Miscellaneous inanities

If it makes you feel any better, I got this editorial published in our school newspaper last week. There's some hope for undergraduate Biology students. Just shows you can't trust those darn private schools ;P

http://purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=7635

Are you sure that U of Chicago student's letter isn't a parody? It sure reads like one, this line in particular: "Dawkins insists that our beliefs should be based on evidence, specifically that which can be tested and definitively proven by the scientific method."

Holy crap, the audacity to insist that our beliefs be based on evidence! ;)

I think our young critic has confused scholarship with obedience to dogma.

no.

the young critic has merely done what all the other religiots do on a regular basis:

projected dogma ONTO scholarship.

in his own mind, it's you who are confused, of course.

they mostly are unable to see past their own projections, and none of their peers seem willing to help them with that, unfortunately. Most likely because all their perceived peers share the same delusions, and project in the same fashion.

Geez, when I was an undergrad at uchicago, I had to read Hume's _Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion_ which is pretty much all anybody needs to read regarding "Intelligent Design" Creationism.

Standards appear to have slipped.

"That you or even a majority of the people in the world find an absence of god uncomfortable does not mean that god therefore exists."

My response to that kind of statement is always the same. If the method by which the universe got here (which seems to have happened years before *I* got here) depends on what I choose, based on what makes me happy, then apprently there IS a god - me.

Religion is egocentrism. The inability to deal with the idea that you aren't the center of the universe.

I haven't even finished reading yet, but I could not restrain myself from commenting:

the reality of the supernatural

What a contradiction in terms! How do these people justify this nonsense in their minds?

Pam:

you mean this?

http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm

now everyone can read it who hasn't yet done so.

"A single dandelion, considered from a strictly scientific, analytical perspective, contains more unimaginable complexity and spellbinding design brilliance -- from its atomic and molecular design to its cellular and plant structure -- than all the manmade supercomputers in the entire world combined."

Haha. I love the "Argument from Wide Eyes." Whenever I hear any form of this argument, I can almost visualize the way it convinces the person. You can see his eyes going so wide at the contemplation of incomprehensible aspects of complexity in things as his agape mouth slurps up the drool and he finally manages to utter "Wowwwwwwwwww. I thinks I knows how that could be....must be GOD!"

"My eyes widen to size of dinner plates and I'm spellbound by how little I can think, therefore God exists."

then apprently there IS a god - me.

I think you'll find that it's me. :))

It also leads someone with an open heart and mind to the unmistakable conclusion...

Ah, my favourite circular reason for belief: If you open your heart and have faith in God, you'll easily see how the evidence all points to God.

Fuck, but the religious are arrogant assholes.

Hey, this is MY blog, and therefore I must be god. And if you disagree with me, I'll have you cast into the darkness...banned!

The arrogance of the truly devout is something amazing, isn't it?

"It's hard for most of us to face such a fearful world without some kind of faith to sustain us, without a traditional formula through which to express our longings for peace and safety."

Or that formula could just be another layer of BS atop the normal human squabbles for resources. As Marvin the Paranoid Android said, "Life is bad enough without having to invent any more of it."

"I could not find content in a landscape whose horizon held no churches or in a civilization whose literature was purged of any reference to a divine being; whose art had blotted out the nativities, crucifixions, saints and angels; and whose music contained no intimations of immortality. And I believe the vast majority of people share such a view."

Frankly, I think art could certainly do with fewer crucifixions. I mean seriously, ick.

"He [Phillip Pullman] wants to denigrate Christianity. He wants to sell atheism to kids. This is not me talking, it's what he said. That's why we put together a booklet on this."

...to sell Catholicism to kids. Can these people see beyond the end of their noses at all?

'It's hard for most of us to face such a fearful world without some kind of faith to sustain us, without a traditional formula through which to express our longings for peace and safety.'

Wimps. Maybe the big bad world wouldn't be so scary if you stopped believing in invisible boogeymen, and took a science course, or several, and learned how reality really works. I'd be scared too if all I had was the bible to go on.

So the Golden Compass is EVIL™ because it pushes a religious agenda, you mean like how say the Chronicles of Narnia does the same thing? I wonder if ever occurs to the assholes that their own compulsive two faced lying is why Christianity is in the shape it is? Probably it does but they could careless because they don't believe it anymore than an atheist does.

The link to that first one (the Chicago student) gives me a 404, but from what I've read here his argument doesn't seem to be a creationist one. Instead, it looks like The Argument from Beauty combined with The Argument from Unfalsifiability, a combination which is popular with the moderates and liberals who accept that evolution happened.

