranquility of the island.

[facepalm]

I’ve been to a couple of the islands of the west coast of Scotland, and seen this sort of thing first-hand. Most businesses and shops are completely shut, except the larger supermarket chains which often have very restricted opening hours (12pm-4pm/5pm is not uncommon), and the booze aisles are usually shuttered all day even though Scottish law allows the offsale of alcohol after 12pm.

There are always two things open on a Sunday regardless: churches and pubs. The Scottish islands have historically have had a higher per-capita incidence of both religiosity and alcohol/drug abuse than the general Scottish population. I’ve sometimes wondered if this anachronistic attitude to Sunday working has anything to do with it.

I’m not sure what the relevant European equality legislation is, so can’t comment on that. As far as I’m concerned, the ferry company should be free to run ferries any day of the week that they choose and people are willing to pay for, irrespective of the whims of a few religionistas and their chosen dogma.

Here’s some advice for these morons: if you want to keep Sunday “holy” then just stay off the damned ferry on a Sunday. Actually, shouldn’t you still be on your knees in church or something, keeping Sunday “holy” all day? Just keeping it “holy” only in the morning seems just a tad convenient…

BBC: Sunday ferry makes first sailing

Again with the “no non-believers on Thought for the Day” already!

Published
by
nullifidian
on July 14, 2009
.

Yes, it’s (again) that time of year when we who don’t-make-claims-to-know-that-there’s-an-invisible-man-in-the-sky-who-wants-to-hurt-us-forever-after-we-die because we don’t-make-claims-to-know-that-there’s-an-invisible-man-in-the-sky-who-wants-to-hurt-us-forever-after-we-die make noises about having our voices deliberately excluded from the Thought for the Day segment of the Today programme on Radio 4.

*sigh*

The Telegraph has an article describing how the BBC Trust, the governing body of the corporation that decides the rules and procedures to be followed by the BBC, is deliberating whether to include non-religious voices in the segment.

From the article at The Telegraph:

Mark Damazer, the channel’s controller, has said that the slot on the flagship programme could “take in a wider range of voices”.

Secularists claim the item discriminates against non-believers and have complained to the Trust, the governing arm of the corporation, which will deliver its response in the Autumn.

Mr Damazer said: “There may well be quite a strong argument for including secularists and humanists” but, he added, “it’s absolutely not a cut and dried issue”.

Responding to listener complaints on Radio 4′s Feedback programme, he said: “You should know that the BBC Trust … is currently considering this question and they will come to some kind of conclusion later on this year.”

The two minute slot should give a voice to a wide range of religions and a voices to those from around the UK rather than “metropolitan figures sitting in a studio in Broadcasting House or the news centre in west London”, he said.

“It is I think satisfyingly diverse [but] that does not mean that it should never change its remit or the criteria for selection and I think it is worth looking at,” he added.

Of course, it’s the usual suspects that want to exclude non-believers from voicing opinions on moral and ethical concerns.

However, faith leaders have criticised the move saying that in an increasingly secular climate, it was “vitally important” that religion retains its voice.

Steve Clifford, General Director of the Evangelical Alliance said: “The Today programme has no problem running slots for business and sport, so why shouldn’t it have a slot dedicated to religion? It strikes me that the secularists predominate in the other 2 hours and 55 [sic - TftD is 2'45"] minutes, so is it really asking too much for religion to just have a small chunk of dedicated time?”

What Clifford is doing here is conflating ‘secular’ with “excluding religion” rather than “not biased in favour of religion”.

The “other” 2 hours and 55 57.25 minutes actually doesn’t exclude dealing with topics related to religion (it often does – e.g. ) but Clifford wants to play the persecution card to gain sympathy for those of his cadre, or at least calibre.

What this actually means is that, in context, the time available for purely secular voices is 2 hours and 57.25 minutes: the time available for religious voices is 3 hours.

While that 2’45″ per (week)day may seem like a small amount, it does add up. But it’s the primary function of TftD that is in question, and that function is to present opinion on whatever the moral or ethical dilemma de jour is.

However, this is only ever religious opinion. Because, as we are so often told, only the religious can hold valid opinions on morality and ethics.

If I were to be charitable, this could probably be considered a case of innocently ignorant anti-non-theist bigotry. But I can’t be, because time and time and time again, non-religious voices have been deliberately excluded from TftD.

And I believe we will again. Sorry, but I don’t have enough faith in the upper echelons of the BBC to be fair and equitable to all, and not just those who claim to know things that they do not know.

I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong though.

Meanwhile, if you want to find out what TftD bobbleheads are actually saying (without all the mumbo jumbo) you can find fairly accurate translations for us unsaved heathens at Platitude of the Day.

