…and this is a 
I am so disappointed. The little evangelical goober has a new book that promises to provide evidence of life after death — it's right in the title, Life After Death: The Evidence — but he doesn't seem to have, you know, actually provided any evidence. Newsweek has a summary of his arguments.
The "evidence," of necessity, is indirect: D'Souza doesn't claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn't expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D'Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn't buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as "an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.," D'Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists' favorite arguments, God's apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes. It worked for Dante, didn't it?
The universal moral code argument is so tired. No, we don't need a magic man in the sky to implant puppet strings in our brains to make us do good, and as the reviewer mentions, we have perfectly reasonable natural explanations that fit the phenomenon just fine. But even beyond that, an external-sourced moral code wouldn't say anything about an afterlife. If I built a robot and included in its circuitry some code that inclined it to avoid colliding with cats, that does not imply that it is therefore eternal and will outlast any later encounters with a sledgehammer and a scrapheap.
The remainder of his argument is built on air. "If there is a god, and if there is an afterlife, and if there is judgment of earthly acts after death, then there is an afterlife" is an abomination of circularity and unsupported presuppositions.
But wait! There's more! And it gets worse!
And if that's not enough to convince you, D'Souza provides a checklist of benefits from believing in life after death: it keeps us honest, gives our lives "a sense of hope and purpose"--and "surveys show" that believers have better sex. It provides "a mechanism to teach our children right from wrong"--a mechanism that those who have been subjected to it tend to describe as a neurotic lifelong fear of going to Hell. And if your smart-alecky kid, full of all that Galileo stuff they get in school nowadays, should ask just where this Judgment business takes place, D'Souza provides you with a response. It happens in the multiverse, the infinitely multiplying complex of worlds predicted by some versions of quantum theory. In the multiverse, physical laws can take on different values, and matter itself may have a different form, so "there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that we can live beyond death in other realms with bodies that are unlike the bodies we now possess."
The argument from consequences is a non-starter, too. For instance, I have my doubts about the results of surveys about sex in populations where sexual behavior is both obligatory and a source of much angst about its effects on chances for a happy afterlife, but even if we were to think that the claim that believers have better sex, it doesn't imply in any way that there is a god or an afterlife. Dinish D'Souza might have more satisfying orgasms if he fantasizes about having sex with Ann Coulter while he masturbates, but that does not mean that he is therefore having sex with Ann Coulter. It wouldn't matter how highly he rated his onanistic experiences, it doesn't provide any evidence of actual intercourse with a real live human (or in the case of Coulter, simulacrum thereof) female. Similarly, if his fantasies are all about a muscular bearded Jesus in a loin cloth sweeping him into his arms and teaching him the true meaning of ecstasy, that might make him feel good, but it is not evidence that Jesus loves him. Not even in a manly way.
And seriously…he's going to trot out quantum physics as evidence for an afterlife? Man, join the crowd of crazies who have turned "quantum" into the "abracadabra" of the 21st century.
I don't think I need to read his book if that is the quality of his reasoning. But if any of you stumble across it and find a compelling scrap of evidence that the reviewer neglected to pass along, let us know. If the above examples are any indication, they'll be hilarious.
Comments
Posted by: Thorsonofodin
|
November 2, 2009 7:43 PM
Have all you Pharyngulites ever heard of Robert Carter from Creation Ministries International? He came to Fort Collins,CO to tell all the people here how modern science proves Darwin wrong. Here are my thoughts.
http://www.tompainesghost.com/2009/11/response-to-robert-carter.html
I'd like to hear yours.
Posted by: walter | November 2, 2009 7:44 PM
And here I was about to e-mail this to you =p
Posted by: Alverant
|
November 2, 2009 7:44 PM
At any point does he offer proof that the god who created the universe and implanted these puppet strings with the christian god? Or does he assume they're one of the same?
Posted by: Krystalline Apostate
|
November 2, 2009 7:44 PM
Excluding the inconvenient fact that some folks outcompete their neighbors in acts of altruism. But anyone who gets their mind changed by Berlinski isn't someone I'd chalk up as an intellectual giant. Or even intellectually average, for that matter.Posted by: Lauren Ipsum | November 2, 2009 7:47 PM
Newsweek has had something of a pro-religion bias for a long time now, but after they changed formats earlier this year, there was a marked upswing in articles/columns promoting and celebrating churchy and spiritual woo. It was one of the major reasons I cancelled my subscription after more than 20 years.
Posted by: Zeno
|
November 2, 2009 7:49 PM
I would have a lot more respect for Dinesh D'Souza (as opposed to the zero that I have now) if he would just stop dicking around with inane "proofs" of God, free will, and the afterlife and simply say, "I take it on faith." Fine. Pretty insubstantial, but a lot better than pseudo-logic and zero-content arguments. Just admit you're hoping it's all true.
Posted by: Glen Davidson
|
November 2, 2009 7:55 PM
By the way, how long can Berlinski go around parroting theistic nonsense and still claim to be "agnostic" or whatever he calls it? He's obviously lying, and believes in some odd mixture of mathematics and Platonism, or at least wants to do so.
At least D'Souza's quit arguing against evolution, showing that he's a cut above the IDiots and their paid liars.
I wouldn't mind D'Souza so much if he'd just say, well, he has faith. It's nonsense too, but it's more or less an admission of nonsense, instead of a claim of bogus proofs.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Brian | November 2, 2009 7:58 PM
Maybe for Berlinski, agnoticism is code for "still trying to make myself believe, not quite there yet."
Posted by: David Horton | November 2, 2009 8:01 PM
Confused by your title PZ - you want an afterlife BEFORE death? I mean I get it with the virgins and the bunches of grapes and all, but surely the harps would interfere with the book writing and all those people wandering around with robes and wings sure would clutter up the living room.
Posted by: Hurin | November 2, 2009 8:01 PM
And if your smart-alecky kid, full of all that Galileo stuff they get in school nowadays, should ask just where this Judgment business takes place, D'Souza provides you with a response. It happens in the multiverse, the infinitely multiplying complex of worlds predicted by some versions of quantum theory. In the multiverse, physical laws can take on different values, and matter itself may have a different form, so "there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that we can live beyond death in other realms with bodies that are unlike the bodies we now possess."
-----------------------------------------------
Translation:
Even though science has ruled the cosmology of Dante out, we can put heaven and hell into new gaps in our understanding, and dress them up with a bunch of fancy cosmological jargon. Quantum Quantum booga booga booga!!!
Posted by: A. Noyd
|
November 2, 2009 8:03 PM
Oh, sure, that's way more simple and sensible than the whole "there is no god" explanation. Oh, wait, no it isn't.
Me, I think evil goes unpunished because there is a war between various factions of Darkmatter Unicorns and all misfortune is just the collateral damage of this invisible battle spilling into the universe we can see.
Did he make sure to include how it provides reassurance and justification for thousands of suicide bombers?
Posted by: Tulse | November 2, 2009 8:06 PM
What "universal moral code"? Some cultures think abortion is wrong, others exposed their unwanted infants. Some cultures encouraged homosexuality, others stone gays. Some cultures practice polygamy, others only monogamy. Some cultures welcome strangers, other kill outsiders. Some cultures have strong taboos against relatives having sex, others allow marriage between siblings.
Whenever I see a claim for "universal morality", I always wonder if the speaker gets out much, or actually knows any history.
Posted by: Zombie | November 2, 2009 8:07 PM
I'm getting real tired of the 'multiverse therefore whatever I want' argument.
Posted by: Aquaria | November 2, 2009 8:08 PM
Anybody got any spare brain bleach. I don't have enough here to rid my mind of D'Douchebag beating off to fantasies of that idiotic bigot, Ann the Lying Sack of Shit Coulter.
Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | November 2, 2009 8:09 PM
The concept is in and of itself, isn't really a problem - we can't verify that it doesn't happen; however, we can say that the logic behind the rationale he's applying above and beyond this basic concept is flawed because he can't provide any compelling argument for the existence of the god he's claiming judges us after we die.
Without that, how does he know it's his religion's god doing the judging and not anyone else's? What if there is a god who's not Yahweh and has nothing but an intense loathing for anyone who worships that particular pissant deity?
Posted by: marcia | November 2, 2009 8:09 PM
WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT
Life after Death
The Evidence
http://www.dineshdsouza.com/
“Never one to be daunted by attempting the impossible, Dinesh D’Souza here shows again the argumentative skills that make him such a formidable opponent."
— Christopher Hitchens, author of
God Is Not Great and
The Portable Atheist
Yet,
""The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life...." is a fallacious argument, an argument from final consequences. God must exist otherwise life would have no meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences
What happened to the Hitch?
Posted by: Squigit | November 2, 2009 8:16 PM
Marcia @ #16
That comment was probably taken out of context. I don't know much about D'Souza, but after reading that review, something tells me my 4 year old could wipe the floor with him.
Posted by: Hurin, Nattering Nabob of Negativism.
|
November 2, 2009 8:20 PM
Zombie: I'm getting real tired of the 'multiverse therefore whatever I want' argument.
---------------------------
Yeah, or you can substitute scientific uncertainty, or quantum physics or anything else you want there. It basically just boils down to "knowledge is limited (be it ours collectively or mine personally), therefore I'm going to posit something completely unsupported and implausible and you can't prove me wrong".
It is really tiresome, and its unfortunate that people are allowed to get away with it so often. Its a really easy bullshitting tactic to spot if you've seen it even once.
Posted by: gigi | November 2, 2009 8:24 PM
Well, there goes my dinner...
Posted by: Blake Stacey
|
November 2, 2009 8:29 PM
D'Souza has rediscovered, in a bogus bullshit way, the Consolation of Haldane. As Carl Sagan summarized it, in The Demon-Haunted World:
Congratulations, Dinesh: you've just multiplied the Problem of Evil to cosmic proportions.
Posted by: Gregory Greenwood
|
November 2, 2009 8:30 PM
A. Noyd @ 11;
"Me, I think evil goes unpunished because there is a war between various factions of Darkmatter Unicorns and all misfortune is just the collateral damage of this invisible battle spilling into the universe we can see."
I just know there is the seed of a fantastic science fiction book right there.
Aquaria @ 14;
"Anybody got any spare brain bleach. I don't have enough here to rid my mind of D'Douchebag beating off to fantasies of that idiotic bigot, Ann the Lying Sack of Sh*t Coulter."
I know exactly what you mean. That particular fantasy would probably qualify as my worst nightmare, or at least joint first with similar material with Sarah Palin as the subject.
The image, it burns! IT BURNS!!!
Posted by: Randomfactor | November 2, 2009 8:33 PM
What happened to the Hitch?
Strong drink? An unwillingness to criticize a fellow Iraq War supporter?
Posted by: Biology Blogger | November 2, 2009 8:34 PM
If you don't murder only because your afraid of punishment, and then you boast about your morality, your not moral, your a damn fraud". -- Me
Posted by: The effin' bear | November 2, 2009 8:35 PM
Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes.
Oh, that’s why there’s suffering! It's because we have an afterlife. And that's why there must be an afterlife -- to account for all that suffering!
Posted by: mcbender | November 2, 2009 8:35 PM
@ marcia (16):
I can't really understand why Hitchens would say something like that either, when he clearly knows better. He's debated D'Souza enough times to know exactly how bad the man's arguments are (although the debates are always very satisfying).
I suspect if anything that Hitchens merely wants to butter him up so that he'd be willing to engage in further debates down the line. If he were to come out and say what he actually thinks (which is most likely that D'Souza is a blithering idiot, although I won't presume to speak for him), that could possibly discourage D'Souza from engaging in further debates down the line and I suspect he enjoys wiping the floor with him time and time again.
Posted by: Insightful Ape
|
November 2, 2009 8:36 PM
I have always found this a little puzzling: you believe in afterlife, because you believe in god.
But then, that brings up the problem of suffering. Which you have no problem solving, since you believe in the afterlife.
Eh?
Incidentally, that reminds me I need to read Frans de Waal's "the age of empathy". Since he is a primatologist talking about kindness among his chimps and bonobos I guess they are going to end up in heaven singing kumbaya to Jebus.
Posted by: Randomfactor | November 2, 2009 8:38 PM
It occurred to me the other day that the Christian and atheist views of an afterlife have a certain parallel.
The Christian says that after death we'll be with our departed loved ones. (Unless they, or we, are in the 90 percent of folks who won't make the cut.)
