…and this is a 
Congrats to Russell Blackford
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: November 8, 2007 2:26 PM, by PZ Myers
Cool — Russell Blackford was noticed by the Dawkins site for this very nice article, "The New Atheism rocks". Russell is a commenter here, too, you know — give him a gold star. The article begins,
The New Atheism deserves our cheers. This is not a time for hyper-scrupulous misgivings about how robustly religion should be criticised, even leaving aside the relative mildness that the New Atheists actually display. Books like The God Delusionand God is Not Great should give confidence to anyone who embraces secularism and deplores the political influence of religion. These books will convince at least some intellectual opponents, or play a role in doing so, expose the population to the idea (doubtless shocking for some) that there are alternatives to theism, and provide a rallying point for opposition to religious influences on public policy.
Exactly. This is not the time to moan and worry — let the other side do that. This is the time to exult and push a little harder, and I'm glad some people get it.
Comments
Congratulations indeed, it's good to see Russell getting noticed. The only big site I've ever been noticed by is, well, this one.
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | November 8, 2007 2:41 PM
It's OK. We can form a mutual admiration society and notice each other!
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 8, 2007 2:48 PM
Personally, I'm partial to the flailing my arms and screaming "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!" option for getting people to notice me. I think that might work...
Posted by: Tyler DiPietro | November 8, 2007 2:57 PM
I have a big important project which I'm pretty sure would get me noticed — it might even propel me to the second tier of the Uppity Atheism — but lots of obligations have to be discharged first. I promised I'd write stuff for SNEWS — a.k.a., using ghost particles to get advance warning of exploding stars — I have a manuscript to critique, and I did promise somebody a piece on quantum woo for a "Cranks Cluedo". . . .
Oh yes, there's that day job. Curses curses squared!
Anyway, three cheers for Russell Blackford.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | November 8, 2007 3:20 PM
Should we award him a Molly? Or is a Dawkie good enough for him?
Posted by: Rey Fox | November 8, 2007 3:21 PM
An article was written in my local paper asking if rationalism/new atheism has gone too far assaulting religions.
Personally, I do not care if you believe in God or not, just do not hound me when you think I am philosophically wrong.
Posted by: Corey Schlueter | November 8, 2007 4:21 PM
Yes, yes! Lets us be loud and vocal. It is nice to see the other side quaking in their proverbial boots. I get tired of being told by religious folk that I take the bible outta context when I quote it, but they dont when they quote it.
I will be getting an "A" shirt for xmas ( in blue to match my sparkling eyes-ERV take notice har har har ) but I digress. I will wear it proudly and carry the banner here in the Daytona Beach area!
Posted by: firemancarl | November 8, 2007 4:44 PM
And a stupid article it was. This dipshit seems to think he's gained some unique and profound psychological insight into Dawkins and Hitchens, as he repeatedly dazzles readers with such incisive assessments as "As for the New Atheists...they unwittingly show all the characteristics of extremism..." and then he goes on to proclaim that it is "a not insignificant leap of faith" to believe that "what one's senses reveal about the world is, in fact, real."
Are these twit writers really paid enough to publish such idiocy--along side their name and picture, no less--that looking so stupid to so many people serves as no deterrent?
Posted by: J Myers | November 8, 2007 5:08 PM
Hip hip hooray, hooray, hooray, hooray!
Whuzzat? Not here we don't, 4 cheers for the crown it is. (I hear they do 3 cheers it in the southernmost part though, from the days when the danish had taken the land. Ingratiates! :-P)
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | November 8, 2007 5:31 PM
Go Russell. Well done.
/begin sillyness
I met Russell the other day. That means I've had a brush with some upper tear of uppity atheism. I'm feeling all warm and important now. Vicarious importance.
/end sillyness.
Posted by: Brian English | November 8, 2007 6:22 PM
Oh, and congratulations, Russell. I apologize for my unpleasant tone in my (yet to appear) previous post here on your congratulatory thread; I was enraged by the stupid.
Posted by: J Myers | November 8, 2007 6:40 PM
Tyler, yes flailing my arms, etc., seems to have paid off for me in this instance.
Thanks for this thread, PZ. It was a nice surprise to find when I eventually got around to my morning browse of Pharyngula. Thanks to other people who are being kind.
Brian, I think that I have a long, looong way to go before ascending to the upper tier of uppity atheism.
I never even set out to be an uppity atheist. I was happy to be low-key about my lack of belief in deities. Live and let live, etc.
I'm just very disturbed at the aggressive way in which religion has been encroaching on public policy over the past decade or so. We are seeing a new Endarkenment.
I'm actually quite friendly and conciliatory to genuinely moderate religionists, and the loopy ones can believe what they like, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they don't try to impose it on the rest of us politically. Let them have their great queen spiders and talking snakes. But of course, it's not working out that way: on issue after issue we see illiberal, irrational, miserable policies being pushed by outspoken religionists ... and it's well and truly time to push back and challenge religion directly. There's just no alternative.
Posted by: Russell Blackford | November 8, 2007 6:59 PM
it is "a not insignificant leap of faith" to believe that "what one's senses reveal about the world is, in fact, real."
Oh my, a real, live solipsist! They are so rare, we should find it a nice climate controlled tank where we can observe it.
Now, who wants to design the maze?
Posted by: Graculus | November 8, 2007 8:29 PM
Oh my, a real, live solipsist!
Solipsism (Solus ipsius - I alone).
That's the belief that only you exist, not that the world we observe and sense exists. I think you've confused some for of materialism with solipsism.
