Salon has a peculiarly defensive article by a Christian confessing to being embarrassed about her beliefs, which seems like a good start to me. She should be embarrassed. As a fun exercise, though, try reading her article while categorizing its statements in the Kübler-Ross stages — there’s a bit of denial in there, some bargaining, and a faint hint of depression, but mainly what she’s got is anger. She lashes out at atheists a fair bit, but it’s in a revealing way.
Writers like Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Victor J. Stenger — and, of course, performers like Bill Maher — get loads of press mocking the dummies gullible enough to believe some guy a couple thousand years ago was God’s son. But come on. It’s like shooting Christian fish car magnets in a barrel.
Well, yes, it is easy to mock people who “believe some guy a couple thousand years ago was God’s son.” But, you know, that’s the central tenet of the Christian faith! Shouldn’t you stop and wonder about the validity of your beliefs when you realize the core idea is ridiculous? She isn’t going to defend that idea at all, though — atheists are just mean for noticing it, I guess.
Oh, and of course she trots out the standard fundamentalist canard.
And yet, atheists are at least as fundamentalist and zealous as any religious people I know, and they have nothing good to show for it: no stained glass, no great literature, no great art, no comfort in the face of death. Just dissipated Christopher Hitchens sounding off on “Larry King Live” and a stack of smug books with childishly provocative titles.
Atheists are not fundamentalists. Saying so just makes you look like a moron.
We have nothing good to show for being atheists? Hey, what about SCIENCE? I had no idea that atheists were unable to create stained glass windows — maybe this is the answer to Hitchens’ challenge, to find something good that a theist can do but an atheist cannot. Unfortunately for our distressed Christian, stained glass is a secular technology that has been used to decorate churches…but we godless people can use it just fine, if we want.
No great literature? One name: Mark Twain.
No great art? Berlioz, Paganini, Schubert, Saint-Saëns. If that’s not enough, browse the list.
No comfort in the face of death? What we lack is a collection of lies about death. I could say the same of Christianity, since I certainly find no comfort in unwarranted authority, wishful thinking, and delusional incentives. And at least atheists do not threaten others with hell.
Her snide comment about Hitchens is accompanied by a link which you should watch. It’s revealing. It’s Hitchens surrounded by a couple of McCain apologists before the last election, ripping into Sarah Palin’s anti-scientific views on genetics and research, and her ridiculous creationism. Does the sad Christian somehow find that antagonistic to her beliefs? I know many members of her own faith who would have expressed the same sentiments…just not as eloquently as Hitchens.
Finally, she wonders if she should speak up.
But also, increasingly, I wonder: When I’m getting a ride from some friends and they start talking about how stupid religious people are and quoting lines from “Religulous,” do I have an obligation to point out how reductive and bigoted they’re being, the way I would if they were talking about a particular race? Increasingly I wonder if I should pipe up from the back seat and say, “Excuse me, but these fools you’re talking about? I’m one of them.”
You certainly are. Please do speak up, we like to know when we’re in the presence of fools.
The equation of race with religion is also standard practice for fools. Sorry, lady, ignorance isn’t the same as being brown, and you can’t excuse yourself by claiming that you were born without knowledge.
Wouldn’t you know a whole bunch of people would write to me with examples of stained glass in scientific institutions? Here’s an example from the Pembroke College library at Cambridge:
Yeah–they don’t seem to understand that religious belief is a choice (to be gullible and stupid), unlike being brown, disabled (or gay.
By the way, if she doesn’t like being pointed and laughed at, she can quit being a delusional moron.
Her choice.
The Natural History Museum in London has beautiful stained glass windows as well as lost of other amazing stuff! (Not my picture btw!)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andgreyskies/2424485489
I’ve always liked stained glass in the large. It’s the main reason I visit cathedrals. I’ve always liked cathedrals too, for that matter. Big cavernous things good for singing in and lots of nooks for nookie. The one in Cologne is a favorite. Obviously saved by the hand ‘o him during the big one (wasn’t that prophesied?) as it’s right next to the train station that we bombed the bejebus out of. Hey, that was a miracle eh? Either that or the norden bombsight worked pretty well. Anyway, happy belated solstice.
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” ~Abraham Lincoln
Episcopalian? According to Real ChristiansTM, she’s practically a sodomite. :)
Another religiot skewering… and so tantalizingly close to Christmas! I’m still waiting for a persuasive argument from the opposition but I’m stuck listening to the same old drivel. Maybe they’ll get lucky in 2010.
Keep ’em coming P-ZED!
It’s like they think they can’t help it: I have these wacky beliefs and I’m stuck with them, so stop making me feel bad; it’s not my fault that I believe this bullshit!
Regarding art and literature, they also seem to have a lot more kitsch than the A-Team. They can keep it.
I want to know who these friends are she rides around with. I for one rarely have those kinds of conversations, particularly with a known Christian in my presence. I’m not that rude (unlike evangelical Christians who feel it is their duty to convert everyone they can, and unlike members of my wife’s family who know I don’t share their beliefs but love to bring them up). Is it possible she has good friends who she goes out with and shares rides with who don’t know that she is a Christian? I suppose so. But even at that, I for one don’t go around simply making fun of Christians in general (but if you are a creationist, I reserve the right to make fun of you). In the presence of people who like a good intellectual discussion the issue might come up, but I’m not quoting Bill Maher lines (because I’ve never seen the movie – I don’t need Maher to be an atheist), instead it’s usually a somewhat intellectual deconstruction of Christian beliefs, and by all means, if you have an argument, get in there and fight for what you believe.
PZ, I think you are mistaken: Franz Schubert certainly wasn’t an atheist.
Indeed, it’s such a comfort to the dying to know that they might not have lived up to god’s mysterious, complicated, muddled, bewildering, and sometimes contradictory standards, and so, might be headed towards the eternal sufferings of hell.
Shit, trashing the New Atheists(tm) is practically everyone’s favorite sport these days. I’d make a drinking game out of it, except I don’t need an excuse to get drunk in a hurry.
And no failed “faith healing,” no Crusades, no suicide bombings, no “condoms don’t help prevent HIV” bullshit, no body count of 12-year-old girls dying in childbirth, no prosecute-the-gays bills, etc., either.
The religious people she knows are not a representative sample.
(I’m assuming she doesn’t stoop to trotting Hitler out, as PZ would have quoted her doing so.)
Although: I do loves me some stained glass. I had a babysitter who made stained glass art in a shed in her backyard. I remember her making a picture of her cat this one time. I don’t remember her making any religious imagery.
Dmitri Shostakovich – Symphony No. 5
Atheists are in ur art departments, pwnzing ur artwurkz.
Perhaps if she spoke up, they could all have a real conversation about things. Maybe she might realize that it’s her beliefs that are being attacked, not her.
Nah. Not likely… but still possible.
@#11 – I don’t know if Schubert was an atheist, but the fact that he wrote religious music doesn’t mean he was religious. Composers have to make money selling their compositions and they want an audience to hear them. In the past writing religious music was a great way to be profitable and have an audience.
Yeah, because all that great literature, art, music and stained glass totally makes up for all the suicide bombing, female genital mutilation, child abuse, superstition, resistance to lifesaving medical advances, support of genocidal dictators, misogyny, homophobia and general all-round bigotry and ignorance. Anyone who says otherwise is just as bad as a fundamentalist, so there! Stop persecuting me with your disagreement!