You see, God is even more likely to exist if evolution happened, because the fact that things we find beautiful and amazing evolved over time through a thoroughly natural process is completely inexplicable unless someone made them beautiful and amazing for us. Beauty and the sense of beauty cannot be explained as "material." Evolution fills you with awe? There you go, then.

For added to this is the the smug conviction that there is absolutely no scientific finding whatsoever which counts against the supernatural. Instead, the more surprising and interesting the natural explanation, the more someone with an "open heart and mind" should appreciate God and see the supernatural behind it somehow. You always start with God, and God can't lose. Special creation? God. Evolution? God. Steady state? God. Big Bang? God. You're not reasoning towards a conclusion, you're retrofitting reasoning to reinforce feelings. It means nothing to say that science "supports" the existence of God if there is no state of affairs that you're willing to claim would -- or should -- count against it.

Looks to me like the student's coming at the issue from the same angle as people who tell you that the best example of a God-demonstrating miracle is "a baby." What kind of monster doesn't like babies?

It is a good sign if the fundies are worried. Their often stated plan is to destroy the US government, set up a theocacy, and head on back to the dark ages. Oddly enough, they controlled the US government between 2000-2006 and made a hash of things.

There is now a definite backlash and they are collecting on what they have accomplished. One recent poll says that 49% of the US population is sick and tired of Xians trying to force their beliefs on the population. The rise of militant atheists is just another symptom. Hopefully if this continues and who knows if it will, then 2010 won't look a lot like 1510.

More from a recent post of mine on another thread.
***********************************
The biggest enemy of Xianity isn't atheists. It is Xians.

From the Freethinker link:

Barna Groups' David] Kinnaman says non-Christians' biggest complaints about the faith are not immediately theological: Jesus and the Bible get relatively good marks. Rather, he sees resentment as focused on perceived Christian attitudes. Nine out of ten outsiders found Christians too "anti-homosexual," and nearly as many perceived it as "hypocritical" and "judgmental." Seventy-five percent found it "too involved in politics."

I've always found the fundie Death cults to be repulsive. Who would want to associate with a group of hating, murderous, voluntarily ignorant, liars? Looks like I'm not the only one.

There is a backlash against these guys. Hopefully it will prevent them from taking over the US government again and trying to set up their silly hell on earth theocracy.

Mainstream Xian commentators have pointed out that the death cults stand for 3 things, antigay, antiabortion, and taking over the government so they can ram their wingnut beliefs down our throats. They have thrown out anything that is uplifting, benign, or humanistic about the religion.

Ultimately the cultists will do the religion some lasting damage. As the book says, "As you sow, so shall you reap."

The arrogance of the truly devout is something amazing, isn't it?

*sigh*

it's not arrogance, necessarily, but it IS always projection.

arrogance can be rationalized from projection, but really, I seriously doubt these people would define themselves as "arrogant".

so don't confuse the two.

... It's really NOT arrogance that maintains religious worldviews.

projection and denial do.

I'm getting a 404 at that U Chicago student paper link. Mind you, sounds like there wasn't much there, either way...

The University of Chicago rant was a dead link. I found it here

"Frankly, I think art could certainly do with fewer crucifixions. I mean seriously, ick."

Hey, just consider yourself lucky that Jesus wasn't drawn and quartered.

Paul Johnson may be eminent and an Oxford graduate, but he seems to find it difficult to frame an argument. He does not directly charge atheism with being destructive per se, but he strikes a backhand blow by saying that 20th century witnessed huge numbers of deaths at the hands of totalitarian regimes ("all atheistic"), but then vaguely mentions the current terrorist cells without saying that they are at the opposite extreme, firm believers in an afterlife and a god-given mandate to kill. He misses that Nazi Germany was still largely Lutheran and Catholic, that the Catholic Church never bestirred itself to protest the mass killings by Germany during that war, that the brutal governments of the Russian tsars were Russian Orthodox to the core, and so on.

For me, a particular memory illustrates the problem. On an early Sunday morning not so long ago, I observed a very agitated man in a suit fluttering about the parking lot that a local Baptist church shared with a couple of businesses. He was buttonholing people to identify the owner of an old black Cadillac that had inexplicably been left in a space next to the church. I thought it rather unworthy of an elderly Christian gentleman, myself, but he was adamant and patrolled the coffee shop nearby to search out the miscreant. I reflected at that point that an unpleasant person didn't change when they became Christian. Despite my wife's believe that Christianity can change someone's life, I haven't observed it myself. After the first flush of hormones is over, whatever you were, you become again. A sadistic tyrant who has been baptized is still the same person, only wetter and perhaps more committed to a twisted view of his own importance, as with the elderly Baptist deacon. Having churches on the horizon, as Paul Johnson wishes, does not reduce pain and anguish, but only gives it a coat of varnish. Those who hurt others are not deterred by their faith, but frequently are emboldened by it. I see no distinction in compassion between the officially atheistic ideologues of the Soviet era and the officially evangelical ideologues of our own White House.