The atheist says that after death we'll no longer be without them.
Close enough for theology, I guess.
Posted by: Blake Stacey
|
November 2, 2009 8:40 PM
If free will leads to suffering (what about tornadoes and pandemics and tsunamis? never mind!), but everyone in Heaven is happy forever, then eternity without free will is A-OK, right?
Posted by: Randomfactor | November 2, 2009 8:43 PM
But then, that brings up the problem of suffering. Which you have no problem solving, since you believe in the afterlife.
Without an afterlife to even things up, the way gods treat us mere mortals looks pretty shitty.
Which is why they tacked one on.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
November 2, 2009 8:45 PM
There's a picture in the link PZ gave. It would appear the afterlife is people in burkhas.
Posted by: jolly wahlstrom | November 2, 2009 8:49 PM
"And if that's not enough to convince you, D'Souza provides a checklist of benefits from believing in life after death: it keeps us honest, gives our lives "a sense of hope and purpose"--and "surveys show" that believers have better sex. It provides "a mechanism to teach our children right from wrong"--a mechanism that those who have been subjected to it tend to describe as a neurotic lifelong fear of going to Hell."
It keeps us honest? Who is less honest than those bible wielding screamers of threats? A sense of hope and purpose? The purpose to threaten others that they need to think like you do? Hope? Hope you get to go to heaven and they go to hell? Guilt sex is better sex? Fear of going to hell must be the sense of hope and purpose. I can't understand these ideas, it hurts. These people with huge egos that think they are so special, that when they die, they don't, somehow their brain keeps living in space somewhere. Well, their god is an a-hole to set things up like this. Free will? I want to play basketball like Micheal Jordan, be as smart as Einstein, etc. I didn't have free will, I am stuck with the body and brain I have.
Posted by: ema | November 2, 2009 8:50 PM
Dinesh "conservatives should embrace their inner mullah" D'Souza, a person who has such a firm grasp of reality that he blames the "cultural left" for 9/11 clearly knows what he's talking about when it comes to the afterlife.
Posted by: RamblinDude
|
November 2, 2009 8:51 PM
Oh, the tedium. The ubiquitous Christian obsession with punishment and reward strikes again.
Posted by: may | November 2, 2009 8:53 PM
comment?
testes.testes.
Posted by: JD | November 2, 2009 8:53 PM
D'Souza is so ridiuculous that he makes me want to do something constructive.
Think I'll masturbate.
Posted by: Policy Merchant
|
November 2, 2009 8:54 PM
What happens if you go to heaven and find out that some of your loved ones are in hell?
Posted by: MAJeff, OM
|
November 2, 2009 8:58 PM
Dinish D'Souza might have more satisfying orgasms if he fantasizes about having sex with Ann Coulter while he masturbates
Wouldn't he just have to remember, not fantasize?
Posted by: Randomfactor | November 2, 2009 8:59 PM
What happens if you go to heaven and find out that some of your loved ones are in hell?
Saw this asked of a street-level fundie a few months back. S/he explained that god would cause you not to remember that person so as to prevent you from missing him/her.
Tinkering with memories to make folks who were important to you nonpersons? Screw that.
(Anyway, I kinda think that a lot of the "kick" in going to heaven *IS* looking down at all those folks frying in the Infernal Skillet.)
Posted by: Mark Plus | November 2, 2009 9:01 PM
What if it turns out that a god exists, but it didn't "create" us, much less offer our existence meaning, purpose and an afterlife?
http://www.box.net/shared/static/4qxqa8nhff.gif
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
November 2, 2009 9:05 PM
A small child doesn't steal cookies because she knows that Mommy will spank her if she's caught. An adult is moral because not hurting others is the mature way to act. Even an adult Christian is moral because that's pleasing to Jebus. So D'Souza has the morality of a small child since he's afraid of Jebus and his old man spanking his bottom forevah.
Posted by: Sardine | November 2, 2009 9:09 PM
Sounds like he is ready to break into a rendition of Frank Tiper's "Omega Point."
Posted by: Aquaria | November 2, 2009 9:12 PM
What happens if you go to heaven and find out that some of your loved ones are in hell?
By loved one, do you mean truly loved, or family?
Because if you mean family, I gotta say what I'd feel about being where some of my family isn't would be: Exultation.
The worst thing that could ever happen to me, second to spending an eternity kissing the ass of a megalomaniacal sadist in the company of a bunch of ignorant dickweeds I couldn't abide in this life is to spend it with the ignorant dickweeds I had the misfortune of being forced to endure because they were family. The horror! Ugh! Can't I get away from them--for even a little while?
You know, thinking about the eternal ass-kissing of that jerk the Xian nutjobs worship made me realize that their space buddy would have to be the biggest ass in the world to give all the nutbars (but, technically, 144,000 male virgins) simultaneous ass-kissing access. The more people who are going to the Mega Eternal Ass-Kissing Fest in the Sky, the bigger an ass he'll be.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | November 2, 2009 9:13 PM
So it boils down to this:
We suffer and don't know why and we don't know the answers to all the questions we can ask and that makes life a bitch. What we really want is all the time that lies ahead in an infinite futre as our own now and we have found ancient stories left by our ancestors that reveal a similar sentiment. Therefore they wanted the same relief from suffering and ignorance that we do and that proves that there must be an answer because how could such a clearly expressed longing not show that there must be a great day a comin'?
It therefore becomes only natural to strive to live an irreproachable and pious life (according to a strict and narrow interpretations of local and contemporary morality; see Old Testament and compare to other times and places) and to merely trust that something wonderful will happen because we want it to so very much and we can't realistically expect to know everything.
I can recall some of the rhetorical devices used to assure the faithful that such mental laziness is in fact a tool of great power:
Those lines are right out of an evangelical church circa 1973. And D'Souza is right there in the middle of the congregation, hands raised in worship, face wet with the tears of repentance and thanksgiving, swaying to that wonderful old song,
Mind you, the melody is lovely and moving. Maybe Cuttlefish can do something with the lyrics.
D.D. has nothing new to offer, even the quantum mechanics appeal is thread worn. And his title is a cheap advertising jingle tuned to the ears of the choir.
The only reason that explains this book's existence is to illustrate how easily the mark is separated from his money.
Posted by: Sardine | November 2, 2009 9:13 PM
Tipler. Sorry.
Posted by: JHS
|
November 2, 2009 9:13 PM
So where was his little moral compass when he got his jollies outing people in the Dartmouth school paper? Oh wait, I'm sure that was just a-ok, since we homos deserve whatever terror such moral crusaders throw at us. I sure wish I were a credulous godbot so I could be so righteous and upstanding all the time.
And the less said about his, er, plumbing of Ann Coulter's fetid depths, the better...
*barf*
Posted by: Mark Plus | November 2, 2009 9:16 PM
"What happens if you go to heaven and find out that some of your loved ones are in hell?"
I like to tell christians that the prospect of "going to hell," whatever that means, would just show that my earthly life had meaning & purpose after all.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
November 2, 2009 9:21 PM
"Heaven for climate, Hell for society." -Mark Twain
Posted by: may | November 2, 2009 9:25 PM
post-mortem torture?
and bombers dying for a sex life?
is it just me?
Posted by: apoLOLgetics | November 2, 2009 9:28 PM
Oh, god. The old "you couldn't imagine it if it weren't real" argument.
Posted by: Trip | November 2, 2009 9:32 PM
I have had things implanted in my heart by a higher power, but they were just coronary stents inserted by a highly skilled physician. They had no effect on the moral sensibilities instilled in me earlier by my own mother. One does not need gods or demons to internalize reasons for moral behavior - one only needs a high quality mom.
Posted by: Nemo | November 2, 2009 9:33 PM
But if there were no Silicon Heaven, then where would all of the calculators go?
Posted by: kopd
|
November 2, 2009 9:34 PM
I thought the suffering in the world was due to us being wrapped up in the epic cosmic battle between the Time Ninjas and the Space Mushrooms.
Posted by: SteveL
|
November 2, 2009 9:36 PM
Laurem Ipsum @ #5:
The newsweek article is as sceptical as it can get, actually. Some quotes:
and
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | November 2, 2009 9:38 PM
You can . . . eat? Space Mushroom?
Posted by: Zarquon | November 2, 2009 9:39 PM
You'll have quantum pie in the sky when you die.
Posted by: Aquaria | November 2, 2009 9:40 PM
I kinda think it's funny that the Christards have devolved into squeezing their afterworld fantasy into the quantum level. A good sign that they know astronomy has kicked their vomiting of a Fairy Tale Kingdom back to the Stone Age where it belongs.
Hooray for science!
Posted by: momentofsciencetx | November 2, 2009 9:40 PM
Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor
Then explain that damn youtube video of one dog pulling another dog out of traffic? Moral code of the dog heart? self-sacrifice and charity? Did both dogs afterward go attack a group of cats?
Posted by: mothwentbad | November 2, 2009 9:44 PM
Hell, I'd be impressed if the benign tinkerer could rig it up so that it was impossible for someone to get turned on by someone else non-mutually. That's the kind of instilled sixth sense that would make life so much easier.
Posted by: Ewan R | November 2, 2009 9:58 PM
PZ :-"If I built a robot and included in its circuitry some code that inclined it to avoid colliding with cats, that does not imply that it is therefore eternal and will outlast any later encounters with a sledgehammer and a scrapheap."
My cat disagrees.
Posted by: llewelly | November 2, 2009 9:58 PM
You can't just include any old moral code. You must include THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Then the soul of your new machine would be filled with the pure love of CHRIST JESUS, and on that glorious day when all the righteous will be rewarded, it would be taken up into the bosom of OUR LORD AMEN.(PS: If you had programmed it with morals of Paul Kurtz it would have gone straight to HELL!)
Posted by: Anonym | November 2, 2009 9:59 PM
Danish rarely fails to provide example of why the commoner pronunciation of 'fakir' usually evokes a knowing grin.
Posted by: Aratina Cage
|
November 2, 2009 10:02 PM
How do you come up with such hilarious refutations PZ? I can't wait for your book!Posted by: Sarmatae | November 2, 2009 10:04 PM
"Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes. It worked for Dante, didn't it?"
It seems that this is a better argument for being reincarnated as a bug than for eternal damnation. Wonder what made him choose one over the other?
Posted by: Jason A.
|
November 2, 2009 10:09 PM
A.Noyd #11:
So I say there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that there are warring darkmatter unicorns. What now, huh?
Posted by: Jason A.
|
November 2, 2009 10:12 PM
Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, it must reflect another reality where darkmatter unicorns are having a war.
Posted by: breadmaker | November 2, 2009 10:12 PM
i not d'souza a roman catholic... not evangelical?
Posted by: Brian | November 2, 2009 10:13 PM
Nietzsche said it best: "You can offer me no evidence of the hereafter."
Simplest and best debunking of Christianity ever.
As far as NDE go, that one's be throughly debunked. When NASA and the Air Force were testing how many G's people could sustain, about a quarter of them had experiences similar to NDE. And while the G forces *could* have killed them, the probability of it under the controlled conditions were very very low, so no, these people were not near death. Made it on Penn and Teller.
Also, if NDE were some sort of evidence of a God existing outside of time, shouldn't he know already that you're not about to die? So why would the NDE be evidence for some sort of spiritual existence.
Posted by: Jason A.
|
November 2, 2009 10:14 PM
And if your smart-alecky kid should ask just where this darkmatter unicorn battle takes place, it happens in the multiverse. Quantum quantum string theory energy vortex.
Hey, this is easy! Can I get reviewed in Newsweek now?
Posted by: Emily | November 2, 2009 10:20 PM
One could equally well argue that our supposed innate moral sense proves that there is no afterlife-- because God was unable to make us immortal, he programmed us with instincts that would allow us to make the best of our short time on Earth. But I won't, because it's still a silly argument.
Posted by: Newfie
|
November 2, 2009 10:21 PM
Coulter... ugggh. Now I have to go rub one* out.
*tonsil
Posted by: src | November 2, 2009 10:22 PM
@PZ:
Not even in a manly way.
Doesn't this sound bigoted to anyone else?
(I'm not a native English speaker, so...)
Posted by: DLC | November 2, 2009 10:24 PM
Sorry, Dinesh, but if the above is an example of your reasoning, I'm going to have to score you a miss.