If insisting that accepting reality is a fundamental requirement for me to take you seriously, then yeah, I’m a fundamentalist.
I would ask why her “friends” don’t know anything about her?
Seems to me if the average christian actually stood up for themselves instead of letting complete morons speak for them we might take them a bit more seriously.
Instead we laugh at the shameles dishonesty and hypocrisy of their spokespeople
…and then get told off for making fun of them by association.
What a weird, rambling screed by this person… If I were her high school Composition or English teacher I would have returned it to her with the following note:
“Please formulate a single, cogent point and try not to contradict it and defend it at the same time… resubmit”
She seems to be disillusioned by the obvious silliness of her beliefs but angry at the people who dare point it out in public… oooooohhhhh.
IOW, “It’s abject stupidity, but it’s my stupidity and I’ll defend it to the death! How dare you ridicule it!”
Good luck in therapy, miss…
This annoys me. The implication is that, say, Da Vinci wouldn’t have been a good artist if he didn’t have The Last Supper for inspiration. Of course, I often wonder if The Last Supper would have been quite so revered had it had something else as subject matter.
Religion is a heavy suitcase. All you have to do is put it down.
“Well, yes, it is easy to mock”
Fun, too! -Homer Simpson
“Just dissipated Christopher Hitchens sounding off on “Larry King Live” and a stack of smug books with childishly provocative titles.”
What is the word “dissipated” doing in that sentence?
“And at least atheists do not threaten others with hell.”
No, we threaten them with non being, which they cannot avoid no matter how good or bad they behave.
The “race = religious beliefs” is such a paltry, disingenuous objection. No one chooses what race to belong to, while religion is in fact the ultimate “lifestyle choice.” That’s why it’s so sadly ironic when the fundamentalists complain about the “choice” of homosexuals; but then, I guess if they got irony, they wouldn’t be fundamentalists.
Also, if I’m in the presence of religious people (some family members, a small handful of friends/acquaintances) I certainly do *not* start slamming religious beliefs and calling these people “fools.” Her friends must be some grade-A dicks.
No great art?!! hmph! At least we have mediocre art.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but this sounds like nothing more than the standard christian as victim
[#10]
Maybe she’s the one initiating the conversations and getting mocked in return.
I think there’s a big difference between people who realize that what they believe is foolish and still continue to believe/argue in favor of it and people who genuinely are delusional.
To try to defend the first position is downright crazy !
grumble
The woman is an addict. Religion is her drug. She knows it doesn’t do her any good, but she can’t quit, because she’s addicted. So she decides to take pride in the particular drug she is addicted to (she is SO superior to all those OTHER addicts who are addicted to the WRONG drug), but she still can’t look a non-addict in the face.
She needs directions to the nearest chapter of RA (Religioholics Anonymous).
This. Most of them don’t even try to disassociate themselves from the wacky fundamentalist beliefs, but then they get upset when we assume they have similar beliefs.
I agree. I always loved the Cologne Cathedral. However, it did suffer some damage during the war (my mother and grandfather were there right after the bombing). The thing is, they took the windows out and stashed them in (I believe) a cave to protect them during the attack. And, the US dropped bags of flour on the Cathedral just to show that they could have blown the hell out of it if they wanted to.
What great xian literature? The Left Behind books? Seems like most art and literature of the last few centuries has been secular. Not necessarily atheistic but not religious either.
One of the main pillars of modern 21st century civilization is science. We feed 6.7 billion people, enable them to live much longer and healthier lives, and have mountains of technology gadgets like cars and computers. This again is not exclusively an atheistic pursuit, but it is secular and not religious. In fact, much of the time, the religious are running in front of the bus and laying down to try and stop it.
@ #16 – German wikipedia quotes a letter by Schubert with regard to the Lied “Ellens dritter Gesang”, often called “Ave Maria”:
“And everybody is very surprised at my piety which I have expressed in a hymn to the Blessed Virgin …”
I do not disagree with PZ as far as atheistic art (or atheism in general) is concerned. But to call Schubert a non-theist is a mistake.
Yes! I’m getting quite smugly good at schooling uppity theists (never in short supply) about their beliefs, and I lo-o-o-ove it. I consider it a public service.
Nothing tickles my heart more than a door-to-door team of religious salespeople with children in tow trying to read me passages in the Bible, or family who breach the topic, because by the time I am through responding they (and the kids in earshot) will know there really are people out there who think it is all crap (nevermind the literary value), and ridiculously funny, and incompatible with reality, and that God is a despot.
I’m considering printing up some business cards with Pharyngula on them to hand out in exchange for religious pamphlets. And if the Skeptic’s Bible goes into print, I will be sure to purchase a copy and carry it around with me (along with a copy of Harry Potter and hopefully the Pharyngula Bible (how’s the book going anyway?)) for those common occasions when a theist decides I need to know Jesus, so I can show them that I already do.
Anyone seen those new hideous churches that have sprung up around England. No stained glass windows. Stupid shapes and ugly colours. Bach was good, modern christian music…not so much.
Is it just me or is the church living off the bought glory (from great artists) back when it had more money from tithing and land ownership than it knew what to do with…ie more than 300 years ago.
@#33 – Thank you, that is a much better piece of evidence than your earlier link. I can see why you didn’t use it at first, since it is in German and all. Now I have to see if my rusty German is good enough to read the rest of it. I’ll need a dictionary and some time, so I’ll have to wait until I get home.
Ada Calhoun to Religion:
“I wish I knew how to quit you.”
I wouldn’t say that religion (also belief) is a choice… What I mean is that major world religions works only through indoctrination. They tell children lies, they lie in churches and synagogues, they lie everytime, so gullible people just believe it. Kids have no choice at all. Their authority is parents. So this cycle is repeating and repeating again and again.
That’s why I wouldn’t call religion a choice. If you were born in Iraq, you would be likely a muslim, if you were born in Poland, you would be a christian. And only in your teenage years you can give up this madness and become non religious. Of course, there are some exceptions, when parents are non religious at all, but still, indoctrination does its poisonous job through public schools and so on.
I don’t buy the “it’s not a choice” argument. Suppose homosexuality was a choice, would it then be okay to discriminate against gays? No. The reason sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. are wrong is not because “they can’t help being that way”, it’s because there is nothing fundamentally wrong with being that way. Women, gays, blacks, etc, are not inherently inferior simply for being women, gays, blacks, etc.
Religion is different, not because it is a choice, but because it is a demonstrably inferior way of gaining knowledge.
Yes, I suppose that is a better distinction.
Two more: Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams.
a third….Terry Pratchett…
This person has some serious issues with understanding the actual meanings of certain words.
She clearly doesn’t understand what fundamentalism is, as it relates to religion… atheism has no central doctrine or strict ideology to adhere to. It’s simply a lack of belief in gods.
However, since the word “fundamentalist” is tossed about so casually by christians, they think it means “strong support for any thought process”. They constantly fuck this up… I doubt it will ever change.
Secondly, I know she thinks she’s using the dictionary definition of “bigotry” accurately… but the irony is, her sweeping generalization of all atheists in this way is nothing short of… well… bigoted…
Shiny, shiny mirror…
I like the way Larry David put it when speaking of religion: “It’s so insane. If I really believed that stuff, I’d keep it to myself.”
