Great Satire of Miracles

Here is a great bit of satire from The Onion: Evolutionists Flock To Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain

Wafa Sultan on Sharia Law

Over the summer this powerful 8-minute video from Wafa Sultan was added to YouTube.

Richard Dawkins On Neighbors

At some point in the past I subscribed to the magazine Free Inquiry for a year or two. It often had interesting articles, written from a "humanist" perspective (non-supernaturalistic worldview). Over the years I get the occasional piece of mail from them, hoping I'll re-subscribe. A recent one had the following provocative two paragraphs from Richard Dawkins, as part of a letter encouraging me to re-subscribe to the magazine:

"If you live in America, the chances are good that your next door neighbours believe the following: the Inventor of the laws of physics and the Programmer of the DNA code decided to enter the uterus of a Jewish virgin, got himself born, then deliberately had himself tortured and executed because he couldn't think of a better way to forgive the theft of an apple, committed at the instigation of a talking snake. As Creator of the majestically expanding universe, he not only understands relativistic gravity and quantum mechanics but actually designed them. Yet what he really cares about is "sin," abortion, how often you go to church, and whether gay people should marry. Statistically, the chances are your neighbours believe all that - and they can vote.

In other parts of the world, there is a good chance that your neighbours believe you should be beheaded if you draw a cartoon of a desert nomad who copulated with a child and flew to heaven on a winged horse. In other places, there's a good chance that your neighbours think their wishes will be granted if they pray to a human figure with an elephant's trunk.

Saudi Ruler Should Practice What He Preaches

Joel Brinkley had a nice column today (and here is a second link to it), in which he criticizes the king of Saudi Arabia for calling for religious tolerance -- just not in his own country. Brinkley gives examples of people condemned to death in Saudi Arabia for "religious crimes" -- pretty scary stuff.

On Miracles and the Amputee Question, Again

I read this story in today's newspaper: "Hawaii teacher's cure clears way for a new saint". This is yet another standard "If you pray to the name of the right dead person, then a supernatural event -- a miracle -- will occur and your wish will be granted. No lamp with a genie inside required." In this case, a woman in Hawaii was given really bad news about her cancer, and so she prayed to "Father Damien". Contrary to the dire prognosis, she has now gotten better, and she attributes this to a miracle. Doctors and Scientists rightly refer to such things as unexplained events since there is no good evidence or theory to explain what happened (I don't think the name given in the article, "complete spontaneous regression of cancer", actually explains anything from a scientific/causal standpoint).

Each time I hear a story of this kind, I think back to the "Question of Amputees". I blogged on this about a year ago: Why Don't Miracles Ever Grow New Limbs? The idea is, why do so-called miracles so often involve really complicated medical situations, that are internal to the body, where there are complex statistics going into the prognosis/survival chances? Its almost always diseases, such as cancer, that get "cured" from the miracle. Have you ever heard of someone getting a new arm from a miracle? No. And people don't even pray for such things, at least I assume they don't. Why is that? These are meant to be rhetorical questions of course, a sort of reductio ad absurdem of claims of miracles.

By the way, the last line of the AP article read "Audrey Toguchi [the cancer survivor] still prays often to Damien, asking him to help others."

Prediction: If she prays for specific people to get healed from diseases (or for anything else really), and the desired change doesn't occur -- the press won't cover it. And I doubt she'll even mention the failures to many people. I suspect that so-called "Saints" and other supposed miracle-workers actually have an extremely low "batting average", so to speak. But how often do you see headlines like these in the news:

• Prospective Saint fails again, is now 2 for 10,497 in answering miracle requests
• Accident left victim an amputee, prayers haven't produced a new leg after 50 years
• Saint apparently indifferent to the desperate pleas of entire village
• Image of Mary on rock seems to have stopped working, as no prayers answered in past decade

Or consider this other common annoyance: athletes who pray before a game and/or thank their favorite deity for help in their victory. Again, a rhetorical question: Why don't you ever read these kinds of headlines?

• Team prays before the game, but still loses 46-7
• Player doesn't thank god after loss, noting prayer was not answered
• Player blames the Almighty after a crushing defeat
• Both teams pray before game, supernatural forces clearly favored East Jersey squad

Must Read: Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Speaking of books that changed my life (see my previous post)... I just finished reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel. This book is one of the best, most interesting, and most important books I've ever read. (To read an overview of the book, see the Infidel page at the AEI site.)

If you are like I was until about a month ago, then you have perhaps heard of her (from the news several years ago) or of this book (it is a NYT bestseller). You have likely heard of Theo Van Gogh, perhaps only because he was murdeed by an Islamist in The Netherlands (after he and Ayaan created a movie critical of Islam's treatment of women in many countries and cultures). If you are like I was, then that is about all you know about her (which says something negative about the news media in this country!).

That said, rarely has a book impacted me in the way this book has. In fact, I had some trouble composing this blog posting -- as it seems no words describing this book, or Ayaan as a person -- will be sufficient. Simply stated, she is a heroine of the rational mind, of liberty, and of women's rights. Indeed, on that last point, while reading this book I found myself many times thinking: "If Ayaan Hirsi Ali continues her current work, then she should go down in history as one of the most important advocates for women's rights."

I strongly urge my friends reading this blog posting to go out and read (or listen to the audio version) this book, Infidel. If you are like me, you have a long list of books -- or a stack of books already purchased -- that are waiting for your time. I understand that. After you finish the book(s) you are already reading, I just urge you to read Infidel next.

This book was extremely educational for me -- it gives a first-person perspective, with many concretes, etc., that you just don't get from newspaper or TV news stories about the "war on terror", "Islamic radicals", and so on.

In reading this book, I found myself pausing every few pages to reflect on what I just read. At times I was shocked with horror; at other times I smiled as I learned of Ayaan's courage and followed her mental development. The writing style of this book is easy to read, but on a more substantive level, this book is both an easy and difficult book to read.

I want to thank Ayaan for this book and for her ongoing work (I look forward to reading her online articles), and my way of doing so is by writing this blog post, and sending out emails to friends, to encourage more people to read her book.

I could go on an on. Please, when you do read this book (notice I didn't say "if"), I hope you'll email me or blog about it -- as I'm interested in the reactions of friends to it, especially if they picked it up based in part on my recommendation and urging.

For more info on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, here are some good links to get you started:

• Ayaan's page at AEI - Includes links to her latest writings, events, etc.


• A good overview of Infidel - provided at the AEI site


• A good review of Infidel - by Gina Ligget, published in the March issue of American Atheist (thanks to NoodleFood, where Ligget is a blogger, for providing access)


• Ayaan speaking - A one-hour AEI event from Feb. 2007, first half her speaking, second half is Q&A (though when I tried the video version, I didn't get an audio -- so I only heard it as MP3 audio).


• Wikipedia for Ayaan Hirsi Ali - for general background, and also many links to interviews with her

On Theory and Law

Clive Thompson wrote an interesting column in the November issue of Wired, "A War of Words". He reports on the view of physicist Helen Quinn that scientists are too tentative when they discuss scientific knowledge, and that this problem allows creationists the opportunity to mockingly refer to evolution as "just a theory" (as opposed to fact).

They're an inherently cautious bunch, she points out. Even when they're 99 percent certain of a theory, they know there's always the chance that a new discovery could overturn or modify it.

So when scientists talk about well-established bodies of knowledge — particularly in areas like evolution or relativity — they hedge their bets. They say they "believe" something to be true, as in, "We believe that the Jurassic period was characterized by humid tropical weather."

This deliberately nuanced language gets horribly misunderstood and often twisted in public discourse. When the average person hears phrases like "scientists believe," they read it as, "Scientists can't really prove this stuff, but they take it on faith." ("That's just what you believe" is another nifty way to dismiss someone out of hand.)

Of course, antievolution crusaders have figured out that language is the ammunition of culture wars. That's why they use those stickers. They take the intellectual strengths of scientific language — its precision, its carefulness — and wield them as weapons against science itself.

