religion
pharyngula | January 26, 2007Well...here's an interesting atlas of religion from Spiegel. I'm not entirely convinced of its reliability, though; the majority of Scandinavia is mapped as Protestant, but I have my suspicions that it should be listed as nominally Protestant. By using solid colors and labeling whole populations as being of one religion or another, it's going to over-represent the importance of religion, which may actually be one of their goals.
(More below the fold)
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This chart shows some of the problems.
The first map shows all of China as godless, and the chart only lists 14.9%…
nisbetmc | January 26, 2007
Survey trends show that atheists are America's least trusted minority, ranking below Muslims, recent immigrants, homosexuals and other groups. Moreover, Pew studies indicate that Americans are very comfortable with religion interceding in public life, and with the expression of religious faith on the part of candidates. The same Pew studies show Dems continue to have a "God problem." Even among so-called centrist members of the public, the party is perceived as hostile to religion, and this perception is a stronger predictor of presidential vote choice than either gender or church…
mikethemadbiologist | January 25, 2007Commenting on this post by John Horgan about religion and defeatism, PZ writes:
John Horgan criticizes Francis Collins for his defeatism in thinking that human beings will always be evil to one another:
Christians castigate atheists such as Richard Dawkins for propagating a dark, nihilistic view of human existence. But Dawkins is Pollyanna compared to Christians like Collins, who has so little faith in human reason and decency that he thinks we'll kill each other until the end of time.
I'm not quite as optimistic as Dawkins--I don't think that the disappearance of religion would necessarily…
oracknows | January 25, 2007Oh, no! The gay bands are here! Hide your children, and keep them away from this corruption! So sayeth Donnie Davies, an evangelical preacher who runs a website called Love God's Way:
One of the most dangerous ways homosexuality invades family life is through popular music. Parents should keep careful watch over their children's listening habits, especially in this Internet Age of MP3 piracy.
Oooh. Scary!
But let's look at the list of bands that Davies thinks we should all watch out for and protect our children from. The first thing I noticed is that Elton John is listed twice. Given what a…
omnibrain | January 25, 2007Answer... They both have tasteless protests when someone dies from something they attribute to the wrong thing.
A Scientology group targeting "toxic" medications plans to protest in Sudbury today for a public airing of any drugs given to the teen accused of murdering another boy at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School last week.
The group's gripe hits as the Sudbury community struggles to cope with Friday's stabbing death of straight-A student James Alenson, 15.
Scientologists are demanding at the demonstration that:
the types of drugs given to accused killer John Odgren, 16, and the…
jrosenhouse | January 24, 2007As I mentioned, Sam Harris has already replied to Sullivan's essay. Let's consider some highlights:
Contrary to your allegation, I do not “disdain” religious moderates. I do, however, disdain bad ideas and bad arguments--which, I'm afraid, you have begun to manufacture in earnest. I'd like to point out that you have not rebutted any of the substantial challenges I made in my last post. Rather, you have gone on to make other points, most of which I find unsurprising and irrelevant to the case I have made against religious faith. For instance, you claim that many fundamentalists are tolerant…
jrosenhouse | January 24, 2007Following up on my previous post about the blogalogue between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris, here have now been a few more entries. Picking up where the previous post left off, let's look at Sullivan's reply. Since Harris has replied in turn, I will content myself with a few brief points.
Sullivan writes:
I also disagree that religious moderates simply have less faith. You write:
Religious moderation is the result of not taking scripture all that seriously.
Blogger, please. In many ways, the source of much of today's religious moderation is taking scripture more seriously than the…
terrasig | January 24, 2007I don't even know where to begin with this beautifully-crafted but very sad article in today's Wall Street Journal (sub req'd..sorry) by Suzanne Sataline.
This has all the features that are sure to send PZ Myers and Orac convulsing in a corner somewhere. As detailed in FDA allegations from an ongoing investigation as reported by Sataline:
A Pentacostal minister physician touting cancer cure rates of 60% or better, without chemotherapy
The sale/promotion of dietary supplements and herbal formulas, sometimes along with diets inspired by Biblical descriptions, at hundreds to thousands of…
clock | January 24, 2007Mormon Missionaries knocked on a wrong door earlier today. I think their heads are still spinning...
pharyngula | January 23, 2007Some might be surprised to hear that I'm actually in favor of this change in the British school standards:
Teenagers will be asked to debate intelligent design (ID) in their religious education classes and read texts by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins under new government guidelines.
In a move that is likely to spark controversy, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority has for the first time recommended that pupils be taught about atheism and creationism in RE classes.
