Who says we don’t need bible scholars?

John Loftus criticizes the Courtier’s Reply. How dare he? I thought it was Holy Atheist Writ by now.

But the Courtier’s Reply as an answer for theology needs to be discussed critically. First off, I do not expect anyone to understand any particular theology in order to reject it. We all do this easily. I doubt very much anyone understands all of the religions they reject. I don’t. No one does. We reject them all for the same reasons, because they have not met their own burden of proof. So I agree very much that neither PZ Myers nor Richard Dawkins needs to fully understand the various forms of Christianity in order to reject them all. They can certainly use the Courtier’s Reply, and for them it’s legitimate, as it is for me when rejecting Hinduism, which I know little about. Christians do not fully understand the other Christianities they reject, so why should anyone expect this from skeptics?

But here’s the problem. PZ Meyers and Richard Dawkins, and others, have the clout to recommend those of us who do understand the various Christianities that exist who know how to debunk them on their own terms. But perhaps, and I’m only suggesting perhaps, they are so committed to the Courtier’s Reply when it comes to their own lack of understanding of Christian theology that they don’t realize this will not do if they want to change the religious landscape. If they do, then may I humbly suggest they recommend the work of Biblical scholars like Robert Price, Hector Avalos, Bart Ehrman and others like them, as well as philosophers like John Shook, John Beversluis, Richard Carrier, Keith Parsons, Matt McCormick and others like them. But they can’t do it, because they are committed to the Courtier’s Reply, and that’s a shame. I can embrace the Courtier’s Reply when it comes to religions I reject. But given the power and influence of Christianity in particular, they need to recommend and embrace those of us who know it and argue against it. The Courtier’s Reply may some day be the blanket response to religion. It isn’t yet. Until then let them recommend those of us who do understand the dominant religion of our land, both philosophers and biblical scholars. It takes all of us together with all of our talents, all of our knowledge, and all of our abilities.

No, no, no. Loftus is making the same misinterpretation I’ve heard from creationists and theologians: that the Courtier’s Reply is a call for ignorance and an excuse for not trying to understand religion. It’s not. Rather, it’s an amusing way to tell someone that they haven’t established their premises (the existence of deities), and that all their phantasmagorical elaborations on their fantasies are irrelevant. Cut to the core issue; if you haven’t shown that Jesus even existed, it’s silly to be arguing about the color of his socks.

I have no disagreement with the approach of the scholars listed above; in fact, I’m a big fan, particularly of Carrier and Avalos. They’re taking a different angle: even if we set aside the fundamental fallacy of the premise, we can assay the ramshackle rationalizations and irrational excuses and shoddy scholarship and show that the whole construction is bogus from root to crown.

For me, the Courtier’s Reply is sufficient because I’m not wedded to any particular doctrine; it’s enough for me to see that the core is rotten and hollow. But I entirely agree that for most religious people, the existence of a god isn’t even an issue — it’s assumed and taken for granted. What most people have locked into their brains is a pattern of ritual and dogma and pseudohistory so intricate that it obscures the central assumption, and to chip through that we need Biblical scholars who grapple with the details.

We just don’t need Bible scholars who layer on more crud.

Oh, no! Another outbreak of Mooneyitis!

I’ll be brief. I’m sure you all find these things as tiresome as I do. Once again, we’ve got a couple of indignant wanna-be bureaucrats of atheism complaining about those cranky, rough-hewn gnu atheists. Chris Stedman and Karla McLaren are shocked that people don’t realize their hectoring is good for the movement. So they whine about how everyone is mean to them.

In this past year, a sociologically fascinating “many approaches” meme has permeated the atheist and skeptical movements. Increasingly, anyone who questions the fiercely uncivil and polemical discourse style will be upbraided with some version of the “many approaches are necessary, so don’t muzzle the movement” meme.

In this meme, however, fierce approaches are actually the only approaches being protected. Moderating approaches such as mine, which are pejoratively dismissed as accommodationist, are explicitly not protected by this meme.

This “many approaches” meme isn’t just being used laterally to shame and stifle peers in comment threads; it is also being used from the top down by elders and authority figures to silence the moderating requests of fellow atheists and skeptics. Wow. That’s a powerful meme!

