Pharyngula

Posted by: Larry | October 22, 2009 3:45 PM

God Is for the Poor and Ignorant.

...and there are a whole mess of TV preachers who make a very nice living based upon that premise.

Posted by: Alyson Miers | October 22, 2009 3:51 PM

Let us go forth, my fellow Homo smartiepantsius, and take over the hominid niche.

It's a very good thing I wasn't drinking anything just now. Figurative coffee, meet vulnerable keyboard.

Posted by: Physicalist | October 22, 2009 3:54 PM

Whoa! PZ does Nietzschian philosophy. This is too much like work to count as procrastination for me.

Posted by: Jerry Coyne | October 22, 2009 3:58 PM

To paraphrase Steve Weinberg:

In a world without religion there are smart people who can think and dumb people who can't think, but to get a smart person who can't think -- that takes religion!

Posted by: vanharris | October 22, 2009 4:04 PM

The difference between us isn't at all biological, but simply that some of us recognize that "god" is a piss-poor answer to any meaningful question, and we've moved on to looking for that meaning and pattern in more productive ways."

I don't think that biology can be ruled out here. One of my daughters is just like me in her contempt for religion, & her rejection of the supernatural generally. And i mean exactly like me. That's either biological (in that we share a cluster of genes that facilitate such a personality type) or else it's some sort of astonishing (even allowing for the fact that i helped bring her up) coincidence.

Posted by: Skeptico | October 22, 2009 4:05 PM

I like the way she blames 9/11 on modern secular society. Apparently religion wasn't responsible, it just absorbed the belligerence of secularists. Or soemthing.

Takes some balls to redefine religious suicide attacks as the responsibility of the non religious.

Posted by: Brownian, OM | October 22, 2009 4:09 PM

These writers are wrong — not only about religion, but also about politics — because they are wrong about human nature. Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus.

Well, if we're going to get into a pissing contest about who's more wrong about human nature, the religionists are gonna win hands down. Because even more than Homo religiosus, we're Homo coitusallatimusevenifwegottapayforitus, and nearly every religious writer of note would like us to deny that fact.

A tip for those sympathetic to religion: don't invoke the Human Nature card: unless you're some sort of animist, your faith is anathema to human nature. Human nature is not the claim of the religious but the secular, and you're going to lose every time.

Posted by: Al | October 22, 2009 4:19 PM

I haven't read any Armstrong since "A History of God." My take away was that she acknowledged "God" was a human construct. Did I get it wrong, or has she changed her mind since then?

Posted by: HalfDemolishedKitchen | October 22, 2009 4:23 PM

I haven't read any Armstrong since "A History of God." My take away was that she acknowledged "God" was a human construct. Did I get it wrong, or has she changed her mind since then?

Posted by: Tulse | October 22, 2009 4:23 PM

My take away was that she acknowledged "God" was a human construct. Did I get it wrong, or has she changed her mind since then?

My dear, sad Al, by asking such a small-minded literalist question and attempting to force the symbolic, metaphorical complexities of human experience into such a narrow dichotomy in a search for such an impoverished notion as "truth", you clearly have failed to appreciate the subtly and sophistication of Armstrong's argument.

In other words, who the hell can tell?

Posted by: Sev | October 22, 2009 4:30 PM

It's interesting to see Karen Armstrong attacked from both sides. Some atheists dislike many of her ideas because they see her as an apologist for religion. The devout often denounce her for telling the history of religion and evolution of religious belief in a way that strips away religious truth claims.

I'm not a believer and I don't think I could ever be, but I've been fascinated about human religious behavior for a long time. I find Karen Armstrong useful for exposing the history of religious ideas and the evolution of theology in a way that believers rarely ever acknowledge. It's always seemed to me that her writing emphasizes that the most useful religious beliefs are the ones which internalize the believer's experience and journey. She does an amazing job of describing the precepts and developments of mysticism in the major religious traditions.

The impression I came away with after reading her books has always been that religion is a human construct that occasionally contributes something useful to human thought. Most often, though, believers fail to explore their beliefs and their religion's history in any detail.

Posted by: Tulse | October 22, 2009 4:32 PM

I'm confused. In order for something to be dead does it not have to at one point have lived? This would eliminate god.

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.

Posted by: truthspeaker | October 22, 2009 4:35 PM

Posted by: Al | October 22, 2009 4:19 PM

I haven't read any Armstrong since "A History of God." My take away was that she acknowledged "God" was a human construct. Did I get it wrong, or has she changed her mind since then?

I got the same impression from that book. It seems to me that Armstrong is an atheist who thinks other atheists should do as she does and be ambiguous about their beliefs because believing in something that isn't true provides, in her opinion, a benefit to many people.

Basically, she's a faitheist.

Posted by: Jim Harrison | October 22, 2009 4:38 PM

The God in Nietzsche's God is Dead remark refers to absolute values of all kinds: reason, science, democracy, or humanity just as much as Yahweh or Allah. Indeed, classical atheists tend to treat Truth as such a value; and Nietzsche wondered out loud why they were so hopelessly enamored of that one nude goddess.

Shooting down the superstitions of hicks is easy...

Posted by: Bro. Bartleby | October 22, 2009 4:50 PM

What say that we name the ALL, all as in the entire universe, God, but not the anthropomorphic God that Western tradition has imagined, but a much different God, a God seeking realization, self realization. Perhaps we can imagine that this universe that science has witnessed, as well as everything undiscovered yet, is really self evolving in order to become self aware, and so far, or so far as we humans know, we human minds are the closest, so far, that this God has come to that self realization? Stealing a bit from the Apostle Paul and his metaphor of the human body and the church as the body of Christ, perhaps all the assorted stuff of the universe are simply the parts, some lesser and some more (time/space/matter/energy), yet all needed in order for the ultimate formation of self realization. Of course that would mean that God is really a work in progress! And too that we are a part of God and ... and forefront in God's quest! We, the collective minds, witness to this whole (universe) that we find ourselves, within and with, are part and parcel of "God." Change is intrinsic of our ongoing reality if we are to believe that time/space/matter/energy are the apparent ingredients of this "reality." (Maybe we can think of the inapparent ingredients as the underlying matrix that reality is build upon, the quantum world). Of course change necessitates time/space/matter/energy, and to think of time as an arrow, from back there, to here, and later, to there, then time moves "forward" ("forward", a concept that our minds seem to accept as real). And too evolution, utilizing time/space/matter/energy, seems, in the brief 4 billion years of Earth life evolution, to change/move forward, from simple to more complex. Perhaps in this musing we could say "God" is manifesting "Godself" through (at this point in time) human minds?

Posted by: ScottKnick | October 22, 2009 4:54 PM

It drives me wild when writers like Armstrong claim that "it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism."

