religiosity
hrynyshyn | July 15, 2009Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney are getting a lot of mileage out of their new book, Unscientific America. This week they pop up in Newsweek to argue that we should welcome the likely appointment of Francis Collins as head of NIH because in a time of polarization, he's a unifying figure, one that embraces both religion (Christianity in this case) and science.
On first glance, their logic seems sounds. We know that many Americans are unwilling to accept science as a worthy pursuit, one that should figure strongly in the development of public policy. We know many of them do so because they…
hrynyshyn | July 10, 2009Poor Chris Mooney. He's found himself deep in the old "are science and religion compatible" debate. I usually try to stay out of this particular rabbit hole, but the Island of Doubt could use a traffic boost to make up for my upcoming vacation, so...
Chris and his Unscientific America co-author Sheril Kirshenbaum have drawn the ire of the New Atheistis by blaming Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, et al. for a good part of the yawning gap between science and the humanities.
It's funny, because the contempt that the issue draws out of otherwise mild-mannered folks is rarely matched anywhere in the…
hrynyshyn | December 23, 2008I've been waiting for almost four years for an opportunity to connect homophobia and global warming, and finally I have it, thanks to the pope. Benny XVI the other day managed to compare the effort to save the planetary ecosystem with the fragility of human sexuality. How did he do it?
Well, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary Humanae Vitae, the paper that lays bare the thinking (or lack thereof) behind his church's opposition to preventing unwanted pregnancies, the ostensible moral compass for the world's Roman Catholics said that:
the "nature of the human being as man and woman" is an…
hrynyshyn | September 4, 2008As of 1700 UT on Sept. 4, 2008, Sam "The End of Faith" Harris had attracted 986 comments to a piece on Sarah Palin he wrote for the LA Times. I guess I need to write a bestseller attacking religion if I want to draw that kind of traffic. And imagine how long ago ScienceBlogs would have celebrated our millionth comment if Sam were writing for us.... But I digress. it was a good little essay, one that has more to say of note about the political zeitgeist in the U.S. than it does Palin, actually. Here's the nub of his argument:
Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to…
hrynyshyn | August 28, 2008As far as I can tell, North Carolina's no different from the rest of America when it comes to religion. About a tenth of the population is free of religious conviction. That's not a big slice, but it could, in theory, be big enough to cost Sen. Elizabeth Dole her re-election this November, if enough free-thinkers learn that they're not welcome at her dinner table. Thanks to PZ's outrage, we learn that Dole is outraged that her Democratic challenger, Kay Hagan, is hanging out with ;;;; horror of horrors ;;;; Boston atheists.
From Dole's website:
Salisbury, N.C. - On September 15th, Kay Hagan…
hrynyshyn | August 10, 2008By now we've all seen the John McCain ad that juxtaposes Paris Hilton and Britney Spears with Barack Obama. Most of us probably recognize it as disingenuous use of imagery to make a flawed argument. Sadly, the same technique is being used by one of our own here on ScienceBlogs. The culprit is Matt "Framing Science" Nisbet. Take a look.
Matt is off on yet another crusade against the "new atheists" as represented by fellow SciBlogger PZ Myers. His post is full of nonsense, and I don't say that lightly. But what really annoyed me is his choice of photographs to illustrate his point. At the top…
hrynyshyn | June 24, 2008The Pew Forum surveys on what Americans think always churn out fascinating results. The latest one, released Monday, is no exception. My favorite tidbit emerges from the clever decision to drill down past the simple question of whether the recipient believes in god to a more sophisticated understanding.
Of particular interest on the Island of Doubt is the question of just how certain are people of faith about what they believe. The answer, which is drawn from 34,000 Americans polled, is that only 71 % are absolutely certain that their god exists. The means the other 29 % harbor some degree of…
hrynyshyn | June 23, 2008There's much gnashing of teeth among the secular set these days, as South Carolina prepares to offer automobile license plates that declare "I Believe." Just in case other drivers don't get it, the specialty plates will also feature a cross, just as Florida's proposed and rejected plates would have. Is this a breach of the First Amendment, as a lawsuit filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State claims? Or is it much ado about nothing? I can't get worked up ;;;; beyond blogging about it, of course.
South Carolina, like many other states, already offers a standard "In God We…
hrynyshyn | May 13, 2008There are basically two kinds of news consumers. Those who will find David Brooks' latest creation from his corner of the New York Times stable of columnists absolutely irresistible and those who will cross the street to Fox News before reading anything with a headline like "The Neural Buddhists."
This David Brooks fellow is a funny sort. Conservative, but not as conservative as some. Respectful of science and reason, but not as respectful as some. Today, perhaps bereft of anything else to say about the candidate who wouldn't die, he decided to wade into the atheism debate. The Neural…
hrynyshyn | April 8, 2008The idea of holding a presidential candidates debate on the role of science in running the country was always a long shot. But those behind Science Debate 2008 must be crying in their coffees this morning with the news that Clinton and Obama have agreed to a CNN-televised forum a week from Sunday on -- wait for it -- "faith, values and other current issues."