I personally favor that “many approaches” strategy, since it’s the only one that will work, and the only one that we can possibly have as a loose coalition of diverse voices. Karla McLaren can no more be the authoritarian dictator of how atheists should behave than I can.

Her complaint gives her away. Nobody is complaining about McLaren and Stedman being nice — I encourage them to be as nice as they possibly can, and go forth and win the citizenry over to the side of reason with the effulgent power of goodness! And I’m one of those mean, cranky atheists, so you know I’m not going to follow suit and claim their victories as my own.

No, what is annoying everyone is that, rather than practicing what they preach, they choose instead to nag every other atheist to conform to their style: she “questions the fiercely uncivil and polemical discourse style” of others, which is a comment that is uncivil and polemical in itself, and she makes “moderating requests of fellow atheists and skeptics”. Well now, who appointed her boss? She isn’t being criticized for being nice, she’s being upbraided for appointing herself God of Manners.

And she’s wrong that it is a meme that is only used to slap down accommodationists. If I started berating Stedman and those other soppy interfaith wankers that they can’t do that, they have to start being meaner and harsher, then everyone would come down on me, too, for being dictatorial. The catch is, unfortunately, that accommodationists tend to be a prissy bunch who seem to spend more time whining at atheists who don’t follow their lead, than they do actually trying to use their appeasing strategies to win people over to rationality.

Enough. You want more, Ophelia Benson has been raking them over the coals, and the commenter Rieux has just been tearing things up entertainingly.

Godless talk radio

Minnesota Atheists is trying to raise money to keep their radio program on the air — they have to, because it looks like rich Republican think tanks or gold-sellers aren’t paying for ads, and the woo-infested shows that surround its time slot are selling air time to quack medicine companies, another option not open to an organization of rationalists. Help them out if you can.

They’ve been putting on great programs, too. Tomorrow at 9am central time, they’ll be interviewing Eric MacDonald of Choice in Dying, one of the rising stars of the atheist movement. If you can’t listen to the radio show, you ought to be reading his blog…but then you’ll want to listen to the interview, so I recommend you make time to tune in anyway.

Now that I have them right where I want them…

As you know, we’re having a little contest to raise money for Camp Quest, and we’ve been competing to see who can raise the most money for a good cause. It’s me standing alone against the team of Hemant Mehta, Jen McCreight, JT Eberhard , Digital Cuttlefish, Sikivu Hutchinson, Adam Lee, The Chaplain, C.L. Hanson, Matt Dillahunty, William Bell, and Greta Christina, which, as you can see, is grossly unfair — they needed at least twice as many bloggers more to stand a chance.

Now, though, they’re gambling desperately to triumph in the home stretch — the contest ends on 1 June — and they’re making grand promises about what they’ll do if they win.

You all know what this means now, don’t you?

TIME TO THROW THE FIGHT! Bwahahahahahahahahaha!

I want everyone to turn it around and donate to the other team. Now that they’ve set the stakes, let’s work together and push them over the finish line.

Man, these amateurs have a lot to learn about what it really means to be an evil atheist. The master will school them now.

Ain’t no heaven, ain’t no afterlife of any kind, either, say the physicists

Hasn’t Sean Carroll learned from Stephen Hawking’s experience? Nothing stirs up the public like a physicist explaining how silly their cherished myths are. Now Carroll gives the physicists’ perspective on life after death.

Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV. The questions are these: what form does that spirit energy take, and how does it interact with our ordinary atoms? Not only is new physics required, but dramatically new physics. Within QFT, there can’t be a new collection of “spirit particles” and “spirit forces” that interact with our regular atoms, because we would have detected them in existing experiments. Ockham’s razor is not on your side here, since you have to posit a completely new realm of reality obeying very different rules than the ones we know.

And then he body-slams the opposition with the Dirac equation. Theologians break down and weep. The faithful flee, and then riot. Churches implode as the void at their heart is exposed.

Well, we can hope.

