Christianity is not religion? It’s a philosophy?

My gob, but Bill O’Reilly is an idiot. He had an argument with Dave Silverman tonight, trying to argue that the government has a perfect right to promote Christmas because Christianity is not a religion.

Right. Believing in a dead god who rose again to redeem humanity from sin is only a “philosophy”. Believing in prayer is only a “philosophy”. Believing in an afterlife with a heaven and hell is only a “philosophy”.

The only raving lunatic in this segment is O’Reilly.

Cuttlefish celebrates BillO with a poem about the war on Christmas.

Wasn’t Ron Lindsay just pinin’ for the days of the Accommodation Wars?

Yes, he was. We could happily bring them back, though, because Nicholas Wade is still writing for the NY Times, as Jerry Coyne mentions today.

Wade’s column is practically an exercise in nostalgia, harking all the way back to 2005. He’s very concerned that people are bashing poor Marco Rubio for not understanding that there is no confusion about the age of the earth — it’s 4½ billion, not 6000, years old. Wade is almost Mooneyesque in his tribute to the old tropes. Look here:

The inevitable clash with science, particularly in the teaching of evolution, has continued to this day. Militant atheists like the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins beat the believers about the head, accomplishing nothing; fundamentalist Christians naturally defend their religion and values to the hilt, whatever science may say.

There’s Richard Dawkins! He’s militant! He’s beating up the Christians, who are all just meekly defending themselves!

I swear, I thought we fought our way past those old stereotypes years ago — only the terminally clueless still refer unironically to “militant atheists”. But have no fear, Wade has a solution to the conflict between scientists and creationists: all we need to do is admit that evolution is a theory.

By allowing that evolution is a theory, scientists would hand fundamentalists the fig leaf they need to insist, at least among themselves, that the majestic words of the first chapter of Genesis are literal, not metaphorical, truths. They in return should make no objection to the teaching of evolution in science classes as a theory, which indeed it is.

It’s like one of the oldest creationist misconceptions in the book! Of course it’s a theory, but it’s a scientific theory, which means that it is a broad explanation that encompasses all the available evidence and has excellent predictive power to guide research. It’s not going to console creationists, unless we plan to also encourage them to continue believing that it means “just a guess”. And seriously, Wade believes that that’s enough to make all the creationists in the world simply fold up shop and go back to church, blissful and happy in a world full of singing angels and magic spun sugar fairy-tale castles? That is quite possibly the dumbest resolution of a chronic problem in the conflict between science and religion that I’ve ever read.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: we can solve all the problems in the Middle East by just getting the Jews and Christians and Moslems to admit that they’re all worshipping the same god. Presto! The fighting ends! (Sorry, I just felt my own words were a challenge and had to come up with an even dumber idea.)

And please, if you’ve ever read the Book of Genesis, practically the last word you’d ever apply to it is “majestic”. Petty, tribal, vicious, demented, small-minded, violent, bizarre…those are better words. And the first chapter isn’t really great poetry, I’m sorry to say — if you think otherwise, you’ve been brainwashed by the repetition. I’m really not prepared to abandon a commitment to scientific evidence just so some dim bumpkin can cling to his cherished belief that a poem saying a magic man poofed everything into existence is a deep insight.

I save the worst for last.

A scientific statesman, if there were such a person, would try to defuse the situation by professing respect for all religions and making a grand yet also trivial concession about the status of evolution.

I’m no statesman, but…you will never catch me lying and saying that I respect all religions. I do not, sir. Religions are systematic collections of threats and cajoling lies intended to bully a population into living in fear and supporting a parasitic priestly caste. They do not deserve respect. What they need is dismantling.

You will also not catch me making concessions about science simply to appease pious politicians. I will state the strengths and limitations without regard for the sensibilities of ignorant charlatans.

Damn, I really am not a statesman. But if that’s what a statesman does, you shouldn’t be able to find a scientist so willing to compromise on their principles to be one.

Catholic priests: SHUT UP!

The Irish Catholic bishops have issued a statement on medical care given to Savita Halappanavar…

Wait. What the fuck does anyone care what a mob of ignorant assholes say about reasonable, ethical medical care? I can’t even imagine the degree of arrogance involved for these self-righteous, unqualified old men to be so seriously offering advice on life-or-death issues of obstetrics and gynecology — to be piously asserting their importance even now in the aftermath of a death that would have been avoidable if Catholic doctrine had not meddled.

