Pharyngula

Posted by: Caledonian | July 15, 2007 2:15 PM

Is inciting a riot boring?

Ask Rob Knop. He found that inciting even a polite discussion was terribly, terribly exciting. So much so that he had to hide posts and close comments, to cut down on all that excitement.

He hasn't even apologized for his behavior - the most he's done is apologize "for the upset he's caused". Nothing he said or did.

Posted by: Caledonian | July 15, 2007 2:22 PM

Incidentally, this:

You gotta have a few freaks to liven up the place.

is why no matter how ridiculous his positions are or become, PZ will always be a bigger man than quite a few of his detractors - he appreciates a good livening up.

Posted by: llewelly | July 15, 2007 2:25 PM

Cephalopods. This one attracts the weirdos. You gotta have a few freaks to liven up the place. ... I get email all the time telling me that one or the other of those is "boring" (except the cephalopods, everyone loves those)

Posted by: Christian Burnham | July 15, 2007 2:31 PM

By some cosmic coincidence / convergent evolution, the Bad Astronomer put his own post up a few minutes ago tackling the same subject

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/07/15/politics-science-me-and-thee/

Posted by: michael | July 15, 2007 2:40 PM

PZ, you rule! Your blog is a constant source of joy, laughter and cephalopods.

Go, PZ!

Posted by: garth | July 15, 2007 2:42 PM

bwahahahaha
I'm stunned that people would get their knickers bunched this far up their cake exits over someone calling religion stupid and wacky. as PZ mentioned, IT IS STUPID AND WACKY! And calling something non-stupid and non-wacky because it makes others feel less stupid and wacky is what you do for your grandmother, not in public. Otherwise you're enabling the stupidity and wackiness.
to me it's the same as not warning someone they're going to get hit by a bus. it's just irresponsible.
this kind of behavior is crap? Come on. that's snit-behavior, and i say that is crap. exact same situation: my feelings are hurt, therefor you MUST BE WRONG! sadly, no.

Posted by: MAJeff | July 15, 2007 2:43 PM

Cephalopods. This one attracts the weirdos. You gotta have a few freaks to liven up the place.

Quoth Michael Franti: "All the freaky people make the beauty of the world."

Posted by: Bryson Brown | July 15, 2007 2:54 PM

There's an important general point here that is worth emphasizing: There is no reason why we should always try to frame our remarks with the aim of charming or persuading others. The fact that being critical of religious belief alienates and upsets some people, and may even lead a few among them to reject evolution because someone they're offended by believes in it, is not a conclusive reason for adopting a policy of polite silence--unless you take the goal of not offending to be more important that whatever other goals you may be pursuing. This can certainly be the case when you're dealing with politics or relationships that are personally important to you (think of Darwin and Emma). But trying to say clearly what you take to be true is a perfectly honourable goal, even when dealing with sensitive topics--better yet, it's one that doesn't leave you open to complaints of duplicity or disingenuousness (which seem, in effect, to be the tactics urged by those who defend evolution but complain about PZ's style of advocacy).

Of course, we should always be prepared to entertain replies and criticisms, but when we're arguing about what's true or false, 'I've been offended' is not a relevant reply. A relevant reply would be along the lines, 'You're wrong because...'

Posted by: James Stein | July 15, 2007 2:56 PM

How are these things even an issue in the internet age? Are people tied to chairs, eyes pried open, and forced to read every post sequentially?

Personally, I open your page and see a series of links and headers - quick and easy directions to whatever discrete portions of your site I want to read. I'm not often interested by your cephalopod posts; so I don't click on them.

All of those "it's boring" whines, or exclamations about this being a science blog are just empty attempts at politely saying "I disagree with you: please stop thinking things I dislike." If it was merely a matter of boredom, they could just. not. read it.

Posted by: Arnosium Upinarum | July 15, 2007 3:08 PM

PZ, you don't sound like an asshole to me at all. (And you aren't that ugly either).

I think its telling that so many use the term to express their outrage at having to encounter an "ugly truth". People don't like the suggestion that they have wasted their lives on superstitious nonsense. The notion that they are incapable of refraining from deluding themselves, or that they cannot recognize the distinction between facts and lies (meaning that their powers of rational thinking are severely underexercised) is naturally something they take personally. Its a culture of stupidity, and they are emotionally very strongly invested in it.

So anyone pointing it out is an "asshole". But its far better to be an asshole than a gullible fool.

Posted by: Natasha Ya-Routh | July 15, 2007 3:14 PM

Cephalopod lovers are weird are we, well ie Cuthulu!

The religious are terrible sensitive to any questioning of the validity of their god and go totally ballistic when someone calls them on the consequences of their superstition. Luckily we have stalwarts like PZ to keep the heat on, maybe they will eventually get so worked up that they will all have aneurisms and give the rest of us some relief.

Posted by: James Stein | July 15, 2007 3:14 PM

Just for the sake of clarity, Luna (and because if you didn't want it addressed you wouldn't have emphasized it in your post) the reason no one asks your reasons for being agnostic is because no one here cares - it's extremely improbable you have a strikingly unique and compelling reason for agnosticism/faith.

I'm sure your feelings are valid for you: they're your feelings, after all. But since we don't share your feelings, we only care for your rationale, which is unlikely to be unique in this instance. And beating apart poor rationalizations that have been beaten apart a thousand times before just isn't any sort of fun. Thus the whole "not caring" bit.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 3:17 PM

Caledonian, sweetie, given that you have been one of the people in there calling individuals names and kicking fuel onto the flamewar actively, including going onto Rob Knop's blog and calling him an irrational, credulous coward, I can see why you think that PZ is blameless. But it was dying down, we were moving onto other topics, then this. Yeah, dragging it all back into activity instead of letting it all die and tempers cool a bit is PZ's doing.

Posted by: fontor | July 15, 2007 3:18 PM

Everybody: louder and with feeling!

I think the message is finally starting to get through!

Posted by: Caledonian | July 15, 2007 3:21 PM

including going onto Rob Knop's blog and calling him an irrational, credulous coward

But, Luna dahling, he IS an irrational, credulous coward. And everyone* on the side of reason and science knows that. (Even some of the people who aren't know that.)

*If you don't know it yet, just click on the url-name-link for this comment post to see the evidence.

Posted by: nancy | July 15, 2007 3:23 PM

I just want to say I've been a lurker hre for over a year now, and this is one of my favourite blogs. I came for the science, stayed for the pretty pictures of cephalopods and the amazing godlessness. I wish real life included more of those 3.

Posted by: GDwarf | July 15, 2007 3:29 PM

Well, I may as well weigh-in.

PZ, I do have to question why you feel that antagonizing people is the best way to get your views across. I like your blog, I'm going to keep reading it, but when you go out-of-your-way to start flame wars, I, at least, always get really annoyed.

At least, I assume you made the original post about the map to start a flame war, since I can't think of any other reason to make it.

If you wanted to get more followers then insulting what they currently believe isn't the way to do that.

If you weren't trying to get more people to become atheists, then maybe you were simply trying to give atheists a better name? Or defend the ideology from an attack? Hmmm, nope. That's obviously not the case.

The only other option I end up seeing is that you wanted to provoke a fight (In which case it's distressingly similar to that movie you posted a while back with the "God hates the world video". Which (the video, that is) was almost certainly made to get people mad at the creators.)

As I said earlier, I'll still read your blog, and I agree with you on quite a few things, but this apparent need to insult everyone with a different religious belief system is something I can't understand. Heck, you go and rant about how horrible people are for doing the that, then turn around and do it yourself.

Posted by: Caledonian | July 15, 2007 3:34 PM

The frustration mostly stems from the other assumptions that I have had made about me over the last few days -- namely, that because I have defended Rob Knop, that I must myself be an irrational, deluded Christian.

No - we didn't conclude that you're Christian.

Posted by: Justin H. | July 15, 2007 3:39 PM

I read this infamous map post just a few minutes after it went up and thought it was a fine example of what Pharyngula is (in part) about. But now I'm just SHOCKED! How could you insensitive rapscallions be so upset over a scientist lambasting beliefs that are inherently anti-scientific? We should expect and cheer on those responses--science should have teeth and we should be able to rely on the scientific community to call things what they are, even/especially if what they are is ridiculous and stupid. Science isn't supposed to be sensitive to your pre-existing beliefs that have been handed down for thousands of years.

And if you have to go after a scientist for being anti-religion, you could at least find someone more likely to care than PZ. If you've read this blog at all then you probably know how he feels about "appeasement."

Posted by: MAJeff | July 15, 2007 3:44 PM

inkadu,

but religious belief is special! It needs to be exempt from mocking and/or criticism.

I'm sure someone will be here soon offering to pray for us, so I'll just toss out a pre-emptive, "please don't bother." We're not interested in your silliness and it's really annoying of y'all to keep saying it.

Posted by: inkadu | July 15, 2007 3:52 PM

MAJeff, you've been reading your dawkins I see...

Here's how to write a really interesting blog post:

"Hi, Guys. I found this map of religious adherents in the US. I just bring it up so you can see, you know, where the religious adherents are. Are there religious adherents near you? Are there more somewhere else? I find it interesting when I drive down South for instance to note, 'My, but there do seem to be a larger concentration of religious adherents out here than in some other parts the US I've driven through.'"

Clearly the real reason PZ is interested in the map is because it also shows where PZ is mostly likely to get strung up by his thumbs for ruining the morals of childen with his atheistic evolution claptrap. (and, unfortunately, the map isn't that useful due to its methodology, but the point stands...)

Posted by: inkadu | July 15, 2007 3:57 PM

Luna_cat,

I don't know you, and I haven't read your posts; but, since you seem curious, I don't generally question the rationality of agnostics -- only their courage.

Cheers.

Posted by: Richard Harris, FCD | July 15, 2007 3:58 PM

PZ, you're doing a valuable job with the anti-religious diatribes.

The only good thing about religion that I can think of is that it gives comfort to weak-minded people. Otherwise, it's all bad. I mean, if you set someone a problem to solve, then feed them incorrect data, they're likely to fail. Life is the 'problem', religion is the 'incorrect data'. Wars, terrorism, misogyny, anti-science attitudes, etc, are the failures.

If enough of us keep chipping away at the idiotic nonsense, we'll reduce its influence.

Posted by: Jon Eccles | July 15, 2007 4:01 PM

I said this in the brilliant argument on the other guy's blog, but it seems to have gone. The reason why the word 'delusional' is important is that the central religious claim is from personal experience. This means that when we say they are mistaken we aren't just saying they've argued incorrectly, we're attacking them in a very personal way, by saying that the inner spiritual experience they claim is just something they're imagaining. There is no nice way to say this, but it still needs to be said.

The word 'delusional' carries this meaning quite nicely, and I'm not aware of another word which does, which hasn't also been co-opted by psychology (one of the objections to 'delusional' was that psychologists to mean something more precise than its everyday meaning). 'Mistaken', which was offered in the debate, is completely inadequate.

Posted by: fred | July 15, 2007 4:03 PM

Why do I like Pharyngula?

Science: interesting.
I have no scientific training, aside from Computer "Science". Nevertheless, nothing about the philosophy of science seems alien or absurd, and scientific methods (or The Scientific Method?) seem only a restatement of what it means to be rational.

Anti-creationism: interesting.
Creationist arguments seem simply silly to me, hardly worthy of response. Evolution Denial seems on a par with Holocaust Denial, except more specifically characteristic of stupid or innumerate people.

Liberal politics: interesting.
As a Canadian, I find almost all American Liberal commentary a little too right-wing for my taste. I think it's a shame that you have only two viable political parties, but few people anywhere agree with my political ideas anyway.

Cephalopods...
... well, what sort of a world would it be without such organisms? Drearier, I'm sure.

Godlessness: !!
This is where Pharyngula is most brilliant and this is where I, like everyone else in the world, am expert. I might claim an edge in discussions of religion because I've clicked through to online ordination with at least two organizations, but every deist or fundamentalist or atheist or -ist of other coloration builds an underlying unifying personal philosophy through a lifetime of social negotiations: very often this personal philosophy is identified with a religion. Importantly, it needn't be so. I like the way PZ deals with those who insist on respect for their imaginary friend(s), who try to promote subscription to their own beliefs. Best identification ever: "ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed victims of obsolete mythologies".

Posted by: PalMD | July 15, 2007 4:05 PM

I guess I'm missing something. Calling religious belief "silly" shouldn't really be insulting to anyone. If you believe, have faith, etc, you obviously don't care very much what other people think, otherwise you're mind would be torn to bits trying to decide which god to worship. CHILL! Religion is inherently irrational...that doesn't mean it can't bring comfort, joy, etc, just that it can't bring understanding of the natural world. Rant away!

Posted by: CJ | July 15, 2007 4:09 PM

Cephalopods. This one attracts the weirdos. You gotta have a few freaks to liven up the place.

Posted by: GDwarf | July 15, 2007 4:11 PM

"I assume he, like many atheists, feels a little penned in by the crazies (aka religious) and was sharing some of that frustration with his fellow travellers.

What's so difficult to comprehend about that?"

Understandable, actually, I feel like that myself sometimes.

However, if that was his reason, it hardly makes sense to bring to our attention the fact that people with other beliefs are also frustrated by his claims, as this post does.