One only needs to look at the Gospels to see that the writers were at pains to demonstrate that their stories were decidedly NOT symbolic, but actually happened in history. As one small example, Luke does not start his description of Jesus' ministry with "Once upon a time," but rather "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene. . ." You don't write that way when you think you're writing allegory, you write that way when you're trying to make it clear you're writing history. While it is true that the idea of what constitutes a historical fact has evolved since ancient times, it is simply dishonest to claim that the adherents of early religions had no interest in whether the essentials of their founding narratives actually happened or not.

Posted by: Tulse | October 22, 2009 4:58 PM

Perhaps we can imagine that this universe that science has witnessed, as well as everything undiscovered yet, is really self evolving in order to become self aware, and so far, or so far as we humans know, we human minds are the closest, so far, that this God has come to that self realization?

And perhaps faeries live at the bottom of my garden.

Posted by: Smiggs | October 22, 2009 5:01 PM

I want what Bro. Bartleby is smoking.

Posted by: Sastra | October 22, 2009 5:03 PM

Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn't going anywhere.

I think Armstrong's sentences here contradict each other.

The quest for meaning is a human quest: the various approaches -- and answers -- fall under the category of philosophy. Remember that? The love of wisdom? Why oh why do all these airy-fairy faitheist murkies continually forget about philosophy? I don't just mean the formal forms, but the general idea of searching for a meaning in life, and an understanding of reality, and how one ought to live and behave? Those are NOT confined to "religion," and its beliefs in supernatural agents or teleological forces. You can throw out God, and still proceed to ask questions.

In fact, throwing out God allows you to ask better questions, and find better answers.

The conflict with science is symptomatic of a reductive idea of God in the modern West. Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.

This is such historical bullshit. God has always been taken as a literal fact by believers: the concept may have been layered with some vague handwaving by theologians, but if these same theologians have been calling for the deaths of the heretics who deny some crappy little doctrine of Truth or another, it's more than a bit disingenuous to insist that they -- and the ordinary folk -- never really took the existence of God any more seriously than we take Santa Claus today: as symbol, not fact.

The belief that God is a metaphor for human needs, or human experiences, or human hopes, is referred to by a technical term. It's called atheism.

It's the theists with the clunky literalism. At some point, they have to turn God into something that exists, and is something, and does something, and is some way. You want to get rid of a 'reductionist' God that fits this literal model, you get rid of God, period.

So why doesn't Armstrong think she's an atheist? Because she LOVES the idea of God. Loves it passionately. Wants other people to believe in it. But only if they do it the right way. It's a symbol that points towards transcendence.

That makes God even better than if it was real!!!! You see??

It's a bad argument, bottom line. And she's using this bad argument to bash, deride, and decry the very people she has most in common with, theologically, and support the belief that one must believe in God, or be impoverished.

My dad mailed me the article where she goes up against Dawkins, basically grants him every point, and then more or less says that he's wrong anyway because everyone loves the idea of God so much, it must be a lovable idea, and you can work with it to make it not as stupid as it can be. I think my dad thinks this is a knockout argument.

Posted by: Alan | October 22, 2009 5:10 PM

I would just like to add one detail to PZ's last section ("God is Incompatible with Democracy"): While it is true that the U.S. has long had a pattern of propping up repressive but relatively secular dictatorships across the Middle East, I would say that our actions there were generally not the result of hostility towards Islam (at least not until 9/11). Rather, it was for two reasons: (1) a need to install political leadership favorable to Western business interests, and (2) a desire to make such nations "pro-American" as opposed to "pro-Soviet." Throughout the 50's especially, which was when we installed the Shah in Iran and helped Saddam to take over Iraq, the religious right was possessed with a nearly hysterical fear of Communism and the "godless atheism" it represented. We did the same thing in South America and Central Africa during the same time frame, even with Third World nations that were at least nominally Christian but whose leaders were leftists willing to deal with China and the USSR. If the Soviet Union still existed, I suspect most right-wing Christians would be perfectly willing to team up with fundamentalist Muslims against atheists, that is, if fundamentalist Muslims didn't have fairly long memories regarding how those Christians have treated them in the past. IIRC, it was Ramesh Pommeru who suggested that fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims could find common ground in attacking the decadence of secular American society.

Posted by: cpsmith | October 22, 2009 5:14 PM

Damn it PZ! I just walked home in the miserable rain after a 3 hour long lecture on Nietzsche, I finally get home all soggy and brain fried and go look to my favourite blog to wind down and what do I get? More bleeding Nietzsche!

Posted by: llewelly | October 22, 2009 5:16 PM

Armstrong is akin to Plato. She knows religion is a lie, but she believes the people should be lied to because deceit improves human behavior.

Posted by: SEF | October 22, 2009 5:21 PM

@ PZ:

The difference between us isn't at all biological, but simply that some of us recognize that "god" is a piss-poor answer to any meaningful question

Ah, but that difference is biological. It's not the sort of difference which prevents any interbreeding from taking place but it certainly doesn't require explanation in the form of a supernatural separate component to one's mind.

From research, there seems to be something of a genetic basis to religiosity; and there's certainly a physical, ie biological, set of differences which correspond to having and using intelligence and to acquiring sufficient education (both formal and informal) to notice religions are bogus. Even the honesty component, of noticing and then acting on that awareness by rejecting religion, is biological (and differences between honest and dishonest people of some types even show up on brain scans!).

Posted by: SEF | October 22, 2009 5:31 PM

The zombies will sup on Karen Armstrong with a straw

I'm not so sure American zombies, accustomed as they are sure to be to rampant commercialism by now, would be satisfied with mere drinking straws. In the coming zombie apocalypse, there may be a market for gadgets which can be inserted into mushy and somewhat vacant brains to transform the material into an aerated spray, dispensed from its current container straight into the zombie's mouth - like spray cheese and spray cream.

Posted by: truthspeaker | October 22, 2009 5:32 PM

MadScientist, Armstrong isn't entirely wrong about the women thing. There's some evidence that there were female priests in the very early days of Christianity, before there was a Catholic church. And when you look at how women were treated in the Roman Empire, the Christian prohibition against divorce actually helped women of that time - they could no longer be discarded when a better family/business relationship presented itself.

The rights "given" to women in the Koran, while not putting them on an equal footing with men, were actually an improvement over pre-Islamic society.

Posted by: truthspeaker | October 22, 2009 5:39 PM

Alan, good points, and let's not forget that the US armed and trained Islamic fundamentalists to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As you sow, so shall you reap.

Posted by: CJO | October 22, 2009 5:52 PM

As one small example, Luke does not start his description of Jesus' ministry with "Once upon a time," but rather "In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene. . ." You don't write that way when you think you're writing allegory, you write that way when you're trying to make it clear you're writing history. While it is true that the idea of what constitutes a historical fact has evolved since ancient times, it is simply dishonest to claim that the adherents of early religions had no interest in whether the essentials of their founding narratives actually happened or not.