The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1yOckwMm_k
I almost fell for it, foul temptress. The article started out nice, full of shame and embarassment for her beliefs. Demonstrating quite well that her need for religion was purely a psychological tool to help cope with mortality, which I can truly understand and empathize with, death can seriously weigh on someones mind (not sure why you’d turn to catholicism to resolve that however). Then, faster than an alter boys pants coming off, she turns the tables on atheism? WTF? She’s no progressive minded theist. She’s just another smug bitch who is unable to get past how foolish she looks. Old tricks used by pious fucks to deride free thought, all nicely wrapped in a thinly veiled apologist guise , as they say, you can put lipstick on a pig….
It is the skeptical position – the default rational position, just like aleprechaunism. I’ve seen that fact, when introduced in a discussion with the fools, cause their brains to short circuit – then the apologetics really start.
Even if religious art was – in whichever sense – superior to secular art, what does that have to do with the veracity of their claims?
Even in the matter of religion, “fundamentalist” is not just a synonym for fanatical or irrational.
It is specifically the reaction against modernity.
“It’s like shooting Christian fish car magnets in a barrel.”
–partial credit for humor.
Well, I think that’s certainly a more modern interpretation of the term, but from a strictly definition-based point of view, fundamentalism is strict adherence to a central doctrine or ideology.
At first, I thought she was doing all right for her position–she seems like a decent person (in that she gets that disgusting things done in the name of religion are no less disgusting), and I can understand the appeal of being part of something as historic and influential (and calming) as the Episcopalian church.
But then she got to the bit where it was apparent that she couldn’t tell the difference between (a) nonbelievers refusing to continue to pretend that we don’t exist, and (b) religion being under attack.
I’m sorry dear, but PZ’s right. In this matter, you are a fool.
In addition to that, they make shit up! They peddle lies as truth to indoctrinate children. They foster willful ignorance and smug dishonesty. They actively work to derail the attainment of knowledge!
In order for a religion to maintain itself, it must, at times, employ (and indeed embrace) some of the most evil and vile attributes of humanity.
Methinks she is not the only xian trapped b’twixt ‘n’ b’tween fairy story and reality.
She is fighting the awful truth formulating in her mind that is is just codswollop, and she is attacking the threats she senses more as a knee jerk reaction then genuine anger!
But peer pressure tends to keep a lid on the doubts, the human fear that religion exploited from day one was the threat of ostracization from family and friends, tis a powerful and vigorous stick to guide the minnions!
The polls that purportedly back the xian boasts of majority in society do so with a fair number that really are not dyed in the wool theists but they are to damned frightened to admit it, even to themselves.
Indoctrination and fear of god tend to quell resentment or doubt, even when the existence of god is not that certain any-more!
In all fairness, I think pretty much everyone can make that excuse. Unless you know someone who sprang from the womb with the collected works of Darwin, Einstein, and Marrie Currie stapled to his brain.
But I know what you mean. No one ever gets to be converted to Asian-ism or receives the White People’s Baptismal Blessing before they get their colors.
I, frankly, think it’s a bit racist to conflate the two. You’re implying that being African or Navaho or Pakistani someone affects the content of your character or the well-being of your mind. I’m waiting to hear the next article explaining that she’s a victim of her own Christianity – predisposed to Intelligent Design in the same way that Asians are really good at math. :-p
to 47
“Even if religious art was – in whichever sense – superior to secular art, what does that have to do with the veracity of their claims?”
Exactly. I think that it is a red herring, when theists assert, that religions done very good to people, because they have better art and things like that. It is simply red herring. It has nothing to do with the fact, that all religions are wrong.
The folks who coined the word and applied it to themselves deifined it that way, but they were very explicitly reacting to moderism in their respective denominations (around the turn of the 20th century).
They were “re-asserting” the fundamentals.
Nice post, but I do want to point out that
We have nothing good to show for being atheists? Hey, what about SCIENCE?
is one of the good things you have to show for being you, not something good that atheists have to show for being atheists.
There are other good things that atheists have to show, of course – but not generally for being atheists.
Atheists don’t have to like science, or even be rational.
If it was “methodological naturalism” or “rational evidenced-based thinkers”, then it would make more sense to reference science.
DaveH (of Lundun).
In my arguments and confrontations with these pathetic godlodytes, I’ve found that most of them have not read the bible. Like signing your life away without reading the contract.
Sure they might have a favorite passage or might even mouth the words when told to turn to a specific page during their subservient congregations. But I suspect that 90% have not read the entire bible.
Reading great literature is beyond them as well since that implies an education. And an education exposes religions as empty shell games, a common street hustle, a pyramid scheme with nothing but smoke and mirrors at the peak.
Of course, ridiculing these bended kneeanderthals is fun! And maybe profitable too as they might come to their senses.
I can’t speak for PZ, but I think the point is everyone was born without knowledge and most of us work to overcome it. That she hasn’t is her own fault.
This is really just the same old Christian martyrdom complex. Christians like to see themselves as victims, it’s a key part of theology, and it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t match with reality. She offers this statistic: “About 2 percent said they didn’t want people to know” they were religious. Wow, shocking! 2 percent? Wow, that’s like, 2 in one hundred. We Christians are so marginalized that a whole 2 percent of us feel we need to hide it! I wonder how many atheists keep their atheism to themselves? I bet it’s more than 2 percent. Meanwhile 76% percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, and the minority least likely to be elected President (below homosexuals and Muslims) are atheists.
Sorry, as a Christian you are not a persecuted minority and you don’t get to complain about the fact that some atheists are trying to tell others that it’s OK to be atheist.
You just happen to live in one of the few places in the U.S. where W.A.S.P.s are a minority. I have no doubt that if you just admitted your religion, none of your friends and associates would care in the least. They all know that Episcopalians are not part of the anti-gay, anti-abortion, creationist, right wing fringe. They’re not going to make fun of you for it, I promise.
Meanwhile, in my city putting up a billboard to support atheists results in threats of violence. Who exactly is part of a persecuted minority?
In every argument I’ve ever had about the supposed benefits of religion, I’ve yet to get one example that couldn’t also be had without the oogie-boogie bullshit. Community, art, charity, etc., none of it requires a belief in god.
It reminds me of Cartman from South Park pleading, “Respect my authority!”
On the contrary. I was much more fearful of death when I was a believer and thought that I would be spending eternity under the thumb of a capricious superbeing.
Ouch. :-)
I think the writer is under a serious misconception, and it’s distorting the way she’s interpreting her situation. She is laboring under the delusion that she’s a Christian, and a person of faith.
No, she’s not. Read the article carefully. She’s a faitheist. She doesn’t really believe in God, or any of the special truth claims which religion makes about reality. Instead, she loves what faith can do for people. She criticizes it only when it makes them do bad things. The doctrine is just incidental, like color. Dollars to donuts her “God” looks like the empty rhetoric Karen Armstrong tosses around.
First the long story about how she had been searching for a way to become “spiritual,” and tries different things on. She then runs into a priest who finally shows her “the best side of Christianity.”
Get that? Religion, properly understood, is not about anything being true or not, it’s about finding what “works” for you. And then there’s the expected list of benefits: the comfort, the meaning, the community, the ritual, the music and stained glass and feeling a part of a tradition and on and on and not a damn thing which an atheist couldn’t appreciate just as well.
