The Power (Lines) of Christ
3 hours ago
Friday, August 13, 2010
Not angels but apes
But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.-- anthropologist and writer Robert Ardrey, in his book African Genesis (1961)
An Atheist runs for Congress in Virginia
The former president of American Atheists has sent around a bulletin of potential interest to many in the freethinking world. There is a Congressional race in Virginia which seems to be between an Atheist Democrat and a Christian Republican. Ellen Johnson writes:
Please note that I am publicizing this message because of its news content, and not because I know anything about either candidate or seek members of the Boston Atheists or other groups to support one candidate over the other.
We need your help to elect Dr. Wynne LeGrow to Congress. Dr. LeGrow is the Democratic candidate for the 4th district in Virginia and he is an Atheist. He is also a veteran and a physician.
His opponent is Republican Randy Forbes, who founded and chairs the Congressional Prayer Caucus [!!! - ZB]. Forbes has introduced such resolutions as H. R. 397 "America’s Spiritual Heritage Week" and H. R. 274 reaffirming the phrase "In God We Trust" in all public buildings and institutions.
We cannot sit back and allow Randy Forbes to be reelected in November. It's time to get serious about electing Atheists to Congress. Dr.LeGrow is a candidate we can be proud of. Our goal is $10,000 to begin purchasing advertising and mailings for Dr. LeGrow.And please ask your friends to visit http://www.enlightenthevote.
We need to start this campaign now. We cannot allow this opportunity to pass. Please send your donation today so we can get to work to elect Dr. LeGrow to Congress.
com and sign up for our e-mail alerts.
Please note that I am publicizing this message because of its news content, and not because I know anything about either candidate or seek members of the Boston Atheists or other groups to support one candidate over the other.
Dawkins: of course the repulsive burka should be legal
‘I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.’-- Richard Dawkins, as quoted on separate occasions, for an article in The Daily Mail. Yes, Virginia, it is possible to be against the burka since its use is for the most part coerced, and be against legal remedies. Let us not forget that we have any number of extra-legal (not illegal!) means of resisting patriarchal, medievalist, and theocratic practices in our shared culture.
‘As a liberal I would hesitate to propose a blanket ban on any style of dress because of the implications for individual liberty and freedom of choice.’
Friday, August 06, 2010
Turn the Bibles into frappes
That said, I think we’d be better off if all the world’s Bibles turned to vanilla milkshakes tomorrow. Over the centuries, humans have devised all sorts of diabolical institutions – genocide, slavery, misogyny, child abuse, homophobia, heretic hunts, witch cleansings, anti-Semitism – and you’ll find each and every one of them endorsed in Scripture, and almost no unequivocal denunciations of these evils.
James Morrow, author of The Last Witchfinder and other excellent novels that foreground a freethinking perspective, in an interview with Eric Mays at The Authors Speak blog.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Don't fool children with fake phone calls from your god
Dear Mr. Greg Bettencourt:
I was discouraged to read, in the Taunton Daily Gazette, that children attending the St. Nicholas of Myra vacation bible school were the recipients of phone calls purportedly made by the Christian god. Perhaps the article got it wrong, and the phone calls were placed not by someone pretending to be a deity, but by someone meaning only to talk to each child about issues of faith. I'd be glad to hear that this was the case -- perhaps you can confirm, one way or the other, what the nature of these calls has been?
In view of the chance that the article is accurate, and children have been receiving phone calls from someone claiming to be a god, I wanted to write and share my concern. It distresses me to think that the trust of children might have been abused in this way. As adult citizens and parents, we are entrusted to raise our children in this reality, and not to misrepresent the nature of that reality. The consequences of failing to meet this responsibility can be severe.
One example hits us particularly close to home here in Massachusetts, that of the Church of Christian Science. Christian Scientists who misrepresent reality engender in their children the notion that disease can be cured with wishful thinking instead of medical intervention. This game of make-believe has led to suffering and death -- children become the victims of medical neglect, and those who grow to adulthood inflict the same unreality on their own children. I'm sure as someone who works professionally in a pastoral capacity, you are aware of such risks.
