Nick Spencer of the Telegraph says Americans don’t do atheism. It’s a weird piece that frets over the religiosity of American politicians, but somehow seems to find it reassuring that there are different ways to be religious, and that maybe the US is moving away from dominionist wackaloonery towards religously-motivated social activism — doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, in other words. There’s a germ of hope there, that the country might get somewhat less insane — but at the same time it represents an opportunity to entrench superstition deeper into the republic. I really don’t consider a liberal theocracy any better than a conservative theocracy: both are built on ignorance and dogma.
Worse, Spencer thinks Rick Warren, glib cult-leader and bubble-gum philosopher, is a good thing for the country. Blah. He seems to be a nice fellow on some subjects, but ultimately he’s a patriarchal loon who thinks gays and atheists will burn in hell. Maybe he is representative of the country, though…superficially earnest and well meaning, with a seething core of stupid that means we’ll do horrible things in spite of good intentions.
That isn’t anything to inspire optimism.
Well, Nick; FYI I don’t do Theists.. I have a literal sexual aversion to them.. in general!
“It is my firm belief that there should be separation of church and state as we understand it in the United States — that is, that both church and state should be free to operate, without interference from each other in their respective areas of jurisdiction. We live in a liberal, democratic society which embraces wide varieties of belief and disbelief. There is no doubt in my mind that the pluralism which has developed under our Constitution, providing as it does a framework within which diverse opinions can exist side by side and by their interaction enrich the whole, is the most ideal system yet devised by man. I cannot conceive of a set of circumstances which would lead me to a different conclusion.”
John F Kennedy
Rick Warren?! There needs to be a mass protest of this event:
The Rev. Rick Warren has persuaded the candidates to attend a forum at his Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 16. In an interview, Mr. Warren said over the weekend that the presidential candidates would appear together for a moment but that he would interview them in succession at his megachurch.
How much longer are we going to tolerate this religious pandering, this religious test for office? This has to be publicly opposed and changes have to be made so that in upcoming years we don’t go through the nonsense that we’ve suffered in recent years, especially this Presidential campaign so far.
PhillyChief
Another Goddamned Podcast
PZ said:
“superficially earnest and well meaning, with a seething core of stupid that means we’ll do horrible things in spite of good intentions”
I think that’s a good description of humanity in general.
There’s a germ of hope there, that the country might get somewhat less insane — but at the same time it represents an opportunity to entrench superstition deeper into the republic. I really don’t consider a liberal theocracy any better than a conservative theocracy: both are built on ignorance and dogma.
You’re always going to have a degree of superstition. That said, if you can get people to do the right things for the wrong reasons, you can at least get the right things done.
I think people keep coming back to religion as a “last resort” when life gets rough. If you can move towards a more progressive society – one that doesn’t treat stem cells with more “respect” than brown people – through religious means, you can eventually get to the point where people can free themselves of religion without freeing themselves of morality.
The Soviets and the Chinese tried to expunge religion from the culture decades ago. All they managed to do was create a big sucking void that foreign missionary charlatans were able to sweep in and fill. Christianity is a rapidly growing faith in China because they tried to get rid of religion before they improved the standard of living.
If you can raise the standard of living, people won’t feel so obligated to go hunting after ephemeral salvation. If you can get religious institutions to back education and health initiatives, you won’t have ignorant cancer-ridden blue-collar folks clinging to the every snake oil salesmen who rolls through town.
:-p You’ve got to build a system that can support society without feeling it needs a religion to fall back on. It’s evolution. :-p
Ugh, he mentioned that Gallop poll that haunts me so. Wether it’s science literacy, religous beliefs or political opinions, those polls are the only things that I refuse to consider that they are could be correct, assume the methodology is flawed without any evidence showing it and go about my business. It helps me sleep at night.
Hey, this must be how a theist thinks.
[blockquote]Appearing before a small group of journalists at a Pew Forum conference in May, bestselling preacher Rick Warren (The Purpose-Driven Life) presents himself as a working pastor with no aspirations to be a celebrity, who just happened to write a historic book: “When you write the best-selling book in the world for the last three years, that changes your life,” he confides in passing. He gets “a lot of invitations to speak” and turns down many. He has chosen to address our small group “because I only speak to influencers…. I read all of your stuff all the time,” he says in a hyperbolic appeal to our vanity. “Thank you for helping me grow.”[/blockquote]
I read parts of his particularly famous rag and found it inane. My wife thought it would be a good idea since everyone told her so. I wanted to vomit but had to restrain myself to avoid what would have been a very big fight. She can get really mean when defending Jesus. Yeah, thank you for helping me grow. Right. Thank you for showing me that what they consider their best is really really bad. Life changing. I guess maybe for those who never have looked within themselves. I find most religious people never introspect much unless they face a crisis.
Great post, and I love this blog, but I wanted to comment on a couple of comments:
First, we are basically drowning the world in our own poisons. How are we going to “raise the standard of living” that dramatically? There is an assumption that the current level of comfort experience by (decreasing numbers) of middle class people in the USA and Europe can be sustained, so religion will just fade away. That ignores the reality of upcoming resource wars and depletion.
I do like this, though: “with a seething core of stupid” but might replace “Stupid” with “Hatred” ’cause that’s what I really see it as.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2008/07/atheists-in-denial.html
There are no atheists in bedrooms. Why else would people shout “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” in bed so much?
Give me a liberal theocracy over a conservative one any day of the week. Except Sunday. On Sunday I’d like to rest.
Dude, it’s the Torygraph. It’s owned by Bond villains and read by characters from Wodehouse. You aren’t meant to take it seriously.
Anybody read the Newsweek debate between Rick Warren and Sam Harris? If that were a boxing match, the ringside doctor would have had to have called off the fight…needless to say, Warren demonstrated neither the existence of the Christian God to any persuasive degree or the moral necessity of Christianity.
One way to look at it is that religion is not really a reason at all, that one might be doing the right things for the right reasons, but sanctifying it with religion. Not what I’d prefer, yet what has been done for millenia.
That’s the real problem. If you don’t make people credit humanity and thought for a humane and thoughtful policy, why shouldn’t they then install Haggard’s policies if he persuades them that he speaks for God?
A bit of genuflecting isn’t so terrible. Crediting god for what humanity and intelligence do is terrible.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I guess I’ve forgotten how to blockquote. This last 6 weeks have been hard on my brain.
This battle between reason and religion will persist for many years to come and I predict will endure long after the last atheist is dead, either through natural means or hounded out of the community by the onslaught of the demented hordes. Is “community” the selective answer, as in a gated community for atheists only? Will we be content and happy among others of like intellect and ideas? I am inclined to think and say we would, even considering many qualifiers such as abortion, death penalty, and other touchy subjects. Let’s get in there first and then hash them out in a manner that emphasizes our rational minds.
Andrew Sullivan, pointed to this article to note that Warren has already had an impact on Obama’s political career.
Marc Ambinder, December 2007 Atlantic Monthly:
“Many Obama friends and advisers believe that the realization he actually could be president first hit Obama on December 1, 2006, which happened to be World AIDS Day. Obama appeared at the megachurch in Orange County, California, run by Rick Warren, the best-selling author of The Purpose Driven Life and an emerging force in national politics. Sam Brownback, the Republican senator from Kansas, spoke first. “Welcome to my house,” he said to Obama, as the crowd laughed. When Obama rose to speak, he replied, “There is one thing I’ve got to say, Sam: This is my house, too. This is God’s house.” Before an audience of socially conservative evangelical Christians, Obama then called for “realism” and advocated the use of condoms to control the spread of AIDS. As the next day’s Orange County Register described it, Obama received a “hearty standing ovation.” Could any other Democrat, Obama wondered, talk to evangelicals about condoms in Africa?”
Oh no Rick Warren… He’s the Pastor of Saddelback cult (oops I mean church), in Orange County. That place is EVIL, I grew up in that area, and had many friends who at some point joined that church (all left after a year or so). That place is so big, and has so much money, it’s scary…
According to http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/steckel.standard.living.us, US GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, has increased over 20 times since 1820. Does that count as a dramatic raise in the standard of living? We now live longer, rarely starve, and have air conditioning. Little changes over time can add up. If we know in what direction we want that change to happen, all we need is more pressure than the other side can provide and a lot of patience.
Good vector calculations probably wouldn’t hurt.
If everyone in China had at least the standard of living of the average person posting on this blog, the hypothesis seems to be that they would be less open to Christian missionaries.
I was going to say: Religiosity-income comparisons provide support for this hypothesis. However, most of what I found when looking for a citation was more in agreement with this: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1088980 which shows a relationship between income and religion, but not always an inverse one.
