Fundamentalist Antihumanist Personality Disorder

I might expound more fully on "Fundamentalist Antihumanist Personality Disorder" in the future. In the meantime, we have all encountered those who make their attitudes our problem.

I stumbled across an old post about The Need for Absurd Belief Among Fundamentalists on the Breaking Spells blog. It discusses, amongst other things, the fact that fundies are desperate to attack segments of scientific knowledge.

I read it with interest because I am fascinated — and dismayed — by what I regard as the Fundamentalist Cognitive Disorder*. This is often linked to the Fundamentalist Antihumanist Personality Disorder.**

The final line of the post reads:

""Eventually, perhaps, the spell of religion will be broken.""

I decided to convert my response into a post.

Let’s hope! Religion continues to support damaging and outright dangerous cognitive and behavioural disorders.

I completely agree that fundies are terrified of knowledge — whether it’s science or the expert conclusions of unbiased biblical scholars. I also agree that this rigid thinking is the result of childhood indoctrination. Why else would IDiots be fighting to insinuate creationism into secondary science curricula?

I think that the motivation is not merely habit — it is highly emotional. It is also deliberately anti-factual, and, most important, illogical. They are trained into illogic and this fallacious thinking is reinforced by Bible quotes.

Successful religions have set up clever reward and punishment systems. Community is the most mundane motivation, but is probably essential for many. An eternal afterlife with a loving SkyDaddy who punishes one’s enemies is an obvious incentive. The flip side is the prison door. They fear what they are instructed to fear.

However, based on long observation of how some fundies think, I conclude that much of the emotional appeal lies in certainty and the assurance that religious-rule-following renders one RIGHT and morally SUPERIOR. (Excuse the caps. They seemed appropriate.)

It always reminds me of prefects in a school playground. Not a highschool playground. Not a primary school playground in North America. No, a school playground for children up to age 11. That’s the moral level at which these authoritarianism-oriented folk function.

Ugh!

* and ** : not official terminology

* and ** Disclaimer: not all fundies, religionists other than fundies, the occasional atheist.

Dumping Poison down the Well

The article dumps. I'm dumping back.

(Contrary to what the article contends about atheist bloggers, I'm busy with other things, so I shall have to dump in a series.)

You might need an antacid, but, for what it's worth, here's the link. It was written by Charlotte Allen who is author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus". She's in for a long search, in my opinion. Still, I bet that she thinks that she's found incontrovertible evidence.

(Heck, there is no corroborating evidence for the omnipotent, omnipresent "Creator" of the universe, so why would she require the writings of independent, contemporaneous witnesses and physical evidence for Jesus? I have not read her book, and shall not read her book, so I admit that I am guessing about the contents. If any of you read it, please let me know if she actually found the guy.)

On to the article, which constitutes half of what I have read of her predictable opinions. (Here's a synopsis of her "argument".) I should point out that I am not in the least insulted by any of her ad hominems. I am irritated by the rest of her fallacious argument against atheism, but that is because illogic irritates me. Her article will, however, convince the right wing types who read the LA Times.

I can't stand atheists -- but it's not because they don't believe in God. It's because they're crashing bores.

Funny thing. I could honestly say exactly the same thing in reverse. I can't stand religionists, but it's not because they believe in God. It's because they are worse than crashing bores.

By "religionist", I do not mean all believers. Rather, I mean those people who are aggressively obsessed about their delusions. This category includes fundamentalists of any religious persuasion and Boring Again Christians.

Worse than crashing bores? Religionists are illogical bores, which I find truly irritating. Worse than that, my experience has been many of them are quite unpleasant. Let's put it this way, "You are going to burn in HELL!" is not guaranteed to win friends and influence rational people.

Speaking of rationality, Charlotte is clearly offended by all the evidence that indicates that, as a group, atheists have more education and higher IQ scores than theists. Of course, as the numbers of atheists gradually swell, this discrepancy will ultimately diminish. Initially, of course, the decampers from religion usually abandon delusion because of rational examination of mythical claims. On the rationality-neutral side, some deconvert because of their emotional reaction to the predictable failure of religion to honour its promises in this lifetime. (It won't honour the after death promises either, but we cannot test this fact – beyond having falsified dualism.)

I'll get back to that later, but in the meantime, here's an article that Charlotte wrote decrying the "emotionality" of some women. Actually, the article is a thinly disguised attack on Democratic political candidates. Charlotte, if you really wished to examine the stupidity of some women, then you could have had a field day with Sarah Palin.

Here's a tidbit:

So I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.

I think that by "the ones fewer of us possess" she was hinting at her own superior powers of insight and erudition. The final line should convince all women that they ought to be barefoot and pregnant while comparing fabric swatches in the kitchen.

Uh-huh!

She concludes by trying to dispell the impression that she is bragging about rising above giddy females:

Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.

Speak for yourself, honey! I could be kind of dim, but I don't shriek, or swoon, or gossip any more than the average gal or guy. (Social anthropologists have found that, in casual conversation, both males and females spend most of their time talking about other people. Let's face it, people are a more varied topic than the weather.)

Perhaps I do not need to write a series:

Sites Elsewhere: Charlotte Allen really is angry at us on Pharyngula (always worth reading, which is why it's so immensely popular) . even more scathing, The Unholy Wars and Flagrant Bigotry at the LA Times . some irony (not intended to criticise Jews) Jews: No Jesus, No Reason, Just Whining; They’re Motivated by Anger and Boohoo Victimhood . Sandwalk Charlotte Allen whines that Atheists exist . Charlotte Allen whines that Atheists exist . God botherer bothered . Sam Harris [Harris’ Note: This is, without a doubt, one of the most embarrassingly stupid attacks on the “new atheists” to be published in a major newspaper.] . Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining .

Too funny!

He actually seems like a sweet guy, but one expects him to pull out a banjo at any moment.

Disappointment at lack of banjos aside, I particuluarly loved his use of charts and schematics and his imaginative use of colour-coordinated props. Someone ought to tell him that ID's ridiculous argument from analogy relies upon unfounded comparisons between biological complexity and designed complexity (in materials that, unlike the chemicals of life, lack the capacity for self-replication).



Unfortunately, I was laughing so hard that I missed much of what he said. OminousVoice is, imo, hilarious, but this kid has him beat. The difference is that OminousVoice is consciously amusing.

I thought that the video above was the funniest, but the video below greatly tickled my beloved's fancy. It's a journey into pathos as he says goodbye to one of his props.