I can give advice, too. Catholic priests, sit down and shut the fuck up. Learn some humility for once in your privileged, pompous, puffed-up lives. This is the part where you should wake up and realize you are not qualified to run hospitals.

Instead, listen to the doctors. Like Jen Gunter, who finds the bishops’ advice to be inconsistent, incoherent, and confusing. That they even felt that their recommendations would be helpful or needed is damning.

All that their statement tells me is that they haven’t learned a single goddamned thing. They still think they’re qualified to interfere in medical decisions.

Holy Mohler

Did you know that Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has an almost daily round-up of of issues of concern for good conservative Christians called The Briefing? It’s on his website, under the category Urgent, because it’s all very, very important stuff, you know. I browse it occasionally to see what’s making Christian hemorhoids burn now; it’s kind of like the flip side of The Morning Heresy, if Paul Fidalgo were a glassy-eyed regressive conservabot zealot, but it’s not quite as demented as trying to read WingNut Daily — Mohler, dull and blinkered as he is, is someone mainstream religious conservatives take seriously.

Anyway, you might want to look in now and then, just to see what the staidly stupid Christian right is up to. Here’s a summary of a recent edition:

  1. He defends Black Friday, that orgy of raging consumerism, because “Christians must understand the moral complexity of a market economy”, and we must support retailers so they can keep people employed. What would Jesus say?

  2. Something I agree with: the state should not be involved in religious education at all. Of course, his reasons are a little different: it’s because state religion is a “tepid, lukewarm, lifeless distortion of Christianity” which led people like Dawkins and Hitchens to repudiate religion altogether.

  3. OMG, the University of Wisconsin-Madison funded the Atheists, Humanists and Agnostics student group on campus, to a degree comparable to that of Christian clubs! Beware, those universities are hotbeds of secularism.

  4. Paul Krugman has “assaulted” Marco Rubio for being a creationist. Doesn’t Krugman realize that this means he denies the truths revealed in the Bible?

  5. Britain isn’t making typewriters anymore. How sad. That damn future keeps rising up and burying the antique relics that established his worldview.

The nice thing about it is that you quickly realize that Christians and atheists are mostly interested in exactly the same issues. The big difference: Christians are mostly wrong about everything.

Eulogy for a lost mind

As some of you may know, both Aron Ra and I cut our teeth together in the creation/evolution battles that raged on the usenet newsgroup, talk.origins, back in the 1990s. One of our colleagues-in-arms was a fellow named Glenn Morton, a petroleum geologist, who brought his expertise to bear in debates with young earth creationists. Morton is a Christian, but he thought it was disgraceful how creationists brought his faith into disrepute with their flouting of the evidence.

One of the concepts he crystallized, in addition, was the idea of Morton’s Demon. One of the notable things about arguments with creationists (perhaps you’ve noticed this too) is how they can stand there slack-jawed and dead-eyed while you explain an uncomfortable fact to them, and how they’ll suddenly leap into action when you say some word or phrase that cues a creationist script — you can be describing how the chemistry of the cell works, for instance, and if you mention “thermodynamics” suddenly you’ll get “The second law of thermodynamics proves that everything trends towards disorder, and is proof of a Fallen World!”…followed by slack passivity as you explain that no, it does no such thing. Morton’s Demon is the mental game creationists have going: they selectively shut out evidence against their pet theories and only allow in ideas their pastor has assured them are completely wrong.

Aron has now made me very sad. It turns out Morton’s Demon was an especially appropriate name for the concept, because Glenn Morton is severely afflicted with one. He escaped the Young Earth Creationist trap because his work exposed him to the counter-evidence every day, hammering the YEC-demon into submission…but I mentioned that he was a Christian. It turns out that he’s a right-wing conservative Christian, with a fully functioning filter tuned to select out anything from any source other than Limbaughesque talk radio.

Glenn Morton has torn down the entirety of his web archive — years worth of articles and explanations refuting young earth creationism. Why?

Because it turns out he was less interested in addressing the truth than he was in defending Christianity. Atheists and agnostics had been using his evidence to argue not only against Biblical literalists and religious extremists, but against the entirety of Christianity. Arguing against religion is bigotry, you see, and he got tired of all those liberal leftist godless bullies who have taken over his country.

It’s an epic, rambling, incoherent, angry rant.