Ugh. Rick Warren. My ex’s mum gave him The Purpose Driven Life and we read it aloud on the drive back for shits and giggles. I don’t recall much, but it didn’t impress me. A lot of false cause and effect, attributing things to God that had more to do with coincidence, and stupid metaphors. Inane is too kind a word.
Barklikeadog:
Nah, you’ve just outed yourself as also posting on a forum that uses BBCode instead of HTML. Fess up, now: Who is the other blog and what have you been doing with that hussy?
8^)
I wouldn’t be that pessimistic. Organized religion is just a crutch that’s outlived its usefulness. Eventually people will shed it like we shed our tails and large amounts of our body hair. But generic superstition is never likely to go away simply because people are born completely ignorant. Never having another guy cling to a lucky rabbit’s foot will happen the same day you eliminate the fear of monsters under the bed from every 6-year-old in the world.
The real trick is preserving morality in the face of wanning religious authority, because the only thing that keeps a great many people from doing a great many horrible things is the fear that they’ll get caught. That’s why you’ve got the current crop of idiots in the White House making such a mess. They don’t fear anything – natural or supernatural.
How do you keep a society of people from acting badly without turning the region into a police state, if they don’t have any fear of the big scary man in the sky? And that question really boils down to how you get a collective population to act responsibly.
“If you’re poor, know that wealth can interfere with salvation: “Money has the greatest potential to replace God in your life.” If you feel weak, know that “God has never been impressed with strength or self-sufficiency. In fact, he is drawn to people who are weak and admit it.” If you feel inadequate, know that God “doesn’t want you to worry about or covet abilities you don’t have.” Remember that suffering is purposeful: “God never wastes a hurt!””
This quote sums up the religious viewpoint. God wants you poor, weak, not self-sufficient, inadequate, and suffering. But don’t worry “God luvs U.”
Well, at least there are some good Americans out there that are will to do atheists if not atheism.
The problem is they’ll just as easily do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. “[Somebody told me] god told me so” isn’t valid reasoning no matter what the outcome.
“and have air conditioning”
I don’t :(
I hear Rick Warren is the only one who was able to get Obama and McCain on the same stage prior to scheduled debates. Shit.
“I think that’s a good description of humanity in general.
Posted by: Ron in Houston”
Nicely done. Surprisingly cynical, though.
Well, if shouting “Oh God!” counts as prayer maybe we can get some Christians to have bumper stickers that read “Do an Atheist for Jesus!”
#13: I remember that discussion with Harris and Warren. Warren’s philosophy is so content-free he could simply be a mime in interviews; he says *nothing.* He did like to play the old standards: if humans are “merely” physical beings, whence morality? The disingenuousness of such a question is palpable; he will accept no answer to it. He’s a fool–a rich, powerful fool. That our presidential candidates are going to bend to his will makes me want to never stop throwing up.
To me, “liberal religion” is like “positive stereotype.” You know, Asians are good at math, black people are good dancers, Jews are good with money. It may sound nice but it’s still *wrong.*
This battle between reason and religion will persist for many years to come and I predict will endure long after the last atheist is dead, either through natural means or hounded out of the community by the onslaught of the demented hordes.
While this is a picture that does much for a very laudable call to action, I do have to protest that where it succeeds as rhetoric, my evaluation is it fails in accuracy. For unless and until human minds evolve in a startling different and disturbing direction toward even greater love of conformity, there will not be a ‘last atheist’.
Indeed, if you were to accept the (amusing) charge of certain religionists that atheism is ‘just another religion’, it is almost certainly amongst the oldest of them. And leaving that nonsensical playground taunt aside, there have almost certainly always been human beings with sensible doubts, even within the most conforming, powerful, and terrifying of theocracies.
Reason is, to some degree, innate, in humans, and even if it weren’t, would still almost certainly be indelible on the larger scale. Yes, it is easily deflected, subsumed, perverted, by powerful social interests–this is what religions do, this is how they survive. But it takes effort, and effort they must maintain. As well-evolved as religious systems have become to deal with this reality, they have yet overcome it entirely, and this is over several millenia. And as human beings need reason to survive and to thrive, and there is a powerful incentive to being that little bit smarter about things than your neighbour is, for purely material reasons, I find it generally unlikely they ever will.
This is part of why modern religions are so contradictory, such mosaics, such bastardizations of (only ever partially) tamed and sanitized ‘reason’ and obscurantism. They have to be to survive in the human brain and in human society at all. They have to kowtow to reason, if only to try to defuse the threat is presents them with. They have to try continually to pervert it to their service, also of necessity. And in that necessity is a wedge that opens opportunities for escape, age after age, whatever they do to prevent it. They can make it ‘rational’, even, not to point out how naked is their emperor, as a practical measure, in the short term, if only through intense social pressure, and through terror. But in the very reason they must appeal to make that mechanism work, their undoing still lurks.
So again: it is unlikely, our brains remaining what they are, and provided there are still humans, that there will ever be a last atheist. We will still be here, for a very, very long time. Probably long after the current crop of apparently terribly powerful monotheisms have themselves either withered and died in the face of other irrationalities, or themselves mutated beyond recognition to become the irrationalities of the far future.
It’s a cold comfort, in the face of contemporary challenges, when faith healers seem as rich and as dishonest as they’ve ever been, when barefaced frauds use tragicomically bizzare claims of transcendant relationships with invisible friends as a lever to political office, and win, in doing so. But it’s still something to keep in mind.
He seems to be a nice fellow on some subjects, but ultimately he’s a patriarchal loon who thinks gays and atheists will burn in hell.
THAT’S a party I want to go to! I’ll bring the hot sauce!
I forget who it was that said it, but re: a liberal theocracy being a step forward from a conservative theocracy, someone said to the effect of, “A benevolent king is worse than a tyrannical one, as he makes people believe that monarchical rule isn’t always a bad thing, and prepares them to welcome the future tyrants.”
(.)(.)
JJ @ #26
Air conditioning is one of my favorite examples because it’s something that people of only moderate wealth today can have that KINGS didn’t have two hundred years ago.
I only got air conditioning this year. I love the way it hides the 100+ degree Fahrenheit weather.
#9 – Clicked on that link, wow! Voxday is so desperate he’s stealing PZ commentor posts?
The atheists killing christians crap is getting old.
Spay or neuter, then release.
That would seem to be a cost-effective and humane way to begin to deal with people who are afflicted by the contagion of religion.
Speaking as an atheist and a left-wing Democrat, I think there may be some good things to be found in Rick Warren’s forum with Obama and McCain.
First, Warren says he isn’t in the business of endorsing political candidates–he doesn’t think pastors should do that. And, he actually seems impartial–he has said that while the candidates are very different, he respects and admires both of them. Of course, this whole thing may be more about helping America get to know Rick Warren rather than Obama/McCain, but that’s another issue.
Warren acknowledges that his church is full of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, etc.
I hope that this de-partisaning of Christianity will reduce the evangelical community’s influence of the Republican Party and public policy in general.
If it’s okay to be a Christian Democrat, then just because you’re a Christian, you don’t have to agree with your (say) Southern Baptist preacher’s political opinions. And you don’t have to vote Republican. It also works the other way–once evangelicals no longer comprise an overwhelming segment of the Republican Party’s base, the national leadership won’t be forced to pay lip-service to their crazy socially conservative platform.
Some conservatives see this already–that the Republican Party’s social platform mostly alienates people. Most people don’t want abortion outlawed, or preaching in schools, and they don’t spend all of their free time thinking about how to take away gay people’s rights. The disenchantment with the religious right among conservatives can be seen very clearly, I think, in the enthusiasm young conservatives have for Ron Paul’s libertarianism.
I disagree with this guys conclusions. Having grown up in Texas and attended public school, I have met four people in my life who absolutely would not concede well-argued points that question faith or defend the atheist point of view. Four out of thousands. There are plenty of knuckleheads, but the vast majority of our fellow citizens just need to be educated and engaged. They may choose to cling to some form of religious in a way that many free thinkers and disbelievers cling to the Church of England for tradition’s sake, but they are more than capable of living secular lives. Most of them already do, though they don’t think of it like that.
#11: “Give me a liberal theocracy over a conservative one any day of the week.”
I concur. I understand either may make you frustrated, PZ, but at least a liberal theocracy will align with us on SOME of the issues. Even if they are idiots.
What, no Koran or cracker desecrations yet?
Sup wit dat?
“Americans don’t do atheism.”
Translation: “Americans don’t understand science, and don’t want to.”
Here’s something interesting from one of the conservative theocrats. Dembski’s concerned about the lack of evidence for, get this, a religious claim. You know, it’s religion that requires and has evidence, science neither has it nor needs it:
Gee, he believes in miracles. Who’d have guessed, after he renamed “miracle” as “intelligent design”, and claimed that it was science?