Increasingly Intolerable Islam

Islam gets more obnoxious. On one hand, I do understand their sensitivies, particularly since they personally identify with Islam, rather than merely accepting the better parts of the Quran. On the other hand, I think that this sort of proposal will backlash into increased resentment of fundamentalist Islam, or, by association, of Islam.

I do not for one second believe that Islamic nations will enact laws that prevent militant muslims from uttering hate-speech and threats against other religions and nations.

Religion is a menace! Theocracies are a bigger menace.

Losing Religion

Another pictorial trip through religion, from paleolithic cave art to fundamentalist restrictions.

I love the name of this song - such a lovely sentiment - eschew delusional sentiment, embrace rationality.

"Rapid Eye Movement"



Higher quality.

Gregorian



Higher quality.

This version of the song, by Gregorian, is my second choice. WMG, aka Warner Mega Greed has forced YT to strip all its music from already uploaded videos, or to prevent upload of WMG music. Not a particularly wise choice on their part - they are losing an enormous amount of advertising exposure. I'd like to see tubers make WMG pay for their greed by boycotting their products.

Community Activism

Poor old YouTube – driven by profit, presumably hiring expensive software engineers, but the cheapest administrative staff that they can find.

The result of this is that some of the YT user community is brighter than the YT staff. (Not I – the video makers on the big science channels.) These tubers are much, much brighter than the majority of creationists and religionists who are using YT as a forum for their illogic, misinformation, and dirty tactics.

In lieu of good arguments, creationists and religionists have been forced to resort to cheating. The votebot is their latest tactic in the war on anyone with the temerity to disagree with them. Honest voting does not interest them. Oh no, they need to use computers to cheat down the ratings of those who are armed with knowledge and logic.

One of the interesting aspects of this ongoing battle between rationality (evolution, atheism) and petty-minded delusion (creationism, bigotry, hate-speech, religionism) has evolved (I love that word) since the attack of the bot-slaves. (Forgive the machines, Lord, they know not what they do).

Creationist and religionist foolishness and malevolence – and now YouTube ineptitude – has forced grass roots activism and community organization.

It's like watching a sociology experiment.

Atheists and scientists tend to be an independent-minded lot, who have naively assumed that providing factual information would be sufficient to help the ignorant to learn the truth. Belatedly, atheists and scientist are realizing that they must co-ordinate their efforts and take a political stand against the Forces of Darkness and Ignorance.

Acting rather like the Bush administration, YouTube has turned a blind eye to hate speech, while acting as dupes to petty-minded, religionist flagging of mild content, and to malicious, false DMCA claims.

YouTube apparently regards tubers as pests, who are best ignored and avoided. This is particularly so when tubers have complaints about YouTube’s failures to provide service in accord with their own guidelines.

Like any greed-bloated corporation, YouTube has focussed on advertising revenues while ignoring the fact that its very survival actually depends upon uploaded videos. Our uploaded videos. Our creations. Videos, which remain on our computers. Videos that we can delete from YouTube and upload onto an alternative site. In other words, we are both the fans and the producers. Boycotts work well, emigration would be even more effective.

YouTube would be well advised to remember not to cut off the hands that grow the food.

Nice Idea, But .........

Karen Armstrong talks of her journey from and back to religion. Here, receiving her 2008 TED prize, she outlines a nice idea that I consider impractical and overly optimistic.

The Golden Rule is simple – I learned the principle before age 8 – and it does not require the institution of religion. We learn compassion through socialization and experience. Those with a personal inclination towards compassion do not need religious nonsense in order to behave morally. If humans need anything, it is not religion but rather connectedness.

I think that Armstrong's personal inclination towards (good) religiosity has lead to her failing to see that religious edifices are, and will continue to be, a cognitive, social and political problem.

Why? The religious have largely failed to see the message that Armstrong sees as the basic theme of religions, and some individuals will always take advantage of any power structure. Religious institutions are particularly well suited to usurpation by power mongers. Call any stupid idea "a religion" and sheep will be willing to flock and be fleeced.

In my opinion, Armstrong ought to have paid more attention to her own words:

"Like it or not, fundamentalism is not going to disappear soon. In some places it is going from strength to strength, becoming more extreme."

Links: Books by Karen Armstrong.

Is it your God who's . . .?

A friend sent me a link to this. It's worth sharing:

To the tune of "Louie Louie", Cheryl Wheeler takes the mickey out of the worst president in the history of the world: Cheryl Wheeler - Dubya Dubya

Religiosity und Moralkrankheit

The Germanic neologism translates as "moral illness". Does the squawking chicken come before the rotten egg, or vice versa?

"It is commonly held that religion makes people more just, compassionate, and moral, but a new study suggests that the data belie that assumption. In fact, at first glance it would seem, religion has the opposite effect. The extensive study, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies,” published in the Journal of Religion and Society (JRS) examines statistics from eighteen of the most developed democratic nations. It reveals clear correlations between various indicators of social strife and religiosity, showing that whether religion causes social strife or not, it certainly does not prevent it."

"The question is one of causation, and there is no clear answer. Whether religion leads directly to dysfunctionality, or religions merely flourish in dysfunctional societies, neither conclusion from this study flatters religion. The first tells us that religion is a hindrance to the development of moral character, and the second that religion hinders progress by distracting us from our troubles (with imaginary solutions to real problems). This study is complicated enough that I do not think that we can draw definitive negative conclusions about religion. But we can at least conclude, contrary to popular belief in this country, that it is not a given that religious societies are better, healthier, or more moral. What we can be clear about from this study is that highly religious societies can be dysfunctional, whereas by comparison secular societies in which evolution is largely accepted display real social cohesion and societal well-being. "

Religious Belief & Societal Health : New Study Reveals that Religion Does Not Lead to a Healthier Society, by Matthew Provonsha

More: Sexism and Religiosity . Inverse Correlations . Delusion inversely correlated with FLQ .

Personality and Religiosity

Some of the research on personality and religiosity seems to employ the quite useless Eysenck personality questionnaire – perhaps because a slight negative correlation with psychoticism sounds good for religion. Yes, I am being a tad skeptical here, but one has to wonder why any studies would focus on such a poor measure of personality.