Complexity is not the same as design. Unguided forces can generate awesome amounts of complexity[...]

Witness, for instance, Jovian weather patterns. They're quite complex, and yet there are meta-stable features as well. Attributing the banding, or the "spot", to design, though, would be an exercise in foolishness.

Which makes me pretty sure it's already been done by some IDiot somewhere, sigh.

A little poking around at the U Chig site produced this URL for that letter:

Still not worth reading...

-- CV

Let's try that again...

http://maroon.uchicago.edu/online_edition/viewpoints/2007/10/08/dawkins…

Here is a link that should work.

This Opinion paper has some other fun quotes in it:

Even the Wikipedia article on The God Delusion presents a deluge of notable philosophers, scholars, and even scientists who disagree with Dawkins's positions.

This doesn't mean a thing. Wikipedia articles should contain criticism of ideas put forward by the subject of the article. That is simply part of their NPOV policy. It means nothing in terms of whether those criticisms are accurate.

To give an example of one of Dawkins's logically flawed arguments, one need look no further than the fourth chapter of The God Delusion. One of his main claims is that because the universe is so enormous and contains so much information and substance, God must also be enormously complex. This complexity predisposes God to extreme improbability. I, along with a host of analytic philosophers, do not understand why this has to be so. Must God be infinitely complex to have designed something more complex than himself? Why does his simplicity prevent him from doing certain things? Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, Handel composed the Messiah, and Gustave Eiffel designed and built the magnificent Eiffel Tower. In each of these cases--and there are countless more--one person produced something so much more intricate than himself that the world still marvels at his ability and vision.

Bwahahahahaha! He means to say that Michelangelo's work is more intricate than Michelangelo himself and the same for the work of Handel and Eiffel? Apparently Kyle Lee has never taken an anatomy class or a neurology class. If he wants to claim that the works men were intricate fine, but I assure you, the brains of those men are far more intricate and complex than their works, which is exactly what lends credence to Dawkin's argument regarding God's complexity.

God must have had the capacity to conceptualize his goal as well as the means to reach it, which strongly suggests that his means of conceptualization are at least as complex as his creation...which makes one ask the question: "If complexity necessitates a designer, which designer designed God?"

When one realizes that this question leads to an infinite regress, the idea that complexity necessitates design should be thrown in the waste bin.

You'd think that someone who writes the Courtier's argument as such:

If he wants some rational arguments for faith, I would encourage Dawkins to read some St. Thomas Aquinas before vomiting up his next accusation against religion.

would at least have some substance to back his condescension, but alas, he does not.

"A single dandelion..."

I have to confess that dandelions, butterflies, birds... you name it, also fill me with admiration, wonder, and awe. However, the conclusion I reach is utterly different - not that some super-being designed and created them, but that these, like me, are the result of eons of natural development. It truly is a miracle.

On the other hand, the world's supercomputers are another form of miracle - the results of the imaginings of a naturally-evolved organism. How clever is that?

All of this is, in the true sense of the word, awesome, and why these people cannot see and accept that without reference to religion simply baffles me. There are more than enough miracles already, without having to make them up.

"I seriously doubt these people would define themselves as "arrogant".

Well, they wouldn't define themselves as delusional either, but that's the problem - they don't have the self-awareness to be able to come even close to defining themselves accurately.

It may not be arrogance in the co-worker from hell or posturing jerk in the corner bar kind of way, but it is a kind of childish self-centeredness and arrogance. Like a 2 year old who knows in their heart that their house is the center of the universe and mommy and daddy exist solely to serve.

It's the kind of arrogance and self-centeredness that comes from emotional immaturity.

Oh yeah, I know I'm on the right track. These guys are mistaking the process of scientific and technological progress which has dominated their lives, with the natural process of evolution, which they understand not at all.
Transistor radios did not "evolve" from tube radios. But we refer to the process of technological progress which took us from tubes to transistors (and on and on) as an "evolution". And somebody had to design that first tube radio.
But at the same time, every time they fly, every time they go to the doctor, they trust this process with thewir life, but about this one thing, it's completely wrong.
Sad bunch.

Of course, now I'm wishing I could paint so I could do a series of alternate execution-method Jesus paintings.