Uh, yes, Dumbski, we’ve been asking for evidence of design (you know, design, purposeful and rational–not what we’ve always known, that life is complex) for years.
I’m sure you’ll supply evidence for ID if you ever have it, too. Until then, it’s as meaningful as your lying “faith healer”.
Anyhow, you’ll be surprised to know that Dembski’s designer didn’t choose to fix the faulty “design” of his autistic son:
What do you know, religion can easily be abused to exploit people. Now I wonder how Dembski would know that to be the case?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
#11, #40
Give me Barry Lynn and C. Welton Gaddy over Pat Robertson and John Hagee any day of the week.
Hmph. This is interesting, alright.
Americans don’t do Atheism? That’s like the President of Iran saying they “don’t have that problem of homosexuality”. Riiiiight.
I wonder what it’s like living in the dark?
SDyuaa there is no firm correlation with income because that is not the determinant. Security is, job, health, child, education, safety etc. That is why Western Europe is so much more godless than the US, ditto Japan.
The US has no job security to speak of (in comparison) little social security, good health care only for the well off, bankruptcy for the rest, poor education for the poor, not good infant survival and as we have seen in the preceding thread a climate of paranoia about personal safety.
All that adds up to insecurity about the future and it is that which religion assuages since it seemingly offers certainty in an uncertain world. When I get sick I only have to worry about getting sick, I don’t worry about armed crazies entering my home etc, etc.
However good luck changing that with your money and interests driven political system.
#30, excellent analogy there.
Also, yes, Warren made me slightly ill to my stomach when he said that if weren’t for god, he’d abandon all his altruistic endeavors. I suppose doing the right thing for it’s own sake doesn’t hold a candle to being coerced by a cosmic tyrant…
#13-
Thanks for that reference to the Warren-Harris debate. I had not read it before. Indeed, the only thing Warren said that made any sense was that “we only know a fraction of a percent of the knowledge of the universe.”
Otherwise, Warren was a joke, and then to end with Pascal’s Wager was pure failure. Like so many, it seems that he is unable to grasp the insignificance of four score years, or even an hundred score years in the span of eternity, or even the vastness, yet finiteness of our universe.
But as for me, I want to enjoy the rest of my years on this pebble in the sky with air conditioning.
What, no Koran or cracker desecrations yet?
Obviously, whatever he did was so heinous that he couldn’t even bear to post about it. Heh.
Point of order…
Nick Spencer is Director of Studies at the public theology think tank Theos – so while the Telegraph is giving him column space, he’s not necessarily representative of the Telegraph themselves.
While its content and attitude is generally quite similar to Ekklesia, having read a fair bit of their output, which belies their frequent neutrality.
I mean, Theology isn’t really something that can be thinktanked too much, can it?
#48-
Well put. Pascal’s Wager is so contemptibly stupid. It’s essentially allowing ancient writers to hold your life hostage. If someone came up to you on the street and said, “believe these insane propositions or suffer forever,” no one would lose any sleep. The biblical claims deserve the same indifference.
Even if the Christian God existed, I have to believe He’d see through this shallow insurance policy. Hitchens is right; better to be a sincere atheist than an insincere Christian.
After all, you can’t just order someone to believe something. You believe something or you don’t. If someone held a gun to your head and said “believe that Stockholm is the capital of New Jersey,” that simply wouldn’t work.
I see what he’s getting at. Compared to an American Christian the Pope is agnostic.
Pope Palpatine has said that evolution is true, that The Bible is full of allegory and isn’t literally true, and that George Bush may not actually be Jesus. There’s some areas of the country where you can get pulled from your car and beaten with lead pipes for that kind of talk.
I find most religious people never introspect much unless they face a crisis.
Posted by: Barklikeadog
I think that there’s a human impulse to look outside of oneself during crises – to find external enemies and demons to blame. Not everyone and not all Christians. However, Christianity allows an always ready excuse to be easily deployed.
Why introspect when, as the great American philosopher Flip Wilson noted, “the devil made me do it” will suffice.
A minor quibble:
Benjamin Franklin said:
AFAIK, the curvature of the universe, and thus its finiteness, is an open question in cosmology (a universe with positive curvature is finite, a universe with zero or negative curvature is not). This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but nevertheless…
I think that this is mostly right on but it doesn’t go far enough to acknowledge reality. There are many types of people in this world. Some have absolutely no use for religion, never have. To paraphrase Hitchens, “Some of us are just not so built, as to need or be able to accept superstitious belief”. But some of us are. The more people drift away from religion, the more some of them drift toward things like wicca, astrology and ufo worship. It seems as if some people are genetically hardwired (beyond the basic pattern seeking behavior that we all share) to look for superstitious explanations. We need religion as an outlet for the superstitious intuitions that so many people tend to follow. Instead of railing so hard against religion in general what we should be doing is fostering the kind of education and discussions that are necessary to domesticate (to borrow Dennett’s term) the wild strains of religion that plague us.
If people want to believe in a Creator who loves and cares for them fine. Instead of heaping derision on them and calling them Fucktards we should patiently explain to them that they are free to use their belief to guide their moral lives but that we just require an explanation in natural terms why their morality is good for us before we will accept it.
What we have is a lot of people who sound like Hitchens and few people that sound like Dennett. I think that what we need is few people that sound like Hitchens and a lot of people who sound like Dennett. That’s how religions work. They’ve got a few outspoken people who savagely assault the ideas of others (those outside their religion). The Hitchens’s break down the firmly held ideas and worldviews (the bonds that hold religions together) and then the Dennetts of the world sweep in with a reasonable voice in an atmosphere of trust and common ground to build them back up again. And religions have Legions of Dennett types. We need more Dennett types. Everybody wants to be a Hitchens. Everybody wants to mock and berate and show these silly religious people what fools they are being. To destroy the foundation upon which they’ve built their lives. But very few are offering anything in return. Is it any wonder that they call us strident, militant and fundamentalist?
jimmiraybob quoted Cotton Mather (#53)
Sounds an awful lot like what happened here recently.
We might have lots of people with a Dennett idea of the matter. They need to acquire the Hitchens-people’s outspokeness.
“We need religion as an outlet for the superstitious intuitions that so many people tend to follow.”
Bogus, unsubstantiated, and a little condescending.
“Everybody wants to mock and berate and show these silly religious people what fools they are being.”
Poor, poor religious people? Give me a break. I for one will never water down my criticism of religion. People can deal with it.
Sorry, off topic, but I was wondering if I missed PZ’s take on Salon’s new interview about religion and atheism? I mean, this is prime stuff for PZ to rip to shreds. A guy going off on how atheists are wrong to criticize religion because it isn’t a belief system but poetry? I know it’s similar to other crap you’ve ripped apart, but a good rant is due for this tripe.
I can make this simple and concise: I have no need for religion nor the people who do need it.
The reason we do most of this is because we lack the political will, not the technology. And because regulated capitalism, while it may work “the best” has its own issues with externalizing costs and problems onto society.
But the problems are, by and large, solvable.
Who said poor, poor religious people? My point is a pragmatic one. If all you want to do is criticize those who hold different views than you own that is fine. But in a way you are excusing yourself from conversation in the same way that the really nutty fundamentalists are. Criticism is not constructive, it’s destructive. I am not saying it’s not necessary or has no value. You have to tear down poorly constructed deathtrap buildings in order to build a safely engineered structure. But if you just run through town with a wrecking ball, never looking back, the people who built those structures are just going to build the deathtraps right back up again maybe shakier than before.
this forum is a joke- PZ “these catholics are mean people” Look at yourself and while I am at it -most everyone else on this board. How old are you people anyway early twenties? it shows. What is wrong with religious people anyway? they give more of their money to help people than anyone else, they believe in human dignity, they don’t want to raise their kids with porn in the room and having to worry about the molesters on the corner. What is your hangup on people who try to create a better world to live in? And who is going to respond to this post, I’ll tell you- people who are going to say go F*** yourself and the rest of the nasty comments I’ve seen in here. Read on and you will see the mean people -these jerks and you PZ. What’s funny is when some disaster hits your home you will be the first taking from religious charities. Who is offending whom here?
What are you PZ? the nerd who was picked on in H.S. and now you’re the cool professor that all the kids like? and you followers listen to this idiot. But when you or loved one are hurt, then you’ll be the first on your knees pleading …God , I know I haven’t been a good person, BUT…. There are no atheist in fox holes are there.