I don’t mean that there are secular alternatives. I mean that you can be an atheist in church, going to church, doing churchly things, and getting all the benefits she gets. Because that’s apparently what she does, and what she is. And she pats herself on the back because she doesn’t proselytise — except when she does it “without words.” Religion as personal therapy.
And that’s why she is so down on the so-called New Atheists, and considers them just like fundamentalists. “Zealous” means that someone is taking the actual content of a religion seriously. You know, that part she dismissed as concern with what is “right and just.” Instead, it’s about form. Style. Preference, and singing the song that’s right for you. It makes things easier, and helps you get in touch with your feelings and needs.
That of course is why she felt persecuted in the cab. They were making fun of her personal tastes. Her chosen identity. Her therapy. Debate? No way. Religion isn’t an intellectual matter to these people: it’s like picking artwork. Which may be one reason she brings up the stained glass windows.
Her faith is just like stained glass. Aesthetically pleasing, but fragile, and in bits and pieces. Take it apart and analyze it and you lose the effect. But the light which shines through it comes from nature, not god.
This is religious humanism. She’s picked the wrong enemy.
Here in Dundee, Scotland the Bank of Scotland building in the town has a nice stained glass frontage. The Wellcome Trust Biocentre building has a very nice one that stretches four floors and depicts a freeform double helix with lots of A,C,G&T interspersed with things like microscopes, cells, mice, yeast, books etc. Unfortunately I can’t find a picture of it.
St Giles High Kirk in the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland has some fine abstract stained glass that, apart from being in a church, have no religious significance.
Sorry, I’m not going to cede the whole stained glass thing to the religiotards.
When I was a kid my room had a really beautiful stained glass window in it, made by a local artist from glass that used to be in my great-grandfather’s house.
My wife and I liked it so much that when we remodeled our home we put in a large (as in 10′ by 20′ large) stained glass window in our stairwell, again made by a local artist.
It’s quite beautiful and I’ve tried taking pictures of it, but due to the way it’s positioned and lit I haven’t been able to get a picture I like. (My lack of skill as a photographer may also be a factor here…) Of course even the best pictures of stained glass don’t really do it justice, which is sort of the point.
The designs of both windows are abstract – nothing religious about them. Or me.
You mock, Prof Myers, the absurdity of believing that some guy two thousand years ago was the son of a god. Rightly so. But have you never wondered why almost all religions have as their core tenets beliefs that are so patently ridiculous? My personal feeling is that the construction of these incredible dogmas was no accident. They are intentionally absurd to serve as a test of credulity. There may be a sucker born every minute but you still have to find them if you wish to extract tithes. Having found minds so malleable as to accept whatever religious nonsense a given church uses for this litmus test they are then in a position to use the concept of multilevel marketing to find other suckers. I submit as anecdotal evidence Jim Jones and the Church of Scientology of the theory that the nuttier the dogma the more zealous the sucker.
It’s not a scientific institution, but when I was last at Navy Pier in Chicago (2006?) they had these amazing full length Tiffany panels.
Has this woman never heard of Louis Comfort Tiffany? His studio did plenty of secular work, and even the church work was, well … in an era where it was understood to be pageantry and entirely cultural. (High church, smells’n’bells.) When CS Lewis and others were making the argument with a straight face that they were Christians because a) it’s pretty and b) it’s our cult.
Caius College has a stained-glass Latin square dedicated to R. A. Fisher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fisher-stainedglass-gonville-caius.jpg
re: Franz Schubert — #11, 16, 33 Gus Snarp & *&W#HIHVWVBLUBLUBLUB
I’m no biographer of Schubert, here’s a snippet from Madalyn Murray O’Hair who had this to say about it (via a biographer of his, Sir George Grove).
I wonder, AItOawlLc8Gfo6oZ8uAX3dYeOBxChVtMasvn…, why “…everybody is very surprised at my piety which I have expressed in a hymn to the Blessed Virgin …” if Schubert was religious, like “everybody” surrounding him.
Why would anybody be surprised at his “piety”, unless Schubert was NOT religious? Looks to me like he had a reputation for NOT being religious, and the word “piety” in that sentence should have been in irony quotes.
Enquiring minds want to know…
When I’m getting a ride from some friends and they start talking about how stupid religious people are and quoting lines from “Religulous,” do I have an obligation to point out how reductive and bigoted they’re being, the way I would if they were talking about a particular race?
No, honey; just wait for the Marine to climb out of the trunk and punch that atheist professor driver in the face.
Ron Sullivan
http://toad.faultline.org
a stack of smug books with childishly provocative titles.
Chalk up another wannabe critic who hasn’t read Breaking the Spell, or, indeed, even bothered to inform herself about it. If there’s a less “smug” book by an atheist about religion, I’m not aware of it. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess: she admits right there that all she knows are the titles.
And Dennett’s book in particular is the one she should read. She lays out the case for “belief in belief” in textbook fashion.
Oh yeah, I think the BPL archive section (old building) has frescos by John Singer Sargeant and maybe some stained glass as well? And I’m pretty sure the State House up the hill has stained glass… unless I’m really tripping. Well, if it doesn’t, it has this marble parquet floor in the rotunda, that ought to count for something.
The majority of the city libraries in Eastern Mass have 19th century marble sculptures, various subjects. (Philosophers, religious figures, children, personifications of ideals.)
Just look at the outside of the (old) Boston Public Library. It was built as a temple to human wisdom. Look at the names engraved across the front.
I know in the 70’s and 80’s this kind of stuff was viewed as wasteful frippery, but there was a period (1880’s and 1890’s) when the kind of energy and patronage that had been lavished on religious institutions was lavished on public institutions. My theory is that the Gilded Age robber barons had been to Europe and felt self conscious/embarrassed and so had to have, like Bill Gates, public institutions just like
AppleEurope, just like Europe, just like Europe! If not nicer. Because they were richer than Europe, after all.Another reason for really stupid stories to find so many believers might be that it makes you think “No one would make up something this weird on purpose”. I was given the many contradictions in the Bible as an argument for its accuracy, because apparently a forgery would be much more polished and more carefully put together. It also makes your believing in it more virtuous and brave.
I did have to do a search for the Wellcome Trust helix window window in Dundee. Sadly, I failed but I can present to you the stained glass PC case: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/12/stained_glass_pc_cas.html
Don’t ask me why…
I also found these which are stunning and are much more profound than most religious art! http://vod.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk/
category failure
Go here http://www.personal.dundee.ac.uk/~cjweijer/dictyweb/projects.htm
and click on ‘Cell Movement’ and view the movie. Fluorescently labelled cells in a dictyostelium ‘slug’ as it moves then begins to form the fruiting body. Watch the differently destined cells dance and spiral around. I remember when Kees first showed that movie at a floor meeting. It quite blew everyone away. The AVI version seemed best for me.
The art and music thing always irks me incredibly. People who bring this up are always referring to Western art and music made in a time where not being a Christian was not an option, which they conveniently forget.
Amazingly enough, as non-religion got more and more accepted by society at large the art and music got more and more secular and not at all worse. And what is Christian art these days? Thomas Kincaid? Ooh.
–Tertullian
I wanted to change my name to Tertullian, but then I would have to reregister.