It does not automatically follow that there must be punishment for wrongdoings. Likewise, there need not be a reward for altruism. The condition of life does not either preclude or mandate afterlife. Saying "it must be so, because I want it to be so" is no different from the toddler who expects to be fed his favorite lunch because he wants his favorite lunch. Were it somehow proven that there is no afterlife would we expect a tantrum from Dinesh, much in the way we might expect a tantrum from our toddler served a cheese sandwich instead of his favored peanut butter and jelly?
Posted by: Kel, OM | November 2, 2009 10:33 PM
So if altruism in humans is proof of a anthropomorphic deity, does that mean altruism in other apes imply an ape-god? And altruistic acts in dogs imply a dog-god? And in vampire bats a bat-god? I remember hearing about a recent paper in Nature where a certain type of anemone (anyone verify the animal?) that has evolved anti-cheating genes for when the individuals group together for protection, does this imply a god-of-the-anemones?
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | November 2, 2009 10:37 PM
Based on what has historically accepted as 'god evidence', Kel, the answer is yes.
Oh, my stars and lands, how shall we break the news?
Posted by: Steve_C | November 2, 2009 10:39 PM
Hahaha. No src. PZ was doing a bit of prodding on the Dinesh Jesus love. In a manly way.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | November 2, 2009 10:40 PM
. . . a "been" should have been there, post historically . . .
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
|
November 2, 2009 10:42 PM
So, does Ruse read this? Is this the type of scholarship we're supposed to be cognizant and respectful of?
Plato's Theory of Forms?
Since we can envision perfect justice, it must exist. Since it does not exist on materialist Earth, it must exist in supernatural heaven. Ergo, God.
This is turning the problem of evil into an advantage?
Alright, who's been handing out the dry cleaning bags without the asphyxiation warning labels?
Posted by: Aratina Cage
|
November 2, 2009 10:57 PM
Re: src
No. It is a form of insider humor. We know Dinesh D'Souza hates gays, so describing him as fantasizing about a submissive sexual relationship with a dominant Jesus is comical, and the last twist, "it is not evidence that Jesus loves him. Not even in a manly way", is designed to ensure the bigot (D'Souza, as we imagine him) gets the sexual nature of the relationship just described using the bigot's own language where manly means fraternal.Posted by: Strakh | November 2, 2009 11:00 PM
The wrong words are being used to describe what this fool is saying.
"Reasoning" cannot be applied to what he said.
"Hallucinating" would be much more appropriate.
I am stunned that he is not simply laughed off the stage where ever he appears if this is the best he can do.
Seriously, why does anyone give this drooling moron the time of day?
Posted by: Kel, OM | November 2, 2009 11:01 PM
Sweet, I've always wondered why God was dog spelt backwards. Now we know.Posted by: herr doktor bimler | November 2, 2009 11:02 PM
The universe is a much simpler place than we imagine. Why else would so many people independently end up with a cognitive limitation of only seven facts (plus or minus two) in working memory?
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | November 2, 2009 11:08 PM
So in an infinitely old universe with an infinite number of appearances of galaxies, stars, planets, and life, an identical Earth must reappear on which you and all your loved ones will be reunited.
It also means that I'll wind up dating Scarlett Johanssen an infinite number of times, be president of the world an infinite number of times, and put my foot up Dinesh D'Souza's butt an infinite number of times. There will also be an infinite number of southern baptist Richard Dawkinses to argue with. Infinities have really interesting properties, that way.
Glenn Beck will always be an idiot, though.
Posted by: Pareidolius
|
November 2, 2009 11:09 PM
The Calculus Spriggins have defended The Great Triangulation of Neverwas against the Space Mushrooms for millions of years. There was, of course, the short-lived alliance with the Time Ninjas, but they would always arrive late with a truckload of excuses and warm beer. Spriggins. Hate. Warm. Beer.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | November 2, 2009 11:13 PM
"What happens if you go to heaven and find out that some of your loved ones are in hell?"
1) It wouldn't be heaven if my dogs weren't there to romp with me.
2) Christians say dogs don't go to heaven.
3) Therefore, heaven cannot exist.
Do I win anything? This theology stuff is fun!
Posted by: Aratina Cage
|
November 2, 2009 11:14 PM
Funny, whenever I listen to him debate, throwing a tantrum is exactly what it sounds like. And I think the evidence is fairly conclusive that an afterlife with memories and awareness intact at this time is simply wishful thinking (barring future technology developments). Maybe that has something to do with the scattershot assertions in this newbookscreed of his.Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
|
November 2, 2009 11:16 PM
Ann Coulter sex fantasies? Someone light the Ichthyic signal!
Or if he's too busy hiking Fiordland or whatever fun he's having down there, then here is his obligatory link:
http://ifuckedanncoulterintheasshard.blogspot.com
Posted by: Kel, OM | November 2, 2009 11:18 PM
Michael Ruse would applaud you for such writing because you're not making the school boy mistake that in the supernatural it doesn't make sense to ask "who created God?"Posted by: whore of all the earth | November 2, 2009 11:22 PM
I always laugh at the "better sex" arguments. It's like god's ultimate dangling carrot for believers.
Posted by: Rick R | November 2, 2009 11:27 PM
"Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death."
I know many posters have commented on this passage already, but sweet leaping FSM this is a dumb statement. He starts with an assertion (a universal moral code) and uses it to justify a complete fantasy.
Why is it that some people just can't find a way to live with the idea that the universe, and our existence, has never been, isn't now, and is never going to be fair?
These idiots have the emotional maturity of a five-year old.
Posted by: truthspeaker
|
November 2, 2009 11:31 PM
I'm sure he just meant afterlife as a metaphor for an indescribable - fuck it, he's nuts.
Posted by: Rick R | November 2, 2009 11:35 PM
"I always laugh at the "better sex" arguments. It's like god's ultimate dangling carrot for believers."
I remember reading cult filmmaker John Waters' list of 10 things he was grateful for. One of them was "Thank god I was raised catholic. Sex will ALWAYS be bad, so it'll ALWAYS be good!"
Posted by: vespera | November 2, 2009 11:41 PM
If my knowledge of wingnut taxonomy serves me correctly, Dinesh actually HAS slept with Ann Coulter, or at least dated her or something. Not to mention being engaged (I think) to Laura Ingraham. Eeew.
Although, as a preachy Catholic (not evangelical, I think) he would be expected to be pure as the driven snow until marriage, though Christians seem to be a lot more forgiving of their own sexual "sins" than they are of other people's. Funny how that works.
Posted by: Aquaria | November 2, 2009 11:46 PM
Oh, god. The old "you couldn't imagine it if it weren't real" argument.
St. Anselm FTW!!!
Jesus in a Jumping Bean, I thought Aquinas pretty much had to cough up his Enhanced Roman Bullshit Spew to give the RCC some semblance of sense after so many smarter thinkers were pointing and laughing at the church for actually letting Anselm out of his crazy box too long.
Not that Aquinas was that much better, but he still wasn't as brain dead as Anselm in formulating an argument.
Posted by: Desert Son
|
November 3, 2009 12:02 AM
Rick R,
They'd first have to acknowledge that fairness is a human concept. They terribly worried about the implications it has for the universe if they do acknowledge that it's a human concept: 1) probably no gods; 2) we are not special animals in the universe; and 3) we humans are responsible for our own actions, including the really lousy ones.
Been kind of grouchy today, so I'm off to bed, but wanted to leave something fun in a thread about Dinesh D'Souza:
Play A Train Song
No kings,
Robert
Posted by: Janet Holmes | November 3, 2009 12:03 AM
It all comes down to, "I can't bear it if I'm all alone in the universe without my invisible friend, so he MUST exist"! Some people never learn that just because they want it don't make it so. Childish and sad really.
Posted by: Drew | November 3, 2009 12:05 AM
This must be some new definition of Quantum Mechanics that only he is aware of.
Posted by: foxfire | November 3, 2009 1:02 AM
I guess D'Souza may not have heard about alternative hypotheses.
And what's with the Quantum Physics nonsense? Give them 50 years and they will be pilgrimaging to Santa Fe looking for pieces of the true cross amidst the complexity.
Nice Newsweek article from Adler.
Posted by: Kel, OM | November 3, 2009 1:04 AM
Or he's taken it from Deepak ChopraPosted by: Sue Laris | November 3, 2009 1:10 AM
DDS is a physically small and repulsive human being who would do literally anything for a buck, and I have proof as strong as anything the DDS offers for an afterlife (stronger, since both DDS and dollar bills are known to exist): I imagined that I wrote on a $1 bill "This money is given for the free use of a Mr. D'Souza on condition that he kick himself one strongly up the arse." and mailed to the same DDS, who was seized with a moment of unstoppable honesty, accepted the buck, performed the deed - as miraculous as any in the Bible - and turned ever after to doing works of goodness and truth without pretending there was anything mystical about it at all.
****
These people are really searching out the extremes of ugliness and pride, aren't they? No wonder most of us consider the Elder Gods preferable in both motive and appearance.
Posted by: foxfire | November 3, 2009 1:28 AM
I forgot to add:
One could always venture to Amazon.com, scroll down to the comments, and rate them as helpful or not (da link).
Seriously, ya gotta see the "editorial review" Rick Warren gives it:
Posted by: Equisetum | November 3, 2009 1:39 AM
No, you don't need to read his book. I watched a debate between D'Souza and Peter Singer. D'Souza is f'in stupid. There's no other word for it. And to compare him to Buckley is an insult. Buckley was one of the last conservatives with a brain. I think he misused it, but at least he had one.
Huh? Really, what does that even mean? "Because bunnies are so often eaten by foxes in this world, that must mean that there is another reality, in which foxes get their just rewards and are eaten by bunnies."
Makes just a much sense, doesn't it?
Posted by: Patrick | November 3, 2009 1:39 AM
No one seems to have mentioned yet why he's full of crap on this: The remarkable homogeneity of the cosmic background radiation means that our entire universe is in causal contact. But the observable universe is expanding, as well. This means there are areas outside the visible universe that have never been in contact with us - light has never travelled from there to here - but nonetheless have exactly the same temperature.
The easiest way to solve this is to posit cosmic inflation. We say that existence as a whole isn't homogenous, but it is, on a small scale, approximately so. If part of a homogeneous region spontaneously expands to a huge degree, it (and the regions outside) will retain their homogeneity. The point where multiverses come in is that there's no reason to assume inflation happened only once. There could be an infinity of different universes, with different physical properties, but - and here's the kicker - they're utterly impossible to get to. Ever. It doesn't matter if heaven is in one of them. You can never go to heaven.
Posted by: Charles Philosopher | November 3, 2009 1:43 AM
PZ does know how to do good philosophy, despite his claims to not "get" philosophy.
Woohooo!!!!!!
Posted by: Christophe Thill | November 3, 2009 1:44 AM
A human being "imbued with a moral sense" reflecting God's would be a very egocentric and dangerous person. Possibly a psychopathic murderer.
What does he mean by "we"?
What in physics allows him to postulate that there is any kind of link between elements existing in separate parts of the multiverse, provided the latter has any kind of reality?
Posted by: Patrick | November 3, 2009 1:45 AM
(See also Wikipedia)
Posted by: H.H. | November 3, 2009 1:46 AM
Because they've been bred to demand fairness.Most people on this blog are aware of the evolutionary models for developing morality. One of the keystones of any morality is the desire for justice, equity, or fairness. Social cooperation requires individuals to keep track of such things as food sharing, mutual grooming, social interactions and the like (economists like to call these "transactions") in order to weed out or punish those who don't pull their weight within the group. This desire is so strong, in fact, that studies have shown that some monkeys will refuse a food reward if another monkey is given a better food reward, actually foregoing their own gift out of spite that the transaction wasn't "fair." And any parent will tell you that children constantly monitor for fairness--the slightest inequity between siblings can kick off riots of tantrums.
But once evolution bred for this desire for fairness into us, since better cooperators had more kids, it went a bit haywire. Early man starting to feel he was owed "fairness" by something that was never in a place to give it: the environment. Our earliest ancestors attempted to coax nature to treat them fairly by using the same tactics they used on one another. Bribes, mostly. Most people today call them sacrifices. A bit of corn, a baby lamb offered up to the god of rain. They also used emotional blackmail. By gifting a particular god in advance of some deed they wished accomplished, such as the rendering of a plentiful harvest, they would "shame" him into acting. They would create a social debt that the god they were beseeching would then be obligated to fill. Most intercessory prayers are usually attempts to guilt god into some action or other.
