Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish get another drubbing, this time at the hands of Matt Taibbi. I’d almost feel sorry for them, except that I’m still feeling the trauma of being trapped on a plane with Eagleton’s book, so I say…sic ’em.
This latest salvo is fired by author/professor Stanley Fish, a prominent religion-peddler of the pointy-headed, turtlenecked genus, who made his case in his blog at the New York Times. Fish was mostly riffing on a recent book written by the windily pompous University of Manchester professor Terry Eagleton, a pudgily superior type, physically resembling a giant runny nose, who seems to have been raised by indulgent aunts who gave him sweets every time he corrected the grammar of other children. The esteemed professor’s new book is called Reason, Faith and Revolution, and it’s sort of an answer to the popular atheist literature of people like Richard Dawkins and Chris Hitchens. If you ever want to give yourself a really good, throbbing headache, go online and check out Eagleton’s lectures at Yale, upon which the book was based, in which one may listen to this soft-soaping old toady do his verbose best to stick his tongue as far as he can up the anus of the next generation of the American upper class.
I am so in love with Matt Taibbi.
…taking notes here,in case I need any beautifully crafted insults in the future…:-)
The comment about Dawkins being humorless and making atheism into a religion seemed a bit gratuitous but otherwise great.
Sorry for this totally unrelated comment but we have the possible start of a crackergate in Belgium
http://www.belgianatheist.com/2009/05/crackergate-in-belgium.html
A local magazine has some fake crackers with the text “eat this it is my body” has already provoked outrage from bishops, cardinals, priests.
The comment section on her site already has some good catholics expressing fatwa envy.
Yup, I’m loving it ;-)
(for the moment there are only dutch comments and they are moderated)
http://www.goedelemagazine.be/index.php/2009/05/06/goedele-9-nu-in-de-winkel-2/
Ha, religion is one thing, obfuscation is another! No, wait a minute! Isn’t it great to have two trains of thought that wholly complement each other? Moronic religion and morons.
**reads review***
Reads Pharyngula…
PZ… you need to introduce yourself to Mr. Taibbi. Your lack of “a priori“‘s will make him an instant fan of yours.
Wow. From the excerpts Taibbi quotes, I can certainly imagine the sort of mental self-flagellation it must have been to read Eagleton’s book from cover to cover. It never ceases to amaze me how apologists can score one “own goal” after another and chuckle to themselves about how the other team couldn’t possibly catch up.
The “Yeti” analogy was hilarious. “God isn’t like a Yeti! He’s more like an imaginary friend!” Brilliant. I guess we’re not supposed to criticize a hypothesis for being unverified if there’s no hope that it ever will be.
Then there’s the idiotic verbage about certainty. He trots out the old binning fallacy, where he cleverly illustrates that since neither the falsity of religion and the law of gravity are absolutely certain, it makes perfect sense to believe in God and step off tall buildings. That old canard aside, though, he really doesn’t understand that what’s wrong with faith isn’t that it’s certain or uncertain, but that it’s an unjustified exaggeration of certainty. It arbitrarily takes a small set of wildly unlikely claims out of an effectively infinite sea of wildly unlikely claims and, without benefit of evidence or reason, promotes them as at least credible, if not certain.
I must be a bit thick, because I have no clue as to what he means by this. Atheism “a kind of religion unto itself.”?
Does me mean because we talk about it in public and sell books about it? The humourless part is also contra to the facts.
I am so jealous! It sounds like Eagleton had an idyllic childhood! (But Taibbi forgot the “maiden” in “maiden aunts”.)
These are the heroes who take the bullet for us, so we don’t have to read this trash.
“…in which one may listen to this soft-soaping old toady do his verbose best to stick his tongue as far as he can up the anus of the next generation of the American upper class.”
I love that quote! Every morning should start with a really good laugh out loud moment. It is reviews like this that makes one appreciate the people who read this garbage that those of us with more delicate sensibilities dread to.
That is hilarious. Not exactly the visualization I needed first thing in the morning, however. And before I was even finished with my first cup of coffee. Scarred for life, I tell ya.
“[P]eddler of the pointy-headed, turtlenecked genus” and “a pudgily superior type, physically resembling a giant runny nose”? I hope Matt Taibbi’s blog post had more in it than what was quoted, because that part looks like nothing more than a long-winded ad hominem.
Yeah, yeah, Taibbi’s great.
But where is my cephaloporn?
Don’t tell me I stayed up late, and still didn’t get any cephaloporn!
And another one lacking any understanding of the things they talk about,namely the ad hominem fallacy.
Cory Albrecht: It’s not ad hominem; it’s insult. He isn’t claiming that Eaglefish’s pointy-headed runny-noseness makes them wrong. He’s just insulting them, a different thing all together. He gets into their arguments afterwards.
Ugh! I wrote “them” for Eaglefish. I fail ludicrously pretending 2 people are one forever. That is why Eagleton is famous and I am not.
Ewwww…that fat, pious tongue flapping up someone’s ass.
Some design.
So Fishleton indiscriminately vomits ‘a priori’. I much prefer an ‘a posteriori’
God People? That’s ok. I prefer the term ‘God Huggers’ myself.
You’re not the only one. We need to clone that man. A few dozen more like him writing away and we might actually begin to right our listing ship of state.
Of course David Lodge long since did a pretty good number on those two in the guise of Morris Zapp and Phillip Swallow.
Jason@20: God Huggers is OK. I still like the classic “God botherers” though; it has that amusing element of “Even if God existed he’s think these people are dicks for asking him stuff all the time”.
I haven’t heard of Terry before but am listening to his “Faith and Reason” lecture.
He is off to a very bad start, explaining the “paradox of reason.” Reason is absolutely fundamental to our existence, yet it is not the whole of our existence. I’m not sure how this is a paradox. Is it the paradox of gasoline that a car needs it to run, but is not itself entirely made up of gasoline?
It’s the sort of pseudointellectual nonsense I miss from my college days. I’m going to pretend I have some popcorn and finish up the lecture.
BTW – I knew a few students at the Yale Div School. They were all very well intentioned, very intelligent, and very confused people… most of them were deeply religious, yet didn’t seem to hold to any religious doctrine… they were mostly very concerned with social reform and politics… I sort of didn’t get it. Without institutional backing (Episcopalian, Catholic, whatever), I wasn’t sure what they could do when they graduated, other than being social organizers or one of a small percentage of religious studies professors. But it seems like the “upper echelon” of the big organized religions are full of people who don’t believe a damned word of anything they teach their flock, so maybe not holding any doctrine isn’t such a career setback.
I don’t have enough time or courage to listen to a Terry lecture right now; all indications are that it would be horribly painful.
Taibbi’s review is very nice, but I too fail to see the point of bashing professors who invoke the a priori/a posteriori distinction. (Of course, it could just be that I’m such a professor.)
My favorite bit from these reviews is still PZ’s
Made me laugh.
The internet : academia :: ad hominem : a priori
The bit about Dawkins being humorless is bizarre. The God Delusion is full of witty observations and sly humour. Admittedly, I was one of the few reviewers to point this out when the book first appeared …
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/reviews/1250/the-god-delusion
… but surely it’s correct.