...And the above is about as clear as mud. Let me try again.

If it was just frustration, why make another post which, in essence, makes fun of other people for also being frustrated?

Posted by: Triumphal_Thusnelda | July 15, 2007 4:17 PM

Wow, PeeZed. I've been too busy for a day or two to read the blog in depth and look what I missed.

I saw the map post, had a bit of a giggle at what you pointed out (it ~was~ hideously red) and Moved. On.

Flame war? Why?

Isn't a man's blog his castle? Yer don't like what's written therein, yer scuttle back to your own blog and put your counter-argument, right? Surely.

Sorry, but I just don't see what all the strong feelings are about. And now that I've read the post, read the comments, read the follow-up post and read *those* comments, I'm off to catch up on last Friday's cephalopod!

Posted by: Mooser | July 15, 2007 4:18 PM

Well, some of them cephalopods look like Devine made flesh.

Posted by: Caledonian | July 15, 2007 4:22 PM

I said this in the brilliant argument on the other guy's blog, but it seems to have gone.

Nope! Still there (if you know where to look)!

Posted by: H. Humbert | July 15, 2007 4:27 PM

I also love the appeal to secret knowledge every time I hear it. No theologian, no philosopher, no great thinker in the history of the world has ever offered a compelling reason to accept god's existence as even merely probable. Yet we're often told to feel chastised because we supposedly didn't consider the possibility that theists really do have rational, compelling reasons to believe in god. This is never actually followed up with such arguments, mind you. Our "arrogance" at presuming to know there are no such arguments is sufficient to dismiss us as close-minded...and therefore wrong. Or something.

Posted by: Maronan | July 15, 2007 4:32 PM

Hey, the godlessness is interesting!

It's nice to have someone stating the obvious in a country where most people ignore it.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 4:40 PM

inkadu -- as someone who stands up and says, "I don't think the Christian god exists, but I think that something usually regarded as 'supernatural' might, and it should be subject to tests if we can figure out a way (which would obviously bring it into the camp of 'natural')" -- I get much grief heaped on me by religious people who think I'm an idiot and lacking in faith, and much grief heaped on me by strong atheists who think I'm an idiot and not skeptical enough. It's a piss-poor position for a coward to take. If I were a coward I should have chosen to stick with one of the larger groups.

Posted by: James Stein | July 15, 2007 4:45 PM

Luna:

I take note of your distinction. For the purposes of religion, however, we must re-inject a great deal of blurriness into the nicety of the distinction. You'd be correct to say that one can't conclusively say God doesn't exist because we simply lack evidence of God's existence. Once we apply ourselves to actual faiths however - jumping that line from discussion to real world belief - we start getting into things like "blood into wine," "resurrection," and so on for which there exists no evidence for and a great deal of science weighing in against.

I can not say anything further about Rob Knop; aside from the one post (and its flaws) that I discussed previous, I do not read his blog. Not because of his faith - I can ignore those parts if I so choose - but because I find astronomy to be tiresome.

My criticism, however, lay not with his lashing out and saying something stupid: my preferred recipe for debate usually needs a pinch of bitterness for it to come out just right. It lay entirely with the substance of what he said: not that PZ's an asshole (which I don't think he is, but who cares either way?) but that it was wrong to label him as "irrational and deluded" for... well, now I'm repeating myself. Regardless, you get my point: I don't much care about what tone he uses or what insults he uses to spice up his rhetoric. It was the substance I found lacking, not the style.

Let's not talk about the personal events that formed the basis of your agnosticism. You correctly stated that I would ignore anecdotal evidence presented to me. I can and will answer only that in my experiences - and working in hospitals and healthcare settings for almost a decade now, the people around me are often quite desperate for spiritual intervention - people far often prefer to presume that the universe momentarily contorted than to pursue explanations that they feel personally demeaning (most of my hospital work has been in immunology and neurology, so 'experiences' of some sort or another are fairly common).

The difference in the X-Ray analogy, as I'm sure you perceive, is that the X-Ray technology had a potential mechanism that did not require breaking the laws of physics. There is not a single extant religion that can say the same. It would be irrational to say that science is complete and we'll learn no more and do no more; likewise, however, I find it unlikely that we'll be rewriting our body of knowledge so much as refining it. Evolution, I feel confident to say, will never be disproven: it will inevitably change and grow and become more fully understood with time, but we'll never reach a stage where we can explain a real Garden of Eden.

I do feel you've expressed yourself clearly, thank you.

Posted by: Fernando Magyar | July 15, 2007 4:52 PM

"Cephalopods. This one attracts the weirdos. You gotta have a few freaks to liven up the place. ... I get email all the time telling me that one or the other of those is "boring" (except the cephalopods, everyone loves those)"

Just last week I was breathing compressed air on my local reef and was given the opportunity to spend an hour with three reef squid hovering around me. Yo, you callin me a weirdo?!! Anyone who hasn't spent time with live cephalopods is the one who is weird. Oh and not one one of the squid was praying. Sheesh, callin people who have squid friends weird and most of you have imaginary friends, and that's not weird,eh?

Posted by: Stephen | July 15, 2007 5:04 PM

PZ's list of adjectives - ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed - does seem to leave out an important one: "insecure". Surely very many religious believers are mainly in search of a security blanket. Yes, some of those would fall under "oppressed", but by no means all. And while I suppose you could argue that the rest fall under "deluded", it doesn't seem helpful to categorise them as such. And to be fair, I wouldn't dream of pointing anyone in the 'insecure' category in the direction of Pharyngula; they would do better with a blog like Friendly Atheist. But for the complacent, supercilious and arrogant subsets of 'deluded': nothing better than a large helping of Pharyngula with Mark Twain garnish.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 5:08 PM

James Stein:

There is not a single extant religion that can say the same. It would be irrational to say that science is complete and we'll learn no more and do no more; likewise, however, I find it unlikely that we'll be rewriting our body of knowledge so much as refining it. Evolution, I feel confident to say, will never be disproven: it will inevitably change and grow and become more fully understood with time, but we'll never reach a stage where we can explain a real Garden of Eden.

Totally agreed. Incidentally, I wonder why you bring up evolution; I study bioinformatics, and thus must struggle with homologies on a daily basis. I regard evolution as being roughly as well supported as the existance of gravity, or, say, the principle of oceans being wet.

I was suggesting only that there are probably phenomena out there which don't fit with current understanding, which we might someday pin down and have evidence for being real. I'm glad you understand what I'm getting at.

inkadu:
One incident, since you actually seem to want to know. When I was nine, I was woken up at around 4am one night by my father roaring, "Oh, no, Ma, no! Don't go!" When I came tumbling out of my bedroom, he was standing in the doorway of his bedroom, being held by my mother and sobbing. The story, on questioning, was that he had been woken up by my grandmother coming to stand at the bed and say goodbye.

My mother argued that my grandmother was in a care facility, and monitored, and that if anything happened they would call. After some few minutes of arguing about it, my mother called them, and asked them to check on my grandmother. They called back saying that yes, something had happened. Not long past, perhaps ten minutes or so given her body temperature, but they didn't think that resuscitation was a good idea at this point, and that she was dead.

I am perfectly comfortable with the view that the personality -- the "me" of a person, the personhood -- is a physiological result of processes in the brain. I join in the widespread mockery of everyone's favourite neurosurgeon Egnor for claiming that the brain is just a sort of radio reception for attributes projected from a supernatural elsewhere, becuase there is so much good evidence even now for how neural interactions give rise to consciousness, memory, perception, personality etc. And I am also comfortable with the view that, as a result of multiple, interacting processes, "life" is not a thing with an independent existence any more than sound exists apart from vibration. But that leaves the question -- what the heck happened there? How did Dad know? What exactly did he perceive?

Like I said, unsubstantiated anecdote to everyone else in the world. But I wonder about it. This kind of phenomena has been reported elsewhere, but where it might be legitimate, it is still rare. I think the scale of monitoring needed to catch even one or two incidents of this type might be rather unfeasibly large and expensive, and we can't just round up a sample population and kill off their loved ones while we monitor them -- that one would never get past the ethics committees. So there are certain challenges to finding out anything about how that might work. I'm just not comfortable saying that it didn't really happen. Make sense?

Posted by: Tom Adam | July 15, 2007 5:14 PM

I've only been reading Pharyngula for a little over a week, mostly at work, and I wish I had found it sooner. I'm about caught up with February '06.

I have to agree with the majority on this issue. PZ was absolutely correct to call religious people on the carpet for being delusional. It's one of my favorite things about this blog. The cephalapods are cute, but not that interesting to me. The science (my bio education stopped in high school) ends up a little over my head most of the time, but I try to stumble through. But I will keep reading and learning crazy, squiddy stuff here.

I will object to someone's implied labeling of Agnostics as lacking in courage. I certainly have no idea what Luna is talking about, and IMO if she believes she had a spiritual experience, she cannot be agnostic. She's claiming knowledge (of a sort) which by definition is contrary to the agnostic position. I am an agnostic because I believe there is no evidence of any supernatural (meaningless term) existence. I believe no gods exists. However, the two stances of pantheism and strict deism are still vaguely possible in the realm of intellectual curiosities.

I will also note, as a self-identifying and militant agnostic, I get more "Agnostic? What is that?" questions than when I identified as an atheist, which gives me more opportunities to present rationalism as better than superstition. It's more disarming, they don't know how to fight against it. :)

I do love this blog, and most of those I've come across on ScienceBlogs.

Posted by: Kagehi | July 15, 2007 5:20 PM

Luna_the_cat, some of the people have a point here when it comes to who is lighting the fires and keeping them going. Not to say that mistakes can't be made and that the people incorrectly targeted can't accidentally, and entirely without intent, dug the hole deeper. However, the majority of people that pop over to some blog to protest how PZ or others like him are painting everyone the same do so with complete disregard for any number of times he and nearly everyone else here has said otherwise, and even given examples of who it isn't true for, while instead grabbing the brush from PZ's hand to paint themselves, and bringing their own feathers, just in case PZ or the rest of use ran out. I have no sympathy at all for some fool that thinks that attacking the extreme delusions of one fool means you are attacking the person of someone entirely different and that they must show up to protest, already tarred and feathered by their own hand. All it does is make them look like even bigger idiots, and beg the question of why they are so insecure in their own "faith", that they must assume that any attack on religious nonsense, even if its something they **agree** is insane, is automatically one against them too.

And, just to be clear, this is precisely what the lunatics want. For people that are offended by their irrationality, their lies, their anti-science and their delusional thinking, to shut up, so they can convince more gullible people to join the fundie movements, instead of the allies you want us to treat fairly. But, we do treat them fairly. We say, quite clearly, that their decision to go to church on Sunday has no more bearing on reality, nor should it on government, or anything else, than if someone goes to every Star Trek convention over hosted. What they do in their free time is their business, even if we think its completely nuts. But you and they get offended because a) we say its nuts and b) we complain about all the idiots that don't **get it** and think calling themselves a Xtian instead of a Trekky means they should get to railroad the rest of the country into their personal fantasy world. If they want that, then do what Star Trek fans have done and build fracking theme parks. Just don't whine and complain because more people want the Star Trek mission experience than the, "A day shoveling animal poop off Noah's Ark" experience. In other words, stop demanding that their fantasies **must** be given special treatment on the level that, in some cases, you can actually get a church built to host one of their conventions faster than a fracking hospital, and **on** government land, while everyone else is denied it. Stop letting, "I believe in this ancient book", mean, "Let me do any damn thing I like, then punish the people that protest instead, when what I choose to do is trample over other people's rights!" Stop letting any belief in such things be a prerequisite for a secular office or an automatic get out of jail free card, like the recent case where some judge asked some Bible questions of a suspect to determine if he should be let go on his own recognizance, and the @#$@$@#$ supreme court opted to side with the judge on it:

http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2007/07/complaint-dismissed-against-judge-who.html

I mean, WTF? This isn't just absurd special treatment, its complete idiocy. And by **both** the original judge and the higher court. So he can quote the Bible. So what? What the hell does that have to do with if he is a liar, guilty, likely to flee prosecution, or anything else pertinent to the case, especially given the number of people that are liars, are guilty, and would flee, and probably can quote the damn thing better than the judge could? Nothing. Yet, this is precisely the kind of BS that we have a problem with, and which, when brought up, inevitably draws some kook in from the sidelines that insists that calling the judge, the supreme court and the suspect all guilty of abuse of religious priviledge an "attack" on religion in general. Don't tell me you haven't seen people that would make that argument, because if you haven't, then you are far more clueless than you already seem.

Look, lets put it as simply as possible. All **religions** are wrong. There isn't one of them that can't be traced to earlier works of provably pure mythology, including the Bible. That leaves all of them as invalid with respect to deserving any special treatment for being an accurate account of the views of **any** gods. The issue of God(s) themselves, isn't testable, provable, etc. There isn't any evidence for them that isn't purely about personal *experience*, which is hardly reliable and which can be induced artificially, with just as much "realness" as anything else. The only thing certain is that, even of you allow for the possibility, while for some reason rejecting all the other possibilities that have, or have had, just as much belief behind them, and from the same personal experience as evidence standpoint, any such being cannot by definition be described by any of the nonsense people are defending. And that is the key point. They are not defending "God", they are defending the church, the Bible, the Quran, the book of Scientology, the "insert dogma or religious text here". If they want to defend god, fine, you can't attack something that you can't see, touch, taste, or what ever, other than to say, "I don't see anything there, what the hell are you talking about?" But its the dogma, the contradictory rules, the insistence of infallibility of all or parts of the religious teaching, the demand that **everyone** must follow them, that we have a problem with.

