Robert Todd Carroll Views on religion What did Carroll think about religion? Carroll tended to have a moderate outlook on religion. He believed that religion has a role to play in people's lives and he didn't condemn religion for terrorism. What is significant about his views? He said in multiple interviews that religion is an area that skeptics don't target enough, and that pure faith is winning the race against critical thinking.
What else did he say about religion?
What else did Robert Todd Carroll say about religion other than not being targeted by skeptics enough and Robert's moderate outlook?
Carroll did not believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent god. However, in his essay "Why I am not an atheist", Carroll described his dislike of the term "atheist" because he feels that the term is being exploited by theists and used as a straw man argument. He felt that the term implies a dogmatic set of beliefs and carries its own share of negative baggage. So, Carroll suggested that atheists might as well adopt the term "Brights" with all its negative connotations.  The only religion that Carroll found attractive after abandoning Catholicism, despite never following it, is Buddhism as taught by the Dalai Lama.  Carroll has always maintained the opinion that people have to be more skeptical of religion than they are now. He said in multiple interviews that religion is an area that skeptics don't target enough, and that pure faith is winning the race against critical thinking.  Carroll tended to have a moderate outlook on religion. He believed that religion has a role to play in people's lives and he didn't condemn religion for terrorism. When asked about the relationship between violence and religion he said that he can't recall anything negative about his religious upbringing, and that maybe Catholicism can provide more good than harm. He didn't believe religion causes wars, he rather believed that it serves as an excuse for people who will go to war regardless of religion's existence. Carroll believed that some people rely on religion as their only source of morality and as a source of comfort. However, he found it distressing that some people are unable to find meaning in their lives without religion. In an interview with Beyond a Doubt he said  "There is nothing dull about a life without fairies, Easter bunnies, devils, ghosts, magic crystals, etc. Life is only boring to boring people." CANNOTANSWER
He didn't believe religion causes wars, he rather believed that it serves as an excuse for people who will go to war regardless of religion's existence.
Robert Todd Carroll (May 18, 1945 – August 25, 2016) was an American writer and academic, best known for The Skeptic's Dictionary. In 2010 he was elected a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He described himself as a naturalist, an atheist, a materialist, a metaphysical libertarian, and a positivist.

His published books include Becoming a Critical Thinker; The Skeptic's Dictionary; The Skeptic's Dictionary for Kids; The Critical Thinker's Dictionary; Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!; The Commonsense Philosophy of Religion of Edward Stillingfleet; Student Success Guide: Writing Skills and Student Success Guide: Reading Skills.

He was a professor of philosophy at Sacramento City College from 1977 until his retirement in 2007.

Life 
Carroll was born in Joliet, Illinois, on May 18, 1945. His father worked in a coal processing plant. In 1954 the family moved to San Diego, where Carroll grew up. He described his early years in Ocean Beach as an ideal childhood. He was raised Catholic.

Carroll went to the University of San Diego High School and then received a Catholic education in the University of Notre Dame. He went into seminary in Notre Dame, but after a short time he left, in 1965, and went back to San Diego. Carroll earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1974 at the University of California, San Diego, writing his doctoral thesis under the direction of Richard H. Popkin on the religious philosophy of Edward Stillingfleet, who had defended the Anglican church passionately against Catholics, deists and atheists before becoming Bishop of Worcester.  Carroll's thesis was published in 1975. By then Carroll was married, with two daughters. The new family moved to Susanville, California, where he started teaching philosophy at Lassen Community College. He later moved to the Sacramento area and from 1977 lived in Davis.