#55: “very few of us offer anything in return”
Really? Hitchins himself hardly comes off as a nihilist. He talks about numinous experiences, about the beauty of art and literature, about the history of philosophy and about the shear joy of sex, food and whiskey. The godless public intellectuals who are scientists offer plenty “in return” (the vast wonder of life and the cosmos).
Also Dennett is pretty good “tearer down” of religion. His proposal for compulsory, value-neutral, fact-based religious studies is a very clever bit of memetic engineering (as DD might put it himself). If the faithful want to claim the courage of there convictions they should support it; after all the truth will out, right? But I would certainly expect it to lead many more kids away from religion than towards any religion.
If all you want to do is criticize those who hold different views than you own that is fine. But in a way you are excusing yourself from conversation in the same way that the really nutty fundamentalists are. Criticism is not constructive, it’s destructive.
Being dismissive or ridiculing religion won’t work on the current generation of the brain-damaged, but kids are remarkably sensitive to uncoolness and will reassess any belief that is clearly going to get them laughed at.
I’m going out on a limb here and disagree with the notion that a liberal theocracy is as bad as a conservative one. First, let me state that theocracies in general cannot work because they’re not isolated islands. Any theocracy has to maintain political and global ties with many forms of government, and in fact, often times, those under theocratic rule can observe secular governments and determine what kind of lifestyle can be possible. The main difference between a liberal and conservative theocracy is that it’s easier to perpetuate a conservative theocracy due to threats, intimidation, crack-downs, and other such religious intervention. Just look at Saudi Arabia or Iran for an example. In a liberal theocracy, such tactics wouldn’t work, and either a conservative form would develop, or the nature of the government would change to be secular.
As for the few years that a theoracy maintains its liberal values, it has to be ar less abusive and intrusive to people than a conservative theocracy. Besides, since it’s not going to last very long, the damage it can cause would be minimized.
“Their” not “there”. I plead dyslexia in mitigation.
they don’t want to raise their kids with porn in the room
Please stop offending my beliefs. I think porn is great. In fact, porn is a sacrament. I’m going to riot, now, and it’s all your fault.
#68 Did you really want to use irony on someone so clearly incapable of processing it?
#62-
What are the tenets of fundamentalist atheism? I don’t think any of us should take your arguments seriously until you explain that.
I predict your answer will be deeply unsatisfying.
Dave Teh Sanctimonious:
No atheists in foxholes, my arse
Dave,
Our hangup is with false, superstitious beliefs. There is no such thing as God, for instance, and Jesus (if he even existed) was certainly not his son.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to create a decent society. If you bothered to engage us sensibly you’d see we atheists aren’t scary devils.
I was once given a Rick Warren book as a gift from a worried friend, otherwise I probably never would have read it. Hell, I’m still surprised I made it to the end. What a half-assed pile of dung that was!
It’s nice that the Democrats are being very nice and courting the whackaloons in a very nice way.
It’s time for a secularist party. Play up all of Jefferson’s ideas on the great wall. We could even call ourselves “The Jeffersons”.
For all you folks given Purpose Driven Life as a gift, why not return the favor with a copy of The Reason Driven Life?
To play devil’s advocate for a moment (so to speak), liberal religion is a hell of a lot better than conservative religion. Sure, liberal religion has its own problems too, but I’d vastly prefer to be in a country of Unitarians and Methodists than one of Baptists and Pentecostals. Also, given that the liberal religious are more likely to be open to science, perhaps a move towards more liberal religion would be a positive step towards greater secularism.
So I say, yes, go for it. Go for liberal religion, people! We’ll still call you stupid (openly), and get pissed off whenever you do stupid things in the name of your religion, but at least the more egregious offenses will be less common this way. And maybe, just maybe, you liberal religious nutjubs will slowly stop being nutjobs.
Well read the post that people have written #72. I am not going to debate the existence of Jesus with you. When I read these post, I see clearly who the “mean” people are. I’ll go out on a limb here, but night before last a broke into my garage and stole about five-hundred dollars of tools. I’m guessing it wasn’t the guy who is going to church every Sunday with sincerity. Atheists- my brother is one. I’m not in fear of your opinions, but it seems you are in fear of ours. Why is that? I’ve read tons of nasty stuff on this site, most of which were from atheist. Tell me I’m wrong. I don’t really care if you believe in God or what you believe, but I know many of truly religious people that are very trustworthy and are caring. Who would never out of the way to offend people. That’s not to say that there are also those who do condemn people and can be offensive and who threaten people. There will always be the exception, but this board throws all the religious people in one bucket. Who is PZ to say …these catholics are mean.Why? because some nut threatens him. So now every catholic is mean. Who in this room is educated? because I’m not seeing it.
I forgot, Dave TS, how old are you? My guess is polar – either preadolescent or ancient and decrepit.
Dave the forum joke @ 63 You may pray and plead to your imaginary god when you are sick or dying, but your pathetic supplications will go unheeded and unanswered because there is no god to listen to your insane prattle. Whether the occupant of a foxhole is a rational person or a raving religious retard as yourself, the end result will be the same. You will lie there dead, without a wimper, and without a prayer, a dead brain that cannot call out anymore to your imaginary god. Just as the atheist who is well aware of this, you will lie there with no place to go. Death will make you both equal, bit the atheist will have lived a rational and meaningful life, while yours was one of dementia, insaneful pleading to the sky, and a life centered around all that religion encompasses, namely, nothing. Even your crackers will not save you from final insanity and death. Give up Dave, and have some more crackers and give your teeth something to grind on what your brain is incapable of. More crackers for Dave!
Dave, #63:
I for one am four years old. Nick Gotts is six . PZ Myers is five. Jonathan Vos Post is our most venerable member at the age of 9 years and 13 months.
I never said that Hitchens offers nothing in return. If you really listen to Hitchens he means it when he says, to paraphrase; “have your religion as long as it doesn’t interfere with me”. That’s what he offers. Dennett offers a way to actually make that world happen. He is not trying to tear down religion so much as he is trying to tame it. Dennett sees real value in the consensus of social values that religion creates, he just wants the unyielding types to go away and I agree. That is what he is “offering” in his proposal for universal religious education. A table at which religion has a seat, but only if it can learn to be more flexible to keep up with the values that society creates or finds within the moral zietgiest.
“they don’t want to raise their kids . . . having to worry about the molesters on the corner”
I sympathize, but that church was on the corner long before these parents moved into the neighborhood.
Communism
Marxism
Leninism
Stalinism
Anything
Alcoholism
Drug addiction
Drug dealing
Sexual perversion
Lesbianism
Homosexuality
Bisexuality
Transexuality
Sadomasochism
Fetichism
Bestiality
Masturbation
Babykilling
Embryo eating (preferably in sweet sour sauce)
Cannibalism
…
Oh anything I forgot ?
Dave,
Your personal anecdotes and wild guesses don’t add up to persuasive arguments at all. You have made the extraordinary claim that religious people behave better on the whole than atheists. The burden is squarely on you to provide some concrete evidence of this.
Dave, countries like Sweden, Finland and Iceland have high atheist/agnostic populations, but their crime rates are lower than ours. They generally have longer lifespans and more educated citizens. Clearly, civilizations can get by just fine without belief in God. If you want religious paradise, I suggest Saudi Arabia, Iran or North Korea.
Finally, I find it telling that you won’t debate the existence of God with me. You have no facts, no case, no evidence, just broad, inaccurate, hysterical statements.
It’s always the same- Like I have said before if you are right and there is no God the joke will be on me, but if you are wrong you will have eternity to think about it. It’s not a condemnation it is a fact so why do people get so angry about that statement. I’m not trying to change your beliefs …believe what you want…I’m not even offended by your beliefs, but when ever this subject has come up with my atheist brother and with many of you it seems that you are the ones who get all upset. Look at some of the stupid comments #80. Do you even have an opinion worth mentioning? outside of some childish post that may well have been written by a nine year old.
Dave TS,
If you ask honest questions and don’t proseletyze, you will get considered responses in return. If you act like a troll, you will get treated like a troll.
Kudos to your brother. My wife is a Catholic and a nice person. Big fat hairy deal. Totally irrelevant.
Sorry to hear about your loss, but you are barking up the wrong tree for the perpetrator. Go find out what the relative poulations are in prison, then start accusing people en masse of their criminal tendencies.
We don’t fear your ideas (see, gods are ideas, not real actual things), we fear your actions. So when fine, upstanding Catholics send (yes they did) death threats, that is serious. When they spout off nonsense like “I’ll pray for you”, that’s not serious although it is an intentional attack. When theists push for religious special treatment, we take umbrage, and we take umbrage even before our morning coffee. And that is exactly the issue with this topic. If you go to the start of the issue, it was criminal behavior, during a mass, that started this entire hullaballoo.