I'm not so sure. There are plenty of examples of both ancient and modern fictions that establish setting in this pseudo-historiographical way, and there are plenty of tropes in Luke's writings (I mean the anonymous author of Luke/Acts), especially in Acts, that are lifted from an accepted fictional form now called the Hellenistic novel. The original audience could have seen these as like sly winks by the author, but we'll never know for sure.

As for "adherents of early religions" and this kind of question, I think it's important to draw the distinction between the literate, and literary, elites, who were actually responsible for the composition of the texts, and the generally uneducated, illiterate rank and file. The authors of texts like Job and Daniel were quite clearly telling stories. Your insistence that everybody must have been fooled suggests you think there's some reason why literate, educated people in the ancient world had more trouble than we moderns with understanding what a story was and what its purposes were.

Posted by: shaunotd | October 22, 2009 6:07 PM

@SEF #45

Ah, but that difference is biological...etc.

Could you provide some references for that lot, please?

Posted by: Matt Penfold | October 22, 2009 6:09 PM

Can we please stop making derogatory comments about Karen Armstrong's intelligence? She's clearly a highly intelligent and well-educated person. She's very knowledgeable in her field. The fact that most of us here disagree with some of her views doesn't negate any of her accomplishments.

It does not take much to be an expert in making stuff up.

Karen Armstrong has a gift for being able to convey important and complex ideas from the history and evolution of religion to casual readers. As I said before, I'm not a member of a religion or a believer in a supernatural being, but that doesn't mean that I don't find her writings interesting, particularly her explanations of how different religious ideas originated and how they have changed with time.

Nothing I have ever read by here leads me to think she can convey important and complex ideas to casual readers. Like most theologians she is impenetrable on some issues, and simply trite on others.

Even as a historian of religion she is not well regarded with others in the field accusing her of cursory research and simple inaccuracy.

Posted by: SEF | October 22, 2009 6:11 PM

I've started reading the original article (following PZ's link) and ... this Karen Armstrong person seems to be aiming for some sort of record in being as wrong as she can be without actually being a creationist herself.

In the very first real sentence she gets Nietzsche wrong (not that Nietzsche was right either!). She then ignores world history to focus on just a few things which modern UnSAnians care about having happened and continues onwards in that vein, showing scant regard for the truth (since it contradicts the position she wants to hold) and perhaps much more for a very parochial adopted US audience, with:

But it is only since Sept. 11, 2001, that God has proven to be alive and well beyond all question -- at least as far as the global public debate is concerned.

Rubbish. Or perhaps I have to say "hogwash" for her UnSAnian audience to understand.

Posted by: woozy | October 22, 2009 6:15 PM

Armstrong says [God is Dead] isn't true, and points to fundamentalist upheavals as evidence that "God has proven to be alive and well". I think it means she doesn't understand Nietzsche.

Another woozy confession. I never felt that I ever understood Nietzsche or the meaning of "God is Dead". I always wanted to because it's sooooo much fun to say.

Nietzsche, of course, wasn't arguing for a literal death of a deity, nor was he claiming that religion had disappeared from the world. He was making a narrower argument, that in his culture (19th century Europe), the concept of god had lost its material and moral authority.

A woozy confession again. When I read this and note that so many of the fundies and, what I like to call, "new theocrats" do give god total material and moral authority over them and others, I thought I saw what she meant by "god is alive as ever". On reading this, I thought it ought to be modified as "God should be dead". (Huzzah! That's also fun to say! As is "God must die". Wheee!)

God is inadequate. To defend religion, people have to borrow the authority of science, and invent misbeggoten terms like Home religiosus and make grand claims about nature and natural law. This is exactly what Nietzsche meant when he said "God is dead"!

And then, aha!, I finally saw PZ's point, and maybe for the first time I *did* understand that Nietzche quote. Religion alone can no longer satisfy.

Except then I lost it again. Folks do still use their puppet god to be the moral and material authority in their lives and forces are at work to return theocracy which would have seemed absurdly superstitious to a 19th century European. So I don't know. Maybe he isn't dead. But he damned well should be.

Anywhooo, doesn't really matter. Just wanted to thank PZ for clearing up a quote that had always puzzled me. Then I lost it again. I always was to literal for poetry and modern philosophy... *sigh*

Posted by: Andreas Johansson | October 22, 2009 6:17 PM

Al wrote:

I haven't read any Armstrong since "A History of God." My take away was that she acknowledged "God" was a human construct. Did I get it wrong, or has she changed her mind since then?

FWIW, the impression it left me with was that she's a theist, albeit of an unsually annoyingly nebulous sort.

Clarity of expression does not seem to be high on her list of objectives.

Posted by: HarmlessEccentric | October 22, 2009 6:20 PM

I disagree entirely with PZ here.

Zombies are not intelligent enough to use a straw.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | October 22, 2009 6:21 PM

Woozy,

Can't help much on the poetry front, but for an intro into philosophy I can recommend Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

He goes from the Greek philosophers up to the beginning of the C20th. As an added bonus, were Russell alive today he would no doubt be labelled a new atheist. It was he after all who came up with the teapot argument.

Posted by: Andreas Johansson | October 22, 2009 6:28 PM

Can't resist...

Aren't we collectively Homo smartiepantsii?

Smartiepants's Man?

(If you meant to make it plural, it'd have to be homines smartiepantsii, but, for reasons of vaguely platonic thinking, species names are singular.)

Posted by: Matt Penfold | October 22, 2009 6:32 PM

Sev,

Her biography of Mohammed has been criticised for being revisionist by Efraim Karsh, a scholar of Mediterrean history at Kings College, London.

And another critic, Hugh Fitzgerald has said:

For Karen Armstrong history does not exist. It is putty in the hands of the person who writes about history. You use it to make a point, to do good as you see it. And whatever you need to twist or omit is justified by the purity of your intentions – and Karen Armstrong always has the purest of intentions.

Karen Armstrong is not innocent, and manages to do a great deal of harm, careless or premeditated harm, to history. Too many people read that she has written a few books, and assume, on the basis of nothing, that “she must know what she is talking about" – and some of the nonsense sticks. And perhaps an enraged professor or two bothers to dismiss her, but mostly – this is how the vast public, in debased democracies, learns its history today.

As for her theological work, it will all be made up. It makes no more sense to write a book on the nature of god as it does to write one on the nature of faeries. It does not matter how internally consistent your arguments are if they are built on make believe.

Posted by: Sev | October 22, 2009 6:41 PM

Matt Penfold,

Thanks for replying to my post. I'm familiar with the two sources you've cited, since what you've got there is pretty much directly from the 3 paragraph "criticism" section of the Wikipedia article on Karen Armstrong.

I could do the same thing with Ephraim Karsh, who himself is torn apart by accredited historians for distorting history and promoting a political agenda in his own books.

