Archive for the 'Religion'

It’s a very familiar story: atheist student sits in class, looks up, notices the school administration has plastered the walls with pious Bible nonsense, and sics the FFRF on ‘em. The usual response occurred: the town is up in arms, local churches whine about “Christianity under attack!”, bullies begin lashing out at those who don’t go to church, Christians start claiming that the majority rules, therefore they get to violate the constitution. The amazing thing is that Pulliam is still optimistic that he’ll be able to finish up his last year of high school there without serious repercussions. He has high hopes that the students and teachers will not hold his actions against him. I hope he’s right — not just for his sake, but because it would be good to see signs that the religious fanatics can back down when they’re clearly in the wrong.

I read this and thought, “but you’re alone either way!” It tells you all you need to know about the people who endorse that kind of message, anyway. (Sharing because I disagree!)

Hey, I thought Europe was more secular…so why is this poll going the wrong way? Oh, because it’s in Catholic Austria. In German: Sollen Kruzifixe aus den Klassenzimmern verbannt werden? 17,68% – Ja, denn Religion soll Privatsache bleiben. 77,04% – Nein, denn das Christentum hat in Österreich jahrhundertelange Tradition. 5,28% – Egal, es liegt sowieso an den Eltern, ihren Kindern Religion nahezubringen. Auf Englisch: Should crucifixes should be banned from classrooms? 17.68% – Yes, because religion should remain a private matter. 77.04% – No, because Christianity has centuries-long tradition in Austria. 5.28% – Doesn’t matter, it is up to the parents to bring their children up in a religion. Can a bunch of Americans reverse this trend? That would be weird.

And he offers a historical perspective on Skepticism and Religion. Enlightenment theologians had to strike a bargain with scientific skepticism since they were terrified by a different, far older kind of skepticism: ancient Greek Skepticism. This rationalistic skepticism demanded high standards of provability before accepting anything as knowledge. The basic idea for a rationalist skeptic during the Enlightenment was something like this: Where reason and empirical inquiry cannot confirm, it must be disbelieved as unreasonable. For this rationalist skepticism, all the gods must go. The core of religion, and not just the claptrap, is entirely unreasonable and unbelievable, since no theological argument demonstrates a god’s existence and no empirical evidence is sufficient to support a god’s existence. Instead of saying "No Comment" to religion’s core claims, rationalist skepticism says "That’s unreasonable for anyone to accept." To this day, many skeptics rely on both scientific skepticism and rationalist skepticism. It’s all about the appropriate use of reason. That is why being a genuine skeptic means being a disbeliever and being open about disbelieving everything religions talk about. But joining up with this current Skeptic(TM) movement means never having to tell the faithful how their god isn’t real. Is that too big a price to pay, to get more science accommodated by society? To answer that last question, yes, it’s much too high a price to pay, especially since we aren’t getting a reasonable return on the investment. Science is a disruptive, revolutionary force, and lying about its implications does not lead to acceptance — it leads only to acceptance of an insipid shadow of science.

Some Christian dorkasaur named Gene Mims has an argument for silencing atheists. It’s about unicorns. Unicorns Stay with me for a moment and I think I can give you a better understanding to my perplexity concerning atheists.  You see I do not believe in unicorns.  You may and that is surely your right, but I don’t.  They are cute in cartoons, movies, and comic books, but I must confess that I don’t believe in them.  So what’s the point.  The point is that since I don’t believe in unicorns I don’t give them much thought.  I don’t write about them or speak about them.  I don’t go to conferences on how to stop people from believing in them.  I do not fund legal societies to stop people from being able to talk about unicorns in schools and public places.  I  don’t worry if people celebrate holidays dedicated to unicorns.  For me they don’t exist. Give It Up To all bent-out-of-shape atheists I say simply, GIVE IT UP! Find something else to worry about like global warming, Republicans, education, war, and rain forest destruction.  Let those who believe in God alone.  If He doesn’t exist then why all the worry and concern?  If He does exist then you don’t care anyway.  He won’t bother you.  Try not to be bothered by what you don’t believe in and work on what you do know. The more you talk about God the more likely it is that those who may share your position might begin to doubt it and actually search for Him and find Him. Aww, we have something in common. I don’t believe in unicorns, either! So I don’t spend much time dwelling on them, myself. We’re both a-unicornists! We should form a club. Of course, there’s a reason I don’t worry much about unicorns or unicorn believers. We don’t have institutions dedicated to preaching about unicorns every week. People don’t get tax breaks for believing in unicorns. Unicornists don’t have a de facto lock on elected office....
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