The Guardian has a well-done article on British creationism, which looks from here like a low-rent, twee version of the rampant excesses of our American idiocy (We’re #1!). It also looks very familiar, with the same dead arguments and the same old delusions.
We also get new twists on old tropes. Remember the horrible New Scientist cover that we knew was going to be abused by the creationists? It is.
“I am guided ultimately by the parameters that the Bible lays down,” admits John Peet, travelling secretary of the Biblical Creation Society. He estimates that 90% of the congregation at the Chertsey Street baptist church in Guildford, where he worships and where I hear him address the “creation club”, are young earthers. The theme of pastor John Benton’s sermon in the evening is “Genesis and Evolution: Do They Fit Together?” He holds up a recent New Scientist cover, headlined “Darwin was wrong,” as evidence that the scientific base for evolution is crumbling, that the Darwinian tree of life can be uprooted.
I’ve got my copy of that issue, and you dedicated warriors against creationism might want to pick one up soon. One simple strategy to counter that nonsense is to ask if they read anything more than the title, so that you can open it up and show that they are lying about the science.
That cover was a mistake, and it is one more headache for us to deal with it…but as we all know, creationists will misuse anything to suit their agenda. They (and also, unfortunately, many defenders of evolution) like to blame atheism for creationism, too.
Mackay, too, is clutching a copy of that issue of New Scientist when I meet him. This is manna from heaven – the science establishment offering up gifts to the creationists. They also claim that the aggression of the new atheists is helping them. They paint Dawkins as a “recruiting sergeant” for creationism because he links evolutionary thinking with atheism. “He has been a real help to the ministry, ” says Randall Hardy.
Creationists argue that the new atheists are fuelling the dogmatism; Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford and a theistic evolutionary, last week threw that accusation back at them. “Creationists totally misunderstand the Bible,” he said. “Genesis is in the business of story, myth, poetry, metaphor. They [creationists and atheists] feed off one another. The debate has an unreality about it. Those of us who are not fundamentalists can’t find a place.”
Atheism and evolution are linked because science provides an evidence-based, rational account of origins that makes the myths of faith superfluous. If the fact that many scientists have abandoned the crutch of religion makes you flee from reason to embrace the absurdities of the creationists, you weren’t a friend of science in the first place. These are people who claim the existence of a cure makes them love their disease all the more.
As for Mr Harries, I can understand how he can’t find a place — he’s got nothing but vapor wafted about by furiously waving hands to stand upon. Of course the book of Genesis is a pile of metaphor and myth — so is the whole freaking Bible. But a metaphor for what? It’s all very nice to stagger away from the literalist interpretation of the bible — I sympathize, it’s what we atheists have all done — but then we’re left with this curious pile of pages that is a collection of very badly done history, bizarre behavioral proscriptions, uneven poetry, unbelievable fairy tales, and utterly insane politics and prophecy, which people believe fervently and which, even among those apologists who excuse it as mere “metaphor”, is endorsed as a guide to moral behavior and eternal life.
If he finds the debate unreal, think how we people free of the god delusion see it: a minority of lunatics espousing the kinds of silliness described in the Guardian article, which is hard enough for us to believe, with a majority of gawping fish on the sidelines trying desperately to avoid any association with the creationist kooks while averting their eyes from the rational people fighting their battles for them because they know, deep down, that their feeble apologetics for a “metaphor” they believe in makes the bewildered middle-of-the-roaders just as ridiculous as the creationists.
This line is superb. it sums it up exactly. These creationists are never people to base their “thoughts” on anything so substantial as actual facts, so lets not get too worried about their cries of “militant atheists help us!” – it is a thinly veiled smoke screen and nothing more.
Detailing the rational truth for people makes it all the easier to see how crazy these people’s beliefs are!
:). It’s going to be a good day.
I’ve blogged before about these creationbrits. I think they’ve always been there, but are being encouraged by the militancy of their US counterparts.
I sent a letter to the Editor of New Scientist by email as soon as I read that article this morning with a link and the relevant quotation about having granted them a weapon. I asked if they felt proud now. Be interesting to see if they have the courage to print it, or one of the many others they will undoubtedly receive.
A few years back when NatGeo ran that cover with “Was Darwin Wrong?”, a creationist friend of mine hoisted it in front of my face with a, “What do you think about _that_?!?!” As I had not yet read it at that point, I opened it to the article to have a little read. However, I could tell by the very first word that he had not read any of it, as said first word was “No.” From there on, his excitement waned.