That bucket is the Bucket of Delusions, cousin to Pandora’s Box.
BTW, cheeses was at best equivalent to an urban legend.
#81: Then who are you criticising for not offering anything in place of religion? Blog commenters? I’m pretty sure no one would pay attention to anything we did offer.
In any case the purely negative offer of “no Sky Daddy watching when you masturbate” is worth quite a lot.
#75 – I haven’t read The Reason Driven Life myself yet. Adding that to my to-do list now! I have been known to give out copies of Sagan’s books to strangers at coffee shops though :)
do you want a fact- fact read about Fatima Spain. Witnessed by eighty-thousand people and television crews. Is that not a fact? who is being hysterical? I’m not.
If there’s a god that hates and tortures those who worship it for being suck-ups (/or even just hates your particular sect) you will have eternity to think about it. It’s not a condemnation it is a fact so why do people get so angry about that statement.
negentorpyeater,
you forgot “Murder for fun”
Dave,
This is my last post for this thread and I’d like to conclude our exchange.
Gay rights, abortion rights, international affairs, secularism, scientific education, women’s rights, equality…these things mean a great deal to me, so naturally when people base their views on these issues on what a 2,000 year old myth says, or what they saw in a dream last night, yes, I get a little worked up.
All I’m saying is, skepticism is a better way of approaching reality than faith. It’s the difference between making factual, informed decisions or making fantasy-based decisions.
Poor examples Dave. The religious get far more out of people than they give in return, or they would go out of business. GawdCo doesn’t work like that. Turn your light bulb on, dimwit.
I’m rioting too. Wheeee!
Excellent point, Matt @ #90. And I am supremely confident that Xipe is gonna be pissed at those non-believers – flayed alive, beeyotches.
Fatima, Spain? Not when I last took the train through it, it wasn’t. Assuming you mean the supposed Marian apparition at Fatima, PORTUGAL, it was reported by three children. All that has been witnessed by crowds and TV cameras is the annual procession in honour of the event.
Another fact for the person who spoke about the church child molesters. Fact is that statistically the same percentage remains across the board school teachers, Doctors and every other profession. As far as your assumption that I said that religious people behave better on the whole than atheists… well…read on. It’s proven right here. Tell me how I have offended or even have tried to offend you the way you all have me. Here is another fact… couples that incorporate Natural Family Planning in their marriage have lower than a .5% divorce rate, whereas; the norm is over 55%.
Wasn’t today supposed to be Desecration Day? I want to see smushed Jesus crackers.
OK, In fairness I guess you mean the weird shit with the sun not the apparition itself. There are weather conditions that would explain it
This is gonna break either my head, or my desk. :(
I don’t agree that there is anything like a “fundamentalist atheism”. Here’s what I said:they call us strident, militant and fundamentalist?”
“Everybody wants to mock and berate and show these silly religious people what fools they are being. To destroy the foundation upon which they’ve built their lives. But very few are offering anything in return. Is it any wonder that
My point is that unless there is a conversation that involves a real attempt to bridge the divide between the religious and the non-religious then in a way they have a point. There may not be any tenets of fundamental atheism, but if your belief is that people who believe in God are wrong and people who don’t believe in god are rightand there is no room on this planet for both then you are in a sense little different from the Christian and Islamic fundamentalists who want to eradicate each other.
Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchens all present very good, clear arguments for why it is not necessary to believe in superstition in order to live a good life. They all also temper their views to one degree or another (except for Dawkins perhaps) by saying “but if YOU want to be superstitious go ahead, just keep it out of my life”. But on these forums there seems to be a growing cacophony of voices who are taking up the arguments why religion is not necessary for them and extending those arguments to say why it’s basically reprehensible for anybody. All this with very few offering the olive branch that for those who want religion, for those who feel a need for something like religion in their lives, there might be some common ground we can live with.
Dave, that’s appples and oranges. Rhythm method is highly endorsed by religions that forbid divorce. Maybe more of them should get divorced
OK, I know I said last post, but Dave, what are you offended about? We have disagreements. That’s no reason to be offended. You should grow a thicker skin.
There are a host of reasonable explanations for what happened at Fatima. The most probable explanation in my estimation is that the “Miracle of the Sun” was some sort of atmospheric phenomenon that the pious crowd imbued with supernatural meaning.
Regarding molesters, I think the point is not so much the percentage, but how the Church was complicit in protecting the offenders by sending them to different parishes.
Finally, I haven’t taken offense to a single thing you’ve written. I just think most of it is poorly supported by facts.
#58
#100-
Looks like I bowed out of this thread prematurely…
Look, naturally I support the right of people to believe what they wish. No one’s talking about a secular inquisition here. But I really do think the facts are on my side and I’m not going to muzzle myself. No one tells Christians they can’t stand on street corners and distribute pamphlets in an attempt to spread their beliefs. Well, I think I’m entitled to cogently rebut their views and advocate my skeptical worldview in response. It may seem hostile at times, but that’s the nature of vigorous debate. It’s not all harmony and rainbows.
#95- fact eighty-thousand stood in a downpour and when the sun was appearing to hit the earth all eighty-thousand and their clothing along with the ground was dry. Are you not open to that as fact? This is a fact. It cannot be disputed. Although I like the portrayal that the procession was witnessed by eighty-thousand. #92 I understand your getting worked up, these topics are passionate for many, but let me ask you. What does a baby have to do with any of what has happened on how or why someone got pregnant? why is it when Scott Peterson killed his wife and baby there was a murder charge for both the mother and child and yet abortion is ok? why is it against the law to screw with a turtle egg on the endangered species list and yet it is OK to kill a fetus to the numbers that in many states there have been more killed than the population of the state.
Dave the god-joke @ 85 The joke is on you because there is no god, trust us. If you don’t believe us, go ahead, call it down. We’ll wait, we have plenty of time to laugh at and deride you. Boy, if I was a god and my little Dave called to me, I’d be down there as soon as the universe reverses back to the Big Crunch! Davey boy, you are dealing with the cream of the rational world, not with insane worlds populated with imaginary demented gods and demons. No joke god for you Dave. Here, take this cracker and sit in the corner and consider your future as a life of inevitable insanity.
Dave:
Joke? You’ll have wasted your entire life, and you’ll likely have encouraged others to waste their lives as well. That’s a very bleak joke at best.
I have a little wager for you. An invisible prophet came down from Kanchenjunga a week ago, and announced that everyone who disbelieved in God would be blessed with an eternal afterlife of drinking beer from a volcano, eating pasta, and reading papers about evolution, while everyone who believed in God would be chained to a mountain where giant eagles would eat out their livers three times a day for eternity. If the Kanchenjunga prophet is right, and you go on believing in God, you suffer terribly for all eternity. Since eternity is a very long time, the impact of believing in God is too terrible to face, even if the prophet is unlikely to be correct. Therefor, you must reject God, just in case the invisible prophet is right. If you think this is a joke, please read this.
What was that weird sort of atmospheric phenomenon? Prove me wrong-that’s what you want me to do-prove me wrong. I’m not denying that the church did cover up those tragedies as well as many other institutions have. Since when are Priest professional “good people” the past has shown that there have been cases where the catholic church has indeed acted inappropriately. I can’t defend that and nor would I want to. As far as Natural family Planning and the divorce rate, why are those apples and oranges. I have no problem with me skin thickness, I’m not here crying-I’m just stating that people here are trying to be more offensive towards me than I am with them. So why is PZ claiming “these catholic are mean people”? read on ….defend yourselves. I suppose these post are taking high ground are they?
Could someone name even a single example of a “liberal theocracy” in all of human history? Clerical rule is illiberal almost by definition.
Dave @85:
Unless you picked the wrong God, that it was Zues, or Brahman, or Odin, or Allah all along.
Or, God could be a trickster, and only Atheists get into heaven, and worshippers spend eternity in hell as a punishment for accepting things without good reason.
Kevin @59
The James Carse article’s criticism of atheists is essentially the Courtier’s Reply. PZ has done this already. Sad that religiopoligists are still using it.
#87: Yes, I am to some degree criticizing blog commenters. But I hope I don’t come off as too critical. I am, in the same way that you are, trying to transmit my favorite ideas, perhaps with a bit of my own synthesis, and get them repeated out there in the memosphere. Maybe only a few hundred people are actually out there paying attention. But if the idea is accepted by even a few of you then it will be carried out “into the world”. Most of my ideas are actually Dennett’s ideas and I like them. I hope that others will like them enough to pass them on. In this way I think, what you say as a blog commenter actually can matter. Also I think that people actually do lurk in from time to time to see what’s being said. And then they tell all their friends what they saw. How else do you think the big talking heads could talk with a straight face about “Dawkins’s legions of strident, militant, fundamentalist followers” or some other such tripe?
