Because religions are just stories.
And bad stories at that. I was brought up as a Buddhist, and the canon was full of old, tired tropes. Reincarnation, supernatural powers, heaven and hell, the whole gamut. The story of other religions are no different. The heroes just have different powers and the miracles come in many varieties. To be honest, I fell for the Buddhist stories until I entered university, and this fact still embarrasses me to this day.
So Jesse Bering had a recent article in Salon in which he said we shouldn’t trust the godless — because psychology blah blah blah fear of an observant deity blah blah untrustworthy blah. Blah blah.
I didn’t like it.
So I wrote a quick rebuttal, and Salon has published it: Don’t trust the religious.
Perhaps you missed it, but there was recently a paper claiming that gay parents were a perilous proposition. No surprises, as expected it was shoddy work promoted by religious social conservatives.
Mano Singham has discovered a good analysis of the claim that circumcision has health benefits. I agree with it entirely, because I looked at those same papers and came to the same conclusion a year ago! So they must be right.
The analysis points out a few new things I hadn’t noticed, in addition to the bad experimental design and the inflated statistics: the results were confounded by the fact that the newly circumcised individuals also got additional counseling about safe sex, and were restricted in their sexual practices by their surgical wounds. It’s bad research coming to impractical and unrealistic conclusions, and they suggest that there are better answers than promoting this shaky idea that circumcision reduces the risk of AIDS.
Rather than wasting resources on circumcision, which is less effective, more expensive, and more invasive, focusing on iatrogenic sources and secondary prevention should be the priority, since it provides the most impact for the resources expended.
Exactly — the defense of circumcision is ludicrous, it’s an unnecessary cosmetic surgery promoted entirely for historically religious reasons, and it’s time to stop.
I am an atheist because I was only ever a theist due to an emotional bond which had time to fade, and reason did not save it.
My mother is Catholic, and I was raised and confirmed in that tradition. Regardless of my present unbelief, the Church will count me among its ranks until the day I die. (Even if I convinced some priest or bishop to unhappily record my renouncement, I suspect he would not pass on the minus-one to the higher-ups.) As a child, I often quietly spoke to God as if He were a foot away and could hear my every thought. Every time I did this I would wonder if He was really listening, but it was nice to always have someone to talk to.
Here’s me, Ashley F. Miller, Brianne Bilyeu, Russell Glasser, Ian Cromwell, Al Stefanelli, Justin Griffith, and Ophelia Benson having a discussion about why this blog network talks about progressive social issues all the time, in addition to being Vulcan-eared pontificators about atheism.
Oh, it’s another crappy television show put on by a purported science-positive network that I completely missed. National Geographic ran a show called “Chasing UFOs” on Friday, and since about the only television I ever watch any more is commercial-free movies on Netflix, I wasn’t tuned in. Fortunately, Robert Sheaffer did, and found it “lurid and sensational”.
A fellow named Kacey Simmons claimed to have seen UFOs in a particular forested area, so the UFO Chasers decide to go there to check it out. At night, of course. So they attach themselves to absurd-looking night vision equipment with long booms protruding from shoulder braces, looking very much like people with broken necks wandering about. We repeatedly hear one or another excitedly exclaim, “What the (bleep) was that?” They take a video of a light in the sky “changing sizes,” not realizing that is the operation of their camera’s auto focus function, trying to bring the light into focus. We hear coyotes howl in the distance, and they have an almost-encounter with a wild boar. Such are the hazards facing those who dare to pursue extraterrestrials. They photograph an aircraft with three lights, and wonder if it is from earth.
Great. The ghosthunter tactic. I guess people tune in to these things, so it must be effective television for some segment of the population, but every time I’ve seen these horrible green screen/night vision videos with everyone running around with a camera on a boom pointed at their face, I think it’s television for people who want to laugh at how stupid and gullible other people are.
Now why would National Geographic want to sully their good name with this tripe? Here’s a clue: they did a survey. 77% of Americans believe that there is evidence that aliens have visited the Earth, and 36% are sure that they have; 79% of Americans believe the X-Files was a documentary, and that the government has been covering up the Truth about the aliens.
Another nugget of information: Rupert Murdoch owns a 2/3 stake of the National Geographic Channel. Much is explained.
By the way, I know it’s in vogue in these parts to mock the old-school skeptics who track down Bigfoot and UFOs and other such weird phenomena, but I think the contempt is misplaced. As the survey shows and this series exploits, the gullibility of the population for these topics needs to be addressed. If serious organizations with good reputations like National Geographic are going to be pandering to idiocy, we need skeptics like Bob Sheaffer to counterbalance them.
I am an atheist because there is no proof for any gods and the rationalist and sceptic in me insists that the burden of proof relies solely on those making the claim for a religion. This may seem to be a fairly straightforward position to those who read this site but it still amazes those religious people who ask the question. The path to this realisation was an interesting one.
I am an atheist because of Alcoholics Anonymous. My mom is an alcoholic, and had been in the group and sober for as long as I can remember. AA was my religion growing up, even more than Christianity. While I would go years without setting foot in a church, I sat outside of AA meetings and listened to everyone share and repeat the twelve steps and the Lord’s Prayer several times a week. I learned all of the twelve steps and all of the slogans. I was taught my mom had a disease, and that her disease would kill her if she didn’t attend these meetings. I was taught that while I was important, god and AA had to come first in her life. I was also taught that alcoholism was a family disease, that it was genetic, and that I was doomed to either become alcoholic myself or marry an alcoholic.
Say, look: it’s a new organization promoting godless values, called Secular Woman. You should join. I just did, and they didn’t even balk at my Y chromosome!
The Blaze is hot on this story! They say it’s “yet another point of evidence that non-believers are working feverishly to harness and secure power”. They’re wrong. It’s another point of evidence that we’re working steadily and confidently to take over the world.