I was hoping that you had read or come across other sources, or could provide specifics of what she got wrong and which evidence disproves some of her statements.

Posted by: Paul | October 22, 2009 6:49 PM

Sev,

How about this from Armstrong?

In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart.

All her twaddle is like that. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers considered "God" as a symbol of an "indescribable transcendence"? Yet somehow this "indescribable transcendence" was describable enough to give out 10 commandments, order Canaanite genocide, and promise virgins in heaven for the faithful. She regularly participates in wholesale revisionism by pretending that the fluffy unknowable space people put God in today is where people always assigned them. Just on the face of it, it's wrong. God was only pushed into such "unknowable" terms when science filled in the gaps people used to shove it into. Yet she would pretend that the Hundred Years' War was fought over an "indescribable transcendence". I don't understand how people take her seriously.

Posted by: Andreas Johansson | October 22, 2009 6:53 PM

Wikipedia says she used to be a Catholic nun. So she'd certainly have plenty of experience with being particularly slippery in her religious dishonesty.

Catholicism has many faults, but I don't think extreme nebulosity is among them.

As I understand it from A History of God, Armstrong started out as a Catholic, became a nontheist, and eventually arrived at her present nebulous theism.

Posted by: SEF | October 22, 2009 6:56 PM

@ Paul #75:

I don't understand how people take her seriously.

I do. They're typical humans. The vast majority of them are rather stupid, very ignorant and quite intellectually dishonest. And some of the remaining few who do know she's not telling the truth are evil people who are very pleased she's telling the untruths they want told.

Too many people are naive about what humans are really like. Perhaps you've fallen for the "homo sapiens" label.

Posted by: Jerry Garcia | October 22, 2009 6:57 PM

You gotta love the Homo smartiepantsius!!

Posted by: CJO | October 22, 2009 7:02 PM

Yet somehow this "indescribable transcendence" was describable enough to give out 10 commandments, order Canaanite genocide

Yahweh in those stories is an ancestral polytheist deity being used as a literary character in a story to talk about a later, transcendent, monotheist conception of god in the only intelligible idiom the authors had to talk about such things. As you note, "indescribable transcendences" make for pretty boring characters. But do you really think the authors of the biblical texts as we have them, in their final redacted form, worshipped a literary character of their own devising?

I think she's right, in a way, and as far as it goes. The problem is, it doesn't go very far. She's mixing up a conception found among a literary elite with what "god" and the stories about him were taken to mean by hoi polloi. The fact is, she belongs to a literary elite herself. She's not dealing with religion at ground level, she's trying to defend the ivory tower version as having ancient roots. It does, but only among a very small and privileged subset of the faithful, in any time or place.

Posted by: Sev | October 22, 2009 7:08 PM

Paul,

A close reading of Armstrong's books will reveal that she has a definite preference for mystical strains of the religions she's writing about. That's not in dispute. Among my own criticisms of her are that she sometimes forgets that the mystical practices and ideas she finds most appealing have almost always been practiced by a minority of believers.

There is a long list of thinkers and philosophers throughout history who have taken the view summarized in bit you quoted. I don't have my copy of "A History of God" with me, but it does a good job of running through the major thinkers in the course of each tradition's history. A shocking number of them do advocate this view of god, although it was never particularly popular with the masses. The path to god for many of these people went into themselves and their minds, not out into the reaches of imaginary heavens.

Posted by: Pamela Ronald | October 22, 2009 7:14 PM

Thanks for introducing my blog, PZ. Several of your readers have already stopped by.

By the way, at a recent talk my husband and I gave in SF where we made the point that it makes sense to incorporate the best organic practices with the best seed (which may be GE seed), we got quite a strong reaction. My husband thought our talk would have been much less controversial if we were simply arguing that God is dead.

Posted by: Paul | October 22, 2009 7:18 PM

A close reading of Armstrong's books will reveal that she has a definite preference for mystical strains of the religions she's writing about. That's not in dispute

The problem is, she presents it as if the mystical strains are the only strains (or only true strains, but it comes out to the same thing). That is where it becomes dishonest, and it is a repeated pattern in every piece of published tripe she writes.

Posted by: CJO | October 22, 2009 7:25 PM

Paul,
I do think there's a thread that runs between certain elites pre 200 CE and modern proponents of the philosopher's god. But I agree that it's intellectually dishonest to pretend it was ever more that a thin, fragile thread, or that very many believers through history have entertained such a rarified theology.

Posted by: Sev | October 22, 2009 7:37 PM

Paul,

Like I said before, she devotes a lot of time to the discussion of mysticism and similar religious practices. Sometimes it's too much, but it's hardly dishonest. She's pretty clear in pointing out that most kinds of mysticism and inward-looking religious practices are usually the domain of the educated or the elite. In "A History of God", she gives a pretty good description of popular objections to mystic practices: they're often misunderstood as idolatry, most traditions must be learned from a teacher over a fairly long period of time, and the practitioner must learn to interpret symbols and imagery.

It's pretty clear that this is where she wants the majority of religious practice to go. Why is that? Well, mystics have a pretty good track record of actually cultivating and living the values that their faiths (and most common practitioners) give lip service. They're typically not involved in persecuting people, committing violent acts, or spreading hate. It's very much a "de-fanged" version of religion.

It's a tradition that has been thoroughly stamped out in Western denominations of Christianity and replaced by the view of belief as an intellectual acceptance of doctrine. This is very similar to the state of belief for many modern Muslims. In this sense, a huge component of religious life has been lost, misconstrued, or vilified.

Posted by: Kel, OM | October 22, 2009 7:49 PM

So the game of atheism whack-a-mole continues. Can somebody put a stop to it? My arm is getting sore.

This whole plot to save the word God has to stop. The condmenation of religious beliefs by most atheists focuses around the notion of a specific interventionist deity. So as much as we here the cry of "Dawkins isn't talking about the God I believe in, the characterisation of God that Dawkins gives would be much more recognisable to the average theist if it weren't an atheist saying it.

I can understand why the likes of Sam Harris get frustrated with religious liberals, they preach this nebulous entity which is used to defend the more out there versions of the word. So everytime there's criticism levelled, one can retreat to this transcendent entity that really shouldn't be tied down on any specific attributes, so as soon as the atheist has left the room they can go back to claiming that Jesus really is God-incarnate and performed all those amazing miracles. That there is a heaven and an afterlife, and God's love can be seen in the hearts of the faithful.

This morphing transcendence has changed so much that the incarnation that God now takes looks nothing like what it once was, yet we're still being forced to defend our non-belief in God to this new form. This new morph is almost identical to the position that many atheists hold, yet we're the enemy and the completely alien incarnation of god believed by the masses is the term being protected.

