When I dismiss the Bible as “the writings of superstitious Bronze Age mystics” I am not trying to be disrespectful, I’m trying to be accurate. A depiction of the authors of the Bible as holy men in direct contact with god is fanciful in any rational sense. The same is true with the notions of heaven, hell, original sin, divine conception, resurrection, Doom’s Day, and so on. They are indistinguishable from fiction. None of it meets any of the standards that we have for considering something “believable”. Every religion has as much direct evidence as the ancient Greeks and Romans had for Zeus and Venus. I’m not trying to be unkind, I’m stating an obvious fact.

But I recognize that this fact still befuddles many people. They believe in god and they believe in an afterlife and they are not at all ready to listen to what I’m saying. That’s fine. I’m not on a mission of conversion. I think it is important that people think rationally — religion is a corruption of the mind in this sense. It helps keep the door open to dogmatic, arbitrary and wholly unsupported thinking. Furthermore, such beliefs are considered to be “off the table”. Under the guise of respect we treat fanciful mythology as perfectly acceptable.

Why? The more you think about it the more it boggles the mind.

I must add my standard atheist disclaimer: I don’t know if there is a god or not and I don’t know what happens when you die. I’ve calculated the odds of each and found the likelihood vanishingly small. My calculation is subject to change. There is no faith in my position.

(This started as a comment.)

Ball is arguing that it is folly to outright dismiss religious thinking as incompatible with science. He thinks that religion is here to stay and deeply ingrained and that we have to strive for peaceful coexistence. Harris on the other hand, similar to my last few blog posts, thinks that religion is a dangerous mindset that should be taken head-on.

I agree with them both. I agree more with Sam Harris but I am keenly aware of the difficulties surrounding (what appears to be) attacks on people’s sacred beliefs. Even though I think all of our beliefs are fair game, in a sense, many people feel they never have to defend their religious beliefs. So any “attack” (and by that I mean a debate of ideas) is seen as hostile. That undermines our argument if our goal is to convince people to open their minds to our ideas.

Each of these guys had a great quote (among others) that I thought was worth sharing. Sam Harris describes Christianity accurately but severely:

Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven”—where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and sceptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on Mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truth-claims ever revealed about the cosmos. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will (probably) be consigned to a fiery hell for all eternity.

On Mr. Ball’s account, there is nothing in the scientific worldview, or in the intellectual rigor and self-criticism that gave rise to it, that casts such convictions in an unfavorable light.

Ball, who I agree with in the sense I described above, is a bit desperate and outmatched, I think, but he does sum up a view of agnostics that is well said:

I share your view that many of the alleged ‘facts’ that comprise most religious belief – the existence of a deity (or deities), that deity’s capacity to intervene in the world in supernatural ways, the whole paraphernalia of miracles, afterlife, saints, sin, absolution, virgin births, resurrections – are not just outside of science but fundamentally incompatible with a scientific view of the world. And while some agnostics might insist that we cannot ‘know’ that a god does not exist, this does not compel us to give the ‘for’ and ‘against’ possibilities equal weight. We shouldn’t imagine things into being without good reason to do so.

The problem is — they are no different from any other religious sect. ALL OF THEM make assumptions about what God wants and what God likes and doesn’t like. I don’t believe that any of you know what God wants. I don’t believe that any of you have some direct line of communication to God and I don’t believe that an ancient, tortured text like the Bible includes the true word of God in any way, shape or form.

So religion is arbitrary. It’s made up.

Now if you take as your initial premise that there is a God and that he did create and does interact with us pitiful humans, things get complicated. If you pull this initial premise out of your ass, it changes how you think about this stuff. You are assuming there is truth and you need to find those things which support it. You pick and choose from the Bible and make your own cafeteria-style faith based on your intuitions. It’s still just as arbitrary as the Westboro Baptist Church.

People accuse atheists of being moral relativists, but really it is religious people who invent a confused and contradictory morality out of thin air. This is why we have extremist Islam, fag-hating Christians and cults like the Mormons who have sex with minors and systematically abuse women.

Yes, many religious people are good people and many religious organization do good things in the world. But it’s all based on a house of cards and a fictional God and we are right to reject it.

It is not rational to expect people to hold sacred what you hold sacred. As PZ said in a recent post on the controversy: “Your personal sense of the sacred in a piece of bread dough is absurd to me and imposes on me no sense of obligation.”

Most of the criticism towards PZ is that he was disrespectful and rude. I think these people forget that he was reacting to a story where Catholics were threatening bodily harm to a person over a cracker. Being rude is a petty and completely forgivable crime in light of the vast hypocrisy and irrationality of threatening to kill someone over your religious beliefs.

