The talk I gave at to the CWRU chapter of the Center for Inquiry on Why Atheism is Winning produced a lively discussion. The talk lasted for about an hour and was followed by a Q&A that lasted for almost 90 minutes with most people sticking around for the full period.
Both the talk and the Q&A will be posted soon for viewing.
UPDATE: The hour-long talk is now up on YouTube.
I will upload later the lively Q&A that followed the talk.
In an earlier post, I wondered how long it would take for religious nutters to say the recent earthquakes were due to god, who seems to be really cranky, getting ticked off about something or the other. I expected the usual suspects: gays, feminists, abortion, etc. But to my surprise it turns out that it is Japanese atheists who are the cause.
Senior pastor Cho Yong-gi of Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest Christian church in the world [my italics], has faced vicious public condemnation as he called the catastrophic Japanese quakes and tsunamis “God’s warnings.”
“I fear that this disaster may be warnings from God against the Japanese people’s atheism and materialism,” an online Christian press quoted the elderly religious leader as saying Saturday.
“I hope that these series of events will drive the Japanese to turn their eyes towards God.”
Of course, in the midst of the massive death toll there was the usual praise for god for not killing people in an in-group.
Meanwhile, Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon-soo also came close to facing similar public blame with his Twitter remarks.
“I thank God and my ancestors for keeping the Korean peninsula safe,” the Catholic governor wrote on his Twitter on Sunday. “The disaster left more than 2,500 dead or injured and 10,000 missing.”
How thoughtful of god to single the Korean in-group for preservation while slaughtering those in the Japanese out-group! This must prove that Korea is god’s chosen country. Take that, America!
The woman in the following video claims that the events in Japan were in response to her prayers at the beginning of Lent (which was last Wednesday) to teach all the atheists who are around her a lesson. She is thrilled that god responded within two days and says that if more people pray with her during Lent, she is sure that by the end of Lent god will similarly smite those other hotbeds of atheism, namely Europe and the US. (She must have been reading my series on why atheism is winning.)
This was so over the top that I watched closely to see if there was any indication that this was an Onion-type parody but it seems genuine. She is actually taking delight in the massive death and destruction in Japan as answers to her prayers.
It is sad what religion can do to people.
I will be giving a talk on this topic on Wednesday, March 16 at 7:00 pm in the 1914 Lounge in Thwing student center on the CWRU campus. It is free and open to the public and free food is provided to compensate you for having to listen to me. The talk is sponsored by the Center for Inquiry.
In my talks, in addition to the tradition Q&A and discussion at the end, I also encourage people to question and comment during the presentation, so come along with your ideas.
We have had two natural disasters in quick succession that have killed and injured a lot of people and inflicted considerable damage: The earthquake in New Zealand and the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan.
I am wondering how long it will take before the religious nutters (and I am looking at you Pat Robertson) come out and say that this must be because god is angry with us about something. I am not sure what god could be angry about in these cases but you can be sure that it contravened something in the book of Leviticus or some surah in the Koran.
Since god tends to use very blunt instruments as punishments, indulging in mass killings and wanton destruction that destroy men, women, children, and the elderly indiscriminately, what ticked him off in these cases need not be due to anything that happened in those countries. It could well be that he was angry that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was repealed in the US, but didn’t want to hurt people here because as his chosen people and country, we are special in his eyes.
In an article titled Why evangelicals hate Jesus, Phil Zuckerman says:
White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ, who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily, listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message.
A British university scientist who is also an imam of his mosque received death threats for saying in a lecture that Darwin’s theory of evolution is consistent with Islam.
Masjid Tawhid is a prominent mosque which also runs one of the country’s largest sharia courts, the Islamic Sharia Council. In January, Dr Hasan delivered a lecture there detailing why he felt the theory of evolution and Islam were compatible – a position that is not unusual among many Islamic scholars with scientific backgrounds. But the lecture was interrupted by men he described as “fanatics” who distributed leaflets claiming that “Darwin is blasphemy”.
“One man came up to me during the lecture and said ‘You are an apostate and should be killed’,” Dr Hasan told The Independent.
You would think that he would leave such an intolerant mosque and join another but such is the hold that religion has on people that he preferred to apologize and say he was wrong.
Instead his father, Suhaib, head of the mosque’s committee of trustees, posted a notice on his behalf expressing regret over his comments. “I seek Allah’s forgiveness for my mistakes and apologise for any offence caused,” the statement read.
…
“I want to go back – I’ve been going to the mosque for 25 years. It is my favourite mosque in London, and I have been active in the community for a long time. I hope my positive contribution will outweigh their feelings towards me.”
(via Machines Like Us)
Thanks to Machines Like Us I learned about a cable access call-in TV show in Austin, TX called The Atheist Experience. The hosts of this show take exactly the right approach. In this clip, a Christian caller gets stumped (as so many tend to do) when asked to explain why he believes in god and the Christian god in particular.
You would think that this is the question for believers and that they would have thought deeply about it. And yet when you ask them directly, they act as if the question had never occurred to them and flounder around.
Taking pity on the caller’s inability to articulate any reason, the hosts of the show then very eloquently explain why they themselves became atheists.
Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman in a long article titled Why the gods are not winning say that, “Women church goers greatly outnumber men, who find church too dull. Here’s the kicker. Children tend to pick up their beliefs from their fathers. So, despite a vibrant evangelical youth cohort, young Americans taken as a whole are the least religious and most culturally tolerant age group in the nation.” (My italics)
The paper does not provide citations, unfortunately, though I did find a little support in the literature for the claim. For example, in a paper titled On the Relative Influence of Mothers and Fathers: A Covariance Analysis of Political and Religious Socialization (August 1978, JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY, vol. 40, no. 3, p. 519-530) authors Alan C. Acock and Vern L. Bengtson say that “The mother consistently appears more predictive in most areas we examined and is often the dominant parent in terms of prediction. The only areas in which the fathers had a slight edge were in Religious Behavior, Religiosity, and Tolerance of Deviance.”
My parents had similar religious beliefs so I cannot tell who influenced me more. I had not been aware of the greater influence of fathers on children’s religious beliefs and am curious if this statement is consistent with the experiences of readers of this blog.
So are your religious views closer to your father or your mother?
I have never understood how modern societies permit male circumcision while they rightly condemns the female variants. It seems like as long as some practice is old and stamped with the word ‘approved by religious authorities’, it is exempt from the usual protections we give children.
I am glad to see that the creator of Jesus and Mo shares my concern.