Studies on the genetic heritability of religiosity seem to show a range of results. Reported levels of religiosity are so high in the US that it might be difficult to tease genetic and cultural factors apart. I'd be more inclined to trust the conclusions of a study on 1974 Dutch families with adolescent and young adult twins:

"Analyses of these data showed that differences between individuals in religious upbringing, in religious affiliation and in participation in church activities are not influenced by genetic factors. The familial resemblance for different aspects of religion is high, but can be explained entirely by environmental influences common to family members. Shared genes do not contribute to familial resemblances in religion. The absence of genetic influences on variation in several dimensions of religion is in contrast to findings of genetic influences on a large number of other traits that were studied in these twin families."

Ignoring extremes of neurological functioning, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, and extremes of psychological functioning, such as personality disorders, I have a hunch about the temperament that might be most likely to adhere to parental patterns of religiosity:

Whereas the Eysenck personality questionnaire is utterly outmoded, the Myers-Briggs Types Inventory is more generally useful with regard to attitudes. The MBTI types individuals according to their self-report of preferential approaches to others and to information:

E/I : extraversion vs introversion – outgoing, energized by social interaction vs introspective and fatigued by too much socializing.

S/N : sensing vs intuitive – satisfaction with the basic information (S) vs a tendency to search for cognitive insights based upon that information (N).

F/T : feeling vs thinking – self-perception of basing of decisions upon 'gut'-level intuitions and feeling (F) vs basing of decisions on logic and rationality (T).

J/P : judging vs perceiving – a preference for closed-ended structure and quick decisions (J) vs a desire to keep options open and to seek more information before making decisions (P).

The four parameters yield 16 different combinations. Though many mental health professionals might treat these combinations as cut-and-dried, there are shades of gray to these parameters – for example, you might consistently base some types of decisions on feelings and other types of decisions on logic.

All MBTI types are equally 'healthy' in a psychological sense. The differences relate to preferred modes of interaction with others and the world. The commonest personality type is ESFJ and the least common is INTP (or is it INTJ? – it's years since I saw the actual statistics).

Because the inventory is administered by fee-charging professionals who purchase it from the developers, it is not available on-line. However, it is not too difficult to quickly guesstimate where you – and your family and friends –would place on the inventory. This page has a chart with roll-over descriptions of each combination.

My hunch is that those who attend church regularly are more likely to be ESFJ than are atheists. ESFJs are socially oriented, satisfied with basic information, feeling-oriented, and structured. I am not saying that all religious people are likely to be ESFJ, just more likely. This is not necessarily true of any theists who might choose to read a blog that sports a large red A – such theists might be atypical.

Reading atheist blogs, I detect a high level of emphasis on logic and analysis, so my hunch is that atheists are more likely to be -NT- (probably -NTP) than -SF-. Obviously, the latter would not necessarily apply to those who become atheists because of traumatic events that damage faith in the deity's benevolence, but it might separate those who turn to religion in the face of life's difficulties from those who do not.

If you want to try an on-line inventory, "True Colors" inventories yield somewhat comparable results here (it's quick). Individuals are a blend of the four colors – rather like a Scottish tartan – on this test. The commonest 'color', corresponding to ESFJ, is gold, while the least frequent type is green.

If I ever figure out how to write the code for polls, I might set one up to do a general survey of MBTI and colors amongst atheists (that's presumably who reads this blog).

In the meantime, it might be interesting if you want to list, as a comment, your a/religious beliefs and your 'type'.

The Friendly Atheist has a related post on this topic: What Role Does Personality Play in Belief/Skepticism?

Further to this topic, I found the following information:

A sample of 422 female undergraduate students, attending a university-sector college in Wales specialising in teacher education and liberal arts subjects, completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator together with the Troldahl-Powell Dogmatism Scale. The data demonstrated that higher dogmatism scores are most clearly associated with sensing rather than intuition. Higher dogmatism scores are also associated with extraversion rather than introversion, and with judging rather than perceiving. No significant difference in dogmatism scores were found between thinking and feeling.

That is, ESJ types are indeed more likely to be dogmatic. It's interesting that there was no significant difference in dogmatism between self-reports of T versus F.

Why not?

Feeling is only indirectly connected to thinking, yet decisional output ultimately involves thinking. Self-report on a parameter where feeling may be appropriate on some occasions and thought appropriate in others, is fraught with the potential for mis-reporting. This probably explains the observation that T is the parameter most likely to shift on repeated administration of the MBTI.

Self-report that an individual makes decisions on the basis of thinking does not necessarily indicate that the individual's thought processes are logical or effective. Since people are aware that intelligence is socially valued, they are probably more likely to exhibit a bias for overreporting themselves as Ts.

Most people are likely to overestimate the effectiveness of their thinking, in some areas at the least. One presumes that Sarah Palin fondly imagines that her thought processes are logical. An ill-informed, illogical, or magic-thinking thought is still a thought. So, S combined with T may be selectively ineffectual in promoting critical thinking. Data suggests that superficial, illogical, and emotional thinking are prevalent problem.

Source:
Dogmatism, Religion, and Psychological Type, Christopher F. J. Ross, Leslie J. Francis and Charlotte L. Craig, Pastoral Psychology, Volume 53, Number 5 / May, 2005

atheism, cognition, emotion, logic, psychology, personality, religion,

The Yawning Chasm

The NYT, in Evolution Book Sees No Science-Religion Gap, had the following to say of the National Academy of Sciences' third book on evolution and the creationist mythologies:

"But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God."

Unfortunately, the yawning chasm between rationality and creationism necessitates such a footbridge.

What's left once a person reconciles evolution with religion?

Plenty.

Deism, or moderate theism, or Catholicism, or Judaism, or Buddhism, or whatever other religious tradition of choice is compatible with science. There's also nonliteral interpretation of the best bits of the Bible as moral allegory, religious ritual, religious community, music, art, literature, and, most wondrous of all, the fabulous world of opening one's eyes to . . . understanding and appreciating the world.

Imagination is much better stimulated by recognition that modern theories of biological evolution offer the best explanation for the observable fact of biological evolution. Yes, Virginia, there really is a chimp ancestor in your family tree! Grounds for rejoicing. Yes, you really can count bacteria not only as your distant ancestors but also as the power houses of your cells and the photosynthetic machines that capture Ra's munificence. More grounds for rejoicing.

