godlessness
pharyngula | September 24, 2007Can we stomach another label? How about "passionate atheists"? An Arkansas minister objects to the very idea.
Not long ago the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published an interesting article entitled "Passionate Atheists." This caught my attention immediately.
My first thought was, "How do you get passionate about nothing?" If no God exists, what is there to get passionate about? Why do professed atheists find it necessary to convert other people to their unbelief, since there is nothing of substance there to convince them of?
My second thought was, "Isn't this statement, passionate atheists,…
pharyngula | September 24, 2007You would think Yale would attract a smarter class of stude…oh, wait. I forgot what famous Yalies have risen to power in this country. OK, maybe it's not surprising that a Yale freshman would raise the tired canard of the "amoral atheist".
Recent years have seen an influx of anti-religious publications in the Western world, as well as a growing audience for such publications. From Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" to Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great," anti-theistic works have poured into bookstores as atheists in the United States and elsewhere have taken on a more strident tone in…
pharyngula | September 24, 2007It's bad enough everyone is using this "New Atheists" label: various critics keep inventing new ones. Some letter writer to the Independent has decided to call us "Naive Atheists" because we are unaware of the implications of atheism.
However, let's forget about the unfortunate history of atheism for a moment and concentrate instead on its philosophical implications.
Two of the big consequences are that once you ditch belief in God you must also, logically, ditch belief in free will and in objective morality.
What a silly, silly man. If anyone is naive here, it's someone who thinks atheists…
pharyngula | September 22, 2007Aha! Another non-scientific online poll that we can mob. This one asks: Are Dawkins and Hitchens good for humanism? Let's make the wheels on their poll-o-meter spin for a little while. Wheee!
pharyngula | September 20, 2007So I've been sucked into a live text interview on the Raving Atheists forum — they've finished with me and spat my well-chewed carcass out now, so everyone else is welcome to come on over and squabble over the scraps.
pharyngula | September 20, 2007I read this headline — "Mary Midgley argues that opponents of intelligent design are driving people to accept it" — and my first thought was that surely some editor had mangled the sense of an interview. No one could be that blatantly nonsensical. And then I read the first paragraph and discover that it was an understatement, and that Midgley is much more extreme.
People are not going to accept scientific fact if they think it is morally pernicious. When people are asked why they are persuaded by intelligent design, they often say that it's the only alternative to scientific atheism and…
pharyngula | September 20, 2007Paul Kurtz is an intelligent and interesting fellow who has done commendable work in advancing the cause of skepticism and freethought. He can be rightly considered one of the heroes of the atheist movement, and he's one of the reasons that the sobriquet "New Atheist" grates — Kurtz has been writing this stuff for decades.
Now, suddenly, he's being trumpeted as an advocate of "silencing the New Atheist Noise Machine." This is weird on so many levels.
For one, if he were to announce something like that, I'd be disappointed — Kurtz deserves to be listened to carefully — but ultimately, it…
pharyngula | September 16, 2007I'm a little late to this tea party, since Jason Rosenhouse and Larry Moran have already trampled on the biscuits and kicked over the teakettle, but I have to register my disagreement with thispolite and sincere article by Jake Young. It's got several elements that bug me badly.
First of all, don't try to tell the New Atheists (insert obligatory detestation of the term here) what the New Atheists believe unless you've actually got some understanding of what the New Atheists believe. This is a mistake I'm seeing repeatedly now.
The New Atheist Camp (for lack of a better term) asserts that…
pharyngula | September 16, 2007Andrew Brown suggests that we shouldn't suppose that religious belief is irrational, and I'm going to have to agree in part with him. I think theology is actually an exercise in reason — it is an activity that has engaged some of the greatest minds of the ages, and it is a sophisticated and elaborate logical edifice. It is a towering skyscraper constructed of finely honed girders of deductive logic, and I can appreciate how so many people respect it and admire it and want to protect it. I can also see how those who have dedicated much effort to working closely on the craftmanship of the…
pharyngula | September 14, 2007I see that Matt Nisbet has organized a panel for the AAAS meetings, in which he has picked a squad of people sympathetic to religion to 'argue' that "scientists must adopt a language that emphasizes shared values and has broad appeal, avoiding the pitfall of seeming to condescend to fellow citizens, or alienating them by attacking their religious beliefs", and he doesn't have a single person on the panel that might actually challenge them on that recommendation to muzzle the godless. He's also presenting a paper on "The New Atheism and the Public Image of Science," and we all know precisely…
pharyngula | September 13, 2007Massachusetts has a law on the books that could have gotten me in trouble: Chapter 272, Section 36. Blasphemy.
