godlessness
pharyngula | December 30, 2006Ed Brayton and Mike Gene have gone over the top in accusing Richard Dawkins of wanting to coerce the religious into giving up their beliefs; as is usual for Ed, he has no problem immediately comparing an atheist to R.J. Rushdooney and calling him a totalitarian, on the basis of a rather poorly written petition that Dawkins signed.
I must say, though, that this petition is certainly strange, and I don't quite see how it could have gotten over a 1000 signatories. I sure don't approve of it, although I can understand the motivation behind it.
In order to encourage free thinking, children should…
pharyngula | December 28, 2006Before there was The God Delusion and Letter to a Christian Nation, there was another excellent book on atheism: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Susan Jacoby. I can't recommend that book highly enough: it takes a purely historical perspective on American religiosity, and shows that it is a fairly recent aberration. I consider it superior to the more recent works by Dawkins and Harris; I wonder why it is so rarely acknowledged in the current interest in freethought?
Anyway, she has a recent short column well worth reading:
However, both atheism and…
pharyngula | December 24, 2006Christmas Eve is an excellent time for another edition of the Carnival of the Godless!
In my own strange Christmas Eve tradition, I'm spending this late afternoon sorting flies and setting up Drosophila cultures — I'm not even done with grading and I have to get to work on next semester's labs.
pharyngula | December 24, 2006There's a common refrain in the criticisms of Dawkins' The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) that I've taken to categorizing with my own private title—it's so common, to the point of near-unanimous universality, that I've decided to share it with you all, along with a little backstory that will help you to understand the name.
I call it the Courtier's Reply. It refers to the aftermath of a fable.
I have considered the impudent accusations of Mr Dawkins with exasperation at his lack of serious scholarship. He has apparently not read the detailed discourses of Count Roderigo of Seville on the…
pharyngula | December 21, 2006Thanks to Hilzoy, I've learned that our dearly beloved president has enunciated an important principle.
Bush said that despite declarations of piety from Muslim radicals now fighting the United States, he doubted that they believed in God.
"'Terrorists' can't be God-believing people,'" Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, quoted Bush as saying.
Before you run off and dismiss this as the ravings of an incompetent, deluded boob, think it through. It means that if someone does something wicked, we get to declare that they must not really believe in God — true faith only belongs to…
pharyngula | December 20, 2006The latest panty-twisting at Uncommon Descent is over the Blasphemy Challenge. The poor dears are so concerned about all the heretics damning themselves that DaveScot is moved to weep and pray over them, and William Dembski writes a letter to Richard Dawkins asking him why he doesn't expand the challenge to torment the Moslems (note that Dawkins is not responsible for the Blasphemy Challenge, has nothing at all to do with it, and hasn't promoted it, so it's rather peculiar of Dembski to act as if he is the Grand Overlord of All Atheists).
This wouldn't be worth following, except that I think…
pharyngula | December 18, 2006David Paszkiewicz, the history teacher recorded while proselytizing to his students, has made the NY Times. Here's the familiar part:
Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah's ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.
"If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,"…
pharyngula | December 17, 2006Is this an evil coincidence, or what? The next Carnival of the Godless falls on Christmas Eve, giving us another opportunity to steal back the holiday. Send your links to those blog articles that show Santa Jesus doesn't exist to the crew at God is for Suckers soon!
pharyngula | December 17, 2006We atheists have been caught in our ongoing devious strategem for destroying Christmas. The NY Times first expresses some surprise that fervent atheists celebrate Christmas, but then the writer begins to catch on.
"Presumably your reason for asking me is that "The God Delusion" is an atheistic book, and you still think of Christmas as a religious festival," Mr. Dawkins wrote, in a reply printed here in its entirety. "But of course it has long since ceased to be a religious festival. I participate for family reasons, with a reluctance that owes more to aesthetics than atheistics. I detest…
pharyngula | December 15, 2006Now here's a difficult question from a reader:
Long time reader, but only very occasional poster here. A friend asked me
to recommend some books to read to small
children (2 -5 years old) to teach the basics of atheism. His son is
getting exposed to a lot of religious training from
his wife, and my friend wants something to present the alternative
perspective.
Any suggestions? Feel free to open this up to the blog.