It’s not that she thinks atheists can’t produce great art, she makes the mistake in thinking that if there were no religion, all the religious art would be gone and not replaced with secular art. That is, she makes the mistake that if the Bible didn’t exist Michealangelo not only would not have carved David, but would not have carved an equivalent figure not based on a bible story, that Bach would not have composed any music. Why is it inconceivable to her that if these artists did not have religion to inspire them, that they would not have been inspired by something else? Artists are compelled to create and seek out “inspiration”, they are not passive receivers who simply wait to be inspired.
—Tertullian
(I wanted to change my name to Tertullian, but then I would have to re-register.)
No comfort in the face of death?
Comfort in the face of death? I think of Hitchens’ point about the “celestial north korea” and wonder if these people think at all.
Heaven is beautifully and cleverly skewered by Mark Twain in “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven” (project Gutenberg, here: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1044 )
It’s not a place I’d want to go. Besides, my dogs wouldn’t be there and how could any place be called “heaven” without dogs?
@ # 71:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellens_dritter_Gesang#Schuberts_Fr.C3.B6mmigkeit
Perhaps somebody with a better knowledge of English than I have can translate the whole letter and the whole paragraph. It is absolutely clear that the letter is not ironic, and that Schubert rejected the Catholic Church, and insofar “formal or dogmatic religion”, but that he held religious/Christian/Catholic beliefs: He deliberately omitted the profession of faith in the church in the credo of all his masses, but left the rest untouched.
And it is not true that in the early nineteenth century, “only the religious art form was accepted, or acceptable”; this ist demonstrated by Schubert’s work itself, most of which is secular. It seems to me that Murray O’Hair counts everyone as “skeptic” who does not adhere to “formal or dogmatic religion”.
And I’d like to add that Schubert is not on Wikipedia’s list of non-theist musicians that PZ linked to (and neither are Paganini and Saint-Saëns, btw), only Berlioz.
Peter, it really is art in itself. Wait until David Hockney see this!
No great atheist writers? Hmm… off the top of my head…
John Fowles. Mark Twain. Iain McEwan. Jill Paton Walsh. George Bernard Shaw. Voltaire. Shelley. Kingsley Amis. Asimov. Arthur C. Clarke. Iain Banks. George Orwell. Salman Rushdie. Kurt Vonnegut. Zoe Heller. Robert Graves. Angela Carter. Roddy Doyle. Philip Larkin. Mary McCarthy. Primo Levi. José Saramago.
And that’s just the first to spring to mind. There are many others.
@#69 – The Tiffany stained glass exhibit is still at Navy Pier. I think it’s actually a permanent exhibit and I always duck in for a stroll through when I’m at the Pier. The pieces are absolutely lovely and while there are a few Christian religious pieces, if memory serves, there are also quite a few depicting scenes from Greek/Roman myths and popular fairy tales, as well as general non-religious art. So, nope, Christianity does not get to claim credit for sole inspiration of stained glass art, much less any art forms in general.
“…atheists are at least as fundamentalist and zealous as any religious people I know, and they have nothing good to show for it: no stained glass, no great literature, no great art, no comfort in the face of death. Just dissipated Christopher Hitchens sounding off on “Larry King Live” and a stack of smug books with childishly provocative titles.”
I may be an atheist, but does that mean I discount the breath-taking beauty of the Sistine Chapel or am unmoved by listening to “Ave Maria” echoing through the magnificent arching halls of a cathedral because they are religious in nature? No. So much of early great art is religious in nature precisely because the Church was one of the wealthiest art patrons in Western Civilization, so of course a lot of the artwork created was going to be religious in nature – it doesn’t pay to piss of your patron. So where does she get off asserting that a lack of belief is equated with an inability to create great art? Some of the greatest artists in history were nontheists – Brahms, Shostakovich, Asimov, Twain, there’s an insanely long list here. Calhoun styles herself a writer, so surely she must be aware of the works of Dave Eggers, an enormously talented writer, who, oops! just happens to be an atheist as well. A statement like that is just plain mean, petty and lazy. Also, as an atheist who considers herself an artist – my work is by no means great or world-shattering, but it sure as hell means a lot to me – words cannot begin to describe how utterly ignorant and insulting that statement is as well.
I’d like to nominate Nietzsche as great atheist literature. However you take his philosophy it’s always thought provoking, and the sheer quality of the prose…damn.
Happy Christmas / hannukah / solstice / winterval all!
Jack @ #86
Showoff.
(Well done, by the way).
“We have nothing good to show for being atheists? Hey, what about SCIENCE?”
Hmm… not sure if I agree here.
Science doesn’t result from atheism. Science leads to skepticism which, if done right, leads to atheism.
OTOH, nothing she listed is inherently religious so I guess we’re square.
@86:
No offense, but isn’t Salman Rushdie still a muslim even after the Fatwa?
I take offense on #86’s behalf, and declare.. Fatwā!
Atheist Moderate: I don’t believe in any gods.
Atheist Fundamentalist: There is no evidence to suggest the existence of any gods, so I do not believe in any god.
Atheist Zealot: All evidence is in favour of the non-existence of gods. I believe there are NO gods.
Anti-theist: There are no gods and this is a good thing. Wouldn’t it be awful if there were a Kim Jong-Il in the sky sending us to heaven or hell when we die, neither of which can we escape from, based on nothing more than what we think, and all the while causing all the misery in the world. If a god created out universe, it could be considered Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent, but rather impotent, inept and malicious.
reductive?
Again the comment comes to mind.
It’s somehow okay to believe in any cock-and-bull story, but if someone says it’s nonsense, they are a fundamentalist?
Here the translation:
Schubert writes to his father and stepmother:
People are surprised by my piety, expressed in my Hymn to the holy virgin, that touches people’s hart and calls to devotion. I think this is because I never forced myself to devotion.
Peter Härtling comments this excerpt form the letter in the following way:
…by which he gives a precise but subtle reply to his father regarding numerous arguments, which mostly ended in angry shouting, about the true belief (™) and the righteous piety.
The author lets Schubert have the following conversation a few chapters earlier:
“So you don’t belief?”
“Yes I do!”
“But, why THIS?”
“I belief in God and Jesus”
“And in the church?”
“I don’t have to necessarily belief in the church.”
“It’s good that no one hears you, Franz”.
The place in life of this passage is that Schubert left the passage “Et unam sanctum catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam” (…in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church) out of the Credo in all the latin masses he wrote.
“I see him as a wanderer, much more conscious of his time than his friends could imagine. One who melancholically remembered the Enlightenment and who could – under cover – cope with the Restauration and who caught up with the coming alienation, our alienation, in his music.”
reductive?
I believe the intended meaning is ‘reducing’ Christianity to a single caricature based on right wing fundamentalism.
She’s just a bit confused by her atheist friends stating the obvious. She seems to agree with the improbability of a biblical, desert god, but still talks of Jeebus.
She believes there is some sort of plateau in her religion, a safe place of reasonability, where she can believe authentically and be respected for doing so, because on that level, the real god of the ‘true’ christian religion exists – the true deity – Jeebus.
She believes there to be such a ‘middle ground’ – not loony evangelical crazy, but truth.
She must know in her heart that if you believe in a ‘Christian’ god, it comes with all the biblical nonsense – that’s religion – and all the marvelous architecture, exquisite stained glass and pious, pomp and ceremony won’t make it truth – it’s still religion and it’s all unbelievable.