I am not arguing that the criticism of religion that goes on here is wrong. I think it is necessary. I just think that we need more people who are atheists saying “Yeah but” and talking about constructive ways that we can bridge the gap between believers and non-believers. More talk along the lines of “believe in Christ if you want, but you have to Justify to me why abortions are wrong and you have to Accept that I find gays to be for the most part nice people, just like you and me”.
Also, I would like to hear more talk about the pros and cons of a Religious Education curriculum in public schools. I think that this is one of Dennett’s greater ideas, and I don’t think it’s getting talked about enough.
And yes, I agree, the offer of private masturbation should convince even the staunchest religious adherent. :)
Dave,
Light refraction can make all sorts of dramatic images. It’s a far more likely explanation for Fatima than “the creator of the universe, rather than intervene in preventing genocide or curing cancer, decided to give 80,000 believers a light show.” It’s not so difficult to imagine. 80,000 people showed up expecting to see a miracle. They see something vaguely miraculous looking, a parhelion. Mass hysteria sets in. People faint and run around. Tension is high. Notice that no astronomer in the world reported anything like the sun flying out from its normal position. Indeed, no one outside a small perimeter of the site saw anything unusual in the sky.
And other religions put forward miracles too. Have you ever heard of the Lord Ganesha milk miracle in India? Hindus believed that a statue was consuming milk. Thousands upon thousands of worshippers believed in it, despite far simpler scientific explanations. Why do you take Fatima into account but not the milk miracle? I’ll venture a guess–because you seek incidents that validate the Christian faith and ignore others. Why not accept the obvious? Miracles most likely don’t occur, God doesn’t likely exist, and you’d lead a more intellectually fulfilled life if you didn’t pretend that he did.
—why is it when Scott Peterson killed his wife and baby there was a murder charge for both the mother and child and yet abortion is ok—
You don’t know the difference between homicide and a woman’s basic right to make a private decision about her body, her health, her finances, her life? Wow. I don’t think even your imaginary friend can help you if you don’t.
Dave:
When you make an extraordinary claim, the ‘burden of proof’ is on you – not on the person you accost with your claim.
Nonetheless – you refer to the ‘Miracle of the Sun’, which purportedly occurred in Fatima, Spain, in 1917. I believe Joe Nickell debunked this in one of his books, probably Looking For a Miracle which you can likely find at your local library. Highly recommended, and I urge you to check it out.
Finally, the ‘Miracle of the Sun’ sounds a lot like a sun shower, an odd mix of rain an sun shine that sometimes results in the rain evaporating before it hits the ground, and sometimes comes with odd lighting effects. I don’t know if sun showers are common in Fatima, Spain, but they can happen almost anywhere in the world, and happen about once every two or three years where I grew up (along Utah’s Wasatch Front).
Well technically you could describe the UK as a liberal theocracy. Our head of state is also head of the state church. The church leaders sit in our upper house and the church has various privileges. I understand that Lutheran church is the state religion of Sweded and you have to opt out of paying church taxes so they would qualify too.
So basically liberal theocracy is ok, providing there is a constitution and the theocrats are way outnumbered by those democratically elected. Though the Lords Spiritual did combine to talk out Lord Joffe’s assisted dying bill last year, bastards.
What is wrong with religious people anyway?
Do you mean in general or are you talking about a specific sect, or just individuals? Someone like my fundamentalist neighbour? Nothing is wrong with him, he’s a great guy. As is the neighbour in a previous neighbourhood who happens to be Muslim and helped put out a fire I started under the hood of my Camaro.
The problem isn’t with the average religious person but with the power religion, and its leaders, have over people. Anything can be justified through God and His followers are more likely to uncritically follow dangerous and violent commands from the church leaders (or someone representing God) than the non-religious are to follow secular leaders.
The attack made on American soil is a good example of how religion has power over actions. All you have to do is ‘believe’.
“they give more of their money to help people than anyone else”
What percent of their income, on average, do religious people give to charities and other noble causes? What percent do the non-religious give? We need to see the numbers.
Good, so do atheists. However they don’t wait for a command from God, nor from a questionable 2000 year old book to do so. They go far beyond theists in that they include in the respect for dignity a much larger group. Religionists tend to restrict, at times violently, their tribe to people with the same belief system. They are told by their book of authority to reject all without their tribe.
Which they do, just because it says so.
I here a lot from the religious that children should not be exposed to sex (or naked bodies). Am I to assume from this that being exposed to viewing sex some how ‘damages’ the child? Exactly what kind of damage are we talking about here?
You do know that education works don’t you?
You seem to be linking porn and molesters in a cause and effect relationship. Care to give citations to research that gives numbers to this?
I don’t think anyone here has a hangup with people trying to create a better world, but that really isn’t the question. The question is, does belief in the supernatural, sourced from ancient stories, actually contribute to a better world? Since the belief tends to direct people towards an imaginary world I suspect the only time religious actions improve the world is as a result of unintended consequences. In other words, by accident.
Sorry for all the overly large paragraph breaks, I’m afraid I went ‘p’ crazy.
What makes the “miracle of the Sun” more “miraculous” is that the crowd had gathered based on the claim of these 3 shepherd children, that a “miracle” would happen that day at noon. Claim that they had made based on a supposed secret revelation from the Lady of Fatima.
So it is said that the event happened, most probably the result of a natural meteorological phenomena, as promissed.
Which still makes the whole thing difficult to explain, these 3 shepherd children don’t control meteorological phenomenas on demand.
On another hand, it is said that about half of the people present didn’t really report noticing anything. And those who did reported many contradictory accounts.
So maybe in fact nothing happened at all, some people really “wanted to believe”, and started a mass hysteria reaction amongst the most deluded part of the crowd based on a very common and banal phenomenon. Not an unlikely explanation.
Thanks, llewelly. I grew up in Florida, and we had sunshowers pretty frequently. I always thought they were cool – water wouldn’t even hit the ground, bright bright sunshine, NO MIRACLES.
It’s exactly what I thought when a description of the “miracle” was posted.
Let me go on record. I looooooove the word “wackaloonery.”
You are “technically” describing an official state religion, not a theocracy. The U.K. is a constitutional monarchy, with power held by a hereditary monarch on behalf of an elected Parliament. The closest the U.K. has ever come to theocracy was Cromwell’s Protetorate which was still formally a constitutional republic. A theocracy requires that ultimate political power be held by the clerics, as in modern Iran or medieval Tibet.
“why is it when Scott Peterson killed his wife and baby there was a murder charge for both the mother and child and yet abortion is ok” – Dave
“You don’t know the difference between homicide and a woman’s basic right to make a private decision about her body, her health, her finances, her life? Wow. I don’t think even your imaginary friend can help you if you don’t.” – Will E.
I think dave’s point was a good one (and I’m very much pro-choice). Will, your ridicule is completely misplaced. His point is that a baby doesn’t suddenly stop being a human life at the whim of its host, so why is a fetus a human life one moment and not the next? His example isn’t the only legal problem. I recall a pair of conjoined twins where one would die if they were separated. In this case, the twin who would live wanted the separation while the non-viable twin did not. Is this simply a “private decision” about the viable twin’s “body”, “health”, and “finances”? Without mitigating circumstances, I think not. The issue is when a human life begins, and under what circumstances can it be ethically ended.
Personally, I don’t think he should have been charged with two murders, but that’s me. It’s a matter of how you solve the problem of life and when it begins. While the abortion debate isn’t ONLY about drawing a starting line for life, I think it’s completely credulous to claim that line has nothing at all to do with the debate.
PZ: I really don’t consider a liberal theocracy any better than a conservative theocracy: both are built on ignorance and dogma.
The problem is that a good liberal theocracy inevitably creates the conditions for a bad conservative theocracy. Just like the danger in a Communist revolution — most of the folks are trying to destroy totalitarianism (see the left-anarchist role in Russia), but their language inevitably creates legitimacy for the totalitarians. Same with the anarchist syndicalists in helping to form fascism.
It doesn’t just matter what you do — but how you explain it, cause sooner or later someone is going to re-use that explanation.
if your belief is that people who believe in God are wrong and people who don’t believe in god are right and there is no room on this planet for both – ConsciousMachine
The last clause does not follow from the rest. Yes, I’d much rather no-one believed in religious nonsense, yes I will carry on saying it’s nonsense, but no I don’t expect it to vanish in my lifetime, and yes I am happy to work with believers on issues we agree on.
Jams: Personally, I don’t think he should have been charged with two murders, but that’s me. It’s a matter of how you solve the problem of life and when it begins. While the abortion debate isn’t ONLY about drawing a starting line for life, I think it’s completely credulous to claim that line has nothing at all to do with the debate.