The defense against this: a revamped scientific lexicon. If the antievolutionists insist on exploiting the public's misunderstanding of words like theory and believe, then we shouldn't fight it. "We need to be a bit less cautious in public when we're talking about scientific conclusions that are generally agreed upon," Quinn says.

What does she suggest? For truly solid-gold, well-established science, let's stop using the word theory entirely. Instead, let's revive much more venerable language and refer to such knowledge as "law." As with Newton's law of gravity, people intuitively understand that a law is a rule that holds true and must be obeyed. The word law conveys precisely the same sense of authority with the public as theory does with scientists, but without the linguistic baggage.

Evolution is supersolid. We even base the vaccine industry on it: When we troop into the doctor's office each winter to get a flu shot — an inoculation against the latest evolved strains of the disease — we're treating evolution as a law. So why not just say "the law of evolution"?

Best of all, it performs a neat bit of linguistic jujitsu. If someone says, "I don't believe in the theory of evolution," they may sound fairly reasonable. But if someone announces, "I don't believe in the law of evolution," they sound insane. It's tantamount to saying, "I don't believe in the law of gravity."

The Big Questions

Recently I've noticed some advertisements from the John Templeton Foundation in The Economist and The Chronicle for Higher Education. These ask a "big question", and then give snippets of responses from various academics or others. See their archive.

The one I've seen in ads lately is "Does the universe have a purpose?". The answers provided are of course varied, and are summed up as Yes, No, Unlikely, Perhaps, "I hope so", and so on. Read them all to get several perspectives.

Astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss make some interesting points, but in the end are not confident enough (or don't understand proper epistemology well enough) to assert certainty.

The two that most align with my own views are from biochemist Christian de Duve and professor of chemistry Peter William Atkins. Mr de Duve is a little all over the place in his essay, but finally raises a core issue at the end:

It will be noted that there is no logical need for a creator in this view. By definition, a creator must himself be uncreated, unless he is part of an endless, Russian-doll succession of creators within creators. But then, why start the succession at all? Why not have the universe itself uncreated, an actual manifestation of Ultimate Reality, rather than the work of an uncreated creator? The question is worth asking.

Indeed it is! This is a basic question of metaphysics: does existence simply exist, or did someone or something create it? I would argue it doesn't even make sense to ask that question, and even if you do ask it, you immediately have an immediate regress. The only proper position is to simply start with the given: the world we perceive and live in, which includes both material objects and consciousness (lest you think I am crude materialist).

But I actually like Atkins' essay better. Here it is in full:

In the absence of evidence, the only reason to suppose that it does is sentimental wishful thinking and sentimental wishful thinking, which underlies all religion, is an unreliable tool for the discovery of truth of any kind.

The extension of analogies is another tool that accompanies wishful thinking in the toolboxes of the credulous. That an intricate mechanism, such as an engine or even a spoon, is commonly associated with a purpose cannot be taken to be evidence that the universe as a whole is associated with a purpose, any more than the existence of a cheetah implies that it has been designed with a purpose in mind. Cheetahs have evolved by the bloody, directionless, unguided processes of evolution: they have not been provided for the purpose of killing antelopes. Similarly, the universe has evolved over its 14 billion years of current existence by the directionless, unguided processes that are manifestations of the working out of physical laws: it has not been made for the purpose of providing platforms to enable cheetahs to stalk their prey or humans to generate great art or to entertain delusions. That we do not yet understand anything about the inception of the universe should not mean that we need to ascribe to its inception a supernatural cause, a creator, and therefore to associate with that creator's inscrutable mind a purpose, whether it be divine, malign, or even whimsically capricious.

Theologians typically focus on questions that they have invented for their own puzzlement. Some theologians are perplexed by the nature of life after death, a notion they have invented without a scrap of evidence.

Some are mystified by the existence of evil in a world created by an infinitely loving God, another notion that theologians have invented but which dissolves into nothing once it is realized that there is no God. The question of cosmic purpose is likewise an invented notion, wholly without evidential foundation, and equally dismissible as patently absurd. We should not regard as great the questions that have been invented solely for the sake of eliciting puzzlement.

I regard the existence of this extraordinary universe as having a wonderful, awesome grandeur. It hangs there in all its glory, wholly and completely useless. To project onto it our human-inspired notion of purpose would, to my mind, sully and diminish it.

I love the analogy with cheetahs here! And I very much like this point (italics mine above) about the very question itself being dismissable, as being a category mistake in essence.

CHE Highlights

I've been getting caught up recently on The Chronicle of Higher Education from the past couple of months. Here are some items I found interesting for various reasons... worth a read if you have an interest in any of these topics (some require subscription to access directly at CHE's site, so I'll try to provide links to free versions online):

"Don't Require Colleges to Spend More of Their Endowments", an 11/9 opinion piece that responds to the 11/2 cover news story. Many good points are made about legal and other technical hurdles to government proposals to force Harvard or others with huge endowments to spend more of that money sooner. Nor is it likely that a group of government bureaucrats will know best how and when such funds should be spent. However, the biggest question isn't raised: why should government be telling colleges how to spend their endowments? This is not a proper use of government force! This essential moral point is, as usual in such situations, not brought up. Otherwise, this is a good opinion piece though.

"Are Sacred Texts Sacred? The Challenge for Atheists", a 9/21 piece by Carlin Romano. Lots interesting stuff here, including much that should give bible literalists pause to say the least. But I agree with the Letter to the Editor in the 10/12 edition, from John T. Goldthwait (Prof. Emeritus of philosophy at SUNY, Plattsburgh), that Romano "gets the rules of the debate wrong". Romano's conclusion and suggestion is that Atheists should be polite to believers, and that is fine as far as it goes -- but it doesn't go very far. No need for an atheist to go out of his way to cruelly attack believers and the texts they call sacred -- but that doesn't mean that critics (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.) of religions and their texts can't go on the offensive in books or articles they write. Believers aren't forced to buy those books or read those articles if they will find them offensive. Here is part of Goldthwait's letter on this matter:

Romano writes, "That behooves atheists, then, to have a clear definition of the sacred... and also a clear definition of text or book." But it is not up to the atheist to supply those definitions. The believer is the one who has claimed that a text -- some version of either the Old Testament, the New Testament, or the Koran -- is a sacred text and a source of revealed religion. That is what needs proving... Romano suggests characteristics for a sacred text. However, he assumes that there are such things as sacred texts... If there isn't any God, what becomes of a text whose alleged value is that it relates to God? The believer has the responsibility to establish the meaningfulness of his claim by establishing the existence of the referent of this explanatory term. If he cannot thus support his claims, we do not owe him our attention. Romano has not put before us a serious challenge, but merely a nice lesson in politeness.

Agreed. I look forward to writing some further thoughts on concepts like "sacred" in the future, but for now, I'll let this go.

The Intellectual Responsibility of Educators. In this brief "On the Contrary" piece, David Horowitz takes on the issue of indoctrination in the classroom, and is critical of the new report "Freedom in the Classroom" from American Association of University Professors.

Veiled Politics, by Joan Wallach Scott (11/23). Some interesting background on an issue (Islamic women, the veil, and rights) that is big in Europe, but that we don't hear as much about as a major political issue here in the USA.

The Two Faces of Al-Qaeda, by Raymond Ibrahim (9/21). The author makes clear the two types of messages that Al-Qaeda leaders send, and the importance of the message intended for their own followers and would-be recruits (the radical, theological message and the anti-Western civilization message) as opposed to what is intended for Western readers (criticism of USA foreign policy, etc.).

Rigid Scholarship on Male Sexuality, by Camille Paglia (9/21). Though I'm usually only in partial agreement with her views, Paglia is one of those authors that I always find interesting to read (like Christopher Hitchens). This review of three related books on male sexuality didn't disappoint. I haven't read any of these books, so I can't say whether her analysis of them is on-target or not. But I did like her taking one of them to task for postmodernist jargon, fashionable namedropping, and making leftist-academic assumptions common in so many social science and humanities departments these days -- I trust Paglia's opinions on that issue, bigtime.