Children are particularly vulnerable to believe in unrealities that are made real through the collusion of the parents and teachers -- think of how common belief in Santa Claus is. But then, childhood belief in Santa Claus doesn't often factor into a person's decision in adulthood to vote for one political candidate or another, or modify the way they raise their own children. A phone call from someone claiming to be Santa Claus will delight a child without causing harm, since belief in Santa has an extremely limited scope. Belief in deities like the Christian god, however, will resound throughout life, informing decisions such as where to live, who to vote for and how to raise one's own children.
Few issues are as serious as belief in the existence of gods; surely you can educate children on the history and nature of your tradition of faith without relying on outright trickery. If there are reasons to believe in the Christian god, I should hope you introduce them to children who are of such age as to be able to evaluate that evidence for themselves, and in such a way as to ensure that their ethical intelligence is allowed to judge that evidence rather than the less rational and more emotional components of our human selves. I find it ironic that this kind of betrayal of trust would occur in the parish of Nicholas of Myra, whose special regard for children is so famous. Using trick phone calls to reinforce belief isn't near the violation of the butcher who baked children into a pie, but I think St. Nicholas would be displeased just the same.
Although it is not for me to say how best for you to live according to the dictates of your religion, I would like to observe that this form of false witness seems not only to misrepresenting reality, but also to misrepresent your own faith. The expectation that a god is accessible by phone can only lead to disappointment.
Neither theology nor the trust of children should be treated so frivolously as this article suggests they have been in the program operating under your supervision. For such reasons, I encourage you to discontinue this practice of deceptive phone calls at the St. Nicholas of Myra VBS.
Sincerely,
Zachary Bos
Massachusetts State Director, American Atheists
E: zbos@atheists.org
CC: Kendra Miller at the Taunton Daily Gazette; Tim Goldrick of Saint Nicholas of Myra Catholic Church
I was discouraged to read, in the Taunton Daily Gazette, that children attending the St. Nicholas of Myra vacation bible school were the recipients of phone calls purportedly made by the Christian god. Perhaps the article got it wrong, and the phone calls were placed not by someone pretending to be a deity, but by someone meaning only to talk to each child about issues of faith. I'd be glad to hear that this was the case -- perhaps you can confirm, one way or the other, what the nature of these calls has been?
In view of the chance that the article is accurate, and children have been receiving phone calls from someone claiming to be a god, I wanted to write and share my concern. It distresses me to think that the trust of children might have been abused in this way. As adult citizens and parents, we are entrusted to raise our children in this reality, and not to misrepresent the nature of that reality. The consequences of failing to meet this responsibility can be severe.
One example hits us particularly close to home here in Massachusetts, that of the Church of Christian Science. Christian Scientists who misrepresent reality engender in their children the notion that disease can be cured with wishful thinking instead of medical intervention. This game of make-believe has led to suffering and death -- children become the victims of medical neglect, and those who grow to adulthood inflict the same unreality on their own children. I'm sure as someone who works professionally in a pastoral capacity, you are aware of such risks.
Children are particularly vulnerable to believe in unrealities that are made real through the collusion of the parents and teachers -- think of how common belief in Santa Claus is. But then, childhood belief in Santa Claus doesn't often factor into a person's decision in adulthood to vote for one political candidate or another, or modify the way they raise their own children. A phone call from someone claiming to be Santa Claus will delight a child without causing harm, since belief in Santa has an extremely limited scope. Belief in deities like the Christian god, however, will resound throughout life, informing decisions such as where to live, who to vote for and how to raise one's own children.
Few issues are as serious as belief in the existence of gods; surely you can educate children on the history and nature of your tradition of faith without relying on outright trickery. If there are reasons to believe in the Christian god, I should hope you introduce them to children who are of such age as to be able to evaluate that evidence for themselves, and in such a way as to ensure that their ethical intelligence is allowed to judge that evidence rather than the less rational and more emotional components of our human selves. I find it ironic that this kind of betrayal of trust would occur in the parish of Nicholas of Myra, whose special regard for children is so famous. Using trick phone calls to reinforce belief isn't near the violation of the butcher who baked children into a pie, but I think St. Nicholas would be displeased just the same.