Not to offend the religious, that's to easy... more of just an experiment in taking an image that's been seen so often that it can't be looked at objectively and reasserting that aspect of it.

Ever have the experience where whatever it is in your brain that interprets the written word shuts down for a few seconds? And you look at the word and instead just see the shape and think "'duck', holy crap, that looks so strange, I never noticed that before! Sounds strange too!"

yes, I know I'm rambling.

issues a rallying cry to atheists everywhere to take up the cross

This cracked me up.

Not living in the US I may well be mistaken but I was under the impression that the University of Chicago was supposed to be held in high regard. After all was it not in an old squash court there that Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear reactor ?

Have you ever met a really happy kid who is an atheist? I mean, give me a break.

Ah, barstool icebreakers! Verily, the entrons of empty rhetoric.
.

"Frankly, I think art could certainly do with fewer crucifixions. I mean seriously, ick."

The subject is indeed grim, but tens of thousands of human beings were crucified in Roman times, and hundreds of thousands have been executed in other horrible ways since, up to those being killed with electric drills in Iraq this year. It is not a bad thing that serious art should remind us of one exemplar of all these victims, just as Anne Frank stands for all the victims of the Holocaust.

After all, assuming Jesus was just a wandering preacher and not a supernatural being, the poor guy did get crucified for no good reason except that wandering preachers were suspect. If you want to, you could remember Spartacus and his companions when you see a crucifiction painting.

ooh... well, I'm actually encouraged now about The Golden Compass. I was afraid it would be too watered down. Now if the religious are starting to get up in arms about it, I'll be glad to go... and take my unhappy atheist kids.

I always find it ironic when I keep encountering the same two arguments:
1.) atheism is depressing: it demeans humanity, removes beauty, takes away purpose, destroys hope, and makes people unhappy.
2.) atheism is arrogant and self-centered, and atheists only believe it because it's so easy and makes them feel so good.

Come on. Pick a horse and ride it, guys.

"There are more than enough miracles already, without having to make them up."

And so, to paraphrase Marvin the Paranoid Android, "Life is miraculous enough without having to invent more of it."

*smiley smile*

"Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, Handel composed the Messiah, and Gustave Eiffel designed and built the magnificent Eiffel Tower. In each of these cases--and there are countless more--one person produced something so much more intricate than himself that the world still marvels at his ability and vision."

Complexity arising from simplicity? NAW!

Yeah, I know how they'd refute my little "gotcha". Complexity arises from simplicity plus pixie dust.

1.) atheism is depressing: it demeans humanity, removes beauty, takes away purpose, destroys hope, and makes people unhappy.
2.) atheism is arrogant and self-centered, and atheists only believe it because it's so easy and makes them feel so good.

Sastra, you have a talent for boiling arguments down to their constituent parts and representing the claims so clearly and succinctly.

"lumpenkookery"? What a great word!

I feel like I'm ten years old again and just want to keep saying it over and over.

So psychology, sociology, anthropology, anatomy, physiology, embryology, neurobiology, and just about any other scientific discipline that examines humanity is a "religion".

Does that mean any pro-evolution organization can apply for tax-free status as a religious organization? Who wants to bet how supportive IDists and Creationists would be of that move?

If he wants some rational arguments for faith, I would encourage Dawkins to read some St. Thomas Aquinas before vomiting up his next accusation against religion.

Well, Thomas Aquinas wrote in Summa Theologica that heretics should be "... exterminated thereby from the world by death".

I'd take the god delusion, for all its faults, any day of the week over ramblings like that.

MORRIS: Well, this is the point John, you know coming to the belief that there is no such thing as transcendence, there is no such thing as heaven, there is no such thing as destiny, that's a big deal. Now if that's an issue that adults come to in a very serious way, it should be presented in a serious way among adults. Putting a PG rating on it I think is saying this is a conversation that's worthy of kids. And that's my problem with this film.

I love this. It should be presented to adults in a very serious way. Except for those poor kids that have to be indoctrinated from a very small age. Go through the sacraments during elementary, middle and junior high schools. All those "youth ministries".

"Have you ever met a really happy kid who is an atheist?"

Hey, I'm happy. Bunch of lumpenkookerous nitwits...

You know what screams "happy"? An image of a guy wearing a crown of thorns, nailed to a couple of boards, and bleeding to death. Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

Kupelian:

"So I tried, just as an experiment mind you, to conceptualize the existence of the fantastic creation I was beholding, yet without a Creator. I consciously tried to adopt an atheistic worldview, even for just a minute, to see what it was like.
What I got was a headache, a psychic shock, a momentary taste of another realm - an empty, prideful, appalling dimension of hell-on-earth, masquerading as enlightenment and freedom."

the ol' Argument from Eeewwww-yyeechhh.