Mewonders if this episode will repeat when he finds the NewSci mag.
“they know, deep down, that their feeble apologetics for a “metaphor” they believe in makes the bewildered middle-of-the-roaders just as ridiculous as the creationists.”
Sweeeet conclusion.
I think that this needs to be hammered into the middle of the road crowd more and more. I’m tired of seeing polls saying that large percentages of the USA is Christian – when church numbers don’t bear it out.
You’re not a Christian if you aren’t in church at LEAST weekly. So stop claiming it as your religion. If you can’t believe in the word of your book of faith enough to do what it says, then you’re lacking the faith necessary to get into heaven by the rules laid out in your book.
ugh. i am so tired of religious people.
Creationism in then UK may not be as prevalent as in the US, but it is still worrying. In Northern Ireland, the most preacher ridden part of the UK, there have been serious attempts by members of the DUP, one of the governingg parties in NI, to introduce creationism/remove evolution from the school science curriculum.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/0807/1218047756470.html
There has also been a rise in Muslim creationism, especially in Muslim schools http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7028639.stm driven in part by sales of the “Atlas of creation”.
Fortunately the scientific community seems to be doing a reasonable job of defending evolutionary theory, and convinced creationism is definately something of a fringe view.
But there’s certainly no room for complacency!
If there’s one thing that can save us Brits, it’s a pretty thick carpeting of centuries-old secularism, as well as a similarly long-standing obligation for comparative religion to be taught in schools. It provides the most potently effective inoculation.
In any case, there’s simply not the social pressure to ‘believe’ over here. Communities are not run along religious lines, and nobody even really talks about it. Everywhere you look, churches have been converted into social halls, gymnasiums, apartment complexes and sport/recreational halls.
Besides, we have Hitchens. And Dawkins. And Hari.
As I assume most people here know, Genesis does not “fit” with Genesis, since there are two different, conflicting creation stories. I’d worry about that first, if I were religious.
@ comment #5:
It won’t.
National Geographic was unambiguous. One big word: “NO.” There’s absolutely no way to misinterpret that.
New Scientist, on the other hand, doesn’t have anything so punchy. The intent becomes clear if you read the whole article and are open to subtlety and having your mind changed; but creationists are neither of those things. To them, the article is “a whole lot of blah blah blah HEY DID YOU SEE THAT COVER? HAW HAW DARWINISM IS DEAD!”
Better than that, pubs!
Creationist cling to their beliefs because they see no acceptable alternative. To them accepting evolution implies atheism, which implies immorality and a subsequent downward spiral right into the depths of hell. If you could convince them otherwise, I bet they would be more open to accepting the theory evolution as fact.
And of course, we can return the compliment. The creationist coupling of Christianity and belief in God with the rejection of evolution is one of the best “recruiting tools” we atheists have. It’s a perfect illustration of how untrustworthy and unreliable faith can be. It doesn’t lead to humility. It leads to epistemic arrogance, and rests everything on cultural factors and personal inclination. Believe. Just believe.
They’re practically handing evolution to us on a silver platter — one of the best supported theories in all of science. So if it plays out as they intend, that means atheists get all the reasonable folks, and Christianity gets the people who think man once rode around on the backs of dinosaurs. Sweet deal.
Go ahead, creationists. Shoot your own religion in the foot. Bring science into it. Make it falsifiable. Then, when it’s left lying on the floor, we can use the tattered rags of the faith that remain to mop up what’s left of God.
The ‘moderate’ Christians do have a place in the creationism vs. evolution debate: they are on the same side as us atheists. But, like it or not, they’re on the same side as the Biblical literalists when it comes to the existence of God, the belief that reality is fundamentally magical and anthropocentric, and the importance of approaching the question through “faith.”
I have a friend who is a reasonable, science-friendly, pro-evolution Catholic, and he was once chiding me for being “just as literal” as the fundamentalists. He didn’t take religion so literally. Genesis was symbolic of the idea that things were created by God. The stories in the Bible were vehicles for putting forth reasonable and unreasonable ways to behave to each other. Original sin was a metaphor for things that we do wrong, and salvation a metaphor for when we try to make things right again. He went on down the list, trying to show that every idea in Christianity had a perfectly reasonable analog in secular humanism — if you simply interpreted it through poetry and metaphor.
“Is God a metaphor?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then you’re a literalist. I think it’s a metaphor for our ideals, or our needs. You take it as an actual person, in a very literal sense. The problem then isn’t that atheists don’t recognize poetry. The problem is that we recognize that it’s poetry all the way down. You’re the literalist. Not me.”