Although it is not for me to say how best for you to live according to the dictates of your religion, I would like to observe that this form of false witness seems not only to misrepresenting reality, but also to misrepresent your own faith. The expectation that a god is accessible by phone can only lead to disappointment.
Neither theology nor the trust of children should be treated so frivolously as this article suggests they have been in the program operating under your supervision. For such reasons, I encourage you to discontinue this practice of deceptive phone calls at the St. Nicholas of Myra VBS.
Sincerely,
Zachary Bos
Massachusetts State Director, American Atheists
E: zbos@atheists.org
CC: Kendra Miller at the Taunton Daily Gazette; Tim Goldrick of Saint Nicholas of Myra Catholic Church
Friday, July 02, 2010
Freedom of conscience in the US and elsewhere
Freedom of conscience, what we non-theists call freethought, is called arrogant in these our United anti-intellectual States. Elsewhere in the world, however, the exercise of such freedom threatened with execution.
In thinking about Ron Rosenbaum's silly appreciation of "the New Agnosticism," I have been self-consciously this week evaluating my own "militancy." Am I one of those rude New Atheists who has never learned to live and let live, who takes pleasure out of calling other people wrong in their beliefs.
(The kind of New Atheists that many blogs and articles call-out for being so antagonistic.)
I think not; I'm proud of the work I've done to examine my beliefs,knowledge, and values, and not ashamed of having strong reasons to be confrontational against religious belief and religious authority. This video from P. Z. Myers blog gives me good reason to think that a confrontational attitude isn't just acceptable, it is essential.
About the video: "In the Muslim-majority nation of Maldives, a man stunned an audience during questions and answers period in a lecture given by an Islamic cleric, by stating that he had chosen freedom of conscience not to follow Islam. The man, Mohamed Nazim, was promptly attacked, taken into custody, and has been threatened with death and beheading, or other punishments for choosing his freedom of conscience. Maldives media are reporting that it is the first time in many hundreds of years that a Maldivian has publicly renounced Islam, since Sultan King Hassan IX converted to Christianity in 1552 and was deposed."
It is very easy, in our democratic republic, for members of the majority culture to confuse their numbers with their superiority. In a country with near-universal religious belief, it is possible for a speaker (as in this video) to dismiss a freethinker with the most feeble of arguments, and be supporting by rounds of enthusiastic applause. The same audience that endorses this dangerous nonsense will shun the freethinker, and not come to his defense when the police take him into custody, when public figures denounce him, and when his life is threatened for his minority beliefs.
Thinking about the Fourth of July, In view of Sunday's holiday, I recommend we all think about what it means to be a member of a dispossessed and unorganized minority community, one which is labeled as depraved, subversive, immoral, and arrogant.
When I sent a message to the Boston Atheists mailing list, to share the news of Nazim's situation, I told the list members -- I really like you arrogant, militant, atheistic people. And I am glad none of you live in the Maldives.
Thanks for P. Z. Myers for the critical, confrontation, conscientious work he does at Pharyngula, the source of the links I use above. More information about the incident of apostate Nazim can be found at RealCourage.org.
In thinking about Ron Rosenbaum's silly appreciation of "the New Agnosticism," I have been self-consciously this week evaluating my own "militancy." Am I one of those rude New Atheists who has never learned to live and let live, who takes pleasure out of calling other people wrong in their beliefs.
(The kind of New Atheists that many blogs and articles call-out for being so antagonistic.)
I think not; I'm proud of the work I've done to examine my beliefs,knowledge, and values, and not ashamed of having strong reasons to be confrontational against religious belief and religious authority. This video from P. Z. Myers blog gives me good reason to think that a confrontational attitude isn't just acceptable, it is essential.
