godlessness
pharyngula | August 5, 2007Go read Carnival of the Godless #72.
Then Revere's Sunday Sermonette takes on the clueless Steven D. Levitt.
Hemant links to the freakiest mindset. This is not a satire, although I wish it were.
Jesus implies that those who brought him this news thought he would say that those who died, deserved to die, and that those who didn't die did not deserve to die. That is not what he said. He said, everyone deserves to die. And if you and I don't repent, we too will perish. This is a stunning response. It only makes sense from a view of reality that is radically oriented on God.
All of us have sinned…
pharyngula | August 2, 2007A few readers sent me a link to this interview with Alister McGrath; most thought it was worth a laugh, but one actually seemed to think I'd be devastated. I'm afraid the majority were correct: everything I've read by McGrath suggests that here is a man whose thoughts have been arrested by a temporal lobe seizure that he has mistaken for a lightning bolt from god. He'd probably be flattered to be compared to C.S. Lewis, but I see some similarities in the shallowness of their thinking that they believe they've deepened by tapping into theological tradition, but I'm sorry — my bathroom tap…
pharyngula | August 1, 2007OK, I don't know quite what to make of this: it's a site called The Atheist Conservative. I know there's no obstacle to being both godless and conservative, but this one is 'round-the-bend freaky far-right Bush-lovin' conservative. I don't know how an atheist could write a review of Ann Coulter's Godless that contains gooey dollops of praise for Coulter — that book was one flaming bonfire of stupid. But hey, if there are conservative atheists out there with tears running down your cheeks because you're reading this pro-atheist site by a crazed liberal, maybe you'll be happier over there.
Oh,…
pharyngula | July 31, 2007The researcher behind this study is "surprised and disappointed," but I'm neither.
Although most religious traditions call on the faithful to serve the poor, a large cross-sectional survey of U.S. physicians found that physicians who are more religious are slightly less likely to practice medicine among the underserved than physicians with no religious affiliation.
In the July/August issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that 31 percent of physicians who were more religious--as measured by "intrinsic religiosity"…
pharyngula | July 31, 2007Richard Dawkins defends the Out Campaign. I really have to stress to everyone who complains that they don't like the design, that it's too bold, that it's too timid, that they don't believe in joining anything, etc., that this is not about conformity — you don't have to wear the big red "A" t-shirt, and no one is going to draft you into the Atheist Army. This is a plea for everyone to get loud and make your beliefs known. Atheists generally are not joiners or conformists or big fans public displays of unity, but we have to start forming some kind of loose interessengemeinschaft — a fellowship…
pharyngula | July 30, 2007Minnesota Atheists notes a new policy at Borders Books — they've put up a small display section dedicated to books about atheism.
If you've ever been frustrated in a search for books on nonbelief in your local bookstore or annoyed by their inclusion in the comparative religion section, Borders Books has remedied the situation. "Atheism and Agnosticism" has been added as a new section for the works of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and many others. We hope other bookstores will follow this example, and encourage our members to suggest they do.
A reader actually sent me a…
pharyngula | July 28, 2007A while back, I floated the idea of a logo for the godless. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea, and a lot of good design ideas came out of it … maybe too many good ideas. And being a mob of atheists, there was absolutely no consensus on what was the best symbol to use. Finally, I didn't want to impose a logo on anyone, so I just let it drop to see if anyone would simply start using one of the suggested designs, that maybe a consensus might coalesce. I saw a few of the logos on scattered sites, but there wasn't much of a spontaneous response, and alas, every single site used a…
pharyngula | July 28, 2007Let's bring up that atheists and civil rights issue once again — it makes everyone so happy. The Science Ethicist is really peeved with DJ Grothe, who in a recent Point of Inquiry podcast repeated his assertion that a) atheism is not a civil rights issue, and b) lots of atheists are making their civil rights a major issue.
The curious twist here is that he's interviewing Peter Irons, author of God on Trial, who at the very beginning makes the point strongly that religion is the most divisive issue in the country after race, and that there is a deep intolerance towards atheists. Then Grothe…
pharyngula | July 28, 2007Oregon looks to have an interesting senate primary race, with two excellent Democratic candidates, Jeff Merkley and Steve Novick, vying for the chance to give the boot to two-faced Republican Bush booster Gordon Smith. I think it's great that more progressive candidates are being drawn into loftier tiers of the political arena, and that good wholesome sparring in the primary is going to help them both out, no matter who wins the nomination. Why, though, should this Minnesotan care? Aside from having lived in Oregon for 9 years (and loving it!), it was brought to my attention that there's a…
pharyngula | July 25, 2007Oh, no, I'm torn — I'm an atheist who thinks IQ tests are over-rated and over-interpreted, and here's a Danish study that claims that atheists have IQs that average 5.8 points higher than theists'.