He did not like that at all — it completely undercut his point — but as I recall really didn’t have an answer to it.
Thoughful Guy # 12,
Do you have a particular “acceptable alternative” in mind?
“DARWINISM IS DEAD: LONG LIVE DARWIN”
Now isn’t that a better and more pertinent title? Would we have been proclaiming Wallaceism if Darwin had not been born? Wallace went bonkers with mysticism after his co-discovery, so I doubt if he would have been memoralized as Darwin is. Our contempt is for all religions. The batty religionists hate us as exemplified by Darwin who has firmly upset their insane ideas. And to think that people pay to see a circus, when all they have to do is witness the trappings of all religions free of charge and free from the confines of thought.
That’s a great idea. The misleading headline might actually prove to be a valid tool to demonstrate how creationists constantly distort information, take things out of context and leave out important information.
Maybe the magazine wasn’t such a bad idea after all…
Have you met creationists? Ted Haggard can smoke meth with his hired male prostitute but that either doesn’t make him ‘gay’ or he’s a victim of the liberal media’s ‘gay agenda’. These people treat facts like they treat bible verses: tidbits to toss out when they serve one’s agenda, and don’t worry too much about context or accuracy.
No, seems to me the best solution is to eat ’em.
In a trivial sense, that’s true.
Behind it is the fact that the ones who have fought the endarkenment have been the secularists, atheists or whatever you want to call them, for the most part. If the religious had effectively fought off idiocy, there probably wouldn’t be nearly as much enthusiastic atheism.
And the IDiots have always been fighting “the atheists,” even when the latter barely noticed them. In some sense the IDiots have a reasonable point, in that evolution is poison to most religious belief in this society. That we grant them that fact is no fault of ours.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Then of course there’s the genocide, including the childish Noah’s Ark story, accepted as fact by million of Americans. Ask a Christian fundie why would god murder virtually the entire human race, including babies, and their reply is usually “they deserved it.”
Even some atheists do this. They tell Christians they can accept modern science and still believe in the Magic Space Man. They tell other atheists who don’t want to spread this lie to shut up. These atheists who suck up to religious insanity are part of the problem and I have no respect for them.
#1:
I don’t take prognostications form fundies seriously either, but, in the case, do we really know if they are wrong? I’ve seen some vague statistics that suggest that the ranks of those who have abandoned religion are growing, which would validate Dawkins’ and others’ endeavours, but nothing too convincing, to be honest.
Thoughtful Guy #12 wrote:
There are two ways to convince them “otherwise.”
The first way is to point out that theists can also accept evolution. Yes, the universe is grounded in magic — but only grounded in magic. When it comes to how nature works, there is no need to believe in magical interference. You can then believe in a God who never interferes like that. You have that choice. Evolution doesn’t mandate atheism. After all, if you have enough faith, you can make anything “compatible” with God, in any way you choose.
The second way is to convince them that atheism doesn’t entail immorality, and there is no hell to have a downward spiral to. Argue that atheism is a perfectly reasonable, valid, honest option. There’s nothing wrong with being an atheist. It actually makes more sense, and is more consistent with the world revealed through science.
When atheists take that second option, however, we’re often accused of forsaking the only “reasonable” option that will work. No, we need to join in the frantic chorus reassuring people that you can have science AND God, and there’s no inconsistency to speak of. And that way, you can avoid atheism.
But imagine if the accusation was that belief in evolution was “Jewish.” Evolution came right out of “jewish thinking,” and those who support evolution were all either Jews, or secret Jews. And we all know what they’re like.
Would anyone really think that the best strategy to take here would be to flatly and hotly deny that no way — there are a LOT of evolutionists who aren’t Jewish! Stop with the lies and insults!
At the very least, one would not expect the Jews to be the most enthusiastic pushers of that sort of “defense” of evolution. A lie, sure. But an insult?
Evolution leads to atheism if you follow its implications all the way down, into religion. Modern apologetics tend to focus on the many reasons that one should not apply scientific analysis to the claims of religion. “God exists” is not a hypothesis about reality. Although it’s a disembodied mind that works through psychic powers, it’s not at all like the theory of mind/body dualism, or ESP — which are open to scientific analysis.
It’s more like saying “I need a hug” or “pretty sunset!” Can you see love under a microscope? Can you “prove” someone ought to have determination and inspiration through science? What is the nature of properties, and how does one relate them to objects, if you sit back in an armchair and think about it. God is more like one of those things.