Here's a pair of wacky Christians. Bill Donohue and his friend, Father Jonathan Morris are frothing at the mouth over the new movie, "The Golden Compass."

I heard most of the anti-religious content had been stripped out of the movie. But then, if they cared for the reality of any particular situation, they wouldn't be sanctimonious pricks (after all, they've convinced themselves that they're being persecuted even though they're in the majority, and if they can convince themselves of that, they can convince themselves that there's a blood-red pentagram on the face of the moon that was hand carved there by Charles Darwin himself).

So I tried, just as an experiment mind you, to conceptualize the existence of the fantastic creation I was beholding, yet without a Creator. I consciously tried to adopt an atheistic worldview, even for just a minute, to see what it was like.

That's a transgression of at least three different Bible verses that I'm aware of. This apostate is going right to hell.

"So I tried, just as an experiment mind you, to conceptualize the existence of the fantastic creation I was beholding, yet without a Creator. I consciously tried to adopt an atheistic worldview, even for just a minute, to see what it was like."

Uh-oh. He forgot to put on Julia Sweeney's 'No-God Glasses' first.

If they're going to ban 'The Golden Compass' they better get rid of 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe' too.

Both of which I liked as a child.

Have you ever met a really happy kid who is an atheist? I mean, give me a break. We have to spend our time helping kids become happy people.

Happy like Bill Donohue? Because he strikes me as the kind of guy who goes home every night to get loaded on a bottle of scotch before thinking long and hard about blowing his brains out. If not the latter, than certainly the former, and it doesn't matter because his pancreas is bound to quit soon anyway.

For instance, instead of using evolution and natural selection as examples of a harsh, Godless reality, he should realize that the complexity, intricacy, and beauty of a living organism further reinforce the reality of the supernatural.

So... what doesn't? Name something that doesn't "further reinforce the reality of the supernatural".

Everything does if you want it to! OMG, lol. :P

I remember reading a Paul Johnson article in the 90s, describing how poor people were poor because they're all stupid and/or incompetent (his words), and while sterilization could be used to stop them breeding together he personally couldn't advocate that because of his christianity.

Such a nice man.

OK so far...it's true. A lot of people would like to promote rationalism and it's close relative, atheism, to kids.

Okay I'll remember that next time I'm at the grocer's. Hahahha. :P

Testing; I tried to comment earlier and got a repeated error message.

Trying again. My last comment got posted. So I re-wrote my previous attempt, and got the error message.

Did my comment fry the software's brain?

I thought it was innocent enough.

Third and final try, including the previous, booted comment:

And I got the error message again.

I'm too stubborn for my own good. Here, (I hope) is my comment.

Nope.

Let's see: "Iffy" vocab -- God, critter, ain't

Try that, see what happens.

I give up.

Hey, just consider yourself lucky that Jesus wasn't drawn and quartered.

Or skinned alive like Mani was.

For instance, instead of using evolution and natural selection as examples of a harsh, Godless reality, he should realize that the complexity, intricacy, and beauty of a living organism further reinforce the reality of the supernatural. It also leads someone with an open heart and mind to the unmistakable conclusion that the cell or molecule under observation had to have been designed before it ever evolved to its current state.

Two friends of mine recently published an analysis of the comments and responses to Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds anatomy exhibits, and it is appalling how many of the comments echo the sentiments posted above. Many of the visitors seemed to think that human anatomy, as displayed in the exhibit, is undeniable proof of an intelligent designer/creator, and that human anatomy is so remarkable and different that we cannot possibly be related to chimpanzees or horses. A few visitors demanded that von Hagens produce an equivalent exhibit on the "anatomy of the soul or the spirit". Whatever that means.

Ugh. *sigh*

If he wants some rational arguments for faith, I would encourage Dawkins to read some St. Thomas Aquinas before vomiting up his next accusation against religion.

I dunno about Aquinas, but I suggest the religious folks read St. Augustine's On the Literal Meaning of Genesis before they spout off about science -

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]

Well, here's adding to the inanity. And just to avoid the rush, I'll post it first: it looks like Hitler to me.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_a…

I believe that religion is a central part of our civilization.

The interesting thing about this statement is that it need not be couched as a "belief" when it is a verifiably true statement. No atheist would argue this point.

War, genocide, slavery, rape, and oppression are also central parts of civilization. As are the arts, architecture, and music. And???

I could not find content in a landscape ...