I really wish this game of whack-a-mole would stop, all it is doing is making it impossible to be a vocal atheist as no matter what version of God you're talking against, you're guaranteed never to get it right. We have to encompass every conceivable notion of god and make sure we describe it exactly as the particular theist believes, otherwise they can say "you're not describing my god" and dismiss any criticism of the concept at all.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 22, 2009 8:03 PM

He was making a narrower argument, that in his culture (19th century Europe), the concept of god had lost its material and moral authority.

No, he did go beyond that. He immediately went on to make the argument that that concept would never regain its authority:
"Gott ist tot. Gott bleibt tot. Riechen wir noch nichts von der göttlichen Verwesung? – auch Götter verwesen!"
"God is dead. God stays dead. Do we still not smell anything of the divine decomposition? – gods rot, too!"

(Note the important difference to Cthulhu here. Iä!)

Wait, what? Who has made that argument?

1) Rushdooney the Dominionist.
2) Piltdown Man the Feudalist.

Not any atheist I know of...

Wait, Mark Twain had a nice story about how Heaven can't be a democracy.

I like the way she blames 9/11 on modern secular society. Apparently religion wasn't responsible, it just absorbed the belligerence of secularists. Or soemthing.

Takes some balls to redefine religious suicide attacks as the responsibility of the non religious.

Well, that one is mostly to blame on nationalism. Most of the hijackers were not unusually religious at all; some liked to drink alcohol...

Notice how she keeps using "God" where she really means "religion" or "belief in God".

That's because Nietzsche did it, duh.

Indeed, classical atheists tend to treat Truth as such a value;

Good thing I'm a scientist, then, not a "classical atheist". :-|

Perhaps we can imagine that this universe that science has witnessed, as well as everything undiscovered yet, is really self evolving in order to become self aware, and so far, or so far as we humans know, we human minds are the closest, so far, that this God has come to that self realization?

Sire, je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse.

Also, the hyphen key on your keyboard seems not to be working. Maybe there's dust trapped under it.

(And you're utterly abusing the word "evolve".)

Amusingly, they even get their prayer stance wrong--very early frescos painted by illegal gatherings of Christians depict prayer with one's arms held outstretched and upwards. The modern "pressed hands" stance was specifically avoided by the earliest Christian cultists as it was "pagan".

That gesture comes from a medieval vassal-and-liege thing. Officially even.

for reasons of vaguely platonic thinking, species names are singular

Easy: it's the name of the (singular) species, not the name of any of its members. Homo sapiens is the name of humankind, not that of any human.

====================

Wow. I'm starting to wonder if truth machine is Sastra's sockpuppet for when she has enough. I mean, look at comment 37 (or 52 for short). You can almost hear the clothes ripping apart on the Incredible Hulk.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 22, 2009 8:15 PM

And "One must imagine Sisyphus happy"? What does that mean?

He's happy because he's got something to do, as opposed to sitting around and whining about how pointless it all is.

...You can probably tell I'm not an existentialist. :-)

Posted by: MartinDH | October 22, 2009 8:26 PM

Bro Bartleby @ 29:

Good grief...a panentheist. I never thought I'd see the day. You might, perhaps, be a little too parochial in attempting to nudge humanity into a place of importance into the "universes" theological development.

Of course, like all other god claims, you have no evidence. But it is one of the least contradictory.

--
Martin

Posted by: Jack | October 22, 2009 8:53 PM

Thank you for this summation of her new book - I belong to a used book swapping service, and you have both saved me the time of adding her new book to my comparative mythology requests, and giving me the motivation to post the 4 books I have in my 'to read' pile back into that system in order to trade for worthwhile titles. Not enough hours in life to spend them reading junk.

Posted by: what it is | October 22, 2009 9:04 PM

"Homo smartiepantsius."

Hah! heh, heh...

Thank you, feel much better now.

Smugfully yours...

Posted by: truthspeaker | October 22, 2009 9:10 PM

Posted by: CJO Author Profile Page | October 22, 2009 5:52 PM

As for "adherents of early religions" and this kind of question, I think it's important to draw the distinction between the literate, and literary, elites, who were actually responsible for the composition of the texts, and the generally uneducated, illiterate rank and file.

Yes, and the generally uneducated, illiterate rank and file were a much larger part of the communities of faith than the literate and literary elites, and their beliefs were just as much the beliefs of a particular religion as the literate and literary elites.

If you talk amongst your peers as if religion is just a metaphor, but talk to less educated people as if it's actually true, then you don't get to claim that your private view is the "real" religion.

Posted by: RamblinDude | October 22, 2009 9:26 PM

Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn't going anywhere.

What a bizarrely defeatist attitude. Let’s not even try to evolve our consciousness and eliminate outdated ways of thinking about the world, I mean, what’s the point, right?

And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults.

Where has she been? Religion’s worst faults have already been amplified—many times over throughout history—and its belligerence has become “hideously clear”—especially when it is in power.

“Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, people believe the sun revolves about the earth, and demons cause sickness, and lightning bolts are thrown by an angry god, and it's time we found a way to live with him these beliefs in a balanced, compassionate manner.

I don’t like it, Ms. Armstrong. I want to help set people free from this nonsense, and I repeat—you have a bizarrely defeatist, accommodationist attitude.

(Oh, what’s that? You say God isn’t really a personality who wrote a book, and had a son, and loves to play hide and seek in burning bushes? It’s actually just a metaphor for the mysterious unknown, and we mean old atheists are trying to squelch humanity’s mental wanderlust, the human predilection to imagine and conceive of endless possibilities in the search for meaning? Oh, puuulease.)

Posted by: truthspeaker | October 22, 2009 9:32 PM

Posted by: Monado Author Profile Page | October 22, 2009 9:24 PM

The egalitarian branch of the Christian church (a.k.a. Albigensian heresey) was slaughtered in a twenty-year campaign by the papal forces. It is no more. The hierarchical branch mustered the forces and mounted a campaign; the "live and let live: be nice to one another, you might be a woman or a peasant next time around" group wasn't allowed to live. The bishop leading the last campaign was the originator of that famous command now usually rendered as, "Kill them all--let God sort them out."

I'm sure that bishop and the people who obeyed his orders to kill the heretics thought of religion as symbol rather than fact, as a metaphor for transcendence. Right?

Posted by: Diane G. | October 22, 2009 9:59 PM

#79Posted by: SEF | October 22, 2009 6:56 PM

@ Paul #75:

"I don't understand how people take her seriously."
I do. They're typical humans. The vast majority of them are rather stupid, very ignorant and quite intellectually dishonest. And some of the remaining few who do know she's not telling the truth are evil people who are very pleased she's telling the untruths they want told.

Too many people are naive about what humans are really like. Perhaps you've fallen for the "homo sapiens" label.

Love the "label" remark. :-)

Proposition (not uniquely mine): a propensity to not question authority (frequently leading to embrace of religion) has proved to be an adaptive human trait & is thereby maintained in the population at some level. Or, conversely, the tendency to think critically is not adaptive above some low frequency, population-wise. (We need more worker-bees than engineers.)