In an ideally rational world, it would not be necessary to pander to religious sensibilities so that some might open their closed minds to the wonders of reality. In an ideally rational world, there would be no need for supernatural mythologies or fantasies of special creation. In an ideal world, the nation whose Founding Fathers considered it expedient to entrench separation of Church and State would have honored and protected that prescient ethos by providing an educational system commensurate with the nation's wealth. In an ideally rational world, the wall would have been built higher rather than ignoring the fundamentalist sappers who were tunneling under the wall.



Brochure from NAS (pdf)





atheism, biological evolution, creationism, deism, education, fundamentalism, intelligent design, religion, science, supernatural, theism,

Through a Mirror Reflectively

I don't read self-help books, though I have perused some. As far as I could tell from my brief survey, much of the material appears to comprise regurgitated advice, reassembled in the latest book that purports to offer new insights. This sales strategy, of course, employs a fallacious appeal to novelty. Perhaps some of the insights are novel and I simply have not examined enough books to determine this, but how many psychological wisdoms could be discoverable?

The books often illustrate their "pearls of wisdom" by way of anecdotal tales about the follies and triumphs of individuals struggling with a range of problems. It strikes me that self-help books provide mirrors. The reader is able to identify with particular elements of these tales and to benefit from self-critique, or more helpfully, from inspiration. Because the stories could not possibly be personally directed at the reader, the person seeking help is safe to identify with anecdotal mistakes without feeling personally criticized and demoralized, or becoming defensive and resorting to self-justification.

What does any of this have to do with atheism?

Many who attack the tactics of the New Atheists say that nobody changes their mind because they have been directly called a fool. I'd agree with this – to say, "you are an idiot to believe that, so you must change your mind!" is scarcely a convincing argument for the truth value of the alternative belief advocated.

In fact, to do so would be very much like the tactics that theists too often use to try to convince atheists to convert to theism:

a) "You can't be a good moral person if you don't acknowledge His existence and let God into your heart."
b) "You are merely spitefully / fearfully / stubbornly / rebelliously / selfishly denying the God who you really believe really exists."
c) "You do not want to believe in God because you selfishly don't want to submit to God's will."
d) "You cannot not believe in God – the fact that so many believe in God proves that they must be right."
e) "You are being arrogant if you claim that your scientific understanding is valid and deny that the Bible version is the Truth."

However, theists have also heard until recently – almost unopposed – believer-targetted versions of these messages:

a) "You can't be a good moral person if you don't acknowledge His existence and let God into your heart."
b) "Those who refuse to believe in Our Savior are merely spitefully / fearfully / stubbornly / rebelliously / selfishly denying the God who we must believe really exists."
c) "Those who do not want to believe in God do do because they selfishly don't want to submit to God's will."
d) "You must believe in God – the fact that so many believe in God proves that we must be right."
e) "Atheists are being arrogant when they claim that scientific understanding is valid and deny that the Bible version is the Truth."

I did not even need to alter a) and merely rephrased b) - d). There are many more examples, all fallacious, most of which include appeals to emotion.

Many theists know little of the actual dogma that they ascribe to, little of the arguments that purport to "prove" God's existence, and much less of the history of their religion. All that many Christians "know" is that they have been told that the Bible is literally true and that abundant evidence and proofs exist. Most such people are not looking for empirical information so as to rationally reevaluate their beliefs. They will seek only information that confirms what they wish to believe, and will deride any dissonant information. Some will stubbornly entrench deeper into comforting ignorance.

Until the upsurge of vocal atheism, few believers doubted for a minute that their version of reality was the dominant one. Many resist reevaluating the veridicality of their views.

When theists read that some theists display less than stellar intellects in remaining deluded, like the readers of self-help books they probably assume that the speaker is referring to theists other than themselves. When the science-ignorance of creationism is mentioned, creationists resort to saying that scientists have made errors in the past, so scientists must be mistaken again. When the bigotry and small-minded hatreds of some fundamentalists are exposed, fundamentalists protest that they personally are actually "Evangelical Christians" and not fundamentalists.

Some theists even pretend that religious critics are referring to different dogma and different apologetics than that which they espouse. When core Christian beliefs are called deluded, many Christians say that the critic should not categorize all Christians together, or they resort to the ever-popular accusation that the critic is just not sufficiently well acquainted with doctrine. Similarly, when atheists say that they do not accept the evidence that is claimed to "prove" the existence of supernatural agents, many theists make the category error of claiming that the atheist is not sufficiently well acquainted with religious dogma.

So, despite the fact that it is nonproductive to personally call a theist a fool – for holding religious beliefs to represent literal truth or to be the only route to morality or happiness – any irrrational basis of such claims must be challenged. Unless indoctrinated individuals repeatedly read that the intelligent position does not include adherence to deluded mythologies, inculcated dogma will maintain its anti-rational grip on the minds of those herded into sanctuary from reality. Like the lessons in self-help books, doubts raised by indirect, impersonal messages are more easily considered in private, enabling the more rational amongst the indoctrinated to reconsider the evidence.




apologetics, atheism, Christianity, creationism, fundamentalism, religion, theism,

Always a Dangerous Thing

I've been thinking . . . always a dangerous thing.

More from The Great God Divide: European Secularism and American Religiosity: the following comments were excited by the speaker's impressions of the Great Arch of La Defense, President Mitterrand’s monument to the bicentennial of 1789.

"And that put a question in my head . . . which culture could give a better account of its commitments to the rights of men, which was being memorialized here, the culture that produced this rational, striking, but essentially featureless cube, or the more complicated culture that had produced gargoyles and flying buttresses and crosses and the holy unsameness, if you will, of Notre Dame.

It’s a question of what a society loses when it completely and self-consciously cuts itself off from those civilizing and civilizational roots, represented in this case by the cathedral, and attempts something that I think is quite unprecedented in human history; namely, the creation of democratic political community on an essentially religiously featureless social and cultural terrain."

This remark is yet another example of a romantic apology for religion. Certainly, the flying buttresses of Notre Dame (at top), for example, are much more visually interesting than even the most interesting view of the Great Arch (below). However, few rational people would argue that 13th century Paris gave a better "account of its committment to the rights of man" than 21st century Paris, its frustrations with Muslims notwithstanding.

I think that the speaker was ignoring the fact that the cost of stone masons and the time required to construct a cathedral such as Notre Dame, and not secularist politics, preclude the construction of another such cathedral. Construction on the cathedral began in 1163 CE. Does anyone wish to guess when the cathedral was completed? [answer]

All of which brings me to thinking about the so-called New Atheism. Atheism as nonbelief about the existence of deities (or belief of nonexistence if you recognize what disbelief actually means) is scarcely new. The new element lies in the refusal to be polite about the content of religious delusions and emphasis on the dangers posed by religionist elements (not by religious moderates, but by religious fundamentalists).