The problem is the framing – “When does life begin?” is a trivial question, if meant literally. Life began at least 4 billion years ago. It is continuous all the way back without interruption.
If we weren’t being manipulated, the question would be: “When does a human being begin?” That question is harder, but it clearly doesn’t begin in utero if we mean anything more by human life than some tumor cells in a petri dish. Then we have to start at brain function — and not just some random waves, but significant brain function that distinguishes a human being from a lizard.
Now, that is only even possible after myelinization is significantly complete — which in human beings is approximately three months post-partum. So, at the earliest, a real human being begins about three months after birth.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect other forms of life — including newborns. It means that if we are going to discuss the issue rationally, we can’t just claim that “it looks like a person, therefore it is a full human being”. Obviously, our rights depend on our stage of life — an adult has more human rights than a child.
The problem for the theocrats is that any rational, secular argument you give for the rights of early stages to the development of human beings is equally applicable to other animals, to some extent or other. If we give a newborn rights, well a chimp is more human than a newborn. And a fetus? Well a cow is just as “human” as a fetus.
The problem with this argument in my view is one of potential.
I think it can be safely argued that a chimp has no potential of becoming a human, likewise a cow.
I agree that we can’t claim that if it looks like a human that automatically makes it one, but this isn’t (IMHO) an easy question to answer nor should it be. I think that one should agonize a little bit over the answer of when a life becomes a human and when the agonizing is done that one should err on the side of caution. In the same way that we can’t really answer the question of at which stage of evolution the first humans appeared (this question can only be approximately answered and then only in retrospect) I don’t think we can really answer the question at what point in development a human fetus becomes a human being. But we have to draw a line somewhere. I think that the first trimester is not an unreasonable place to draw that line. Some people think that a fertilized egg is not an unreasonable place to draw that line. I would say that drawing that line postpartum seems a bit icky to me. Yes icky. At some point (since the line we draw is in some sense arbitrary, no matter how you spin it) feelings and intuitions come into play. Making the case that something is not fully human until it “has more brain function than a lizard… at the earliest… about three months after birth” may seem like a good objective standard but you could tack on all kinds of higher order function that some of us have while other do not to make the distinction of human/not human. Carried to an extreme one could make the case (one wouldn’t likely be taken seriously but one could make the case nevertheless) that to be “fully human” you must have mastered at least one language, understand logical argument and be able to demonstrate the ability to empathize with your fellow human beings.
ConsciousMachine: The problem with this argument in my view is one of potential.
I think it can be safely argued that a chimp has no potential of becoming a human, likewise a cow.
That argument doesn’t hold water. Potentially, a pancreatic stem cell could become a human beings. Potential is irrelevant to what an organism is right now. It can be considered in a broader social context, but then the question is no longer one of “inalienable” rights, but purely one of social outcomes. There’s a good social outcomes argument that we should protect newborns as if they were human beings, regardless of the reality.
At some point (since the line we draw is in some sense arbitrary, no matter how you spin it) feelings and intuitions come into play. Making the case that something is not fully human until it “has more brain function than a lizard… at the earliest… about three months after birth” may seem like a good objective standard but you could tack on all kinds of higher order function that some of us have while other do not to make the distinction of human/not human.
Please — no slippery slope. It’s pretty damn clear that you don’t have to speak multiple languages to be “human”. We know what human is, and it’s someone who thinks. A chimp is kind of human — a one year old is clearly human. A person with an IQ of 70 is clearly human. We can make definitions here — they may be arguable (they should be arguable) — but that’s no reason to give in to the argument from despair. We can reason, even in the most fuzzy of situations.
What you want to do is justify your prejudice. In your “gut”, you know that a fetus is human, regardless of the facts of the matter. I can understand that, but it’s no basis for an argument or political decisions. Our “intuition” is just the detritus of 10 millenia of cultural beliefs; we are best just using it as a starting point for our own examinations, not as a basis for social decisions.
Look, when my children were born, I saw a human being. I know that it was an incorrect perception, but its what I saw. I’d never go from my perception to arguments of law — the way I feel is just the way I happen to feel, dammit.
“The problem is the framing – “When does life begin?” is a trivial question, if meant literally.” – frog
You mean, “if meant broadly”, which I clearly did not mean. I was speaking in terms of a single human being’s life. If I were speaking about ALL life, then certainly I would have noted that there’s no difference between terminating a fetus, a woman, or a baby, because “life” goes on without them.
P.S. Canada and Mexico aren’t colonies either. I just thought you should know.
@frog #128:
Yes it does. If you want to carry things into the impractical then dirt has the potential to become a human being. Feed it to a plant, then the plant to an animal then the animal to a mother etc. A pancreatic stem cell by itself has zero potential of becoming human. A fetus in a womb, left to run it’s course does. The machinery to make it so is already in place and in motion. I am not saying that such potential ends the conversation but it deserves consideration.
I agree, the question is one of social outcomes. There is also a good argument on the same grounds that we should protect the unborn as if they were human beings. I don’t think it sets a good precedent for personal responsibility to make abortions freely available when there are perfectly good methods of contraception available to prevent pregnancy in the first place.
I didn’t say multiple languages, I said one language. A chimp is not a kind of human it’s a chimp. And a one year old is not clearly human by your own standards. How do you know that a one year old is thinking? Without the capacity for language it may be that it is simply reacting to the world around it the same way an animal does. How exactly do you define the threshold for “thinking”? Is it curiosity about the world around oneself? Cats are curious creatures. Is it the ability to organize information about the world that makes successful predictions? My cat can open doors and windows. Clearly this required some “thought”. Does that make my cat human? The point is that the lines that are drawn can be based on some objective criteria, but the selection of the criteria is somewhat subjective and arbitrary. Also, once you have drawn those lines it is not always clear which side of the line a particular organism falls.
No, my point is that there may not be any facts of the matter. I don’t know that a fetus is human nor do I know that it’s not. It depends on where you set the boundary. I know that it’s a hell of a lot closer to human than a chimp or a cow because the chimp and cow can never be human while a fetus can so that argument doesn’t hold water.
We probably agree much more than we disagree. At least on the rules of discussion I think we are in line. As you say “We can make definitions here — they may be arguable (they should be arguable)”. The point of my analogies was not to argue from despair but to make a case for two ideas. While we can set a definition of what it is to be human we should keep in mind that those definitions are not as concrete as we’d sometimes like them to be (that is the trap that religion leads to). Also that potential is a valid course of argument which deserves consideration.
If anyone is interested, I’d welcome responses to a question I’ve posted on my blog (in response to Jason Rosenhouse’s recent post on this subject): “What is an atheist?”
http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-is-atheist.html
Thanks in advance for your input!
RED ALERT! RELIGION AT WORK THROUGH BUSH ADMINISTRATION!!!
Birth Control may now be denied to women by their doctors. Please read!
If they take away birth control, I promise I’ll produce lots of atheist offspring!!!
Dave, victim of robbery:
No True Scotsman fallacy right there. We’ve seen the statistics on atheists vs. religionists in prisons, so permit me to doubt the assumption (considering that open atheists are probably rare as hen’s teeth in your neighbourhood).
And Dave apparently never met any atheists before, so has no basis for comparing populations relative to these categories and doesn’t try.
A little Pascal’s Wager in another message, which others have addressed above. Then, Fatima:
No Dave, it’s a factoid, a rumour, hearsay. Mass hysteria, and Orwellian official lies about history, are well-attested real phenomena and more credible explanations for your ‘miracle’. Oh yes, and sunshowers too, and mistranslation or poor expression: ‘sun hitting the earth’ most plausibly referred to sunlight, not the incandescent big ball of gas itself, as the credulous tend to represent the story. Numerous Biblical ‘miracles’ are probably bad translation and wrong guesses of the same kind. You may think otherwise, but the onus would be on you to prove it.
Consciousmachine @ #127:
If you want to talk about _potential_ determining what we do with a fetus, I would like to point out that every fetus has the _potential_ to be a multiple mass-murderer. Does this mean that we immediately treat every fetus as a multiple mass-murderer?
If not, please explain the difference in your approach in a fashion that someone not sharing your moral beliefs is compelled to understand; otherwise, I will be forced to assume that this is a moral decision on your part, with no rational reasons backing it up.
Notkieran,
Dammit, had great responses twice and lost them both times.
Yes it’s a moral decision. That’s my point. So’s yours.
Exactly my point.
So how are you going to convince me that your morality is superior to mine? That’s the challenge, you see.
If you can’t, then you have to accept that your morality is not based on a universal system of ethics. Furthermore, you have to accept that your morality is inherently self-contradictory, because you believe that fetuses should be granted positive rights due to positive potential, but should not have rights taken away due to negative potential.