Well yes you’re right. It’s certainly not going to cause any of the major proponents to change their mind, but not all creationists are that stubborn and delusional. If even just 5% of all creationists are open minded enough and clever enough to get it you’ll get millions of creationists who just realized how stupid and dishonest their “leaders” are.
There’s no one universal way to reach creationists. Many are totally unreachable, some might respond to being mocked, some might respond to being educated and others might respond to demonstrating just how ignorant and dishonest their leaders are.
God is like treacly picture postcard art?
Great post, Sastra, but this is just silly:
Everyone knows it’s the left anarchists who are behind the statist-Darwinist-Marxist-creationist conspiracy.
Generally, that’s how I operate on a personal level (when I’m not ranting on teh internetz, that is), because it’s pragmatic and ethical.
And getting eaten. Some might respond to that.
But then they would claim this in any case, as they are conditioned to react to with the horrid notion of non-belief like killer bees on a lawn mower.
It was presumptuous of the publication (if they even care about the creationist problem in America) to assume that the truth of the article’s contents would become so widely known that creationists could no longer hide behind it. Very presumptuous, indeed. It is unlikely that it will get that much publicity. All creationists need do is see their preacher hold it up proudly, and then once they have a good prayer meeting thanking god about it, it will be fixed forever in their minds no matter how much it gets refuted. It was a mistake.
I disagree with you that the New Scientist title was a mistake.
It is a baited trap, waiting to catch any surface skimming creationist looking for sensation. If used as evidence, it offers proof that the user hasn’t done their research; it provides a quick come-back for anyone to discredit them.
genewitch at #6 says:
Yay, genewitch! I often argue that the commandment against taking the Lord’s name in vain has nothing to do with profanity. It instead means that anyone who claims to be a Christian or Jew, but who isn’t doing all the dance, is in serious trouble.
I mean, Jeeze Louise, anyone who thinks that they have an immortal soul, and thinks that there is a heaven-or-hell judgment a-comin’, had better be on their knees or in the church 24/7. It is way more serious that any final exam that has ever been crammed for.
Hold Christians up to their own standards, and make them justify their faith, or their adherence to their faith. The fact that they cannot do it should become obvious.
I disagree with you that the New Scientist title was a mistake.
I hope you’re right, and that the positive–eventually– outweighs the negative.
Posted by: Sastra | February 17, 2009 11:33 AM
Sure, evolution does point to atheism being the only sensible position with respect to gods, that is why evolution instantly caused upchucking, backpedaling, apoplexy and sundry other violent reactions amongst the devout back when Darwin first published. But, it is well known that people are perfectly capable of accepting evolution and having faith in their god within the same mind. Atheists who wish to assure theists that they can accept evolution and keep there god as well have a valid point. I am perfectly happy, for the moment, with them pushing this idea to try and get more theists to accept evolution. I just wish that they would stop whining about other atheists that are more direct.
“God exists,” by itself, may not be a hypothesis about reality (unless you are a theist of course). But, you can usually count on an apologist to fuck up and claim something that science can render some significant data about, always to the detriment of the apologists argument.
cedgray @8,
If there’s one thing that can save us Brits, it’s a pretty thick carpeting of centuries-old secularism… Besides, we have Hitchens. And Dawkins. And Hari.
Dawkins and Hari I grant you. But Hitchens has
popedturned himself into an American.SC, OM #24 wrote:
The reason “everybody knows” this, however, is only because the Illuminati are so good at covering their tracks. Shhh.
Yeah, perhaps my original statement that it was a “good idea” was a little too optimistic. I’m not expecting many die hard creationists to change their minds from hearing what the article has to say, but then again I’m not expecting the creationist holding up magazine cover to change any evolutionist’s mind.
At worst it’s just another quote mine for them to use amongst their flock. At best it can be a chance to sway the slightly less delusional over to reality. Or maybe nobody will pay much attention and we’ll all forget about it in a few weeks.
What did you think I planned to do with the unreachable ones?
Darrell E #30 wrote:
I agree; I think there is value in using both strategies. I like what Jonathon said in #22
Right. People differ, and there’s no one magic way that works for everyone (aside from eating them, perhaps).
If, instead of creationism, astrology was “out of control” in our culture and interfering with legitimate science and political positions, it might be pragmatic to try to get people to adopt the kind of astrology you see in today’s newspapers columns — bland, reasonable, it-might-apply-to-anyone advice that does no harm. But, at the same time, you should also have people pointing out that astrology itself is bunk. If the best astrology — or religion — has to offer is “today is a good day to be nice to people” — then why promote that by using a system that is equally good at offering “today is the day destined and decreed by the stars and gods … that you start a war.”