I don't think that there is any paucity of empirical historical evidence that links religious extremism to harm. Nor do we lack evidence that links dictator-exploited ideological extremisms such as communism or, its mirror, fascism to harm.

I think that the key element of any harmful -ism lies in extremism in its application – perhaps I should say misapplication. Obviously, this is also true of the harmful misapplication of scientific advances, particularly those in military technologies, that have caused damage and distress. Alfred Nobel invented gunpowder in the hope that such a dangerous weapon would prove to be a deterrent from warfare. Clearly he did not succeed, and nor has the 'atomic' bomb succeeded, except insofar as gunpowder conflicts have so far stopped short of nuclear holocaust.

Sam Harris' Islamophobia smacks of paranoiac visions of annihilation such as followed 1945. Ironically, and nontheless tragically, the greatest recent Islam-related deathtoll is of innocent Iraqi civilians brought about as a result of the stupid decisions of a president not-elected largely as a result of the politicking of the Conservative Religious Wrong.

The Middle East has presented a political problem ever since Zionists decided that Jewish problems could be solved by turning Palestine from a Jewish symbol of exile into a homeland. This is not to dismiss the influence of earlier capitalist exploitation of the Middle East nor to ignore the long-standing perceived threats of imposed secularization within Islam. In other words, it is not only religion that causes harm. The problem is that religion perpetuates ancient divisions that exacerbate political schisms.

answer: The towers were completed around 1245 CE, and the cathedral was completed around 1345 CE – a mere 182 years, or about 6 generations.

atheism, religion,

David Wolpe Demonstrating Sam's Point

The Jewish TV network has a video of Sam Harris in debate with Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple. I have streamlined the exchange, at 13+ minutes, somewhat:

Rabbi David Wolpe: "You said explicitly that religion is the only thing that we believe things on insufficient evidence. . . . On what evidence do you believe that life is worth living?"

Sam Harris: "I think that that’s a misconstrual of how we talk about beliefs. . . . People attacked me with the line, “but we need faith to get out of bed in the morning, our lives are built on faith” That’s not the kind of faith I’m attacking."

Rabbi David Wolpe, interrupts: "I’m asking you whether you believe that life is good or worthwhile on the basis of scientific evidence. Because if you don’t then I would amend your statement to, “religion and everything else that is of central value in our lives, we believe on evidence that is not susceptible to scientific proof.”

Sam Harris: "You’re equivocating on the meaning of the word “belief”. I don’t believe that life is worth living – that’s not what gets me through my day. I am operating as though life is worth living because I am seeking various states of happiness, I am avoiding suffering, I’m moved by compassion. I have these states in me that presuppose the reasonableness of not killing myself at the end of the day.

Rabbi David Wolpe, interrupts: "Which is not so different, by the way, from a religious person who would say . . . you know, religion is not belief in a proposition, it’s an orientation towards life."

Wolpe is actually equivocating on more than "belief": he's misapplying the term "evidence"; he's misstating what Sam could otherwise have said; he ought to know better than to think that science ever claims to have proven a theory; and he inadvertently illustrates Sam's point about the equivocated meaning of belief.

Belief simply means to hold something to be true, whether or not it is actually true. This is a mental state, and, as applied to belief that life is worth living, indicates a state of expectation based upon past and current experience. Religious belief, or religious faith, as Sam implied, is the mental state of holding some claim to be true despite the absence of sufficient evidence to rationally support the belief. The scriptures actually have nothing specific to say about the value of life insofar as getting out of bed in the morning. Any such assumptions have been built into interpretations of religion.

The evidence that leads any individual to personally consider life worth living is experiential. There is no need to demonstrate our personal experiences to each of us in order that we believe ourselves. Those whose experiences repeatedly indicate that their life is not worth living are not helped much by religion – improved circumstances would help.

Sam is correct to say that there is no evidence to support religious belief in the proposition that the supernatural exists. Wolpe's fallacious argument in an attempt to counter this fact is an argumentum ad ignorantiam.

Wolpe is incorrect to say that no scientific evidence could be gathered concerning those things that are of value in our lives. However, scientists do not claim that all such things are technically experimentally accessible, nor that they need be investigated scientifically.

Scientists could gather evidence concerning an individual's life situation, and could measure the decreased frontal lobe activity that is correlated with emotional depression. So, scientific evidence could be gathered, though scientists would not bother with such an investigation, and a psychiatrist would administer antidepressants without such a demonstration. Wolpe is not really interested in such data, he merely wishes to make a different point. To imply that life must be explained either by religion or by scientific evidence is to create a false dichotomy.

Finally, Wolpe reduces religion to the level of attitudes, to the level of framing of personal experiential evidence. This is an atheistic view of religion – it has expunged the supernatural from religion, leaving a mere framework for interpretation of experience. Wolpe has tossed out religious propositions, leaving only a sense of the spiritual. This coincides with Sam's view.

I have yet to find a good argument by a deist or theist. Shifting the actual definition of the deity or the definition of religion is a common ploy.

However, I have not yet listened to the entire debate. You never know, Wolpe's arguments could improve.

.........they didn't. I quit in disgust at 33 minutes, after Wolpe had blamed the Holocaust on science.

Tour d'Ivoire

I've been listening to the interesting discussions at the Beyond Belief 1 conferences. Several speakers have, I think correctly, identified current anti-science attitudes as not merely stemming from religion per se, but also from poor education in science and in critical thinking. The recently released PISA test results certainly confirm this for 15 year olds in America.

One speaker seems to believe that people are merely confused about whether or not to believe scientific findings, and consequently that better conveying rational information about science will enable these people to assess scientific claims for themselves.

This led me to wonder what planet this fella lives on. Earth obviously, but that segment of Earth referred to as the ivory tower*:

"a sheltered, overly-academic existence or perspective, implying a disconnection or lack of awareness of reality or practical considerations."

How do otherwise intelligent people come to be so oblivious of the mental machinations of the average person? Academics are protected from the guy in the street, that's how.