Carroll said he never went through a religious deconversion moment but instead had a long journey to disbelief. He first started doubting Catholicism, he said, when he went into seminary in Notre Dame. After leaving the seminary he became intrigued by eastern religions and, inspired by Alan Watts, started looking at their holy books. Carroll became interested in Paramahansa Yogananda and attended meetings of his Self-Realization Fellowship to do yoga and chanting. At the time, he identified as agnostic. After leaving the Fellowship, he said, he spent years thinking about his religion. He later said, "The more I thought about religious ideas, the more false and absurd they seem to me." Carroll took up Kierkegaard's idea that religious beliefs require a leap of faith because they cannot be rationally proven. But Carroll decided to leap in the other direction. He said he "found many reasons for disbelief and absolutely no reasons for belief."

In May 2014, Carroll was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer and liver metastasis. In May 2016 he announced he would no longer be able to write the Skeptic's Dictionary monthly newsletter on account of his illness. On August 25, 2016, Carroll died in a local hospital in Davis, California. He was survived by his wife and his two daughters and two grandchildren.

Career

Professor 
Carroll started teaching philosophy part time at Lassen Community College. Then he taught philosophy of religion at American River College for two years. Thereafter he taught full time at Sacramento City College, where from 1977 through 2007 he taught introductory philosophy; logic and critical reasoning; law, justice, and punishment; and critical thinking about the paranormal. For several years he served as chairman of the philosophy department.

Writer 
Drawing on his classwork, Carroll wrote Becoming a Critical Thinker: A Guide for a New Millennium, an introductory textbook for logic and critical thinking. Pearson Educational published the first edition in 2000. A second edition was published in 2005.

In 2003 John Wiley & Son published a paperback edition of The Skeptic's Dictionary, derived from Carroll's website of the same name. The book provides essays on subjects Carroll considered supernatural, occult, paranormal, or pseudoscientific. He assumed that something is false until proven otherwise. In the last chapter, Carroll offered ways to improve critical thinking and skepticism. The book is also available in Dutch, English, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. 

In 2011 Carroll published online a children's version of The Skeptic's Dictionary. In 2013, it came out as a book under the title Mysteries and Science: Exploring Aliens, Ghosts, Monsters, the End of the World and Other Weird Things. Carroll also wrote Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!, which was published as an e-book in 2011 by the James Randi Educational Foundation. A paperback version is available from Lulu. In 2013 Carroll also published The Critical Thinker's Dictionary, which features short articles about cognitive biases and logical fallacies.

Skeptic 
Carroll said he had been investigating controversial beliefs since he was seven years old when he had doubts about Santa Claus. Carroll described the importance of critical thinking and open-mindedness thus: 

"If you are willing to be open minded, accept that reasonable probabilities rather than absolute certainties are the best information in many things that matter, and hold your most precious beliefs tentatively, then you can overcome some of the hindrances to critical thinking at least some of the time. And also that one's world view can be a major hindrance to being fair-minded. The minimum requirement of fair-mindedness is a willingness to take seriously viewpoints opposed to your own. In other words, you have to be willing to admit that you are wrong. Or that you might be wrong."

Carroll started writing skeptical content in 1992, when both his best friend and his father-in-law died within the same week. He later said, "It was like the deaths of these two people had forced me to start looking at everything and not take anything for granted."

After Carroll and his wife attended free training in 1994 in which they learned about the Internet and HTML code, Carroll started the Skeptic's Dictionary website (skepdic.com) with ten articles written for his students and expanded it from there. Although the website was a one-man project, volunteers later assisted in editing it and translated it into more than a dozen languages. The Skeptic's Dictionary, Carroll said, was inspired by Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary in both its name and its biased stance.

Carroll created skeptical blogs such as Mass Media Bunk and Mass Media Funk (they were replaced by Skeptimedia in 2007). In addition to skepdic.com, he also maintained blogs at Skeptimedia and Suburban Myths.

On March 27, 2012, Carroll began a regular segment on the podcast Skepticality entitled Unnatural Virtue in which he commented on topics in critical thinking and skepticism. The segment ran for thirty-one episodes, until April 29, 2014.

