Monday, January 26, 2009

He studied Islam and became an Atheist

BA member Gene Gorter recommends an essay by Douglas Murray, who says he stopped being an Anglican after studying Muslim texts and deciding that no religious text can be called infalliable. An excerpt from the essay in the Spectator:
"Many people hold on to belief as an unquestioned part of their make-up. They never have to confront the source of their belief, and as long as nothing actively pushes them into addressing it, they keep it as something which rarely does much harm and might actually do some good. I have been an Anglican since birth — and not just a cultural Anglican but at times (rarest of things) a real, worshipping, believing Anglican. Like a lot of believers, I knew that there were parts of my belief that wouldn’t stand up to analysis. But that was fine. I didn’t need to analyse them. I only lost faith when I was forced to."

Science: Metaphysical Party Pooper



Many thanks to BA member Robert Wilfong for pointing out this humorous and high-minded Non Sequitur strip from January 19th.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Boston Atheists Report 1.2

Our mid-January podcast, recorded 1/15/2009. Topics: the widespread failure of Christian abstinence pledges; the British atheist bus campaign inspiring Spanish
freethinkers, irritating the Vatican; a Biblical scholar's announcement that Jesus is not God; and reactions to Rick Warren's role at the inauguration.

[Edited on August 31, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Look for us on iTunes!

Sources Cited:

Homeopathy and the placebo effect

This week on eSkeptic, the email newsletter of the Skeptics society, Dr. Harriet Hall takes on homeopathy in an article aptly titled "Homeopathy -- Still Crazy after all These Years." Why, she asks, should this long-debunked pseudoscience still remain popular (and practiced, amongst others, by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles)? Hall writes that

Oliver Wendell Holmes recognized that it was nonsense back in 1842 when he wrote “Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions.” We long ago gave up the nonsense of trying to balance the four humors by bloodletting and purging, but the homeopathy Energizer Bunny is still marching on. What makes it so indestructible?


What, indeed? Homeopathy is based on the idea that "like cures like" so homeopathic treatments are highly diluted substances that cause the original ailment (Hall gives the example of coffee--homeopaths say that if coffee keeps you up at night, drink diluted coffee and hey-presto! You will get better.) Things get more suspect when we consider the amount of dilution. "How dilute?" Hall asks. Well, seriously dilute,

as in comparable to one drop diluted in all the water on Earth. When they realized that no molecules of the original substance were left in most homeopathic dilutions,homeopaths rationalized that the water must “remember” what it had come into contact with — as in clusters of water molecules somehow holding the memory of their encounters with the allegedly curative substances. Unfortunately, homeopaths have failed to explain how water can remember what it’s supposed to remember, and forget all the other memories of coming into contact with various trace contaminants, elements, bacteria, and whatever else happened to float by at the time.


Essentially, homeopathy is, as Hall says, "the ideal placebo. It’s great for the worried well and the hypochondriac. It’s great for those elusive symptoms scientific medicine cannot diagnose and cure. It’s harmless except in cases where patients are persuaded to forgo effective medical treatment, or when homeopathic vaccines are offered in lieu of real vaccines."

In other words, homeopathy "works" because people suspend their disbelief and trick themselves into thinking it is somehow, mysteriously, medically effective. They talk to a sympathetic homeopath who listens, seems to care, and spends time working with the patient. Homeopathy appears to work because patients report that "they feel better. That’s why bloodletting and purging lasted so long: patients got better despite the treatment and the treatment got the credit." It is only a matter of time before homeopathy is tossed out as well.

Boston Atheists Report 1.1


Our first podcast episode, recorded 1/15/2009. the widespread failure of Christian abstinence pledges; the British atheist bus campaign inspiring Spanish freethinkers, irritating the Vatican; a Biblical scholar's announcement that Jesus is not God; and reactions to Rick Warren's role at the inauguration.

[Edited on August 31, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Look for us on iTunes!

Sources Cited:

Thursday, January 15, 2009

More about Atheist bus advertising

You'll have already seen reports about the success the British Humanism Association has had with putting atheistic ads on the sides of British buses. With the endorsement of Richard Dawkins, their members raised over 130,000 pounds, and have put ads on 800 buses. The slogan, a modest enough one, reads: "There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Of course a transit advertising campaign would never work in Boston. Commuters are putting their lives and their itineraries in the hands of providence when they ride on the MBTA -- we can't ask them to give up their faith, their hope, that all the delays are part of a greater plan, a divine timetable. Commuters trapped on a subway car stuck between Andrew and JFK need a religious source of comfort if we want them not to give in to despair. Do we really need more despair on the Red Line? Do we want to associate atheism with that despair? Maybe instead we could do ads on the back of bottles of Sam Adams: "Hi there, New Englander... enjoying your drink? You might want to open another one, because boy do I have some upsetting news for you about the afterlife."

Actually, the BA is developing plans for just such an advertising campaign here in Boston. For several years, we've been seeing subway and bus ads for Christian groups like The Vineyard and the storefront Reunion Church. These are being peddled as fresh alternatives to traditional congregations. These aren't your parents' religion, folks -- this is church for the iPod generation. I'd like to see ads for Boston's secular institutions, social groups, right alongside ads for the Vineyard and other hipster ministries. You'll hear news about that as that project moves forward.

Not everyone's pleased about these blasphemous buses. Stephen Green, the national director of Christian Voice, has filed a complaint with the British Advertising Standards Authority, saying that the advertisements broke codes on substantiation and truthfulness. Says Green, "It is given as a statement of fact and that means it must be capable of substantiation if it is not to break the rules. There is plenty of evidence for God, from people's personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world.h The regulations he cites state that marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims, whether direct or implied, that are capable of objective substantiation."

I came across a report in the Scottish Sunday Herald: apparently the Spanish are atheisizing their buses, too. The Catalan Union of Atheists and Freethinkers has just signed a contract to put ads similar to those in Great Britain, on buses on Barcelona, and have plans for the same slogan to appear in Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Saragossa and Bilbao.

The Vatican's cultural spokesman, Cardinal Paul Poupard, has dismissed this Spanish bus blitz as "stupid, superficial and ridiculous". Then, Cardinal Poupard heplfully provided an example of stupidity and ridiculousness, by inviting people of faith "to continue enjoying life believing in the love of God".

Of course Catholicism does not have a monopoly on stupid or ridiculous. To say more about that, I'll turn the mic over to Jackie who wants to tell us about a recent article on World Net Daily -- a fiercely independent news company dedicated to uncompromising journalism.

Sources cited: ATHEIST BUS CAMPAIGN
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-dawkins-qa12-2009jan12,0,3974830.story
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5478036.ece
http://www.sundayherald.com/international/shinternational/display.var.2480793.0.0.php