Literary critics are not supposed to be tone deaf. Really, when you clear away the obfuscating bullshit that all-too-often often surrounds literary study, one of the genuine things about good literary criticism is that it reveal things you might not otherwise have noticed about tone, irony, nuance, context, etc. That kind of sensitivity to less literal aspects aspects of the written word is a big part of what you’re actually supposed to develop from a literary education. If Eaglefish thinks that Dawkins is humorless, Eaglefish is looking like a charlatan. Even a first-year English student should be expected to talk sensibly about the humour in Dawkins’ work (saying something not too far-fetched about how it’s achieved, and so on). An esteemed literary theorist like Eaglefish should notice that the humor is there. It’s not slapstick, but it’s not that subtle.
I have never heard of an “eaglefish,” but there are several birds called “fish eagles,” including the osprey. Of course, they are all very impressive, competent birds of prey and therefore not an appropriate metaphor here…
Amusing. I just wish he’d cop to being an atheist. >;)
@Russell Blackford. Wasn’t it Taibbi rather than Feagletosh who said Dawkins was humourless? Feagletosh would have had to have admitted that Ditchkins was two people to say any specific about Dawkins.
Y’know what I want? I want my fuckin’ flying car.
Seriously. I was promised a flying car, and I don’t have it. I was promised virtual sex, and the closest I have is downloadable porn. I was promised meals in pill form, and all I have is yummy, yummy Whoppers.
I was promised fuckin’ proof of god. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY PROOF FOR GOD?!?
It’s very fortunate we have people like Matt Taibbi who can entertainingly give us the bad news: “Sorry, kids, no flying car yet. And, no proof for god. This is just some man-sized runny nose that managed to snot out grammatically-perfect muzzy-headed nonsense. Now go home and eat your yummy, yummy Whopper.”
Really, I don’t care about proof for god. As a wise man once said, “That’s a long wait for a train don’t come.” If it’s a book of Christian apologetics, it’s a book of snotted-out muzzy-headed nonsense of varying grammatical quality. The content, though, that seems fairly constant.
But I *do* want my flying car.
I will make a deal right now with all the Christian apologists out there: I will stop talking about theology if you stop pretending to reason. There’s your two non-overlapping magisteria right there.
I can’t even get 1/4 of the way through the Faith and Reason lecture. His lips are moving, but he is not making any sense.
He makes a string of points, thinking that a quote from Augstine or Freud or a French philosopher somehow makes it valid, and then moves onto another unrelated point. Either I am really stupid, or this guy doesn’t know how to think.
He also heavily leans on the ambiguity of language. It’s doubly painful because Dawkins goes out of his way to first define the many meanings of the word “faith,” and which one he is specifically referring to, and this in a book which Terry has apparently read well enough to mount a well-argued defense. Terry runs through the entire gamut of meanings for the word, “faith” making it impossible to have a meaningful dialogue about the word (or should I say dialogically difficult?), or even to THINK about “faith” seriously without getting a brainfreeze.
I honestly don’t know what the man is saying. Is God like the Yeti? Should we have absolute faith he exists? If religion is about experience and not propositions, then what about all the propositions about that religion does make, explicitly and implicitly about how the universe works? Why does religious traditions matter if all that matters is a personal experience (like love)? How can any religious doctrine be any more valid than something a crazy person yells from a street corner? Do most Christians really believe that God doesn’t “exist” in this world? What the fuck is this guy fucking talking about?!
And just a note on the intra-anal linguism… at one point in the lecture Terry says, “But I scarcely need to point out to this distinguished and utterly priveleged and special company, he said grovellingly…” And he says it in all sincerity. He really is a toad (meaning no disrespect Bufonidae).
nigelTheBold said:
Put me down for a pony and a plastic rocket whilst you’re at it.
“Stanley and Terry” sounds like a Vaudeville act…
My only “religious phase” happened in graduate school as a lit-crit major (German studies) and I blame it squarely on Postmodernism.
Glad I ditched that stuff and recovered my Rationalism.
It dawned on me fairly quickly that
religious faith = intellectual suicide.
And I wanted no part of that.
Matt ‘Call a Spade a Spade’ Taibbi strikes again.
Matt is one of the delights of Rolling Stone, like here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/27596371/the_class_clowns always being the icing on the cake with his acerbic comments about all the nonsense going on around us, as in this case the two yapperty yaps.
Some cute polemic devices, but how can anyone describe Dawkins as ‘humorless’ and maintain any impression of knowing whereof he speaks?
Richard is subject to such furious bile from theists, I suspect those who haven’t actually read or heard him, even though they’re actually on his side, assume that the insults must be a bit true.
They are not.
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a winner.
@Matt Heath…
Correct. It was Tabbai, not Eaglefish.
It was an otherwise fun read…. but I just don’t get the need–when you’re taking on the religious–to throw in a swipe at Hitchens or Dawkins as a way of showing you’re evenhanded. So lame. Especially when, as Mike Haubrich rightly points out, it is completely absurd.
My favorite bit from PZ’s review: “his own contradictions are worn with pride as emblems of ineffable profundity instead of addlepated murkiness.”
We are all Ditchkins. Resistance if futile.
It’s good isn’t it? Sadly it’s not mine; I got it froma comment at Russell Blackford’s blog.
“Taibbi”… sorry.
First name: “Starry”?
Wow. I just became a huge fan of Matt Taibbi.
His put downs are delicious.
That’s Heidegger’s “gift” to philosophy, he took the BS about god being hidden as per his nature, and sanctified it in his “phenomenology”. He didn’t apply it to god, however, presumably because that would be a little too obvious (and because, at least at times, Heidegger was atheist, if addicted to woo).
There’s neither cleverness nor surprise in simply returning this “attribute” to god, that he is necessarily hidden. Nothing was gained, though, by running this excuse into philosophy, and then returning it to theology. It failed at the starting gate, and only the pathetic resort to it.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Okay, I’m confused now (*checking everything again*).
Alas, it looks like I made a mistake in thinking that Taibbi was attributing the “humorless” to either Eagleton or Fish. In that case, I’ll withdraw the remark and say that it’s Taibbi who is tone deaf to that extent – which means I now have to (1) own up to getting something wrong myself (dammit), (2) exonerate bloody Eagleton and Fish, and (3) withdraw that particular remark about them.
So, I hereby concede that whatever else the Eaglefish have done, they’ve (seemingly) not made that mistake … while Taibbi seems to have indulged in some gratuitous and wrong-headed snark against Dawkins.
If God is hidden, how do we have Jesus, the old testament, the new testament and all that jazz? So maybe you can’t see “all of God”, but that’s true of everything unless you are a fourth dimensional being with x-ray vision.
And at 9A when I read Matt Tabbai’s piece I was trying to come up with an appropriate name for the Fish/Eagleton combo. The best I could do was Eaglefish – and I see I was beaten to the post early on. But Feagletosh, Feagletosh! It doesn’t get any better.
DaveL @#7: Thanks for this “…what’s wrong with faith isn’t that it’s certain or uncertain, but that it’s an unjustified exaggeration of certainty. It arbitrarily takes a small set of wildly unlikely claims out of an effectively infinite sea of wildly unlikely claims and, without benefit of evidence or reason, promotes them as at least credible, if not certain.”
Well done. A refinement of previous definitions of faith.
God People, God Huggers, God Botherers — I prefer God Addled. We need a description that captures the look in the eye and the change in the voice when they start talking about their god(s).
The line about God being inherently unseen reminded me of this one nut who said the reason all Bigfoot photos are fuzzy is because Bigfoot is inherently fuzzy, because he’s an alien species that shapeshift 10,000 times a second.