For an example of the “wisdom” of the religious when considering moral or ethical issues, see this TftD from yesterday’s Today programme when Alan Billings held court:

Christians are taught by St Paul to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Over these last few days, you would need a heart of flint not to have wept with the relatives of those waiting at RAF Lyneham to receive the bodies of their loved ones repatriated from Afghanistan.

I have been especially moved by the sadness of the parents. In the most intense way we see in them what the vocation of parenthood entails. You bring children into the world. You love and protect them. You are proud of their achievements and distressed at their setbacks. You learn about what we might call the burden of love: how vulnerable you are to what happens to them. Then your vocation changes gear. Your eighteen year lease is up, and you watch them grow up and grow away. They make their own way in the world, and you must watch now from a distance.

Down the centuries parents have often been drawn to Mary, the mother of Jesus, since her life exemplifies this pattern. She gives birth to her son. She raises him. But then, in his relatively short adult life, her vocation is one of watching – with growing anxiety. Finally she receives his body at the foot of the cross.

Some years ago I remember visiting an exhibition at the National Gallery called Seeing Salvation. The Director had brought together a wonderful collection of Christian art and artefacts from the earliest centuries to the present. I recall seeing a woman standing in front of a pieta – an image of Mary holding in her lap the dead body of her son, cradling him as she had once cradled his living body as a small child. The woman stood before the pieta, crying quietly. Was she religious? Or was she a mother who had also known in its sharpest form the burden of love?

But should the human cost of the Afghan conflict, made so visible in the raw emotions of the relatives, be made so public? During the Vietnam War, the American government sought to prevent photographs of the returning flag-draped coffins from appearing in newspapers and on television. One can understand why. All modern wars are fought in the head as much as on the battlefield and this, it was felt, would be bad for morale and so an aid to the enemy. The Taleban also understands the power of images, using them whenever they can to undermine our resolve.

Even so, we should not seek to hide the cost of this conflict. Preventing Taleban control of Afghanistan and ridding the country of the terrorist training camps that threatened us, may have made the war a sad necessity and the lesser of evils. But, the sorrow of the relatives serves to remind us that war remains an evil nonetheless.

For those of us who don’t wear JesusGogglesâ„¢, this is what he said filtered into the language of the non-theologically biased:

War is a messy business. No, honestly it is! People get killed. When we see the grieving families of dead service personnel, we immediately think of Mary, the mother of the visible bit of the Invisible Magic Friend. Even at a time when we should pause to salute the bravery of those who have given their lives, or deplore the waste of those who have died so young, or question the wisdom of a protracted campaign in a region that is notoriously difficult to control, the important thing is to be distracted by religion, the right religion, my religion. And there’s been some fantastic paintings of Mary.

As a Reverend Canon Doctor and an Anglican Priest, let me just assure you that it’s all in a good cause. That Taliban lot are a bunch of religious nutters. They think their Invisible Magic Friend has told them how to live their lives and because their Invisible Magic Friend is all good, all knowing and all powerful, everyone has to live their lives the way they tell them to. I mean, you can’t get much more loopy than that, can you? That’s what happens when people with dangerous delusions are given exclusive privileges and legitimised by the state. It’s not even the right religion. My Invisible Magic Friend assures me that their Invisible Magic Friend is just a figment of their imagination and they should stop paying any attention to him.

Actually, as an alternative, if they just recorded Platitude for the Day and broadcast that just after the existing TftD, I’d be content with that.

I get (fundi)email

Published
by
nullifidian
on July 13, 2009
.

Well, this is interesting.

Well, not really, but I don’t often get Ray ‘Tampon-Case’ Comfort style/quality email trying to get me to think that I’m scum and need a zombie to apologise to for it.

If you’re interested, the email I got is below the fold, but this was my rather brief response:

Sorry, but nothing here cuts it. Here’s a list you can use to help you in your attempt to make me believe you.

http://www.nullifidian.net/2007/10/01/go-on-then-convince-me-of-your-religion/

I’m still going to mark this mail as spam though, hilarious as it is.

Thanks for the chuckle.

null

The email I received (emphasis as original) is below. However, I’ve removed the To and CC fields as these poor people have already been subjected to this nonsense, but I have no qualms about spam enabling fundies. Hey, they emailed me.

From Mel Chizedek <mel_kizadeck@bellsouth.net>.

Hello,

Thank you for not deleting this email right away. While you and I may not know each other, what I want to tell you is important enough for me to want to contact you. But don’t worry, I obtained your email address off of the internet [sic] and will not contact you again unless you reply.

