godlessness
pharyngula | July 4, 2010The more skilled the slave, the more likely they are to break free. Where faith enlists knowledge to glorify itself, it opens itself to destruction from within.
I was watching an old documentary, and one of my favorites, The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski, and one episode, The Grain in the Stone, caught my attention in particular. The whole series is about how humans developed this peculiar method called science, and it does not take the glib way out of starting with Bacon and talking about the usual superficial outline of hypothesis, experiment, and revision that you get in a basic science…
grrlscientist | July 3, 2010tags: Stephen Hawking on Religion: Science Will Win, Diane Sawyer, Stephen Hawking, interview, science, religion, streaming video
World News Anchor, Diane Sawyer, asks physicist Stephen Hawking about the biggest mystery he'd like solved. He said, "I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something rather than nothing".
pharyngula | July 2, 2010Austin has put up one of those mild, positive, and effective billboards that so rile up the faithful. It's impressive that it's happening in Texas, but I noticed something portentious in its placement: it's on I-35, a road familiar to me as the major north-south artery in this region (Minnesota and Texas have a direct connection, you see). I-35 also has a freakish association in the fundagelical brain, because of a passage in Isaiah 35:8:
And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the…
pharyngula | June 30, 2010He's tweaked the noses of those 'New Atheists', for sure! One of Gee's roles is as the editor of the Futures science fiction section in Nature, and he's proud to have published a story by Shelly Li, which actually is a well-written short dystopian fantasy, titled The End of God. Gee really detests those obnoxious atheists, though, so I think one of the reasons he picked it was that it so perfectly conformed to his idea of militant atheists as fascists.
The story is about a future in which satellites can somehow pick up on activity in the parietal lobe of the brain in individuals — amazing…
pharyngula | June 29, 2010It's an odd way to put it, I know, but it gets your attention. I could have called this the Atheist and Skeptic Problem, which is more accurate, but leads people to start listing all of our problems, starting with how annoying we are, and just for once I'd rather not go down that road. So here's the Woman Problem, and it's not a problem with women: it's a problem with atheist and skeptic groups looking awfully testosteroney. And you all know it's true, every time I post a photo of some sampling of the audience at an atheist meeting, it is guaranteed that someone will count the contribution of…
pharyngula | June 29, 2010One of the outcomes of the Copenhagen gathering of atheists was the formulation of a set of principles. It has now been posted on the web, so it's time for everyone to discuss, comment, and criticize…have at it!
The recent Gods and Politics conference in Copenhagen adopted the following Declaration on Religion in Public Life. The conference was the first European event of Atheist Alliance International, and was co-hosted by AAI and the Danish Atheist Society.
We, at the World Atheist Conference: "Gods and Politics", held in Copenhagen from 18 to 20 June 2010, hereby declare as follows:
We…
pharyngula | June 28, 2010This makes me so happy. I've long wanted to join those lovely conservative Christian groups on campus that have until now restricted membership to heterosexual believers, and now I can. The Supreme Court has ruled that universities may refuse to recognize campus groups that violate non-discrimination policies.
Hey, but I didn't want to join them. I guess the good news is that any organization that tries to claim university affiliation while telling the gay kids at school that they're hellbound will get slapped down hard and cut off from funding. That's good news, too!
Oh, and that reminds me…
pharyngula | June 28, 2010My brain has been blasted by the confident inanity of Ron Rosenbaum. He's a chipper flibbertigibbet who is proudly agnostic (no problem with that) and as dumb as they come (which is a problem). He has written an essay on Slate titled "The Rise of the New Agnostics" which has a few little quirks. No such movement exists, which he admits, it's strikingly unoriginal to invent a 'new' epithet for your nonexistent movement by appropriating a three letter modifier from the "New" Atheists which we all detest and groaningly disavow over and over again, it is a remarkably incoherent manifesto, and he…
pharyngula | June 28, 2010It's a tiny little island nation in the Indian Ocean, and it sounds like an interesting place. Unfortunately, the people there make it a hellhole.
In the Muslim-majority nation of Maldives, a man stunned an audience during questions and answers period in a lecture given by an Islamic cleric, by stating that he had chosen freedom of conscience not to follow Islam. The man, Mohamed Nazim, was promptly attacked, taken into custody, and has been threatened with death and beheading, or other punishments for choosing his freedom of conscience. Maldives media are reporting that it is the first…
pharyngula | June 27, 2010Scientists and atheists do something that many believers find repellent: we shatter their perception of their relationship to the universe. And understandably, they don't like that.