Said Myers in his original post: “That’s right. Crazy Christian fanatics right here in our own country have been threatening to kill a young man over a cracker. This is insane. These people are demented fuckwits.”

Myers was not saying that all Catholics are demented fuckwits he was saying Catholics who send death threats to someone over this are demented fuckwits and he is obviously right. I don’t think he would have gone out of his way to talk of desecrating the sacred items of Catholics if he wasn’t reacting to the completely wacko nutjobs who don’t see the sad irony in threatening to kill someone over Jesus.

So Catholics, relax. Your crazy superstitions are safe. Keep on keeping on. Let Jesus handle this one rather than complete dipshits like Bill Donohue.

I found this quote interesting from Is Evolution Atheistic? by Dr Denis Alexander:

Evolution itself is not atheistic. A robust Christian theism readily encompasses evolution as an expression of God’s creative actions. But, sadly, there are prominent scientists, like the Harvard sociobiologist E.O.Wilson, who left their earlier Christian experience to become atheists because they faced hostility to evolution. Arguably, attacks by well-meaning Christians on evolution promote rather than counteract atheism.

It makes two great points: 1) Evolution does not at all deny the existence of God; and 2) Ignorant attacks on evolution by well-meaning Christians actually undermines their aims.

Using this definition its literally self-evident that if you want to convince people of something that you should approach your argument in a manner most likely to do so! That’s just obvious.

It’s a separate question whether you should have that goal or not. I.E. it would be a tedious world if everyone always spoke with utter care for maximum convincing power. I’m going to talk about religion differently if I’m with a bunch of atheists than I do if I’m at a funeral. Sometimes we preach to the choir and enjoy reveling in our superior views.

But, yes, if your goal is to convince, framing is a no-brainer.

Generally the framing debate at scienceblogs relates to the “new atheists” and the “battle of science and religion”. Dawkins and Myers alienate the people they are trying to convince, says one side. Dawkins and Myers respond: fuck you, we have every right to speak our opinions when and how we feel.

They are both right.

Dawkins and Myers do alienate the people they are trying to convince by focusing on the most radical and ridiculous examples of religion. That’s not all they do, by a long shot and I agree with them on literally almost everything. But they do alienate people. That’s a fact whether you like it or not. Religious moderates, who are an important political ally of secularists, are painted with the same broad brush as loonies like young earth creationists.

But on the other hand, and really more importantly, what Dawkins and Myers have done is say what they think. They used their best judgment. They have no responsibility to religious moderates, secularists or anyone else. Their words have been a very important part of the debate and we would be much poorer without them. We’re all grown ups and we should be able to handle it if it gets a little rough sometimes.

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1. 13.73 billion years ago, the universe was created.
2. Somewhere around 4 billion years ago the Earth was created.
3. Around 3 billion years ago, life formed.
4. Life evolved and grew more and more complex and diverse.
5. Today there are millions of species.

The Intelligent Design (ID) movement, exemplified by the movie Expelled, has a problem with #4. They think God mucked around in #4. Science doesn’t have a theory (yet) for how the universe was created (#1). We know exactly what happened milliseconds after the Big Bang, but we don’t know how the Big Bang banged. We don’t have much of a theory about how life was created (although we are making significant progress) (#3). We have really, really good theories of #2 and #4. They are based on hardcore science and have been argued about and tested very thoroughly.

So if you are fervently religious and want to believe that God did #1 and #3, fine, great, have at it. We’ll probably prove you wrong on #3 someday but for #1, God snapping his fingers is as good of theory as any.

But why would you argue with #4? Evolution is obvious. Natural selection is obvious and if you think God is smart then he might think of a way to do things that was clever! He didn’t zap fully formed humans into existence He created a beautiful machine that opened up like a flower over billions of years from which stepped a mind capable of wondering and worshipping. Evolution is a testament to the patience and the brilliance of God. Science is never and could never be at odds with the will of the Creator.

So ID isn’t just bad science, it’s bad theology, it’s bad philosophy, it’s bad everything. It’s especially destructive because it falsely presents itself as being on the side of believers. That is nonsense. True believers are in awe of God’s creation, including the Big Bang, the old earth and natural selection. Science studies God’s creation, it doesn’t oppose it.

Mike,
I just wanted to drop you a note letting you know how much I enjoy your lolife blog. I’ve been a silent reader over the years and appreciate the efforts you put into it. I have paid extra attention to your religion posts as I have taken the final step and now call myself an atheist. I have done a fair amount of reading and couldn’t deny it any longer…your rants have been helpful! I do miss your podcasts, but hope you continue to post…Thanks!