If people want to claim to be attacked on that basis, then I presume that its because they a) think there is nothing wrong with making such demands or b) that they think their views **deserve** more respect than everyone else's. In which case, they have already lost, since we don't think "any" view that cannot be backed by verifiable evidence *deserve* more respect than all the other *mere* personal opinions.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 5:25 PM

Kagehi, just out of curiosity, did you actually read what I said I was ticked about and just missed the point, or did you decide to ignore what I said because you think I meant something else?

I'm impressed by the depth of your vitriol about the strawman, but it ain't what I said.

Posted by: Tom Adam | July 15, 2007 5:32 PM

Or confused. btw, it's 'Adam,' no 's.'

Posted by: Kagehi | July 15, 2007 5:42 PM

Tell you what Luna, next time I will wait 2-3 days, so I don't end up posting something I am typing 8-9 posts "after" everyone else has replied and you have replied to those replies, with statements that clear up most of this stuff. Or in other words, sure, you posted later things that my post ignores, while I was only addressing some of you first posts, but its damn hard to keep up.

That said, I still think you missed the point initially, and that most of the people making claims of prosecution against *them* are not really being accused or attacked, but have chosen to assume that its an attack on them in general, and thus opted to, as I said, come show up already tarred and feathered, to promote the idea that its PZ or one of us that did it, and not them to themselves.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 6:08 PM

Kagehi, I don't know what posts of mine you read or hadn't read, but I believed that I had made it clear from the outset that my objections were not to PZ's attacks on beliefs, but to (a) other posters attacks on individuals, in the first instance, which went way beyond reason, and to (b) PZ's posting again on the topic in a way to fan the flames, as soon as the vitriol began to die down a bit.

It is not special pleading on behalf of religion to say that, yes, people who consider themselves to be Christian will get angry after sufficient repetitions of the statement that all Christians are wicked, idiotic, deluded or oppressed, because people do not like to be called names -- that's just reality, call people names and they will eventually get pissed off;
and simply calling names does not amount to reason;
and that angry people say stupid things;
and that undeserving people have been made targets of hatred by posters here;
and that it would be a rather more decent thing to do to let the hatred die down a bit.

Posted by: Kagehi | July 15, 2007 6:18 PM

If all he did was call people names, then fine. But last I checked he makes clear arguments for why each case presented *is* a problem and only paints with a wide brush when that lunacy is "common" to the sub-group that the person being described belongs to. If its not true, and their faith was so solid, they wouldn't have better rebuttals for any false claims, of which all you see is special pleading, or they would **know** it wasn't directed at them specifically. You might as well shout at the people that made the Moral Oral cartoon for attacking Christians, instead of doing what it does, and attacking the inconsistency, stupid ideas and wacky thinking some engage in.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 6:25 PM

PZ, it is obviously not up to me to "allow" you to post on anything, or to set timescales for you. I don't believe I even implied it was. But you couldn't even have left it for a day or two until your more rabid followers had let the threads die? You are hardly Caledonian's keeper, but seriously, a day to let the people on SB's tempers cool is not outwith the remit of your judgement, surely. Rob flew off the handle more than you did, but why stir it up at the very moment it started to die down?

Posted by: The Physicist | July 15, 2007 6:32 PM

You were quite astute not to debate me PZ. You have horse blinders on, but so do most people. But I still like you.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 6:33 PM

Er, what would be a better term for Caledonian, then? Rabid fan?

Sorry, I should drop the attacks on people thing, myself. No more names.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 6:58 PM

Ok; obviously I have drawn from too small a sample of Caledonian posts.

PZ, I don't believe I ever called all the people who agree with you "sycophants", nor have I ever said or meant to imply that everyone who posts here agrees with you. I know better. However, there are people who do the fandom thing here, with some overlap with the people who defended you on Rob Knop's blog by going way, waaay too far into the whole direct personal insult thing. Those are the people who I would have classed as your "rabid followers". Probably not the best term that I could have chosen, but just about everything else I can think of is unwieldy.

Not trying to tar the entire population with a characterisation of a subset, you know.
Merely pointing out that the subset exists, and you must surely have been aware of what was going on.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 7:13 PM

PZ, I can't say that I have seen him do that; certainly it wasn't in any of the posts that I've read in the last few months, so it did not form any part of my own response. I saw him lose it with you on the by-now-infamous recent thread, but by the time I had seen that there was already a dogpile and it had already gotten quite nasty.

He was wrong to respond with a set of direct personal insults against you. I think he's got that. Enough, already. Shame on anyone who keeps this mess going, me included.

Posted by: Gilmore | July 15, 2007 7:37 PM

It is interesting to me that nobody has responded to Luna's experience re: her grandmother's death. I am myself a longtime atheist, but I have friends who have related similar experiences to me, some even more uncanny than that, and I have no reason to think these people are lying or hallucinating. What is the place for such experiences in our atheist worldview?

Does it violate our Atheist Commandments to consider the existence of forces or phenomena science has not yet been able to measure? Is it unbecoming a self-described atheist to be curious about investigating such occurences? Are we to be tossed in the disposal with Deepak Chopra and Jimmy Swaggart?

P.S.: Kudos to PZ for not accusing his opponents in this flamewar of the crime of masturbating. It's good to see how willing you are to improve yourself!

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | July 15, 2007 7:44 PM

I said it because it was true.

No, I think that was clear. It is btw consistent with your tolerance shtick - one gets tolerance, but earns respect.

If anything, the earlier casual remark left an distinction between the group and the individual, so they didn't have to feel personally offended. The precise formulation here doesn't; let's see if that will evoke a further reaction.

Now, if some of teh miffed can show that religion doesn't work to earn its followers the epithet "ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed", more power to them.

Posted by: poke | July 15, 2007 7:56 PM

Gilmore: I don't think it violates atheism to consider "forces science hasn't measured yet." I do think it violates science. Physics has a lot to say about what forces and interactions we should expect at different energy levels and AFAIK it just flat rules out any new mystery force in our local environment. (Sean Carroll has a great post about this over at Cosmic Variance but I can't find it right now.) The notion that a statistical analysis of people guessing cards or whatever is going to overturn particle physics is, IMO, just unscientific. There's a hierarchy of evidence is science and psi/supernatural aficionados have it backwards: to them anecdote trumps statistical anomaly trumps 300 years of physics experiments.

Posted by: foldedpath | July 15, 2007 8:05 PM

Gilmore (#107): It is interesting to me that nobody has responded to Luna's experience re: her grandmother's death. I am myself a longtime atheist, but I have friends who have related similar experiences to me, some even more uncanny than that, and I have no reason to think these people are lying or hallucinating. What is the place for such experiences in our atheist worldview?

Speaking as a skeptic and athiest, I think Occam's Razor gives us an appropriate response for spooky-seeming events like that -- "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." Don't go out of your way to assume complex or mysterious explanations when a simpler one will do.

And the simple explanation is pure coincidence, filtered by the natural human tendency to remember the times when a coincidence seems to "fit" a potentially supernatural event, and forget all the times when there were no coincidental fits like that.

P.S. I miss the pirate content too, yarr.

Posted by: Gil | July 15, 2007 8:19 PM

Arnosium Upinarum said:

"This isn't just a disagreement between people who believe in superstitious nonsense and those who don't. Its a growing war between those who accept the reality of change and those who don't. Your agnosticism, viewed in that larger and more general context, is not only a misapprehension of what you hope, its just a simple mistake in your thinking".

The less polite term is cowardice.

Posted by: Caledonian | July 15, 2007 8:22 PM

PZ, I can't say that I have seen him do that; certainly it wasn't in any of the posts that I've read in the last few months, so it did not form any part of my own response.

I pointed out that Knop had tried to troll up a flamewar, and you denied it. Then I pointed out the section of text (the very first line) where he'd said it - and you claimed he was merely anticipating a flamefest, not calling for one.

You're not a reliable judge of what has and hasn't been said; that's been demonstrated.

Posted by: Azkyroth | July 15, 2007 8:34 PM

Luna:

The audacity of those who conjure a personal stake in a general debate, enter it with a volley of sputtering indignation, and then blame it on the objects of attack when they stand up for themselves astounds me. Defending yourself in a fight you didn't start (I assume I won't have to explain the difference between an uncompromising general criticism of the adherence to certain doctrines by a segment of the population and a personal attack like what PZ is apparently facing...), whether it "perpetuates" a "flame war" or not, is nothing to be ashamed of; compromising one's principles merely to avoid conflict very much is. Those who feel otherwise can have my spine when they pry it from my cold dead torso.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 8:40 PM

For what it's worth, my sample size for people I know, over the course of my lifetime, who leapt out of bed convinced that a loved one had just died consists of...well, one, really. And it had happened. Yes, my grandmother had been in poor health for some time, but we had no reason to believe that her death was imminent (she had been in poor health for the previous four years!), and the coincidence was remarkably specific, for all of that.

I'm quite positive that more people die and their family don't sense it. I think I even pointed out that catching incidents of this type would be rather a challenge. However, I find myself unable to handwave this particular incident away as a coincidence even though I know there are some real doozies of coincidences out there; my father's actions in this instance were way too far away from the norm of his usual actions, for a start, and for all that they are genuinely poorly documented, anecdotes of this type are far from unique. It could have been a coincidence, but that is still, to my mind, a question rather than a settled answer. Sorry to disappoint you, Humbert & Gil. Well, no. Not really sorry. I don't really give a rat's. I still don't quite see how my not knowing an answer for this equates to cowardice, though.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 15, 2007 9:03 PM

Bob -- with general and unfocused apologies for a partial repost from Island of Doubt --

I've been intrigued by one particular question for a long time. I believe that it is well accepted, now, that stimulation of certain areas of the brain (especially electrical storm type stimulation, such as in seizures) results in a feeling of the "divine", in a feeling of religious imminence, or something described similarly (my mother experienced several such seizures in 1994 and described it as "it felt like God put His fingers in my skull"). Ok, physiological stimulus results in this particular sensation. But why -- why this perception of the stimulus? Why does a perception, or a description of a perception, exist as "religious" or "divine" at all? What prompts us to label this perception as "deity" or "imminence"? What is the real reason for the existance of both the physiological perception and our labelling that perception as we do?

Now, though, the cat is hopefully going to go sleep. It's 2 in the bloody am here, and I have work tomorrow.

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | July 15, 2007 9:07 PM

PZ writes:
>I'm not saying you're a bad person or even stupid
>if you're a believer.

Nonsense. Of course you are.

That was a great post, PZ, because - as you say - it's true. But if you're dealing in truths, go all the way. Are you really trying to tell me that you DON'T think the faithful are stupid (Or, at least, below average?) I sure as hell do. How can you possibly respect the intellect of someone who's so brain-addled that they'll swallow all that nonsense and come back for more? COME ON!

Posted by: foldedpath | July 15, 2007 9:13 PM

Luna_the_cat (#121) For what it's worth, my sample size for people I know, over the course of my lifetime, who leapt out of bed convinced that a loved one had just died consists of...well, one, really. And it had happened.

Our brains are wired to notice coincidences because we're pattern-seekers. Science (and healthy skepticism) gives us a way to avoid deluding ourselves that ALL the patterns we think we see, are actually significant.

I think it's also important to beware of the "wouldn't it be nice" syndrome... as in, wouldn't it be nice if loved ones could somehow communicate like that at the moment of dying. I dial up my bullshit detector to full strength for any silly proposition that would be warm and comforting, if it were only true. I prefer finding my warmth and comfort in the real world, knowing I have exactly one shot at this.

Posted by: CH | July 15, 2007 9:19 PM

12 year old son was home on a sickie from school , on the lounge watching the news , CNN and The Gaza Strip and the removal of people from their homes live coverage , found him sobbing trying to comfort child {unsure if he was sick or the great act } he looks at me and says 'Why '? why what I reply ..... why are they doing this ... its all for a myth ... why mum why ? will that happen to us ? its all for a myth , just a myth mum ...how can they do that ? ... mum's answer ...
Blind faith in the name of religion son , they believe what they are doing is their rite as they have done all through history ..... we can only stand by and watch and help those left with the sad consequences they have caused .. How many children today are suffering from those myths ????? right now while you sip on coffee at your PC .....hmmmm argue all you want facts are facts . Myths until they become facts are myths and children are suffering because the grown ups in the world allow it in the name of religion hiding behind politics ... Our children's future is at risk on global scale , myths holding up progress to fix most problems in all areas ....please help them .. from a humble mum . Thanks .

Posted by: Mike Haubrich | July 15, 2007 9:28 PM

Having read through all of this, I have to join the dogpile on luna_the_cat, with regard to your "concern." I think that this is exactly the right time for PZed to bring out the three points noted in the post, while it is still fresh. Suppose he waited two or three weeks, for things to "cool down a bit." People would accuse him of bringing up old stuff.