I suppose if we're really lucky the moderators will buy Al Gore's argument that climate change is a moral issue, as is stell cell research, energy independence, the teaching of evolution.... But we all know that's not where this thing is…
hrynyshyn | March 9, 2008For its inaugural issue, the new interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal Time and Mind has seen fit to publish a paper suggesting that Moses, among others of his time, didn't actually commune with any god, but was simply high on a local psychotropic plant extract. Ya think?
In "Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis," (10.2752/175169608783489116) Hebrew
University pyschology prof Benny Shannon draws on "comparative experiential-phenomenological observations" (his own drug trips), along with the documented effects of the psychoactive substances available to the ancient Hebrews. He came…
hrynyshyn | February 20, 2008According to the BBC, "an Israeli MP has blamed parliament's tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently." Whoa.
hrynyshyn | February 7, 2008Nicholas Kristof, one of the best voices on the New York Times op-ed pages, wants us all to stop being so mean to evangelicals. Why? Because so many of them are doing so darn much good. Yes, but...
Last weekend's column, Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love, drew a fair bit of contrary comment, to which he has replied at his On The Ground blog. One line of argument is particularly relevant to these ScienceBlogs. Here's a piece of the opening to the column:
... few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama's race or Hillary Clinton's sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with…
hrynyshyn | December 13, 2007One of my Facebook friends, someone I only know through the Internet, just invited me to join the new "Atheists >> Theists" group. I'm sure she meant well, but this is exactly the wrong way to go about trying to spread the word about the Enlightenment.
The group has just 24 members, so it's hardly catching on. Not like the just-created Science Debates 2008 Facebook group, which had 1,334 members last time I checked. But still, it's disappointed to see so many people self-identify with such a self-righteous idea.
Of course, most atheists believe their lack of faith is superior to faith…
hrynyshyn | December 3, 2007Nicole Kidman says her grandmother, a devout Catholic, would have been happy with her work in the soon-to-be-released The Golden Compass. This even though the book, the first of what producers hope will be a triology of films base on Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials series, begins a story that culminates in the overthrow of religion by humanism.
According to a wire story posted on the SciFi Channel website
The books have been lambasted as anti-religious and, more specifically, anti-Catholic, for their themes and the depiction of the Magisterium, a powerful and oppressive group that many…
hrynyshyn | November 9, 2007The Seventh Day Adventists aren't the brightest lights on the tree (although as they don't celebrate Christmas, I suppose that's not the best metaphor), but sometimes their propaganda astounds even me. The latest edition of the church's monthly magazine, Signs of the Times, offered freely in streetboxes around the world, asks "Has Science Found God?" Gee, I wonder what the answer found within will be?
That's the difference between secular journalism and religious propaganda . When Time or Newsweek asks such questions (Is OJ really guilty?) you know the magazine will leave the conclusion up to…
hrynyshyn | September 20, 2007We'll never know what role, if any, the mockery of the New Atheists had in the decision taken yesterday by the Toronto Catholic District School Board to let the girls in their charge get the HPV vaccine. But for once, it feels good to pass on the news that empirical evidence has trumped irrational faith.
The decision came just a couple of days after the news spread that that another nearby school board, just down the road from Toronto in Halton, " could become the first in Ontario to ban public health nurses from administering the HPV vaccine to young girls at local schools." From the Globe…
hrynyshyn | September 16, 2007A pair of stories in Saturday's Washington Post would have us believe that atheism is on the rise in America and in Europe. And despite the popularity of the subject here on ScienceBlogs, the culture of science barely rates a mention in either story. Also missing are much in the way of quantitative evidence to back up the main thesis, but there are some hints that the recent proliferation of "New Atheist" literature may be responsible for whatever growth in atheism there really is.
The Post's story on the situation in Europe is headlined " In Europe and U.S., Nonbelievers Are Increasingly…
hrynyshyn | September 13, 2007That's the big question I take away from a surprisingly fascinating exchange on the what I thought was a tired "how to promote atheism?" debate, in which ...
... Jake Young of the Pure Pendantry blog makes a respectable, if somewhat lengthy, attempt to argue that linking science with atheism too intimately will scare off people of faith and turn science into even more of an elistist community, and Jason Rosenhouse at EvolutionBlog counters that atheists need to make their case more forcefully if rational philosophy is ever to find a position of influence in society. Both, including the…
hrynyshyn | August 23, 2007The argument that atheists should try hard not to offend people of faith, lest we further polarize the two factions, assumes that the meek will inherit the earth, not the rhetorically courageous. But what historical evidence is there for this assumption? Or does history make the opposite case? Christopher Hitchens suggests the latter.
Towards the end of his new dismissal of religion, God is not Great, Hitchens points to the example of the American revolutionary Thomas Paine:
"Paine's Age of Reason marks almost the first time that frank contempt for organized religion was openly expressed. It…