godlessness
pharyngula | September 4, 2010Since it will be otherwise buried in the endless thread, I thought it might be a good idea to put this plea for help from someone calling themselves "EvolutionSkeptic" up top.
Hey, so some of you may remember me (one can hope). I found this thread that some people told me last time to find when I wanted to ask a question. Since I have one, I thought I'd check in. Hope everyone is doing well.
All right. I read "Why Evolution is True" and "The Greatest Show on Earth," as recommended by several of you. After that, I also started reading some of the stuff on Dawkins' site, because I really…
pharyngula | September 2, 2010Some good news: the online 'debate' between Dawkins and the religion editors of the Times can be read for free. It's a terrible format: it's just a chat window with people throwing questions at Dawkins, which he deftly slices out of the air with a samurai sword of reason. Here's one of the more coherent questions the pro-faith gummi bears tossed at him, which will give you an idea of the quality of the interrogation.
I just interviewed David Wilkinson, principal of St John's Durham and astrophysicist, and this is what he said (full interview at my Times blog Articles of Faith):
The science…
pharyngula | September 2, 2010Laplace, Hawking, same difference. In a completely unsurprising move, Stephen Hawking has made it clear that we have no need for the god hypothesis.
Modern physics leaves no place for God in the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded. Just as Darwinism removed the need for a creator in the sphere of biology, Britain's most eminent scientist argues that a new series of theories have rendered redundant the role of a creator for the Universe. In his forthcoming book, an extract from which is published exclusively in Eureka, published today with The Times, Professor Hawking sets…
pharyngula | August 31, 2010A reader, Sam, sent some fascinating excerpts from a court decision in 1824, Updegraph v. Commonwealth. It was a small case that prompted the judge to write a seventeen page furious rant, and reading it will make you realize what Glenn Beck's America would like to return to — no, thanks, I wouldn't like it.
This was a blasphemy trial. The guilty party (and yes, he was found guilty), had said this one terrible, awful, horrifying sentence:
"That the Holy Scriptures were a mere fable: That they were a contradiction, and that, although they contained a number of good things, yet they contained a…
pharyngula | August 29, 2010What dreadful price must we pay to be an atheist?
It seems that Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is feuding with Michael Dowd, the author of Thank God for Evolution, who endorses a kind of fuzzy spirituality that is mostly pro-science. I can't honestly say that I'm a fan of Dowd's approach — bite the bullet already, man, there's no need for even the concept of 'spirituality' — but I will say that a fuzzy faith is preferable to the cast-iron dogma of an old-school Baptist.
But here's the thing: without even trying, Al Mohler is hilarious.…
pharyngula | August 28, 2010It's feminist, atheist, science-loving Nina Hartley.
I haven't actually seen any of her movies, and I wouldn't recognize her if I passed her in the street, but I can still actually call her my favorite porn star, right?
Don't bother recommending any of her movies; my lust is entirely superficial and only for her brain, and I'm certain I'd prefer a conversation over lunch than seeing her naked. (Not to say anything derogatory about her body, of course, which I'm sure is just lovely.)
pharyngula | August 18, 2010The Secular Student Alliance is looking for cash, and they're having a fundraiser: check out the book Hemant is auctioning off. Somebody has scribbled all over it! I remember when I was about 4 and my dad discovered I'd scrawled all over some of his books, and he got mad at me — I should have told him to hang on to them, I'd just increased their value.
I doubt he'd have believed me, but I'm going to remember that excuse for the next time I'm 4.
pharyngula | August 15, 2010Afterlife? What afterlife?
Religion has always fluorished in ignorance. What is it but a collection of stories and claims to explain the mysteries of life — wherever there is something we don't understand, that we lack real knowledge about, there is a priest ready to rush in and fill the gap with a story. And it's always a story that gives the answer people want to hear. It's all about retribution for the wicked and rewards for the godly, and everything has a purpose, even the most arbitrary phenomenon, because people love to believe in a guiding hand that, if they properly satisfy the god…
pharyngula | August 15, 2010In the past week, there have been a couple of anti-atheist articles published in the newspapers. I have it easy, though: other people have taken care of the rebuttals.