IOW, the stupid will always be with us.

Posted by: MadScientist | October 22, 2009 10:11 PM

@Valdyr #48: Even at the beginning of christianity, I don't see any merit whatsoever to Armstrong's claims. Judaism is a matrilineal religion and the Greek and Roman traditions had their priestesses. I'm not familiar with Egyptian or Persian religions of the era (or a horde of others from that region in that time). So exactly how was christianity meant to be better for women than the majority religions of the regions first infested by christianity?

Posted by: Kel, OM | October 22, 2009 10:16 PM

That's exactly what it is. It's all about the signifier. Remember a while back when we had some fool trying to redefine it as "potential" or some such crap?

"God" is a floating signifier, empty and waiting to be filled. That's all it is. And desire is the only thing that keeps it alive--the desire for there to be something "more."

Yeah, I've heard all that nonsense before.

Sadly this isn't atypical, most "intellectual" arguments for God pull this same fast one. There must have been a first cause, therefore Christ died on the cross for your sins. The bacterial flagellum is irreducibly complex, therefore Christ died on the cross for your sins. Free will exists and can't come from a deterministic universe, therefore Christ died on the cross for your sins. Murder is absolutely wrong, therefore Christ died on the cross for your sins.

Of course the arguments aren't framed like that, but that's what in effect is being argued. Something diffuse therefore God. God in the transcendent Karen Armstrong sense then with the skill of a professional magician there's equivocation to mean that God is Yahweh and that if you don't believe you'll burn in hell for eternity.

*sigh* it's apparent that atheism is a losing ticket when people will bend over backwards to appease those who claim they know God's will yet will criticise anyone who calls that nonsense...

Posted by: Monado | October 22, 2009 10:24 PM

Richard Dawkins will be on TVO Friday night, talking about his book at 10 p.m. Eastern time, on "Allan Gregg in Conversation."

It repeats on October 24 at 06:00 p.m. on October 25 at 11:30 p.m.

Posted by: Lion IRC | October 22, 2009 10:59 PM

Mr Meyers,
For thousands of years humans have been doing what goes on here. Person "A" telling person "B" that they heard person "C" say something about the religious views of person "D" and what person "A" would have said if they had been there. Pahleeeeeeeese!
And still...........Person "A" accusing the views of person "B" as being the cause of >insert pet hate here Dawkins goes from pin up poster boy to "yawn factor" quicker than the time it takes theists to recognize that TGD actually does the opposite of what satan wants people to do - STOP TALKING ABOUT GOD.
But we cant. Even people who say there is no God want to "talk about" why people say there IS.
Why we're here, how we got here, God, the soul, the afterlife, the universe(s), the unseen forces, the supernatural stuck in our DNA/minds/hearts/souls? (You pick)
The age of enlightenment was a fizzer. All we got was chaos theories and goldilocks enigmas and uncertainty principles - oh yeah....I forgot to mention....vampire movies are more popular than ever. Shouldnt they have gone out of fashion by now?
Lion (IRC)

Posted by: RickR | October 22, 2009 11:05 PM

"The age of enlightenment was a fizzer. All we got was chaos theories and goldilocks enigmas and uncertainty principles"

And medicine and modern agriculture and space travel and the computer you're using to type your inanities on.....

And it's "Myers", you sap.

Posted by: Lion IRC | October 22, 2009 11:09 PM

Hi "truth" speaker,
I even saw a vampire on Sesame Street!
Lion (IRC)

Posted by: woozy | October 22, 2009 11:17 PM

#95

I really wish this game of whack-a-mole would stop, all it is doing is making it impossible to be a vocal atheist as no matter what version of God you're talking against, you're guaranteed never to get it right. We have to encompass every conceivable notion of god and make sure we describe it exactly as the particular theist believes, otherwise they can say "you're not describing my god" and dismiss any criticism of the concept at all.

Goose for the gander:
Wellll, an outsider might think it's a little perverse that an athiest feels compelled to play whack a mole and insist a theist stick to his belief solely so an atheist can continue to disagree with it.

(I am joking, I hope you realize. But it is kinda weird ...)

Posted by: Douglas Watts | October 22, 2009 11:25 PM

The belief that God is a metaphor for human needs, or human experiences, or human hopes, is referred to by a technical term. It's called atheism.

Urr .. no. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in religion. By its definition, one can be an atheist and also deny the very existence any human needs or hopes or the value of any human experience. A-theism means the "lack of" a thing, as in "atonal" or "aseptic." It does not imply any content, rather the lack of a specific type of content.

Posted by: llewelly | October 22, 2009 11:37 PM

Pay close attention, folks:

The age of enlightenment was a fizzer. All we got was chaos theories and goldilocks enigmas and uncertainty principles - oh yeah....I forgot to mention....vampire movies are more popular than ever. Shouldnt they have gone out of fashion by now?

This individual displays symptoms of having had their brains sucked out through a straw, by a zombie.

Posted by: Kamaka | October 22, 2009 11:42 PM

vampire movies are more popular than ever

"Let the Right One In" is pretty good. I liked it.

Posted by: Kamaka | October 22, 2009 11:45 PM

I wonder how she'd feel knowing that she was a major, early signpost on my trip to skepticism and atheism?

She's an atheist in denial.

Posted by: RickR | October 22, 2009 11:52 PM

"Urr .. no. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in religion."

Bzzzzt, no. It's lack of belief in god(s).

Clarity is important.

Posted by: aratina cage of the OM | October 23, 2009 12:07 AM

they are wrong about human nature. Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus.
-Karen Armstrong

Somebody has been watching too many Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner episodes (take a look at all the pseudo-latin names in the list of episodes).

I get to claim that I, and my fellow atheists, are a new species. Let us go forth, my fellow Homo smartiepantsius, and take over the hominid niche.
-PZ

Excellent rejoinder, PZ. "Beep beep!" ZOOM!

Yep -- we need a catchy label for this rhetorical trick. Bi-theism?
-Tulse

As long as Armstrong has her Acme toolkit with her, she'll be able to turn any situation around in her favor.

Posted by: Kel, OM | October 23, 2009 12:19 AM

Lets all jump on those wonderful inventions - space ships and fly away to the land where science has cured all disease, fed all the people and worked out what the smallest indivisible particle is.

The question remains why you're using a computer at all. Here you are complaining about the destructive capabilities of particular inventions, but at the same time reaping the benefits. Why are you sitting on your computer? why are you in a house with electricity? To say there are consequences for our technology is far different from from saying it's given us nothing. Yes there are consequences, science is not perfect and there's no such thing as a free lunch.

So why are you still on your computer? Why are you reaping the benefits from the enlightenment era when you decry their very existence? The phrase "biting the hand that feeds" comes to mind.

