Posts Tagged ‘atheism’

Creation “Museum” — Also Ugly

January 22, 2010










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Ricky Gervais answers: How Did You Lose Your Religion?

January 16, 2010

Ricky Gervais @ Big Think. •  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dknumOcNVcU

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The only part that slightly irks me is there at the end when he says “by accident,” — but I understand the colloquial shorthand used by a comedian. He’s probably more concerned with effect than precision of meaning.

Still, it’s a great to be able to distill “losing your religion” down to a precise moment like that!

Can Ken Ham can ham?

January 15, 2010







The general public is invited to attend this free forum.



Let those things sink in for a second.



Quoting Fred Clark again from the same post linked above,





Ruse the day

November 11, 2009

Philosopher Michael Ruse has recently put up an essay about the newest new atheism news: The Schism. Or as PZ Myers has described it Deep Rifts, DEEP RIFTS! that are rending the frail alliance of non-accomodationalist new atheists and the old republic of old accomdationalist atheist vangaurd! The drama! I can’t wait to hear of the latest encyclical from the pope his most rationalist Dawkins Darwin the Fifth on the dogmatic neccesity of philosophical naturalism and its twin sister the materialist evolutionism-ist neodawinianism-ist humanist secularism.

Anyway, Ruse says,

As a professional philosopher my first question naturally is: “What or who is an atheist?” If you mean someone who absolutely and utterly does not believe there is any God or meaning then I doubt there are many in this group. Richard Dawkins denies being such a person. If you mean someone who agrees that logically there could be a god, but who doesn’t think that the logical possibility is terribly likely, or at least not something that should keep us awake at night, then I guess a lot of us are atheists.

Seriously? His first question as a professional philosopher naturally is about who counts as an atheist? What a waste. Maybe he just means on this particular topic. Sure, in a certain sense, you can only be agnostic as to whether gods exist because, Jesus Christ could come back tomorrow (or some Other , Thing…)
and strike all his believers dead rapture them to heaven, forcing a reconsideration of a few points of view.

Atheists are even more complex than a these-and-those situation. “We”, as Ruse doesn’t seem to realize, form a continuum of different beliefs, just like any other group of people you might care to imagine in your granfalloon.

Moving on,

But there is certainly a split, a schism, in our ranks. I am not whining (in fact I am rather proud) when I point out that a rather loud group of my fellow atheists, generally today known as the “new atheists”, loathe and detest my thinking. …

and then he goes on to detail all the proud detestation he has earned, at length. Its a shame all Ruse got out of PZ’s response was “clueless and gobshite“.

I have had first hand experience with Michael Ruse. Both I and slightlyharmless were at the CFI World Congress in Bethesda, MD, where Ruse made the argument that, as he later states in this essay,


Really. He makes this argument (At Bethesda it was phrased a bit different, the content was the same). As if somehow beliefs derived from the bible are on par with hard earned science. So apparently, if a well meaning parent feeds a child bullshit, we “atheists” are to blame for science teachers contradicting the bullshit put there. This IS America, after all. Just because it’s factually wrong doesn’t mean you can’t make your kids believe it. Ruse treats creationism leading to kids being christians, and evolution leading kids to being atheists sitting on exactly the same grounds.

Its insane. Even putting aside whatever crap someone put in a child’s mind, shouldn’t any kind of real education change a child’s beliefs about the world? Any deep understanding of the sciences (or history, languages, art, literature, etc) *should* change how you view the world, because it makes you think in new, different ways.

Ruse does have the drop on me though. I didn’t know that, as a “new” atheist, “that all religion is necessarily evil and corrupting”. I had previously thought that religions in general were full of good people because churches attracted a certain kind of them, but now I will dogmatically adopt the latest decree from the lords of new atheism. I hope they tell me to think for myself soon.

Ruse asks “us”, “how dare we be so condescending?” Oh, “we” new atheists, if we could just stop being such jerks! How dare we talk about the cause or contributing factor to many problems. Tough questions! The hard, varsity level ones like “should people be treated equally under the law?”. I’d say yes, but as Maine shows, religions can be part of the problem.