The Choc Doc, by Piper Fogg (9/14, Academic Life). An interesting article about Patrick Fields, a professor who studies and teaches about the history and culture of chocolate. Fields treats chocolate as seriously as many people treat wine.

Saudi Arabia Puts Its Billions Behind Western-Style Higher Education, by Zvika Krieger (9/14). This article gives a lot of info on the increased funding of higher ed in Saudia Arabia, including the creation of the first co-ed institution in the country, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. While there are many good signs here, I consider the prospects for real success to be quite poor. The goal is to create a highly educated workforce, and more importantly, to create critical thinkers, creative thinkers, and entrepreneurs. That seems pretty unlikely, given the repressive and restrictive culture of Saudi Arabia (mostly because of its brand of Islam). Consider another university that is getting a lot of funding right now, in the hopes of reaching those goals:

Alfaisal [University] will also be coeducational, a big improvement for female
students, many of whom are taught by men through closed-circuit television at the country's women's colleges. Unlike at King Abdullah University, though, men and women will not be allowed to interact, in accordance with the country's legally mandated gender segregation. The university will have split-level classrooms, where women attend the same lectures as men but from balconies surrounded by one-way glass. An underground entrance for women — dropped off by their drivers — will lead directly to stairwells, elevators, and floors strictly segregated by gender. But since even those accommodations would raise many eyebrows in Saudi Arabia, Alfaisal is starting with male students only to gain social credibility first. "Philosophically, I would like to see women from Day 1, but the reality is difficult," Mr. Goodridge says. "We're probably a little ahead of where they're going."

Wow. They are going ridiculous lengths they are going to segregate the education of women from that of men. And that is just one example of why I just don't see how "throwing money at the problem" is really going to lead to major success. Consider this other blurb about Saudi Arabian culture:

But the country is a tough sell: Most public entertainment is prohibited (there are no movie theaters, for instance), alcohol is banned, and women must cover themselves almost completely in public and are not allowed to drive.

I have to agree with the Letter to the Editor from Ayesha Razzaque in the 10/12 issue -- it seems unlikely that we'll see major success in Saudi Arabia until significant cultural changes occur. A huge amount of educational content won't be taught, even at these new "liberal" schools, either because of outright bans or because of fear that the professor would get in trouble for even broaching the subject. How is free thought, critical thinking, creative thinking, and so on ever going to flourish in such a climate?

Religious Scholars and the Flying Spaghetti Monster

A recent CNN headline seemed like something from TheOnion: "Religious Scholars Mull Flying Spaghetti Monster." (For some background on FSM, see my April 2006 blog entry.) It seems there were several sessions that discussed the FSM phenomenon at a recent American Academy of Religion annual meeting. The CNN piece gives several of the lecture titles.

One thing I found annoying about this news article was the following at the end of it:

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

In short, is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?

Joining them on the panel will be David Chidester, a prominent and controversial academic at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who is interested in precisely such questions. He has urged scholars looking for insights into the place of religion in culture and psychology to explore a wider range of human activities. Examples include cheering for sports teams, joining Tupperware groups and the growing phenomenon of Internet-based religions. His 2005 book "Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture," prompted wide debate about how far into popular culture religious studies scholars should venture.

Lucas Johnston, the third Florida student, argues the Flying Spaghetti Monsterism exhibits at least some of the traits of a traditional religion -- including, perhaps, that deep human need to feel like there's something bigger than oneself out there.

He recognized the point when his neighbor, a militant atheist who sports a pro-Darwin bumper sticker on her car, tried recently to start her car on a dying battery.

As she turned the key, she murmured under her breath: "Come on Spaghetti Monster!"

That is a funny anecdote -- I've never thought of substituting FSM for "God" when I blurt out "God damn it" or something similar. I think I'll start doing that, just for fun.

But it is ridiculous to even ask whether the group of people who "believe" in FSM are themselves a religion! This demonstrates an utter lack of understanding of concepts, essences, and proper definitions. While every complicated concept has its boundary and marginal cases, clearly FSM is not one for the concept of "religion". It is a joke. People don't actually believe in FSM -- putting forth the theory of FSM is a rhetorical device, a reductio style thought experiment by Atheists in their debate with believers in the supernatural. No one who talks approvingly of FSM does so out of a "deep human need to feel like there's something bigger than oneself out there". Give me a break.

True, people who gather at an FSM club might do so for some of the same reasons that some people join religions: for social reasons, for something to do on a regular basis (e.g., once a week at an appointed time). While that is an important aspect of why many people join religions, it is not an essential, definining characteristic of the concept of religion. For that you need something that involves metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Without going on at length about it now, I would consider a good definition of religious beliefs to involve at least the belief in one or more supernatural beings (metaphysics), a belief in at least some propositions on the grounds of faith alone (epistemology), and what the existence of the supernatural means for how one should act (ethics). These are the core characteristics of what make something a religion. FSMism puts forward beliefs that in each of these areas -- but only as a way of making fun of actual religions. FSM isn't actually a religion, and neither are people "cheering for sports teams, joining Tupperware groups" thereby members of a religion.

More On Why God Won't Heal Amputees

I recently blogged on the very interesting question, that I had never really focused on before: "Why won't god heal amputees?". That is, why is it that when people pray for miracles to occur, it is always something like curing a disease, or receiving some money, or something like that? Why don't we ever see miracles in which the prayers of amputees have been answered? And to the extent people don't pray for amputees to have their limbs miraculously return (or grow new like a starfish can do), why not?

Well, tonight I discovered a website with the name WhyWon'tGodHealAmputees.com. There is some very interesting content here, including chapter five of the online book at this site. This page has lots of good material, including the following that gives other examples that are just as powerful as the example of amputees:

Amputees are not the only ones either. For example:

• If someone severs their spinal cord in an accident, that person is paralyzed for life. No amount of prayer is going to help.
• If someone is born with a congenital defect like a cleft palate, God will not repair it through prayer. Surgery is the only option.
• A genetic disease like Down Syndrome is the same way -- no amount of prayer is going to fix the problem.

Or what about this. What if we get down on our knees and pray to God in this way:

Dear God, almighty, all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe, we pray to you to cure every case of cancer on this planet tonight. We pray in faith, knowing you will bless us as you describe in Matthew 7:7, Matthew 17:20, Matthew 21:21, Mark 11:24, John 14:12-14, Matthew 18:19 and James 5:15-16. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

Then I went further and checked out some of the videos from this same group at YouTube. Several are interesting, but this one is the most relevant here. It is called "10 Questions That Every Intelligent Christian Must Answer". The first of the 10 questions is why doesn't god heal amputees?, and then other key questions follow. The people who wrote the script for this video (and the others they produced) sure don't pull any punches!

Why Don't Miracles Ever Grow New Limbs?

Recently blogger Ergo Sum posted some comments about Mother Teresa. In that post, he note the following observation that he came across on an atheist website:

If there're so many miraculous cures occuring even today, how is it that we never hear of an amputee growing out a new, fully developed, and healthy limb?

This is an important question! Anytime you hear about miracles or someone praying for a cure to an ailment, it is always something that can have any number of things happen to improve the situation, cure the disease, etc. Often the people getting the miracle cure are in third world countries with less high-tech science and medical care available. But not always of course. The point is that the thing prayed for, or the miracle delivered, is always for something internal in the body that people don't perceptually see the cause and effect relationship for (not without instruments, tests, etc.). So it just seems like: I prayed, and a week later I got better. Or the miracle-worker did some ritual, and a week later I felt better.

Well, if miracles can really happen, or if prayers are really effective, then why don't miracles ever grow back an arm or a leg, and why don't people pray for such things to happen? I think that is very telling: both about supposed miracle-workers, and for people who pray for something to happen in their lives.