If Rob Knop uses this as an excuse to revive the flamewar, that is his problem. But I don't see the big problem with a flamewar, anyway, as it boosts traffic and the SciBlings are making money for the Seed Overlords.

And Gilmore: Masturbation isn't a crime. Remember it's God who does the kitten killing. That's the real crime.

Posted by: Kim | July 15, 2007 9:41 PM

Hey PZ. I for one don't think you're an arsehole. A lot of people just can't tell the difference between that and having a sense of humour. Hence why so many of those humourless people really are arseholes.

And doesn't it occur to these people that your purpose in life isn't to entertain them? The whole point of a blog, I thought, was to see what was going on in the head of the author because the particular person, like yourself, had an amusing and informative head. Just because you're posting it somewhere they can find it doesn't mean it's not all about you.

Posted by: sea Creature | July 15, 2007 9:50 PM

I just think this whole blog is fun. As for those who are insulted by those who say it is delusional to believe in deities, hey, grow a thicker skin. As a lesbian and an atheist, I have to deal with all kinds of really insulting crap - being equated with child molesters, for example, so I don't have a lot patience for those who can't handle an atheist who thinks religion is delusional and says so.

Posted by: Abbie | July 15, 2007 10:01 PM

And the simple explanation is pure coincidence, filtered by the natural human tendency to remember the times when a coincidence seems to "fit" a potentially supernatural event, and forget all the times when there were no coincidental fits like that.

Exactly. It's basic statistics.

If you think about whats going on in the world... how many people are dying in hospitals... how many people have nightmares... how many people have nightmares about relatives dying... it's absolutely going to happen once in a while.

So, there are two options: Either it was a coincidence, or it wasn't. And if it wasn't, there are infinite possible explanations, all far less likely than it being a simple, coincidence.

Dawkin's Unweaving the Rainbow has good stuff on this topic. I think "rare but predictable coincidence" explains a good deal of supernatural claims.

Posted by: David Harmon | July 15, 2007 11:18 PM

I get email all the time telling me that one or the other of those is "boring" (except the cephalopods, everyone loves those).

So give the cephalopods some drill bits already... ;-)

I find myself agreeing and disagreeing a little with everyone on this business. Yeah, PZ can be pretty irritating when he gets on his high horse, but Rob knew that when he came to SB. He definitely needs to come up with better comebacks than (my words) "he called me deluded! That's mean!". In this crowd, a flippant disdain for your righteousness would have gone over much better.

On the other hand, public criticism is, in and of itself, a social sanction -- an attempt to influence (and usually to subordinate) someone else through interpersonal pressure. Criticizing someone's behavior addresses acts that have consequences in the real world. Criticizing someone's beliefs is a little trickier.... Thomas Jefferson summed up the issue: "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." If someone's done you no injury, is it right to denounce them as similarly "deluded" to those whose ignorance and indoctrination do harm you and yours?

Luna, Gilmore, etc: If you're interested in investigating "uncanny" experiences, the practice of shamanism provides a fairly reliable source of same. The link points to the group founded by anthropologist Michael Harner, who boiled down the methods of several indigenous tribes to provide a simple (and drug-free) technique for self-inducing the relevant trance states. Religion is irrelevant to the method, and belief is nearly so.

Anyone interested can start with just three items: (1) Harner's book The Way Of The Shaman ($16 from the group or B&N, currently less from Amazon). The book explains the usage of the other two items. (2) a drumming CD/tape ($16 for the "No. 1" journey tape from shamanism.org), in lieu of a partner with a drum, and (3) a pair of rattles (music store, toy store, or improvised). (The "journey tape" could even be replaced with MIDI or a drum machine, using information from the book.)

Posted by: Chris | July 15, 2007 11:31 PM

But why -- why this perception of the stimulus? Why does a perception, or a description of a perception, exist as "religious" or "divine" at all? What prompts us to label this perception as "deity" or "imminence"? What is the real reason for the existance of both the physiological perception and our labelling that perception as we do?

In any case, until and unless there is some real proof that those types of events are anything more than remembering the one dream that came true and forgetting the hundreds that didn't, the only reasonable thing to do is live our lives with what we know is real. That, generally applied, is realism as I know and practice it. Gods, aliens and any other form of garage dragons don't make the cut.

Posted by: hephaistos | July 16, 2007 12:21 AM

Hoo Yah!! pi zeta, for an outstanding site and for your clear, courageous stand in this matter.

Your readers may be interested in an article concerning Salman Rushdie which appears on page 27 of the 15 July NY Times Book Review section. Rachel Donadio reviews comments made at the time (1989) of the anti-Rushdie fatwah by Jimmy Carter, John le Carre, and others. Although all of those commentators supported Rushdie's right to free speech, many of those commentators also felt that Rushdie was wrong to do something which he knew would incense people of a particular faith. Deja vu all over again, eh? I am no friend of royalty but I say God (hmm...) Bless the Queen and I hope she creates Sir Salman a Duke next time around.

Posted by: JohnnieCanuck, FCD | July 16, 2007 12:37 AM

And who knows? Maybe God isn't really God at all, but an 8th grade science teacher in an alternate universe, and we are but a science project.

Then Armageddon will be what happens when the bleach hits the Petrie dish. I don't care how hard the moulds pray, teachers already know what happens if you give in to little beggers, even once.

Posted by: Tulse | July 16, 2007 12:48 AM

In all things, I have peace, because I know God loves me, and I know He has a plan, a purpose, and a destiny for my life.

Slaveowners had a plan, purpose, and destiny for their "property", and cattlemen have a plan, purpose, and destiny for their livestock. Somehow in neither case are the objects of this attention comforted by this. Explain to me again why one should follow the alleged plan of an alleged creator? And do you always do exactly what your mother tells you to do?

Posted by: autumn | July 16, 2007 1:25 AM

Mr. White, I can say the same things about booze, but I've never spent a Sunday morning singing songs about it (okay, I do every third Sunday).

Back to the "why incite the flamewars" whine, get real. The internet is at its most useful as a tool for shit-flinging and beating-off (not necessarily at the same time). Why incite the flamewars? It's fun. It's damn fun. There is no chance of my actually getting hit in the face. Other people freak the hell out, and I get to see it. I certainly am not attributing my particular attitude to PZ, but I absoloutly love the fact that I can, when an argument is getting heated, reach into a little place in my darkness and pull out a few words that will cause my interlocuter to go insane. As I have gotten too old for the actual hitting, I see the internet as a place where one can still draw out the blithering madness of an opponent with a few well-chosen comments. I always saw it as a victory if I could get someone punching-angry with a little verbal poke in the hoo-hah.

Yes, it's immature and foolish, but in some little way (and I am not the type who is physically intimidating) I felt good about my ability to cause the other to lose their rationality and start swinging first.

Posted by: Aristotle Pagaltzis | July 16, 2007 2:01 AM

Paul, I doubt that you will personally see this comment, but in case you do, there is one thing I disagree with here:

You've got crazy-ass megalomaniacal evangelical kooks telling people to hate their gay/muslim/hindu/godless/female/evolutionist neighbors, you've got mobs believing them, you've got people electing presidents on the basis of how fanatically they will wage a crusade, and you've got even more swooning with the vapors at anyone who criticizes religious belief. Religion makes you nuts.

Sorry, no. Religion does not make people nuts. People are nuts. (You know the famous Einstein quote.)

Religion is effect much more so than cause. For evidence, consider whether the Sovjet Union fared any better than theist governments in terms of humaneness. An atheist society would be no more considered, fair and, well, rational than the theist ones we have now. The only difference would be that religion would not be used as an excuse, although the same underlying appeal-to-authority thinking would almost certainly persist in some other form. (The communists would often hide behind Marxist ideology instead of religion; looks suspiciously like the same thing to me.)

People quite simply have an immense capacity for irrationality, pettiness and cruelty. This is a given. Religion, much like "free will", is just something that gets dragged out to rationalise (if you can admit the use of that word in this context) impulses and emotions that are long set in stone by the time the higher brain functions get around to processing them.

Doubtless, of course, if you are already nuts, you might be more likely to accept religion.

But religion doesn't make you nuts.

Posted by: RealPhysics | July 16, 2007 2:21 AM

PZ:
You rock. I've been following your blog for many months now, and I love it. You always bring out the best humor, rampant godlessness (and godbotherers) and cephalopods. I'd like more cephalopods, though!

I'm a physicist in training (Jr. Standing), and an atheist for 2 years (parents are devout Catholics. Love the show, PZ. Let's have some more lighter fluid.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | July 16, 2007 3:02 AM

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I don't check this place out for a few days and I miss all the fun!

I agree with PZ and this Rob guy seems to be somewhat disagreeable as a person. After reading his comments to posters over on his blog, I'm left with the idea that he doesn't think people should be able to voice opinions that disagree with him.

@ Luna_the_Cat It's really inappropriate for you to attempt to persuade PZ to modify his posts because of someone's hurt feelings. Quite frankly it shows that you, like Rob, think that preserving someone's feelings by not chipping away at their false ideology is somehow admirable or desirable. This will not help us (Americans subject to the dictates of a conservative Christian president and vocal populace) live our lives the way we see fit without fear of retaliation from those clinging to antiquated Bronze Age myths of a small group of desert nomads!

From your comments I surmize that you live in the UK? though maybe I'm wrong. The threat to atheists in the USA is very real and is not limited to simple verbal assault, but rather systemic discrimination and the threat of actual, physical violence. To have outspoken, public atheists willing to call religion what it is helps me live my life day to day with the hope that one day things might change.

As for your reasons for being agnostic rather than atheist, I agree with other who state that it is simple coincidence. I once had a a very real dream that my mother died, and came to say good bye. It was so real that I called my mother to see how she was and make sure she was still alive. Everything was fine. My dream was just that, a dream. However, had something actually happened to her, you would take that as evidence for your beliefs. I'm not denying the reality of what you and your family experienced, but rather the conclusion you have come to as to the nature of that experience.

Finally, why do some people describe a particular physiological experience as "divine" or "religious?" I suggest that you start investigating the extensive body of work relating to enculturation, language and perception of the world. Start with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and work your way through.

Pygmy Loris

Posted by: Martin R | July 16, 2007 3:08 AM

I was really surprised at the violent reaction to that entry. I mean, it's not as if that was the first time that PZ said something vitriolic about religion.

Many people seem to feel that free speech doesn't extend into the field of religion, that such claims and beliefs aren't open to debate. Some probably believe that criticizing a religious belief system is a kind of hate speech that should be restricted.

I certainly don't think so. There is only one kind of truth, the empirically testable one. If someone makes vacuous truth claims such as those in religion, then they shouldn't be surprised when they get criticism.

Posted by: Oliver | July 16, 2007 4:17 AM

"There is no god, or to say it in the most optimistic and sensitive way possible for a rational person, there is absolutely no evidence for a god."

PZ, your epistemology is lacking. There's a profound difference between "there is no..." and "there is no evidence for..." Unfortunately, in making such comments, you're practicing the same irrationality that you accuse others of.

Religion isn't science -per definitionem. But if you insist in applying the standards of science -which is like using a sharp screwdriver to get out the tubing of your bike, i.e. using the wrong tool and more likely to do more harm than good- at least use them correctly. In any case, until the day you can actually FALSIFY the existence of god, "There is no evidence" means little more than just that. While we can happily apply Occam's razor, it is a)no real evidence, just a guide on assumptions, and b)very limited in scope when looking at the more fundamental hows and whys of the universe. The problem is, of course, that falsification isn't possible in entirety, because unlike science, religion can go back BEYOND the origin of the universe. So you can happily falsify individual aspects, such as the age of the world, the origin of species etc., in the end, the true believer can go one step back and say "Yes, but it's all like that because it was planned to be this way in the blueprints the creator drew."

You can argue all you want that we don't NEED religion. You can claim we don't need it socially, though that would be hard to prove, and you can demonstrate we don't need it to explain the workings of the universe around us. But the battle you're trying to fight is one the tools of science were never meant to be used for and if you insist on using them this way, you're trapped in a war you can't win.

@Pygmy Loris:

What's inappropriate is your insistance that Luna_the_Cat should apply the same standards in social discourse that you do. What you are doing is precisely the same thing that you accuse Luna of doing. You are suggesting someone else should suppress their priorities for the sake of your personal comfort. There is a difference between "calling religion what it is" and giving derogatory labels to its adherants. If you don't want to be called something like "godless scum", it would be proper to lead by example. If you want to demonstrate that your values are better, you have a weak case if you behave in precisely the same fashion because then, evidently, the different values don't lead to different behaviour.

@MartinR
"Many people seem to feel that free speech doesn't extend into the field of religion, that such claims and beliefs aren't open to debate"

Debate looks kinda different that some of the posts here. Which is the point. Free speech very much extends into the field of religion. It doesn't extend to calling other people names, though. Not in the field of religion nor in any other field. And in fact, the constitution of some countries (Germany, for example) specifically cite human dignity as the value which has primacy over all others. As for stating "there is only one kind of truth: the empirically testable one", a brush-up on epistemology should infuse some humility into such radical claims. Yes, there is (likely) only one kind of truth, but we shouldn't be so foolish as to claim to possess it. By empirically testing it, you already lose it and gain, at best, an approximate. If we DID have the truth, we wouldn't be having this debate. We would be dictating laws on some stone tables and sending fire to Sodom and Gomorrah. You should be careful not to make yourself bent on replacing religion with a religious belief with merely a different label.