Posted by: Brian English | November 8, 2007 10:12 PM
Before I get spanked for bad latin: Ipsius = that (of yours) so a beter tranlation might be that (of yours) alone, or yourself alone....
Posted by: Brian English | November 8, 2007 10:27 PM
"An article was written in my local paper . . ."
That came out of Canada. How embarassing.
Congratulations, Russell, your paper made good points. It's just a shame that they are necessary. The epidemic is spreading out of America, alas.
Posted by: salient | November 8, 2007 11:39 PM
Brian, the implication in the article (the newspaper link in comment #6, not Russell's) is that we have no reason to assume that our perceptions are accurate. My take on this was the same as Graculus's--that the author was asserting that the only thing one can "know" for certain is that s/he exists, which, as you pointed out, is philosophical solipsism. I suppose you could also consider the assertion from the perspective of Plantinga's EAAN, but 1) I can't stand Plantinga's contrived sophistic crap, and 2) that would detract from Graculus's splendid derogation, which would just be a shame.
Posted by: J Myers | November 9, 2007 12:10 AM
Kudos to Russell and a hearty heigh-ho atheism (new, old, forgotten or unborn) away!.
"This is not the time to moan and worry -- let the other side do that. This is the time to exult and push a little harder, and I'm glad some people get it."
This sentiment, regardless of its object, nearly always brings these lines to mind:
"Let the rough side drag
Let the smooth side flow.
As you carry that load
Everywhere you go."
Name that tune, anyone?
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | November 9, 2007 12:45 AM
No, Brian - Graculus is quite right.
Your correctly defined Solipsism but you seem to confuse the logical consequences of Solipsism and Materialism - actually I have no idea what Materialism has got to do with it.
When Graculus mocks the guy who considers accepting "that what one's senses reveal about the world is, in fact, real" as "a not insignificant leqp of faith" he is essentially describing someone who considers himself to be a real and existant entity, but doesn't trust the picture his senses give him about the world outside (remember, he considers it a "leap of faith"), essentially saying that we could all be brains-in-a-vat...
Comes pretty close to the textbook definition of Solipsism as the philosophical idea that "My mind is the only thing that I know exists", don't you think?
Posted by: Marc | November 9, 2007 12:46 AM
#17 Thanks for the heads up. Bleh, we can be so skeptical as to be paralysed I suppose. Put the solipsistic prat in the maze then!
Posted by: Brian English | November 9, 2007 12:49 AM
In the first place, other than Hitchen's book, I really didn't find any of the current 'New Atheists' at all 'strident and shrill'. That accusation seems to come from critics that can't muster a logical counter-argument.
The idea that we do not want a religious backlash, is perhaps misguided. Throughout history many of the most prominent freethinkers got their introduction to doubt from attacks on the works of other doubters. Nothing seems to convince someone of the truth of a proposition like an invalid argument against it. The recent flood of Christian anti-'God Delusion' books, could be the best thing for promoting the ideas Dawkins, et. al.
Posted by: John Huey | November 9, 2007 11:51 AM
A while back, I contacted Alvin Plantinga in response to an article he'd written, and asked him to provide examples of vitriol in The God Delusion. He mentioned the famous "The God of the Old Testament is the most unpleasant character in all of fiction" passage, adding that he'd never seen anything quite like that.
Had my esprit d'escalier worked a little faster, I would've answered with something like "I'm sorry to hear you've never read Twain's or Ingersoll's writings on religion."
Then again, maybe it's a good thing I didn't. Anyone who can't handle Dawkins and reads Ingersoll should have a fainting couch handy.
Posted by: arensb | November 9, 2007 4:34 PM
Great article by Russell.
J Myer, Graculus et al. what have you got against us Cartesian skeptics? One can accept methodological solipsism while also accepting the utility of science on pragmatist grounds. At any rate if you want to propound scientific realism either you have an argument against skepticism and your method is exactly the same as Descartes or you think scientific realism just is true which seems pretty close to "faith" in the sense being discussed here. I haven't studied a lot of philosophy but it does seem that my brand of internalist rationalist epistemology has become unpopular, it'd be great if someone could let me know why.
Maybe I just don't get it, but it seems to me that direct realism rather than its denial is closer to "idiocy". In any case Kyl sounds more like a post-modernist than a Cartesian skeptic in which case claims to ridicule would seem to me to be fair.
Posted by: Thomas Hendrey | November 10, 2007 7:45 AM
On the topic of solipsism just found this quote from Bertrand Russell on wikipedia:
"As against solipsism it is to be said, in the first place, that it is psychologically impossible to believe, and is rejected in fact even by those who mean to accept it. I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician and a solipsist, her surprise surprised me."
:P
Posted by: Thomas Hendrey | November 10, 2007 7:50 AM
I had forgotten that crap.
Plantinga says in effect that it is our senses that limits our knowledge of the world, which is absurd. It doesn't matter if you are near-sighted or have 20/20 vision for acquiring knowledge. The bandwidth and reliability of our senses have no mapping to the bandwidth and reliability of the instruments that do our observations for us. I positively detest such medieval sensory BS.
We live with science now, and I hope Plantinga and similar minded anti-scientists would wake up to that fact some day. And as much as I read Plantinga's "defeaters", I can't see that he even once describes scientific observation.
In a theoretical analysis there is a mathematical theorem, Yoneda's lemma, that AFAIU says that you can fully map an object by embedding it, i.e. by using all possible functions on it. By hitting an object with all measurements that works, we are guaranteed to establish everything that is relevant about it by observing how it kicks back.
If Plantinga has found an error in the math, I would like to see it.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | November 10, 2007 4:13 PM