And, of course, if God can’t be perceived, how’s he any different than the dragon in Carl Sagan’s garage?
inkadu @#32:
“Dawkins goes out of his way to first define the many meanings of the word “faith,” and which one he is specifically referring to”
Oh really? Would you please enlighten me as to where Dawkins does this? I don’t believe it’s in TGD (and yes, I’ve read that book cover to cover, and I have my copy right in front of me waiting to check you answer). (Just to forestall a couple of non-starters: he does attempt to define “The God Hypothesis” — but insofar as this is defined as a hypothesis at all, many of the meanings of “faith” — including those Eagleton finds to be most significant, such as trust in another person, loyalty, or adherence, are just left out altogether. Similarly his spectrum of probabilities, p. 50 in my 1st edition copy , is a spectrum of degrees of propositional credence and leaves out many significant meanings of “faith.”)
Ah, at last the scales have as it were fallen from mine eyes.
Goodbye, Flying Spaghetti Monster – I must now a priori return to worship of the Invisible Pink Unicorn!
@Lilly de Lure
I can’t help with the pony, but here are some plastic rockets
@Glen Davidson
Sorry, I can’t read that without thinking:
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
ponies, plastic rockets and trains don’t come? Someone has been watching “Serenity” a lot. Errm, guess that’d be me for one…
trust in another person, loyalty, or adherence, are just left out altogether. Similarly his spectrum of probabilities, p. 50 in my 1st edition copy , is a spectrum of degrees of propositional credence and leaves out many significant meanings of “faith.”
Trust in another person entails, minimally, believing the proposition that the person exists or existed, yes? Are you loyal to, do you adhere to, a completely content-free, propositionally empty program? What would that even mean? I don’t mean to answer for Dawkins, or for the commenter you’re addressing, but this “faith (in Christ, for example) entails no propositions,” or “real faith has nothing to do with ‘propositional credence'” line just sounds like “Yes, the emperor is wearing clothes, but they’re not like the pants and shirts and vests we wear.”
Fine. But what are they like, and how do you justify calling them “clothes”?
OT but i doubt anyone’s reading Thursday’s thread: the Star Trek movie blew me away. not perfect (i’m not a fan of the BSG space-cam style) but flippin’ great. i saw it with some non-Trekkies who were just as entertained. a relaunch that can satisfy fans of the original AND neophytes — without making them feel Lost (heh) — is a rare and unexpected treat
9.2/10
God addled… that’ll work.
The term I sometimes use is godridden
I like “God-besotted”, myself.
@maddogdelta, 52:
David Hume Could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
who was just as sloshed as Schlegel!
One of the most egregiously stupid claims by Eagleton/Fish is that scientists are incapable of asking questions such as, “Why is there anything in the first place?”. Not only is the question asked, but there are answers as well — notably from Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek and others, which can be summed up as, there is something rather than nothing because nothing is unstable. If you want to see a whole session devoted to the question Eagleton/Fish think is never asked, go the the World Science Festival in NY in June, and see Wilczek, Paul Barrow, Paul Davies and Michael Turner get it on.
http://www.worldsciencefestival.com/2009/nothing
Ouch! Now that is what was once known as a burn in the internet world…
Good grief, what a clunker from Eagleton. It’s like watching someone with progressive Alzheimer’s try to be erudite. Now replace “God” with “imaginary being” and you get this:
It’s more accurate and it still makes as much/little sense as the first version.
I’m with some of the others, though, in thinking that Taibbi’s remark about Dawkin’s sense of humor was a bit off-kilter. I’ve just started reading “The God Delusion,” and contrasting their two styles, I suspect that Dawkins’ dry, understated brand of witticism simply gets trounced underfoot in Matt’s loud and glib sports-bar-brawling mind, but I’ll still gladly bookmark Taibbi’s blog.
I could have done without the last image in the Taibbi excerpt.
re: a priori
What exactly is the use of this term? I looked it up on wikipedia, and got the following examples:
The mathematical examples are the usual ones, but these are not actually a priori (as I understand it). 2+5=7 only given the axioms of number theory. The propositions of Euclidean geometry are true only given the axioms of Euclidean geometry. And “all bachelors are unmarried” only given the definitions of “bachelor” and “unmarried.”
If a priori actually means “things that are known independent of experience”, it seems to me none of these examples make the cut. The sum of the angles of a triangle is only 180 degrees if we make the assumptions of Euclidean geometry — those axioms are themselves a posteriori results, and incorrect ones at that (as applies to this physical universe, anyway). One can devise mathematical systems that might apply in some other possible universe in which 2+5 does not equal 7. And of course, the relationship between being “unmarried” and a “bachelor” only holds within English-speaking cultures on Earth.
Does a priori actually refer to statements that are only true given a particular set of assumptions? Because it doesn’t seem to be used that way by philosophers.
So in these precincts, Matt Tabbai’s high schoolish naming calling and inability to make a presentable argument count as serious critique? I’m all for remaining young at heart, but why do atheists/agnostics on this blog want to remain perpetually adolescent?
Hope I die ‘fore I git old
…er.
Than I will be when I actually want to die.
With all the gravity of my gray hair and nearly 54 years on this planet I say to you with the utmost solemnity:
Fuck off, you humorless loser. I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course. ;)
Why do theists always think they have an argument worthy of more than mocking?
The hilarious thing about saying that Gud is not “even a possible object of cognition” is that it doesn’t stop him claiming he is cognizant of such a being (and why is he suggesting that vision be the only real means of perception when he is clearly advocating other means).
In other news, Michael Kremer (#50) said,
I love how religiots need to play semantics in order to pretend that minor definitions are relevant in the meaning, and they do it to support the stupid argument that ‘everyone has faith’.
The trouble with ‘trust’ as definition, Mikey is that you miss the import follow-ups:
1. Trust in what?
2. Trust based on what?
Trust in the sense of loyalty is meaningless on its own, which is why Dawkins doesn’t address them.
That said, I think I know why you didn’t find the definition: You were reading for a simple blurb when you should have been reading for a concept.
@joe above wrote:
That’s all very interesting, but that’s not what the religious mean by “why” and is way too much of a cosmological shaggy dog story anyway.
The deeper issue and the real problem with all this blather about science not being able to answer “why” questions isn’t that science hasn’t tried, it’s that the very assumption that the religious “why” question has any meaning when asked of the universe is, well, dumb.
Hey now, don’t go talking ’em out of it. Laughing at that very fact is one of the things that keeps me young at heart.
Me,
You’re criticizing Matt for not making “a presentable argument”?
Perhaps you missed the part where he says “I listened to this argument at least five times and at the end still had absolutely no idea what the hell Eagleton was talking about.
We all feel this way. How do you argue against incoherence? People who are so decrepit in their thinking deserve juvenile name-calling.
Don’t worry, I have “faith” in their need to continue presenting the mock worthy arguments.
Patricia @56 and Chris @57: God Ridden is dynamic, (fosters some interesting images –maybe I’ll shamelessly steal that for future use),and God Ridden does serve the purpose, but as a poet, I still prefer God Addled. It not only brings to mind the wild-eyed and zombie-speechifying aspects, but it sounds good and is fun to say. There’s the similarity of the vowel sounds, and the repetition of the “d” is wed to the similar vowel sounds. Music. It reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins, but of course he never would have written such a phrase, being God Addled himself.