I kind of think they start to fuck up as soon as they get around to defining God. Which may be one reason why the cagier of the sophisticates try to avoid clear and coherent descriptions.
@minimalist [#10],
Fuck. I’ve got to get him to read some real science? A task that will be (for each of us).
.
@David [#27],
That’s actually a good angle for looking at this.
Menyambal@28 and genewitch@6
I think you miss the point. For the liberal Christians, the bible stories are metaphor for some “deeper” meaning. The “dance” it prescribes is the expression of that deeper meaning for Bronze Age shepherds. Its expression for modern times asks for a different “dance”. It’s still a stupid dance — as Sastra@13 pointed out, they don’t carry their metaphorical interpretation to its conclusions. They go just far enough that they can live with the cognitive dissonance.
But it’s a strawman argument to decry liberal theology as “not True Christians” and insist that they conform to a fundamentalist mold. Address their actual beliefs, don’t tell them they should “really” believe this other, more easily disproven, thing.
Not exactly. It fails to point out that the creationists are telling falsehoods when it comes to blaming Darwin for “eugenics, Nazism, communist materialism” and other stuff which pre-dates his work (even as far back as biblical times!) and/or are things actually opposed to/by it. Ditto the fact that “race” used to be used interchangeably with “species”. It just lets these falsehoods slide by unchallenged. So (typically ignorant) people who are new to them might mistakenly think they’re true instead.
Menyambal @ 29
My take is that those who arrogate to themselves the right to decide who is or isn’t a Christian are breaking that commandment.
Related to this thread, a last week I finally got around to complaining to Gert Korthof about the very unfortunate title of his (otherwise very good) site ‘Was Darwin Wrong?’. It’s something I’d been meaning to do ever since I first visited the site, some years back.
http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/
Korthof immediately accused me of trying to make a ‘Saint’ of Darwin. :< http://193796.guestbooks.motigo.com/
But at least he’s changed the title of his site (which I don’t claim credit for — though it happened virtually simultaneously with my complaint)
Yep, this was the inevitable action as soon as New Scientist went with the idea. Talk about the ultimate quote-mine!
Sorry, Scott B, I was going too fast and goofed up. I wasn’t trying to imply that religious types should adopt fundamentalism, I was trying to say the exact opposite. Anyone who thinks there is a here-after should be studying ALL religions rigorously, comparing and contrasting, and be damned sure that they have the right and true faith–almost a scientific search for truth. Then, once sure they are in the right one, yes, get all fundamental in whatever way the gods desire. I oppose the assumption that most folks make, that they were born into the right religion. The risk is far too great to take any chances with, which is why most folks get violent if you unbalance their faith in any way, but they are assuming that they are in the right from the get-go.
I need to stop commenting and enjoy my life.
Got it sitting on my desk right now. I wonder how many of them actually read the article inside. Hybridisation of plants and horizontal gene transfer are interesting topics after all.
PZ, that was one kickass brilliant piece.
Kudos my man.
It actually means, claiming to speak in the name of the lord god without actually the deity’s OK. As in the common cult leaders program, “god wants you to send me lots of money and boatloads of your cute teen age girls (or boys).
It is quite common and the bible is full of warnings about false prophets. IIRC, somewhere in there, false prophets were supposed to be killed.
PZ has once again allowed his proselytizing passion for atheism and his profound dislike for religion skew his judgment.
I feel a sense of sorrow for the Mr. Harries of this world since they don’t have a “home”. Their sense of homelessness derives from what we might call the PZ error, i.e. he allows the definitions of PZ and the Fundamentalists to define his faith universe as between atheism and fundamentalism. There is no home in the middle ground.
The issue that is lost for Mr. Harries is his faith. If Mr. Harries allows people like PZ, who has no faith in theism or the fundamentalists, whose bizarre and exaggerated biblical beliefs covers for having no faith or represents a misguided application of their faith, then he truly can see no home. In truth, there is an enormous space between these polarities where the exercise of faith can, and should, find its legitimate expression.
Faith is a virtue that finds expression in God. Atheism is a belief system borne of frustration. Most atheists were at one time or other believers but now for a panoply of reasons have given up and decided to embrace rationalism as a sort of quasi-god, They still have faith but it is now in reason.
The fundamentalists are so afraid of living in the world as it is, that they have to create a kind of mini-salvation here on earth that will protect them from the ruin that the ways of the world will surely lead them.