The Amazing Randi on YouTube

I was recently poking around YouTube and found the many great James Randi video clips where he debunks and shows to be frauds various supposed psychics and other mystics. Here are some worth seeing:

• James Randi exposes Uri Geller and Peter Popoff - I esp. love how Randi used radio equipment to expose the religious faith-healer Popoff as a fraud, and that Popoff then went into bankruptcy... alas, Popoff is back to his con-man ways, see below for the latest.
• James Randi exposes James Hydrick - this is classic... what a clown Hydrick looks like in his outfit, and then with his claims about why he can't perform during the test.
• James Randi explains Homeopathy - this stuff is such nonsense. So many believers in its effectiveness are so deluded. Placebo effect, anyone?
• James Randi on Astrology - short, but effective, refutation of astrology (as if it needs refuting, LOL)
• James Randi and a Medium - Randi manages to make some very important points in the Q&A in this one.
• Peter Popoff vs. James Randi 2007 - from Inside Edition. This covers his latest con, the Miracle Water nonsense. A great exposing of this criminal con-man! This one is the best of this group... if you just watch one of these, WATCH THIS ONE!

Medieval Church "Is Sex OK?" Chart

This is great stuff... check out this chart (click the image to see full chart) that answers the question "Is it ok to have sex now?" for those sad folks who lived in Christian Europe in the Medieval period. The chart is funny... but also... if ever there was a visual representation of the evil of such views on sex, this is it.

Flowcharts for Science and Faith

Here are two good flowcharts showing a methodological difference between science and faith. Classic. (Thanks to GeekPress for this.)

Archaeologist Takes on Bible-History Pseudo-Scientists

I don't know anything about archaeologist Eric Cline, but I heard this 10-minute CHE audio clip tonight about his book From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. While I'm not particularly interested in the subject of biblical history, I did find this audio clip interesting and I am intrigued by his book. He is taking on what he considers to be a wave of "junk science" that is taking over Bible Studies programs.

Machan on Islam "Insulted"

Read the comments from Philosophy professor Tibor Machan on the recent outrage from Muslim leaders in response to Britain's bestowing honors on Salman Rushdie. He makes several very obvious distinctions that seem to be eluding many folks, including many in the media.

Wafa Sultan's 2006 Al-Jezeera Appearance

For some reason I thought I had blogged about this last year, but after doing a search of my blog it seems I didn't. So this isn't new material, just a late posting about something that I found amazing to watch.

In February 2006 Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American (Syrian-born) Psychiatrist, made this appearance on Al-Jezeera. Her thesis is that it is wrong to claim that we face a "clash of civilizations", but rather a clash between the mentality of the middle ages and that of the 21st century. She is extremely articulate and forceful in this speech.

For more information about her, see the Wafa Sultan entry at Wikipedia (with of course the necessary caveats about potential errors in Wikipedia content, esp. a controversial figure like Sultan). She seems to be a very courageous person!

On the Right to Assisted Suicide

During the week that Dr. Jack Kevorkian was released from prison, The Ayn Rand Institute had both a press release, and an op-ed "The Right to Assisted Suicide" Thomas Bowden. Both are excellent.

From the Op-Ed:

What lawmakers must grasp is that there is no rational, secular basis upon which the government can properly prevent any individual from choosing to end his own life. When religious conservatives use secular laws to enforce their idea of God's will, they threaten the central principle on which America was founded.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed, for the first time in the history of nations, that each person exists as an end in himself. This basic truth--which finds political expression in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--means, in practical terms, that you need no one's permission to live, and that no one may forcibly obstruct your efforts to achieve your own personal happiness.

But what if happiness becomes impossible to attain? What if a dread disease, or some other calamity, drains all joy from life, leaving only misery and suffering? The right to life includes and implies the right to commit suicide. To hold otherwise--to declare that society must give you permission to kill yourself--is to contradict the right to life at its root. If you have a duty to go on living, despite your better judgment, then your life does not belong to you, and you exist by permission, not by right.

For these reasons, each individual has the right to decide the hour of his death and to implement that solemn decision as best he can. The choice is his because the life is his. And if a doctor is willing (not forced) to assist in the suicide, based on an objective assessment of his patient's mental and physical state, the law should not stand in his way.

And then commenting on Oregon, the one state that has "provided clear procedures by which doctors can end their dying patients' pain and suffering while protecting themselves from criminal prosecution", Bowden continues:

Religious conservatives' opposition to the Oregon approach stems from the belief that human life is a gift from the Lord, who puts us here on earth to carry out His will. Thus, the very idea of suicide is anathema, because one who "plays God" by causing his own death, or assisting in the death of another, insults his Maker and invites eternal damnation, not to mention divine retribution against the decadent society that permits such sinful behavior.

If a religious conservative contracts a terminal disease, he has a legal right to regard his own God's will as paramount, and to instruct his doctor to stand by and let him suffer, just as long as his body and mind can endure the agony, until the last bitter paroxysm carries him to the grave. But conservatives have no right to force such mindless, medieval misery upon doctors and patients who refuse to regard their precious lives as playthings of a cruel God.

Secular and rational state legislators should regard the occasion of Dr. Kevorkian's release from jail as a stinging reminder that 49 of the 50 states have failed to take meaningful steps toward recognizing and protecting an individual's unconditional right to commit suicide.

Two Views of "Culture of Life"

Debates about abortion, euthanasia, assisted-suicide, and stem cell research are often so emotionally charged, and filled with straw men on both sides, that it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff -- to pin down the core philosophical issues, the key points that matter, and ignore the rest.

Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute wrote an Op-Ed titled "The Religious Right's Culture of Living Death" on these issues recently, attacking what he presents as a generalized "religious right" position. Not a piece of philosophical argumentation, it doesn't get into the key questions of personhood, individual rights (including the right to life), the role of government, and so on. That was not its purpose. Instead it is a rhetorical piece that raises a very interesting question about the phrases "Culture of Life" and "Culture of Death" -- phrases often used by those on the so-called "pro-life" side of the debate.

What Mr. Epstein writes is quite powerful I think -- and it certainly isn't something you read or hear coming from those on the "pro-choice" side of the Abortion debate, or the pro-research side of the stem-cell debate. While I encourage you to read the entire op-ed, the second half is provided below. After separately attacking what he sees as the "religious right's" position on abortion, euthanasia, and stem-cell research, he then writes:

To uphold these positions in the name of the sanctity of life is a colossal fraud. A "culture of life" would not benefit human life, but cause massive suffering and death.

What could possibly justify the religious conservatives' crusade for such a world? "God's will," they answer. Our lives belong to a supernatural being, they say, and He commands us not to end them "unnaturally," no matter how unbearable they become. He sanctifies bits of protoplasm, they say, and thus commands young women to abandon their ambitions in order to raise unwanted children, and commands everyone to abandon the breathtaking promise of a new field of research.

This is the rise of the same medieval mentality that demanded rejection of the life-enhancing developments of anesthesia, the dissection of corpses, and birth control.

The religious conservatives do not value actual human life; they are consistent followers of the Christian ideal that human life is properly lived in sacrifice to a supernatural being, and that suffering is proof of virtue. The worship of suffering is fundamental to Christianity, a religion whose central figure is glorified for dying a horrific death for the sins of mankind. Several years ago, a prominent religious conservative said of the Schiavo case, "Terry Schiavo . . . is suffering in obedience to God's will." He added: "Isn't suffering in pursuit of God's will the exact center of religious life?"

This is the culture of death--of living death.

Human life is sacred--not because of supernatural declaration, but because of the unique nature and glorious potential of the individual, rational human life: to think, to create, to love, to experience pleasure, to achieve happiness here on earth. A genuine culture of life would leave individuals free to pursue their own happiness--free from coercive injunctions to sacrifice themselves to religious dogma. Such a culture is what we must seek to create, as we do everything possible to fight religious conservatives' culture of living death.

This is powerful stuff. The next time someone on the Christian "religious right" speaks of the "culture of life" and of being "pro-life", ask them what their philosophical position is on sacrifice and suffering. Of course most Christians today would not say that they are in favor of suffering (thankfully), but the most consistent ones, and some of the most famous ones, explicitly do: Mother Teresa for example.