I assure you that this is not a solicitation or a scam of any kind. I do not want to sell you anything or sign you up for anything. My hope is that you will continue to read the email. My hope is that, in the end, you will see this letter as so much more than “spam.”

The reason for the email is so that you can hear about the good news of the Gospel. Now, you might be saying to yourself, “I already know Jesus Christ and am sure of my salvation”. I THOUGHT I WAS SURE TOO. It can’t hurt to examine your faith and see where you stand. The cost of being wrong is too great.

The Bible says in Hebrews 9:27 that “it’s appointed for every man once to die, and then judgment.” What that means is that everyone dies once and is then judged before Almighty God. So, if you are standing before God on Judgment [sic] Day, are you going to heaven or hell? Have you been a good person? You might think so but, unfortunately though, we aren’t going to be judged by any human standard of goodness. There is only one standard by which we can all be judged and that standard is God’s Law, also known as the Ten Commandments. The Bible says in Romans 2:15 that God “has written the law upon the heart of every man in the form of our conscience” so that when we die and face him, we will have no excuse.

So let’s go through them real quick. Have you ever broken the 9th commandment by lying? Of course you have. A person who does that is called a liar. Have you ever broken the 8th commandment and stolen anything (regardless of value)? A person who does that is called a thief. Let’s look at the 7th commandment against adultery: Jesus says that whoever looks upon another person with lust has committed adultery in their heart. Have you ever looked with lust? Yes. What about the 6th commandment against murder? Jesus also says that whoever hates a person, without cause, has committed murder in his heart. Have you ever hated anyone? If you’re like most people, at this point you are a lying, thieving, murdering adulterer at heart standing before a just and holy God.

At this point, you might be saying to yourself, I don’t believe in God, Heaven, or Hell. I say that it doesn’t matter what you believe. Let’s say that someone held you up at gunpoint, would you laugh at him and say “I don’t believe in guns!”? Of course not! That’s because your disbelief doesn’t negate reality and believe me, GOD IS REAL. Or are you willing to bet your eternal life on it?

Or, you might be saying to yourself, “I don’t believe that God would judge us so harshly. My god is a god of love and forgiveness and would never send anyone to Hell”. You are right. Your god would not send anyone to Hell because he doesn’t exist! What you’ve just done is broken the 2nd commandment against idolatry. When you create a god in your mind to suit yourself, you are turning your back on the real God. Have you ever broken the 3rd commandment by using our Creator’s name in vain as a four-letter cuss word? That’s called blasphemy and is very serious in God’s eyes.

So, if you are still reading this then you’ve probably said, “That’s impossible! No one can live up to the standard of the Ten Commandments.” You are right. No one can. Man is not perfect. We were born into sin and have a sinful nature. God is so holy and so perfect that his standard is unattainable to mortal men. You might say, but that’s not fair! What about forgiveness? God is supposed to forgive us of our sins. What about all of the good things that I’ve done in my life?

Well, let’s look at an example. What if you were in a courtroom standing before a judge and you had just been convicted of murder. You did it. You’re guilty and all that’s left is for the judge to render his sentence: $500,000 or death. You can’t just say to the judge “Your honor. I just wanted to say that you are a good man and that I know you will forgive me of my crime. Besides, what about all the other good things I’ve done in my life?” What’s the judge going to say? If he is a good judge then he’s going to send you to the electric chair. He might want to be merciful, but he can’t just set you free, the law demands a penalty. Since God is a good judge and because he is so good and so holy, he has no choice but to send you to Hell. The law demands a penalty and the Bible says in Romans 6:23 that “the wages of sin is DEATH”.

But, here’s where your story takes a turn for the good. You are about to be lead away in shackles when all of a sudden, someone comes into the courtroom and pays your $500,000 fine. The judge then sees that the requirement of the law has been fulfilled. And since you’ve met the requirements, you are now free to go! That’s what Jesus Christ did for all of us when he died on the cross 2000 years ago. Jesus Christ came to earth, God in human form, born of a virgin, lived a perfect and blameless life, was crucified on the cross, and then rose from the dead three days later as a payment for our sins. All we have to do is accept the payment and we are free from eternal damnation!

How do we accept the payment? All that is required from us is to ask God for forgiveness, repent (turn away) from our sins, and then trust in the Lord Jesus Christ with all of our hearts (Romans 10:9). When we do that, Jesus Christ washes away all of our sins and we can now stand before God blameless on Judgment Day. Then read your Bible and obey it, join a local church and be baptized. God will make you into a new person with new wants and desires. He doesn’t want to send you to Hell, He loves you. You’ve probably heard John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, will not perish but have eternal life.”