The powers that be think that everyone MUST be forced to pay for contraception for the YES, slutty life style of Sandra Fluck who gave a speech at the Democratic convention bemoaning that we don’t pay for her contraception. (Rush Limbaugh got in lots of trouble for saying she is a slut, yet it is Sandra who wants to live a life of sex where everyone else pays to keep her from getting pregnant). Why must I as a Christian, who thinks such behavior abysmal, sinful and self destructive pay for her to have sexcapades without consequences? Why must my taxes be used to support what I view as her responsibility? Why does she have a right to pick the money in my pocket when she didn’t earn it? But, it seems, if you question this simple fact in today’s world, everyone will cluck their tongues at you, making you out to be the evil one. Why is it that they think that everyone MUST be forced to believe that what Sandra does is OK AND PAY FOR HER TO HAVE PLEASURE WITHOUT WORRY FOR THE CONSEQUENCES???? She can do what she wants, but don’t ask me to pay for it and don’t force me to approve of her behavior. The modern political left, and make no doubt, most anti-YEC folk are from the political left, want to enforce their conformity upon us because we can not be allowed to actually have an independent view of Sandra Fluck’s behavior or anything else, including anything they deem to be wrong. That is not to be allowed. Enforced conformity is what they want. I must smile while I give Sandra my money to pay for her sexcapades.

I think he means Sandra Fluke. Her speech wasn’t about paying for her hedonistic pleasure, but that the omission of contraception from her school’s insurance plan was a selective disadvantage to low-income students, and she talked about a friend whose contraceptive prescription was necessary to manage polycystic ovary syndrome. But Morton’s Demon won’t let him hear that…all that gets through is “sexcapades.”

He also rages against the expectation that Catholic organizations should cover birth control and abortions in their hospitals — it’s abhorrent to them, you know, and therefore their personal opinions should be allowed to dictate how non-Catholics live their lives. Chick-Fil-A should have the freedom of speech to hate gays…but their customers should not, apparently, be allowed to choose where they eat. The religious ought to be allowed to put up monuments in the public square, because removing them is a theological view.

And apparently the Democrats are a “leftist party” that hates god.

I watched the leftist party vote 3 times to drop God and Jerusalem and then watched their leaders steal that election on national TV and everyone knows that election was stolen. but then I watched delegates of the convention saying church goers weren’t welcome in their party.

Do follow that last link. It doesn’t say what Morton says it does — it’s about some Democrats expressing contempt for red-necked Teabaggers, not church goers (which would be very odd, given we just elected a church goer to the presidency). Morton’s Demon strikes again.

He goes on and on. He’s all for teaching young earth creationism and racism in the classroom despite disagreeing with them and recognizing that they’re built on lies, but gosh darn it all to heck, he’s absolutely committed to freedom. He has shut down all of his evidence-based arguments against young earth creationism because he’s a freedom fighter. And he really, really hates atheists.

I no longer want to worry about what a YEC believes. I no longer wish to be used to destroy my religion. The American Indians lost because the tribes hated each other more than the English and they couldn’t join together to beat them. The Scots lost to the English for the same reason. I do not intend to make the same mistake with the atheist war on religion. It doesn’t matter one whit that someone is a YEC and I am not, it does not matter a whit if I am protestant and someone else is Catholic, or Mormon. I urge all religious peoples to cease bickering about such trifles, when the wolf is at our door. We are in danger of losing our religious freedom, I will NOT argue inconsequential stuff with my co-religionists, ignoring the real danger to our religion, you, the religious bigot and Christophobe. YEC is a trifle; a mere philosophical debate. Freedom is dear; and you, the religious bigot, are a danger to my freedom.

I will note the irony of his signature, which has included this comment for a long, long time:

Banned forever by the Amer. Scientific Affiliation, a Christian Scientific Group, for the crime of discussing the ethics of ignoring scientific data.

Apparently it’s not unethical to ignore the scientific data if it contradicts the teaching of your church. Morton’s Demon strikes again!

Unfortunately for Morton’s goals, his diatribe simply reaffirms to me that religion poisons the mind…or that minds poisoned by an information deficit are more receptive to religion. Either way, it’s a shame.

In case you’re wondering what got him kicked out of the ASA, it’s buried in a thread here. It was a fight over Morton’s climate change denialism, and I notice that he announced his resignation.

Are you smarter than a Hovind?

The proof of god is that without god you can’t know anything. You either have to know everything in order to say you know anything, or you have to have somebody who knows everything tell you what’s true. That’s Eric Hovind’s argument, in response to a question from a sixth grader who seems to be about ten times as smart as a Hovind.