Homer Simpson's God Puzzle

I think I've seen just about every episode of The Simpsons -- possibly every single one. But I don't remember this line from Homer that I was introduced to today (paraphrasing): "Could God create a burrito so hot that even he couldn't eat it?"

This is of course a humorous twist on the classic omnipotence paradox (see Wikipedia entry). Most commonly this is stated as the paradox of the stone, namely "Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even that being could not lift it?" But more generally, the key logic of it is to ask whether or not a being that is able to perform all actions can perform an action that would limit its own ability to perform actions.

A great many philosophers have tried to tackle this problem, from ancient and medieval folks like Augustine, Averroes, and Aquinas, to more recent folks like Rene Descartes, and then contemporary thinkers like Wittgenstein and various other 20th and 21st century philosophers.

Of course the easy way out of the paradox is to just state that any omnipotent being is restricted by the laws of logic, so this paradox is not a problem. Even if one takes this position, and defines omnipotent in this way, there are numerous, far more serious problems with the concept of God that still remain.

Besides The Simpsons there have been other references to this paradox in populat culture. I was able to recall the use of it in Star Trek The Next Generation episodes (in relation to Q, who claimed omnipotence but clearly was not). But some of the other items listed the Wikipedia entry (a good read) were news to me

Real Pope Story or from The Onion?

In the Saturday paper, on page 20A, I came to the following AP article's headline: "Pope: Unbaptized babies could go to heaven" (I can't find the article from my local paper online). The LA Times headline was "Vatican Panel Condemns Limbo to Eternal Dustbin", and another version of this story is here. As the mainstream media often gets subtle, complicated things very wrong (not to mention getting simple, obvious things wrong a lot of the time too!), you might also read this blog entry that criticizes the news coverage of this story and provides some details of Catholic belief to correct any misimpressions that the news media might be causing.

Be that as it may (and I'm not in a position to argue with the "Faithful Rebel" blogger on the details of Catholic belief), I must admit I found this entire story -- and especially some of the headlines -- to be quite comical. I would expect such headlines at The Onion, but as real news stories?

This raises the question that Dawkins has asked in his most recent book and elsewhere, which is essentially this: To what extent is theology a legitimate and serious endeavor or field of study? The "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin issue" arises here. Consider this passage from the AP story:

Although Catholics have long believed that children who die without being baptized are with original sin and thus excluded from heaven, the Church has no formal doctrine on the matter. Theologians, however, have long taught that such children enjoy an eternal state of perfect natural happiness, a state commonly called limbo, but without being in communion with God.

Where to begin? Leaving aside the huge elephants in the room from this paragraph (assumptions of "eternal", existence after death, and so on), on what grounds would theologians feel qualified to teach one side or another of the issue of limbo? I say "feel" on purpose, not think. Because that is what it in the end comes down to. One might say that theologians base their teachings and arguments on this or that written document. They then argue which documents are more blessed, have more mystical import, or whatever the case may be. But in the end they have no evidence for the claims they make -- they are relying on authority, a logical fallacy, and in this case not very good authorities since the authors of ancient documents were individual humans like you and me, except they lived during extremely ignorant times (relative to the knowledge we possess today). So theologians are not thinking, but rather feeling, when they take sides on issues such as this. So then Dawkins asks: Is this really a legitimate field of inquiry and study, or just people making emotional utterances?

Take this next example:

"If there's no limbo and we're not going to revert to St. Augustine's teaching that unbaptized infants go to hell, we're left with only one option, namely, that everyone is born in the state of grace,'' said the Rev. Richard McBrien, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.

Obviously the context for "we're left with only one option" remaining is the realm of Catholic doctrine and the attempt to have as many internal consistencies, and as few outright contradictions that then require blatant calls to faith in the face of logic and reason. But there are of course many other options on this question: grace is a meaningless concept in a metaphysical context, there is no limbo, and no heaven or hell either, there is no existence for living beings after death, there is no supernatural realm of any kind -- including ghosts, angels, and gods.

Or perhaps theologians and the like make decisions based on feelings, but feelings tempered by pragmatism:

Benedict approved the findings of the International Theological Commission, a Vatican advisory panel, which said it was reassessing traditional teaching on limbo in light of "pressing'' pastoral needs - primarily the growing number of abortions and infants born to non-believers who die without being baptized.

Gotta love this... what does this have to do with questions that purport to be about the truth and falsity of a grand metaphysical question? Saying that innocent babies might make it into heaven (or even limbo, as opposed to hell) is just an emotional tool to make people feel better. Again, feelings rather than reason.

Or how about this:

In the document, the commission said such views are now out of date and there were "serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision.''

I'd like to know how two theologians decide when there are "serious" vs. "unserious" grounds for deciding anything! I know, I know... it would be based on the ancient texts involved, and for Catholics, the writings of Augustine, Aquinas, and so on. But my point is... why those texts and not others that contradict them? That is a core epistemological problem with all such religious beliefs -- on all kinds of important questions they resort to written authority to play the role that legitimate evidence and reasoning should play instead. And on top of that the written authorities are not even really smart people alive today, but people from a long time ago, when mankind was laughably ignorant. Consider how much laughter someone from today would rightly receive, someone with only the knowledge that a man from 400 AD had, if he were to start making pronouncements about the nature of reality and so on. So why do millions of people continue to believe what these ancient and ignorant people felt and opined about the world? Again, note the key word felt used here, as opposed to "scientifically tested and reasoned using logic therefrom".

And this gave me a laugh, it really did:

It stressed, however, that "these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than
grounds for sure knowledge.''

Well, good. Perhaps they know their epistemological limitations afterall... though I doubt it.

Bananas and Peanut Butter as Proof of God

Here is a YouTube video in which someone argues from the various attributes of Bananas (and mankind's hands) to the existence of God as creator (and evolution is wrong). Then here is another YouTube video where someone is arguing that because new life is never found in jars of peanut butter, therefore God created life and evolution is wrong.

For the first one, I wasn't sure if this was a joke or not. It looked like the guy might be making fun of creationists. But I'm not sure, because I glanced at a few comments on that page and it seemed that other viewers were not seeing this video as a joke.

The second seems clearly to not be meant as a joke -- it is more professionally done, and the beginning makes clear this clip is not meant to be a joke. But if all I saw was the peanut-butter theory guy, I might have thought it was a hoax created by an atheist -- in which case it would be completely hilarious!

Suffice to say, these are extremely poor attempts at reasoning. I am categorizing this post under "funny", and I did chuckle at these two videos, but really -- these are actually quite sad (assuming they weren't created by atheists to ridicule the reasoning of creationists). I mean, if these people have kids, and the kids are being taught these sorts of ridiculous things, in place of science... then I must ask, a la Dawkins, is that not some sort of cruelty to children's minds?

Tom and Jerry Cartoon Conspiracy

Consider if you will this video at YouTube of an Iranian "scholar" giving a lecture to students (or conference attendees, I'm not sure) giving his views on how the Tom and Jerry cartoon was created as a Jewish conspiracy.

Or consider if you will this video at YouTube of an Iranian "scholar" giving a lecture giving his views on how various Hollywood blockbusters like the Alien series, Jurassic Park, Predator, and others... are actually attacks against Islam.

I could quote many laughable claims, and entire syllogisms that are just beyond belief, from these two videos, but you can just view them for yourself.

Oh, the interpretative hoops these guys go through! These are great examples of what happens when postmodernism combines with premodernism. Here we have an "anything goes" postmodernist approach to interpretation and "critical" analysis of something, combined with the essentially premodern mentality that is religion (and in this case, a particularly paranoid advocate of his religion). And the offspring is of course utter irrationality. Not surprising, since you are adding one irrationality onto another -- what else could result but something laughably ridiculous and illogical?

There are many, many more videos like these two at YouTube -- many linked directly from the two pages above. And I'd like to take this opportunity to point out the source of these great clips... The Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI. Check out their awesome website for loads of great translated videos that you simply won't find anywhere else -- certainly not on any of the major news channels on TV. And be sure to see their relatively new blog as well (started in December). Great stuff...