The biologists’ perspective, which is a little less fundamental, is simply that there is no identifiable ‘receiver’ localized in the brain (no, not even the pineal gland, as Descartes believed), distributed physiological activity is associated with thought, and injury, disease, and pharmacology can all profoundly influence the mind. Furthermore, the way the brain works involves trans-membrane ion fluxes and synaptic activity — it’s all electrochemistry and biochemistry. In addition to that new physics, we’d need a new chemistry to explain how spirit interacts with neurotransmitters or gene expression or protein phosphorylation.

While we won’t see the churches shut down, at least we can say that wishful thinking withers in the face of science.

I get email

These people do exist.

I am a fellow atheist from Germany. I have to say I enjoy reading your blog Pharyngula. I study molecular biology and strongly believe in evolution.

I am, however, rather conservative in my views. That’s what troubles me with atheism lately, it seems that atheists are generally on the left side of the political spectrum. Esp. your last post about how atheists should have progressive views in terms of “racism”, “gender equality” and “disability rights” made me thinking.

I feel like I agree with Conservative Chirstians on most political and social issues. For example, I think that abortion is wrong, that homosexuality is wrong and that feminism is one of the biggest threats to society. I furthermore believe that reverese racism (things like affirmative action) against Whites is actually worse than White-on-Black racism. I think that the state has no right to impose taxes on citizens. I think that everything should be privatized in order to increase individual freedom.

In recent times I considered the question if it’s not better for me to just start believing in God and the bible since I have so much in common with Conservative christians. On the other hand, evolution is a pretty strong argument against the literal interpretation of the bible and I already understand to much about this stuff.

Now my question to you is: Can one be a conservative and atheist at the same time? It seems to me that atheism goes hand in hand with progressivism, which is not my thing…

Oh. Well.

It is entirely true that one can be an atheist, in the very narrowest sense of the word as someone who does not believe in gods, and a conservative.

However, one cannot be a rational, intelligent human being and contributing member of society and hold the conservative views you do. When you say you favor increasing individual freedom, you actually mean increasing the individual freedom of healthy white male heterosexuals who have skills that corporate interests find profitable, which, I’m sorry to say, is an extremely narrow slice of our culture, and not necessarily the best element of our society. Whatever shall we do with diabetic black lesbian poets in your world?

I also note that the maximum freedom for a molecular biologist and advocate for evolution will not be found in private industry, so your ideals don’t even match up with your profession. Unless you define freedom as “making the most money.” I have a sneaking suspicion that you probably do.

But, since you seem to find it so easy to switch on god-belief (how, I do not understand), I suggest that you do so…and there are many Christian sects that do not insist on Biblical literalism, including the Catholic and Lutheran churches. You’ll fit right in, as long as you avoid those radical subgroups, the progressive Christians. They’re easy to spot, though: they tend to be infested with women and gays.

Another cause

After saying that the atheist movement ought to be politically progressive and inclusive, I got a letter saying I left some people out. I’ll rectify that by simply posting the letter!

I’m a long-time reader and admirer of Pharyngula, and I’ve been especially impressed with your call for atheists and skeptics to take up the banner on progressive causes, including women’s rights and being more inclusive to people of colour. As a progressive woman skeptic, I was overjoyed by your support.

There’s another issue though, that I think has been overlooked by the majority of the skeptical community, and I would be honoured if you would also consider giving it some space on Pharyngula: Disability Rights. As a disabled woman, I have to tell you that skepticism, atheism, and disability rights go together perfectly. Obviously, the most prominent example of this is the way skeptics have tackled the “vaccines cause autism” issue, which has led to a plethora of damaging practices being used to torture autistic people, such as chelation, homeopathic garbage, and other “purification” woo. But there are other examples of the damage religion and lack of scientific literacy can do to disabled people: We’re often the most highly represented victims of practices like faith healing and exorcisms. As someone who works on a pilot project to address violence against disabled people, I can tell you hair-raising stories of the parents, spouses, and caretakers of disabled people using the Bible to justify abuse, humiliation, and deprivation of essential needs and equipment for disabled people, in the name of a “Loving and Merciful God”. And of course, the venomous hatred spewed by the most rotten Christian commentators whenever Stephen Hawking discusses the ridiculous claims of Heaven and Creationism offer a peek into just how little the religious truly respect disabled people.