About the video: "In the Muslim-majority nation of Maldives, a man stunned an audience during questions and answers period in a lecture given by an Islamic cleric, by stating that he had chosen freedom of conscience not to follow Islam. The man, Mohamed Nazim, was promptly attacked, taken into custody, and has been threatened with death and beheading, or other punishments for choosing his freedom of conscience. Maldives media are reporting that it is the first time in many hundreds of years that a Maldivian has publicly renounced Islam, since Sultan King Hassan IX converted to Christianity in 1552 and was deposed."
It is very easy, in our democratic republic, for members of the majority culture to confuse their numbers with their superiority. In a country with near-universal religious belief, it is possible for a speaker (as in this video) to dismiss a freethinker with the most feeble of arguments, and be supporting by rounds of enthusiastic applause. The same audience that endorses this dangerous nonsense will shun the freethinker, and not come to his defense when the police take him into custody, when public figures denounce him, and when his life is threatened for his minority beliefs.
Thinking about the Fourth of July, In view of Sunday's holiday, I recommend we all think about what it means to be a member of a dispossessed and unorganized minority community, one which is labeled as depraved, subversive, immoral, and arrogant.
When I sent a message to the Boston Atheists mailing list, to share the news of Nazim's situation, I told the list members -- I really like you arrogant, militant, atheistic people. And I am glad none of you live in the Maldives.
Thanks for P. Z. Myers for the critical, confrontation, conscientious work he does at Pharyngula, the source of the links I use above. More information about the incident of apostate Nazim can be found at RealCourage.org.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
David Hart thinks atheism is dumb.
David Hart has written an outrageously condescending article for the Catholic journal First Things, in which he dismisses entirely the intellectual credibility of New Atheism -- that is, the fusion of scientifically informed, change-driving nontheism that he and other theists have good reason to be worried about. He's read ALL the new books, he writes, and finds them all boringly ignorant.
That sounds like just the kind of ad hominem position which is the last resort of a man with no other options. His worldview isn't defensible -- socially, empirically, ethically, logically, or, I'll go whole-hog, aesthetically -- and he's unprepared to identify the logical failings of atheism, so, he just sneers at it.
He writes, "A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe."
Really? Must I bother myself with fully grasping the deep incorrectness of every non-self-evident belief before I can fairly claim that I lack belief in it? Let's go all enroll in unicorn zoology, 101: or do you want to be accused of appalling ignorance for having rejected belief in unicorns?
He has a solution for our failings: get a little godliness in you. Because, you see, the best atheists are really closet prophets: "Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets—a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties."
God save me from ever feeling the "moral grandeur: of the prophets -- as distasteful a collection of woman-hating, sex-fearing, reality-rejecting delusionals as I can imagine. Though, there is something to possessing a deep abhorrence of "vicious idolatries that enslave mines..."
It is a mark of the true believer that irony has entirely left the building.
I hope many of us in the BA world will stop by the article and give it a read. It should put steel in your step and resolve in your work: this is the kind of diatribe that a huge proportion of believers finds entirely credible, and which lends to ant-atheistic prejudice a false polish of sensibility.
Write to Hart, personally. His pen is a pulpit, and he's spewing venom. That kind of demagoguery needs to be challenged, and not just with an anonymous comment in a message thread. Compassion and intelligence may not have the rhetorical efficiency of his fallacy-filled whitewashery, true; but we've constrained by good taste and principles to just be better than that. We all have our handicaps.
I read these articles and get so exasperated. One does wish that the children would step aside and let the adults handle things. Even with all their wailing, I am optimistic that we're participating in the dismantling of religion. I'm glad for it.
Read more about Hart at Wikipedia. I'm tempted to do a line-by-line response to his article, but this seems already to have been done by others elsewhere -- in parts by different authors, though it looks like all the necessary points have been made -- and in any case, does it matter? When a person believes in the nonexistent, and makes the study of such their professional career, you have to feel like evidence, logic and reasoning are all a bit beside the point. A variety of sensible responses appear at RichardDawkins.net. Comment #195 by Edward T. Babinski is fantastic.