And so pretty much with that one big mistake right there you have the basis for what we call religion. You look at the most extremely religious fanatics today, and they all share an obsessive focus on "justice." And eye for an eye, it's what's fair. That's why they can be both against abortions and for the death penalty. You have to pay the price for your actions, whether that's the burden of a child or the electric chair.
So that's religion. One big cognitive error. Thanks, evolution!
Posted by: herr doktor bimler | November 3, 2009 1:47 AM
But even beyond that, an external-sourced moral code wouldn't say anything about an afterlife.
That bears repeating. Within DDS' own belief system, if you accept the twin assumptions that (a) a system of ethics was programmed into us by a personified creator,* and (b) the creator also designed us to expect punishment or reward after death depending on how well we followed that system;
-- Then there is STILL no reason at all for postmortem experiences that fulfill those expectations.
* As opposed to being programmed by a social structure that takes advantage of evolved propensities.
Posted by: Brock | November 3, 2009 1:48 AM
Dinesh: Mechanism or it doesn't happen :p
Posted by: llewelly | November 3, 2009 1:48 AM
Rey Fox, that is a disgusting website. Not even Ann Coulter deserves to be subjected to that sort of misogyny.
Posted by: Rorschach | November 3, 2009 2:05 AM
llewelly @ 109,
this has been a running gag here for years, and not even strange gods to my knowledge has ever complained about it being misogynistic.
It's what you get, male or female, if youre a lying hating hypocrite.
Posted by: Kristjan Wager | November 3, 2009 2:12 AM
D'Souza also recently wrote a piece where he made the argument that since not all suicide bombers are religious, and since some religious people are not suicide bombers, it follows that Islamic suicide bombers are not motivated by religion.
I fisked it here
Posted by: Matthias Krause | November 3, 2009 2:12 AM
Three Points:
1. I don't think being compensated in an afterlife makes things "moral". Even less so if one assumes an all-powerful god who could have made things right without the need for compensation in the first place.
2. Even if Dinesh was right, it would conflict with the Christian teachings. Because the punishment and reward in Christianity is either hell or heaven - such an utterly disproportionate compensation doesn't make things "moral". Also, (Christian) heaven and hell do not depend on "right" and "wrong" - but solely if one chose to accept Jesus as lord and savior. ("I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.") Therefore, the criterion ist not if one behaved "good" or "bad".
3. In "God's problem", Bart Ehrman explains how the Old Testament shows that people first believed (and taught) that if one behaves good, or fears god, God will bless that person's life with wealth, health and so forth. When it became obvious that this wasn't true (bad things happening to good people), they changed the doctrine, and eventually the punishment and rewards had to be shifted to the "afterlife". Congrats, Dinesh - you already managed to grasp the understanding of some primitive folks, living in the desert and herding goats. Now all you have to do is catch up with the last 2000 years of thinking, and maybe we'll take you seriously. (Or not.)
Posted by: Lola | November 3, 2009 2:16 AM
Why do these nuts always think their god is somewhere watching
everything they do? if you were god, would you waste your time
doing that? And if all faithful go to the afterlife, hasn't the sheer
number of them caused heavenly global warming?
Posted by: Lola | November 3, 2009 2:20 AM
Better sex? There had better be better birth control too, cause I don't have any other names picked out except Casper.
Posted by: Mr T | November 3, 2009 2:25 AM
But see, here's why you're totally wrong. The Bible predicted the big bang and quantum mechanics [insert string of Biblical references and other nonsense here], so we'll just have to see what the Pope has to say about your heresies. Yeah, that's the ticket. No, wait: Jesus can do magic tricks and stuff. Therefore, these multiverse theories are pretty much irrelevant -- you lose again, science! Yes, Jesus loves me, for the Bible tells me so. And so on, and so forth, etc. ad nauseum.Posted by: Rorschach | November 3, 2009 2:35 AM
Hell yeah !!
:P
Posted by: TralFamadorian | November 3, 2009 2:58 AM
One big plus about reading Dinesh D'Souza instead of hearing him talk is that at least he can't start yelling and pontificating at the top of his lungs.
Posted by: Ray Moscow
|
November 3, 2009 3:23 AM
So, the world doesn't conform to some guy's infantile expectations? Doesn't that pretty much prove that there has to be another, better world to come?
This seems inescapable.
Posted by: latsot | November 3, 2009 3:35 AM
Hmm..... read this in a sarcastic tone and it sounds like exactly the sort of thing Hitchens would say. D'Souza is hardly the sort of person to balk at quoting out of context.
Posted by: Richard Eis | November 3, 2009 4:06 AM
Reminds me of Deepak Chopra and his love of all things quantum.
-Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death.-
No it doesn't. First prove theres a moral code to the universe....then we will talk.
-it keeps us honest, gives our lives "a sense of hope and purpose"-
Sproing...Christians honest? please....and "a mechanism that those who have been subjected to it tend to describe as a neurotic lifelong fear of going to Hell."
Yeah, real hope there.
Posted by: Tim Fuller | November 3, 2009 4:34 AM
People who believe that sex outside marriage is bad will obviously have happier sex (approved by God) within a religious framework. It would also appear that a significant percentage of high profile and outwardly devout family types enjoy the wages of sexual sin (as they perceive it) to a great degree as well.
For example, I perceive a very strong bias in conservative politicians to engage in such behavior.
Dinesh isn't worth wasting time on.
Enjoy.
Posted by: Harry | November 3, 2009 4:57 AM
[Belief is]"a mechanism to teach our children right from wrong"
Really? The Bible is a poor source of information of any kind.
H.H. @106 Thanks for your clear explnation of the origin of religious rituals.
Posted by: Speedy | November 3, 2009 5:00 AM
Wtf? D'Souza believes in the multiverse theory?? Whenever someone brings up the multiverse in a debate, in rebuttal to D'Souza's fine-tuning argument, D'Souza always dismisses it immediately because 'there is no evidence for a multiverse' (never mind that it doesn't MATTER that there's no evidence, because so long as we can just think of a natural explanation for the 'fine-tuning', the fine-tuning can no more be used to prove the God's explanation as it can be to prove to the natural explanation- a point I've yet to see an atheist bring up, to my immense frustration). But D'Souza saying he believes in a multiverse is a major contradiction of his fine-tuning argument that I hope someone calls him out on, widely and publicly.
And I doubt that believing in an afterlife makes you more moral. In fact, I find it logically impossible to justify hospitals, life insurance, caring about genocide or infanticide around the world, if you believe that the only consequence of death is an infinitely better life!
Oh yeah- and like hell they have a better sex life. I have a much better sex life knowing it's not a sin and that some magic man in the sky is watching the whole time.
Posted by: Liveliest Crib
|
November 3, 2009 5:01 AM
I always get a good laugh listening to Dinesh. He's one of the hottest comedians on the circuits right now. His ability to dress up intellectually dead arguments in fancy words makes him the Weekend at Bernie's of theistic morons.
That's convenient. Prominent evolutionary scientists explain the evolution of morality, and he just goes, "Oh, fiddle dee dee. I just don't buy it."
It cracks me up that this man is treated as a scholar.
Turns it to his advantage? He turns it to gobbledygook. That is not the argument of a serious thinker. It is either (a) a joke; or (b)the drooled mutterings of a man who has eaten too many magic mushrooms.
Hey Dinesh, give me all your money -- for it is precisely because I am scamming you that you will reap riches beyond your wildest dreams. Karma, after all, is most deeply sensed by those who have truly been wronged, and the sense of justice makes it so on another plane of reality, where I will undoubtedly get my comeuppance.
Posted by: Moggie
|
November 3, 2009 5:05 AM
I think someone told D'Souza that Christians have a lot of sects, and he misunderstood. But, seriously: "surveys show" that believers have better sex? We already know that "believers" have the ability to will themselves into accepting a claim without evidence, simply because they find the belief comforting, so pardon me if I don't find this "better sex" claim very compelling. And it must be pretty galling for anyone whose life is blighted by the religious obsession with sex: the gay couple denied basic rights, the submissive wife, the unmarried mother shunned by her religious family, the teenager with an STD because "condoms are evil", the Muslim wife living in fear of false claims of infidelity, the altar boy raped by his "celibate" priest...
"I'm great in bed, therefore Jebus"... this must be some of that sophisticated theology one hears so much about.
Posted by: Per-Erik Svensson | November 3, 2009 5:12 AM
I think an equally interesting question is: "What happens if you go to heaven and find that it is full of people you dislike/from the bible?"
I wouldn't want to be in the same room as the child abusing Abraham or Moses, the guy who killed not only the opposing army but also all women and children of the opposing people. How about Samson, always quick on killing others as soon as God came upon him? Elisha killed what, 42 kids for screaming "Go on up you baldhead"? Saul and David are kind of... not very kind? Giving away his daughter (like he has that right in the first place) to David, only if David brings him 100 foreskins from Philistines first? Of course, David killed 200 to show what a good sport he was.
Posted by: Liveliest Crib
|
November 3, 2009 5:14 AM
I'm curious about the "better sex" surveys. How is the goodness of sex measured? How can one even begin to conduct such a study?
My questions are not rhetorical. I really want to know. Because I wouldn't mind participating in such a study as part of the control group of atheists.
Posted by: Moggie
|
November 3, 2009 5:19 AM
#127:
Well, duh. Obviously calling out "oh God" during sex feels better if you believe he's listening.
Posted by: Liveliest Crib
|
November 3, 2009 5:22 AM
i.e. Subatomic particles behave in seemingly impossible manners when we try to observe and measure them. Thus there once was a talking snake, and you will survive your own death if you believe the right stories.
Posted by: RPJ | November 3, 2009 5:32 AM
There might be dragons in the multiverse too. But I'm not going to plunk down money and time on dragon-riding lessons on Earth in anticipation of the possibility of finding life-forms based on properties observed in our Universe within a not-logically-impossible realm, with indetectable and possibly unfathomable properties.
Religion teaches right from wrong? That's not the kind of thing that should be taught to anybody, much less impressionable youngsters. Theistic "right" and "wrong" regards the principles of benefit and harm irrelevant; rather it's based on the arbitrary degree of some "higher force". If the higher source would decree that raping little girls was "right", then it would be so. And that's no mere thought experiment; refer to anti-homosexuality, discrimination against blacks (especially in regards to the colonization of Africa), misogyny, etc.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton | November 3, 2009 5:47 AM
The little evangelical goober
Actually, I believe you'll find that D'Souza is a Christianus papambasians rather than a C. bibliabattuens. It's true that the differences between the two species are superficial and the harm they wreak on the environment similar. Still, the phylogenetic distinctions are clear, and of we start getting sloppy with our taxonomy, where will we all end up?
Well, not where D'Souza thinks, anyway.
Posted by: Rixaeton | November 3, 2009 6:15 AM
I didn't know Mr D'Souza was a Buddhist.
Posted by: windy | November 3, 2009 6:43 AM
Dunning-Kruger effect?
Posted by: JeffreyD | November 3, 2009 7:11 AM
Well, religious belief can lead to better sex in a way. One of the best partners I ever had was a 44 year old ex nun who was making up for lost time and a mostly wasted life. Having spent a lot of time on her knees was a plus as well. Or have I said too much? (smile of remembrance)
Ciao y'all
Posted by: Richard eis | November 3, 2009 7:16 AM
-"I THINK i'm great in bed, therefore Jebus"... this must be some of that sophisticated theology one hears so much about.-
There...fixed it for you.
Unless they think sex is better because technically you are having a threesome with Jebus (or he just gets to watch). Thats not better, thats just creepier. Does he give performance evaluations and tips?
Posted by: Hypatia's Daughter | November 3, 2009 7:28 AM
But DD left out "FOR AN ETERNITY" No lesson learned? No longer a chance for repentance or atonement?We must obey a set of rules, many of them arbitrary, given to us, in all cases, by ONE man (Moses, Abraham, Elijah, Jesus), who we must trust is telling us what God truly wants. And we have to sift the wheat of the "true" prophets from the "chaff" of the false prophets. And if we make a mistake, we are punished FOREVER!
The saddest part is the DD's highest philosophical musings cannot even separate the fact that punishment has two purposes - training & revenge.
Earthly suffering may have be a "training" mechanism. If the child disobeys you and touched the hot stove, he will learn that stoves are dangerous AND that maybe he should obey you in the future.