Besides which, ‘bollocks’ is slightly easier to blurt out than ‘not even wrong’ when you’re in the midst of involuntarily spitting out your beer.
I’ve mentioned this before but I think it bears repeating.
My friend worked for Stanley Fish. Fish refused to speak directly to him, but instead would pass his conversation through his assistant while my friend stood face to face with him in a 5′-6′ wide hallway.
This wasn’t because my friend offended Stanley in any identifiable manner. As far as he could determine it was because my friends was just the lowly guy handling some fairly critical [certainly essential] responsibilities.
He never came up with any explanation other than; He wasn’t worthy of Fish speaking directly to him because he wasn’t an Acamdemic, high level administrator, or personal assistant. I suspect the later was only by necessity.
Fish was pretty well disliked during his tenure at that University.
As far as I can tell, he’s a pretty loathsome person.
I laughed out loud a few times when I was reading Dawkins’s “The God Delusion.” I thought it was funny. True, he’s not brawler like Taibbi, as was pointed out up-thread, but he’s got a good sense of humor. Dawkins trusts the reader to get the humor.
I expected Eagleton to make sense, so, like Taibbi, I read and re-read a few of Eagleton’s pronouncements. I dislike it when an author makes me work that hard with no payoff at the end of the effort. He just fails as a writer, and he flails as a philosopher.
Eagleton wrote:
The only category of things which “unseeableness” is inherent to are those things which do not exist. I wonder if god is also unhearable?
I dunno. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure all this gay marriage stuff has led to the author taking gratuitous license by talking up tongues and asses.
Enjoy.
ffakr @ 75
Yes, as loathsome as Fish can smell after putrifying for a few days. It would be great if one of us could run into him some day and reduce him to the crap he is and represents.
The objections up-thread to Taibbi’s juvenile name-calling miss the point. Having a sense of humor does not mean the writer isn’t serious in his intentions.
Taibbi makes several good points and he uses humor to make them memorable. And it’s a short article, give him a break — he’s not writing a book about the book.
When I was a church-goer, I noticed that one was allowed to have a sense of humor about everything but church dogma. Later, as a short-term participant in some pointless woo, the same unspoken rule applied: you can laugh about everything but the Head Honchos and the woo-dogma.
New rule: if you can’t laugh at it, something is seriously wrong.
Wilde: “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”
@Michael Kremer…
Here’s what Dawkins was talking about in The God Delusion.
“there exists superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.”
This is what he is talking about, where he is coming from in his book and elsewhere.
That’s what keeps them coming back. What PZ does has a bit more sophistication than right wing radio, but not by a whole lot.
One of these days, PZ’s going to run into one of his own loyal commenters and it’s going to look something like this:
(Talk Radio–great movie by the way.)
if you can’t laugh at it, something is seriously wrong.
Yes, indeedy. In fact, it’s one of the main points in “The God Delusion” when Dawkins talks about the weird reverence the world still has for outdated superstitious thinking. To be sure, pointing and laughing at the inanity of most religious beliefs would have gotten you punished—and perhaps tortured, and perhaps killed—in years gone by, and the residual fear still impacts society today, but we need to get to the place where we can point and laugh at nonsense without inciting mobs with pitchforks and torches screaming “Blasphemy!” We need to point and laugh at Eagleton for what he wrote. It was obfuscating, semi-senile crap, and using our creativity to engage in “high school name calling” not only helps to highlight his feeble-mindedness, it keeps the rest of us from being tainted by it.
Yeah that’s exactly how it will be. Never mind the meet ups that have already taken place. If you think you can make some sophomoric point and come off thinking you are clever, what are past examples good for.
Taibbi makes two presentable arguments in that post:
1) Eagleton and Fish don’t say anything that actually makes sense. God’s not an acceptable subject for cognition — fine. Faith is not about making truth claims — fine. But then what is religion doing making all these truth claims and claiming all these properties of God? If this stuff is only true in a literary sense, then there is no problem — Dawkins and Hitchens say as much. But Eagleton is supposedly arguing against these gentlemen, so presumably he’s saying it’s true outside of a literary domain. He’s either not making sense or he’s obfuscating.
2) All these arguments seem to be predicated on the assumption that there must always be an answer to the question “why?” But neither Eagleton nor Fish provide any argument as to why that should be the case. They beg the question by assuming that there must be an ultimate purpose, and then insist that because reason cannot satisfy their requirements for an ultimate purpose, religion must be at least as true — and Eagleton seems to claim that religion is actually a whole lot more true.
The insults are just gravy.
Theists seem to confuse the problem of induction with “faith” They think they’ve landed a zinger when they say things like “you have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow!” and don’t seem to realize that it’s not “faith” it’s an “understanding of how things work” – that, in fact, it’d take faith to believe that the sun was not going to rise tomorrow, because its failure to do so would mean that something truly extraordinary and unexplained was going to happen. (That wouldn’t apply if we knew that a mumblemumble event was going to cause the sun to implode tomorrow) I haven’t refined an argument yet but it seems to me that “faith” is another way of saying “does not sufficiently understand causality” I’m bothered by the “sufficiently” bit because it’s vague but so is “understanding” – but if you understand how something works to a reasonable degree it’s the antithesis of faith to expect it to perform in accord with your understanding. A lot of philosophers spend a lot of time on induction and it makes me wonder if they’re really just trying to shelter a little slice of woo by preserving its incomprehensibility.
How do you make a serious critique of an incoherent argument?
It was obfuscating, semi-senile crap…
I’ve only read some of Eagleton’s piece, and heard some of the lecture, but it didn’t seem like “obfuscating, semi-senile crap” to me. I thought it had some serious things to say. Not really all that different from what you might read in say, Karl Jaspers or Isaiah Berlin.
Then again, you could just give all these guys the drive-by treatment that you see all the time on this blog.
Then you don’t have to worry about actually trying to understand anything.
@JJWFromME:
I would love if you tried to explain whatever it was that actually made sense to you.
Like what?
Wikipedia-enabled insinuations are so awesome…
But wasn’t it Dennett (or was it Dawkins? Dennkins?) that said (paraphrasing) denigrating a man’s religion was like denigrating his beloved wife? Actually, worse than that. So this puts religion, in the believer’s mind, in a place high above his even most cherished real possessions.
So it seems that it’s more than “residual fear”. Society has been conditioned by the religious to not dare to make fun of their most beloved possession. You see this each time someone like PZ calls out their beliefs for what they are – ridiculous. They puff up immediately and complain of being attacked, persecuted, and being at war. Why such strong protests? Because IMO they know they have no coherent substantive retort. Only bluster. It’s their only defense, and it’s conditioned all others to avoid upsetting someone with such strong convictions.
Unfortunately, this is not good. Religion wants far too much influence and control over people and society. They want this without having earned credibility, indeed having failed at showing that they understand and correctly perceive reality.
Criticizing superstitious beliefs should be done at every opportunity. This will condition believers to not cling so dearly and love so deeply such fragile incoherent nonsense.
Win for #91!
Pwned
The high tone of this blog is just so conducive to discussing anything. I just feel so welcome to discuss all the important human questions. Every nuance will be taken seriously in an adult fashion.
Pwned
Video games is what it’s all about dude!!! I’m going to stop discussing all this bullshit about meaning and shit and play World of Warcraft right now.