I would suggest to Mr. Harries that between the frustration driven rationalism of the atheists and the fear driven apocalyptics of the fundamentalists, there is an enormous space for the expression of faith.
Boy Silver Fox has lost it. How does one proselytize disbelief? He needs to reboot his brain, which stopped working months ago.
Yes, it’s all the atheists fault that moderates don’t have a place anymore, just as it’s the atheists fault that so many believers are creationists. Atheists are the perfect scapegoat for any problem in religion because it’s such an easy target to complain about.
Why is it that theists want a double standard in our society – where they are free to talk about their beliefs but no-one is allowed to criticise them? Calling the concept of God stupid does not make one an extremist or an absolutist, and in most cases I doubt that most theists even know what it means to be an atheist; let alone base their beliefs on a counterpoint to it. Silver Fox is again bitching about things he doesn’t understand, though that’s no surprise.
Silver Fox, as you would expect from a man who claims atheism is invalid because it cannot disprove his god yet cannot himself disprove any other gods (therefore, by his own logic, rendering his faith invalid) continues to remind us of how stupid he actually is.
What does this even mean? Atheism isn’t on a spectrum; it’s a yes/no, a digital state. Either you’re an atheist or you aren’t.
Religious beliefs, on the other hand, may be on a spectrum: liberal, cafeteria Christianity where the parts you find embarrassing or limiting to your lifestyle are done away with, but not in such a way you can’t convince yourself you’re still sucking up to your god; at the other end there’s hardline fundamentalism where you take everything in the bible literally because you think that is the best way to suck up to the god you fear.
Meaningless tripe. There is no god; faith is a security blanket that comforts you as you lie to yourself about this.
Incorrect. Atheism is the lack of belief; it needs no ‘system’ – how can a nothing being organised? Alphabetically? Chronologically? Tell me, Silver Fox, does someone who doesn’t collect stamps categorise the lack of stamps in any particular way?
‘Here’s where I don’t have a penny black. Oh, and do you like my absence of the sheet with the planes printed upside down?’
Idiot.
Projection.
No True Scotsman fallacy.
Another epic FAIL for Silver Fox. You really should stop bothering; refuting your incompetence isn’t even a challenge anymore.
Silver Fox, your god doesn’t exist except between your ears. That is a delusion on your part. So quit posting your delusions here, and you will seem much smarter to us. Get the picture?
Silver Fox, I’m going to tell you to piss off, too. You are soooo close to getting banned — your inept non sequiturs and goofy godbotting are getting very annoying.
Nerd:
“How does one proselytize disbelief?”
Atheist believe there is no reason to believe in God. What is the belief: the belief is in God. The atheist see no reason to believe in that belief.
What is the atheist’s position. He doesn’t believe in the belief. So, he has no belief. If he disbelieved in the belief, then he would be believing. So, he can’t have a belief and he doesn’t have a disbelief. That’s his position.
When I said that atheism was borne of frustration, I didn’t think that Nerd would come right back and prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Holy crap. You really are a moron, Silver Fox.
Wrong Silver Fox the idiot. Disbelief is disbelief. Only ignorant and stupid gobots like yourself torture logic to be point of trying to prove that disbelief is a belief system, then they lie like a cheap rug in doing so. Quit deluding yourself that your god exists. Quit deluding yourself that we need your help. You are just a nuisance, and you know it. You have no reason to keep posting here as PZ alludes above. Just go away again.
Ha. Yep. Facilis too.
Why Silver Fox’s argument is useless – I’ll just make a change or two:
AtheistChristians believe there is no reason to believe inGodGanesh. What is the belief: the belief is inGodGanesh. TheAtheistChristians see no reason to believe in that belief.What is the
atheist’sChristian’s position. He doesn’t believe in the belief. So, he has no belief. If he disbelieved in the belief, then he would be believing. So, he can’t have a belief and he doesn’t have a disbelief. That’s his position.When I said that
atheismChristianity was borne of frustration, I didn’t think thatNerdSilver Fox would come right back and prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt.See how easy that was?
It’s all very well saying that ‘the new atheists’ drive religious people into the arms of the creationists, but in the end, how can you argue that religion and evolution are compatible when you (in order to help convince others that evolution is true) when you can’t square this yourself. I don’t think dishonesty will work in the long run either.
Talk about terrible logic, that was a logical abortion. Lucky that Roe vs Wade allows you to make such abortions, otherwise you’d be in gaol.
