religion
jrosenhouse | August 23, 2012Jerry Coyne directs our attention to a harrowing, but important, article from The New York Times Magazine. It is a profile of Jerry DeWitt, a former Pentecostal preacher who discovered, after more than twenty-five years in the biz, that he no longer believed any of the things he was preaching. Here's the opening:
Late one night in early May 2011, a preacher named Jerry DeWitt was lying in bed in DeRidder, La., when his phone rang. He picked it up and heard an anguished, familiar voice. It was Natosha Davis, a friend and parishioner in a church where DeWitt had preached for more than five…
oracknows | August 22, 2012Since I seem to be on a roll the last few days discussing cancer quackery, I thought I'd just go with it at least one more day. Frequently, when I get on these rolls laying down the Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, over antivaccine quackery I start whining about how I need to change topics, but not this time around, not this topic. It takes a lot more than what I've posted lately to make me feel as though I need a change of pace. Besides, for whatever reason, the blog fodder is flying at me fast and furious, whether it be the dubious testimonial I discussed yesterday, yet…
oracknows | August 17, 2012A couple of days ago, I did one of my usual bits of pontification about alternative medicine, this time around pointing out how religion facilitates the magical thinking that undergirds so much pseudoscientific medicine and how the belief systems that underlie so so much of alternative medicine resembel the belief systems that underlie religion. However, in retrospect, I suspect that I might have gone a little too far. Although the two share many aspects, alternative medicine is not in general a religion (with the possible exception of reiki, which, for all intents and purposes, is faith…
oracknows | August 14, 2012Over the years, I've often likened non-science-based medical belief systems to religion. It's not a hard argument to make. Religion involves believing in things that can't be proven scientifically; indeed, religion makes a virtue out of ignoring the evidence and accepting various beliefs on faith alone. Similarly, alternative medicine frequently tells you that you have to believe in the therapy, dedicate yourself completely to it, in order for it to work. Of course, as I've also mentioned before, it is that insistence on belief and total commitment shared by religion and alternative medicine…
jrosenhouse | August 14, 2012Remember that scene in Die Hard, where Bruce Willis drops a huge pile of explosives down an elevator shaft, blowing up the lobby of the building and killing a few terrorists, but also shattering the building's huge glass windows? You might recall that right after he does that the officious deputy police chief says to him, angrily, “I got a hundred people down here and they're all covered in glass!” And Bruce Willis replies, “Glass? Who gives a sh*t about glass?”
I was reminded of that scene upon reading this article, by Tom Bartlett, in the current issue of The Chronicle Review. Here's…
jrosenhouse | August 9, 2012I'm on the road, again. I've been in New York City since Tuesday, and I am currently sitting in my tiny room at a Comfort Inn near Central Park on 71st Street. Alas, I've been sworn to secrecy regarding the purpose of my trip (ooooooh), but suffice it to say that after this afternoon the business part will end and the pleasure will begin. I'll be back n Virginia on Sunday.
It was nice, during my morning internet round-up, to come across this encouraging article from HuffPo:
Rocked in recent years by sex-abuse scandals and crises in leadership, the Catholic Church in the Republic of…
jrosenhouse | July 31, 2012In this post over at HuffPo, Rabbi Adam Jacobs serves up one of the standard replies to the problem of evil. After recounting a harrowing story of having to subject his 16 month old son to a difficult medical procedure, he writes:
I have found this story to be helpful for explaining to people the nature of suffering. In truth, our ability to perceive what is happening around us is extremely limited; as Thomas Edison once said, “We do not know one millionth of one percent about anything.” With such limited and flawed faculties, how can we rightly expect to have any more perspective about the…
jrosenhouse | June 21, 2012As a counterpoint to Monday's post about Genesis, consider this essay, by Craig Kanalley. He writes:
I felt I needed a shake-up in my life. And that's what happened. I decided to make a career change, abruptly leaving my job at NBC News, and coming back to where I was happy in a prior phase of my life, The Huffington Post (thanks for allowing me back!).
It was risky. For one thing, you're not supposed to leave a job after just three months. It was a period of transition. And with that transition, I wanted God to be with me.
So, I started reading the Bible. This is something I had tried to…
oracknows | June 5, 2012Remember Vox Day?
Newer converts to the glory that is Orac (or at least to the ego that is Orac) might not know who Vox is because it's been a while since I've discussed his antiscience attitudes. By and large, this is probably a good thing, given that Vox denies evolution, has been antivaccine from way back, and apparently thinks nothing of suggesting that the U.S. emulate Hitler's methods of ejecting Jews from Germany to take care of our illegal immigrant problem. Truly, Vox is an example of crank magnetism at work. Particularly amusing is the way that he trumpets his membership in Mensa…
oracknows | June 4, 2012Let me start right here by repeating yet again my oft-repeated assessment of reiki. Reiki is clearly nothing more than faith healing that substitutes Eastern mysticism for Christianity. Think of it this way. In faith healing, the faith healer claims to channel the healing power of God into the person being healed. In reiki, the reiki master claims to be able to channel "life energy" from what they refer to as the "universal source." Big difference, right?
Wrong. It's the same thing.