Does he mean "content" as in "events, information, principal substance or physical details", or "contentment" as in "the state of being satisfied"?

I assume it is the latter but the former would be even more interesting and revealing.

Susannah: all of your comments seem to be coming through just fine.

I have to confess that dandelions, butterflies, birds... you name it, also fill me with admiration, wonder, and awe.

I might add that the U.S. Tax Code fills me with dread, horror, nausea, and a creeping migraine ... I do not take this as proof that it was composed by the Devil. No, it was cobbled together over the last howevermany years by a series of jury-rigged addenda. Much like a dandelion. (Where, in this analogy, "congress" plays the part of "mutation" and the IRS "natural selection".)

If devils existed, though, I bet they would write something similar to the Tax Code. Either that or it's God's way of fucking with me.

As a free-thinker, I do not rule out that possibilty, however remote. It sure *feels* true!

Oh, and, I should say: just because *I* can't understand the tax code (or choose not to try) doesn't mean it's not understandable by someone somewhere.

In fact, I have paid those people a lot of money to figure it out for me.

Much like the government pays me a very small amount of money to help figure out how life works. (Thanks!)

If you're testing hypotheses and making predictions and collecting observations of the real world, you're probably doing science, no matter what the subject.

So theology ought to be taking its cues from xenobiology. I can dig it.

Hmmm. Looks like Bozo the Clown facing right. The pointy thing is his hair, not an upraised hand.

BTW, Father Morris must never have met any atheist kids at all. I have a couple of really happy ones. OTOH, I keep seeing news stories about kids who became very unhappy servicing the church. . .

One little peek into the xian mind ought to sum it all up. Their second commandment says "no graven images." Then you walk into their tax-exempt meeting place, and what do you see? Statues of Jesus on the cross. Stained glass windows showing the life of Jesus. They can't even understand and follow their own simplest rules, and they think they are qualified to comment on COMPLEX issues?

Never mind the lumpenkookery of the Christian ideologue, though...
Yeah, I can't make gravy or custard, either...

About atheism being a "religion" itself: some nimwits were in a case that went to the supreme court regarding "secular humanism" being taught in the schools. The supreme court ruled that secular humanism is NOT a religion, of course. My wingnut christian brother is a lawyer and tried to throw a similar argument at me once and I told him I agreed with the supreme court that humanism is not a religion at all. I'm guessing he was counting on me not knowing about that case because he dropped the argument at that point.

I'd just like to comment on the U of C student's innocuous mention of the long tradition of atheism. Atheism is not a tradition. It is often not passed on, forcibly, as religious beliefs are from parents to children. In my case, and that of every atheist I know, we began with a default belief in god, just like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and then found problems with what they were telling us. An inconsistency here, a conflict against intuition there, suspicion grew, and little by little we came to the completely original conclusion that it's all a lie.

In my case, this happened not only before I knew anything about evolution, or even the scientific method, it occurred before I'd ever heard of atheism. It was only several years later that I realized I wasn't alone. Bear in mind this was also a few years before the Internet, so I wasn't exposed to the logical arguments counter to theism, but had to devise some of them myself. It was the inconsistency of my beliefs that hinted me something was wrong, not any outside arguments.

There's a reason more introspective, curious, and naturally mathematically/logically proficient people tend to fall off from religion. It's natural (or social) selection. Theist populations retain those who are less likely to turn on their brains. In our technological world, survival (employability) of the fittest will probably lean towards non-theists, as a general trend. We'll take over eventually.

Donohue's "no happy atheist kids" argument falls a little flat given the (admittedly anecdotal) number of lapsed Catholics I've known in my life who cite their experiences as Catholic children as the primary reason for their lapses. I think I've known more lapsed Catholics than Catholics.

Bill, buddy, if Catholic children are so happy, why in the world is your church experiencing a crisis in retention among the young? If they're so happy, why do they bail and why don't they come back immediately? You'd probably say it's temptation and peer pressure, but how do you tempt somebody with misery? Certainly, Bill, you threaten them with misery -- well, more misery, I guess would be accurate -- but there's no real evidence to back you up on that. You'd probably also say that however miserable they claim they are as Catholics, and however much happier they claim they are after leaving the Church, that they're deceiving themselves. Just like all those homosexuals: you know they're really much happier living a lie, don't you, Bill? Because, you see, Bill, you are defining "happiness" as "doing whatever Bill Donohue wants me to do," and that is because you, Bill, are an asshole.

Good day, sir.

PZ:
"Susannah: all of your comments seem to be coming through just fine."

Yes, they do. As long as I don't include the 3 or 4 paragraphs commenting on your post.