Posted by: Jim Miles | July 16, 2007 4:39 AM

"This week, I tossed off"

LOL

Posted by: BT Murtagh | July 16, 2007 5:18 AM

Oliver quoth:

The problem is, of course, that falsification isn't possible in entirety, because unlike science, religion can go back BEYOND the origin of the universe.

Posted by: Frost | July 16, 2007 5:26 AM

#123 Luna_the_cat said:
"But why -- why this perception of the stimulus? Why does a perception, or a description of a perception, exist as "religious" or "divine" at all? What prompts us to label this perception as "deity" or "imminence"? What is the real reason for the existance of both the physiological perception and our labelling that perception as we do?"

The reason we call those experiences "divine" is simply because religion is the dominant paradigm of our society that is used to explain feelings of unity/oneness/etc commonly labelled as mystical.

It is a matter of language and culture how you describe (and some have speculated that language also effects the way you experience and understand*) the world.

It's just that in our culture telling that you are feeling "god" is more conductive of being undertood than, say describing those experiences as being brought to you by space aliens or aligning your chakras or resting in the shade of the great Wahoo tree.

Why do we have those experiences in the first place, then? I'm no MD, but I would suspect that they are merely instances of the brain misfiring. We are talking about abnormal states here, after all: epilepsy, seizures and external stimulation. You can get also other kind of effects through stimulating or injuring the brain, effects that certainly cannot be described as divine.

I could, of course, write an essay about this but I'm trying to be brief so pardon me for cutting some corners. And yeah, sorry 'bout using 'paradigm'.. I blame the university..
*Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, interesting and controversial, Wikipedia will tell you more

#155
PygmyLoris: Damn you, you beat me to it. ;) Gonna post this anyway. SWH certainly deserves consideration.

#159
Oliver. What can I say. *bangs head repeatedly to the keyboard* Ahem. I presume you take this stand regarding every other piece of drivel dreamed by someone somewhere at sometime in the history of mankind, starting from Wotan and Apollo and ending with Flying Spaghetti Monster and the space aliens behind Hale-Bopp. It is _perfectly_ reasonable to assume that none of the above exist because the burden of proof rests quite comfortably in the hands of the one making the claim.

It is true that there can never be 100% proof that there is no god. Indeed, there can never be 100% proof that there is no Invisible Pink Unicorn. However, there are infinite degrees of likelyhood from quite certain to extremely improbable. The "god hypothesis" and the "no god hypothesis" are nowhere near the same footing on that scale.

So okay: its really, really, really, really... really(n>10^9) unlikely that there is a god. It is so unlikely that for all purposes we can approximate the likelyhood of there being a god as zero without any of the calculations suffering from that.

And to paraphrase Prof. Dawkins, when religion starts making claims about the essence of reality it _is_ purporting to act as science and as such is subject to the same standards and methods.

Quoting another one from professor D: It takes religion to get good people to do evil things.

Sorry 'bout the lengthy rant, wrote the first part in notepad, refreshed the screen before submitting and read what had come after. And felt the urge to comment..

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 16, 2007 6:23 AM

Wow, a few people here are having such fun attributing things to me which I did. not. say.

First, and least important overall: I was asked why I was agnostic. I offered the anecdote about my father as nothing more than an attempt to explain myself. Please refer to the other things which I have said about it, including:

[The events] did not take place in my head, but were external to me, and had other witnesses. [However] They are not data; they are nothing more than unsubstantiated anecdote, and as such, not only are they likely to be unconvincing to anyone else, they damned well shouldn't be. Other people should shrug them off as irrelevant until such events are replicable and adequately documented.

Second: Look, I said to PZ that I was disgusted that he didn't let tempers cool on SB a bit. I've had my say on that, he responded in such fashion that I didn't simply feel he was blowing me off, and I'm more than willing to let it go. The number of "more gasoline! More lighter fluid!" posts outvote me anyway, much as I think that hardly helps anything or improves ScienceBlogs. But then again, I obviously lack a sense of humor.

And finally, the basic issue which prompted the original complaint against PZ, which I'm afraid I don't think he really addressed above and which has gotten lost under all the name-calling from various quarters (and I do not exempt myself from this, again) is actually an important one and yes, I'm going to risk more flames here by bringing it back up.

I don't think that anyone here, me included, Rob Knop included, PZ included, is happy about the state of science education and understanding in the population of the US (and increasingly in the UK, yes) at large. Is that something we can all agree on? That there needs to be more education?

Second thing which ought to be relatively easy for people to understand -- if you call people names, they get pissed off and will not listen to anything else you have to say. "Aw, don't care if your poor widdle feelings were hurt, I'm right and you should listen and start thinking for once, even though you're obviously not used to it" tends to, overall, have a poor track record for getting people to consider your ideas. In this sense, and in this sense only, is my argument about "hurt feelings".

Rob Knop had been trying to introduce concepts of rational thought and science to the church and Christian populations he was in contact with. I've personally done the same, with some success. Yes, we all know that there are devoutly religious people out there with a deep emotional investment in their worldview, a hostility to science, and no interest whatsoever in learning anything different. There is no point to pandering to these people, or even addressing them. However, there is a much larger population out there which simply has no clue how science operates and why scientists say the things they do, and who adhere to religion because that is what they are exposed to, it is the environment which welcomes them, and it is espoused by the people they trust. These people, this very large population, is a target audience.

Now, it would be wonderful to use Seed and ScienceBlogs as a tool for the education of this large, religious-by-default-but-composed-of-ordinary-people population. A lot of fascinating topics are touched on here, and there are bloggers who are capable of explaining them in clear and wonderful ways. But neither Rob nor I, for that matter, feel that we can point people from that background here now, because for good or ill, Pharyngula has become the first ScienceBlog people are likely to encounter if they go exploring around, and they are also likely to encounter the anti-religion rants early -- at which point they switch off, get defensive, and that's that; you have fulfilled the stereotype that that the fundamentalists teach them. Skatje herself said it -- why would people listen to you after you've slapped them in the face?

Please note: I understand that this is PZ's space, that these people are not PZ's target audience, and that PZ very obviously functions as a welcome reinforcement and validation for atheists. But the blog has gone from this:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/what_should_a_scientist_think.php
--which makes the all the points necessary and expresses PZ's views clearly and logically, without the fire-breathing, inflammatory rhetoric of calling people who adhere to religion deluded idiots in so many words, to:

Religion makes you nuts. It makes ordinary people identify with invisible spirits, it turns them into caterwauling flibbertigibbet idiots at any slight to a magic man who has never done a thing for them, and it makes them center their lives around head-dunkings and cracker-eating and gibbering chants to an unheeding phantasm.

Because of this, it isn't possible to use the site as outreach to that large population I just mentioned. The irony is that Pharyngula has become such a prominent part of ScienceBlogs because of PZ's popularity and large audience, and that irony is not lost on me. But I do regret the loss of this resource from my possible arsenal.

I hope this makes sense to at least a few people.

Posted by: alamandrax | July 16, 2007 7:13 AM

You know something PZ? I'd rather you dropped the atheist tag. I'm beginning to appreciate why Sam Harris has a certain take on this word.

"There is no word for a person who is not a plumber... You do not get up in the morning wondering about what you are not."

Just a suggestion. It helps me bring two worlds together. The world that Matt Stone puts forward in South Park, where future generations get rid of all their "-isms". (disclaimer:you might already be doing this in your page, but this is the first time i've visited here.)

Posted by: Frost | July 16, 2007 9:01 AM

Oliver:
Don't presume what you presume. I'm merely making the point here that not all information has the same probability of being true, and as such the same value. There are things that are likely to be true, like gravity and the speed of light in a vacuum. Then there are things that are quite unlikely to be true, like Harry Potter or a god. The presupposition that there are no absolute truths, or at least if there are, they are in essence unknowable does not make all propositions about the truth equiprobable as valid approximations. All truth may well be subjective, but some theories of the world are repeatable by others and have more data supporting them than others and are as such more valid as approximations that come closer to the absolute, inherently unknowable truth.

When one says: "There is no god," one means "based on meticulous weighing in of the evidence, observations and careful contemplation I have come to the conclusion that the likelyhood of there being a god is infinitesimally small and as such dismissable," but one does not like to speak legalese all the time.

My reason for saying: I presume you take this stand regarding [...], was more of a nature of a wish that you apply your stance consistently throughout the spectrum of differing ideologies and beliefs. Are you implying by your answer that you _only_ afford certain religious doctrines the benefit of being thus set apart? Or that you are engaging in this discussion as an intellectual excercise on epistemology? One could take the epistemological position that I detect in your writing to its logical conclusion of solipsism, but that would be rather fruitless don't you think? Of course I may have misunderstood you completely. Why not give us an example of an argument on this issue that you would find acceptable?

Except, of course, that there is no "god hypothesis". There is a set of beliefs, which is something fundamentally different.

Isn't there? How is a set of beliefs something "fundamentally different"?

The definition of hypothesis is: guess, conjecture, supposition, surmise, surmisal, speculation; a tentative theory about the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena; a message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence; a proposal intended to explain certain facts or observations.

Is it not a working hypothesis of the believers that there is a god, who functions in the world a certain way etc.. These belief systems also claim that the god they presume affects the physical world at least to some degree. These effects of a divine being are thus something that happens in the real world and as such are observable, or the divine operator is offered as an explanation of certain existing and observed phenomena. It is, as such, a hypothesis. (I am not discussing eg. deists, here.) Or are we just bandying words here? Please elaborate on that?

You can quote as much as you want, but all you demonstrate is that you don't hold yourself to the standards you expect of others. As you said, "the burden of proof rests quite comfortably in the hands of the one making the claim."

Due to the restrictions of this medium I cannot give this question the attention it deserves. Thus I am left with quoting mere anecdotes, but one feels certain that a little time with google will provide quite a lot more. How about the Middle East? 9/11? India&Pakistan? Northern Ireland? Former Yugoslavia? US with fundamentalists killing abortion doctors etc? People denying eg. medical aid from their children on basis of faith alone?

It would be simplistic to claim that religion is the only factor in all the crises and ills of the world, but it is a major contributing factor in many of them and the only one that trivialises and even glorifies death, and denies provably working alternatives if coming from the wrong place.

So far I haven't seen one shred of acceptable evidence on behalf of aforementioned deities. As I said in my previous post, as long as religion claims to offer an explanation of reality it is subject to the same standards and methods as science. I'm still waiting.

You teach a doctrine of "demonization of unbelievers" without ever bothering to test it, or even putting it into a form where it is testable. You fail to graps that your line of argumentation is in no way different from that you criticise. A little bit more self-skepticism -the hallmark of good scientific argumentation- would become you. Lambasting others for propagating that they have irrefutable truth on their side while arguing in just the same fashion has little credibility.

"Demonization of believes", surely? Or do I misunderstand you? I have great faith in humanity as a species, and I think it takes quite a lot to pervert the inherent altruism of a social animal. It seems to me that religions, or rather dogmatic beliefs of which religions form the major portion, have such a mechanism. I am saying that misquided people, in the firm belief that they are doing good things, are led to do things that are harmful to both themselves and other people. I feel great sympathy and sorrow eg. for the young people who blow themselves up in the firm belief of heavenly glory for advancing the holy war. They aren't evil, just decieved.

Wherein I come to the point of just where have I been "lambasting others for propagating that they have irrefutable truth on their side while arguing in just the same fashion"? As far as I know I have never argued that I have irrefutable truth on my side. Quite the contrary, I have merely noted that there is a complete lack of evidence _for_ a god, the overwhelming amount of evidence that there isn't one, and pointed out that the burden of proof is not on the one denying such proposition.

I would also like ask you to get off your high horse and be a bit less condecending, but that would be making assuptions about your attitude based on a few lines written on a discussion board, and hardly representative of your personality as it in reality is. So lets us presume the best intentions of eachother?

Well, the length of this is really getting out of hand so I'll quit now. I haven't even begun adressing all your points, but this shall have to do. I apologise for any lack of proper references, citations and bibliography, rest assured that if this were an academic paper and not an entry on a DB, I would give them.

Godless scum, over and out. ;)

Posted by: Graculus | July 16, 2007 9:22 AM

have addressed a set of complaints with which I have been dunned for this last week.

I wonder how many of those complainers are legit?

It is pretty much the complaint that liberals/secularists/etc are "uncivil" when they don't allow themselves to be used as doormats; that Michael Moore is the left's Ann Coulter, that Dawkins is shrill, etc, etc.

It is, of course, a steaming pile of bullshit.

Posted by: Kerlyssa | July 16, 2007 10:04 AM

@162: I knew when the phone rang that my grandpa had died. Same way I 'know' when someone is late they are dead in a ditch, or if they oversleep they've had a stroke and are laying paralyzed in bed. Just the way my worrying mind works.

Now I don't recall most of the minor thoughts from that year of childhood, but my grandpa's death sticks out, so in my memory it looks like an oracular event. And once you get that train of thought in your head, it's easy to find confirmations that in actuality are due to reading body language or just plain coincidence.