I’ve started re-reading Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and this part

But to tear down a factory of revolt against a government … because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. pg 88

The “new” atheist movement has a lot to do with religion. Mostly, against it. Some people just want religiously motived (or funded) groups to stop attacking the separation of state and church, and keep the god nonsense away from politics. Others would arrest all clergy for fraud. If the approach Ruse favors could work, it would have by now, and there would be no need for the entire “movement”, because we would all have moved on to moon bases, and free oral sex for everyone, and ending hunger and disease and overpopulation and all those other real problems, real people have, in this world, now.

It seems to come down to one main point Ruse seems to have for us: just shut up already.

Atheism with Stealth, part 2

November 4, 2009


There are a few things worth commenting on, though:















Religion is a Stealth Atheism

October 28, 2009

David Sloan Wilson, one of two new editions to scienceblogs, has a seven part series called “Atheism as a Stealth Religion”, by Erin Johnson. The title makes me roll my eyes, but it has seven parts, and if it has worthwhile or insightful criticism of atheists, I’d like to check it out and respond in turn.

Here we go:

The new atheists hate religion for causing between-group conflict and especially for its wanton disregard of the canons of rational thought. Yet, both of these problems extend far more widely than religion.

How long can people be “new atheists”? Another 5-10 years? 20? I can’t wait to have been a “new” atheist for 20 years or so. Kind of a blessing really, even as I age my atheism will still be “new”.

Of course irrationality extends beyond religion. All being an atheist means is not believing in deities. Get as many self-identified atheists as you can together, and all you will really be able to say about them is what they don’t believe. If the world was a saner place, “atheism” wouldn’t even be a word, any more than one needs to be identified as a heliocentrist or aheliocentrist in ours today.

The vast majority of atheists turned away from their given religion, so why is it such a big deal for them to voice their criticisms of it? There are all sorts of irrationality, supernatural or not, but few as persistent or large a problem as religion (political ideologies can be quite toxic).

Ayn Rand and her crappy “objectivist” nonsense might still sell thousands of books a year, and fleece thousands more from their money to chase some literary fiction, but they don’t insist on shitting their “philosophy” into as many schools, government buildings, and as much public property as possible. They don’t bankroll political campaigns to take away gay’s rights, or seek to ruin children’s education in the name of their god.

It is humbling to contemplate that the concerns typically voiced about religion need to be extended to virtually all forms of human thought. If anything, non-religious belief systems are a greater cause for concern because they do a better job of masquerading as factual reality. Call them stealth religions.

I agree with the first point. Atheism alone really doesn’t require rational thought or even critical thinking. You could not believe in deities for the same reason others do believe, because their parents told them so when they were young. For many though, atheism is really the result of trying to think in a more rational/skeptical/humanist/critical way. It is trying to get away from the errors and pains all forms of irrationality can bring about. Thinking about religion may have been the point of entry for many people who call themselves atheists, but that is just a launching pad for where to go next.

Johnson says the “new” atheists show many hallmarks of what he calls stealth religion. This is illustrated by using book titles (and subtitles). The points the authors actually make in the books mentioned are not the polarized us-and-them views put forward by the likes of fundamentalists.

Johnson also talks about fundamentalist religions portraying a world in which much “factual realism” is sacrificed for “practical realism” (if I am using the terms right), and how “at least some” versions of atheism fare no better. I agree again, and also that many “versions” of atheism (say, Bill Mahr) are still prone to large errors, irrational thought, and everything else. If anyone thinks not believing in deities makes them fully rational, they’ve fucked up.

And finally, Johnson can associate religion with humility, but that would be wrong. Astronomy and Cosmology teach humility better than most religions could ever imagine. What passes for humility in most religions is a kind of self-negation, declaring oneself to be worthless BUT for god. All this on top of the amazingly self-centered and arrogant view put forward by many religions that mankind is the whole point and center of the universe. What humility!