Religion
drorzel | May 2, 2007Are there reasons for being an atheist that don't easily reduce to "Religion is stupid"?
Should there be?
drorzel | March 18, 2007I'm always sort of fascinated by articles in which people talk about why they believe what they do, particularly in a religious context. I basically never find them persuasive (my own inclinations are Apathetic Agnostic-- I don't care if there's a God or not), but when they're done well, they're really interesting reading, in sort of the same way as some science fiction-- it's a look inside a very different worldview.
Two good examples have crossed my path recently. One is Rob Knop's post about why he is a Christian (the third and concluding post in a series), which I'm sure has already been…
drorzel | March 12, 2007As part of one of my intermittent attempts to be a better person, I've given up atheist-baiting for Lent. And let me tell you, it isn't easy.
I would be remiss in my blogging duties, though, if I didn't point out Rob Knop's recent posts about religion and science. The first is about being a Christian, and the second is about the role of spirituality.
The posts make for interesting reading. The comments in response, not so much.
drorzel | February 15, 2007As usual, Scott Aaronson says it better than I did:
[M]ost of the commentary strikes me as missing a key point: that to give a degree to a bozo like this, provided he indeed did the work, can only reflect credit on the scientific enterprise. Will Ross now hit the creationist lecture circuit, trumpeting his infidel credentials to the skies? You better believe it. Will he use the legitimacy conferred by his degree to fight against everything the degree stands for? It can't be doubted.
But here's the wonderful thing about science: unlike the other side, we don't need loyalty oaths in order to…
drorzel | February 13, 2007I'm having the sort of morning where I feel like lobbing a grenade at somebody, and the predictable outrage over yesterday's story about a creationist paleontologist is as good a target as any.
The issue here is whether it's appropriate for Marcus Ross to receive a Ph.D. for work in paleontology, given that he's a young-earth creationist. His scientific papers are all perfectly consistent with modern understanding, speaking of events taking place millions of years in the past, but he himself believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and was created as described in the Bible.
The usual…
drorzel | February 11, 2007Kate passes along a link to a New Scientist article noting this today has been proclaimed Evolution Sunday 2007 by the Clergy Letter Project:
On 11 February 2007 hundreds of congregations from all portions of the country and a host of denominations will come together to discuss the compatibility of religion and science. For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science. More than 10,000 Christian clergy have already signed The Clergy Letter demonstrating that this is a false dichotomy. Now, on…
drorzel | February 11, 2007I've long been of the opinion that if sanity is ever restored to the relationship between politics and religion in America, it will owe a lot to people like Fred Clark. He writes passionately and persuasively about the many problems caused by the "Religious Right" from a Christian perspective, in religious language. His Left Behind posts in particular are a treasure-- he explains why LaHaye and Jenkins's books are a disaster not only because they're aesthetically bad, but because they're theologically bad, relying on a gross misinterpretation of Christianity.
Of course, well-informed,…
drorzel | January 17, 2007Scott Aaronson talks sense about religion, in response to an emailer who stopped reading his quantum computing lectures because he made references to "God":
What I'm trying to say, Bill, is this: you can go ahead and indulge yourself. If some of the most brilliant unbelievers in history -- Einstein, Erdös, Twain -- could refer to a being of dubious ontological status as they would to a smelly old uncle, then why not the rest of us? For me, the whole point of scientific rationalism is that you're free to ask any question, debate any argument, read anything that interests you, use whatever…
drorzel | January 1, 2007Over at The Island of Doubt, James Hrynyshyn (pronounced, no doubt, just like it's spelled) points to an article by Daniel Dennett in which he refuses to let a bad idea die:
In July, 2003, I wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled "The Bright Stuff", where I drew attention to a budding movement among atheists intent on copying an idea from the homosexuals' excellent campaign: the hijacking of a perfectly good word with an established meaning, gay, and putting it to use with a new meaning, as a consciousness-raiser.
Articles like this make me question whether Dennett ever talks…
drorzel | December 11, 2006Over at Bora's House of Round-the-Clock Blogging, we find the sensational headline Beaten by Biologists, Creationists Turn Their Sights On Physics. On seeing that, I headed over to the editorial in The American Prospect that it points to, expecting to be scandalized. When I got there, I found this:
U.S. creationists have changed tactics. Though none have explicitly abandoned ID in public, the focus of their scientific cover arguments has shifted from organic change to the creation of the universe. They have picked up on the controversial claim that human life could only have evolved because…
drorzel | December 7, 2006The Onion AV Club has a review of The God Delusion this week. "Big deal, " you say, "Who cares what a humor magazine thinks?"