A belief of not believing is just that. Consider the statement “I have no reason to believe God exists.” This is a belief, I believe that I have no reason to believe that God exists. This does not however change that I have no reason to believe that God exists, a belief in the disbelief does not turn that disbelief into a belief. The belief is a statement in the disbelief and does not modify that disbelief in the slightest.
Silver Fox, quit your pathetic attempts at logic please, I’m sick of looking at that bloody coathanger.
I don’t know about American English but in English English Silver Fox isn’t even managing to be coherent @ #51 (comment-1410950), let alone having so much as a sniff at being right. He’s locked in a sort of feeble-minded “not-even-wrong”.
He’s not making sense in Australian English either. He’s a polydialectical idiot.
That isn’t true at all. Xians split into large numbers of sects starting the day the religion was formed. Wikipedia says there are currently 32,000.
The day after the first schism, they started killing each other. The last 2,000 years have been marked by routine rivers of blood and piles of bodies.
From this one can get the idea that the various sects don’t like each other very much. The xians say the mormons are heretics, the fundies say everyone else are heretics, the catholics claim the protestants are fake, the protestants claim the catholics are the church of satan and so on ad infinitum.
Polls show that the majority of the US population are sick and tired of the fundie Death Cults. Most of those are…other xians.
Even in the USA, sectarian violence has been known. The Puritans killed Unitarians and Quakers and Rhode Island was formed as a refuge. Some group went after the Anabaptists. The xians massacred mormons who in turn, massacred them back. These days they mostly just call each other names. The secular government took away their armies and heavy weapons because we are sick of mindless violence.
A few years ago I was in a three-way discussion with a Romanian Baptist and a Greek Orthodox, and I was stunned to discover they were far more interested in arguing with each other about the small differences than they were in agreeing on the big similarities in order to combine and challenge my non-belief.
That says it all as far as I’m concerned. You’d think that an ominmax god would be able to provide a revelation that didn’t lead to countless subjective interpretations, wouldn’t you?
So where’s the proof of your existence for your imaginary friend, Silver Fox?
Show your work.
We’re waiting.
And meanwhile, I’m pleading with PZ–ban this tiresome fucktard. He never offers anything substantive to a thread, just tortured logic, godbotting, wanking, insipidity and insufferable stupidity.
I say keep Silver Fox — but modify yer blog kodez to make all his posts appear in Comic Sans Serif™, with the little wackaloon icon out to the left side of each one.
For example (in the css code),
blockquote.SilverFox {background: url(http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/tiny_gumby_trans.gif) 0 0 no-repeat; font-family: “Comic Sans MS”;}
(the “no-repeat” could happily take a hike, though)
Or maybe trigger the wackaloon effects with a nice little javascript that detects his/her/its IP or name. But no need to focus only on him/her/it — apply the effects to all godbots.
Then again, there may be far easier ways of doing this if u haz master controlz of ze blog.
Please excuse the lame metaphor but…
Rather than buy a copy of the magazine and perpetuate this non-science, can’t we just raid our local libraries? I don’t usually advocate intellectual property theft, but if we all agree to merely read our library copy without taking it out, can’t we have our cake and share it with our friends too?
I say keep Silver Fox. He complimented us all when he claimed that we have a belief in reason. I totally believe in reason. Reason is kick-ass!
Did I just see SF disappear up his own fundament in post #51. I am blessed for having seen such a wonderful demonstration. Who would have thought it could be so easy, it must be a xian gift.
Creationists and atheists feed on one another: a clear empirical observation. Nobody has done more to promote creationism than Richard Dawkins.
Gerald, a pissant troll, wrote:
Really? Got any evidence to back that up?
Funnily enough, there’s plenty of evidence for the contrary; most of the converts from creationist idiocy admit that having their religion revealed as utter nonsense unsupported by anything other than archaic mythology was a significant aspect on their choosing the path of rationality over retarded credulity.
I’m betting that almost all creationists are creationists because of the years they spent in Sunday School and in church listening to the priests and practitioners telling them that the world was created in 6 days, and that the only knowledge of Dawkins they have is “he the man who calls my belief a delusion.”
Point is, decades of indoctrination and being taught that the myth is real is going to be far more persuasive than one scientist who says that God is a silly idea.
I’ve been following the whole British creationism thing for years, and it’s certainly concerning.
However, as I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, I think the magnitude of the issue has been exaggerated: the creationists have used the media to portray their organisations as larger, richer, and more popular and influential than they really are.
