How religion undermines reasoning abilities

Some time ago, P. Z. Myers made an important point. Atheists tend to find the beliefs of religions so incredible that we cannot believe that the people we know well personally, who seem to be perfectly rational in other areas of their lives, take those beliefs at face value. So we tend to delude ourselves that they consciously pay only lip service to the tenets of their religions and belong to religious institutions purely for the social benefits they get from belonging to the group. Hence we are surprised when we discover that we could not be more wrong. He says,

Many of us find it really hard to believe that Christians actually believe that nonsense about Jesus rising from the dead and insisting that faith is required to pass through the gates of a magical place in the sky after we’re dead; we struggle to find a rational reason why friends and family are clinging to these bizarre ideas, and we say to ourselves, “oh, all of her friends are at church” or “he uses church to make business contacts” or “it’s a comforting tradition from their childhood”, but no, it’s deeper than that: we have to take them at their word, and recognize that most people who go to church actually do so because they genuinely believe in all that stuff laid out in the Nicene Creed.

It makes the phenomenon of religion even scarier, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does, because [Read more…]

Religious intimidation

This is quite extraordinary. A talk at a UK University on “Sharia Law and Human Rights” was cancelled because of threats by some people of violence if anyone said anything that they considered offensive to Islam or prophet Mohammed.

This comes on the heels of a two other cases of intimidation in the UK, this time over the display of Jesus and Mo cartoons. Blag Hag has been covering those stories.

People who try to force others to be silent are people who know that their beliefs cannot stand up to scrutiny. It is as simple as that. And who better than Jesus and Mo to make that case?

Why agnostics may find the religious more congenial than atheists

A regular reader of my former blog, who describes himself as a fence-sitting agnostic, commented in response to one of my posts at my previous site:

One objection I do have against this blog is the sense of superiority it conveys and the derision with which it refers to the religious. Atheism somehow seems to bring out the not so nice qualities of its adherents. A great pity. In my experience, being an agnostic among Atheists is more daunting than being one among the religious.

Actually it should not be at all surprising that he finds that that the company of the religious to be more congenial than that of atheists. This is because for some time, the more sophisticated religious people have been feeling the heat that the new atheists have been putting on them. Our relentless demands for evidence to substantiate their belief in a god have put them in a quandary because there is no evidence, other than the evidence from ignorance that there are some major things (the origin of life and the universe for example) that science has not yet fully explained. It has resulted in them resorting to the position that god is not an empirical entity and so evidence is not relevant to the question of his/her/its existence. If you look at the arguments of theologians, much of it now consists of finding reasons for why there is no evidence of god although, oddly enough, they seem to have no difficulty ascribing a whole range of properties to something for which they have no evidence. [Read more…]

Prayer mural in high school ruled unconstitutional

Jessica Ahlquist, a Rhode Island high school student who happens to be an atheist, challenged her local school board, requesting that a ‘prayer mural’ that had been hanging in the school auditorium since 1963 be removed.

The 8ftx4ft mural in the auditorium read:

SCHOOL PRAYER

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER, GRANT US EACH DAY THE DESIRE TO DO OUR BEST, TO GROW MENTALLY AND MORALLY AS WELL AS PHYSICALLY, TO BE KIND AND HELPFUL TO OUR CLASSMATES AND TEACHERS, TO BE HONEST WITH OURSELVES AS WELL AS WITH OTHERS, HELP US TO BE GOOD SPORTS AND SMILE WHEN WE LOSE AS WELL AS WHEN WE WIN, TEACH US THE VALUE OF TRUE FRIENDSHIP, HELP US ALWAYS TO CONDUCT OURSELVES SO AS TO BRING CREDIT TO CRANSTON HIGH SCHOOL WEST.

AMEN

[Read more…]

The road to apostasy

It is not easy for a Mormon to publicly renounce his or her faith. This article shares the story of four young Mormons who realized that they did not believe during or soon after they finished their obligatory missionary work. The author of the article Greg Wilcox says that this disenchantment with religion is part of a more general trend.

A 2010 article in Christianity Today, citing various studies, says that the percentage of Americans claiming “no religion” doubled in about two decades, up from 8.1 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008. A substantial 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claimed no religion, up from 11 percent in 1990. Also, 73 percent of these younger people came from religious homes.

The same article makes reference to the research of Robert Putnam and David E. Campbell, authors of a 2010 study called “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” which shows that the younger generation is dropping out of religion at five to six times the historic rate. [My emphasis-MS]

This adds to the evidence supporting my (admittedly minority) view that, despite appearances, religion is in serious danger of collapse. It is not that it will completely disappear but that it will become like astrology, largely irrelevant, viewed with amusement by most, but still believed in by an increasingly small minority.