Every time I put those in, I got an error message. Take them out; and -- no problem!

Unless they posted, and I can't see them. Because they don't show up here.

Humor me for a moment:

I find ALOT of creationists make a statement along the lines of "It is obvious that cells are designed." They then compare them to watches and other things that are designed, with the inference that if it wasn't designed, it would look undesigned. A while back, Behe made a statement similar to this. After thinking about it, I wrote this:

0) "From computer programs to frogs, there are actually pretty clear indicators whether something is the product of design or not." - Behe
1) If there is a creator, it designed everything.
2) If everything is designed, no example of something that is not designed exists.
3) If there are no things that are not designed, there is no way to tell what properties an undesigned thing has.
4) Therefore statement 0 is false.

Now... Assail my logic! ^.^

#75 sil-chan, you're right on with that. To them, everything is designed. Even the evolutionary "pathways" they are always complaining about are designed. Those guys really are so full of it that it truly is mind boggling. Your logic indeed is unassailable. :P

I like how Kyle Lee points out in the beginning how he is a "senior in science". I wonder what science in particular...

I am a senior in chemistry, and all I could smell was dreck though out his op-ed.

Now, feel free to read the hippie version of the chicago op-ed ;-)

its molecular design

Thanks for that. I was getting worried that the creationists had forgotten about chemistry. Biology gets all the attention.

I find it telling that The Golden Compass mostly flew under the fundamentalists' radar when it was "only" a book; not until it was a movie did they find out what it was about.

I think the Paul Johnson argument deserves a fuller response (or perhaps I need direction to some good already existing responses).

In my experience, there are a few freaks who actually believe fully, but the vast majority of practicing, colluding, worshipping etc people do so for the (perceived) coziness, and will respond to empirical argument about details by saying it makes them feel warm to participate in something traditional and full of sentiment, bonding, music etc. I never know how to reply when someone says, more or less, "I'm not a fundamentalist, so what does it hurt if I go to church and teach my kids about religion etc if it makes me feel good."

Guys, according to this
letter to the editor response by a Unitarian Universalist student at UChicago, the author of the original column was a fourth-year biology major. UChicago is doing the field proud.

It does always startle me how seriously Paul Johnson is taken by certain people across the pond. There may well be no second acts in American lives, but Anglo-American lives seem to be rife with them.

He used to be quite popular with the British right for his long books and essays decrying humanism and liberalism, usually on the basis that they were propagated by people whose sex lives didn't come up to his own high religious standards. Everyone who's read his work will have their own favourite kooky argument from him - my own is that because Andy Warhol positioned himself against traditional values in Western art, he should be considered as equivalent to Osama bin Laden. (Is this some of that "moral equivalence" that right-wingers are always decrying? Naaaaaah, can't be)

Despite writing such numbing idiocy, he did have a strong following, and was one of the endless stream of cranks and wackos invited through the doors of Downing Street during the early years of the Blair government. Unfortunately his reputation took a bit of a hit in about 1998, when it was revealed that this moral warrior paid ladies of the night a substantial sum to spank him and tell him that he was a naughty boy. To his credit, his response to this was excellent; "We are all sinners. Well, I am, at least."

Poor Paul was more or less laughed out of town in this country. The next I hear of him, he's getting a medal off President Bush. I can only assume that Americans have higher standards of what a really juicy scandal is - anything less than two wetsuits and you're not interested.

"Have you ever met a really happy kid who is an atheist?"

I've encountered them countless times, every time I see an infant, toddler and child BEFORE they are troubled by religious superstition, without exception. None of these little humans have any religion whatsoever. That's REAL atheism, not the kind that theists insist must be defined wholly in opposition to their brand of thinking. Those kids who are repeatedly exposed to the infection inevitably develop a certain melancholy. Those who aren't remain far happier...until they realize what monumental lunacy in the world they're up against.

I've never met ANYONE who has been swallowed by religion who isn't seriously unhappy. Acting happy doesn't count. In fact, the act itself is a clear indication of a deep-seated despondency. They're all terrified of dying, and it shows in how they need to huddle together for mutual support.

It bears repeating every once and awhile: religion is the original terrorism.

I would like to remind Mr Jones that iconoclasm is also a religious phenomenon.

Mr. Kupelian's exceedingly strange assertion...

"Any theory/philosophy -- especially an unprovable one -- having to do with explaining the origin, destiny and nature of man is, by definition, religious. If you don't get that, you're not thinking."