Many of the people I know who have beliefs in the supernatural build off of one long past experience that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The UFO that I clearly recall as a sparking transformer, the fairy toadstool circle that didn't show up on camera(when in fact no picture was every taken).

Posted by: paleotn | July 16, 2007 10:36 AM

Oliver wrote...."The problem is, of course, that falsification isn't possible in entirety, because unlike science, religion can go back BEYOND the origin of the universe. So you can happily falsify individual aspects, such as the age of the world, the origin of species etc., in the end, the true believer can go one step back and say "Yes, but it's all like that because it was planned to be this way in the blueprints the creator drew.""

This sounds like a variation of the "God of the gaps" argument. No matter how far science pushes the envelope of understanding, the superstitious will continue to make up shite to explain that ever shrinking portion of existence science has YET to enlighten. This game can and probably will go on as long as we exist as a species, and accomplish precisely nothing useful. It amounts to useless mental masturbation (also the definition of epistemology?) that over time makes one's particular phantasm all the more distant and irrelevant. Before one's personal god becomes so tiny and insignificant he vanishes completely from sight, why not just let it go and accept the fact that the evidence against the existence of some sort of creator being is gargantuan and continues to mount, while the evidence in favor of such a being is the same as it was 100,000 years ago...zero.

It's kind of ironic that the Hebrew / Christian old testament is filled with stories of guys like Isaiah and Jeremiah who apparently had no qualms with verbally whacking people over the head from time to time. With regard to the sharpness of their rhetoric, these guys make PZ look rather tame. Talk about "name calling", read some of Isaiah's rants! Christians, particularly evangelicals and fundamentalists, admire these characters for their bravery in speaking the supposed "truth", simply because it was the "truth". They apparently didn't care that their words might make some feel bad, or cause intense anger or close the minds of their intended targets.

Now, since the shoe is on the other foot so to speak, like the kings and priesthood of ancient Israel and Judah, the religious and otherwise secular religious apologists among us can't seem to handle the truth. Oh no, speaking the truth as science explains it is being mean and closing minds yadda, yadda, yadda. I dare say that if PZ and others simply whispered the same ideas, the sensitive among us would STILL get all bent out of shape. It seems the mere existence of non-theists just flusters them to no end. So why not shout it from a science blog? In the end, the reaction will be the same.

Yes, PZ, like Harris and Dawkins, you're the "Isaiah" of atheism and agnosticism. So keep on keeping on.

Posted by: tony | July 16, 2007 11:23 AM

Re: Luna & her dad's oracular vision...

This may be a little prosaic, but my wife frequently comments to me -- maybe once a month -- on how she was 'just thinking about her mum' when...dring dring... her mum calls her on the phone! Whoa! And her mum is in Spain! Way across the Atlantic! How wierd is that!

Rational analysis would ask the following:

1. How often do you (wife) normally think of your mum... (Answer: maybe once an hour - especially since our two year old talks incessantly about 'gramma' - so definitely once an hour during the day when Lucie's active - 8am to 7pm)

2. How often does your mum call you? (answer - at least once a week - in a window from 8am to 4pm eastern)

3. What is the probablility of these two events being co-incident.

I'm not doing the math - but it is virtually guaranteed that event 2 will happen within 1 hour of event 1 happening (that's our baseline premise, after all) since event 2 timeline is a subset of event 1 timeline.

So, if we consider 'co-incident' to be within 5 minutes... then I have a 1 in 20 probability of having a 'co-incident' event - [drum roll please] - that's about what my wife experiences!

Case proven -- at least for this.

I would think that the majority (if not all - but I don't have evidence) can be similarly rationalized!

Posted by: tony | July 16, 2007 11:33 AM

Frost: @171.

Totally.wonderful.post! Great! Fabulous. Awesome!

paleotn: @177

superstitious will continue to make up shite

Posted by: Sean Peters | July 16, 2007 11:54 AM

There is no god, or to say it in the most optimistic and sensitive way possible for a rational person, there is absolutely no evidence for a god.

Of course, those two statements are not at all the same thing.... what do you think about "There is no life on Europa, or to say it in the most optimistic and sensitive way possible for a rational person, there is absolutely no evidence for life on Europa".

Yay, Luna. I'm not particularly religious, nor did I take any offense by the original post (primarily because I really just don't give a damn what PZ thinks about my not very well formed religious beliefs), but I do find attempts to cure me of my spiritual insanity (or wickedness, oppression, ignorance, whatever) to be every bit as annoying as the Jesus people trying to save me.

I'm not trying to tell you what to post - it's your blog, post what you want. I'm thick skinned, so I'll read it even if I find it annoying, and mostly I won't bitch about it. But if you are going to call people ignorant, deluded, oppressed, etc; it is hardly worthy of comment that they're going to find it offensive. So why bother? The only answer I can come up with is that stirring the pot drives page views.

Sean

Posted by: Mike | July 16, 2007 12:12 PM

Jesus Christ, what a load of comments! Look, I can straighten this all out. It's a simple misunderstanding along with some punctuation and spelling errors.

". . . you are asshole. As my preacher says, . . ."

was probably supposed to be

". . . you are as holy as my preacher, says . . ."

Of course, the odds of several hundred people making the same mistake are probably pretty small, but what are the odds of me winning the lottery? I'm still pretty sure I'm going to win.

Posted by: Fishbone McGonigle | July 16, 2007 12:18 PM

The world that Matt Stone puts forward in South Park, where future generations get rid of all their "-isms".

You mean the same world with talking otters and a telephone that lets you prank-call the past?

A real deep thinker, that Stone.

Posted by: Sean Peters | July 16, 2007 12:27 PM

#165:

It is _perfectly_ reasonable to assume that none of the above exist because the burden of proof rests quite comfortably in the hands of the one making the claim.

I'm not making the claim. I don't care whether you believe this stuff or not. I just find it annoying when I continually get "but you can't prove any of that" in my face. It's just as annoying as "you need to accept Jesus to avoid hellfire".

I'm not trying to tell anyone to stop talking - what I'm saying is, don't be surprised if people get irritated by it.

Sean

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 16, 2007 1:20 PM

James Stein: I find it regrettable that an intelligent and interesting blog seems to be going down the path of more and more flamboyant shouting. It's also part of the face of the entire site, to the point that I can't point people I would really like to learn more about science towards Seed and ScienceBlogs without risking turning them off entirely. Yes, not your concern. Not PZ's, either, obviously. But yikes, I wish I could use the place as a teaching resource for a very specific set of people I know, and it won't work, and I don't know if I can adequately communicate the depth of my regret and how much of a loss I think this is.

I did not personally take any offense at PZ's post, and I thought that Rob Knop really shouldn't have started with the direct personal insults himself. If nothing else, his doing so meant that no-one read any further or looked at the meat of the complaint. All the attention was taken up by the words "blowhard", "jerk", etc. Which is, if you think about it, closely related to the point I've been trying to make about communication.

To the various people who've commented on the anecdote I so unwisely put in the blogosphere:
If I may say rather plaintively, do I really give the impression that I am stupid? Or unwilling or unable to think logically? (I wouldn't ask if I weren't willing to hear the answers, although in the case of Caledonian I'm pretty sure I can already guess.)

If it were an obvious candidate for coincidence, I wouldn't be bothered about it. I'm aware, too, that coincidence can be remarkable; the most odds-are-against-this-ever-happening coincidence I know of is a real jaw-dropper, but the idea that it has anything to do with the "supernatural" is patently absurd. Thing is, I've thought of all of the things brought up above, and due to the nature of this particular experience and the physical circumstance surrounding it*, I honestly can't find "coincidence" a complete enough answer. That's all, really.

The vast majority of "psychic impressions" are beyond doubt cold reading, wishful thinking and/or coincidence, and this is actually fairly obvious to anyone with critical thinking skills and observational powers. And my general classifications for psychics, through experience, are "con artist" or "sincere but deluded" -- I can't say that I have ever encountered, in person or in the media, any "psychic" who could provide evidence that they did not fit into one of those two categories. So what I'm trying to say is that I am hardly wedded to some supernaturalist worldview. I don't find it useful, if nothing else, and above all I am a pragmatist -- I have the heart of an engineer. (In a jar, on my bookshelf.)

I said before, I wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything with the anecdote. This is still true, even now. I'm not trying to convince people here that this here is a genuine mystery which can only be explained by the supernatural -- not least because I find the "only explained by the supernatural" bit to be unsatisfactory and unacceptable as well. And I find myself not particularly caring whether anyone else thinks it's a mystery; having my own curiosity to deal with is quite enough, thanks.

I'm just trying to justify the fact that I haven't settled on coincidence as being a complete and satisfactory answer for myself, I guess, and yeah, I've found myself getting a bit huffy about the implication that I couldn't have considered it thoroughly. Gads, its not quite on the same level as seeing swamp gas and calling it a UFO, I think.

Anyway, I think this is about it for me. If anyone can offer insight or information on this kind of thing which I haven't run into before, that would be quite cool.

---------------------------

*Witnesses -- no gap of memory in which we did not refer to it having happened, and multiple family members who remember the incident and refer to it independently, and who are willing to argue about it. I'm not an only child, I only wish I were sometimes.
Not part of an established pattern of behavior, like a phone call every week or every month or worrying if someone is out late.
Extremely atypical behavior on the part of my father, something I wouldn't expect anyone outside the family to know or take seriously, but significant in my own assessment.
Not part of an "expected" set of phenomena. No-one in my family expects to mystically know when something bad has happened, with the current exception of my mother, who has been brain-damaged by seizures and may well be going senile. The rest of us acknowledge that we are consistent with pretty much everyone else on the planet, more in the habit of being completely blindsided by tragedy.
Things like that.

Posted by: Sebastian | July 16, 2007 2:04 PM

Jake #102: Let's see some good absence of free will posts. Atheists exist as a named group at least. if still a minority, but denying free will pits you against basically everyone outside a small circle of academics.

Materialism has indeed fallen on hard times:

"No matter that the physical world provides no room for freedom of will: that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know its false..." Marvin Minsky - Society of Mind

Never mind that the "psychology" doesn't amount to a hill of beans, and hasn't produced a useful result in 2500 years. Cling to it, even if it means you must embrace admitted falsehoods. Don't even consider that modeling the so-called "mental realm" might be where you've gone astray. Then we'll all be moral and happy.

Posted by: paleotn | July 16, 2007 2:42 PM

#184 Oliver wrote....."If you already state "This game can and probably will go on as long as we exist as a species, and accomplish precisely nothing useful" then the same holds true, per definitionem, for trying to end it."

Maybe a good reason to end it is that the energy expended in such useless endeavors could be better spent elsewhere. I tend to think so. Will it ever end in the foreseeable future? No, and mores the pity.

#184 "I suggest you publish that "gargantuan" evidence against the existence of some sort of creator, because philosophy has been trying for a while now to formulate evidence for OR against which would not be dependent on a multitude of assumptions being true for quite a while now."

Since the time our species consisted of a few groups of hunter /gatherers, spiritual being(s) were evoked as necessary for the everyday function of our existence, but with every new discovery of how things really work, said being(s) become less and less necessary. You won't find god(s) hiding behind the rising and setting of the sun, the change of seasons, the origin of human disease, the workings of the observable universe...on and on we go. Notice the trend?

No assumptions, Oliver, just observable data, not one bit of which points towards the need for or existence of a supernatural creator. That is unless god is running away from us faster than we can discover physical evidence of him. Now why would he do that?

As was stated above in the thread, it is YOU who needs to show some observable evidence that would lead one to believe that a supernatural creator-god exists. Do that and I assure you I will believe. Unless you can give us at least one shred of credible, verifiable, physical evidence, religion remains what it's been heretofore, an exercise in mental masturbation.

#184 "Last I checked, Christians defined themselves through chiefly the new, not the old testament. While what you say is true for some of the subgroups you cite, I suggest when we're talking evidence here, you double-check the statistical significance of these people vis-a-vis the entirety of the christian population of the planet."

So what do the other subgroups do with the Old Testament, ignore it, hoping it will go away? A fundamentalist would probably state that those other subgroups aren't being true to the nature of Christianity and I'd tend to agree. Picking and choosing what one wants to believe based on its palatability is kind of dishonest.

Are you alluding to the idea that the Old Testament is simply a mish-mashed collection of Bronze Age folk tales? I would agree with that, but then I could also say the New Testament amounts to nothing but the writings of one of hundreds of Roman era mystery cults and that this one (Christianity) just happened to catch on.

#184 "Sorry to say, but you give pretty much the same picture as those you lambast -not a hint of difference except that you refuse to have your religion called "religion"."

Now that's and old, well worn canard. No, Oliver, it's not a "religion" any more than observing the balance in my checking account or how much I owe on my car loan is bowing before the god of BankofAmerica and his father, the US banking system. It's observable, measurable, tangible fact. Scientific theory is merely an explanation of said facts, BankofAmerica has some of my money, but I owe them more than they owe me.

To state scientific theory as we understand it now and that it shows no evidence for god doesn't undermine scientific credibility whatsoever. Religion is undermined each time religionists have to reinvent their god in order to keep him relevant in the face of scientific advancement. Did the scientific community doggedly hang on to the steady state theory of cosmology or the idea of a celestial ether for years and years after observable data showed those theories to be wrong? No, both theories were junked eventually. Science evolves, sometimes radically, driven by new discoveries. In science, no theory is safe from the effects of future discoveries. Religion on the other hand......