Posted by: Lion IRC | October 23, 2009 12:52 AM

Hi Kel OM,
Oh I'm sorry....excuse me! I meant Kel,OM
The missing comma is going to get me in trouble with someone.
What's with the dualistic, either/or paradigm?
Not all science/technology is destructive or bad and neither is it all good. And what a sad surrender for anyone in science to hoist the white flag and say oh well yeah we do occasionally contribute to global warming, and cane toad infestations. Why can't we have scientific advances which are ALL beneficial? We will take the solar panels (which some people use to power their PC's) but pass on the nuclear bombs. We will say yes to the plough and no to the sword. I dont remember decrying the very existence of science/technology. Did I do that?
Leave the "projecting" and strawman methods to the other side (as PZ Myers rightfully does)
Science and its consequences are always going to reflect the morality or amorality of those responsible.
Sometimes good, sometimes bad. (Am I allowed to use the word evil on this blog?)
Lion (IRC)

Posted by: aratina cage of the OM | October 23, 2009 1:03 AM

The belief that God is a metaphor for human needs, or human experiences, or human hopes, is referred to by a technical term. It's called atheism. -Sastra, OM

Urr .. no. Atheism is simply a lack of belief in religion. By its definition, one can be an atheist and also deny the very existence any human needs or hopes or the value of any human experience...It does not imply any content, rather the lack of a specific type of content. -Douglass Watts

OK Mr. Homo smartiepantsius, if gods do not exist, then what exactly are people praying for? What is this thing they call "God"? Now reread what Sastra wrote.

Posted by: Douglas Watts | October 23, 2009 1:44 AM

OK Mr. Homo smartiepantsius, if gods do not exist, then what exactly are people praying for? What is this thing they call "God"? Now reread what Sastra wrote.

Given the Zillion types of spiritual/religious beliefs that exist and have existed in the world, you'd need to ask everyone individually, including the Celts, which is sort of my point. A-theism means the lack of belief in any and all religion, of all types, whatever they might be or have been. It's a negatively constructed word, like "abiotic" which means all things non-biological, whatever they might be. Plenty of religions don't have a "God" (polytheism) and some religions don't even have a discrete, finite number of "gods" (Native American animism). And much of what is called religion for many cultures is an allegorized creation story which is used to help explain many things which lack any rational explanation, like why people hate each other or why some people show altruism toward total strangers and others do not. Science offers no concrete, empirical explanations for these things, so other forms of explanation have been developed and are used, as faulty as they might be.

Posted by: Kel, OM | October 23, 2009 1:50 AM

Not all science/technology is destructive or bad and neither is it all good. And what a sad surrender for anyone in science to hoist the white flag and say oh well yeah we do occasionally contribute to global warming, and cane toad infestations. Why can't we have scientific advances which are ALL beneficial?

Good or bad, the underlying issue is that science works. The enlightenment has brought us a tool for understanding reality, what we do with it is another issue entirely. If you're expecting humans to be benevolent and omniscient as to consequences, then you're obviously barking up the wrong tree. Science is a human endeavour, so for better or worse the tools of the trade are going to be abused and misused.

Pre-enlightenment people still found ways to kill, torture, destroy the environment, wreak undue havoc among other things. People suffered, starved, harmed others. Enlightenment hasn't changed that, but it has improved vastly our understanding of the universe and our place in it. We are able to feed billions who would have otherwise starved, we are able to make transport systems and communications networks that tie us in with the rest of the world. Because of the enlightenment, I don't need to grow my own food. I don't need to make my own shelter. These are significant things! But I digress...

In response to this:

The age of enlightenment was a fizzer. All we got was chaos theories and goldilocks enigmas and uncertainty principles

I put it to you that you're talking to me right now because of the enlightenment era. You're living in a house with electricity, running hot water, long term food storage, and a gateway to the world. This is the enlightenment, this is information condensed and packed up in ways our ancestors could not envisage. And it all is underlined by one principle: science works.

Science is a tool of discovery, it works on the edge between what is known and what is not. The products of science, the consequences for discovery, for inquiry, they are there. You're not going to get otherwise. So why don't we have solar panels everywhere? Because solar technology is not quite ready and a significant investment in creating infrastructure hasn't yet been done. Is that a problem with the science? Of course not. It's a problem with attitudes, with how people and governments operate. You're talking about a species that spent 99.9% of its history in hunter gatherer tribes, not working in civilisation with logic and reason.

For the record, Interview With A Vampire is a great film. Do I have to be irrational to enjoy vampires?

Posted by: Douglas Watts | October 23, 2009 2:12 AM

Because of the enlightenment, I don't need to grow my own food.

No. Migrant farm workers grow your food. You might want to read up on who actually grows your food and slaughters your cows and how much they get paid and what happens if they complain about job conditions.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | October 23, 2009 4:17 AM

A-theism means the lack of belief in any and all religion, of all types, whatever they might be or have been

No, it does not mean that.

I am an atheist and I believe in religions, in that I believe religions exist.

What I do not believe is that gods exist. So whilst I believe that religions exist I do not believe they have any reasonable grounds for the gods normally found at the centre of religion.

Trying to change the meaning of words is a creationist trick, but one I have noted that fatheists have been adopting of late.

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | October 23, 2009 4:25 AM

In Australia?

Do backpackers count? In my summers I picked fruit in different regions; I worked with people from all over the world who did it to pay the bills as they travelled.

Posted by: Stephen P | October 23, 2009 4:42 AM

Nietzsche, of course, wasn't arguing for a literal death of a deity ...

Actually I think she understands that. In this section at least. Then you get further down her essay, and you start to wonder.

Is it too much to expect that when theologians start to talk about God they first explain what they mean by the word? Apparently it is.

Posted by: llewelly | October 23, 2009 5:49 AM

Who discovered the oceans are being over-fished? Scientists.
Who demonstrated soils are being eroded in most of the world's arable lands? Scientists.
Who discovered global warming? Scientists.
Who demonstrated too much fertilizer was being washed into the world's waterways? Scientists.
The people who are committing such great environmental destruction are enabled by technology, which is in turn enabled by science, but they are acting in ignorance of, or, more frequently, in denial of, the best available science.
Lion, you have the relationship between science and environmental destruction entirely backward. taven, why did you ignorantly accept Lion's blatantly wrong premise?

Posted by: Gerald Snit | October 23, 2009 6:20 AM

"Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism."

So it probably went something like this -
1st-century religious person: "They're not facts, just symbols".
2nd-century religious person: "They're not facts, just symbols".
3rd-century religious person: "They're not facts, just symbols".
4th-century religious person: "They're not facts, just symbols".
...
...
16th-century religious person: "They're not facts, just symbols".
17th-century scientist: "Yes, and here's some proof that they're just symbols".
17th-century religious person: "WHAT?!! They're not just symbols, they're FACTS!"