Once you state something substantive, like answering the questions asked of you, the seriousness will begin.
Eagleton made some good points? Perhaps I’ve only heard the bad ones. Do share.
Content is more important than tone. If your nuances make sense, they will be taken seriously. If not, expect to be mocked. And don’t expect bonus points for knowing the German word for “understand”. I learned that in 7th grade.
Once you state something substantive, like answering the questions asked of you, the seriousness will begin.
I already did in previous threads. Same response from the flying monkeys on this blog. You can Google it. I’m not going to waste my time.
Erm… okay… but you do realize we mostly talk about religion and similar juvenalia here, right?
(Porn is thataway…)
Alex, #92
Well whoever said it was stupid. Go ahead and denigrate my religion, what do I care? Answer: not at all.
Nope, don’t want any influence at all.
Go for it. Criticize away. To the best of your ability. Let’s see what you got. Come on– unleash something clever and interesting and funny and original. Or are you just all talk?
There was some confusion about ad hominems before. This latest putz is getting pretty close to an actual ad-hom. He’s more-or-less saying “you’re wrong because you’re rude,” and thus he is criticizing the person rather than the person’s arguments. Study up, class!
You’re the one who made a claim, failed to back it up, and then insinuated that the people here aren’t willing to have an adult conversation with you. I offered to hear you out, and you responded like a petulant child by saying that no one is willing to take you seriously and talk to you like an adult.
Projection?
(Also more important than religion…)
Actually, Eagleton is right and Dawkins is wrong about the nature of God-belief — Dawkins does think God is like a Yeti. Eagleton is right insofar as God is more like an imaginary friend — true believers presuppose his existence as the basis for the interpretation of any data, instead of having God be the consequence of their data. They see God everywhere, therefore they could not possibly see him anywhere. He’s also like the assumption of consistency in the universe — it’s not a result of observations, it’s an assumption about the nature of observations.
Only con-men and the hopelessly cretinous believe that they believe because of the facts of the matter, rather than that their claims of the facts of the matter presuppose their belief.
Of course, only children, the insane and chronic masturbaters have imaginary friends. Eagleton is shockingly honest to imply that he belongs to that clique.
How about just answering the question many have asked here.
Ex.
Unless you think a response in a different context is a response in all contexts and all questions, I don’t see how what you just said makes any sense.
Until you have an answer to THE NEW QUESTION, most everyone here remains justified in thinking Eagleton is a moron based on the excerpts we’ve seen.
Unless you’re trying to defend the indefensible here…
JJW
You’re not worth the time or effort if you can’t even repeat yourself on different threads.
Quit being lazy and obtuse or bugger off.
The problem with this blog is that there is no real dialog. The outrage meter is immediately buried at 11 from the start. Kind of hard to have any dialog in that atmosphere because the point, from the very beginning is to caricature what someone says, not understand it. You get the same thing on right wing talk radio. Anyway, here are the previous threads I commented in.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/proof_that_there_is_no_god.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/was_halten_sie_von_der_katholi.php
I don’t want to say the same kinds of things all over again. It’s exhausting and apparently fruitless.
I had the impression from Terry Eagleton’s books that he himself is not religious. Most of the polemics against Dawkins et al. I’ve seen from him have called them out for their ignorance of theology and philosophical unsophistication. He’s still a Marxist, as far as I know.
His autobiography (largely about falling away from Catholicism) is a good read.
Fish has always seemed to me an unpleasant character based on his books, though.
“But wasn’t it Dennett (or was it Dawkins? Dennkins?) that said (paraphrasing) denigrating a man’s religion was like denigrating his beloved wife?”
Were you maybe thinking of the H.L. Mencken quote that we should respect a man’s religion in the same way that we respect his opinion that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart?
“I don’t want to say the same kinds of things all over again. It’s exhausting and apparently fruitless.”
So go fuck off then.
Seriously: if you don’t like this place and don’t care for the discussions here, then just leave. The rest of us like it here just fine, and don’t need you prissily informing us that this is totally just like right-wing talk radio (which is a talking point you’ve already repeated in this thread, so apparently you do enjoy repeating yourself).
Or let me guess: you’re also one of those idiots who listens to right-wing talk radio for hours every day just to bitch about how awful it is?
someone once suggested that trying to see God was like trying to see your own eyeballs
so i showed her a mirror. she still thought her point was valid, but at least i knew she wasn’t a vampire
(bacon)
Then don’t do so. Unless all you really want is to say the same thing over and over, like your god really does exist or some other such nonsense.
@JJWFME in #108
Looked at both of those links, and one was a snipe at something that Eagleton wasn’t involved in, or:
and the other was a link to the exact same thing we’re talking about, tempered by whining:
Again, you never actually said what you found interesting in either of these threads.
It’s fruitless because the only discussions you bring up are heavy-handed whining.
Why should anybody respond pleasently to that?
I’d hate to encourage you, but try again.
So go fuck off then.
I was just visiting as an experiment.
It kind of turned out as I expected.
OK–fucking off, now. Bye.
This seems to be among the more active threads, so…
I just got a message from nothing’s sacred / truth machine, who said that he’s safe and his home appears to be as well, though he’s worried about some of his friends.
He requested (I hope he doesn’t mind if I quote him): “Please convey my thanks and appreciation to all those at P[haryngula] who wished me well, and everyone else there whose comments I’ve enjoyed reading, including…our fearless host PZ.”
Please send NS my regards and hope for continued safety.
Alex,
So it seems that it’s more than “residual fear”.
I don’t agree. I wasn’t being glib when I used that phrase. Try saying to a true believer sometime something about Jesus that offends them. Blaspheme their god right out in the open, or even just say you don’t believe such silliness, and observe their response. Quite often you can almost see them go “Ahhhhhhm…” like a little kid who sees something naughty. I think all this talk from religious people about how they cherish their beliefs is just half-truth and double-speak. They have been conditioned to be subservient to a belief, to be endlessly preoccupied with rituals and icons, and to be happy about it. There is as much (and I think, more) fear of their divinity as love for it. In fact, they want it that way—because the institution of religion wants them to feel that way. It’s not flattering, however, for them to admit being afraid of their increasingly invisible God in today’s more rational society, and so they downplay it to nonbelievers. It’s still a vital, and historical, part of the whole mindset, though. They’re afraid of not believing. Pat Robertson talks endlessly about the dangers of not believing to his flock. I don’t believe they are driven by love; I think they’re all too often driven by fear—fear of being smote—as much as a sense of knee-jerk defense of their group- conventions. Fear drummed into our ancestors for centuries.
Glad to hear NS is safe.
Wait, what? What happened to NS/truth machine? Is there a link some’eres?
JJWFromME:
Checked out the other threads. You seemed to claim that there should be a distinction between the natural sciences and the humanities. Then you misrepresented the arguments of Daniel Dennett so as to suggest he disagrees. (If you’re interested, Dennett believes that the mind, and possibly but not inevitably its products such as consciousness, are subject to scientific scrutiny. He’s not saying that we shouldn’t read, appreciate, or critique literature according to standards different from those of scientific papers.)
And you failed to say anything else substantive at all. What is your point? That God can be omniscient in the same way that Snoopie can be white with black ears? We know that. Or are you arguing that “true” means something other than “the best explanation given the quality and quantity of evidence”? What is truth, then?
But…all I’ve heard you say is the same thing over and over again. So stop already.