Clear mistake more like it. The rise of the Militant Atheists and their supporters is directly tied to the rise of the fundie Death Cults. When xian becomes synonymous with liar, ignorant, hater, and sometimes killer, who would want to be one?
Humanoid toads like Hagee, Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, Kennedy, Haggard, and Ham have created more atheists than Dawkins times 100.
There is a backlash against the Liars, Haters, and killers for jesus crowd. Polls show the majority of the US population is sick and tired of them. They are destroyers. During their 8 years of power, they all but wrecked the USA and their political vehicle, the theothuglican party is also looking all but dead.
In Germany there is even a school which they officially teach “intelligent design” next to “evolution theory”. There is a German documentary about creationists in Germany and Europe which is really interesting (and saddening!).
Salaam
The western “values” suggest equality and freedom for all, that means society must allow religious freedom. The Christians and Jews have Church/ Jewish schools as well as kosher meat, yet when Muslims simply ask for the very same treatment,the Islamphobic secular right wing jump up and down screaming that somehow western values have been attacked.
The Jews throught out the western world have their own religious courts. Christians have been enjoying the right to be married in Church. Muslims should have the same right to get married in Masajid as well as they need Sharia Courts, dealing in marriage, civil matters and divorce.
It is easy to say” Go back to where you came from”,but do not forget that British Muslims are actually born and educated here. They are in the unenviable position of trying to combine two diffent worlds. That is no easy.
Multiculturalism is not about separation, ghettoisation or balkanisation. It is, instead, a recognition of both diversity and the need for common ground, mutual respect,and cultural engagement.
Muslims all over the world never opposed English as a language what they did was opposition of the Western culture and their system of education. In Pakistan, the medium of instruction is Urdu and English and the official language is both English and Urdu. Pakistan is going to send English teachers to Korea for the teaching of English language.
Muslim parents would like their children to be well versed in standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity.
Majority of Muslim children leave schools with low grades because state schools with monolingual teachers are not capable of teaching English to bilingual children.At the same time, they need to learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.
I am concerned with the education of the Muslim children. It is nothing to do with integration or segregation. Those state as well as Church schools where Muslim children are in majority, in my opinion, may be designated as Muslim community schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models.
Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
Iftikhar Ahmad
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
#74
Salaam,
There are no muslim children. Children are not capable of making rational and informed decisions about their worldview on that scale. A child identifying herself as muslim does not know what she speaks of other than what she has been told to say. The same is true for children of other superstitious parents.
“Majority of Muslim children leave schools with low grades because state schools with monolingual teachers are not capable of teaching English to bilingual children.”
This statement of yours makes no sense at all. If they’re bilingual children, they already know some English, and therefore should have no trouble learning some more. Monolingual teachers are perfectly well capable of teaching bilingual children one language. They can have a second teacher for a second language. I know what I’m talking about because I had monolingual parents and was educated bilingually at a bilingual school by monolingual teachers.
Children have little trouble learning a second language or even a third; the trouble starts when their social environment starts denigrating the speakers of that language as culturally deficient, morally depraved and inferior in other ways. Many children of muslim parents have achieved a lot in western countries. Because they weren’t lazy, didn’t waste their time becoming more muslim or finding an imported wife.
“The Christians and Jews have Church/ Jewish schools as well as kosher meat, yet when Muslims simply ask for the very same treatment…”
Apparently you haven’t been paying attention to the majority of regulars at this site. See, most here give a flying slice of bacon (probably much less) for what Christians, Jews or any other superstitious ideology enjoy as special rights and privileges. The strongest reason for why faith schools get better results is segregation and selection of students. That must end, because it cements mindsets that have historically been proven to be immensely dangerous and socially corrosive. Rather than demanding equal privileges, you should be demanding removal of privileges for all.
The same is true for Sharia courts, halal butchery and other barbaric customs. No sorry, they don’t deserve ‘mutual respect’ because they are unreasonable, primitive and superstitiously motivated. I don’t know if or why not muslims have a right to get married in religious institutions. As long as they’re privately funded, that’s fine. Can you provide reasons why separate courts should be an improvement? What provisions are there that would guarantee equal rights for male and female plaintiffs – because if they are proper Sharia courts they don’t. And that is not acceptable.
By the way, nice of you to link to your poll.
Having read the article and most of the comments thereto, what else can one expect from a population that has been spoon-fed pseudo-science from cradle to grave? If one steeps in soup long enough, one becomes soup. It’s that easy to explain any kind of mass irrational behaviour. Light the torches, boys, and let’s go after the miscreants that want to harm our pet theory. Atheists of the world, unite!