Why is this so?
That said, we do agree that the end of the first trimester is a good place to draw the line– always recognising, of course, that we DREW the line and didn’t FIND it.
I just don’t think that the argument of “potential” is a good one to use is all.
Remind me why _you_ think the first trimester is a good place?
For me, it’s a point where there is _still_ clearly nowhere in the “brain” for a “mind” to reside, and since my argument is that you cannot cause a pain to a person if there is no “mind” in that human, I feel that the first trimester is an acceptable compromise, because there is inarguably no “person” in that brain.
He got this absolutely right, and it’s the ultimate irony of the situation:
ConsciousMachine: Yes it does. If you want to carry things into the impractical then dirt has the potential to become a human being. Feed it to a plant, then the plant to an animal then the animal to a mother etc. A pancreatic stem cell by itself has zero potential of becoming human. A fetus in a womb, left to run it’s course does. The machinery to make it so is already in place and in motion. I am not saying that such potential ends the conversation but it deserves consideration.
See, once again with the bullshit slippery slope type arguments. A stem cell in a womb has 0% potential to become a human being without the positive protection of the mother — it’s just a stem cell! With a bit of intervention, you could put any stem cell there — which will be easy soon enough. “Dirt” will never become a human — it’s just simply a ridiculous statement.
I agree, the question is one of social outcomes. There is also a good argument on the same grounds that we should protect the unborn as if they were human beings. I don’t think it sets a good precedent for personal responsibility to make abortions freely available when there are perfectly good methods of contraception available to prevent pregnancy in the first place.
No, you miss the point! The point is that certain rights are an inalienable part of being human — other rights are defined by social outcome. This latter argument you have is not only off-point — but undermines your case, because when you put up an inalienable right, the right to determine what happens with your own body, versus a social outcome style right (you want to punish women for not using birth control, or even having failing birth-control, — the arrogance you have — and thereby punish their entire families), inalienable rights always win.
I didn’t say multiple languages, I said one language. A chimp is not a kind of human it’s a chimp. And a one year old is not clearly human by your own standards. How do you know that a one year old is thinking? Without the capacity for language it may be that it is simply reacting to the world around it the same way an animal does. How exactly do you define the threshold for “thinking”? Is it curiosity about the world around oneself? Cats are curious creatures. Is it the ability to organize information about the world that makes successful predictions? My cat can open doors and windows. Clearly this required some “thought”. Does that make my cat human? The point is that the lines that are drawn can be based on some objective criteria, but the selection of the criteria is somewhat subjective and arbitrary. Also, once you have drawn those lines it is not always clear which side of the line a particular organism falls.
Lordy, read up on psychology and neuroscience before muttering inanities. There are huge differences in cognitive function between a cat and a human being. A three month old is already acquiring language. There are plenty of papers that have tested this, if you bothered to look at the empirical evidence instead of trying to blow smoke up our asses. Chimps have many, but not all, of the cognitive functions that humans have — they may not be human, but they are a hell of a lot more human than a six-month fetus! This “potential” argument is just a red-herring — inalienable rights adhere to actual existing beings, not what they may become. Social outcomes are irrelevant when face with those kinds of rights.
No, my point is that there may not be any facts of the matter. I don’t know that a fetus is human nor do I know that it’s not. It depends on where you set the boundary. I know that it’s a hell of a lot closer to human than a chimp or a cow because the chimp and cow can never be human while a fetus can so that argument doesn’t hold water.
There are plenty of “facts” on the matter. You just want to dismiss them out of your own deeply, gut-held instincts, and unfortunately the facts don’t support that. You seem to be unable to distinguish the difference between “arbitrary” and “non-salient”. Yes, a lot of developmental milestones are fuzzy — there’s no salient boundary — but that does not make those lines arbitrary. There are lots of facts that either you don’t know or are uninterested in.
If you want to have a rational discussion, you have to start from reality, instead of your personal psychological issues with your mother, minorities and the poor.
Notkerian @ 136:
In some sense we seem to be arguing the same point. No morality is based on a “universal system of ethics”. All such systems are inconsistent if you look closely enough. Fuzzy boundaries abound in logic and nature. You can easily say what is on one side of the boundary or the other, but as you approach the boundary itself the clear demarcations disappear and it becomes more and more difficult to tell what is on the inside and what is on the outside. Where we draw the lines to determine where so called “human life” begins is a subjective question. Once they are drawn we can measure them objectively but there is no “rational” means of drawing them in the first place. If you want a clear objective rational line to draw I think the closest we could come is to say that from conception to fully functioning healthy adult with language capability is the line. It’s a pretty fat one. You and I can talk to each other and I think, pretty much agree that we and anyone else with the capacity to communicate intentionally along with a lot of other definitional information such as body type (i.e. human as opposed to chimp), capacity for empathy, ability to make decisions etc. can be considered human. I think we could also agree completely that an unfertilized egg clearly is not a human. But between these two states are a myriad array of different developmental processes and stages that go into building what we “know” to be human beings. Which one of these developmental stages is the critical one? You think it’s the capacity to feel pain? Fine, that at least seems to fairly clear boundary that can be drawn. But that is a subjective and morally based answer like any other. If you want to define it as “personhood”, well that’s far more difficult. At what point does a zygote, a fetus, a baby, a toddler, an adolescent go from being “merely” a collection of cells in a womb, “merely” a lump of unfeeling flesh, “merely” a learning animal, “merely” a communicating animal, “merely” an irresponsible and impulsive animal to a being a “full fledged human being”? Or to turn the question around, at what point does it stop being merely a potential human?
frog @ 137:
Without intervention a zygote has the potential to become a human a pancreatic stem cell has no such potential without intervention. Since we are arguing the value/morality of such intervention, I think that that is a salient point.
Acquiring language. But is that really what “makes us human”? You say that three months after birth seems to be the salient boundary that demarcates humanity. Why not six months, a year, two years, again exactly what stages of development are necessary to have been started or completed to go from being a potential human to a real human? That choice is arbitrary. It’s gut based. Intuition, feeling, NOT (entirely) rational.
Please, drop the rhetoric. I don’t want to punish anybody. Punishment involves imposing an artificial consequence on an action. I simply think that it is a (socially) poor idea to allow the easy evasion of the natural consequences of an easily preventable action. Particularly when there is a living “organism” involved.
Listen, I certainly don’t think that a zygote or fetus or newborn is the same thing as a human or should be treated with the same “rights”. I hope that at least that much has been clear. But neither is it simply a piece of flesh to be treated like a cancer.
@frog:
P.S. what the hell is this supposed to mean?
@frog:
P.S. what the hell is this supposed to mean?
Way to keep the argument rational and on point captain ad hominem.
Consciousmachine:
I will now lay out my premise:
A person stops being a potential human and starts being a human at the point where he begins conscious thought. He ceases to be a human and becomes baggage when he ceases conscious thought.
(I am willing to make exceptions for Dubya, as he obviously has managed to reroute his brain functions to his very little head.)
This is my premise.
My next premise is that thought– conscious thought– requires what we consider a human _mind_, and that mind cannot exist without a complete neocortex.
That means that by my premises, as long as there is no neocortex, and no place to emplace memories of a human nature, there is no human.
Now, although I recognise that all this happens long after the first trimester, I find that the first trimester is a suitable compromise– since we do not exactly know at what point in neocortical development it becomes capable of memories that can be read in human-type thought and a human-type consciousness, we can simply tentatively draw the line at the point where we know it has not occurred.
Naturally, this is not the only consideration– another is that by the first trimester, it should be pretty damned obvious that the woman is pregnant and has been so for a while, and she should have had time to think through what she wants and needs.
There are other reasons as well, such as the health of the mother and so on. But the most important one is this:
I draw the line at the first trimester because it is well on the “nonhuman” side of the fuzzy boundary but still gives options to the mother involved.
Look, arguing that there’s a fuzzy boundary is pointless. I’m a physics teacher and a physicist by training, and the first thing about quantum mechanical or even experimental fuzziness is not to declare the whole thing hopeless, but the determine the limits of that fuzziness and then arrange things so that even if it hits the limit of that fuzziness, it will not matter.
Now, we have two things to do here:
i. Explain why you reject my viewpoint;
ii. Explain why yours is more valid.
Without doing the first, you have to accept my logic; without doing the second, I do not have to accept yours.
The Telegraph article has a point. Try living abroad for a while, and it becomes painfully obvious that the United States’ puritan past is also its puritan present.
If, say, a Swedish politician ever paraded his religion in the way that Obama or McCain does, that would instantly blast his chances of election.