I don't recall which scale was used for the report in which I read that the average IQ of university graduates is 110 (Wechsler, 74th percentile; Stanford-Binet, 73rd). Harvard medical students averaged 135 (W, 99th; S-B 98.5th). There's lots of controversy about IQ tests, yet they are good predictors of academic performance. The scales are standardized with a score of 100 for the 50th percentile. Most people clump around the hump at 100.

Extrapolating, I assume that most graduate students average somewhere between 110 and 135. This would mean that most professors probably come into close contact with students who are brighter than at least 70% of the population, and who are motivated to think and to learn. No wonder this professor had an inflated estimation of the level of science-interest of the population-at-large. He certainly must not have taught science to reluctant, hormone-obsessed teenagers.

The members of religious congregations are quite capable of learning "we do not believe in evolution because goddidit." Not a difficult concept to master, particularly since goddidit requires no comprehension of complicated mechanisms – virtually no comprehension of any kind, really.

In most Western countries, the average person may understand little about the mechanisms of evolution, but at least they were officially taught that there is abundant evidence that biological evolution occurred. However, in America, the teaching of creationism in high schools has only been illegal since 1987, so the bulk of the population has been taught only misinformation. No wonder science in America is in some trouble.

*Apparently the term "ivory tower" takes its current meaning from a poem by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve.




biological evolution, critical thinking, education, religion, science, IQ

Conflating Magisteria

Religionists are upset about the upcoming release of The Golden Compass, which should be recommendation enough.

The movie is based on the His Dark Materials trilogy by British author Philip Pullman. The series revolves around preteen orphan, Lyra Belacqua, who’s pursued by a murderous institution known as “the Magisterium.”

The term Magisterium (Latin, teacher) has clearly been borrowed from a technical ecclesiastical term of the Roman Catholic Church that refers to the teaching authority of the church. RC Magisterium is taken to be embodied in the episcopacy (bishops), and is led by the the Pope.

Stephen Jay Gould used the term nonoverlapping magisteria, or NOMA to separate religious 'understanding' from scientific understanding. According to Gould each "magisterium describes a domain of understanding in which only one form of investigation or teaching possesses the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution.

The notion of NOMA protects religion from scientific scrutiny even though 'scientific' claims including genesis, floods, and miracles are described in the Bible. Gould's suggestion has been criticized by evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, and by philosopher of science as applied to evolutionary biology, Michael Ruse."

In The Golden Compass, "Magisterium" refers to “the Holy Church.”

"In its quest to eradicate sin, the Church sanctions experiments involving the kidnap and torture of hundreds of children—experiments that separate body from soul and leave the children to stumble around zombie-like, and then die." from Atlantic.com

Christians are whining about the pro-atheist aspects of books and movie, though some Christians have managed to mine the works for "inspiring Christian theology".

Sites Elsewhere : De-atheification . THE GOLDEN COMPASS more exclusive screenshots . Does Defending Pullman Make Me an Extremist? .

NOMA : NOMA, A Separate Peace, Gould on God, The religious views of Stephen Gould and Charles Darwin, The Holes in Gould's Semipermeable Membrane Between Science and Religion, Gould's Separate "Magisteria", Inventing allies in the sky, Dictating the Terms of the Peace .

How Wide a Brush?

Hell hath no fury like a theist scorned. Or so it seems nowadays.

I, and I suspect most atheists, differentiate between the narrow, intolerant, and too often dangerous attitudes of bigoted religious fundamentalists compared to the more liberal, enlightened, and tolerant attitudes of moderate believers.

It is understandable that the moderate believer is uncomfortable with the negativity that immoderates attract, though histrionics is weakening their case.

The following was news to me, though it happened in England in January:

"I'm glad that religious hardliners have failed in their attempt to secure special leave to discriminate against lesbians and gays. Had peers handed them victory last night in the House of Lords, a new law - Sexual Orientation Regulations - making it illegal for businesses to refuse to provide services to people because they disapprove of their sexuality would have been effectively annulled, given legal licence to the fearful and bigoted to act upon a prejudice that disfigures society and ruins lives. The campaign, led by a small group of Christian evangelicals, was ignorant, alarmist and wrong. Sadly, so was some of the critical comment it inspired. . . But when liberal-left resistance to religious conservatives becomes a generalized expression of contempt for all religious sentiment, it sounds as blinkered as the bigots it berates. This is a phenomenon I've long failed to understand. What is about "the religious" that reduces Polly's quality of argument to a level lower that of a sixth-form debate? What sort of advert is it for secular rationalism when the eminent philosopher A.C. Grayling comes to the podium as he did yesterday spitting bile like a man possessed by demons? " ¬ Dave Hill, Hate the sin, not the sinner, guardian.co.uk/commentisfree, Jan 10, 2007

I dislike that phrase 'hate the sin' because, even though I might consider some homosexual acts unhygienic and unappetizing, I consider it unjustified to speak of hatred and sin in connection with what others choose to do without harming others.

"Spitting bile like a man possessed by demons?" That sure sounded interesting, so I checked it out:

"There is only one printable phrase apt enough for religious groups seeking exemption from the requirement not to discriminate against gay people, and that is that their actions constitute an obscenity against human rights."

Grayling went on to draw parallels between discrimination against gays, which the religious groups in question continue to regard as a prejudice that ought to be protected behind their guise of sanctity, and no longer permissible Christian discrimination against black [sic] people, women, or Jews.

He concluded:

"I write the above in anger. This effort to halt the fight against the evil of discrimination is a step too far by the religious, so ready to squeal like pigs when it is they who feel they are being discriminated against. They are trying to roll back the gains in civil liberties and the creation of an open society, which it has taken us centuries to achieve, from the time that Torquemada was burning people at the stake for incorrect versions of Christianity." ¬ AC Grayling, Halting progress, guardian.co.uk/commentisfree, Jan 9, 2007.

Grayling did make it quite clear at the outset about which specific religious group his remarks were made. He did not tar all religious individuals with the same brush. However, in claiming that Grayling was "spitting bile" over an issue that Hill agreed displayed attitudes that were "ignorant, alarmist and wrong" merely provided another example of "the religious, [who are] so ready to squeal like pigs when it is they who feel they are being discriminated against."

Admittedly, in Homophobia, not injustice, is what really fires the faiths, Polly Toynbee does direct her remarks more generally at the fact that "Christians, Muslims and Jews are all fighting against the sexual orientation regulations with a wrecking clause that would render them meaningless."