...and PZ's sensible response:

"So psychology, sociology, anthropology, anatomy, physiology, embryology, neurobiology, and just about any other scientific discipline that examines humanity is a "religion". Cute. It's an awfully inclusive definition, but I don't think Mr Kupelian is doing any thinking himself."

Perhaps Mr. Kupelian just forgot to finish his sentence with two little words: "LIKE ME".

One boggles at why religion might be exempt from the qualification of "unprovable theory/philosophy".

I need a couple of aspirin.

"I seriously doubt these people would define themselves as "arrogant".

So, how we define ourselves = reality? Damn, I'm freakin' awesome!

That's REAL atheism

I dare say it's actually REAL agnosticism, but that's nitpicking :^)

I've never met ANYONE who has been swallowed by religion who isn't seriously unhappy. Acting happy doesn't count. In fact, the act itself is a clear indication of a deep-seated despondency. They're all terrified of dying, and it shows in how they need to huddle together for mutual support.

There is alot of truth in this comment. We are all often fearful and life throws curveballs from time to time. Often people turn to religion for the support they need and less so when they don't need said support.

It is often the case that the most unhappy are the msot religious. Although polls often show them as happier. I think the more drawn to religion someone is the more problems they may have internally.

RE: unhappy theists

A few years ago, I was visiting my sis-in-law and went to their church. The preacher kept talking about how, if your life is in despair, you can always count on God, and how turning to God can get you through hard times.

The question I kept thinking is, what if my life is NOT in despair? I mean, on the whole, things are pretty good. I have great, loving wife, a good job, cool-ass dogs, a great family, and in-laws whom I love. So what is there to be miserable about? Sure, we have bad days, but on the grand scheme, I can't complain.

But I'm listening to this dude ramble on about how bad life can be and wondering, is this really a problem? Do people really have such terrible lives? I look around the church, which is filled with all these young professionals (suberb of Chicago) with their little kids sitting next to them, and I'm wondering, are you folks really unhappy? Why?

Absolutely nothing the guy said resonated with me at all. None of the feelings he mentioned were familiar to me at all. I left wondering, am I the odd one because I don't hate my life? Because, apparently, the reason I need religion is because life sucks, and Jesus can get me through it.

And they accuse atheists of being unhappy.

Objection, your honor! Improper foundation.

Ms. Brown (#81) wrote:

I never know how to reply when someone says, more or less, "I'm not a fundamentalist, so what does it hurt if I go to church and teach my kids about religion etc if it makes me feel good."

I like to reply "Oh, I have no problem with religion as personal therapy, a sort of narrative or framework people use to make themselves feel or behave better. That's fine. It's just that so many people forget it's all playacting, you know? They start to take the stories or ideas like God literally, and think they're really true or they actually exist. They think it's serious. No, like you, I think truth means something, and it's important to keep in mind that the religious stuff is all symbols and myths. What really matters is how we live and treat one another. The God part is scientific nonsense but -- I agree -- it's useful and beautiful poetry. It all comes down to love, doesn't it?"

Say it with a bright smile and plenty of head nodding. It really throws them. They either have to argue that "no, it's actually about what's real" or they shut-the-f* up.

It's not so surprising that Christians see anger as a weakness.

One of the most repellant (and that is not too strong a word from my perspective) things about the religious crowd, especially evangelicals, is their unnatural preoccupation with 'JOY!!" They're obsessed with it. They're obsessed with feeling it, and exuding it, and spreading it to others so that they can be obsessed with it, too. And they're just as obsessed with stamping out all the emotions that they have been brainwashed into thinking are "negative". It's a childish and dishonest way of living life. And because religion tends to dull the brain, they can't understand that the ability to focus one's attention on something does not make it a gift from god, it makes it a diversion. Like being a Goth, or a sports fan, or Muslim or Hindu.

But, of course, stepping back and looking at the bigger picture is sinful--and the rapture might happen any minute!

Oh crap. My comment above was meant for the "Anger is a perfectly healthy emotion" post, but it seems to fit in with Sastra and Pablo's comments so I'll just leave it. Heh, I'm not even angry!

RambinDude:

Yeah, funny how it fits in either thread. It's almost like theists keep repeating themselves no matter what the subject. Or maybe that's us ;)

the same old story. for heaven's sake! lets do some math here...

1. god != religion.
2. religion - god = religion.
3. !god = atheism.
4. !religion = secular
5. !creationism = science + philosophy
6. !religious superstition = religious reform != atheism.

Hey, just consider yourself lucky that Jesus wasn't drawn and quartered.

Or skinned alive like Mani was.

That's REAL atheism

I dare say it's actually REAL agnosticism, but that's nitpicking :^)