Religion
drorzel | January 6, 2008Myers:
There are atheists who look on a tragedy and cry, "There is no god," in despair. But we are atheists who look on beauty and complexity and awesome immensity and shout out, "There is no god!" and we are glad.
That's the distinction we've got to get across. We are fulfilled, happy atheists who rejoice in the superfluity of the old myths. We generally don't have a tragic backstory -- quite the contrary, we've come to our conclusions because we have found natural explanations satisfying and promising.
Clearly, this is a result of insufficient vigor in calling religion stupid. Redouble…
drorzel | December 12, 2007One of the alternately entertaining and depressing things about the culture wars in the US is the existence of a sort of parallel academic universe, in the form of vanity universities like Oral Roberts University, Bob Jones University, and Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University. These provide both a thin veneer of credibility for pseudo-academic nonsense and a launching point for hilarious academic misconduct.
There's really nothing comparable on the militant atheist side. But here's your chance, Pharynguloids: Myers University is for sale:
Don't write the obituary for Myers University yet. The…
drorzel | December 11, 2007I have a good deal more synmpathy for the plight of religious scientists than most of my fellow ScienceBlogs bloggers. For example, I'm willing to believe that people can both have sincere religious faith and be practicing scientists, without assuming that they're either brainwashed or evil.
I really find myself feeling sorry for Richard Colling, then, who Inside Higher Ed reports has been barred from teaching introductory biology because of his religious beliefs. "Boy," you might be thinking, "I bet the Discovery Institute and the Christian Law Association must be all over that..."
Not so…
drorzel | December 7, 2007Over in LiveJournal land, Sherwood Smith links approvingly to an essay by Tom Simon in response to what are apparently some "logical positivist" evles in Christopher Paolini's books. I haven't read the books in question, but it really doesn't matter, as Simon very quickly spins this off into a larger essay about the nature of the world, in the mode of C.S. Lewis:
In my life, I have never witnessed an instance where the laws that govern the world sufficed to explain an event. That is, I have never seen anything that was not, strictly speaking, the after-effect of a miracle. Many events have…
drorzel | November 26, 2007The infamous Davies op-ed has been collected together with some responses at edge.org, and one of the responses is by Sean Carroll, who reproduces his response at Cosmic Variance. Sean's a smart guy, and I basically agree with his argument, but I'm a contrary sort, and want to nitpick one thing about his response.
He builds his response around the question, raised by Davies, "Why do the laws of physics take the form they do?" He considers and discards a few responses, before writing:
The final possibility, which seems to be the right one, is: that's just how things are. There is a chain of…
drorzel | November 26, 2007I said I wasn't going to write anything about the Paul Davies thing, but it's been the hot topic for the last day or two, and I've found myself reading a bunch of the responses in blogdom. I basically agree with most of what various science bloggers have said, but being a contrary sort, I can't help poking at a couple of points in the responses that seem a little iffy to me.
The main argument has centered around Davies's claim that science has its own form of "faith:"
All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist…
drorzel | November 16, 2007Turnabout, after all, is fair play.
An easy answer would be to just copy the worst reason for doing just about anything else: "Chicks dig it." Ironically, it's also one of the more effective ways of getting guys to do things, particularly college-age guys...
But I'm sure somebody else can come up with some entertaining snark, so have at it.
drorzel | November 14, 2007Dave Bacon watched "Judgement Day" last night, and has a question:
It's not like, you know, there aren't people who think quantum theory is wrong or that quantum theory is somehow related to the Vedic teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. So why is it that quantum theory (which after all is "just a theory" wink, wink, nod, nod) doesn't illicit courtroom battles of such epic scope as the Dover trial?
The answer: Because quantum physics involves math, and Math Is Hard.
If you want to construct a cockamamie theory that can pretend to be an alternative to quantum mechanics, it needs to have…
drorzel | November 14, 2007So, in case you missed the splashy banner ads that have been running here for the last week, NOVA ran a show about the Dover, PA "Intelligent Design" trial last night. You can find all manner of commentary on ScienceBlogs, for example here, here, and here.
I'm not as, shall we say, personally invested in the issue as many of my fellow bloggers, but this did look interesting to me, so I watched it last night (with occasional flipping over to the Syracuse basketball game). It was... pretty good. I doubt it would change anybody's mind, in the unlikely event that any "Intelligent Design"…
drorzel | November 12, 2007John Scalzi visits the Creation Museum.
Did you know, for example, that Adam is responsible not only for the fall of man, but also for the creation of venom? It didn't exist in the Garden of Eden, because, well. Why would it? Weeds? Adam's fault. Carnivorous animals (and, one assumes, the occasional carnivorous plant)? Adam again. Entropy? You guessed it: Adam. Think about that, won't you; eat one piece of fruit and suddenly you're responsible for the inevitable heat death of the universe. God's kind of mean.