On the New Atheism

I've been getting caught up on my Wired magazine reading this weekend. The November issue had a cover story that I put off reading for when I had the time, because I knew it would be of interest to me. The cover reads: "The New Atheism. No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science. Inside the crusade against religion." The main article is annoyingly titled "The Church of the Non-Believing", and centers around the latest three books defending atheism, and/or attacking belief in the supernatural (with traditional religious belief being a large part of that). These are evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins' best-seller The God Delusion, neuroscientist Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, and philosopher Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

The Wired article is a good read, particularly if you don't have the time or interest to read any of these three new books. It summarizes the angle that each of these three folks are taking in attacking supernatural beliefs, mysticism, faith - in short, the essence of religions the world around. And it presents how this represents "new" atheism: not that the arguments used by these writers are new per se, but that their attitude to their task is new, as they see a new urgency to ridding the world of belief in the supernatural. For what its worth, in what follows I'll just be picking and choosing bits and pieces from the Wired article that I feel like commenting on.

There is a nice quote from Dawkins on the onus of proof issue (that it isn't up to science to disprove God, or any other arbitrary assertion or existential claim made without evidence.) He even mentions the Flying Spaghetti Monster (see the original website and the Wikipedia entry on this for more info), a variant on Russell's teapot example (see Wikipedia on this too). Dawkins pleas for non-believers to come out of the closet as it were, noting that there are more non-believers in the US alone than there are Jewish people on the entire planet. Dawkins also notes here that the battle between evolution and creationism is just that -- a minor battle, the tip of the iceberg. The real war is between naturalism and supernaturalism, noting that "sensible" religious people are actually more fundamentally akin to the "extreme" religious believers than they are to pro-reason atheists like Dawkins -- because they are fundamentally supernaturalists, not naturalists. This is of course one dimension on which beliefs can be considered, and on this point at least, he is correct.

Before shifting from discussing Dawkins to Harris, the author of this article, Gary Wolf, makes an interesting point about why some people dismiss atheism or at least don't admit their own non-belief in religion. Some people consider it rude. That is "Atheism is like telling somebody, 'The very thing you hinge your life on, I totally dismiss.' ... This is the statement the New Atheists believe must be made - loudly, clearly and before it's too late."

The consideration of Sam Harris is interesting, and includes a quote from his book:

"Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you," he writes, addressing his imaginary
opponent, "dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of
the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well – by your denial of tangible
reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by
your attachment to an imaginary God."

I also enjoyed this exchange between Wolf and Harris. Harris certainly doesn't pull punches:

"Look at slavery," he says. We are at a beautiful restaurant in Santa Monica, near the public lots from which Americans – nearly 80 percent of whom believe the Bible is the true word of God, if polls are correct – walk happily down to the beach in various states of undress. "People used to think," Harris says, "that slavery was morally acceptable. The most intelligent, sophisticated people used to accept that you could kidnap whole families, force them to work for you, and sell their children. That looks ridiculous to us today. We're going to look back and be amazed that we approached this asymptote of destructive capacity while allowing ourselves to be balkanized by fantasy. What seems quixotic is quixotic – on this side of a radical change. From the other side, you can't believe it didn't happen earlier. At some point, there is going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too embarrassing to believe in God."

Suddenly I notice in myself a protective feeling toward Harris. Here is a man who believes that a great global change, perhaps the most important cultural change in the history of humanity, will occur out of sheer intellectual embarrassment.

We discuss what it might look like, this world without God. "There would be a religion of reason," Harris says. "We would have realized the rational means to maximize human happiness. We may all agree that we want to have a Sabbath that we take really seriously – a lot more seriously than most religious people take it. But it would be a rational decision, and it would not be just because it's in the Bible. We would be able to invoke the power of poetry and ritual and silent contemplation and all the variables of happiness so that we could exploit them. Call it prayer, but we would have prayer without bullshit."

I do call it prayer. Here is the atheist prayer: that our reason will subjugate our superstition, that our intelligence will check our illusions, that we will be able to hold at bay the evil temptation of faith.

Just as I found the use of the word "Church" in the article's title to be annoying, I find the use of the word "prayer" here to be annoying. Worse than annoying really, they are conceptually confused, as they demonstrate a lack of understanding of essentials in defining one's terms. And for what reason? Just to be cute or to draw attention in the case of the title. Can't Mr. Wolf show off his writing chops without causing readers to further muddy important concepts under discussion?

But that aside, what Harris is saying here is striking. His prediction, or perhaps his hope, is that eventually there will be some sort of point of inflection in the culture (of the world), where supernatural beliefs, faith, mysticism -- the core of what is essential to religion -- will be seen to be intellectually embarrassing. Many people look on astrology that way today for example. Or consider the tribal belief systems of Africa or other third-world countries. These are often polytheistic or animist. I've always assumed that most Christians, and other believers of the major religions, see these obscure (to them) systems of supernatural belief as "intellectually embarrassing". But why? They are no more or less supernaturally-based than their own religious beliefs are. And they are no more or less in need of faith for at least some of the basket of beliefs. Harris is just noting that there could (will?) come a time when the same will be said of all religions -- Christianity and so on will be seen the way astrology, palm-reading, or tribal beliefs are seen today.

Or consider another case. I've always thought about how I (and I assume most viewers) react to seeing the religions of aliens from other planets portrayed in sci-fi movies and TV shows. For instance, consider the mystic beliefs of the Klingons in the Star Trek series. I always reacted to that as follows "Those silly Klingons. They have no evidence for their beliefs in the supernatural, life after death, and so on." But then why not apply this attitude to your own religious beliefs? I think most believers do so not only to fictional religions from sci-fi shows, but also to a great many obscure real religions here on Earth -- just not to their own (and perhaps a few other mainstream ones that they "respect").

This is all similar to the old atheist line that notes the difference between the Atheist and the monotheists, e.g., Christians/Jews/Muslims. It goes like this: "You reject eastern religions or the ancient Greek gods in part because they believe in multiple gods. Well, I believe in one less god than you."

I'm always careful when employing that line, because while humorous, I think it is philosophically misleading. It could be taken to imply that there is commonality on the essential point between the atheist and the monotheist, just as their is between the monotheist and the polytheist. But while the latter is true, the former is not: as Dawkins made the point, the key distinction is between naturalism and supernaturalism, not in this case, between how many supernatural beings your belief system allows for.

Getting back now to this lengthy article in Wired, I must say the part I was least pleased with was the section covering philosopher Daniel Dennett. I'm not sure if this is because I disagree with some of Dennett's views, or whether he wasn't reported well in this article -- I'd have to read Dennett's latest book to find out. For example: "Ethical problems must be solved by reason, not arbitrary rules. And yet, on the other hand, Dennett knows that reason alone will fail." That is a view I disagree with, but is that really Dennett's view, or a misrepresentation by Wolf? Or consider also Dennett's view of ethical "default settings", whatever those are explained to be exactly. This sounds like a variant on moral intuitionism, a broad umbrella very popular in philosophy departments in recent years, but a methodology and viewpoint I think is very flawed.

Or consider this passage from the article:

"Yes, there could be a rational religion," Dennett says. "We could have a rational policy not even to think about certain things." He understands that this would create constant tension between prohibition and curiosity. But the borders of our sacred beliefs could be well guarded simply by acknowledging that it is pragmatic to refuse to change them.

I ask Dennett if there might not be a contradiction in his scheme. On the one hand, he aggressively confronts the faithful, attacking their sacred beliefs. On the other hand, he proposes that our inherited defaults be put outside the limits of dispute. But this would make our defaults into a religion, unimpeachable and implacable gods. And besides, are we not atheists? Sacred prohibitions are anathema to us.

Dennett replies that exceptions can be made. "Philosophers are the ones who refuse to accept the sacred values," he says. For instance, Socrates.

I find this answer supremely odd. The image of an atheist religion whose sacred objects, called defaults, are taboo for all except philosophers – this is the material of the cruelest parody. But that's not what Dennett means. In his scenario, the philosophers are not revered authorities but mental risk-takers and scouts. Their adventures invite ridicule, or worse. "Philosophers should expect to be hooted at and reviled," Dennett says. "Socrates drank the hemlock. He knew what he was doing."