The all-important qualifying phrase is "in their religious education classes". It's not science, so I'll always…
nisbetmc | January 22, 2007Across most nationally representative surveys, if you measure Evangelical christians as those respondents who identify themselves as "evangelical" and who also, when given a multiple choice question, answer that the "bible is the literal word of God," you usually find that about 30% to 35% of adult Americans can be categorized as Evangelical christians. If you just use the measure of "evangelical" self-identification, that figure runs closer to 40% or higher.
George Barna, a pollster who's firm specializes in religious marketing and communications, disagrees with this method for tracking…
pharyngula | January 21, 2007Man, it's so annoying when the little sites take a poke at me, hoping to trigger a strong reaction so that I'll send lots of traffic their way. It's pathetic, and you know I can't resist. This particular site is trying to yank my chain by complaining about my lack of support for Barack Obama, and along the way they confirm my point.
What's interesting to me about all this is that when you get down to it, Obama presents conservatives with a category error. Democrats are liberal, and therefore cannot be religious, q.e.d. It simply fries their circuits that Obama won't stick in the pigeonhole…
pharyngula | January 21, 2007There's a whiff of armchair psychoanalysis to this article on why religiosity has become such an epidemic in this country, but I think there's a strong strain of truth running through it.
The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn…
jrosenhouse | January 18, 2007My SciBling Josh Rosenau had a different reaction to the exchange between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan. Sadly, he gets most of the important points wrong.
Rosenau writes:
As for “the myth that a person must believe things on insufficient evidence...,” I'd merely note that this ought to lead us to a state of profound agnosticism. There can be no natural evidence for God (philosophy of science and theology generally agree on this point), and neither could there be natural evidence against the supernatural. Insisting that others acknowledge the fundamental importance of one's own answer to…
jrosenhouse | January 18, 2007Beliefnet is hosting a blogalogue between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan. Harris is defending the entirely sensible view that religious faith, especially in its monotheistic form, is a lot of twaddle, while Sullivan takes the view that reasonable religious faith is not an oxymoron. Here are a few excerpts. Harris first:
Where I think we disagree is on the nature of faith itself. I think that faith is, in principle, in conflict with reason (and, therefore, that religion is necessarily in conflict with science), while you do not. Perhaps I should acknowledge at the outset that people use…
nisbetmc | January 17, 2007Many readers will want to check out the debate going on over at Belief.net between best-selling "End of Faith" author Sam Harris and "Conservative Soul" author/Time magazine blogger Andrew Sullivan. I have to admit, Sullivan does a noble job of defending his views, not to mention, doing it with flair and style.
jrosenhouse | January 17, 2007Bashing religion is fun and all, but occasionally a religious public figure does manage to say something sensible. Here's one example, as reported by Keith Olbermann on Monday:
Number one, Rich Cizik, the vice president representing the National Association of Evangelicals, after a meeting with a science group, the faithful and the scientists issuing a joint statement insisting, “We must fight global warming immediately.” Quoting Mr. Cizik, “Whether God created the earth in a millisecond or whether it evolved over billions of years, the issue we agree on is that it needs to be cared for…
jrosenhouse | January 17, 2007Christianity Today has posted this interview with Francis Collins. Collins' goal is to persuade us that evolution and Christianity are compatible. Let's see if he's right:
How does evolution fit with your Christian faith?
[Evolution] may seem to us like a slow, inefficient, and even random process, but to God--who's not limited by space or time--it all came together in the blink of an eye. And for us who have been given the gift of intelligence and the ability to appreciate the wonders of the natural world that he created, to have now learned about this evolutionary creative process is a…
razib | January 17, 2007Both Jason Rosenhouse and Rand Simberg have offered in the past few days that they have never exhibited an inclination to accept theism. Jason wonders:
I have very clear memories of attending Sunday school as a kid, and spending most of that time thinking my teachers were putting me on. Do I lack something that other people have? Are there genes that predispose people to belief or non-belief?
There certainly are such genes involved in predisposition to religiousness. There is non-trivial heritability toward religious zeal. By heritability I mean the proportion of popuation level variation…
mikethemadbiologist | January 16, 2007I grew up in Virginia, and unlike transplant George "Macacawitz" Allen, I've never been pollyanish about Virginians' attitudes on race and religion. But what VA Republican State Delegate Frank Hargrove said in a recent interview was shocking (italics mine):
There were furious denunciations in the General Assembly after a Virginia legislator stated that black people "should get over" slavery.
Hanover Delegate Frank Hargrove made the comment about slavery in an interview published Tuesday in The Daily Progress of Charlottesville.
In the same interview about whether the state should apologize…