I think Eagleton conflates capitalism and liberal rationalism. Western atheists tend to think of the Inquistion as the ultimate critique of religious enthusiasm. People like Eagleton similarly see the exploitation by the “rational” West of the third world as the symbol of what’s wrong with the “liberal” rational tradition.
Along similar lines, I think back to the Cold War. Nearly all the Cold Warriors, who were ready to annihilate a sizeable fraction of the human race, were non-religious (from Kennedy to Herman Kahn to Kruschev).
It’s a cliche to say that atheists substitute one idol for another, but it does help to have an immunization against Idolatry.
Obviously it would be silly for me to tell Pharyngulites to pay close attention to the First Commandment. Francis Bacon’s discussion of the Idols of the Marketplace (bewitchment by words) would be a good alternative.
I second minimalist’s inquiry about NS/TM’s safety. CA wildfires? Had to evacuate from those once myself, in a former life.
Yes, he lives near Santa Barbara and had to evacuate. I couldn’t find the thread, so this is from memory.
I don’t recall the thread either, but this is all that we knew from it anyway.
RamblinDude @#118: Thanks. Appreciated your excellent delineation of the fear factor. Too true.
On the Mormons as Ghouls thread a True Believing Mormon claimed that they baptize dead people out of love. I think they can’t admit to themselves that they also do it out of fear that the Bishop will ask them about their temple work in their next worthiness interview, or even that their God will ask them about it after they die. This “most important work” is always accompanied by a threat.
And yes, they are afraid they’ll fall apart if they don’t believe. Their veneer of faith will crack and all their insides will pour out. The heads of religious organizations know this. They play on the fear. They also bolster faith with constant repetition, some of which demands that the faithful themselves make public proclamations.
Not being accepted as a member in good standing also plays a part in the fear factor. And of course, it’s much better to tell yourself that you’re baptizing dead Hitler and Obama’s mama out of love than to admit that you’re just checking off the requirements needed to earn the approval of peers, clerics, and the All Smitey.
It’s towards the end of the “Republicans can’t even…” thread. I would link to it, if ScienceBlogs would let me open the fucking page.
*shakes fist in impotent rage*
I guess I keep talking into the void waiting for an intelligent answer. This comment comes the closest I’ve seen. It’s actually an intelligent response. But it makes exactly the assumptions that Eagleton and Fish are criticizing–about liberal rationalist assumptions about progress (as Isaiah Berlin and Charles Taylor do as well).
My point is that these arguments can’t just be shouted down. Or if you do just shout them down, don’t be surprised if someone like me says things like I expect more from a grownup at a university.
(I’m not at one myself by the way.)
Heddle @ 101
Ad hominem attacks are merely deflections in defense of a weak argument. I’m fairly certain it was Dennett (Breaking the Spell), I could be wrong. Also, I was directing my comments to the religious in general. Telling the religious that the notion deities exist is unsupported, and irrational generally causes frothing at the mouth. The more fervent the believer, the more froth.
Again, your ego has you assuming somehow my comment was directed at you. Generally speaking, there are plenty of examples where the religious want to control marriage, reproduction, and science (i.e. reality based) curricula. They have embossed their messages on the currency, the pledge, and oaths. Many would love to see decaologue documents in schools and government buildings. Many call America a “xtian” nation. And your point about control was? (An note, the Constitution is the founding law document of this country. There is no mention of god, heaven, hell, jebus, xtians, or anything. Funny that eh?)
This has been done handily by many much more qualified than I. Read Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett – the new atheists on the block. There are many more back in time. My best shot is this: Why not alah? Or zeus? That question can’t be answered honestly or coherently and here’s why: There’s as much evidence to compel someone to think that leprechauns are real as there is to compel someone to think that deities are real. Believers in supernatural superstitions have nothing to show except bluster. So you put up or shut up. Religion attempts to make a positive claim about reality, religion needs to supply the physical, real evidence, and not just philosophical masturbation. You’ve fallen in love with falsehoods and lies. You’ve been tricked.
What evidence do you give? Your opinions are worth squat at a science blog. Show the evidence. You’ve had your chance and done nothing.
@#94: You are following the standard pattern of falling into a persecution complex. Whilst there are a lot of people posting here who will ridicule any point you make there are others who will actually treat it seriously. Welcome to the internet. How about spelling out what is so worthy about Eagleton’s lecture? Perhaps you will actually get a reasonable answer.
Answer to what? What’s your question?
JJWFromME:
What are you even saying in the first place? How can I respond intelligently to an argument that hasn’t been expressed?
How does that post make assumptions about liberal rationalists and progress? I don’t see the connection, having read that post.
The problem is that you’re either not being clear about what you’re saying, or that you’re not saying anything at all.
And yes, the humanities have different standards of criticism than the sciences. Find me a single atheist who disagrees and you might have a point there.
And by the way JJW… you are exhibiting signs of self imposed martyrdom that is remarkably similar to someone who posts as “Moderate” in other science forums. Is that you?
RamblinDude @ 118
I think you and I are in agreement. My comment was constructed around the thought of the non-religious kowtowing to the sensitivities of the religious. I don’t think that kowtowing is residual fear. I think it’s how societies have been conditioned by the religious (over) reactions to criticisms of their deeply cherished and beloved beliefs.
Rudy #123
I’ve read Bacon’s Idols of the Mind. One part that I particularly enjoyed was an anecdote of about shipwreck survivors. A man was shown a picture of people praying thankfully to god after having escaped a shipwreck. The man was asked how he could deny the power of god since god had obviously saved these people. He responded by asking to see the picture of the people who had drowned after praying for rescue.
Ouch.
<shudder>
Even so, however, it was still possible to negotiate with them, as Kennedy fortunately demonstrated. Show me how to negotiate with a fundamentalist who believes in a glorious afterlife.
What would happen if Pakistan collapsed and al Qaida got hold of the nukes (and some way to deliver them, which is fortunately another question)? Then they’d use them. Period. You see, they actually want to die in “battle”. They believe there’s something that’s worth not just killing but also dying for, en masse.
Except it doesn’t work that way. The most religious people are also the generally most credulous people — the ones most likely to believe in everything that doesn’t outright contradict their (their own personal) religion. My aunt believes in Padre Pio, astrology, hand-reading… homeopathy doesn’t even count because, where I come from, almost nobody knows how it’s supposed to work in the first place… and 15 years ago she apparently believed a certain Indian guru who performed magic tricks that are pretty ordinary over there was for real, telepathy and all included. Similarly, it’s the fundamentalists who believe in demons & devils.
I guess I keep talking into the void waiting for an intelligent answer.
Praying, you mean? How’s it working for you?
Typical.
JJWFME thinks its a waste of time to ‘repeat himself’, but still finds the time to repeat himself about repeating himself.
JJWFromME, I thought you were fucking off?
The liberal rationalist assumptions go like this: Old ways of thinking, especially if not materialist (such as theology) are useless, irrelevant, no new understandings to offer, bad. New ways of thinking (the more scientific the better) good! Because modern stuff, by definition, has all the quirks ironed out of it. So throw the old stuff out. “Ending is better than mending.”
Now that’s boiling things down. The trouble with boiling things down is that 1) no one will bother reading what I’ve linked to, which explains things in more detail,and 2) everyone will pontificate based on not reading anything I linked to, let alone looking into anything referred to in the things I linked to.