Thommo writes:
I like to tell christians that we atheists should thank god if we wind up in hell; that would show us that our earthly lives had meaning & purpose after all.
Wow, I like this one, the argument that our faith is better than your atheism because we have lots of pretty windows and music. Maybe the reason science doesn’t have as many stained glass artifacts is because we were busy spending all our funds on researching ways to increase people’s life spans, improve health and education and find answers to real questions and issues about life and the universe rather than spending the money on fucking windows.
Oh, okay.
#91:
No, in spite of predictable scurrilous
liesrumours from the predictable suspects, Rushdie is an atheist.The reason she (and so many other xtians) feels persecuted is not that her friends are opressing her, reality is. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, reality has a well-known atheist bias. If Jesus is that “still small voice” described by CS Lewis, reality is that loud blaring obvious voice and it’s yelling at you every waking minute. And atheists didn’t create it.
Many goddists are so afraid of death that their religion says “don’t worry, you won’t really die, you’ll just go somewhere else where there’s
72 virgins whose sole purpose is to give you endless sexual pleasureharp playing and singing praise to a sadistic bully.”Here’s at least a detail of the Wellcome Biotrust Centre’s window in Dundee.
http://www.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk/groups/joost_zomerdijk/images/atrium_window_full.jpg
Did anyone else notice this story directly beneath the closet Christian story? Kirk Cameron as Number 9. in the Year in Crazy. Works for me.
Jack in #86,
Let’s not get carried away, Robert Graves? Great literature? I rather think not.
And Suzanne Somers also made the Year in Crazy list.
I think that’s an interesting point. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that a large portion of art generated by religions is meant to glorify/adorn/decorate the religious enterprise. It’s not art made for the sake of art, creativity, or the human enterprise.
So it would seem that religious art is narcissistic. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.
Great response, PZ. I have stained glass windows in my newly purchased home and this atheist is absolutely going to rip that shit out.
No great art? To quote a wonderful artist and my favorite musician, Tom Waits:
“Come down off the cross we can use the wood”
Coryat writes:
I’d like to nominate Nietzsche as great atheist literature.
He’s a supernaturalist. So, I’m not sure he’s an atheist, exactly. Would you consider him “new age”?
Art for art’s sake is less narcissistic than art for religion’s sake?
And, in any case, the argumant for great artistic works is either essentially useless or deeply bigoted – either one must assume that any god (or belief in god) can inspire great works or art, or one must assume that all great works of art are essentially Judeo-Christian in origin.
Some people, (stupid people, no doubt) believe that there have been the occasional pieces of worthwhile art created outside of the Big Three faithsphere…
…some of them were even non-religious in nature.
Well, take a look at the composer the theists like to trot out all the time, JS Bach.
Bach may have been religious (no reason to believe he wasn’t a theist) but he certainly was not terribly pious. He was known to fuck off to the pub during particularly long sermons, until the windbag himself busted him one week. He also threw Protestantism to the wind and wrote a beautiful Mass as a job application for a position in an RCC cathedral in Leipzig (he didn’t get it, more’s the pity). Some of his best music, written late in life, was highly meditative and without words.
He loved the hymn “O Sacred Heart Surrounded”, which might at first seem to say something of his attitude towards the Christology, except that he loved it so much he would set the music with different words! Er….
He also arranged some profane ditties, if I remember my Glenn Gould correctly. In a more secular time he would have written more secular music.
I stand in awe of comment 65.
Sounds quite plausible.
How true, how true.
@81
That “David” argument is hilarious because Michaelangelo had a thing about carving male nudes. WTH does his “David” have to do with David anyway? It’s inspired by Roman nudes of Apollo. Hello. She might as well argue that without the Greek and Roman pantheons, Western (Western, honey, all those millennia of great Chinese art happened before Christian incursion and quite frankly, most of the really amazing Chinese art objects aren’t religious in any way) art would not be so rich.
Has this lady even been in an art gallery? It was all Greek and Roman mythology/history all the time from the Renaissance until the late 19th century when the Impressionists decided to fux things up. (I mean that in a good way.)
@93
Zen Atheist: What is a god?
Melbourne, Australia, has an awesome bit of non-religious stained glass.
The National Gallery of Victoria has a gorgeous stained glass ceiling in one of its free public areas.
There’s a pic here:
http://www.thecollectormm.com.au/gallery/photography/City/slides/ArtsCentre4.jpg
Google image search for “national gallery victoria ceiling” for more. It’s not a scientific institution, but it is a godless public building, and the ceiling is just abstract art. No gods to be seen anywhere.
Children love it – every time I go in there, I always see kids lying on their backs looking up at the ceiling.
Andreas Johannson, #112:
I’m not sure how meaningful “narcissistic” is in the context, but I think art for art’s sake is at least more coherent than art for religion’s sake. Let’s leave aside for a moment the obvious reasons religions are incoherent.
If art is done for the sake of religion and to the exclusion of any other purpose, then it is meaningful only to those whose beliefs accord with the artwork itself. One may not even know the artist’s beliefs which culminated in the production of said artwork, and so the artwork is not itself a sufficient vehicle for transferring beliefs or ideas about beliefs. This is less of an issue with language-related arts (i.e., fiction, poetry, musical titles, song lyrics), but even then there is a great deal of ambiguity. Also, non-religious and believers of other religions can still enjoy religious art as art.
For example, one can enjoy J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and believe any number of other things regarding the libretto used, which was itself derived from a German translation of Matthew 26 & 27. The music does not have a function of conveying ideas about theology, since as far as I know it cannot be determined exactly what the purpose of each notation in Bach’s score (or any score, any painting, any sculpture, etc.) is meant to be. It does, however, have an artistic function, which is to enjoy it for its own sake.
or how about Tool
Well, perhaps that is the case in the visual arts. In music, you can go back to the 17th century and find both Johann Fux (writer of the music theoretical treatise Gradus Ad Parnassum — an allusion to Mt. Parnassus, which in Greek mythology was sacred to Apollo and home of the Muses) and Vincenz Fux (not related).
;)
IANAP(sychologist) but I get the feeling that many christians feel so persecuted because on some level they are aware that their beliefs don’t align with reality and won’t hold up to any rational scrutiny. No wonder they react so badly to those pesky ‘new atheists’ and their rationality and their science and logic and integrity. Christians aren’t so much persecuted as they are extremely fearful, intellectual cowards.
Well in a way she’s correct about Atheist potentially being “atheists are at least as fundamentalist and zealous as any religious people I know” as many see the only way to fight narrow rigid adherence to principles is to be narrow and rigid in reverse. I joke about this often by calling myself a “Born again Atheist” or “It’s wonderful being loved by someone that doesn’t exist” etc.
Some however practice intolerance to others , a key foundation of fundamentalism, in their frothing at the mouth about everything religious. Being the polar reverse of what you hate isn’t much better than being the enemy, although Orwell puts it better in Animal Farm.
I like to live in a world where you can believe what the hell you like as long as you don’t try and tell me what I should believe or not believe. Some Atheists are no better at that way of thinking than their fundie counterparts.
This seems quite self-evident to me, and Mr. T did a good job explaining.
Art, as a human endeavor, should be used to explore all facets of humanity, not just the narrow attitudes of the current group of fascist ideologues that happen to be in power. Historically, typically when the church made art, it was to “glorify”, prop-up, extol the church and its rigid teachings with very grandiose efforts. That is very narcissistic.