Carroll spoke at several skeptic conferences. In 2003 he spoke at the first Amaz!ng Meeting and at a conference of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal on frauds and hoaxes. In 2004 he spoke to the Irish Skeptics in Dublin. In 2007 he conducted a critical-thinking workshop at the 5th Amazing Meeting. In 2011 he led a discussion on "Five Myths About Skeptics" at the second annual SkeptiCalCon event, held in Berkeley, CA.

He was also interviewed by groups promoting scientific skepticism, such as the New England Skeptical Society and Media Man Australia. In January 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

In an interview with Point of Inquiry's Karen Stollznow, Carroll said he did not earn much money from his skeptical work: "If we talk about the money we make from skepticism we might set a record for the shortest interview ever." But everybody should be a skeptic, he said, because it is a healthy way of approaching life. He said that skeptics' meetups and conferences, as well as the positive feedback he received on his work, were his main motivations.

Criticism

Richard Milton 
After Carroll published a piece online labelling Richard Milton's writings on alternative science "Internet Bunk," Milton responded by accusing Carroll of being a "pseudo-skeptic" and said that Carroll had fabricated quotations and misrepresented his arguments. Carroll replied to these accusations in an addendum to his piece.

Rupert Sheldrake 
Carroll wrote two Skeptic's Dictionary entries that criticize Rupert Sheldrake's ideas. The first criticized Sheldrake's N'kisi Project, a set of experiments meant to test the possibility of a telepathic link between N'kisi (a grey parrot) and its owner, Aimee Morgana. Carroll charged that when calculating the statistical significance of the parrot's responses, Sheldrake had omitted 60% of the data. Carroll also criticized Jane Goodall for her involvement in the Project. The second entry challenged Sheldrake's morphic resonance idea, in which Sheldrake proposed that, in addition to genetic influences, a "morphogenetic field" for each species evolves similarly to how the species' genes might evolve, that these fields organize the nervous system's activity and can act as a collective memory for the whole species, and that these fields get passed down into the species.

Sheldrake replied to Carroll's criticism by defending his own arguments and accusing Carroll of committing several logical fallacies, including using false dilemmas and misrepresenting Sheldrake's position. He also criticized The Skeptic's Dictionary, claiming that it would not survive had it been subject to independent peer reviews.

Publications 
 Becoming a Critical Thinker – A Guide for the New Millennium, 2nd ed., .
 "Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!", Los Angeles: James Randi Educational Foundation, 2011, .
 the Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003, .
 The Common-sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet 1635–1699, . (1974 doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Richard Popkin, University of California at San Diego).

References

External links

The Skeptic's Dictionary

1945 births
2016 deaths
American philosophers
American skeptics
Critics of alternative medicine
Critics of parapsychology
Writers from Joliet, Illinois
Writers from San Diego
University of California, San Diego alumni
Former Roman Catholics
Truth and Tolerance () is a book written by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).

The book discusses faith, religion, culture, freedom, and truth, with special emphasis on the Christian religion and how it relates to these and if it can continue to make an absolute claim as the true religion.

In the preface, he states that "beyond all particular questions, the real problem lies in the question about truth." He first tries to understand what culture is and how cultures relate to one another. Then he tries to understand man, what he is and how he can become himself. Then, in the end, he deals with the question of whether man is made for the truth and in what way he can put the question of truth.

Reviews
Review by Sarah Donahue for the Acton Institute
Review by Ignatius Insight
Review by Cathy Duff
Review by Paul J. Griffiths in First Things
Is It Arrogant to Say Christ Is the Only Savior? Asks Cardinal Ratzinger

References

Books by Pope Benedict XVI
Books about Christianity
2004 non-fiction books
2004 in Christianity Al-Kāfirūn (, "The Unbelievers") is the name of the 109th chapter (sūrah) of the Quran. It has six ayat or verses as follows:
۝ Say, "O disbelievers,
۝ I do not worship what you worship.
۝ Nor are you worshippers of what I worship.
۝ Nor will I be a worshipper of what you worship.
۝ Nor will you be worshippers of what I worship.
۝ For you is your religion, and for me is my religion."