But what function does burning in Hell for an eternity have but revenge? It serves no purpose for the punished and feeds the worst part of the human soul for those who think they will be spared but get to view the suffering of the damned as a spectator sport? Why would God wish to surround himself with a souls so poisonous?
Posted by: Ray Moscow
|
November 3, 2009 7:44 AM
Wait, I thought Collins was converted by a frozen waterfall, and also by C.S. Lewis' trilemma/trial-enema (Liar, Lunatic or Lard).
It puzzles me that even some scientists can't accept that altruism and morality have natural explanations.
Posted by: Lauren Ipsum | November 3, 2009 7:53 AM
SteveL@53: re this particular article, you are right; I stand corrected. :) I should have read the whole thing before commenting. (but man, those DD excerpts... teh stoopid, it burns!)
Posted by: Guy | November 3, 2009 8:14 AM
Dinesh D'Souza is a douchebag.
I did find "Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by" Michael Newton to making a more compelling case.
Posted by: Ric | November 3, 2009 8:22 AM
I read this somewhere, and it stuck with me:
If something needs this much defending, you know it's false.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | November 3, 2009 8:23 AM
D'Souza's success to talent ratio certainly indicates that the path to the heart of the masses IS NOT a well constructed argument. People rarely make decisions rationally. So you can either make vague, irrational emotional appeals that will leave people all warm and fuzzy (D'Souza, Ruse, all mainstream clerics), or you can construct an airtight, rational argument, in effect kicking the crutch away from the believer (the four). Its no wonder that atheism is a minority position. Look at this forum! We are hilarious for the most part, but we are also a bunch of player-haters. Player-haters don't win the minds of the masses. I don't really have a better idea what to do about it (cause I am a total hater), other than throw a tremendous amount of weight at education, so people will develop an easy, natural response to logic.
Not off topic, totally. Just marveling at D'Souza's tremendous popular success given the weakness of his position.
Posted by: faithless | November 3, 2009 8:24 AM
@MAJeff:
You think they did the horizontal boogie? NAAH! I reckon that's why she called it off - he wouldn't stop pestering her.
Posted by: Daniel
|
November 3, 2009 8:32 AM
When confronted with the 'where-does-morality-comes-from-if-not-from-god' argument, some people here -I've noticed- seem to think that the naturalistic counterargument can only involve an appeal to the supposed Darwinian adaptation of a fully developed moral sense, for which there is, however, no more evidence than for its being god-given, i.e. Nature-given.
On the contrary, if we were by nature predisposed to be nice to each other spontaneosly and without learning we wouldn't have any need for moral codes. So we don't need to get morality from anywhere or any anyone: it is a human invention, and a very fragile limited one.
Posted by: DuckPhup | November 3, 2009 8:33 AM
Two things I'd like to have explained to me...
1) Why does god's criteria for selecting those with whom he wants to spend eternity seem to be 'the most stupid and gullible'? What respectable deity would want THAT?
2) Why does Ann Coulter have an adam's apple?
Posted by: faithless | November 3, 2009 8:37 AM
How does anyone know that 'believers' have better sex?
What do the experimenters do - trick them into unbelieving for a while, and then see how much they enjoy screwing?
I mean, I know how much I enjoy sex - but how can I possibly tell whether I would enjoy it more if I believed in a god?
We need to get some apostates to do an experiment, and let us know whether it's better *now*, or as they remember it from before.
(This justification offered FOC to all apostates with reluctant partners.)
Posted by: Michael | November 3, 2009 8:41 AM
Anyone who argues that religion makes for better sex has never dealt with Catholic guilt
Posted by: Joe | November 3, 2009 8:47 AM
"simulacrum thereof"
Coffee through the nose.
Thanks.
Joe
Posted by: BigBob | November 3, 2009 9:01 AM
It happens in the multiverse, the infinitely multiplying complex of worlds predicted by some versions of quantum theory. In the multiverse, physical laws can take on different values, and matter itself may have a different form, so "there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that we can live beyond death in other realms with bodies that are unlike the bodies we now possess."
Someone tell D'Souza that that also justifies doing as much harm a we possibly can. Assuming god waits "in the Multiverse" and "there is nothing in physics to contradict the idea that yada yada we can make it up as we go along", it's possible that we are meant to slaughter as much of His bounty as we can lay our hands on. Good job Mom and Dad taught me to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.
Posted by: DLC | November 3, 2009 9:04 AM
You know, every time I think of Desouza I can't help but think I should be scolding him and sending him to the time-out room. Or that he writes his little works expecting his deity to pat him on the head and send him back to his seat with a boiled sweet for his efforts. I could almost imagine him in short pants, a blazer and a little round cap with a bill. As he can't be Angus Young that would make him . . . GASP! . . . Ben Stein !
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip
|
November 3, 2009 9:05 AM
Perhaps a lot of believers are exhibitionists who enjoy the feeling of being watched.
Not that I would know anything about that sort of thing.
Posted by: Tom | November 3, 2009 9:24 AM
"Dinish D'Souza might have more satisfying orgasms if he fantasizes about having sex with Ann Coulter while he masturbates"
O god that's funny.
Posted by: KemaTheAtheist | November 3, 2009 9:30 AM
Anyone here not honest?
Anyone here without a sense of purpose?
Any why is hope being trotted along with purpose as a strictly theist thing?
First, you would think he would know better than to trot out an argument made by Ted Haggard...
Second, we've all read vague stories here on Pharyngula about the bedroom goings-on of some the commenters, and it seems to me like at least as far as this section of the population goes, we're doing quite well on that front.
...then again Ted Haggard did have sex with a prostitute while on meth, so maybe he does have a better sex life. How many people here can say they've done that?
Posted by: Gruesome Rob | November 3, 2009 9:32 AM
That's not true.
It's a wonderful source of figuring out why the followers of Abrahamic religions are batshit insane.
Posted by: marcia | November 3, 2009 9:34 AM
Why hasn't this guy been laughed off the stage yet? This answer to a question about a teen's interest in atheism is no answer at all. Could you imagine if the questioner was Richard Dawkins' mother? I'm sure this would convince him to drop his interest in biology.
I actually expected D'Souza to finish the answer by pausing and exclaiming, "Boy that sucked, didn't it?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOUxexPu5hs#t=3m28s
Posted by: KemaTheAtheist | November 3, 2009 9:37 AM
My answer to this question makes me want to do an Austin Powers impression:
"Because she's a man, baby. Yeah!"
Posted by: dr_igloo | November 3, 2009 9:39 AM
...it doesn't provide any evidence of actual intercourse with a real live human (or in the case of Coulter, simulacrum thereof) female.
Okay, I hate Ann Coulter as much as the next person: her politics are disgusting and she's a hateful, discompassionate human being.
But let's lay off the sexist bullshit, okay? There are plenty of repugnant things about her worth attacking without resorting to these kind of cheap shots about whether or not she conforms to mainstream ideals of femininity.
Posted by: Phil Miller | November 3, 2009 9:41 AM
So this is a review of a review? Very gutsy--and thanks for taking the trouble of reading the review before spouting off.
Posted by: marcia | November 3, 2009 9:47 AM
Phil,
Thanks for taking the time to review the review of the review.
Much shorter than the original review of the review, but oh, so much more dickish.
Posted by: Fern | November 3, 2009 9:48 AM
dr_igloo @ 156 -
As I understand it, the "(or in the case of Coulter, simulacrum thereof)" modifies "human," not "female."
Your objection may apply to some of the comments above, but I think you're misreading PZ's original post.
Posted by: Alyson Miers
|
November 3, 2009 9:55 AM
I love the smell of shitty logic in the morning!
Why would we turn to a qualified biologist and evolution expert for explanations of our behavior, when we've got Mr. Fallacy Factory here to say, "I do not understand natural selection, therefore God."?
Am I the only person who, reading arguments like this, thinks of a scene from the old Dennis the Menace series where Dennis and friends are trying to plug up a leak in a fish tank with chewing gum? And the chewing gum just isn't doing the job?
"My idea of God would be in deep doo-doo if there were no afterlife, therefore there is an afterlife."
Wouldn't it be simpler for God to just...put us together so that life doesn't suck so hard here on Earth? What's the point of making us jump through all those hoops, if we're created in His image? This isn't even an argument from consequences; it's not that coherent. It's just chewing gum on a leaky fishtank.
Argument from warm fuzzies!
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I like this reviewer.
I DEMAND THAT YOU PROVE A NEGATIVE!
Oh, and I'm sure those young women in rural Pakistan who were buried alive for trying to choose their husbands would be simply delighted to hear that there's a universal moral code programmed into the human soul.
I can't help recalling the scene in Amadeus in which Mozart "compliments" Salieri's latest opera.
Posted by: KemaTheAtheist | November 3, 2009 10:13 AM
Nah... he participates: Cosmic reach arounds. He's an expensive whore though. You have to give up logic, reason, 10% of your money to the church, and be married in the church which includes the promise that you raise your kids in that religion too.
If you pledge him your "soul" you and your lover also get the cosmic zombie and his father's penis, and, as an added bonus, you also "get filled" by the holy spirit. That's three for the price of one, so you only get to claim a 3-some instead of an orgy.
Oh, I almost forget, there is one exception to what you can't have. Gang bang with the angels is out of the question since you must be procreating with your spouse. You have to sell your soul to the devil for that. Sorry.
And you get all this without the guilt of a real orgy! I mean you still have to carry the regular guilt of being a self-loathing sinner, but the sex is (almost) guilt-free.
Wow... I'm actually making this sound almost bearable...
Posted by: kopd | November 3, 2009 10:16 AM
I have to agree with Fern. In English, parenthetical statements generally modify the section before them, not the section after. The statement was not taking a cheap shot at "whether or not she conforms to mainstream ideals of femininity", but at whether or not she conforms to mainstream ideals of humanity.
Posted by: Hannah
|
November 3, 2009 10:27 AM
The thing that has always irritated me the most about anti-evolutionists is that they seem to persistently claim that, because they don't understand the explanation for an evolutionary phenomenon, then there isn't an explanation for it. D'Souza thinks that evolution would provide us with an individualistic, competitive, selfish outlook because this view suits his aims. We are a social species. It is beneficial and actually necessary for our survival for us to get along with the people who we will mate with and share resources with. We have the least selfishness toward people who are biologically related to us (kin selection), which makes perfect sense under evolutionary theory. How would D'Souza explain the fact that members of our family are more important to us than others - that we would save their lives first every time, if it came down to a choice? We don't have some objective moral code instilled in us. We have some tendencies toward cooperation and pro-social behavior, especially toward our kin. If we did have a moral code, the world would likely not be in the state that it is in today, because people would feel equally obliged to treat their "out-group" with respect and kindness as they do their "in-group." As we all know, this is rarely the case.
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
|
November 3, 2009 10:44 AM
It's because they haven't read the bible, specifically the part about requiring ID badges for God to know who you are.
Posted by: Vicki | November 3, 2009 10:53 AM
Well, dogs do seem to get at least some of their moral behavior from a higher power: they want to do what pleases their owners, at least where those humans can watch. (There's also some recent evidence that dogs have co-evolved to understand, and use, human body language: dogs are more like us in this regard than chimps are.)
The difference is, I have plenty of evidence for the existence of my dog's higher power.
Posted by: Anono | November 3, 2009 11:14 AM
(or in the case of Coulter, simulacrum thereof)
Classic!
I am just getting up back from off the floor.
lol
Posted by: robinsrule | November 3, 2009 11:25 AM
Fail
If evil so often goes unpunished in this world, then we need to work harder for justice in this real world. Believing in a fantasy of divine retribution does nothing except encourage inaction. It isn't even a especially satisfying fantasy for the believer, judging by the number of holy warriors happy to wage war for their particular religion.
Posted by: Mark A. Siefert | November 3, 2009 12:07 PM
So another mystical dipshit misuses quantum mechanics to justify his breed of supernaturalist crapola. Is D'Souza trying to become the Christo-fascist Deepak Chopra?
Posted by: SteveM | November 3, 2009 12:44 PM
someone has probably said this in the previous 168 comments, but just in case...
I don't get this whole concept of the afterlife giving a "purpose" to life. In fact, it seems quite the opposite. If there is an eternal afterlife that gets you into heaven just be saying "Yea Jesus", then what is the point to doing anything in life since it is such an infinitesimal part of an eternal life? No, it is a finite lifetime that has purpose, that this life is your one shot and you'd best make the most of it.