Because that requires actual *understanding* (see Dilthy).
Alex, #130,
And your point about making general statements about “the religious” and ignoring the fact that some religious are champions of separation of church and state was?
Put up or shut up? That’s what you got? And why does “religion” need to supply physical, real evidence? At least some of us are not claiming that we can prove God exists, nor do we feel any need to attempt to prove to you that God exists, so there is no onus on us to supply you with any physical evidence.
I had some hope you would have interesting criticism.
Who are the “American upper class”? Does the US have an upper class?
I liked Taibbi’s critique…. but, I didn’t agree with his opinions on Dawkins. I’m not sure how he’s justified in making them, but whatever.
My only other problem with Taibbi is his “I’m an agonistic, not an atheist” vibe that I was catching. I always have to raise an eyebrow the second I hear someone claim to be an agnostic. I’m just hoping I took it out of context, but I’m so sick of people pretending that agnosticism is the middle ground between atheism and theism.
Screechy Monkey has once again invited me to fuck off, so now I will.
I think you and I are in agreement. My comment was constructed around the thought of the non-religious kowtowing to the sensitivities of the religious. I don’t think that kowtowing is residual fear. I think it’s how societies have been conditioned by the religious (over) reactions to criticisms of their deeply cherished and beloved beliefs.
Yes, I see your point, and we’re on the same page, but I still hold to my essential idea that it is fear. There is a miasma of fear around the whole field of religion that affects everybody; not just the faithful, but also those who would dare to suggest that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. This faux-respect is weird today, and I think it is an innate, deep-psyche fear of getting one’s head chopped off! (Which is why PZ’s blog so alarms some people— don’t rile them!!) I think that “conditioning” you were talking about is fear based.
Yeah. Well, y’know. He’s a man of his word, our JJW…
A tankard of grog says that JJWFromME will be back. They always have to try for the last word…
@JJW…
That is you, Moderate! How’s it going? Still the persecuted one! Still repeatedly leaving and repeatedly coming back! Still linking obsessively, rather than answering anything! Still citing all those wonderful metaphysicians!
JJWFromME:
Well, in case you’re lying again, the post at 142 isn’t an argument. It’s a straw man, or possibly a collection of straw men. If you think:
is Dennett’s position, or my position, or that of any other atheist or free thinker that I’ve ever met, then you are simply wrong.
However, I do think that when theology tries to make a truth claim about the mind or the nature of the physical universe (and it’s the only humanity I know of that tries to do so), it’s stepping into science’s territory, and addressing the truth claim by asking for evidence is fair game.
Also, I haven’t met any rationalists or free thinkers who think that progress is inevitable. Most will ask you, “what do you mean by ‘progress.'” Which is the correct question to ask — if you mean increases in the usual economic proxies for standards of living, then progress does really seem to be the norm in most parts of the world. If you mean the acquisition of knowledge about the world around us, then again progress seems to be the norm. If progress is an increase in liberty for human beings, it is not the norm.
In other words, you’re not making an argument. You’re putting words in people’s mouths, and then arguing with them — in essence, arguing with yourself. You’ve assumed that everyone on this message board has the same opinion, and that you know exactly what that opinion is. So you say it’s a superficial and absurd opinion — that is true. But it’s not my opinion, so what is your point?
as one of this board’s resident theologans, let me ask …
who designed the computer you’re typing on, JJW, materialists or metaphysicists?
i don’t expect an answer, though. first, i don’t insult people so they don’t get to play martyr; second, not everyone appreciates irony as much as i.
So where are they when it counts? Where are they when court cases demanding “under god” be removed from the pledge get dismissed? Where are they when state officials fight to place a 10 commandments monument at a courthouse? Perhaps the some you talk about should be more active and vocal. In any case, my point was about how the religious want to control society. I cited several examples. You didn’t refute any of them. My point stands.
Well heddle, this is how reality works. If someone wants to make a positive claim about reality, such as goblins are real, it’s up to them to show why they think so. This applies to any claim. So since my first point still stands (the one about religionists wanting control, among other things), I think that if religion wants to play any part in government, law making, or society in general and not be ridiculed, they better show why anyone should think that deities are real. Show the evidence, or accept the classification of delusional. If they keep their delusions to themselves and don’t get offended when they approach me with them and I call them insane, then fine.
And yet the critical points I offered, the specific points, you have no argument against. Perhaps my criticism is uninteresting in your opinion, but it was successful at withstanding your analysis. Not even a scratch. It’s always the same with you guys. Move the goal posts, deflect, and evade. Just the basic disingenuous attempt at honest discourse. Typical.
SC, thanks for letting us know. If you contact ns again, be sure to send our continued good wishes.
PZ – your vitriol is sheer poetry!
Thanks.
Has anyone run analyses of thread hijacks (in general, at sciblogs, pharyngula, wev) by trolls or otherwise?
My prediction is that our cozy little cyberpit here is particularly susceptible, with probability approaching 1 after xx comments.
Extermination of the brutes entirely may not be possible, desirable or Darwinistically-correct, but surely some sort of Integrated Pest Management could be applied, no?
To start with, if the locals could be persuaded not to overfeed them…
heddle is a consummate DRAG.
Everything he says is designed SPECIFICALLY to raise a CONTRARY reaction (have you noticed?) just so that he can waste other people’s time battling about the bushes of his own making.
PZ – PLEASE – get rid of him.
Alex:
Well heddle, this is how reality works. If someone wants to make a positive claim about reality, such as goblins are real, it’s up to them to show why they think so.
…..
To Eagleton anyway, this is not what religion is about. It’s not making claims about how the world works, but what it means, or at least, what it should mean to us.
There are other ways to look at this too.
Spinoza was no friend to organized religion, and I can’t decide whether he was an atheist or God=intoxicated as the two famous claims go, but his conception of God is so much more interesting than anything that Dawkins or the fundies recognise. And that’s why Eagleton is getting so irritated… the “atheists” are just so ignorant of intellectual history. So much like their shadow selves in the Bible Belt.
“The high tone of this blog is just so conducive to discussing anything. I just feel so welcome to discuss all the important human questions. Every nuance will be taken seriously in an adult fashion.”
Wanker.
I like Taibbi’s journalism. The targets he goes after always deserve it, but I wish he wouldn’t spend so much time mocking people’s appearance. He’s always criticizing people for being fat or soft or weak-looking. He himself has an athletic background, and good for him, but other people’s looks have no bearing on the points he’s making and his insults along those lines are embarrassing to read.
astrounit #157,
PZ can get rid of me whenever it pleases him, but you are wrong about this (as you are wrong in almost everything you write–even when you use CAPITALS.)
There is a common theme for my posts, and I think most people know it, but you have not detected it–though it ain’t subtle. That is, I usually reply to posts that make gross generalizations about Christianity or religion. Or, which is less common, someone posts something manifestly wrong about Christianity. Or once in a while on the “science and religion are incompatible” threads–though that’s getting boring, and I’ve been skipping the recent incarnations.
Yeah I’ll have to agree that while I don’t agree with much Heddle posts here about religion, he’s pretty consistent in what and when he posts.
heddle is a consummate DRAG.
A heddle piddle puddle is inevitable.
If you want to have a heddle piddle puddle battle, just get the heddle addled with a heddle piddle paddle, which makes heddle’s piddle brittle till he sputters and he spittles.