I've found in recent years, though, that the AV Club is one of the most consistent sources of reviews of movies, music, and books out there. They're sharp, they get right to the point (reviews are seldom more than a few paragraphs), and they're a reliable predictor of my reaction to a book, record, or movie.
It's a three-paragraph review, so it would seem cheap to quote it at length, but here are the opening sentences:
Without a doubt, contributing to the public…
drorzel | November 15, 2006Fred Clark at Slacktivist is probably the best writer in blogdom, when it comes to matters of religion and the intersection between religion and politics. This might sound like damning with faint praise, given how screechingly awful most blogospheric writing about religion is, but it's not intended that way. He's a terrific writer by any standard, and he's at his very best when it comes to religion. Supporters of liberal engagement with Christianity could do a lot worse than just pointing everyone they meet to his blog.
So, when blogdom's best writer on religion writes a post about the best…
drorzel | October 27, 2006It's mildly ironic that the recent Dawkins discussion has centered around whether he does or does not do an adequate job of addressing the logical arguments for the existence of God, because that's one of the few areas where I probably agree with him. I don't find any of those arguments particularly convincing, either.
There are two real problems I have with Dawkins (and most other militant atheists, for that matter, but we'll use him as emblematic of the whole crowd). One of those problems is a matter of tact and tactics-- I think his whole approach to the issue is obnoxious and counter-…
drorzel | October 25, 2006The recent discussion of reviews of The God Delusion has been interesting and remarkably civil, and I am grateful to the participants for both of those facts. In thinking a bit more about this, I thought of a good and relatively non-controversial analogy to explain the point I've been trying to make about the reviews (I thought of several nasty and inflammatory analogies without much effort, but I'm trying to be a Good Person...). Unfortunately it requires me to explain a bit of physics... Please, please, don't throw me into that briar patch.
Some people say that the last really significant…
drorzel | October 23, 2006This week's New York Times Book Review features a review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion that judges the book fairly harshly:
The least satisfying part of this book is Dawkins's treatment of the traditional arguments for the existence of God. The "ontological argument" says that God must exist by his very nature, since he possesses all perfections, and it is more perfect to exist than not to exist. The "cosmological argument" says that the world must have an ultimate cause, and this cause could only be an eternal, God-like entity. The "design argument" appeals to special features of the…
drorzel | October 12, 2006Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman both pick up on the new book from Dennis Kuo saying that the "faith-based initiatives" program was a political scam.
The MSNBC piece contains a few colorful quotes about the shenanigans Kuo is reporting, which sound pretty bad. Kevin cites them, then asks:
Like I said a few days ago, are social conservatives ever going to catch on to the way they're being conned by the Republican Party?
I agree that they're being conned, but at the same time, what, exactly, does Kevin think they're going to do about it?
This is one of the central problems with the "What's the…
drorzel | September 21, 2006Over at Inside Higher Ed, William Durden resorts to satire in response to the Spellings commission report:
In the nation's current zeal to account for all transfer of teaching and insight through quantitative, standardized testing, perhaps we should advance quantitative measurement into other areas of human meaning and definition. Why leave work undone?
I suggest, for example, that a federal commission propose an accountability initiative for those of faith (not such a wild notion as an increasing number of politicians are calling the traditional separation of church and state unhealthy for…
drorzel | September 6, 2006There was a fair bit of talk last week about Pope Giblets Benedict's weekend seminar on evolution. I haven't seen any post-seminar commentary yet, but I'm not sure I would expect much, given that no official statements are forthcoming.
I'm sort of puzzled as to why this is a story, though. As the Times puts it:
In 1996, Pope John Paul declared evolution "more than a hypothesis," and in 2004 as Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict endorsed the scientific view that the earth is roughly four billion years old and that species changed through evolution. Indeed, there has been no credible scientific…
drorzel | July 30, 2006Miscellaneous stories that caught my eye in today's New York Times:
First, on the science sdie of things, a long article about how people are living longer, not to mention bigger and healthier, than their ancestors. It compares medical records for Civil War veterans with people of similar age today, and finds amazing reductions in all manner of health problems. This is attributed to better pre-natal and early-childhood nutrition and medical care.
I hope this is on the radar for the various medical types here at ScienceBlogs, as I'd love to hear the opinions of real live doctors on this. It…
drorzel | July 11, 2006This month's Physics Today has an article by Murray Peshkin on "Addressing the Public About Science and Religion", that is both a nice change of pace (as physicists don't do much of that sort of thing), and a reminder of why a lot of physicists don't do that sort of thing. It's not that he says anything stupid-- quite the contrary, his remarks are sensible and moderate. The problem is that, well, his remarks are sensible and moderate, and thus unlikely to please extremists at either end of the debate.
The key paragraph is probably:
Science and religion have different assumptions, different…