Posted by: DynamicUno | November 3, 2009 1:02 PM
This one was too easy; I stumbled into a discussion on it on a random internet forum and just about everybody was making these points, which is a refreshing change of pace and indicative of the poor reasoning displayed.
You can't prove an afterlife by proving that there is a universal moral code (which proof didn't even actually occur). And proving that there is a social benefit to belief in untrue things doesn't prove that those things are suddenly true (and again, that proof wasn't even completed). It's completely unrelated.
No wonder these people are Republicans. Thinking is just so haaaaard.
Posted by: Mark A. Siefert | November 3, 2009 1:28 PM
Thinking is for Communists!
Posted by: CRS | November 3, 2009 2:10 PM
I hate the phrase "time honored". Just because an idea is old doesn't make it any good.
Posted by: Perry Bulwer | November 3, 2009 2:19 PM
Evidence? Who needs evidence when you've got faith? After all, to bible believers "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1 KJV
In that looney world-view, black is white, up is down, and faith is evidence.
But faith is a childish thing, i.e., just believe because 'daddy says so'. And doesn't the bible say to put away childish things? Why yes it does, in I Corinthians 13:11, which says: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things."
As a former fundamentalist, now atheist, that's exactly what I did. As long as I held faith, I thought as a child does, believing in things for which there is no evidence. But then finally I grew up and started thinking like a man, and put away childish things like the belief in Santa Clause and God.
Posted by: MrFire
|
November 3, 2009 2:45 PM
In light of Ken Miller, Chopra, and now DDS, it seems a new law may be emerging..."As the religious milquetoast runs out of material answers for evil/lack of god, the probability of invoking quantum/multiverses approaches one."
Liveliest Crib:
Let's get this started. Meet you on Patricia OM's spanking couch in fifteen minutes. Gender unimportant.
Posted by: No BS | November 3, 2009 3:52 PM
My favorite Dinesh quote was that his family was from Bombay and was "... made christian at the point of a bayonet".
It's ok to take the bayonet out of your ass now ...
Posted by: Rixaeton | November 3, 2009 4:18 PM
#174
True. God is always "god of the gaps," and lets face it, quantum mechanics involves the smallests gaps there are. Once this gap is understood, god has no where else to go. Not that is matters, because delusions don't require evidence, so we will still have people who fear their own mortality, and will cling to any thought that drives away that darkness. Pity really, because once you can accept the vast bulk of evidence that this is all you get, you can make the most of it, which (hopefully) become a healty respect for life, all life, and not just be our species.
BTW: the agruments that this life is a test for later really only makes sense if you belive in reincarnation, so Xtian/Islam Fail on that one.
Posted by: Mark A. Siefert | November 3, 2009 4:37 PM
Wait... He admits that his family was coerced into converting to Christianity. And... he's OK with this?
It certainly explains his choice in girlfriends.
Posted by: Mark | November 3, 2009 5:00 PM
"Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death."
You could write volumes about the vacuity of this reasoning. He seems so determined in believing that there is a sky-daddy and an afterlife that he's willing to make such acrobatic leaps in logic when there appears to be an inconsistency in his worldview. I really wonder sometimes if his ass is just a bottomless pit that he can pull specious reasoning out of at will, because he seems so bent on expunging the reader's thoughts of the possibility that evil goes unpunished because there was nothing to mete out justice in the first place, save human witness and human hands. But then again, you'd have to already live in the deluded little "what makes me feel fuzzy must be true" bubble with other apologists/crackpots to be able to pick up a copy of his book and not laugh at his idiocy. Keep preaching to the choir Dinesh!
On another note, Buckley actually had a brain, so the comparison is invalid. D'Souza is an Indian Ray Comfort, with a fetish for adams apples.
Posted by: SaintStephen | November 3, 2009 5:52 PM
"The argument from consequences is a non-starter, too. For instance, I have my doubts about the results of surveys about sex in populations where sexual behavior is both obligatory and a source of much angst about its effects on chances for a happy afterlife, but even if we were to think that the claim that believers have better sex, it doesn't imply in any way that there is a god or an afterlife. Dinish D'Souza might have more satisfying orgasms if he fantasizes about having sex with Ann Coulter while he masturbates, but that does not mean that he is therefore having sex with Ann Coulter. It wouldn't matter how highly he rated his onanistic experiences, it doesn't provide any evidence of actual intercourse with a real live human (or in the case of Coulter, simulacrum thereof) female. Similarly, if his fantasies are all about a muscular bearded Jesus in a loin cloth sweeping him into his arms and teaching him the true meaning of ecstasy, that might make him feel good, but it is not evidence that Jesus loves him. Not even in a manly way.
This was a great read, PZ! And funny as hell.
Posted by: Jamie | November 3, 2009 7:18 PM
If this even made sense, this seems to justify not punishing anyone at all in this world. If someone murders someone, we shouldn't try to punish them because God will do it in the next life. (I guess this sorta makes sense if you only believe God is fit to judge anyone/anyone's actions.)
But does that mean it's okay to allow suffering then? It seems like they think, it'll eventually end, so it's okay. No. When someone is raped or killed, that will eventually end, but I don't think anyone thinks those acts are fine.
Sounds like an argument for laziness, so that he doesn't have to do anything to make the world a better place.
P.S. I appreciate being able to comment again. Thanks PZ =]
Posted by: MadScientist
|
November 3, 2009 10:04 PM
I can imagine:
"I was promised an afterlife but all I got was this crummy T-shirt"
Posted by: Brian | November 3, 2009 10:32 PM
Better sex? When I was a religious person I was getting NO SEX WHATSOEVER because my religion taught me it was wrong for the unmarried to have it. Any Mormon or Jehovah's Witness wife will know right off the bat that D'Souza is full of shit when they hear that.
Posted by: pdferguson
|
November 3, 2009 10:57 PM
If D'Souza had thought to look for any evidence against the idea of life after death, he wouldn't have to turn to Bronze Age mythology or far flung theories like multiverses. The evidence is much closer than that. They're called "graveyards", and all he would need is a shovel...
Posted by: Lou | November 4, 2009 2:18 AM
"(or simulacrum thereof) human female"
Why the Coulter-gender bashing? We humanists understand that women with "adam's" apples are women if they say they are. Frankly, when it comes to Coulter, I take everything about her "on faith." That way I don't have to "know" she's real.
Posted by: Aaron Baker | November 4, 2009 9:43 AM
I think the Newsweek article is much more interesting than anything by D'Souza. A parent can't fail to be moved by Jerry Adler's grief for his son.
Also, the near death experiences experiment sounds interesting, and I'm curious to see what comes of it. It seems to me, however, that if seriously ill patients could actually be proved to have perceived objects outside their range of sight, this would NOT be proof of the existence of disembodied intelligences. It would, at most, be evidence for some sort of extra-sensory perception.
If the experiment is rigorously performed, what I expect to happen (on the basis of my (I admit) unsystematic review of really rigorous experiments regarding the paranormal) is something in the range from "not proven" to "highly unlikely." But that, for me, is a significant, if negative, value of such experiments.
Posted by: John White | November 4, 2009 7:28 PM
I certainly agree with most of the people posting on this article that D'Souza did not present a very good argument for the existence of the afterlife. I've written his web-site to enumerate the ways he erred. But I am no atheist anymore. I am continually dismayed by the ridicule atheists continue to hurl at religious faith because people who have faith do not play by the atheists' rules of logic. It is arrogant, pure and simple. Religious people are, of course, arrogant in their own ways...convinced, no doubt, that people who post here not only are going to hell but deserve an eternity of torment for their beliefs.
I'm not one to make judgments on that score, as I believe that God is the One to decide things like that.
I do believe in an afterlife and in Jesus propitiation for sins and in his Father's creative power to direct the universe into whatever plan He comes up with.
That said, I do not belittle people who don't believe that. I don't make embarrassing assertions about them as some did referring to Dinesh's masturbatory habits or the truly offensive things that have been said about Ann Coulter (not one of my favorite people either).
If this is what atheism leads to, then I'm glad I stopped going down that path years ago.
Finally, I am dismayed that atheists continue to misunderstand Christianity and think it is a religion based on fear of punishment or a grasping at straws in a confusing world that non-rational people persist in doing because they have no other way to be than pathetic. I don't know if you have to be a Christian to understand Christians. I certainly did not understand Christianity at one point in my life and was an atheist. But I know what folks say about religious people being homophobic, for instance: that someone who feels homosexuality is not right is, deep down, afraid that he may be a homosexual and uses barbed rhetoric to block himself from finding out the truth.
Atheists who are Christo-phobic just may fit into that same category. Do you secretly believe in God and cannot face up to it?
If that is not the case, a little bit of respect towards the opinions and faiths of others is certainly a good contra-indication of said phobia.
There. Now you know that you weren't just preaching to the atheo-choir here. At least one person who entertains more than one narrow viewpoint has participated in the discussion!
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
November 4, 2009 7:43 PM
We don't misunderstand Xianity. Many of us were raised Xian, and have actually read the bible cover to cover. Which caused us to become atheists because Yehweh is one sick capricious demented crime boss, not worthy of anyone's worship. Further investigation shows no physical evidence for a god. Or that the babble is anything but myth fiction. We find people who belief in god and the babble to be delusional fools, who truly don't understand their own religion, because they study only little bits here and there, and don't understand the bigger picture.All atheism is, is the disbelief in all gods. You disbelieve 1000+ gods created by man, but still believe one created by man 2500 years ago. We also include that last man created deity on our list, as there is no evidence for it outside of a book of myths.
Posted by: pdferguson
|
November 4, 2009 8:45 PM
John White wrote:
There are no atheists' rules of logic, there's only rules of logic. So if we're enumerating the ways you erred, there's your first one.
What is arrogant? Pointing out the obvious idiocies in D'Souza's arguments? He's the one putting them forth--in book form no less. And they are laughably bad, but he is publishing them as if he has some authority or special knowledge which is absolutely not the case. So who is really the arrogant one here?
Too late, you just did... Error number two.
Since God is nothing more than a product of your imagination, every time you parrot some nonsense like "God is the One to decide things like that", it's really YOU who is passing judgment. That's one of the reasons I don't respect religionists, because they avoid taking responsibility for their own words and actions, using their god as a proxy instead. Atheists at least are honest in taking responsibility for their own opinions and actions, and don't attribute them to some imaginary father figure.
This isn't about Jesus or Mohammed or whatever brand of religion you choose. They are all the same in this respect. And of course, it's no coincidence that "God's plan" invariably coincides with the wishes of those who believe they know those plans. You've just given another example of the proxy effect of god belief.
And as for believing in an afterlife, well, perhaps you'd like to read this new book that's just come out on the subject--I hear the author believes in it too...
Error number three (but who's counting?) Of course you don't have to be a Christian to understand Christians. Many of us, of course, WERE Christians once. Christians are not a separate species, they don't live on a different planet, they don't possess secret knowledge or wisdom unavailable to everyone else.
To try to make this argument is inane, and tells me you really don't have anything else. It also tells me you have fallen victim to religious brainwashing (and I use that word carefully) because you seem to be regurgitating the most common nonsense we've heard countless times before.
No, I don't. That you might think some atheists "secretly believe in God" speaks volumes, not about atheists but about you. If you are interested, there have been a number of excellent books published by well known atheists recently that should disabuse of this silliness.
The issues atheists have aren't with gods, they are with people. We don't give two shits about your imaginary father figures or other fantasies, but we do care deeply about what those fantasies lead to. We are deeply concerned about the effects religion and religious faith have across all aspects of society. Religious faith and especially religious certitude can be very dangerous forces in the world. Faith may not move mountains, but you should see what it does to skyscrapers...
Yet again, just parroting the same nonsense we've heard countless times before. Atheists should be "respectful." Stop saying those nasty things about religion, because it makes you uncomfortable. In other words, you want atheists to "shut the fuck up." We won't, at least not until you start burning us at the stake again.
Religion can only maintain it's power and control (and after all, that's what religions have always been about) if no one is allowed to question or criticize them. Religions have spent centuries creating taboos against criticism, and try to make the rules different for their own fantasies and practices than for nonreligious nonsense. Try publicly proclaiming you have your own personal UFO that only you can see, and can fly anywhere in the universe whenever you wish, and see how people react. Is that any different than proclaiming you believe in life after death?