Text and meaning

Text and transliteration
Hafs from Aasim ibn Abi al-Najud

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² 

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Warsh from Nafiʽ al-Madani

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² 

³ 

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⁶

Meanings

Say (O Muhammad (Peace be upon him) to these Mushrikun and Kafirun): "O Al-Kafirun (disbelievers in Allah, in His Oneness, in His Angels, in His Books, in His Messengers, in the Day of Resurrection, and in Al-Qadar, etc.)!

"I worship not that which you worship,

"Nor will you worship that which I worship.

"And I shall not worship that which you are worshipping.

"Nor will you worship that which I worship.

"To you be your religion, and to me my religion (Islamic Monotheism)."

Say, "O disbelievers,

I do not worship what you worship.

Nor are you worshippers of what I worship.

Nor will I be a worshipper of what you worship.

Nor will you be worshippers of what I worship.

For you is your religion, and for me is my religion."

Say: O ye that reject Faith!

I worship not that which ye worship,

Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

And I will not worship that which ye have been wont to worship,

Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

To you be your Way, and to me mine.

Say: O disbelievers!

I worship not that which ye worship;

Nor worship ye that which I worship.

And I shall not worship that which ye worship.

Nor will ye worship that which I worship.

Unto you your religion, and unto me my religion.

Summary
1-6 Muhammad declines to compromise with idolatry  

Like many of the shorter surahs, the surah of the unbelievers takes the form of an invocation, telling the reader something they must ask for or say aloud. Here, the passage asks one to keep in mind the separation between belief and unbelief both in the past and the present, ending with the often cited line "To you your religion, and to me mine". Although some view this as an argument against religious intolerance, others see it as a more time-specific revelation, warning the newly founded Muslim minority in Mecca against being induced (by the Quraysh Arab tribe majority) to collude with disbelievers.

It was revealed in Mecca when the Muslims were persecuted by the polytheists of Mecca.

Cause of revelation
"Wahb ibn Munabbih has related that the people of Quraish said to Allah's Messenger: 'If you like we would enter your faith for a year and you would enter our faith for a year.'" (Abd bin Humaid, Ibn Abi Hatim). "...In this way, if what you have brought us is better than what we have, we would partake of it and take our share of goodness from it; and if what we have is better than what you have brought, you would partake of it and take your share of goodness from it."

Hadith
As for the esteem in which Muhammad held this surah, it can be judged from the following few hadith:

 Abdullah ibn Umar has related that on many an occasions he heard Muhammad recite Surahs Qul Ya- ayyuhal- kafirun and Qul Huwu-Allahu ahad in the two  before the  obligatory prayer and in the two  after Maghrib prayer.
 Khabbab ibn al-Aratt says: "The Holy Prophet (upon whom be peace) said to me: when you lie down in bed to sleep, recite , and this was the Holy Prophet's own practice also; when he lay down to sleep, he recited this ."
 According to Ibn Abbas, Muhammad said to the people: "Should I tell you the word which will protect you from polytheism? It is that you should recite  when you go to bed."
 Anas says that Muhammad said to Mu'adh bin Jabal; "Recite  at the time you go to bed, for this is immunity from polytheism."
 Both Fardah bin Naufal and Abdur Rahman bin Naufal have stated that their father, Naufal bin Muawiyah al-Ashjai, said to Muhammad: "Teach me something which I may recite at the time I go to bed." Muhammad replied: "Recite  to the end and then sleep, for this is immunity from polytheism." A similar request was made by Jabalah bin Harithah, brother of Said bin Harithah, to Muhammad and to him also he gave the same reply.
 Muhammad recited in the two  before the morning prayer and the two  after the sunset prayer on ten or twenty occasions: Say  and say He is God, the One (surah 112: al-Ikhlas).

References

External links
Quran 109 Clear Quran translation
4 Qul in Quran, protection surahs

Kafirun