While I admit being confused as to what Dennett might be meaning with all this, based on what I've read in this article, I don't like the sound of it. It seems as though he is yet another moral intuitionist, or someone who believes we have ethical views (e.g., altruism in various forms and variants) placed in us through evolution, and that this is somehow a defense of them as the right ethical principles to live one's life by. And beyond that, Dennett seems to be saying that the average person need not question these ethical principles -- just let the philosophers handle that, since that is what they are good at. He says it could be "pragmatic" for the average person to not think about the details of this, and to just guard our common ethical "defaults" and presumably enforce them in society when necessary. That I disagree with all of this (if understanding his views correctly from the brief blurb in this article) I'll just say now for the record. I'm sure it will come up on this blog again in the future, and I'll explain further at that time.

Leaving my confusion over Dennett's views, the other failing of this article is the final paragraph:

The New Atheists have castigated fundamentalism and branded even the mildest religious liberals as enablers of a vengeful mob. Everybody who does not join them is an ally of the Taliban. But, so far, their provocation has failed to take hold. Given all the religious trauma in the world, I take this as good news. Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd. If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn't necessarily mean we've lost our convictions or our sanity. It simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say, our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there's always a chance we could turn out to be wrong.

First "church", then "prayer", and now... "faith" used in a confused and essence-destroying way. Faith is the continued belief in a proposition when no evidence in its favor is available. Catholics, for example have "faith" in the virgin birth and miracles, even though these defy scientific evidence, as well as "The Trinity", even though this violates the logical law of identity. They admit this, and that is why these are doctrines of faith (as opposed to many other of their views, that following Aquinas, can be defended -- so they say -- by reason, and so resorting to faith isn't necessary.) But who has "faith" -- belief without evidence -- in the universal skepticism of "there's always a chance we could turn out to be wrong"? Does the author really have faith in that? Or is he just weaseling out of taking an atheist stand against arbitrary claims? One need not claim omniscience -- one just needs to brand the arbitrary as arbitrary.

This paragraph also gives us a false alternative. Note that the so-called "New Atheists" do not (to my knowledge) equate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as equal to progressive/liberal Christians. The former are intellectual allies and enablers of the former -- on the most fundamental level, because they are all supernaturalists. But recognizing that, and fighting against supernaturalism wherever one sees it, does not render the "New Atheist" incapable of drawing important distinctions, such as the difference between an enabler and the actual do-er. The difference between the person who believes in the supernatural and who uses that as his reasons for murdering people, versus the person who believes in the supernatural, but who does not -- indeed, who in some cases fights at all levels except the most fundamental one against those who commit such acts of violence. Obviously the "New Atheists" are able to make such distinctions between thought and action, while still maintaining the fundamental issue of supernaturalism vs. naturalism is something that really needs to be focused on.

Having made those complaints, this lengthy Wired article is a worthwhile read -- for atheists, agnostics, and religious believers alike. And don't miss the sidebar items too, on the right in the box labelled "Faces of the New Atheism", which includes a brief item about comedians Penn and Teller, who are not only atheist but generally pro-liberty as well -- and are a rare breed... celebrities I'd like to meet someday!

Lastly, I'll note that a while back I started reading one of the three books mentioned here, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I've read the preface and the first two chapters, and skimmed other parts so far. I plan to post comments on a chapter-by-chapter basis to this blog, so if you care about issues of atheism and religion, you might be interested in those. They'll be slow in coming though, as I read so many other things each week, finding time to read actual books is a luxury.

The Mr. Deity Series

The Mr. Deity series on YouTube is great. Outstanding satire and criticism of beliefs in the supernatural, and of the traditional Judeo-Christian deity of the bible in particular. The videos that I found available so far include (with minutes duration of each):

• Mr. Deity and the Evil (3:52)
• Mr. Deity and the Really Big Favor (4:15)
• Mr. Deity and The Light (2:31)
• Mr. Deity and the Messages (3:48)
• Mr. Deity and Lucifer (3:47)
• Mr. Deity and the Press Conference (3:07)

From the first one, I love the line "Wait for Lou" towards the end (ouch!), and also the final reference, to a singer... classic!

The second is kinda slow, not as funny until the end... and then there is a great twist!

The other three are pretty good too -- the last one, the press conference, has a lot of humor packed into it, so you might need to watch that one twice!

Thanks a lot to Stephen Hicks for putting me on to these videos!

Pacifism, Self-Hatred, and Complacency

Daniel Pipes' Dec. 26th column, How the West Could Lose, offers an analysis of how the West could lose its battle with Islamism (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia), because of the triple affliction of pacifism, self-hatred, and complacency. An interesting read and also includes several bullet points that nicely summarize the formidable capabilities of the Islamists.

Some Lesser Known Bible Verses

The bible has a great many stories, ideas, events, and passages that, I assume, most Christians are not aware of. Here is a list of ten disturbing ones, with funny brief comments for each. Somehow I think that I'd remember these ones if they had ever shown up in the sunday sermons and masses I went to as a kid. I think that even on days that I was only half-paying attention (hey, I was a kid!), I'd have noted these bizarre passages.

If you want more, see also this list of ten deaths from the bible, provided by the same site.

Door to Door Atheism

I saw this hilarious video a while back, via a link at another blog (Diana's NoodleFood, I think it was). I meant to pass it along on my blog too, but I think I somehow forgot. The first half if pretty funny, as the host goes on a mini-rant against Mormons who knock on his door, early on Saturday mornings, disturbing his sleep. But then the second half is the shocker... as he turns the tables on them by travelling from Australia to Utah and goes around knocking on their doors, trying to convince them of Atheism. Very clever, and well done.

Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God

Susan and I recently listened to Julia Sweeney's 2-CD presentation "Letting Go of God" (thanks very much to our friends Dave and Deb Ross for the recommendation!) Yes, that is the same Julia Sweeney, the comedian, that you might remember from her days on Saturday Night Live (esp. her famous character "Pat"). To refresh your memory of who she is, you can read her Wikipedia entry and visit her webpage.

I highly recommend "Letting Go of God". Presented as an on-stage performance, Susan and I were both laughing often and nodding in serious agreement as Julia tells of her journey from being a Christian believer (Catholic), through a difficult period of doubt, to arrive at a well-thought out position of atheism. Along the way she is critical of more than just her own (former) faith, but also of Mormonism, other Christian viewpoints, Deepak Chopra (and the new age movement), astrology, and much more.

At the end of the presentation she says of God "It's because I take you so seriously that I can't bring myself to believe in you." This is well said: she takes the philosophical questions of God's existence or non-existence, and the effects that has on all other beliefs, very seriously. This means she takes her own life, her own mind, her own duty to the truth seriously. And this was abundantly clear throughout the presentation. Few people could pull that off -- taking such deep questions seriously while at the same time providing so many good laughs.

It is a very effective presentation. I think in some ways it is more effective than the works of standard atheist writers, such Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and others, exactly because it presents the same serious questions and answers in a very approachable way. She does discuss important discoveries from science, as positive evidence and in order to refute claims made by religious apologists, but again, does so in a way that even those with little knowledge of science can follow along quite easily.

Her CD will be of value to both the committed Atheist (for laughs), but also to anyone who is questioning their faith in the supernatural. While a few of the comments will resonate most with those raised as Catholics, the majority of what she says will be meaningful to all. If you currently belief in a God or Gods, but have an active mind, and are willing to hear evidence on both sides, then I highly recommend you get this CD.

I wish I could link to it at Amazon now, but I can't seem to find it listed there (very odd). I'm writing to Julia to ask about this, and will provide a link to it at Amazon here in the future, but for the time being the one link Amazon provides for it is to the downloadable version of it available through their partner site, Audible.com. So you can at least get it easily as a download. I assume it is available on CD in stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble though too -- and the CD comes with nice booklet, so I'd recommend the CDs over the download.