Then you scoop the heddle piddle puddle up into a heddle piddle puddle bottle, feeding heddle little riddles which he straddles till confuddled.
Most heddle piddle puddles are too shallow to belittle.
“gross generalizations about Xtianity”? That’s possible?
And that JJWFromME character who has the temerity to begin a thought with, “The liberal rationalist assumptions go like this…” is an asshole of the first order.
Talk about pontification!
JJW, if you think for a moment that FREE THINKING (which IS what “liberalism” actually MEANS) and RATIONALITY are attributes that can’t properly discern the difference between bullshit (no matter how time-honored) and “truth” (as ALWAYS tempered by the HONEST and TENTATIVE appraisal of the available evidence) then you are quite obviously a jerk of the first order.
Go away. Like heddle, you are just another mosquito buzzing around where you have no business but your own.
If I didn’t know you, Ken, I’d have no idea you had a four year old around the house. Nope, none at all. ;-)
Not that we should NEED an excuse to consult the good Dr. on occasion (Seuss, that is), but it helps.
Pittsburgh 2 Mets 2 in the bottom of the 8th…my loyalties are fully divided.
Sven,
How about those Pens? (I am giving an Electricity and Magnetism final while “watching” the Pens beat the Caps, the Buccos fight the Mets, and the Nationwide race. Sometimes I love the internet.)
How about those canes?
up 3-1 in the third.
Maybe a Pens / Canes regional?
um make that 4-1 in the third
Rev,
That’d be cool. I thought Boston was going to have your lunch. Most impressive.
Cam ward is a monster.
of course Chara is Godzilla
It was H. L. Mencken.
“We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”
I am no fan of David Heddle, but I grant him a begrudging respect. I find his theology tiresome (I really don’t give a shit about the history of the study of angels dancing on a pin or the incredible amount of mental effort–wasted, in my opinion–that’s gone into determining whether they wear spats or tap shoes, and whether or not the pin is galvanised), and given half the chance he will derail a thread, but his intent doesn’t seem to me to be to troll as much as he’s just actually passionate about which he speaks.
Further, when he isn’t recounting his theology, he does make an honest effort to engage. Really, I don’t see him guilty of any bannable crimes that I myself am not guilty of from time to time. There may be an issue of quantity, but what theist here isn’t going to come across as more ‘annoying’ than those of us who are liberal atheists?
I do not like trolls. In fact, I hate them, mostly because I don’t feel I need them to sharpen my claws, as it were (there are any number of reasonable interlocutors who’ll give me a run for my money. Plus, I live in Alberta. Morons abound here, especially in our legislature). When I do engage with trolls, it’s usually because I’m fucking furious at their stupidity, not out of any sense of fun. That being said, Heddle is not one, and I think this site would be poorer were he to be banned.
agreed
I’m kinda hoping that we’ve had enough banning here for a little while, but that’s just me.
The more heddle acts like a fideist, the less there is to argue about. Whatever gets him through the night, or blows his skirt up, whichever the case may be. Without heddle, we would all be less amused.
Not that we should NEED an excuse to consult the good Dr. on occasion.
Any excuse will do. Speaking of which, as I would capriciously characterize it, here’s some rare backstage footage of heddle, not letting his physics students down, preparing to do battle with the atheists.
“Down below me, joyful and eager, my students are awaiting our date with destiny.”
heddle believes his god magically changed him into a believer; there’s no arguing with that aspect of his belief – since, as they say, you can’t reason a person out of a position they weren’t reasoned into.
The inherent immorality of a god who acts in the way heddle believes his god acts, on the other hand, is something else entirely.
And don’t get him started on who’s allowed to call themselves Christian and who isn’t…
I would gladly trade a Piltdown Man and an Africangenesis for two more Heddles.
@86 “Theists seem to confuse the problem of induction with “faith”
I think it’s more that there is a tendency for theists to be befuddled by equivocal phrasing, assume that everyone else is similarly befuddled, and then go on to mistake muddled sophistry for critical thinking.
@142
Another God frakked waste of key strokes from JJWFromME.
Now would you like to share with the class where you actually addressed anything pertaining to this thread or any of the questions asked of you in this thread?
“Boiling things down” by providing links is not really “grown-up” behavior. At this point in adult life, we are expected to argue a position and provide supplementary material to bolster the argument as necessary.
Debate through internet link is pretty juvenile, IMO.
If you actually have an opinion, you should expect to be called on to voice said opinion in your own words and know enough of the opposing viewpoint to maintain a “grown-up” conversation.
Even (and especially) if “juvenile” voices pop up to distract you. Why only respond to the distractions? Why not respond to the substantial arguments?
What should it mean to us?
That is the problem for this atheist. What does a world governed by a supreme being(s) mean?
If there are no specific claims made about how the world works, then what is the difference between a world controlled by an unnamed, unknowable deity and the world that we live in?
I’m sorry, but Eagleton isn’t irritated at people rejecting Deism. Deism doesn’t really lay claim to many morals and atheists don’t make much of rejecting Spinoza’s god. It’s not worth it and Deists don’t make too much of a stink in politics so they’re pretty much left alone. So to say that Eagleton is irritated because we’re dissing Spinoza is fucking retarded.
That said, Spinoza’s conception of “God” is nothing more than anthropomorphizing the awe he felt when contemplating life. To a lesser degree, of course, than most Christians of his day (and ours), but it was pure egotism, nonetheless.
I’m quite sure that Dawkins and Hitchens and all the other “new atheists” have contemplated Spinoza’s god along with the rest of them (they might have left out a few gods here and there, but so have you and I and everyone else).
Spinoza’s god is the most obvious (to me) and the hardest, but eventually the easiest to let go. It is the biggest “what if?” but the last barrier to reason.
Dawkins et al recognize and reject Spinoza’s god. It would do you well to read up on the “intellectual history” of the rejection of Deism and actually read the rebuttals before you try to make a claim about the “Shadow Bible Belt.”
Whatever that means.
I found myself, (mostly), nodding in agreement until the gobsmackingly jarring notion about Dawkins’ presumed intent to deify atheism.
My opinion of the poster turned a sharp 180 degrees at that point.
I must admit that my suspicions were alerted early-on, as I noticed that he was very quick to prominently alert the reader that he claimed to be an “agnostic”.
Er…after my suggestion that someone hit Africangenesis with a brick, he vanished off that thread a few hours later and I haven’t noticed him since.
I didn’t mean to hit him that hard.
All I want to know, is will someone send me bacon in prison?
Oh – and it’s OT, but when has that ever stopped anyone else:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/may/09/dear-lucy
How to deal with a 12-year-old creationist (when you’re twelve yourself).
Also OT:
Ian says Hi to Fiona.
:-)
*waves*
Piemienta,
“Rejecting Spinoza” was not my point. I won’t admit to being “fucking retarded” but I didn’t make my point very well.
I don’t care about the specific thinker: it’s not that
Dawkins and Dennett and Hitchens et al have to address
Deism (Spinoza is not exactly a typical Deist however; it would be interesting to see Dennett grapple with him).
Spinoza was just one example; more? Barth, Whitehead, Reid, Gordon Kaufman, Walter Wink… they just ignore any thinkers of substance and concentrate on easy targets, or popular superstitions. It’s as though I were to refute atheism by demolishing the writings of Ayn Rand. Dennett at least should know better, having philosophical training (and he seems to think and write more clearly in his non-polemical books, like Elbow Room).