If religious moderates were less insistent on labeling comments with which they agree in principal as being examples of "spitting bile", it would appear less that they are tossing their lot in with the bigotry that they claim also to despise. If religious moderates consistently distanced themselves from "religious hardliners", rather than huffily complaining that they too have been insulted by critiques of religious bigotries, then they might make a better case for themselves. As it is, they are lining up alongside the very individuals who are earning a bad name for religious mythologies by virtue of their fundamentalist prejudices.

I think that it is because of this alignment of the religious with any-old-fellow-believer that the so-called New Atheists are broadening their scope to include religion in general. Atheistic complaints target religiously-motivated protection of the unfounded, illogical, anti-education, and anti-science misinformation explosion that seeks to protect politicized prejudices and to promote violence. As long as the religious defend any and all religious activity from justified criticism, then that criticism will continue to be levelled at religion in general. The complaints against blind religious faith are justified by abundant and undeniable examples of the damage caused by religious excesses. The complaints dismiss the insistence upon belief in ancient mythologies that run counter to all the evidence, and that lies beneath and drives the excesses. To protect the beliefs is to be complicit in the dangerous illogic.

Sites Elsewhere: By their fruits ye shall (indeed) know them. .

Guardian Halting progress . Homophobia, not injustice, is what really fires the faiths . Hate the sin, not the sinner .

atheism, bigotry, discrimination, fundamentalism, gay rights, religion

Accounting for Accountability Accounts

I lost count of the number of times that Jeffrey Dahmer and his father Lionel say 'accountable' during the MSNBC interview below (top video).

Unemotional Jeffrey Dahmer and his repressed father are interviewed by Stone Phillips. Dahmer says of his murdering young men, "My relatives had no knowledge of what I was doing."
Dahmer avoids explaining his killing young men and boys (during blackouts) by answering a question concerning any abuse (violent arguments in the home) that Dahmer might have suffered by stating, "I wonder about those things, but as far as I'm concerned they are all excuses. . . they didn't know I was doing it, so they are not accountable for what I did." (Not knowing about someone's actions does not equate to total lack of responsibility.)

Jeffrey describes becoming accountable for his behaviors after his father sent him creation "science" material that convinced Jeffrey that he was accountable to God. "Evolution cheapens "life" because we die."

Lies in Genesis can usually be relied upon for more stupidity than the juxtaposition of dinosaurs and hominids. Here's their contribution to 'discussion', a quotation that they probably fondly imagine says it all:

‘If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…’ Jeffrey Dahmer, in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994.

What rot! Death makes life all the more precious because death is permanent. Jeffrey's parents 'disciplined him' and he felt accountable to them, but sought control of his own life once he had left home. Once free of observation, he set about his cannibalistic spree. Father, Lionel, whom Jeffrey has verbally exhonerated of accountability, says that he "feels guilty".



How very moving (to nausea) when Jeffrey and his father say that they came back to God after the events and Jeffrey's imprisonment.

The religionist fundamentalists will no doubt interpret this interview as a sign that only religious belief can confer a sense of moral . . . accountability.

Let's take a look at the likeliest mechanisms at play when Jeffrey repeatedly "woke up" beside the dead bodies of boys and young men he had killed. When Jeffrey says that he woke up to events for which he was amnesic, he was describing dissociation. Most serial killers come from severely abusive childhoods, typically suffering physical/sexual/emotional abuse in the home or extended family. This man was not merely a conscience-deficient sociopath, Dahmer admits to losing time during which he was dissociated and not in executive control of his actions.

Why? Young children cope with repeated traumas by repressing conscious memory of the events, but the experiences dramatically affect their psychological development. Ultimately, traumatized elements of the dissociative personality system emerge to reenact the sexual/physical activities that generated those aspects of the personality. The chief personality may not be consciously aware of the activities that culminate the sequence initiated under the influence of uncontrollable urges.



Considering the fact that Jeffrey Dahmer's pattern fits the typical profile, it struck me that he was evasively providing a well rehearsed account of his supposedly God-found accountability. What a fecolith that is! It's was so convenient to claim to obey God once he'd been imprisoned.



Contrary to what creationists on Creation 'Science' Evangelism may want to believe, the fact is that a boy from a family in which his "disciplinary" parents 'lost religion' around Dahmer's crimes, suggests that they were religious while Dahmer was growing up. And look at the result!

"Here's what makes that really funny: Dahmer's father is a creationist who has lectured widely on creationism and raised him as a creationist. Oops." Ed Brayton

Exposure to religion during his childhood (whether or not Jeffrey ever accepted the fact of biological evolution or was merely lying about this too) did not leave Jeffrey acting accountably. Religion failed. Creationism after the fact is merely pandering to the interviewer, and probably to prison authorities, and probably to God so that he can avoid Eternal Damnation. Dahmer was beaten to death in prison on November 28, 1994.

"The FBI gave the standard profile of a serial killer, He is a person with few friends. He became much more religious just before he started murdering people. After reading all the available studies I could find and studying all the articles in the newspapers for over 30 years, I find what is most outstanding is Serial killers were sexually inhibited by their strong religious upbringing. Nearly all serial killers are very devout men who were raised by members of Pentecostal sects, fundamentalist Catholics or were 'hard-shell' Baptists and Methodists." Studies after study show serial killers are a product of this environment, not genetics. You can find much information on serial killers being sexually inhibited and there views on sex and religion at http://www.crimelibrary.com/serials/what/whatlust.htm." P.O. Brian, Serial Killers

Elsewhere Jeffrey Dahmer: "Darwin made me do it." : Dumbest Anti-Evolution Screed Ever? : Jeffrey Dahmer and Answers [Lies] in Genesis . 'Creation Science' Makes a Difference (indeed it does, Dahmer was raised by a creationist).

Theidiotic comments: That Darwin made serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer do it : Can America Survive Evolutionary Humanism? :

On Conversions : Captive Conversions :

Google videos on Dahmer : YouTube videos on Dahmer :

* From the Lies in Genesis website, in a typical fallacious argumentum ad verecundiam: "Some modern scientists who have accepted the biblical account of creation: Dr. Lionel Dahmer, Analytical Chemist




audiovisual, biological evolution, creationism, darwinism, DID, religion, videos, Jeffrey Dahmer,

A Fundy is a Fundy is a Fundy

"What's in a name? That which is fundamentalist
By any other name would stink as badly."

¬ with apologies to William Shakespeare*

Following the ignomy that was the 'Scopes Monkey Trial', American Fundamentalists took to calling themselves 'Evangelical Christians', as though this ameliorated their regressive, literalist, politically conservative, dogmatism.