It seems to me that if we have any other method than divine authority that allows us to know anything, Hovind’s assertion is proven false and his premise crumbles.

The Magic Wand of World Peace

Oh, no…I have to defend Sam Harris a little bit even while disagreeing with him! There was a strange flare-up, a revival of an old interview with Harris from 6 years ago, in which he said something controversial:

If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.

This is one of those fraught philosophical scenarios loaded with emotional biases against an unrealistic, overly simplified moral dilemma that can never occur in the real world, and all I can say is…I hate those things. And there it was, all over twitter, and people were emailing me about it, and I just wanted the stupid story to go away, but now David Futrelle has highlighted it and John Wilkins has storified it.

[Read more…]

It’s time to abort the Catholic Church

Bloody butchers and pious toads who mask their medieval ignorance with a pretense of charity and care; it’s long past time to end the illusion and recognize the barbarism of the church. Shut ’em down.

The latest victim in over a millennium of Catholic abuse is Savita Halappanavar, a young woman who was 17 weeks pregnant when her condition began to deteriorate. She went to a Catholic hospital, a fatal mistake.

…she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, Ms Halappanavar asked for a medical termination.

This was refused, he says, because the foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.

She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the foetal heartbeat stopped.

She was clearly miscarrying, she was fully dilated and leaking amniotic fluid, and it was obvious to all, including the doctors at the hospital, that this pregnancy was doomed — there was no hope for the fetus at all. Yet they refused to do the one simple, ethical procedure that would have saved Halappanavar’s life.

Because of a simple-minded, naive, stupid attachment to the magical power of twitching cardiac muscle fibers. Because dogma and superstition stayed their hands.

Because it was a fucking Catholic hospital in a Catholic country.

Because doctors had been indoctrinated since childhood in lies that were shown to be false during their medical training, but which they could not overcome; because hospital administrators put their faith above their obligation to serve patients; because lawmakers in that country shied away from learning how their policies killed women; because a mob of celibate old puppetmasters don’t give a damn about anything other than their theology and will happily sacrifice human beings on the altar of their vile and backward religion.

The end result: a septicemic infection swept through the gaping wound of Halappanavar’s cervix, killing her, after days of agony. The pope and his bishops, and the faithful Catholics in that hospital, killed her as surely as if they’d taken a scalpel to her throat — which would have been a more merciful death than the misery they put her through.

Monsters, every one of them.

Seriously, shut them down. There is no acceptable reason that any hospital in any country should be shackled by the antiquated beliefs of Catholicism. Catholics should no more be permitted to manage hospitals than Jehovah’s Witnesses are permitted to regulate blood transfusions. We are talking about simple, routine procedures that could save lives that are disallowed by a church. What are they doing in the surgery in the first place?

The Catholic bishops have a rationalization.

For those who view life through the lens of their Christian faith, our bodies are sacred; temples of the Holy Spirit, created in the image of God and redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For Christians, our bodies are not our own to do with them what we will. Our bodies come from God, are created in God’s image and destined for eternal life with him in heaven. This is our faith and this is what distinguishes us from those who do not share our faith.

Jebus, what blithering tripe, what pious inanities. This is only the latest atrocity. Fuck the Catholic church. Empty every pew, loot every coffer, disband every level of the hierarchy, take all their property and turn it over to secular authorities to be managed ethically and rationally.

And if you’re still attending church…what the hell is wrong with you?

Shining a light on cockroaches

Australia is doing the right thing and launching a royal commission into child abuse. It is clearly motivated by recent revelations that the Catholic church (of course!) has been covering up instances of child rape, but the commission will rightly look at “all religious organisations, state care providers, not-for-profit bodies as well as the responses of child service agencies and the police”.

But don’t get too excited yet. Governments sometimes use the formation of a committee as an excuse to avoid doing something more substantial. The proof will be in what they accomplish, not whether the committee exists and holds meetings.

Also, George Pell has announced his approval of the commission, which would be suspicious if Pell weren’t so goddamned stupid. He thinks it will vindicate the church. I don’t think so.

  • 400 known victims of child sexual abuse by clergy

  • 11 clergy charged and convicted since 1995

  • 6 Catholic teachers convicted since 1995

  • 3 priests currently on trial

  • First priest charged this year with concealing the crimes of another

  • 12 priests involved in substantial compensation claims

  • Highest known compensation payout to a victim – $3 million

The facts are no friend to the Catholic church. Let’s just hope the commission exposes those facts.