Gary Gutting thinks Dawkins missed the boat on the serious philosophical reasoning behind god-belief. Unfortunately, he doesn't offer any. As is typical for this genre of apologetics, it founders on an incoherent, absurdist definition of deity.
Here Dawkins ignores the possibility that God is a very different sort of being than brains and computers. His argument for God's complexity either assumes that God is material or, at…
pharyngula | August 12, 2010The recordings of the Copenhagen conference are appearing on YouTube now — here's my talk, but you should also like AC Grayling's and Gregory Paul's. I think they're just in the process of being uploaded, since I don't see Peter Singer's on the list…you'll eventually have hours and hours of stuff to watch and listen to.
pharyngula | August 12, 2010I think I'm beginning to figure David B. Hart out. I've been totally mystified about why anyone would consider him a credible or interesting thinker since reading his essay belittling the New Atheists, which was dreary and wearying — I compared his prose style to that of Eeyore. But note: one of his central points in that essay was that these New Atheists aren't as smart and brave as the Old Atheists, an idea that comes up again in a new essay.
Hart has now written a column praising Julian the Apostate, of all people. Julian was a very interesting person in history, a 4th century Roman…
pharyngula | August 12, 2010The Austrians are fleeing the church in droves:
A record 100,000 Austrians are expected to leave the Roman Catholic Church this year after abuse scandals which have badly damaged its image, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Some 57,000 quit the church in the first six months of the year, Austrian daily Der Standard reported, citing figures from local state authorities. This is already more than the full-year total for 2009 when 53,216 walked out.
While the British are a bit smug about their godlessness:
And now congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good…
pharyngula | August 10, 2010How to get from atheism to the complete extinction of the human race:
(via somewhere on here)
pharyngula | August 5, 2010You've got less than an hour from the time I've posted this to tune in to CNN.
It was a very short interview, but Hitchens was clear: the only way there will be a deathbed conversion is if he's rendered irrational and babbling with pain, and concedes that the person who dies could very well be someone very different from the living Hitch. But while he's lucid, he's adamant: he doesn't believe in gods at all.
It is a relevant point, though, that the ghouls of Christianity do rely on catching their prey in the weakest, most desperate, most damaged point in people's lives, when they're at their…
pharyngula | August 5, 2010So I played this Battleground God game, which is supposed to ferret out philosophical contradictions in your views about religion. I didn't implode into a mass of inconsistent pudding at the end, which is good, right?
Where are my fabulous prizes?
Apparently, you can also get a perfect score by playing from the theistic perspective, since the goal is just to avoid self-contradiction. I'd try, but I can't. All I did was give the answers that weren't stupid. It's not as if I were thinking to play.
pharyngula | August 5, 2010Christopher Hitchens is very sick with esophageal cancer, but he still writes like a fiery angel in describing his situation.
These are my first raw reactions to being stricken. I am quietly resolved to resist bodily as best I can, even if only passively, and to seek the most advanced advice. My heart and blood pressure and many other registers are now strong again: indeed, it occurs to me that if I didn't have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far. Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side…
pharyngula | August 4, 2010Not that he's ever been soft on religion, but this recent column in SciAm makes him sound like one of those shrill, militant, rabid, dangerous Gnu Atheists.
I don't know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo. To do so risks being branded as intolerant of religion. The kindly Dalai Lama, in a recent New York Times editorial, juxtaposed the statement that "radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold religious beliefs" with his censure of the…
pharyngula | August 2, 2010In addition to summarizing my talk in Vancouver, the Crommunist also reports on godless CFI skeptics participating in the Vancouver gay pride weekend. I don't understand…how is it we amoral fiends lacking an objective source of cosmic ethics always seem to come down on the right side of the civil rights issues of our time?
pharyngula | August 2, 2010Yeah, those annoyingly shrill fundamentalist militant agnostics annoy me too.