Most religious people in the West have a very specific model of the way the world works that is based on our cultural history as the progeny of nomadic herdsman, and that still resonates strongly with all of us — the father-child relationship, the patriarchy. We have a wise leader who guides us all, punishes us when we stray, offers largesse to those in his favor, and unites the whole tribe in common cause. Those…
grrlscientist | June 26, 2010tags: Best Church of God Vs. An Atheist, religion, cults, faith, funny, humor, comedy, social commentary, Greg Epstein, books, streaming video
A silly video about a bunch of wackaloon religious wingnuts and an atheist humanist discussing religion and how god forces people to live moral and decent lives. (The video is silly, but the protest signs are rather amusing).
The Best Church of God takes on heretical "humanist" Greg Epstein, famed author of the controversial book, "Good Without God."-- edited by Aemilia Scott
pharyngula | June 26, 2010The Evolution 2010 meetings are taking place in Portland, Oregon as you read this (unless, of course, you're reading this in The Future, in which case they're all done) and Jen McCreight is attending and presenting there. She attended a symposium on communicating science which, unfortunately, turned out to be one-sided atheist bashing and the promotion of theistic accommodation — no dissenting views were offered, despite the fact that us ungodly assertive atheists are such a prominent part of the voice of evolution that they needed to discourage attendees from listening to us.
I get this…
pharyngula | June 26, 2010Skeptic organizations often face a nagging dilemma: should they be openly skeptical about religion? There are a couple of very good reasons why they should make criticizing religious claims a secondary issue, and one extremely bad reason that represents intellectual cowardice and a betrayal of skeptical principles. I'm going to come down on the side of accepting that skeptics groups can make accommodations to religious individuals in general, but that they must not avoid confrontation with religious ideas in particular.
What are the good reasons for shying away from religious conflict? One is…
pharyngula | June 22, 2010Jamie Kilstein is putting on a comedy show in New York on 2 July, titled No War, No God, No Nickelback. You should go if you can. He's recommended by that polite, soft-spoken gentleman AC Grayling, so you know exactly what to expect: calm, cerebral, gentle humor, quietly skewering social mores.
Yeah, right. Watch out for a GOATS ON FIRE level of outrageousness. Everyone should go and make him rich and famous, because he's the one comedian I trust will aspire to someday having a comedy tour featuring a giant inflatable vulva*. He does need to get really rich and famous first, though.
If I were…
pharyngula | June 15, 2010Nick Matzke has taken exception to my criticism of Mary Midgley, and has posted a rebuttal. Well, maybe. Probably not.
Eh, I've read most of Midgley's books and articles, I don't think you [The Unpublishable Philosopher] or PZ getting her at all.
The short version of what she's saying is that there is a lot more to life than simply scientifically assessing everything as if it was a hypothesis. The primary reason many people like their religion, despite its obvious problems from a scientific point of view, have to do with things like:
providing a sense of community
instilling values in…
grrlscientist | June 12, 2010tags: Atheism: In Your Own Words, The Thinking Atheist, atheism, humanism, rationalism, religion, cults, self delusion, fantasy life, wishful thinking, streaming video
Realizing that you are an atheist is a profound, personal experience. This video records the stories (in their own words) of some people who came to the realization that they are atheists.
pharyngula | June 9, 2010It's like Bambi vs. Godzilla, except no one would consider Donohue cute and innocent. In an interview, Hawking talked about gods:
"What could define God [is thinking of God] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible."
When Sawyer asked if there was a way to reconcile religion and science, Hawking said…
pharyngula | June 8, 2010It's called Agora, and it's about Hypatia, who was a kind of non-Christian martyr, murdered by a religious mob. Here's one account of her death:
And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through Satanic wiles...A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate...and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments. And when they…
pharyngula | June 6, 2010Good news for those of you already signed up for Copenhagen, and perhaps a little additional incentive if you haven't: Richard Dawkins has been added to the speakers' list. See you there in a bit less than two weeks!
pharyngula | June 6, 2010Religion has a real problem with incentives. As long as they're all in an invisible afterlife, it's hard to take them seriously.
The religion I grew up in was rather vague about the consequences — there was a Hell which was not discussed in polite company, and Heaven was a place brought up at funerals as an answer to where the dead had gone, nothing more. I didn't think much about it until I was in my early teens, when a crazy lady forced me to…and mainly, she made me realize she was a crazy lady.
My brother and I were walking down James Hill in Kent when a woman started yelling and hallooing…