Actually, I'm lying and I'm not really torn at all. I don't buy it. I think IQ tests are loaded with bias that favors a particular kind of thinking, the kind that signals success in academia, engineering, medicine, and so forth, and doesn't necessarily reflect any specific biological property. It's fair to say that atheist values parallel the values rewarded by IQ tests, but the simple-minded…
pharyngula | July 25, 2007
It's an interesting argument, although to be perfectly fair, it ought to admit that everyone has their own bubbles of delusion — some are just less silly than others.
pharyngula | July 23, 2007We should be quaking in our jackboots: a media counterattack is being launched against us wicked atheists. They have a website!
American Vision is launching a relentless and systematic response to militant atheism. We've produced a brilliant 2-minute commercial that we plan to broadcast globally via the Internet and Television. Atheists present themselves as enlightened and civil. But this new commercial will reveal the shocking truth to viewers. The French Revolution, Communism, Nazism, etc. have taught us that the atheistic worldview will inevitably lead to the persecution of Christians and…
pharyngula | July 22, 2007So I'm hanging out at a coffeeshop prior to lecturing people with a primer on basic neuroscience and the limits of the adaptationist paradigm (in addition to telling a group of atheists that there are rational reasons for people to be religious—that'll be fun*), so you'll have to get your godless harangues from someone else for a while. I'll recommend:
Revere's Freethinker Sunday Sermonette
The Carnival of the Godless #71
Humanist Symposium #5
*Don't worry, my concession is mitigated by the fact that it is a rational conclusion derived from incomplete and faulty information, and that…
pharyngula | July 21, 2007The open thread produced a couple of interesting articles I thought worthy of highlighting.
The first is a story from Canada about the growing godless movement. It's very positive and avoids the cheap tactic of presenting this as a scary or worrisome prospect.
Ms. Gaylor [of the Freedom From Religion Foundation], who said her group has grown from 7,000 to more than 10,000 since the fall, is not sure that the recent rash of books is winning converts to atheism, but she is certain it is emboldening those in the closet.
When Herb Silverman became a professor of mathematics at the College of…
pharyngula | July 20, 2007I guess Mark A. R. Kleiman has won our little debate. His prize is that his position wins a starring role in a Jesus and Mo comic.
I just can't compete with that. Case closed.
pharyngula | July 20, 2007After all, he got to have dinner with both Dawkins and Hitchens, at the same time. Simultaneously. Like they were in the same room having a conversation. That would have been an interesting table.
Cowan also has video of Dawkins' talk at Kepler's Bookstore—and yeah, P-Zed is mentioned, inducing a few blushes from 1500+ miles away.
pharyngula | July 19, 2007Now Kleiman digs his hole a little deeper; normally, this would warrant a reply in the comments, but I'm afraid his site doesn't allow commenting. Basically, all he has done is make an invalid analogy and make a gross error in interpreting my thinking.
Take the atomic theory of matter, for example. Most Americans no doubt "believe" that matter is made of atoms; they were told as much in school, and fortunately the Religious Right hasn't decided to deny it as un-Biblical.
But if you ask them what an "atom" is, most of them will tell you (if they can tell you anything) that it consists of a…
pharyngula | July 18, 2007I may have just used the old 2+2=5 analogy, but I also like this example from the Primate Diaries:
Fundamentalists: believe 2+2 =5 because It Is Written. Somewhere. They have a lot of trouble on their tax returns.
"Moderate" believers: live their lives on the basis that 2+2=4. but go regularly to church to be told that 2+2 once made 5, or will one day make 5, or in a very real and spiritual sense should make 5.
"Moderate" atheists: know that 2+2 =4 but think it impolite to say so too loudly as people who think 2+2=5 might be offended.
"Militant" atheists: "Oh for pity's sake. HERE. Two…
pharyngula | July 18, 2007Imagine you found a population in the US where the majority of the people believed that 2+2=5, and that attempts to correct them with the actual, correct result of adding two numbers were regarded as insults to their revered traditions. I think we'd all agree that they a) they were wrong; b) they were misled, misinformed, and miseducated; c) that they were ignorant of arithmetic; or d) might very well have been maliciously deceived by someone in their midst. Somehow, though, if the ridiculous error involves God, some people take a big step backwards and are appalled that anyone might…
pharyngula | July 18, 2007Speaking of looney, unbelievable opponents of the Evo-Atheist Hegemony, Jeffrey Shallit knocks the stuffing out of a blithering apologist for superstition, Peter Berkowitz. When an anti-atheist claims that people like Richard Dawkins are arguing that "we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist," you know that they either haven't even looked at any of our arguments or are simply cheerfully lying.