I welcome the positive feedback. <cry>I get surprisingly little!</cry>

But besides enjoying a compliment I was proud of my friend — I do respect people who make “the final step”. It takes a lot of courage to reject the mysticism of your family. It takes courage to look the universe in the eye and demand the separation of fact from fantasy. It takes courage until you realize — it doesn’t! It’s the most natural thing in the world.

We reject claims without evidence. We know that Reason is, like Carl Sagan said, a candle in the dark. It’s why medicine works, why technology works, why people are less likely to die from disease and why standards of living around the world are going up. Reason is the single faculty that separates humans from animals. God is a myth. Reason rules.

So, yes, the more atheists the better. We reject claims without evidence. We separate what is tested, proven and tested again from the wild speculation of people who are afraid to die. We are appalled at the wars of the Christians, the Muslims and the Jews and, no, we don’t think you do know what God wants and we’re sick of you guessing wrong.

Stop the madness. Recruit an atheist.

Welcome aboard, Randy!

Lots of people like to portray secularists as angry atheists. Listen to Ms. Jacoby and you’ll hear the true message that the “new atheists” are trying to propagate — reason!

Sweet random quote:

But you can’t believe that the Bible is literally true and still believe in evolution. There’s a wonderful book on religious literacy by Stephen Prothero … which cites a poll that half of Americans can’t name Genesis as the first book of the Bible. …[T]his is part of the total dumbing down of our culture. …One of those books apparently that … 50 percent of Americans aren’t reading is also the Bible or they would know that Genesis was the first book of the Bible. It’s sort of like, you know, “I don’t know what Genesis is, but I believe it.”

The podcast I linked above starts with a fascinating segment about the national debt, especially in light of the recent Attack of the Righties here at lolife.com. Moyers interviews Jean Johnson and Scott Biddle who wrote Where Does The Money Go? Your guided tour to the federal budget crisis. These guys do not strike me as liberals but I agree with them. In fact, it inspired my previous post about balancing the budget. I balance my budget at home and at work. I have no choice, really, in the long term. Why can’t we expect our government to balance the budget?

Sweet quote:

BILL MOYERS: You dedicate your book to Lawford W. Bittle, Jr. and John Jay Johnson. Who are they?

SCOTT BITTLE: Our fathers.

JEAN JOHNSON: Our dads, yeah.

BILL MOYERS: And why did you dedicate this to them?

SCOTT BITTLE: Because neither of them would have left debts for us to pay.

They call it the “Highway of Holiness.” Others call it Interstate 35.
Evangelicals throughout the Midwest, from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minn., have been praying at 24-hour prayer rooms for a month for Interstate 35 in order to “light the highway.”

…The scriptural basis for the new movement comes from Isaiah 35:8, which reads, “And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it.” Because of chapter 35, believers say the highway mentioned must be Interstate 35. In addition, a number of people in the “Highway of Holiness” movement claim to have had prophetic experiences that involve Interstate 35.

Now there is a phrase for this: COMPLETELY FUCKING CRAZY. I was appalled at how “respectful” everyone was being about this. This is insane. You are insane if you believe that Interstate 35 is written about in the Bible. This sort of quackery should be ridiculed and these people evaluated for possible institutionalization. They should be arrested for abusing their children with this insanity. The last thing we should treat this tripe with is respect.

Curious then, would you be more likely to vote for an apparent true believer like Obama or an obvious panderer like Hillary? I ask this seriously as I do think that Hillary appears somewhat insincere and phony in religious settings. Or do you just have to throw religion out the window totally as you realize that every candidate has to at least appear to be a bible thumper to get elected.

My tolerance for wacky religious views in political candidates is proportional to how much they let it directly influence their politics. There are lots of religious people on the left who support a secular government. Lots of ‘em. So Obama being a J-freak is less scary, of course, than Huckabee being a J-freak because Huckabee is proud to let it influence his politics and Obama won’t let it influence his at all.

I still find it mind boggling that socially conservative Republicans don’t take their party back. Or become Democrats. Democrats are not nearly left enough for me. They are light-weight Republicans in many respects. If we end up with Huckabee, I’d like to see a lot of socially conservative Repulicans vote for Obama.

If a Christian man is kissing his date and it gives him an erection (often just the possibility of a kiss can do this), is God or his date being honored?

Yeah, I’m sure God is disgusted by the reproductive processes he invented.

Remember folks: God made sex fun! He invented the clitoris, for example. He invented erections. In fact, He made us the sexual beings that we are. You have a duty to repress it.