BTW, he is also interested in short books about the sciences suitable to be
read to children of the same age as bedtime
stories. Suggestions in this category are also welcomed…
pharyngula | December 15, 2006Trade your soul for a DVD! All you have to do is post a video of yourself to youtube, stating that you deny the holy spirit, and you'll get a copy of The God Who Wasn't There. Why those magic words?
Whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit can never be forgiven.
Mark 3:29
More details on The Blasphemy Challenge are available online, and they have a trailer, even:
Some of the comments on that video are hilarious.
You know what I hate? Fanatic Christians? Know what I hate just as much? Fanatic Atheists. This 'challenge' is disrespectful on a level I can't even verbalize. It's juvenile and…
pharyngula | December 10, 2006Don't forget to read the Carnival of the Godless before you go to bed…it's as effective as prayer!
pharyngula | December 8, 2006I'm going to rudely hijack one political issue to make a point about another. I think you'll quickly figure out what it is.
NARAL has been undermining their own relevance by failing to support pro-choice positions in a misguided attempt to court moderates—basically, as Ezra Klein points out, they're failing to recognize their role in the political ecosphere. They're an advocacy group for a specific range of policies, not a politician who has to balance constituencies—they are supposed to be spokespeople for one particular constituency.
…one thing groups like NARAL have a tendency to do is…
pharyngula | December 5, 2006The Atheist Ethicist has written a book: A Better Place: Essays on Desire Utilitarianism.
When I was young I decided to try to leave the world better than it would have been if I had never lived. To do this, I had to know what 'A Better Place' actually was. Thus, I spent 12 years in college studying moral philosophy. This book contains a set of essays describing pieces of the answers I think I found. I argue that we cannot reliably find those answers in scripture, in subjective sentiment, or in evolved dispositions. In fact, those who look in these places for answers often leave the world…
pharyngula | December 3, 2006If you need help figuring out how to irritate me, here's a long, long list.
pharyngula | December 2, 2006
This cute kid makes a nice rant that I completely agree with, but yeesh—those aren't her words. She's playing dress-up and prancing in front of a camera, and reciting with child-like enthusiasm words someone else wrote for her. That bugs me.
My kids were brought up without religion, and I know what a genuinely godless kid is like. They're interested in Where's Waldo and Dr Seuss, not Richard Carrier and Robert Ingersoll and Richard Dawkins. They play video games and like the swings at the local park. They run into religious practices when they visit their friends, and they're curious, but…
pharyngula | December 1, 2006My favorite ferocious feminist has declared this to be "Sod off, God! Week" at I Blame The Patriarchy. There's no respite from the patriarchy blaming, but she is taking a sledge to a few sacred cows as a sideline. Like this:
Take ritual, for instance. My suspicion is that ritual is no deep human need. As a concept it gives off quite the lip-wrinkling whiff of eau du primitif. And what about that trio of stinky undertones — conformity, obeisance, and orthodoxy — that comes with it? Add the collateral conditions of exclusivity and tradition, and you got yourself all the field marks of one of…
pharyngula | November 30, 2006Go ahead, fill it out. These forms are so easy to lose. Don't forget to send in the warranty information, too!
pharyngula | November 30, 2006You know, people don't believe me when I say I don't give my kids weekly or daily instruction about atheism, but it's true: my daughter asked for my videos of "The Root of All Evil?" and "The God Who Wasn't There" for the first time the other day, and I let her watch them. She has posted her reaction.
The sure sign that I didn't tell her what to think is that she likes the idea of the Brights movement, which I've curled up my lip at from the beginning. She also thinks Dawkins could have been a bit tougher. Uh-oh—if you think I'm ornery, wait until the next generation takes over.
pharyngula | November 27, 2006Lots of you have been alerting me to this op-ed in the NY Times, but I have to confess that I read it, and Richard A. Schweder makes no sense at all in his "Atheists Agonistes" article. His conclusion seems to be that we should stop "waging intellectual battles over the existence of god(s)", but everything preceding that point doesn't seem to make any kind of sensible case for much of anything. Here's the heart, I think; he's wondering why we're seeing this resurgence of godlessness as a literary genre:
Why, then, are the enlightened so conspicuously up in arms these days, reiterating every…