As readers have pointed out many times before, the claims of creationists are so bizarre that it is hard to distinguish the sites of genuine believers from parody sites. One site that has puzzled many people and media outlets is ChristWire. One item that gave tips to women on how to find out if their husbands were gay, went viral, with many news organizations not realizing that they had been had. Some genuine Christian writers allowed their material to be reposted on the site, not realizing that their work was embedded amongst parody items.

Interestingly, the creators of this particular parody site are themselves believers, one calling himself an observant Catholic and the other a religious Protestant.

The evidence that religion is losing the battle of ideas keeps coming in from all sides. A new Pew survey compares the attitudes of the various generational age cohorts that it identifies by the years in which they were born and labels as the Greatest (before 1926), the Silents (1927-1944), the Baby Boomers (1945-1964), the Gen Xers (1965-1979), and the Millennials (1980-1992), and finds that:

Younger generations also are significantly less likely than older ones to affiliate with a religious tradition. This pattern began in the 1970s when 13% of Baby Boomers were unaffiliated with any particular religion, according to the General Social Survey. That compared with just 6% among the Silent generation and 3% among the Greatest generation.

In the most recent General Social Survey, 26% of Millennial generation respondents said they were unaffiliated, as did 21% of Gen Xers. Among Baby Boomers, 15% were unaffiliated – not significantly different from when they were first measured in the 1970s. And just 10% of the Silent Generation said that they were unaffiliated.

The report goes on to say that “Fewer than half of Millennials (46%) say religious faith and values have been very important in America’s success. This compares with 64% of Xers, 69% of Boomers and 78% of Silents.”

Meanwhile the Barna group, an outfit that regularly conducts religious surveys, finds six reasons “why nearly three out of every five young Christians (59%) disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15.”

1. Churches seem overprotective
2. Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow
3. Churches come across as antagonistic to science
4. Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental
5. They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity
6. The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt

I found items #3 and #6 particularly interesting. On item #3, the report found:

One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is “Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that “Christianity is anti-science” (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have “been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.” Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.

As regards item #6, the report said:

Young adults with Christian experience say the church is not a place that allows them to express doubts. They do not feel safe admitting that sometimes Christianity does not make sense. In addition, many feel that the church’s response to doubt is trivial. Some of the perceptions in this regard include not being able “to ask my most pressing life questions in church” (36%) and having “significant intellectual doubts about my faith” (23%).

It should be clear that this survey looked at disengagement from church life, not necessarily from belief in god. But once people get disengaged from the groupthink of their churches that gives them the illusion that believing in fantasies is reasonable since everyone around them believes in the same fantasies, many of them will shift to unbelief.

What this survey reinforces is what I have been saying for some time, that the forces of modernity are in opposition to those of religion. Religion is backward looking and opposed to the growth of knowledge in general, science in particular, and to increasingly liberal attitudes towards sexuality. Modernity is an unstoppable force and religion cannot hold it back.

Robert Schuller is of these typical televangelists, a servant of god who managed to persuade enough suckers to fund his high lifestyle and build his vanity project, the Crystal Cathedral. The church has fallen on hard times and filed for bankruptcy and court documents allege that Schuller family raided the endowment to the tune of $10 million.

But that has not stopped the greed of Schuller. Recently his wife fell ill with pneumonia and he asked the congregation to provide meals. Why someone with all his money needs food donations at all is unclear but what has outraged some members is the extraordinary sense of entitlement embedded in the request. The Schullers asked “that the meals be low in sodium and include items such as fruit, meats, soup and egg dishes such as quiches” and that the meals be dropped off in the cathedral’s tower lobby at 4:30 pm each day so the Schuller’s limo driver could pick them up and take to their home.

Presumably this arrangement was so that the Schullers are not disturbed by the riff-raff actually coming to their home. I don’t know why this would be a problem, since his butler could have sent the people around to the servant’s entrance where the footmen or the kitchen maids could have accepted the food donations and checked to see if they met their standards.

Last Friday, I took part in a panel discussion on the topic: “What is the role of religion at a secular university? Should we support it, promote it, accommodate it, respect it, or just ignore it?”

The event was moderated by a professor in the department of religious studies who specializes in Buddhism and the panel consisted of the chair of that same department (whose area is Judaism), the director of student activities program that oversees student organizations, and myself. The session began with each of us speaking for about five minutes and then the floor was opened up for discussions. It was a lively session with a sizeable number of faculty, students, and staff present. I am not going to try and summarize the entire discussion since I did not take any notes but just focus on my own impressionistic views, paraphrasing some of what people said.
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[UPDATE2: The Q/A session following the debate has been added below the debate video.]

[UPDATE: I have now watched the video and I think I know why Haught was upset and did not want the video released. Coyne was direct and uncompromising (which anyone who has read his stuff should have expected) but I don’t think that that was the problem. It was because Coyne used direct quotes from Haught to make his argument that theology can only make science and religion seem compatible by using a fog of language and metaphor. By quoting all those passages from Haught’s books, Coyne essentially provided a template and all the ammunition anyone needs to effectively debate Haught in the future.]

The much talked about video of the debate between theologian John Haught and scientist Jerry Coyne is now available. I have not had time to watch it yet but Coyne says that it consists of the two 25-minute talks. The PowerPoint slides that accompanied the talks can be downloaded separately and he recommends that you do that and follow along.