I refer to these creationist bigots as fundamentalists and I think that others should act likewise. In dropping the term Fundamentalist Christian, these literalists hoped that people would forget their ignominious history of prejudice. Fundamentalism, whether applied to Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, shares regressive, power-mongering elements of bigotry and dogmatism.

* "What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
--From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

bigotryChristianitycreationismevangelicalsfundamentalismIslamJudaismreligion

Fecolithology

A fecolith is an ossified 'dropping', so fecolithology is the study of such offerings.


I found this first offering of histrionic boocr*p by Lee Siegel in the LA Times online. It is over-imaginatively titled Militant atheists are wrong: A flurry of literary attacks on God may also be closing the book on imagination.

Nor would anyone know from reading the latest rash of anti-God books that promiscuous sex and polymorphous sexuality are taken for granted in modern-day America (let's see a conservative Supreme Court try to roll that back);

Judging by Siegel's remarks, I'd have to assume that the New Atheists are promoting rampant sexual expression. This implication might boost book sales. I am currently reading The God Delusion by Dawkins and I have yet to come across Dawkins' exciting comments on promiscuous sex and polymorphous sexuality. I can hardly wait! If Richard disappoints on this score, I shall have to trust to Hitchens for titillation.

After all, in a nation where over 90% of the population claims to be religious, the scurrilous antics of "Paris Hilton, HBO, Internet porn and flip-flops" must, judging by Siegel's innuendo, be solely the result of atheistic influences from that so-influential less than 10%. If this were not the case, then why would Siegel be concerned about arguments for rationality and scientific understanding?

But they make me concerned nevertheless, because I think they strike a blow against something more important (at least to me) than belief in God. In their contempt for any belief that cannot be scientifically or empirically proved, the anti-God books are attacking our inborn capacity to create value and meaning for ourselves.

What utter boocr*p! Siegel, probably for the sake of getting his name in print, is jousting with an invisible straw man. This is not mere distortion of an argument made by the 'militant atheists', but it is something that they are not saying at all*. In fact, Dawkins quite clearly says the opposite of this in TV interviews and in the sections that I have already read of The God Delusion. Siegel is either deficient in understanding or has read theistic reviews rather than the books he is thus libeling. Judging by comments around the blogosphere that Siegel denigrated, the explanation lies largely in the former interpretation.

But that campaign against religious faith and superstition triumphed long ago in the West, where we now live in a technological, irreligious age beyond the wildest Enlightenment hopes.

Technology has definitely advanced in those 200 years, but the Founding Fathers, never mind Voltaire, would probably be horrified at the rampant fundamentalist religiosity that, amongst its other dubious manifestations, put Dubaya into power.

Even Siegel appears not to be impressed by Dubaya's administration when he complains, "For instance, Bush and his gang preach Christian values while lying us into a slaughterhouse overseas, ransacking our public coffers and ignoring social inequities and iniquities at home -- and so our heroic anti-religionists attack . . . Christian values."

Look again, Siegel, many religionists continue to approve of Dubaya, while liberals and atheists were among the first to declare horror at the damage to . . . human values. It strikes me as odd that a Jewish writer should be worring about 'Christian' values.

When our anti-religionists attack the mechanism of religious faith by demanding that our beliefs be underpinned by science, statistics and cold logic, they are, in effect, attacking our right to believe in unseen, unprovable things at all. Their assault on religious faith amounts to an attack on the human imagination.

Oh, go read The Sorrows of Young Werther if you want Romantic fantasy, Siegel! You are clearly unaware that science opens up the wonders of the universe to the imagination, whereas the God of the Gaps explains absolutely nothing and religious zealotry kills. Siegel is obviously unaware, or uncaring, that scientific investigation requires creative thinking on the part of hypothesizers and designers of experiments.

Because the existence of God is undemonstrable, unverifiable and the object of an impractical leap of faith, religion, it seems to me, is one of imagination's last strongholds.

Religion is indeed a product of fervent imaginations, but this comment is otherwise utterly and completely unjustified because, as exemplified by the wonders revealed by science and by the creative outpourings of atheists, imagination is not the sole property of religion. Boocr*p yes, creativity and wonder no. Siegel is probably incapable of discerning the difference.

*Mark Hoofnagle sums up the 'militant atheist' position admirably:

Dawkins et al., are not making the argument that we should become robots, tied to cold logic and unable to do anything new because rationality isn't prepared for the unknown. They are making the argument that we should free our minds from dogmatism and illogic which hampers our creativity, our compassion for our fellow men and women, and locks us into patterns of behavior prescribed by ancient texts that are contradictory, bigoted, and irrelevant in our modern age.

Siegel's arguments are absurd, and irrelevant. But then, so is Siegel.

PZ Myers never disappoints:

I love that admission. I wish more theists would make it. It's saying that the value of religion lies in its awesome idiocy — that no rational, reasonable person could possibly believe in that load of tripe, therefore, because so many people do believe in it, it must be valuable (and they so blithely overlook the possibility that the reason so many accept it is that they are irrational and unreasonable). A willingness to believe does not make a fact out of fantasy — it makes you a believer in nonsense, nothing more.

Pharyngulist comments are often worth repeating:

I am amazed that Siegel has never heard of George Carlin, Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Terry Pratchett, Salman Rushdie, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe Shelly, Woody Allen, David Cross, David Gilmour, Billy Joel, and, one of my personal favorites, H.P. Lovecraft. That list does not [even] include agnostics. So either Siegel is staggeringly ignorant of the contributions of non-theists to the arts or he does not consider the works of these people significant or he is aware and considers them important, but is being completely dishonest. Considering his past episode of sock-puppetry, I'm going with the last one. _ Atheotatous_

Websites: Washington Monthly :
Blogosphere: Play whack-a-mole with Lee Siegel : No Imagination Without Religion? Lee Seigel is an idiot. : Militant atheists are wrong - Los Angeles Times : Lee Siegel could try to be open-minded about reading secularist tomes, & : I Can Has The God? : T Bogg

Hardly surprising that rather than criticizing the rampant illogic of Siegel's piece (aside from the acknowledgement that religion requires 'an impractical leap of faith') religionist sites are merely providing links to the rubbish.




atheismmoralityreligionscienceGeorge W BushRichard DawkinsChristopher HitchensLee Siegel