So I guess all we have to do is remove the empiricism from science and everything will be OK again -
21st-century scientist: "Oh. Wait. I don't have any proof".
21st-century religious person: "Proof of what? They're just symbols".

Posted by: windy | October 23, 2009 6:25 AM

Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.

People like Armstrong are always saying that religion is like art... why doesn't art HAVE THIS PROBLEM THEN? Was art "forced" into a dogmatic, alien realism by science and technology? Even if you, for some strange reason, do think that realism in art is dogmatic and alien, what's stopping you from doing or enjoying other kinds of art?

Posted by: Nebula99 | October 23, 2009 10:28 AM

First off, I am going to sup on Movable Type with a straw! Damn thing kept giving me "forbidden"s last night.

The quote "God is dead" seems to me to mean that people don't define their worldview with religion anymore. If I'm interpreting that right, then it seems like God is dead in most of the civilized world, but in the Buy-Bull belt there are still some people like that, fundie preachers who eat, sleep, and breathe jeebus. The question is, to what extent is that way of seeing the world prevalent among the flocks? Are most people going to fundie churches centering their lives around religion, or do they keep their religion largely reserved for Sunday?

Posted by: Knockgoats | October 23, 2009 11:37 AM

Karen Armstrong is clearly a Bokononist:

"Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."
- The Books of Bokonon I:5

*lies

Posted by: soma | October 23, 2009 12:28 PM

But she is an epileptic, isn't she?
Isn't it that fact alone the ultimate excuse for a self-suffocating religious mind out of touch with reality?
Those people need medical care mostly, not publicity and sponsorship for ‘spiritual’/epileptiform ‘transcendence’. The real disgrace are all the numnut religious establishment and its miserable human ‘secular’ and ‘divine’ representatives who take advantage from any sort of mental suffering when it serves their vile purposes...

Posted by: jack ralph | October 23, 2009 1:56 PM

to say the US is an 'outlier' slightly misses the point. the reason the US is simultaneously the 'richest' and 'most religious' country in the 'west' is that although you do have some very, very rich people in your fair nation you also have many of the poorest people in all of the 'developed' world.

and i, for one, would rather be poor just about anywhere but the states...

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | October 23, 2009 3:25 PM

Hungry people don't need scientists to "discover" fish stocks are declining - they can "detect" that themselves. Ditto the farmer standing in a dust storm.

Discovering why they are and how to fix it is another story though. You're statement is ridiculous in its uselessness.

You forgot to mention the anecdote about the kindly scientist standing there explaining the finer details of global warming to the polar bear.

So we should let the polar bears figure out how to fix it?

Again, a useless statement meant only to try and show off your ego.

There is no premise here except the human ego elevating "science" to the level of Saviour.

Or humans realizing that science is the best tool for solving many problems. It's a tool, an incredible tool, not a saviour.

Learning the truth - discovery - is always good but just try the old trick question about who "invented" penicillin on someone and you will see what I mean.

yawn

As I said, science/technology can be for our benefit or our peril - plough shears or swords.
Lion (IRC)

What's next, "science has been wrong before"?

Get over yourself Lion.

Posted by: aratina cage of the OM | October 23, 2009 3:57 PM

Hungry people don't need scientists to "discover" fish stocks are declining - they can "detect" that themselves.
Ditto the farmer standing in a dust storm.

Wrong on both counts. Without science, there is no way to tell that a food crash is coming. You and the rest of the local population are suddenly caught in the dust storm or starving for lack of fish. Quick question, how would you "detect" starvation events if not with science? So, one of the aims of science is to prevent large-scale starvation of people. It gets even better, though. Science can also discover the most likely causes of a fisheries collapse or a major drought and give people ideas on how to prevent those things from happening or how to lessen their impacts, which is better all around for all plants and animals involved. Such plans are being implemented all over the world right now and they work.

There is no premise here except the human ego elevating "science" to the level of Saviour. -Lion IRC

Then what should we do? Stand around and enjoy the dust storm while we die of dehydration? We don't exist in the Garden of Eden, so we must adapt to our environment. Science gives us a way to adapt more quickly than through evolution. In that sense, it can seem like a savior, but science is not a supernatural being to be worshiped, and science is not all in your head. It is a tool we can use to save ourselves.

(And that probably is what pisses Christoids off the most — we don't need their fucking savior.)

Posted by: Dreamstone | October 23, 2009 5:15 PM

He said "pants", heh heh.

I am proud to declare myself a Homo smartiepantsii woman.

But seriously, a poster above reminded me of my favorite Carl Sagan quote:

"We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter. We are a way for the universe to know itself" (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980).

I also wanted to share a quote from one of my favorite writers, Loren Eisley:

"We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests, and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been human. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality." — Loren Eiseley, "Starthrower" in Unexpected Universe, 1969

I learned so much from both of them, even though a lot of the science has changed since then.

Posted by: Yahzi | October 23, 2009 7:50 PM

PZ writes: "But further, she is again pushing a caricature of the atheist position."

As Paul and others have pointed out, she's pushing a caricature of the religious position, too. The idea that previous generations were more post-modern in their interpretation of God than current generations are is just... absurd.

What kind of job requires you to publish arguments that caricaturize both sides of a position? Politics, pop-art, and theology. And law. Hmm, rather a lot of jobs, actually.

Posted by: Lion IRC | October 25, 2009 8:57 PM

How about we use science to avoid creating problems in the first place? I think God would much prefer that.
Lion (IRC)

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | October 25, 2009 9:21 PM

How about we use science to avoid creating problems in the first place? I think God would much prefer that.

Science can help avoid problems. For instance science has come up with various methods of contraception to deal with overpopulation. Various churches, the Catholics, Mormons and certain evangelicals, have decided The Big Guy In The Sky is down on contraception. Science is attempting to come up with solutions to global warming. A fair number of Religious Right leaders go so far as to say that global warming is a myth. Science is working on problems. It's religion that's trying to stop science, sometimes by pretending a problem doesn't even exist.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | October 25, 2009 9:35 PM

Lyin' Erk doesn't even know what a plowshare is.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | October 25, 2009 9:44 PM

I think God would much prefer that.

Delusional fool, your god doesn't exist, so there is no preference except between your ears. That would explain your incoherent posts.

Posted by: Anoracle | January 28, 2010 4:41 PM

Thank you PZ Meyers;
I found it very strange that Ms. Armstrong at one point says:"---As soon as we become recognizably human, men and women started to create religions".
(Does she realize she's saying 'they' "created God"?)
With 'that' statement Ms. Arstrong destroys any argument against those who know 'her' "God" is a fictional fairytale character, and no more real than "Mickey Mouse" or any other man made "creation"!
Her thereafter persistance in asserting this figment of man's imagination must be taken seriously; calls into question her sanity!