I think that the skeptical/atheist community would be the perfect allies for disability rights activists, if more is done to include them in the discussion, such as courting disabled speakers to talk about their experiences with religious abuse, discussing what can be done to improve their quality of life when so many social services fail and they have to depend on churches and religious-based charities for handouts in exchange for brianwashing, and other issues.

I hope you’ll consider it. As a disabled skeptic, it would make my day.

I agree. We’re about good minds, and we should accept them no matter what the bodies that house them look like.

While we’re talking about advocating equality…

…let’s not forget that other gigantic issue, racism. The secular movement ought to be clearly on the side of the angels on that one, too, and we need to listen more to people of color. I know well the phenomenon of speaking at secular events and looking out to see that sea of paleness — I swear, I could work on a tan off the reflected light from those audiences. And the only way to put more black and native American and Asian faces in the seats is to put more of them on the podium.

We do have a problem with the white assumption of privilege. And the scary thing is that some people think giving a minority a seat at the table excludes a white person.

The study, called ‘Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing’, by Michael Norton and Samuel Sommers, suggests that white Americans surveyed think that they are now more widely discriminated against than black people, and that this supposed ‘anti-white bias’ is a bigger societal problem than the real anti-black bias.

Would you believe that the average white person in this study rated anti-white bias as more prevalent than anti-black bias in the current decade? I was flabbergasted on reading that — that’s insane. “Reverse discrimination” is an imaginary problem — white people get all the advantages by default in our society. I know. I’m one of the lucky melanin-deficient individuals.

That link had a perfect image that I had to steal, simply because it illustrates the situation so well.

i-6a38af3926e628bd1d78ca6ce66b232d-equality.jpeg

Right now, I get more requests to come speak than I can possibly manage; you know that bigger names like Dawkins or Harris or Dennett are impossibly swamped. We aren’t going to be at all discomfited if a meeting organizer asks a brown woman of wit and intelligence to speak — in fact, a more diverse roster of speakers is more likely to make your meeting interesting. A community of ideas is not going to blossom if we keep recycling the same few communicators of the same limited backgrounds.

Godless goals are progressive goals

Rebecca Watson is stirring up trouble again. She points out the dire situation for women in this country.

In the first quarter of this year, 49 state legislatures introduced 916 bills that restricted reproductive rights. Here are a few that have passed, like in Texas, where women must have an invasive ultrasound that they either have to look at or have described to them in detail by a doctor before getting their abortion. Or South Dakota, where there’s now a 72-hour waiting period, and women must get counseling at an anti-choice pregnancy crisis center before obtaining an abortion. No centers applied to be on the official list, so that women would have no way to fulfill the requirements to have an abortion.

Yikes. But that’s not the trouble-making, that’s just basic civic responsibility and human decency. Here is the trouble-making.

The Religious Right’s attack on women’s rights is directly analogous to their attack on science in the classroom, so why aren’t non-believers standing up and fighting back? Why aren’t more of the big secular organizations decrying what’s happening?

Some organizations, like Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Humanist Association have called out some of the problems, though both could take a page from the British Humanist Association, which regularly and boldly confronts anti-science when it infringes upon women’s reproductive health. BHA’s website even describes in detail its official stance on abortion (pro-choice, of course).

Hmmm. All the big shots in the secular organizations I’ve met seem like rather progressive individuals who would agree entirely with Watson’s position, and I’ve seen some published statements here and there that support such liberal (i.e., rational) causes as women’s rights and gay rights and equality in general, but otherwise, these particular civil rights issues seem more assumed than advocated by the major organizations — they certainly don’t oppose them. I can understand how a non-profit might have to tread carefully on political claims (they can’t come out and damn the Republican party, after all), but Watson has a point.

Maybe there should be more overt activism for civil rights in general, in addition to the more focused attention given to atheist/humanist issues. Freethought movements should be about human dignity and freedom in all domains, not just religion. We should own these issues; we need to be on the right side of history. And on the purely self-interested side, these organizations can also grow their base by embracing greater equality. Let’s be the opposite of Jim Wallis and the Sojourners (who I could never stand, anyway).

Of course, such a move would piss off the libertarian/conservative wing of the atheist movement, but I can’t see a down side to jettisoning them, anyway.