The Q/A that followed is not shown and that’s a pity. I find that the Q/A sessions are sometimes the best part of the talk. They enable the speakers to clarify and sharpen their ideas. In fact, when I give talks I often encourage the audience to jump in with questions at any time and even build in time during the talk for such exchanges.

Haught and Coyne’s talks:

2011 Bale Boone Symposium – Science & Religion: Are They Compatible? from UK Gaines Center on Vimeo.

Q/A session:

Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? October 12, 2011 Q+A with Jerry Coyne and John Haught from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo.

Yesterday I wrote about the bizarre situation where Catholic theologian John Haught had objected to the release of the video of the debate that he had with Jerry Coyne. That refusal caused quite a furor in the blog world and as a result, Haught has relented.

You can read Haught’s explanation for his initial refusal and subsequent reversal, and Coyne’s response follows immediately after. What I want to highlight is Haught’s extraordinarily patronizing claim that he was trying to protect our delicate sensibilities from being offended by having to listen to what Coyne had to say.

But let me come to the main reason why I have been reluctant to give permission to release the video. It is not for anything that I said during our encounter, but for a reason that I have never witnessed in public academic discussion before.

I’m still in shock at how your presentation ended up. I was so offended both personally and as an academic by the vulgarity of it all that I did not want other people to have to share what I witnessed that night in October. I still don’t.
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You should be grateful that I have tried to protect the public from such a preposterous and logic-offending way of bringing your presentation to a close.

It is preposterous to think that the kinds of people who would take the trouble to watch a debate between a theologian and a scientist are like stereotypical Victorian ladies who might swoon and have to reach for their smelling salts. We can judge perfectly well for ourselves who comported themselves well and who didn’t.

All Haught has done is vastly increase the interest in watching the debate. He may want to buy stock in companies that sell smelling salts.

I have said many times before, especially in my series on Why atheism is winning, that religion has lost the argument. Modern science has revealed the poverty of even the most sophisticated arguments for god. As further evidence, Jerry Coyne shares the extraordinary events that followed his debate with theologian John Haught.

On October 12 at the University of Kentucky, I debated Catholic theologian John Haught from Georgetown University on the topic of “Are science and religion compatible?” It was a lively debate, and I believe I got the better of the man (see my post-debate report here). Haught didn’t seem to have prepared for the debate, merely rolling out his tired old trope of a “layered” universe, with the layer of God and Jesus underlying the reality of the cosmos, life, and evolution. I prepared pretty thoroughly, reading half a dozen of Haught’s books (you need read only one: they’re all the same), and watching all his previous debates on YouTube. (Note that he’s sanctioned release of those videos.)

Haught seemed to have admitted his loss, at least judging by the audience reaction, but blamed it on the presence of “Jerry’s groupies,” an explanation I found offensive. I’m not aware of any groupies anywhere, much less in Kentucky!

The debate, including half an hour of audience questions, was videotaped. Both John and I had given our permission in advance for the taping. I looked forward to the release of the tape because, of course, I wanted a wider audience for my views than just the people in the audience in Lexington. I put a lot of work into my 25-minute talk, and was eager for others to see why I found science and religion to be at odds.

Well, you’re not going to see that tape—ever. After agreeing to be taped, Haught decided that he didn’t want the video released.
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I am deeply angry about this stand, and can see only one reason for what Haught has done: cowardice. He lost the debate; his ideas were exposed for the mindless theological fluff that they were; and I used his words against him, showing that even “sophisticated” theology, when examined under the microscope of reason, is just a bunch of made-up stuff, tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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The only good thing to come from this affair is that it exposes not only the follies of “sophisticated” theology, but the cowardice of a famous theologian. (Haught is the most prominent American theologian who writes about evolution and its comity with religion.) If Haught can’t win a debate, then he’ll use all his God-given powers to prevent anyone from seeing his weaknesses. I’ve written to other well-known atheists who have debated theologians, and not one of them is aware of anything like this ever happening.

This is shameful behavior by Haught.

PZ Myers makes the strong argument that this practice is nothing but ritualized child abuse.

It is quite amazing how we accept as normal long-standing practices that, if they were not covered by the protective umbrella of old religions, we would reject with horror otherwise as the actions of cults or barbarians.

The Daily Show has more on the bizarre things that religious people believe and do.

Some time ago I wrote about ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel raining big gobs of spit on a reporter because she was using a tape recorder on the Sabbath and thus violating one of the numerous rules prohibiting work on that day.

Now we have another disgusting story of Ultra-Orthodox Jews throwing eggs and feces at young girls on their way to and from their school, accusing them of sluttishness. What makes this even more noteworthy is that the targets of this abuse, the girls and their families, are themselves Orthodox Jews but they are considered not conservative enough for these god-fearing people.

I am sure that the people indulging in this appalling behavior are convinced that they are doing the will of god. This is what religious devotion can lead to. Deeply religious people can act like jerks or criminals or thugs or even murderers and actually feel virtuous about doing so, because they think that god commanded them to act in this way.

Tana Ganeva points to various data that support this idea.

1. American religious belief is becoming more fractured.
2. Non-belief — and acceptance of non-belief — on the rise
3. Growing numbers of young people who do not identify as religious
4. Hate group that exploited religion to bash gays hemorrhaging funds
5. Getting married by friends

What the last item refers to is that more and more people are not getting married with the trappings of religion, choosing instead more informal, secular wedding ceremonies.