I was away for the weekend, visiting the in-laws, so I haven't had time for…
drorzel | September 18, 2007Over at Pure Pedantry, Jake Young has recently posted two long, thoughtful, and civil entries in the New Atheism debate (he must have a thesis deadline, or something). The first follows John Dewey in arguing that a tight link between science and atheism is counterproductive, while the second collects and responds to criticism of the first. they're both well-thought-out, and argued calmly and carefully. Jake's a better man than I am.
I say that not just because he managed to keep his cool after entering this argument, which I'm demonstrably not able to do, but also because I'm going to pick up…
drorzel | September 15, 2007A while back, I posted a call for non-religious charities, and donated $200 to two organizations recommended by readers. Having done that, I would be remiss in my duties as a blogger if I didn't mention the ne plus ultra of atheist charities, the newly launched Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.
Ten of the eleven missions listed are about the promotion of atheism, making it more like a missionary organization than the Red Cross, but the list does include:
7. Charitable giving by secularists to humanitarian good causes. Major disasters like earthquakes or tornados prompt a…
drorzel | July 19, 2007Fred Clark at Slacktivist is the best writer in blogdom on issues of politics and religion in America, bar none. So when he takes up Amy Sullivan's Time article on the "God Gap", you know it will be worth a read.
He actually has two posts on the subject, the first making a good point about the cultural origin of evangelical voting patterns, and the second talking about the specific issue of abortion, which he thinks is the key to the whole problem.
What I really like about these pieces, though, is the end of the second post, which makes a much broader point:
I give Sullivan credit for…
drorzel | July 19, 2007Despite efforts to avoid such foolishness, Kevin Beck inadvertently drew my attention to what people are calling "Blake's Law," which apparently briefly had its own Wikipedia page, but now appears to redirect to the Pharyngula page. Blogdom really needs a killfile.
Anyway, the Internet "Law" in question is stated as:
In any discussion of atheism (skepticism, etc.), the probability that someone will compare a vocal atheist to religious fundamentalists increases to one.
This is notable mostly for being a really beautiful piece of-- wait for it-- framing.
The "Law" is consciously formulated to…
drorzel | June 27, 2007Over at Framing Science, Matthew Nisbet notes a survey about poverty which finds, among other things, that atheists are less likely to take part in anti-poverty efforts. There are a number of good reasons to be skeptical of this survey, which I'll mention at the end of this post, but Nisbet seems to take it seriously, and speculates about why atheists might be less charitable than believers, giving three possible interpretations of the result. In the very first comment to the post, commenter "Roy" offers a fourth: bone-deep cynicism.
Most of the religious 'charity' aimed at poverty actually…
drorzel | June 14, 2007According to Inside Higher Ed, that's what sociologists found when analyzing data from a longitudinal study of more than 10,000 young Americans. Those who went to college were more likely to remain religious than those who didn't attend college, with 76% of the non-college group reporting a decline in attending religious services, compared to only 59% of those who attended college. As one of the authors notes, this goes against conventional wisdom:
"Actually we've just been wrong about this for quite a while," said Mark D. Regnerus, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of…
drorzel | May 16, 2007Miriam Burstein points out the historical antecedents of the "Atheist Two-Step" discussed by Adam Kotsko and Brandon at Siris. This also ties in nicely with Fred Clark on sectarian atheists, as previously mentioned.
Also, speaking of historical screeds by Protestant preachers, Jerry Fallwell is dead. I really don't have anything to say about that, other than that I'm sorry for his family and friends.
drorzel | May 14, 2007Two good "fundamentalism is stupid" posts over the weekend. First up is Scott Aaronson on rules of inference:
In the study of rationality, there's a well-known party game: the one where everyone throws a number from 0 to 100 into a hat, and that player wins whose number was closest to two-thirds of the average of everyone's numbers. It's easy to see that the only Nash equilibrium of this game -- that is, the only possible outcome if everyone is rational, knows that everyone is rational, knows everyone knows everyone is rational, etc. -- is for everyone to throw in 0. Why? For simplicity,…
drorzel | May 3, 2007Believe it or not, yesterday's post started as an honest question. I phrased it provocatively because this is, after all, the Internet, but I wasn't just poking atheists with sticks.
This actually started quite a while ago, during one of the previous rounds of squabbling over Dawkins and his ilk, when I started a sentence something like: "What I'd like to see is less 'Religion is Stupid' and more..." and couldn't finish it. I couldn't come up with a good example of something positive to put in place of the "..."
Which was really annoying. After all, I've got a pretty solid idea of what I'd…
drorzel | May 2, 2007Are there reasons for being religious that don't easily reduce to "God said so"?
What are they?
(I probably don't have the right audience for this to really work the way I'd like, but let's give it a try anyway...)