Whoever wilfully blasphemes the holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching God, his creation, government or final judging of the world, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred…
pharyngula | September 13, 2007Here's another online petition you can sign — this one is to censure Kathy Griffin's censorship. Go ahead and sign, although I'm beginning to wonder if the reason people aren't marching in the streets and fending off flying teargas canisters and roaring angrily in person at the bad guys is that they're too damned busy filling out all these forms on their computers, instead.
Maybe I need to create a new category here: "futile, impotent political posturing" or something. But at least it feels a little bit good.
(via Greg Laden)
pharyngula | September 12, 2007(This article is also available on Edge, along with some other rebuttals to and affirmations of Haidt's piece.)
Jonathan Haidt has a complicated article on moral psychology and the misunderstanding of religion on Edge. I'm going to give it a mixed review here. The first part, on moral psychology, is fascinating and a good read that I think clarifies a few ideas about morality. The second part, though, where he tries to apply his insights about morality to the New Atheists*, fails badly. I can see where he has thought deeply about morality, but unfortunately, he hasn't thought clearly about…
pharyngula | September 12, 2007A football player, Kevin Everett, suffered serious spinal cord trauma in a game the other day. That's tragic, but the impressive part of the story is that he may recover to some degree thanks to advances in treatment, and most surprising, this comment from a consulting neurosurgeon:
"I don't know if I would call it a miracle. I would call it a spectacular example of what people can do," Green said. "To me, it's like putting the first man on the moon or splitting the atom. We've shown that if the right treatment is given to people who have a catastrophic injury that they could walk away from…
pharyngula | September 6, 2007And what a sweet review it is. There are points on which I disagree with Hitchens (as there are with Dawkins, too, of course), but I agree that the book is an excellent contribution to the ongoing evolution of secular thought.
I wonder if one of the factors that is making everyone consider this movement the "New Atheism" is a confusion of cause and effect. The cause, the advancement of outspoken atheism, is the same old idea; the effect is different, because we don't have just one Ingersoll who could be marginalized and humored because he was mostly alone, we have a growing core of literate…
pharyngula | September 5, 2007Everyone go say howdy to The Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University, a brand new student freethought group. They're popping up everywhere!
pharyngula | September 4, 2007Some local godless heathens got mentioned in the Mankato Free Press, in an article titled "Becoming atheist akin to finding religion". It highlights August Berkshire of Minnesota Atheists and an attorney, Jim Manahan, who say pretty much the exact opposite of what the title suggests. The article itself is good and explains a little bit about how one comes to abandon religion, but I suspect the title is an example of an editor doing some editorializing.
Here's some useful local information from the Minnesota Atheists, too: A brief history of disbelief is being broadcast next week in the Twin…
pharyngula | September 3, 2007John Allen Paulos, in an interesting essay on the co-option of mathematics into religious apologia, makes a useful explanation. To counter the idea that the elegance of mathematics is a reflection of the divine, he suggests otherwise — it is a reflection of the natural world.
The universe acts on us, we adapt to it, and the notions that we develop as a result, including the mathematical ones, are in a sense taught us by the universe. That great bugbear of creationists, evolution has selected those of our ancestors (both human and not) whose behavior and thought are consistent with the…
pharyngula | September 3, 2007A new poll seems to be showing that the efforts of those ferocious agitating atheists are working — either that, or the corruption of the theocratic right is driving more people into our arms. Daylight Atheism reports that atheists are at 25% of the American population, which isn't quite right: the numbers include atheists and agnostics at 18%, with another 6% preferring not to say. It would be more accurate to say that about one in four Americans is a freethinker of some sort…and I suspect that that is an underestimate. There are many who affiliate themselves with a church for reasons of…