In my experience, the blinders of religion only serve to narrow people's viewpoints, sometimes severely. I see absolutely no indication from what you've written that your viewpoint is any broader than anyone else's here, but I DO see indications that your viewpoints aren't really your own, but are the viewpoints of the self-appointed authority figures you have allowed to influence you.
Posted by: John White | November 4, 2009 10:44 PM
Whoa! Why the attack here? I did not attack any of your arguments against the existence of God or of a belief in the after-life. I even agreed with you that Dinesh D'Souza did not present cogent arguments in his recent book.
On all of these things, we agree. There is, therefore, no reason for the attack, unless you are angered by the fact that I have a different opinion from yours.
I am quite happy to consider all your reasoned arguments against the existence of God. In fact, I have entertained many of them in my long life. I don't intend to convince anyone in this group to shed their reasoned and logical perspective. It is only the emotional and irrational lack of civility that dismays me. You can be nice and cut down someone else's arguments very handily. I do not begrudge your well-deserved criticism of religion.
I put forth in my other comment that this smacks of Christo-phobia only to provoke thought, not because I actually believe atheists are secret believers. I meant to point out that unnecessary vindictive makes it look as if you have an irrational and defensive fear of religion that is similar to that of homophobia. I pointed this out because I would like to see you present your cogent arguments without that irrationality which makes your arguments seem empty because they are really vengeful attacks on religion because of some personal injury you carry with you. I hope that avoiding such things will keep any who would debate against you have purchase for a counter-attack.
When "Nerd of Redhead" wrote, "We don't misunderstand Xianity. Many of us were raised Xian, and have actually read the bible cover to cover. Which caused us to become atheists because Yehweh is one sick capricious demented crime boss, not worthy of anyone's worship." it seemed obvious to a person of faith who has also read The Bible from cover to cover that there is still a great lack of understanding of what this particular religion of Christianity is all about. I do not hope to be able to explain myself in a simple post like this one, but simply understand that statements like this lead one to conclude that there is a lack of understanding and not necessarily a rationality gap here.
Civility does give one the impression that a person might understand the opinion of another party, even if he has reasons to disagree with them.
pdferguson pointed out quite rightly that an atheist perspective does not necessarily seek to discredit Jesus but to discredit the belief in a deity at all. My bringing my personal faith into the argument did deflect from the point that was being made. Thank you for pointing that out.
I intended to speak of my personal faith, not to posit a convincing argument for people to agree with me about it, but merely to make clear what my personal convictions were. It was meant to be a bit of self-revelation for the readers, then, and I did not seek to present any proofs for what I believe.
When you say that there is only one set of logical rules, you seemed to be correct as my classical training has taught me that logic is right and wrong. But my anthropological background also teaches me that western or Greek logic is not the only kind of logic that exists in this world of ours. And there always exists the possibility that any of us has left out important facts that would clarify different conclusions to a logical conundrum. Religious people see the sun come up and conclude that God has made a new day. This might leave out a plethora of scientific facts that would belie this conclusion.
I do not think that my reasons for believing as I do would be relevant here. I only point out that people come to a variety of conclusions, and it would be good to respect diversity and not insist that those who disagree with you are some sort of cretin or moron.
It is certainly not arrogant to point out the logical flaws in Mr. D'Souza's book. I did this myself, as I pointed out. Arrogance is an attitude that is very easy to see in many of the comments on this article.
When I said that it is up to God to decide whether someone deserves eternal punishment, I meant just what I said. I do not bear ill will towards someone who believes differently than I do. I certainly do not think that eternal punishment for things such as this is correct. But then, for those who do not believe in eternal punishment anyway, these sorts of statements should have no emotional effect at all. I presented this in the context of arrogant Christians who seem to enjoy condemnation of others. I am not one of those.
I think that, should you believe I am projecting myself onto an argument by claiming that God is really the one doing it, you are delving into the area of psycho-analysis. I do not believe you are qualified for that sort of thing, but I may be wrong. If you were qualified, I would think that you would know not to jump to conclusions without probing who I really am first. It could be that I am saying exactly what I mean to say.
I feel that you misunderstand Christianity because you believe it to be a confining or even imprisoning belief system while I, on the other hand, have found it to be more and more liberating as the years go by. Whether I am right or wrong does not merit debate at this point. The fact that I have found it to be so should be something that you should respect because I am another human being trying to make sense of his world as all of us are. I respect the fact that you found it to be quite the opposite, and I am trying to understand why your experience brought you to that conclusion. I admit that I lack understanding. To conclude that you have no reason to have your opinion excepting that you are somehow deficient would be more than a lack of understanding on my part. It would be a misunderstanding.
I could go on, but I have written too much here already.
I will conclude by commenting on your final statement, which did get to the real point here.
"...we do care deeply about what those fantasies lead to. We are deeply concerned about the effects religion and religious faith have across all aspects of society." It would be good for you to consider the positive effects that religious faith has had on various areas of our world: public education, health care, social welfare, the abolition of the slave trade, etc. I know that you have much to say on those things that would refute any positive things I could put forth here. It certainly is a mixed bag. But muslims are not all suicide bombers and grieve that people characterize them as such. Christians are not all abortion clinic bombers either. To characterize people of faith in this way is to do a dis-service to many, many good people. "Religious faith and especially religious certitude can be very dangerous forces in the world." This is very true. Religious certitude is a big problem, as is atheistic certitude. A knife in the hand of a mass murderer is a terrible thing. A knife in the hand of my grandmother was a wonderful thing. The knife is not the problem. As you quite rightly pointed out, it's people that is the problem. does this set of comments show people at their best? Has materialistic rationalism shown itself here to have been better than murderous terrorism? "Faith may not move mountains, but you should see what it does to skyscrapers." Actually, I did see it, of course. It was more than faith that caused that disaster. Politics played a very large part in that, as you know. Saying that religion brought down the WTC simplifies the facts too much. You might as well take the outrageous point of view of religious certitudists and say that the WTC was brought down because of homosexuals.
Posted by: Sastra
|
November 4, 2009 11:00 PM
John White #189 wrote:
Criticism comes in many forms, and not all of it will be civil. You can either focus on the style and tone, or address the substance of the arguments.
One of the reasons the so-called new atheists have what you consider to be a 'bad attitude' is that this approach is part of a deliberate attempt to break the pervasive cultural taboo against criticism of religion, criticism of faith, criticism of what is 'deeply-felt' and 'sacred.' I understand that it can seem counter-productive. But it can have its place.
No; we are not making the common complaint that religion is neutral, and that whether it's used for good, or evil, depends on the character of the person who uses it. Religion is pseudoscience, and whether it's used for what secularists consider good, or evil, is largely a matter of chance. What is valuable in religion, is valuable for secular reasons. But a religion which makes too much sense, is going to turn into philosophy. It has to posit "facts" not available to those outside the religion, who don't want to believe -- and with such "facts," what comes out is unknowable, indisputable, and beyond reason.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
November 4, 2009 11:04 PM
Sorry, you have it ass-backwards. There is no god. No evidence for one. Parsimony defaults to non-existence. You are the one who must provide the evidence for one, preferably physical evidence.There is only a rationality gap on your part, not ours. You are the delusional one, not us. We don't misunderstand anything, you do. No evidence for your deity. No evidence that your babble is a book of fiction/mythology. And the burden of proof is upon you to demonstrate otherwise. That is why we consider you a fool. Time to put up the evidence to back your inane and insane claims, or to shut up. Welcome to science.Posted by: pdferguson
|
November 5, 2009 12:32 AM
And as a mathematician, I have studied many different forms of formal logic. That's really not the point, though. Religion has long rejected logic in any form, and seeks to make claims that are entirely unsubstantiated, and which defy common sense. As Friedrich Nietzsche so eloquently put it, "Faith is not wanting to know what is true". D'Souza's book sounds like an exemplar of such faulty reasoning. Just because people desperately want eternal life doesn't mean they can achieve it through prayer or multiverses or any other way.
That's not "important facts that would clarify different conclusions", in fact, it's not a conclusion at all because it supposes what it concludes. That's just bad logic in any system.
Then you are opening the door to any silly belief whatsoever. Worse, you are equating them as all being equally valid depending on one's point of view. That's not diversity, that's nonsense.
But you do believe "it's up to God to decide", so you ARE one of those. You can't have it both ways.
I don't believe that. I know that you are projecting, and I don't need a PhD in psychology to say that. The only place gods exist are in the human mind. There is infinitely more evidence to support that statement than all the supernatural claims of all the religions put together.
Just because you find it liberating is not evidence it is correct. In fact, most evidence contradicts religious belief systems. Your belief system includes believing in life after death. All evidence we have about physiology and biology contradicts such a belief.
Frankly, I'm more likely to respect people who's belief systems are grounded in reality than those that are grounded in fantasy--especially Bronze Age fantasies. I don't respect people who believe Elvis is still alive or think they are the reincarnation of Alexander the Great for the same reasons.
No, I also lack understanding of why people believe in supernaturalism. To me it is like large portions of the population thinking that the world of Harry Potter is real and that we are living in it. I simply cannot comprehend how people can think like that. I probably never will understand. Perhaps it's genetic and I lack the genes to allow me to conflate fantasy and reality to the degree necessary to blindly accept religious claims as true.
Well, leaving aside your mischaracterization of the role of religion in abolition, I do understand that there have been positive effects in society that have come about through religion. First, I would argue that none of them require religion. Education, health care, etc. are issues of humanity, and do not require any sort of supernatural justification. I would also argue that of the areas where inequality and oppression still exists, such as women's rights or homosexual's equality, religion is the single biggest force opposing them. So in my opinion, the negative effects of religious faith far outweigh the positive effects.
But religion is the enabler that creates suicide bombers and doctor killers. Just because most religious believers isn't the issue. As Steven Weinberg famously said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion."
No, equating the outrageous comments of Jerry Falwell and the statements of those who organized the 9/11 attack are not equivalent. Bin Laden has said repeatedly that he considers 9/11 to have been a battle between Islam and the West. I can dismiss Falwell as relatively harmless idiot, but no one can dismiss Bin Laden as one. Yes there were political and economic dimensions to this event, but the defining characteristic of it has always been religious. The last words screamed by those hijackers undoubtedly were Allahu Akbar...
Posted by: John White | November 5, 2009 5:51 PM
Well, this has been a fine diversion.
I see that my request for civility has fallen on, at least some, deaf ears. I do not think people should quiet their objections to religion. And I understand that the new atheists think no one has had the courage to challenge the sacred until now. I do not at all believe that to be the case, when you look at the facts.
Still, it is possible to disagree without mocking, to find the logical flaw in someone's reasoning without vilifying or projecting evil onto the person who disagrees.
As I read over the various rebuttals to my comments, I detect a lot of judgment and condemnation...just the sort of thing that religion promotes in our society. A lot of comments have been directed at my person, rather than simply at my arguments.
I think my point has been proven rather nicely.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
November 5, 2009 6:17 PM
You have shown no evidence for your deity. Ergo, he doesn't exist. What problems do you have with that? It gets to the meat of your delusion.No, your point is that you think you can talk about deities and religion without being challenged on your presumptions. And when we do, we are mean and not respectful. But, that is where any rational challenges start, with inane presuppositions, like deities exists without evidence, or the babble is true without the proper historical evidence to confirm that.Nothing to boring insipid concern troll.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
November 5, 2009 6:20 PM
JW, you can prove me wrong by showing the physical evidence for your imaginary deity in your next post instead of commenting about our lack of respect. That evidence needs to pass muster by scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural, origin. And they have the final say, not you.
Posted by: John White | November 5, 2009 6:56 PM
No, no, no, no, you Bubble-Headed Booby! I wonder if your intellectual masturbation has any room for considering any other thought but what can fit through your asinine straw of misinformation!
Do you see what I mean? That was mockery and vilification. It did nothing at all to contribute to a reasoned debate. If you look through the postings to which I reacted, you will see plenty of this sort of thing.
I don't have any problem with your disagreeing with my faith in God. Do that all you like. Keep to the issues. Point out that my reasoning is circular and that, to refute my point, you have to believe in the possibility of an impossibility.
I was not disparaging your disagreement, but I only wished to point out that disagreeing without civility only weakened your argument and distracted anyone who would not think as you do to make such personal invective a part of the debate as well.