Well, that’s it. Thank you for reading all the way through. I thank you for your time and my prayer is that you will consider all that you’ve read and seek Jesus Christ for eternal life today. Don’t wait for tomorrow because we never know when we will be taken from this earth and now that you’ve read this email you are without excuse when you stand before God.

To Him be the glory,
Mel Kizadeck

www.needgod.com

http://tinyurl.com/newfaith

P.S. If you’re already saved by faith in Christ, would you please forward this email along to others in your address book? Who knows? You might just help bring a friend to Christ.

LOL!

The God Trumps are here! :-D

Published
by
nullifidian
on July 11, 2009
.

The mail is not usually something that I get particularly excited about, but today was a little different.

Through the magic of a subscription to New Humanist magazine, I’ve finally managed to get my grubby mitts on the first batch of Christina Martin‘s awesome God Trumps to add to my collection of weird and wonderful sets of playing cards.

God Trumps God Trumps

The first twelve cards (and the case) are included with the current July/August 2009 issue of New Humanist, and the remaining twelve should be enclosed with the September/October issue.

Smashing. Now, if I can just find someone to play with…

The Grim Paradolia

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 30, 2009
.

I presume that this “image” was “captured” just moments before Jesus is supposed to have said what Jesus was supposed to have said just before he kicked the bucket bought the farm handed in his chips had his card punched 404ed himself went on a date with Princess Di put on a red shirt and beamed down to the planet gave up the ghost.

Can you spot the mystery guest?

Jesus vs Death

Jesus vs Death

Yes, it’s our old friend Dr Evil The Grim Reaper!

El Grimo Reapero

El Grimo Reapero

Tell him “hi” from me, next time you see him. Unless I see him first, of course!

/hattip: Outside The Interzone

Feynman for all!

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 27, 2009
.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Bill Gates, but his philanthropic gestures aren’t generally among them (this is, of course, an obvious exception).

Gates has apparently recently purchased the rights to a collection of lectures by physicist, author, skirt-chaser and bongo player Richard Feynman, and will be making them freely available to the public.

From Symmetry Breaking magazine:

Bill Gates recently bought the rights to a series of lectures by legendary Caltech physicist Richard Feynman. The former Microsoft head’s purchase shows that the cultural and scientific legacy of Feynman remains strong even 21 years after his death.

The lectures, given in 1964 as part of Cornell University’s Messenger Lecture Series, were filmed by the BBC, who had retained the rights since. Gates purchased the lectures for an undisclosed amount.

But what would the former Microsoft head want with the copyright to lectures by the revered physicist? In a recent interview with the CERN Bulletin, Gates said that his only plan is to make the footage freely available to the public.

The videos themselves don’t yet appear to be online, but I’m sure that’s one of the places they’ll first appear.

/hattip Atheist Media

Britaine’s Firste “Newe Atheiste”?

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 26, 2009
.

Thanks to a contributor to today’s NSS Newsline, I’ve been made aware of this awesome record of civil proceedings from sometime in the early 17th century.

6 DECEMBER, i CHARLES I. Memorandum of the presentment for recusancy and of the insolence of one Richard Beake of Kentish-towne who (on being duly and lawfully summoned by John Corey, one of the bailiffs of the Sheriff of Middlesex, to appeare at this session at Hickes Hall) answered to the same John Corey “that he cared not a f for the Justices, and that he had not been at church for tenn yeares, nor wold goe to churche for all the Justices could doe, adding further, Lett the Justices kisse his A” S. P. Reg.

Richard Beake of Kentish-towne is now a hero of mine.

I’ve also learned a new word: recusancy. It means “fuck you, churchy”.

Oh, FFS, here we go again…

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 26, 2009
.

Yes, it’s that time of the month where someone decides to have a go at the “New Atheists”. I’ll simply link to it for your interest, but it was this comment from (yet another ignorant and “oh woe is me!” christian) that somewhat piqued my relatively low-key ire.

They wrote:

This study convinces me even more that New Atheism has all the qualifications of a being its own religion. It seems to be becoming more organized and the tenets of its “faith” more scripted or set in place, with even four? main “bishops”; ie. Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.

Reading Dawkin’s quote and your description of his love for and faith in the great Cosmos, I’m struck with how “worshipful” his devotion is to the Universe.

You wrote, “He approaches science poetically, demonstrating that it can enrich our lives and aid us in a search for meaning and purpose. “The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear,” Dawkins explains.
It is this belief in the power of science to open our eyes to the awe-inspiring splendor and mystery of the Cosmos and its contents that drives Dawkins’ passion for evolutionary biology and his criticism of religion.”