As the gaps in which god exists become smaller and smaller, the less relevant god becomes. Inversely, the sillier religionists become.

Posted by: J-Dog | July 16, 2007 3:42 PM

As Sister Mary Imaculata said, just before she ran off with Father Bill "F*&K 'em if they can't take a joke".

Posted by: Jared White | July 16, 2007 4:48 PM

H. Humbert: Jared, people have difficult and glorious times without without Jesus as well, we just do it without the "knowledge" (i.e. irrational conviction) that magical spirits rule our lives.

Well, I don't have enough pride nor appreciation of human nature to have either difficult or glorious times without Jesus. I want a personal being of high standing far above my realm of existence to rule my life with love and grace, and that conviction is neither irrational nor illusionary. True faith in God produces results...I've seen them, just as I've seen a blue sky or a funny-looking cat. I don't need to understand every mathematical and theoretical permutation of photons and heat energy to know that if I stand out in the sun, I get warm (and burned!).

My question is: if a personal supernatural being did exist who loved you, would you be interested?

Posted by: Jen Phillips | July 16, 2007 5:03 PM

@Jared #199:
'interested' in what? Are you writing his (I beg your pardon, 'His') personal ad?

IF (and oh, how the very building shakes with the enormity of that 'if') a 'supernatural being' was scientifically proven to a) exist and b) 'love me', or generally have knowledge of/interest in my existence, I think I would be severely creeped out, at least initially. Futher speculation as to my 'interest' in such a relationship would depend entirely on the nature of said being. If He/She bore any resemblance to any of the Abrahamic Gods I'd run fast in the other direction.

Posted by: Tulse | July 16, 2007 5:14 PM

if a personal supernatural being did exist who loved you, would you be interested?

Can it get me chicks? Or at least a Porsche?

(As I have declared on many an occasion, I would take as proof of God's existence if Natalie Portman would have sex with me. Hear that, God?)

Posted by: Brownian | July 16, 2007 5:21 PM

My question is: if a personal supernatural being did exist who loved you, would you be interested?

I have a better question Jared: if a personal supernatural being existed who behaved towards me the way the god of the bible apparently behaves towards his creations, why would I call it love?

Posted by: Brownian | July 16, 2007 5:49 PM

"Religion makes you nuts." The problem with this is that it's clearly false.

Not to those of us who can still see, masturbator.

Just kidding. Religion doesn't make you nuts; testosterone makes you nuts, and estrogen makes you ovaries.

Posted by: Caledonian | July 16, 2007 7:41 PM

The problem with this is that it's clearly false. It's on a par with "marijuana makes you an addict" or "masturbating makes you blind." We are surrounded by plenty of successful, productive, well-adjusted people raising happy families who are religious believers.

Yes, but they're successful, productive, well-adjusted people raising happy families who are insane.

Being well-adjusted to an insane society requires being insane.

Posted by: Bob | July 16, 2007 7:57 PM

And not so far off topic, why don't they just pray about it? God's infallible earthly liaison and all that:

Vatican to go carbon-neutral

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Vatican_to_go_carbon_neutral_07162007.html

Posted by: Starchy | July 16, 2007 8:30 PM

PZ, I agree with the overwhelming bulk of what you have to say here and in the more incendiary post in question, but, come on now, did you really have to use adjectives?

Posted by: Caledonian | July 16, 2007 8:55 PM

I am getting really tired of the meme that agnostics are just cowardly atheists.

They're not necessarily cowardly. They could simply be stupid.

Posted by: Brian | July 16, 2007 10:15 PM

You're no asshole. If these people want to see asshole, they should give me a blog.

Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | July 17, 2007 1:36 AM

Luna-the-cat, don't allow yourself to be put off by what may be, for you, rhetorical excesses here. This blog is a fine resource and you would be the poorer for discarding it simply because some people here express themselves in a more forthright way than some of your friends or acquaintances might like.

I call myself agnostic, too, because I believe it to be the most rational philosophical position but for all practical purposes, I am atheist too because, when push comes to shove, I assume that there is no God. That doesn't prevent some occasional sparring with atheists because it can be good, knockabout fun, same with the abortion debate.

And you must be prepared to be misunderstood or misrepresented because that is the nature of this sort of discussion. Don't expect to change anyone's mind because chances are you won't. This is an atheist as well as a science blog so, if you stay, get used to being in a tiny minority and having to cope with the pack mentality amongst the majority. All you can do, if you will excuse me mixing metaphors, is to fight your corner and let the chips fall where they may - which is pretty much what you have been doing as far as I can see.

Posted by: Bertok | July 17, 2007 2:47 AM

OMG. I can't believe I read this whole comment thread. I should get an f-ing medal for that (or at least for reading Olivers tired cannards, every one of which has been trotted out and slapped down about a hundred times during these go-arounds). And no, Oliver, I'm not responding to you or your posts because it's a complete waste of everyones time. What part of burden of proof did Bertrand Russel outline that you can't understand? Sheesh.

Posted by: Luna_the_cat | July 17, 2007 5:21 AM

Experimental Biradical: :-D Yeah.

As for using Seed and SB, and whether the religious-by-default "ordinary people" link-click around and read more -- given the general level of contempt which seems to be here for people who believe in religion, you might be surprised. You might be surprised at how many people are out there who are genuinely intelligent and curious, and yet still haven't had much exposure to science, AND get tetchy and offended if, when they start to read science, they get called "delusional idiots" and "caterwauling flibbertigibbets" in so many words.

However, you are probably right -- I can use bits of Seed and SB, there are still some very good resources here. Gee, I just have to hope people are curious enough to read what I point them towards, aren't curious enough to link-click and read around the front-page "most emailed" stuff, or human enough to get pissed off and defensive when they encounter the worst stereotypes of hostile and arrogant scientists who call them "caterwauling flibbertigibbets". Well, that should work well.

Yes, that is a bit sarcastic and something of an exaggeration -- just not that much of one. Seriously, reasoned, intelligent discussion of why strongly held positions ARE strongly held are rare and valuable. Namecalling shouty blogs, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen, and although they rarely lack an audience -- monkeys love spectacle and passion, after all -- generally all they function to do is solidify positions on BOTH sides of any given issue. Given that solidifying the anti-science/anti-scientist position is not useful, I hate having to tiptoe around it.

Posted by: Fred | July 17, 2007 9:51 AM

A lot of assholes getting you down? Try sendahole.com.

Posted by: David | July 17, 2007 12:55 PM

--There is no god, or to say it in the most optimistic and sensitive way possible for a rational person, there is absolutely no evidence for a god.--

These are not the same statement. Yet you seem to think that they are. This, to me shows a rather dismal understanding of the basic ideas of reason.

--I'm not saying you're a bad person or even stupid if you're a believer.--

Well, lets see what you ARE saying, shall we?

--Religion makes you nuts.--

So you aren't stupid, or a bad person, but you are nuts. So you can be an intelligent, good, crazy person. But wait, there's more!

--I'm saying that you are possibly wicked if you're promoting it,--

You aren't a bad person as a believer, unless you happen to believe that you are right, and tell others so. Then you are "possibly wicked". So as long as believers shut up and don't bother the high and might atheists they aren't "possible wicked".

--probably ignorant if you accept its contradictions with reality, --

Now, believers aren't stupid but if they actually believe what they believe, then they are actually ignorant. Got it. There are some things that are actual contradictions. With THOSE I would agree that one should not accept those beliefs. Unfortunately you equate all religious beliefs with such "contradictions with reality".

--almost certainly foolish if you think rituals will get you into heaven--

Again, you aren't stupid if you're a Christian... unles you think that you are going to heaven. Then you aren't stupid... no... you are just foolish.

--You can resign yourself to them if you aren't strong enough to part from them -- I'm not going to follow you to church and drag you out with a choke-chain -- or you can wake up. It's all up to you.--

So believers aren't stupid, or bad people. They are just weak.

So what do we have. Believer's aren't stupid or bad people (according to PZ), however they are weak, foolish, ignorant, possibly wicked and nuts. But they aren't stupid or bad. And they believe in stupid ideas, but they aren't stupid.

--My cause is simply the truth -- the truth stated plainly and openly.--

It is a shame then that you have to take these little sidetracks where you turn into nothing but a good shock-jock.

The thing I find the most amusing about atheists like you PZ, is how much they often resemble fundamentalist Christians. When you are talking about something that's specifically evolution related then its plain to see that you are an intelligent person. Its a shame then that you don't take that intelligence and apply it to something other than evolutionary biology. Its understandable, but it is a shame. And funny, in a black-humour sort of way.

When blogs here are talking about creationism or ID then they actually say stuff that's... well... intelligent.

Posted by: Bob | July 18, 2007 7:39 AM

The thing I find the most amusing about atheists like you PZ, is how much they often resemble fundamentalist Christians.

Posted by: David

Runner up, for violating Blake's law. David, your head is in your fundament.

Posted by: Caledonian | July 18, 2007 8:21 AM

However, everything that needs to be said, CAN be said without using the Coulter-type tactic of calling everyone else names and characterising them as evil or stupid.

Unless what needs to be said is that the people are evil or stupid, you sanctimonious twit.

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 12:17 PM

Arnosium Upinarum:

Late comments - but welcome --- if a little long ;-)

Agree wholeheartedly with both your recent posts. I'd add one thing, which I'm certain you intended, re jared (age 24).

Being young is not *wrong*, it simply means you have had less opportunity for personal experience. It does not mean that is necessarily the case: my son is 11, and has personal experience of living in five different countries, speaking three different languages (four if you count UK & US english as different!) -- that is more experience that the average for an 11 year old, and marks him out sometimes as a 'big mouth' simply because he does has that experience which is not generally present in his peers.

What I'm saying is that youth does not *automatically* indicate a lack of experience.... but it does indicate with a farily high probablility that the experience will be 'less' than of someone older! So it is a reasonable assumption to make.

If that's an assumption that someone (Jared?) wants to disabuse, it's easy - simply demonstrate your experience/ expertise/ knowledge/ evidence -- we like and trust those things.

However - anecdote and personal revelation do not constitute experience or evidence or expertise or knowledge. So please keep those to yourself.

thanks & have a *nice* life.

Remember - no-one is watching over you (except for the guy in the satellite monitoring station in Virginia -- he's watching)

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 12:47 PM

Oliver: You're yanking the chain asking for citations....

Why don't YOU provide some (and not from a book written by humans from things in their heads).... I'd as readily accept evidence from Harry Potter -- it's read by many people, and it's a direct revalation from JK Rowling of the REAL WORLD -- prove it ain't so!

If you want to get all snippy - then let's break down your posts... you argue from erudition (The epistemology of "there is no -v- there is no evidence for") -- despite the position of PZ & others on this blog being entirely clear though many evidentiary chains -- as AU said - conflating "there is no god" with "there is no evidence for god" is simply shorthand -- we understand the unwritten 'backstory'. You don't want to recognize that the backstory (evidence) is there. Do we need (as AU asked rhetorically) to provide the causal evidence for EVERY statement EVERY time? there is not enough time for that.

Also: You take umbrage at Au's 'labelling' of US/THEM. Again - you may argue like a cretin, but the previous evidence is clear, the backstory has been written many times, there are TWO CAMPS: US = evidentiary; THEM = revelationary. Which part of that was unclear, and which part was 'arbitrary label'?

Funny. Have noted next to no "creationist anti-Darwin activity" in the entire nation I live in

Do you have anything to say that is not simply sophomore philosophy?

No?

Didn't think so.

Posted by: Arnosium Upinarum | July 18, 2007 1:15 PM

Oliver 'O Oliver (that's a clown that folks in Chicago will remember, #234) says: "If you want to claim the high ground, you should act that way. But frankly, a lot of your claims in this post seem to me as easily falsifiable."

What fucking "high ground"? What the hell are you looking at?

Okay, bub, why don't you just SHOW me and everybody else? Let's see what you've got that you claim I haven't.

I'm with tony here.

Posted by: Arnosium Upinarum | July 18, 2007 3:17 PM

Oliver: "it is quite daring to suggest that anyone understanding empiricism and epistemology is a-religious."

Why are you interpreting what I said that way? How diabolically selective of you. I know lots of people who understand empiricism and epistomology that are both "a-religious" and religious. (Although I observe the latter to be a significantly smaller proprtion of the group).

A more accurate interpretation of what I said (though not completely so) would be that I suggested that religious people don't understand empiricism and epistemology. Generally speaking. Why? Because they don't NEED to understand any fanciness like that. They are perfectly comfortable with what their chosen authority tells them to believe.

But I have to wonder if that second alternative interpretation ever popped into your head, and IF it did whether you seriously entertained it or just rejected it because it didn't resonate with your plan to show how wrong I am...if so, how "DARING" of you attempt pull that kind of fast one thinking nobody would notice. Nasty. Tell me: do you really imagine everyone is as stupid as you are? Or are simply unimaginative?

Posted by: Tom A | July 18, 2007 5:00 PM

To begin with, I must admit that I do not follow your blog, nor have I read the entirety of the post that I am responding to. That being said I have read enough to get the point, and I have a few comments that I would like to make.