Although the story is about loss of Mormon faith, I suspect that the experiences recounted are more generally applicable. The stories are quite poignant in describing the initial feelings of loss and loneliness before they found that they were not alone and joined with others in their same situation.

(Via Machines Like Us.)

Jesus makes a comeback

I have suspected for some time that Jesus was not really that into presidential politics. The candidates who are his most fervent and vocal admirers never seem to get very far despite being specifically asked by Jesus to run. After going AWOL during the Iowa caucuses and not giving Michele Bachmann the miracle win he had promised her but leaving her in last place, Jesus also dumped Rick Santorum into fifth place yesterday in New Hampshire. Meanwhile Rick Perry came in fifth in Iowa and last yesterday.

But you can always depend on Jesus when it comes to his one true love, sports, and last weekend he unambiguously played a big role in giving Denver quarterback Tim Tebow a huge win over the Steelers on Sunday.

How do I know that it was Jesus behind that? The head of a Denver Broncos fan site spoke on part 2 of the radio program As It Happens about all the telltale signs that god was actively involved.

He said there was a strange cloud formation in the shape of a halo over the stadium during the game that suggests that Jesus was actually present, in person.

Furthermore Tebow passed for exactly 316 yards and his yards per completion was 31.6. You know what else has that sequence of digits? John 3:16, the one and only biblical verse that many Christians can recite. Tebow would sometimes write that verse number on his eye black and although he did not do so last Sunday, that game was played three years to the day after the first time he did that.

The fan actually missed some other signs. Tebow 10 completed passes, exactly the same number as the commandments god gave to Moses. He had three touchdowns (two passing, one rushing), which of course symbolizes that each member of the Trinity took turns to help with them.

That wealth of evidence is good enough for me. Jesus is back, baby!

Fighting over the baby Jesus’s crib

Many Christians who belong to the Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas on or around January 6 because they follow the older Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar that the rest of the world uses. This gives them a huge advantage since they can do their Christmas shopping after December 25, thus not only avoiding the crowds but also taking advantage of the post-Christmas sales.

I came across this news report that said that priests of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Orthodox Church came to blows over who has the right to clean the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the site that tradition says is where Jesus was born. Each side had come with cleaning materials to clean their assigned area but when one group encroached on the space of another, they used their brooms and mops to wage a pitched battle for supremacy. Watch.
[Read more…]

Stoning in Iran

As a vivid example of the ghastliness that can ensue when religious people gain political power, we have the case of people who are condemned to death by stoning in Iran. According to an ACLU pamphlet that I received, at least 14 people are currently awaiting this form of execution.

Bound, wrapped in shrouds and buried in a pit with head and shoulders above ground, the victims are likely to survive for between 20 minutes and two hours from when the first stone draws blood. The reason they survive so long can be found in the chillingly clinical wording of Article 104 of the Iranian Penal Code:

‘The size of the stone used in stoning shall not be too large to kill the convict by one or two throws and at the same time shall not be too small to be called a stone.’

As can be seen in this passage and in the instruments of torture and death developed during the Inquisition, religious people can be quite ingenious in the careful way they devise ways to prolong the agony of their victims.

One Iranian woman, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, is awaiting such an execution because of an adultery conviction. Maryam Namazie has been highlighting her case, hoping to win her freedom.

That’s a relief

Bolon_Yokte.jpgFor all those people worried about the Mayan prediction that this will be the last year before the world is destroyed on December 21, it appears that a new reading of the Mayan calendar says that it did not predict that the world will end in 2012. It only predicted the return of the god Bolon Yokte, shown on the right.

So who is this Bolon Yokte? And does he/she come in peace or to smite us in the ways that gods seem to enjoy? The image suggests someone with a fierce attitude, which does not look promising. Some have suggested that he is in fact Jesus, but that seems a bit much. The concept of the trinity is mind-boggling enough without adding a fourth incarnation. As they say when it comes to gods, three’s company, but four’s a crowd.

Tebow or not Tebow

Although I have stopped following football, I have been intrigued by the story of Denver quarterback Tim Tebow who frequently drops to one knee in prayer during games (this act of genuflection has even acquired the label ‘to Tebow’ or ‘Tebowing’) and even has biblical verses painted on his face. So much for Jesus’s admonition “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:5-6)

Of course, such ostentatious displays of piety cry out for parody and Saturday Night Live duly obliges.