Bonus: Read more horrendous twaddle from Hart at New Criterion, part of his campaign against the obvious and boring manifestations of modern atheism. Gosh, everything he writes is either theologically evil (Google to find his article on theodicy and tsunamis!) or piously, depravedly smug.
That sounds like just the kind of ad hominem position which is the last resort of a man with no other options. His worldview isn't defensible -- socially, empirically, ethically, logically, or, I'll go whole-hog, aesthetically -- and he's unprepared to identify the logical failings of atheism, so, he just sneers at it.
He writes, "A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe."
Really? Must I bother myself with fully grasping the deep incorrectness of every non-self-evident belief before I can fairly claim that I lack belief in it? Let's go all enroll in unicorn zoology, 101: or do you want to be accused of appalling ignorance for having rejected belief in unicorns?
He has a solution for our failings: get a little godliness in you. Because, you see, the best atheists are really closet prophets: "Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets—a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties."
God save me from ever feeling the "moral grandeur: of the prophets -- as distasteful a collection of woman-hating, sex-fearing, reality-rejecting delusionals as I can imagine. Though, there is something to possessing a deep abhorrence of "vicious idolatries that enslave mines..."
It is a mark of the true believer that irony has entirely left the building.
I hope many of us in the BA world will stop by the article and give it a read. It should put steel in your step and resolve in your work: this is the kind of diatribe that a huge proportion of believers finds entirely credible, and which lends to ant-atheistic prejudice a false polish of sensibility.
Write to Hart, personally. His pen is a pulpit, and he's spewing venom. That kind of demagoguery needs to be challenged, and not just with an anonymous comment in a message thread. Compassion and intelligence may not have the rhetorical efficiency of his fallacy-filled whitewashery, true; but we've constrained by good taste and principles to just be better than that. We all have our handicaps.
I read these articles and get so exasperated. One does wish that the children would step aside and let the adults handle things. Even with all their wailing, I am optimistic that we're participating in the dismantling of religion. I'm glad for it.
Read more about Hart at Wikipedia. I'm tempted to do a line-by-line response to his article, but this seems already to have been done by others elsewhere -- in parts by different authors, though it looks like all the necessary points have been made -- and in any case, does it matter? When a person believes in the nonexistent, and makes the study of such their professional career, you have to feel like evidence, logic and reasoning are all a bit beside the point. A variety of sensible responses appear at RichardDawkins.net. Comment #195 by Edward T. Babinski is fantastic.
Bonus: Read more horrendous twaddle from Hart at New Criterion, part of his campaign against the obvious and boring manifestations of modern atheism. Gosh, everything he writes is either theologically evil (Google to find his article on theodicy and tsunamis!) or piously, depravedly smug.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
What Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini Get Wrong
Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are no creationists, but 'outright, card-carrying, signed-up, dyed-in-the-wool, no-holds-barred atheists'. That, however, only makes worse the incoherence of their understanding of Darwinism. There is much that Darwin got wrong, from his views of racial struggle to his occasional espousal of Lamarckism. There is nothing in this book, however, to suggest a fundamental flaw in his central argument about evolution by natural selection.-- Kenan Malik, in "Pigs Won't Fly", his review of What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (Profile Books 262pp £20).
Poll: "Milennials" ain't very religious
A Christian polling agency has determined that the members of the Milennial generation are not very religiously observant, according to an article in USA Today:
Most young adults today don't pray, don't worship and don't read the Bible, a major survey by a Christian research firm shows.Feel free to join a discussion of this latest development in the demystification of American youth, over at the Boston Atheists message board.
If the trends continue, "the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships," says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources. In the group's survey of 1,200 18- to 29-year-olds, 72% say they're "really more spiritual than religious."
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Weighing intelligence in Atheists and the religious
In an article for Psychology Today, Satoshi Kanazawa -- "the Scientific Fundamentalist" -- examines the hypothesis that Atheists are more intelligent than the religion (since it requires novel features associated with intelligence to overcome the evolved tendency to believe in gods).
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