Let me also point out that, as much as I detest quackery, I'm particularly not a big fan of subjecting innocent…
jrosenhouse | May 30, 2012A while back P. Z. Myers posted an essay entitled, “You Want Evidence That Religions is Bad for the Species? OPEN YOUR EYES.” Myers was replying to an earlier essay by David Sloan Wilson. Here's an excerpt from Myers:
Whenever I hear that tripe about the beneficial effects of religion on human cultural evolution, it’s useful to note that the world’s dominant faiths all hardcode directly into their core beliefs the idea that women are unclean, inferior, weak, and responsible for the failings of mankind…that even their omnipotent, all-loving god regards women as lesser creatures not fit to…
jrosenhouse | May 29, 2012If the assertion, “Science and religion are incompatible,” simply means, “It is highly unreasonable to accept simultaneously the claims of modern science and the claims of traditional Christianity,” then I agree with it. The trouble is that the word “incompatible” is vague. People often take it to mean something like “logically contradictory,” and I do not agree that science and religion are incompatible in that sense.
For this reason I prefer to avoid the language of compatibility/incompatibility, and talk instead about “tensions” between science and traditional faith. When I am feeling…
jrosenhouse | May 14, 2012Economist Robin Hanson poses an odd challenge to atheists:
A few days ago I asked why not become religious, if it will give you a better life, even if the evidence for religious beliefs is weak? Commenters eagerly declared their love of truth. Today I'll ask: if you give up the benefits of religion, because you love far truth, why not also give up stories, to gain even more far truth? Alas, I expect that few who claim to give up religion because they love truth will also give up stories for the same reason. Why?
One obvious explanation: many of you live in subcultures where being religious…
jrosenhouse | April 29, 2012As you have probably guessed from the blog drought around here, it's the end of the semester. That means tons of grading, office hours, meetings with students, deadlines to meet, and all around not much time for blogging. Final exams are this week. Once those are graded I reach the promised land of summer break. So regular blogging will resume shortly.
In the meantime, here's a guest post I wrote for the Oxford University Press blog. I offer a few thoughts about my two recent experiences with atheist gatherings: The Reason Rally and the American Atheists Convention. I enjoyed both…
oracknows | April 27, 2012Almost exactly a year ago, I came across a bit of woo so incredible, so spectacularly stupid and unbelievable, that I dedicated one of the last segments I've done in a long time of Your Friday Dose of Woo to it. Basically, it was about a movie called Eat the Sun, which described a bunch of people who believe that they can imbibe the energy they need to keep their bodies going by "sun gazing," which involves, as the name implies, staring directly into the sun. The idea is to stare directly into the sun for as long as possible at sunrise or sunset, so as not to burn out your retinas by staring…
jrosenhouse | March 27, 2012It was cold, and it was pouring rain for much of the afternoon, but the rally was a huge success nevertheless. The official estimate from the Park's Department was 20,000, which seems about right to me. I'm not generally a real social person, and I'm not much of a joiner. But given that I live in a culturally conservative part of the country, and spend so much time reading and thinking about religious right propaganda, it was with a sense of physical relief that I spent the afternoon standing in solidarity with my fellow atheists.
And make no mistake, this was an atheist rally. A New…
oracknows | March 25, 2012As sometimes happens, last week I let myself get tied up writing multiple posts about a single topic, namely the promotion of an antivaccine movie by a school board president in California, apparently as part of an attempt to influence California legislators who are considering a law that will make philosophical exemptions for school vaccine mandates easier to obtain. As a result I didn't get around to blogging about something else that happened last week. It's a topic near and dear to my heart as a cancer surgeon. On second thought, perhaps "near and dear" is exactly the wrong way to…
jrosenhouse | March 24, 2012I spent the day at the big Reason Rally on the National Mall. I'd say it was a huge success! According to rally host Paul Provenza, the official estimate from the Parks Department was 20,000 people. Not too shabby, especially considering that it was cold and very rainy all day.
I'm sticking around for the Americn Atheist's convention tomorrow. I'll have a full report on everything when I get home.
jrosenhouse | March 9, 2012Continuing with the process of getting caught up on things I should have blogged about a while ago, let's take a look at this bizarre article from Bryan Appleyard, published in The Guardian. It is a contribution to a familiar genre, in which the New Atheists are criticized for being so mean and nasty:
Two atheists - John Gray and Alain de Botton - and two agnostics - Nassim Nicholas Taleb and I - meet for dinner at a Greek restaurant in Bayswater, London. The talk is genial, friendly and then, suddenly, intense when neo-atheism comes up. Three of us, including both atheists, have suffered…
jrosenhouse | March 8, 2012I'm way behind on this, since other bloggers have already piled on, but I wanted to comment on this essay by Alain de Botton. Here's how it opens:
Probably the most boring question you can ask about religion is whether or not the whole thing is “true.” Unfortunately, recent public discussions on religion have focused obsessively on precisely this issue, with a hardcore group of fanatical believers pitting themselves against an equally small band of fanatical atheists.
De Botton hails from that segment of the nonbelieving population that endlessly trumpets its own moderation. Not for them…