Sure, there was secular art. But not at the scale the church could produce.
I call bullshit.
I shouldn’t even have to explain why.
“… no great literature …”
Personally, I’d cite Umberto Eco, though he’s an agnostic.
William of Baskerville is perhaps the greatest fictional hero of science aborning ever portrayed…
_______________________
I attended a Memorial Mass for my former wife’s mother today… our daughter (the heathen!) performed beautiful vocal renditions of “Amazing Grace” and… “Fly Me to the Moon” in memoriam.
Stained glass? Dude, we have FRACTALS! No stained glass looks as cool as a fractal growing on your screen.
But more important, atheists have Bruce Lee while the relgiotards have Chuck Norris. And as we all know, Bruce Lee could kick Chuck Norris’ ass any day of the week.
Here we go again, comparing religion with race! Mocking somebody because of their unchangeable, innate characteristics and mocking somebody because of their silly, possibly dangerous, ideas are two entirely different things!
Thinking some more about the example I gave at #119, of St. Matthew Passion, I should make a correction. I said the libretto was “derived from a German translation of Matthew 26 & 27”, but that is not entirely accurate.
Some of the lyrics are text from a Biblical translation, some are poetry by Christian Henrici the librettist, some earlier hymns are included, and some lyrics and music are even borrowed from secular songs! The shock! The horror! This music must not be “for religion’s sake” and/or not entirely religious!
Would someone kindly find me a fainting couch? Please? No? Okay.
On a more general level, we should all thank those nasty Pythagoreans (or at least some ancient heathens of one tribe or another) for discovering some of the mathematical relationships underlying Western music theory. This does not mean we should consider Pythagoreanism to be a reasonable belief system, or that we should not mock Pythogoras’ legendary fear of eating beans because they resembled testicles. Duh.
@111
Wut?
DaveH (Lundun).
I’d like to throw my lot in with waitsian. Tom Waits is absolutely brilliant. I do not know for sure that he is an atheist, but he seems to be. He’s certainly a fan of sacrilege.
More “all beliefs are equally valid” horseshit….
I have to comment about the “comfort in the face of death” issue. The atheist’s knowledge that he will just cease to exist and turn into mere atoms that become part of other living things or just dust in cosmos allows him to face death with maturity and rational acceptance.
This calm attitude is, I’ve found, unlike that of many believers who are wrought with psychological pain and anxiety before death, many praying feverishly and, in the case of illness, many wondering distraughlty why their god let them suffer like this.
Also unlike atheists, believers tend to suffer under the restriction of taboos. The taboo about death prevents many of them to face up to the idea of dying. They can’t speak about it clearly and can’t examine it soberly, so it remains something mysterious and menacing.
It drives me nuts when people say that “atheism hasn’t produced X, Y, Z” because atheists as such produce NOTHING. We’re simply people who no longer (or never) believe(d) in the narrative. It’s like saying “people who don’t believe in astronomy have never created a wardrobe like Miss Cleo’s”. Atheist individuals have contributed plenty to society of course, but there’s no “atheist church”, and that’s as it should be.
“We have nothing good to show for being atheists? Hey, what about SCIENCE?”
As an atheist and ecologist I find this statement to be just as strange as the notion that Christians and not atheists are the sole inheritors of great literature and art. Science is not a fundamentally atheist undertaking, nor should it be.
Lee,
Um, I’m not a scientist, but I understand science to be a purely naturalistic enterprise, hence fundamentally atheistic.
Science is a fundamentally godless undertaking.
If you’re trying to squeeze god or spirits or supernatural forces in there, you’re doing it wrong.
Not to parrot, but…
(…because I’ve posted similar to this many times previous…)
Being skeptical (of positive truth-claims about reality) is the default rational position. If it was not, every positive truth-claim about reality (by anyone!) would have to be considered equally true – without evidence, and even despite it. That is not rational/practical/useful and indeed, potentially very dangerous!
The term “atheist” is as valid as the term “aleprechaunist”. All are born atheist and aleprechaunist (as well as ascubaist/aflowerist/agravityist and so on). There is no need to take an operative negative stance against a claim that has never been demonstrated (or properly reasoned rigorously), and furthermore, has reasoned-logic stacked against its veracity. If that were the case, those of us with gardens would all have to concern ourselves with tripping over leprechauns. Once past a certain age (hopefully by grade-school), being an aflowerist or agravityist is no longer a serious reality-based consideration.
One aspect of the scientific method is to approach positive truth-claims about reality using rigorous skeptical inquiry. Again we have skepticism, the default rational position. Atheism, along with aleprechaunism, is the default rational position.
I am of the opinion that the previous points lead to the conclusion that espousing the scientific method, by default, espouses skepticism, thereby disregarding positive truth claims that have no empirical support, demonstrated parallel, or reasoned necessity.
Science takes as much an atheist position as it does an aleprechaunist position.
So, is science fundamentally aleprechaunist? I think that’s just a silly question because the answer is clearly yes. Science used to also be aheliocentrist as well, but Heliocentrism didn’t have nearly the scope of information against it (breadth, depth, and time) that the existence or necessity of deities do.
Produce the deities and the magic so that they can be subjected to the rigorous skeptical inquiry of the scientific method. Until then, they are effectively non-existent (along with all the other a-ist positions). This is the bold statement of learning-progress espoused by the scientific method. It’s no different than saying that if you think leprechauns are real, bring one in. Until then, science must continue its learning considering the opposite as the default. If science needs a leprechaun idea to help it through a tough spot, science will still want more than empty speculation.
The scientific method is atheist. This is the result of those making positive truth claims about the existence of, or the need to even consider the existence of, deities and magic, when working towards the goal of achieving learning-progress.
Ok, candidate for TLDR. I said my peace.
Who needs stained glass windows? We got diffraction gratings!!!!!
lttl sh*t pz thnks h cn dbnk Gd..
y r gng t b trtrd nd mrdrd wtht mrcy…
Lks lk yr wbst s ndr ttck frm sprntrl frcs…
http://dyn.pltc.cm/mmbrs/frms/thrd.cfm?ctd=2&sbctd=7&thrdd=3449994
y rlly nd t dd cmmnt mdrtn t yr blsphmy…
In the usual sense, doing science doesn’t require atheism, in the same way that walking through a doorway doesn’t require atheism.
Humans come with multiple storage locations and parallel processing. The belief module is not seen to operate as a one-belief-at-a-time stack.
Atheism is not in the same category as methodological naturalism, and I’m not sure methodological naturalism needs to be renamed.
Unless you want to wind up Francis Collins, of course.
DaveH (Lundun)
Except that guy. He definitely has only one track.
It may not require atheism, but it requires non-theism.
Oh, wait… :)
I think you should be more explicit here in step two.
@ # 96,
Thank you for the translation.
Why isn’t Tom Lehrer in that list of non-theists?
i find signs of fundamentalism is both science and atheism .. it is, after all, a disease of the ego characterized by certainty ..
Nietzsche as a supernaturalist? How so? I can accept that he believed in some silly things like Lamarckianism, but supernaturalism? His writings refute this claim; he never published parts of his unpublished notes precisely because they went over into Schopenhaureian supernaturalism: RJ Hollingdale’s ‘Nietzsche: the Man and his Philosophy’ has more details. As for being New Age, I really don’t know where to begin.