1. You seem to equate being "religious" (whatever THAT exactly means...I'll assume that it means attending a worship house for God) with being an ignorant dumb fuck. That's your prerogative. I would like to know if you are friends with anybody who attends a church, or if you would ever be WILLING to be friends with such a person?

2. What definition are you using for God? The term God has been used throughout history to apply to a number of different concepts. ie the God of Spinoza is NOT the God of Leibniz.

3. How exactly has science proved that there is not a God, or some form of ultimate intelligence? Could there be a willing, intelligent being that is more advanced than human beings? If so, then why could there not be an ultimate intelligence?

4. Has science explained how something can come from nothing? I'm not an expert in the least, but I do stay abreast of important scientific findings and problems. To my knowledge there is currently not an accurate account of how physical matter can materialize from nothingness, but then again I would question whether there can even ever be "nothingness" in the first place. And if there cannot then this lends itself to there being a self-existent being. If the universe could be self-existent, doesn't this lead logic to take you to the point of considering that the self-existent being exists OUTSIDE of the physical universe?

Good Day

Posted by: Steve_C | July 18, 2007 5:09 PM

Either the two goofballs above came from the same site to here...
or they are the same person. Both of them are vapid.

Posted by: sophia | July 18, 2007 5:16 PM

I sent you an email. I hope you got it. I'm interested in what you think of it.

Posted by: sophia | July 18, 2007 5:23 PM

I meant that last comment for PZ Myers.

Posted by: sophia | July 18, 2007 6:03 PM

Why do so many people on this blog have issues with God and people who have chosen to love and obey him? There is no christian extremism problem in this country. Just because you cant see something doesnt mean it isnt there. Often times people only get to see God through his works. Science is of man and faith comes from God. Obviously i dont deny scientific facts but "facts" is the operative word here. Its not peoples job to try to prove there is a God; we arent meant to do that and cant anyway.People recognize truth through personal experience in relation to the big picture. Christians arent trying to impose on others but i see many atheists trying to impose their beliefs on christians. Not very liberal.

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 6:26 PM

AU @ 236

Sorry - just noticed
As for your peculiar charge that I have supplied any "anecdotes or personal revelations" in what I wrote (which I should "keep to myself"), I am at a total loss.

That's my bad.... those comments were directed at Jared.... but I mistakenly left out the tag!

Sophia@251

Christians arent trying to impose on others

WTF???? What planet do you live on???

You want us to pray to your god, you want us to accept your words in our laws, on our currency, and in every facet of our lives.......

how is this not *impose*?

Posted by: sophia | July 18, 2007 6:36 PM

Furthermore, Ive noticed many of the proud atheists throwing words around like "slaves" and "herd mentality" saying that people of faith are brainwashed but its the opposite.True christians will always be persecuted for their beliefs because it isnt like anything else. Its not being part of a herd; its standing out. Its not servitude; its freedom from the world. A lot of people on this blog seem like they are atheists because they are the ones who dont like the truth because it means that they might have to change the way they live. And no one's gonna tell you how to live right? Especially not God, in fact lets just say there is no God so we dont have to live by rules based on love, selflessness, and grace. That way you only have to live for yourself and if theres no God then we're the gods right? If we're the gods then we dont have to answer to anyone about the way we live our lives (feeling no guilt) and we can say, through our own infallability, what is right and wrong. And then anyone who disagrees is just being weak; anyone who believes in others before self is an idiot, a sucker to be taken advantage of right? This is the real difference between the faith of God and the science of man: the goal of faith is to save people from themselves through humility; the goal of science is to save people through their own pride. I'm not saying science is bad. A lot of good comes from it and i am happy there are people involved in trying to make the world an easier place to live in and giving knowledge about our environment. However it is sad that our technology has surpassed our humanity for one another.

Posted by: Bob | July 18, 2007 6:43 PM

There is no christian extremism problem in this country.

Please, give sophia a break. Maybe "this country" is Indonesia.

Posted by: Bob | July 18, 2007 6:51 PM

Sophia @ 255

Does this form of rambling non-sequitor work on you? Really, not much there beyond the echoes of talking points.

Sorry if I'm persecuting you, nothing personal, I'm an evil atheist and can't help it. [eyeroll]

Posted by: sophia | July 18, 2007 6:56 PM

I dont want you to accept my beliefs i want you to respect them, tony. I respect your beliefs because thats how i would like to be treated. And it is not imposing to have IN GOD WE TRUST on our coins. Please explain to me why that offends you. If you are an atheist shouldnt this just make you laugh? Its not hurting you and last time i checked its not immoral to believe in God. It does hurt other people when they are told they cant talk about their own faith but atheists are allowed to say there is no God. This is hypocrisy dont you see? Oh and to the 2 people who commented on my christian extremism comment, I do see the irony and as a christian i can still laugh at it, Mates.Also extremism isnt saying i dont think gay marriage should be legal. Extremism is being charged with a hate crime for saying that. Thank the ACLU for that kind of bs. An example of christian extremism is executing people who arent like you i. e. the Inquisition but thats not waht is going on in this country. The people who do things like that are not true christians. Unfortunately they give us all a bad name

Posted by: abeja | July 18, 2007 7:07 PM

Also extremism isnt saying i dont think gay marriage should be legal.

Yes it is you dumbfuck. Supporting laws that discriminate against people for their sexual orientation is absurdly extreme, considering that the justification for such support comes from a fictional book about a fictional sky fairy.

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 7:14 PM

Sophia

If you've read ANY of my other posts, here or elsewhere, you'll realize that I comment with respect - where earned. respect is not a right -- you need to earn it. I will grant you provisional respect if you are yourself respectful... but not otherwise.

Re imposition and IN GOD WE TRUST.

Let me ask you a question in return. If we decided to eliminate the whole god schtick and instead chose the FSM & his purply noodly appendages as appropriately silly to represent us (since all seriously sane people are also seriously silly... silly is a serious business). Would you object to the *imposition* of IN FSM WE TRUST on our currency?

Why should *your* beliefs be considered so important that they get a place of honor on *our* currency?

It's not that I *can't* ignore it. It's that I should not *need* to ignore it.

regarding 'extremism': perhaps you need a dictionary - because extreme is not synonymous with killer. extreme is not a disagreement that doesn't fit *your* world view.

Lookit - a hate crime is any crime that attempts to foment disenfranchisement of any citizen(s) from exercise of their rights by reference to a 'difference' that is founded upon denigration of the individual, their person, their peers, their race, their creed, of their origin.

Now -- I (as an athiest) could be charged with a hate crime if I attempt to stop you exercising your rights (such as free assembly) by (perhaps) organizing rallies and parades and protests against your assembly as being a 'hotbed of fundamentalists' and 'immoral and unamerican'... or even just 'they're trying to mindwipe our kids'

The difference is -- I wouldn't. Nor would most atghiests. Not worth the bother. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. But if you DID try to brainwipe kids, we'd be on you in a moment.

Extreme is anything 'not normal or commonplace'. From that perspective -- you seem to be quite the 'extreme christian' with your viewpoint and all. But - that wasn't what you intended, was it?

The mainstrean christian is like most other religious practitioners.... following the motions, enjoying the 'comfort' of belief.. perhaps even enjoying the social cameraderie.

The extremists are those who believe in innerrancy, who believe that their sect is the 'one true faith', and that all others are heretic.

that covers quite a lot of the religious right.

ps. It would help us if you could get some name-badges. We find it hard to know which 'brand' of true christians' we're talking to...

Posted by: Kseniya | July 18, 2007 7:17 PM

[E]xtremism isnt saying i dont think gay marriage should be legal. Extremism is being charged with a hate crime for saying that. Thank the ACLU for that kind of bs.

No. I call Strawman. There's BS here, yes, but it's your statement.

Show me one case - ONE - where a person was charge with a hate crime for stating the opinion that gay marriage should not be legal.

Did everyone who voted at the polls in the many states that had marriage amendment questions on their ballots over the past couple of years get charged with a hate crime? I don't think so. Your example of secular extremism doesn't even exist. Don't expect to sway anyone to your point of view by employing pure fiction. It won't work here.

The ACLU is far from perfect, but it'll be the last bastion of extra-governmental protection for our civil liberties if it ever comes down to it. Don't forget that.

"In God We Trust" should not be on the currency. "One nation under God" should not be in the Pledge. You should be able to argue this point of view before you're qualified to argue your own.

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 7:21 PM

Tom A:

re (2) Yes rude (intentionally so). Uncalled for by you, perhaps, but it's a road we've all been down before...many, many, many times. If I offended you personally - sorry, but...

What is *rude* is posting such a statement on a blog that already had your answer multiple times. RTFC then comment!

Re (3). No fair -- you can't change the question mid stream. I'll accept another question, however. Answer - scientists are not *hostile* to god... are you *hostile* to the easter bunny, or to santa, or to tom thumb, or to alice in wonderland? We can't be *hotile* to something in which we don't believe. We *can* be irritatedly indifferent!

(4) not.even.wrong. you asked for theories that supported 'something from nothing'. that's what you got. You did not ask how that would support evidence for god. (see answer to (3) which you apparently are OK with)

Posted by: Kseniya | July 18, 2007 7:27 PM

Tony, I am hostile to the Easter Bunny, who didn't leave me a coconut egg when I was eight. Damn him! Damn him to Hell!

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 7:32 PM

Kseniya: I am personally hostile to the easter bunny, ever since I had to be photographer at a neighborhood easter party. You'd think that the big bun would have made it easy to get beautifully photogenic images of happy smiling children.... NOT. Trees & bushes in the way. fist fights. outright theft. crying. general mayhem.

(and that was just the parents!)

Never again. Struck off my list, forever!

Posted by: Kseniya | July 18, 2007 7:37 PM

Rey, well put.

Sophia. Perhaps you've heard of Thomas Jefferson. He wrote these words in a letter to Thomas Law, dated June 13, 1814. Read this passage, and then please tell me what you think about it. Thanks.

"If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God."

Posted by: Kseniya | July 18, 2007 7:44 PM

Our coins say what they say because of our founding fathers and ...

Ack! NO THEY DO NOT! Sophia... You're in over your head. I don't know how else to put it.

Being short on information does not make one stupid. However, being short on information and refusing to take steps to change that situation is, arguably, stupid. Willful ignorance is the root of all evil. Errr... ok, maybe not the root of all evil, but it does no good to anybody.

Really. Trust me. I'm not your enemy. You can't argue these points if you have most of the relevant facts wrong.

I recommend that you:

1. Learn where Jefferson, Adams, Monroe, and Washington stood on Christianity, freedom of religion, and the notion of a secular government and society.

2. Learn when "In God We Trust" was added to our currency - and why.

3. Learn when "one nation, under God" was added to the Pledge - and why.

4. Take a break, have dinner, relax. :-)

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 7:50 PM

Kseniya

I'll take your advice. And give Sophia some time to digest our indigestible atheistic ramblings. Maybe when I come back she'll have undergone 'morhic reconfiguration' and be full of sweetness and light, and also reasoned, informed argument... (and maybe not - but at least I'll have had some dinner!)

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 7:54 PM

The true ones are always the funniest! (just not at the time!)

Posted by: Bob | July 18, 2007 8:08 PM

Sophia, the golden rule is not uniquely christian (and not so often practiced by "christians").

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethic_of_reciprocity

This is how I am using 'respect':
Respect
Function: transitive verb
1 a : to consider worthy of high regard : ESTEEM

So I cannot "respect" a belief I have no regard for.

And this is how I am using 'tolerate':

tol·er·ate
Function: transitive verb
2 a : to allow to be or to be done without prohibition, hindrance, or contradiction b : to put up with

Nothing personal, just a usage issue.

Posted by: Bob | July 18, 2007 8:24 PM

sophia, we start from "God? What is this god? Show me sumpn real."

So show us some god evidence. If you cannot feel love before first believing in a god, I for one feel sorry for you. There is.no.compelling.reason *for* a god.

Posted by: Bob | July 18, 2007 8:31 PM

"But i just dont understand why you all are so vehemently against God who is love."

Sophia, I am not against god. Just like I am not against Sherlock Holmes or Moriarty or Cthulu.

Posted by: tony | July 18, 2007 8:37 PM

Sophia

You admit you are young. Then all we can ask is that you take the gifts that you believe god gave to you - your abilities to read, to think, and to reason, and simply *use* them.

Nothing more.

We all got here by different paths, but they all had one thing in common - reason.

I'm sorry you feel that we are attacking you, or that we are being vicious - spend some time here reading and you'll see why we are not so tolerant of wilful ignorance.

We are *very* tolerant of inquiring ignorance.

We are intolerant of xians falling back on 'the book' as a 'gotcha' answer to every argument.

Evidence - causal and verifiable evidence _ is extremely import to us, as it should be to you ... You depend on verifiable evidence every day... (You trust the sun to rise... Why? Why is it so regular? Will it change?)

Please do us the courtesy of following our hosts "house rules".

That means - evidence and honesty. It does not mean false modesty. It does not mean personal attacks. Attacking ideas is perfectly fine. Pointing out that someone may be deluded, etc., for holding demonstrably misguided ideas is also acceptable. Doing so while 'educating' is high karma..