To me this is just one religion criticizing the others. “Nothing is new under the sun.”

In my opinion, the intolerance of the new atheist is only a result of his/her commitment to their own set of beliefs and their worship of what is seen rather than what is unseen. The resentment to Christianity, in particular, definitely stems from the spiritual side of things, even from those who deny its existence. Have you ever met a religion which doesn’t resent Christianity?

I felt a need to respond, so I wrote:

Whatever “New Atheism” is (and it’s patently obvious that this isn’t a label that atheists apply to themselves except in the context of rebuttals to arguments like this), a “religion” it certainly isn’t.

Organised? If by that you mean that there are discussion fora, community web sites, (arguably) sceptical conferences, then yes. If you mean that we all gather in a bunch of rooms every so-often and pat ourselves on the back, you’re onto a wrong ‘un.

Tenets? What on earth is a tenet of atheism (or “New Atheism”, whatever)? Even the most elastic definition I could find (dictionary.com) defines a ‘tenet’ as “any opinion, principle, doctrine, dogma, etc., esp. one held as true by members of a profession, group, or movement.”

The closest tenet of so-called “New Atheism” then could be the collective position (as per the original definition of “atheism”, rather than the populist strawman definition) that we don’t believe in gods. Any gods. All gods. Not just the christian gods.

Bishops? Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Grayling? Really? They hold services every now and then and tell us exactly what to think based on their pontifications of our holy books? Oops, we don’t have any.

Faith? What faith? Atheism is a respondent position, not an accusatory one. It’s a position based on the question “do you believe in the existence of any gods?” and if the answer is anything other than “yes”, then one is, by definition, an atheist.

Worship? An appreciation of the fact that we’re alive in the here and now and can look at the universe with a sense of wonder and try to figure it how it works? Please.

You’ve also completely ignored to tell us what the rest of our supposed religion’s trappings are. So, please tell us what our “holy book” is, what our “rituals” and “traditions” are, where our “churches” are, what our “dogmas” are, who our “popes” and “saints” are, how we “pray” and what we “pray” for.

I’m surprised you didn’t go the whole hog and call us “militant” while you’re at it. By ‘militant’ you would of course means “doesn’t shut up when told to”, rather than the usual definition of militant meaning going out with a gun and shooting someone, or carrying a belt of plastique into a crowded market place. You know, the usual use of the word ‘militant’, it’s even one you can find on Fox News! But then conflation and equivocation is a traditional refuge of the unreasonable mind.

It’s typical of people like you to call atheism a “religion” and then deride it. Just in case you don’t get it, this fails for at least two reasons:

1) it’s a strawman argument and anyone with even an ounce of common sense can see through it; and
2) by calling it a religion and then decrying it as such lends absolutely no credibility to any religion, especially that of the arguer.

There are other reasons, but I’m not entirely convinced that you’d understand why your accusation fails for the two reasons above, and frankly it’d be a waste of time.

“New Atheism” is nothing if not responding to the unjustified demand of “you can’t criticise religion (especially mine!)” with the flat answer of “yes, I can, why can’t I?”.

Atheists, “New” or otherwise, can hold any number of positions including an appreciation, an indifference or a hostility to classic organised religions, including (but certainly not exclusively) christianity.

[Comment broken here due to length.]

To claim that we resent christianity en masse is to a) completely fail to understand the basic position of an atheist (see above fro hints); b) play the “persecution” card (don’t worry, we know it’s in the christian scripture, so we expect it) and c) demonstrate that you appear to think that everyone who is an atheist used to be a christian (but obviously not a True Christianâ„¢) which is not only untrue but absurd and only serves to show a startlingly narrow experience and mindset.

Your basic argument (and pay attention because there’s a big point here, but I’ll write slowly so that you can keep up) seems to come down to “New Atheism has all the qualifications of a being its own religion … [because] [h]ave you ever met a religion which doesn’t resent Christianity”.

Completely risible.

And I laugh at you (no, not because you’re a christian before you decide to replay the same persecution card) but because you can’t seem to reason your way out of a wet paper sack, even with the aid of a chain-saw and an angry claustrophobic ferret.

I can’t help feeling that it’s like smacking a 4 year old for something it doesn’t understand it’s done wrong.

Gay marriage debate chart

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

Gay marriage debate chart

/hattip: The Good Atheist & @almightygod.

Dear Annabel Croft

Published
by
nullifidian
on June 22, 2009
.

Dear Annabel Croft,

Just FYI:

Homeopathy is full of shit

/hattip: @bengoldacre

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.

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 the The 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

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.