Please. Let's just be civil. Let's show some respect.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
November 5, 2009 7:07 PM
Two things, first, you don't control the tone of the discussion, we do. And we are lewd, crude and rude. So if you can't handle that, you need to retire as the wuss you are. You do that by just stopping your posts.And if you want a discussion, you start with the statement "I believe this, and this is the evidence to back it up". Start with the physical evidence for your imaginary deity, because if you deity doesn't exist, the bible is a book of myth/fiction, and any dogma is totally irrelevant. Welcome to science.
Posted by: DaveL
|
November 5, 2009 7:15 PM
John White,
You'll find debaters here have a different notion of civil discourse than you seem to. Here, whether a post can be considered "respectful" and "civil" depends not on whether it uses crude words, but on whether it displays intellectual honesty. Here you will find that people are far more offended if you misrepresent their position, employ logical fallacies, or ignore the substance of their arguments to complain about tone than if you call them and their mothers nasty names.
Posted by: Lehooo | November 5, 2009 9:43 PM
Quantum physics says we go to heaven? Pfft, that's crazy talk! We all know it's proof that we go to hell: http://chaospet.com/2008/07/07/91-quantum-immortality
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
November 5, 2009 10:24 PM
John White #193
What exactly are "new atheists"?
The only people who use that term are either accommodationists or goddists. Accommodationists, also known as "faithests," are atheists, agnostics and deists who feel that atheists shouldn't upset the goddists by challenging their beliefs. Some goddists' beliefs are challenged by the mere existence of atheists. Quite often the term "new atheist" refers to any atheist who publicly announces their atheism.
As you note, atheists have been challenging "the sacred" for centuries. However, it wasn't that long ago that such challenges were harmful or even fatal to the challenger. In some places like Iran, this is still true. Many goddists bemoan the lapse of the Inquisition since it would definitely deal with anyone so brash as to demand actual evidence for a deity or deities. But that's how it is in these less enlightened days, when the auto de fé and public burnings at the stake are no longer administered as rigorously as they should be.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
November 6, 2009 8:02 PM
Looks like John White wasn't interested in a discussion if he couldn't control things, especially the tone. That would be the only way he could preach at us without his ideas being challenged the get-go.
Posted by: Anri | November 7, 2009 9:28 AM
John White Sez:
Please demonstrate the location of this misinformation.
Strange, I was able to pull a question from it, and respond. That's adding to a reasoned debate.
And after we have done that, and you continue to attempt to insist that we be respectful towards those who rape children and blow themselves and other to bits in marketplaces...
Do we get to be rude then?
And yet, we hear again and again in deconversion stories that, for many people, realizing that nothing bad happened to people who were disrespectful or mocking towards religion was a tremendous revelation. We hear again and again that when mocked and laughed at, religious beliefs tend to strike people as, well, mockable and laughable.
Should I respect the idea that it is acceptable to rape children?
How about stoning them to death if they sass me?
How about teaching children that there is a horrible, horrible place, where they will be brutally tortured through all of eternity unless they do certain, specific things - unless they feel guilt over merely being as they were born?
How about teaching children that there is a wonderful place that they will go when they die, and that not all of their friends and loved ones will go there, but instead go to the awful place noted above... and the child will be happy knowing this, because those people deserve it?
Have I hit any ideas worth respecting yet?
If so, please explain.
Posted by: Paul | November 8, 2009 9:48 AM
Don't even joke about D'Souza having intercourse with Coulter. I've probably seen more than my fair share of disgusting but that would take the top.
Also, I don't even want to imagine what kind of 'ungodly' offspring might result from such an activity.
Posted by: pdferguson
|
November 9, 2009 11:44 AM
John White wrote:
I don't think anyone here thinks no one has criticized religion before now. History is full of examples, as you say.
But the real issue is that the taboos against criticizing religion are as strong as ever; a United Nations forum passed a resolution categorizing religious criticism as a "human rights violation." In Islamic countries, the penalty for defamation is death, as several Danish cartoonists learned all too well. Bill Donahue has become a millionaire by attacking anyone who dares to mock his beloved Catholic Church--or even their free crackers.
Pharyngula is a great resource in the battle against this sort of religious tyranny and oppression. PZ Myers has established himself as a tireless voice against these forces, at considerable personal risk to himself. If you can appreciate the David and Goliath imbalance of this struggle, then perhaps you can understand why "being nice" is not very high on the list.
I pointed out a number of flaws in your reasoning, some of which you responded to. I suggest you ignore Nerd of Redhead or anyone else whose comments get under your skin, and just focus on the actual arguments. You seem to be spending all your time trying to enforce your idea on civility on the entire forum here. That's a waste of your time and everyone else's.
Of course, the biggest logical flaw of all is your acceptance of ideas that fly in the face of reality; believing in life after death is a prime example. You don't like being mocked as if you announced you believe you can time travel, but honestly, there is little distinction between those two claims.
If it were only a harmless belief, that would be one thing, but a belief instilled in a large number of people can have serious implications. Voltaire could well have been speaking about Islamic suicide bombers when he said "Someone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Seventy two virgins, anyone?
I would characterize it as frustration and anger. We get a steady stream of people who stumble in here claiming they "used to be atheists too", but have since "seen the light". Most of them revel in their willful ignorance about science and believe they now know "The Truth", which invariably involves that savior on a stick, Jesus. We have a very low tolerance for that sort of sanctimonious bullshit, and get very frustrated by their predictable nonsense, thinking they're the first ones to come here and "enlighten" us about the errors of our ways. And quite frankly, the subject of this thread, D'Souza, strikes me as exactly this sort of D'Ouchebag.
I do appreciate that you seem to understand that religion has been responsible for an enormous amount of judgment and condemnation over the centuries, perhaps atheists have simply learned what works...
Since you presented yourself as a representative of the religious converts we get here, it's only natural you would (rightly or wrongly) end up on the receiving end of some level of incivility. And to be honest, I haven't really seen you put forth much in the way of arguments that haven't yet been responded to. You just don't like the responses you've received, nor have you been able to rebut them.
If your only point has been about civility, you're really in the wrong place.
Posted by: John White | November 11, 2009 12:18 AM
I must admit that I pushed buttons that need not have been pushed. I should certainly not have given the impression that I wanted to evangelize a group of people who do not hold to my faith.
I said things incorrectly.
What I should have said was that ad hominem attacks only weaken a person's arguments and that I thought these comments had strayed in that direction too much. The article itself, calling Dinesh a "little goober" began this sort of ad hominem attack.
Please believe me that I was not offended by people's personal attacks of me. I only thought that they were uncivil and mis-directed the debate. The reasoned points made against a believe in the irrational and immaterial were certainly well-founded and I appreciated the force of those arguments.
It's not that I got my sensitivities ruffled as such. I am just tired of the "take no prisoners" approach to so much of the public debate these days: conservative/liberal Republican/Democratic. When people speak reasonably, I find that very refreshing.
Posted by: Hector Brenes | November 12, 2009 9:53 PM
What I find astonishing is that Dinesh D'Souza has any public prominence whatsoever. He's totally a 4th-rate thinker, and that's if it's even possible to put thinker and Dinesh together in a sentence and remain coherent. Yet, he writes a completely non-starter of a book and then even serious-minded Greta Van Susteren invites him to her show! Give me a break! What kind of dislocated world are we living in these days?
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
November 15, 2009 8:52 AM
John White, you showed exactly why we are rude, lewd and crude. You wanted a polite discussion, but you would never discuss anything. You just wanted to complain about our tone. That makes you a concern troll, and concern trolls are treated badly to drive them off. If you wanted a discussion, you needed to just say "this is what I believe, and this is the evidence why." Not hard, but direct, and it will require you to defend yourself as we will question what you say. I don't think you really wanted to have to defend your ideas, but rather just wanted us to applaud you for even expressing them. That is another form of troll which we drive off. The insipid boring ignorant troll.Posted by: Knockgoats | November 15, 2009 9:20 AM
does this set of comments show people at their best? Has materialistic rationalism shown itself here to have been better than murderous terrorism? - John White
Did he really compare calling people names with murdering them? What sort of moral imbecile does that?
Oh, right, he's a godbot.
Posted by: MKhan | December 22, 2009 9:50 PM
The world (but not the universe) can end because of earthquake, tsunami, meteor strike, nuclear war, supernova, and some other natural or man made disaster. These are however just local ends that have nothing to do with The Day of Judgment. End will also not happen on any arbitrary date like December 2012. The end of the universe is an entirely different phenomenon that is built into the laws of the universe by the creator. The contraction of the universe with reversal of time and gravity will commence the beginning of the end which will last for thousands and possibly millions of years. We will be removed from the regressing effects of reversed time as we come back alive in our own time. We will the be taken across many dimensions to beyond this universe. A beautiful natural mechanism that is based on the laws of physics will cause all that to happen. This real end has nothing to do with wishful thinking and predictions of priests or shamans.
Posted by: mlowrance
|
February 19, 2011 10:22 AM
Two things: So you haven't read this book, and you are reviewing it based merely on a Newsweek article? That seems ignorant to me.
Second thing, Zeno said,"I would have a lot more respect for Dinesh D'Souza (as opposed to the zero that I have now) if he would just stop dicking around with inane "proofs" of God, free will, and the afterlife and simply say, "I take it on faith." Fine. Pretty insubstantial, but a lot better than pseudo-logic and zero-content arguments. Just admit you're hoping it's all true."
Well, he does admit to this. In the first or second chapter of the book he says that believers in an afterlife as well as athiests have no empirical evidence. In both cases it is a matter of faith. He asserts that while believers say it is a matter of faith, athiests deny it is a matter of faith and seem to project that they have proof/evidence, but they do not.
I think if you all are going to be so hard on a book, maybe you should read it first and then give your rants.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM
|
February 19, 2011 10:28 AM
First prove he says anything new in his book, rather than just rehashing old ideas. He has been mouthing off stupidity for years, and hasn't had a new idea in a long time.Posted by: David Marjanović
|
February 19, 2011 10:41 AM
We have the principle of parsimony.
We win.
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine
|
February 19, 2011 10:55 AM
mlowrance,
OK, allow me to point out that D'Souza goes looking for the roots of Obama's rage in the fact that his father was Kenyan. Dude, I've spent more fucking time in Kenya than Obama!
D'Souza is just flat stupid. I don't need to get beyond the premise of his silly-assed writings to know he's an idiot. Hell, all I have to do is see the name Dinesh D'Souza and I know that if I open the cover, I will be treated to arguments with all the consistency of warm puppy shit!
Life is just to short to waste reading idiots like Dinesh D'Souza.
Posted by: Nightjar
|
February 19, 2011 10:57 AM
So, he does admit there is no evidence of an afterlife. Misleading title, then. And pretty pointless book, I imagine. Like if I were to write a book titled Invisible Pink Unicorn - The Evidence where I'd sate that there is no evidence for her existence but there also isn't evidence for her non-existence, so there, nyah.
Great argument I've got here for her existence, isn't it?
No. It doesn't take faith to not believe in something for which there is no evidence. You make the claim, you provide the evidence. It is reasonable for me to reject your claim if you don't provide any evidence. (But it wouldn't be if you did provide evidence and I merely ignored or denied it, much like creationists do.) I'm not asserting anything, you are.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
|
February 19, 2011 11:07 AM
Also, faith is brain rot.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
|
February 19, 2011 11:20 AM
I have heard D'Souza speak many times. When his utterances take the form of the spoken word, they are incoherent and indicate that the contents of his braincase are not working properly. Admittedly, there is a remote possibility that whatever aphasia plagues D'Souza does not effect his written word. However, there are many good books to read, and the probability that D'Souza presents anything intelligible in the printed medium is vanishingly small.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes
|
February 19, 2011 11:22 AM
I have heard D'Souza speak many times. When his utterances take the form of the spoken word, they are incoherent and indicate that the contents of his braincase are not working properly. Admittedly, there is a remote possibility that whatever aphasia plagues D'Souza does not effect his written word. However, there are many good books to read, and the probability that D'Souza presents anything intelligible in the printed medium is vanishingly small.
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine
|
February 19, 2011 11:28 AM
mlowrance: "Well, he does admit to this. In the first or second chapter of the book he says that believers in an afterlife as well as athiests have no empirical evidence."
Ah, so does chapter 3 say, "Oh, never mind."