Pinker on Reason and Faith

Steven Pinker's "Less Faith, More Reason" piece was a treasure-trove of important points and distinctions (thanks to Stephen Hicks for the link). While he says there is much to praise in Harvard's Report of the Committee on General Education, he has a few criticisms. His first concern is with how the "Science and Technology" requirement is described. I liked this passage in particular:

The report introduces scientific knowledge as follows: “Science and technology directly affect our students in many ways, both positive and negative: they have led to life-saving medicines, the internet, more efficient energy storage, and digital entertainment; they also have shepherded nuclear weapons, biological warfare agents, electronic eavesdropping, and damage to the environment.”

Well, yes, and I suppose one could say that architecture has produced both museums and gas chambers, that opera has both uplifted audiences and inspired the Nazis, and so on. It makes it sound as if the choice between science and technology on the one hand, and superstition and ignorance on the other, is a moral toss-up! Of course students should know about both the bad and good effects of technology. But this hardly seems like the best way for a great university to justify the teaching of science.

Then he also rightly objects to the requirement called "Reason and Faith". Here is his excellent list of concerns on that one:

First, the word “faith” in this and many other contexts, is a euphemism for “religion.” An egregious example is the current administration’s “faith-based initiatives,” so-named because it is more palatable than “religion-based initiatives.” A university should not try to hide what it is studying in warm-and-fuzzy code words.

Second, the juxtaposition of the two words makes it sound like “faith” and “reason” are parallel and equivalent ways of knowing, and we have to help students navigate between them. But universities are about reason, pure and simple. Faith—believing something without good reasons to do so—has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these. Imagine if we had a requirement for “Astronomy and Astrology” or “Psychology and Parapsychology.” It may be true that more people are knowledgeable about astrology than about astronomy, and it may be true that astrology deserves study as a significant historical and sociological phenomenon. But it would be a terrible mistake to juxtapose it with astronomy, if only for the false appearance of symmetry.

Third, if this is meant to educate students about the role of religion in history and current affairs, why isn’t it just a part of the “U.S. and the World” requirement? Religion is an important force, to be sure, but so are nationalism, ethnicity, socialism, markets, nepotism, class, and globalization. Why single religion out among all the major forces in history?

There is also considerable disagreement over whether religion really is the driving force behind the conflicts that are commonly attributed to it. Many people in Ireland insist that the Ulster conflict is about British rule versus Irish unification, not about Protestantism versus Catholicism. And among the Islam-aligned forces with which our country is currently entangled, Saddam Hussein’s Baathism is more secular and nationalist than it is religious. Whether or not religion is a major force is a question best left to our colleagues in history, government, and area studies, in the context of the broadest possible study of world affairs. This empirical issue should not be prejudged in the categories of a general education requirement.

Fourth, if the requirement is supposed to be about the clash in the history of ideas between religion and reason in Western thought, here again it seems far too arbitrary and specific a choice for a general education requirement. Why not rationalism and empiricism, or idealism and materialism, or the subjective and the objective?

Finally, if the requirement is meant to be the union of all or any of these (some students concentrate on Islamic jihad, others on the Reformation, still others on the argument from design or the ontological argument for God’s existence, still others on biblical history), it just doesn’t hang together as a coherent requirement.

Again, we have to keep in mind that the requirement will attract attention from far and wide, and for a long time. For us to magnify the significance of religion as a topic equivalent in scope to all of science, all of culture, or all of world history and current affairs, is to give it far too much prominence. It is an American anachronism, I think, in an era in which the rest of the West is moving beyond it.

Arbitrary Religious Rules With a Twist

I got a laugh from this posting by Craig Biddle, given the twist he provides. And he is completely right that one could do the same with Christianity and Judaism as with Islamic edicts.

Analysis of the Culture Clash Continued

A few weeks ago I linked to Part 1 of Stephen Browne's "Observations on Arabs". He has now provided another seven points, which again I found to be worthwhile reading given his first-hand experience in Saudi Arabia.

One Man's Take on the Culture Clash

Stephen Browne has posted part one of a very interesting column over at the Atlasphere, Observations on Arabs. Having lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for a year, he is able to make cultural comparisons that most Americans cannot.

Outstanding Comments on Pope and the Reaction

Lee Harris at TCS Daily has provided some excellent commentary regarding the reaction to the Pope's recent controversial speech. In particular, the analogy he gives is just outstanding! (Much thanks to Stephen Hicks for this link.)

Then philosopher Lester Hunt has two good posts on this issue, here and here. Plus he points me to Anne Applebaum's excellent Washington Post column. Her final three paragraphs our superb:

"By this, I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or to analyze this particular sermon; I leave that to experts on Byzantine theology. But we can all unite in our support for freedom of speech -- surely the pope is allowed to quote from medieval texts -- and of the press. And we can also unite, loudly, in our condemnation of violent, unprovoked attacks on churches, embassies and elderly nuns. By "we" I mean here the White House, the Vatican, the German Greens, the French Foreign Ministry, NATO, Greenpeace, Le Monde and Fox News -- Western institutions of the left, the right and everything in between. True, these principles sound pretty elementary -- "we're pro-free speech and anti-gratuitous violence" -- but in the days since the pope's sermon, I don't feel that I've heard them defended in anything like a unanimous chorus. A lot more time has been spent analyzing what the pontiff meant to say, or should have said, or might have said if he had been given better advice.

All of which is simply beside the point, since nothing the pope has ever said comes even close to matching the vitriol, extremism and hatred that pour out of the mouths of radical imams and fanatical clerics every day, all across Europe and the Muslim world, almost none of which ever provokes any Western response at all. And maybe it's time that it should: When Saudi Arabia publishes textbooks commanding good Wahhabi Muslims to "hate" Christians, Jews and non-Wahhabi Muslims, for example, why shouldn't the Vatican, the Southern Baptists, Britain's chief rabbi and the Council on American-Islamic Relations all condemn them -- simultaneously?

Maybe it's a pipe dream: The day when the White House and Greenpeace can issue a joint statement is surely distant indeed. But if stray comments by Western leaders -- not to mention Western films, books, cartoons, traditions and values -- are going to inspire regular violence, I don't feel that it's asking too much for the West to quit saying sorry and unite, occasionally, in its own defense. The fanatics attacking the pope already limit the right to free speech among their own followers. I don't see why we should allow them to limit our right to free speech, too."

Seyyed Nasr is Dangerously Confused

David Boaz reports on an interesting inteview of Sayyed Hossein Nasr (who has a PhD from Harvard and has published over 20 books, including from Oxford Univ. Press). In it he claims that the Pope's recent, controversial statements were themselves "acts of violence". Although Boaz doesn't apparently see a clash of civilizations looming yet, he does note:

But if Islamic scholars who teach at great American universities believe that violent attacks “on churches, embassies and elderly nuns” are “provoked” by the words of a religious leader in a university speech a thousand miles away, then we certainly have a clash of world views.

Indeed. Either Nasr is dangerously confused about the concept of "violence", or he is evading key distinctions on purpose for philosophical reasons.

Member of the Left Criticizes the Left

In his article in the LA Times "Head-in-the-Sand Liberals", Sam Harris, who describes himself as a liberal, takes American liberals to task for their dangerous attitudes toward Islamic fundamentalists and the "war on terror". After making a persuasive case, he concludes:

Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.

A good article.

On a side point, my one complaint about this article is something that is increasingly becoming an issue for me, which is the use of "liberal" in the US to describe members of the political left. Europe has retained the original use of that term, to refer to those who are pro free-market, individualism, small government, etc. -- what intellectuals in America now have to clumsily call "classical liberal" (and sometimes "libertarian"). In Harris' article this gets confusing at the very end, when he notes that the same problems he sees with American "liberals" can be seen in Europe... but there they don't call them "liberals", but rather "progressives" or "socialists" or whatever. The name "socialist" makes sense for those who are against private property, but in general I wish writers would refer to such folks as "leftists", especially if they are discussing global issues that span America and Europe -- which are more and more issues these days.