“i find signs of fundamentalism is both science and atheism .. it is, after all, a disease of the ego characterized by certainty ..”
Obvious troll is obvious.
I have lived in NYC all my life, and I’m calling BS on Calhoun’s editorial. A liberal Christian in NYC? They’re EVERYWHERE!!! Posted on my blog:
This is in response to a friend’s comment about an editorial I posted on Facebook (a great forum for stirring controversy, apparently). I am a closet Christian by Ada Calhoun begins by relating the author’s experiences of covering up her Christianity in New York City. Odd, I’m sure, since NYC is the largest American city with the most religious houses of worship. But Calhoun thinks that, since she’s a liberal with liberal friends, she can’t possibly be a proud Christian. Nevermind the fact that plenty of liberals also wear their religion on their sleeve. The Panel Study of American Religion & Ethnicity cites 26.5% of those participating in its poll as having liberal religious views, and 37.4% as leaning to the left. Of those confirmed liberals, almost 40% consider themselves “very liberal.” Calhoun also uses the Panel Study of American Religion & Ethnicity to validate one of her points, but more on that later.
So my friend notes that Calhoun isn’t playing the victim here since her points seem to be valid. And my belittling of the editorial adds to the “outrageous vehemency of the anti-religious.” I’ll admit it: I am a lot more vocal than most about my atheism. And when a suppressed, discriminated minority begins speaking up for itself, I can see how some would interpret that as “vehement.” But that doesn’t mean we’re not correct.
But on to those points that seem to be valid. Here they are:
1.“All of us need help with birth and death and good and evil, and religion can give us that. It doesn’t solve problems.” Yes, but it definitely creates problems.
2.“[Closeted Christianity] definitely exists in Manhattan, some Democratic corners in Washington, and I’d bet parts of Northern California.” Really? Manhattan, where just today I saw a woman praying on a rosary in the subway and walked by 3 churches in a 4 block radius? And DC, where there is only one open atheist in Congress, Pete Stark from CA? Not to mention the whole world of politics, where almost 50% of Americans would never vote an atheist into the Oval Office and religious people recently tried to usurp open atheist Cecil Bothwell from his elected position as Asheville, NC city councilman. Why? Because the NC state constitution, plus at least 6 others, bars atheists from holding public office.
3.“The Panel Study of American Religion and Ethnicity asked people how they felt about those outside their close friends and family knowing they were religious. About 2 percent said they didn’t want people to know, and that percentage is higher among people with liberal politics and people, like me, who are part of Generation X.” Maybe Calhoun should have added that over 40% of those polled want people to know they are religious. I also find it interesting that Calhoun provides links to promote a religious book and a reverend’s personal website in her article, but fails to provide the link to this piece of evidence that would expose her narrow-mindedness – but I digress. To address the point that more than 2% of liberal Gen-X’ers don’t feel comfortable wearing their religion on their sleeve: I can’t think of a college that doesn’t have a religious group on-campus. In fact, there are colleges specifically for religious people! And if those +2% of liberal Gen-X’ers are finally listening to criticism, then that’s not a bad thing.
4.“But if you’re in a place like New York City…the ‘new atheists’ surround you.” Calhoun then goes on to point out the recent poster campaigns by the Big Apple Coalition of Reason and by Richard Dawkins in London. And that atheist authors criticizing the religious is like “shooting Christian fish car magnets in a barrel.” Okay, a few posters on buses and in subway stations does not equate “surrounding” you. Over 6,500 houses of worship in NYC is more like it. You don’t see atheists handing out the next Dawkins best-seller, but plenty of people hand-out pocket-sized Bibles and pamphlets proclaiming the “Word.” As for shooting fish in a barrel? It’s not the atheist’s fault that so many people are religious. If religion didn’t corrupt politics and education, there’d be a lot less of us pointing out the fallacy of faith.
5.“The Creation Museum is a riot. The psychos shooting up abortion clinics and telling gay couples they’re going to hell are evil, and anyone of faith has an obligation to condemn them. Abominable stuff has been done in God’s name for centuries. The Bible has a lot of crazy shit in it about stoning people for using the wrong salad fork. Up with science and reason!” Really the first and only valid point Calhoun has made.
6.“atheists are at least as fundamentalist and zealous as any religious people I know, and they have nothing good to show for it: no stained glass, no great literature, no great art, no comfort in the face of death.” Let’s see… “fundamentalism” as defined by Merriam-Webster: skipping over the blatantly obvious definition relating to Christianity, “a movement of attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles.” The only principle we have is that we do not personally believe in a supernatural deity. There is no adherence to a set of rules. Atheism may be a movement, but it is by no means fundamentalism. But even disregarding Calhoun’s warped dictionary, it is a slap in the face to the world of art and literature that she thinks only religion can inspire great works. There have been, and still are, plenty of nontheist authors, entertainers, and musicians, some of whom are professed atheists.
7.“When I’m getting a ride from some friends and they start talking about how stupid religious people are and quoting lines from ‘Religulous,’ do I have an obligation to point out how reductive and bigoted they’re being, the way I would if they were talking about a particular race?” Yes and no. Yes, you are obliged to let your friends know that you are religious so that they can finally have a worthwhile conversation about religion with you. No, you are not allowed to equate your religious “persecution” with racial bigotry. Why? Simply because religion is not the same thing as race. You cannot choose or abandon your race; you have every freedom to choose your religion (or lack thereof). So freethinkers criticizing religious dogma and their adherents is in no sense similar to racists insulting ethnic minorities.
So there is my response, certainly too lengthy to put on my profile. I suppose I would have respected Calhoun’s editorial a little more if she were actually insulted by her friends for being a Christian, but she wasn’t. She hides her practice like a dirty little secret so she can still partake in the carpool gossip. So if Calhoun wants to play the victim, she should postpone her acting career until an atheist is president, the Pledge of Allegiance is restored to its original glory, Trinity Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral become meeting places for American Atheists, and theists are barred from public office in 6 states.
Science is about certainty?
hahahahahahah
One thing that I cannot let go unchallenged is the strongest objective piece of evidence Ms. Calhoun has for ‘Christian Persecution’. I have looked up the study that she says claims that 2% don’t want those beyond their close friends and family to know they are religious. The specific statistic that she references is available here. The full page of questions about this is here.
So I do not take her out of context, the exact wording that she uses is:
What the page actually says the question is: “How do you feel about letting others outside of your closer friends and family know that you are a member of the religion you stated earlier?”
This includes the unaffiliated and other categories.
When looking at the breakdown of the numbers, it looks even worse for Ms. Calhoun’s statistics. Of the 1896 Christians of various flavors that replied to the survey, 16 replied negatively: either “Probably do not want people to know” or “Definitely do not want people to know”. For those not doing the math at home, that’s .84%. The two non-Christian categories, unaffiliated or other, had 714 participants, of whom 33 replied negatively – that’s 4.6%.
Simply put, the survey Ms. Calhoun is using does not support her claim of Christian persecution.
Atheism is Dead is brilliant. He’s disemvoweled himself making his death threats unusable in a court of law.
If you want to see a real big, beautiful and secular piece of stained glass, you should visit the Cosmovitral in the botanical garden of Toluca, Mexico.
According to wikipedia, “is considered to be the largest stained-glass artwork in the world.” and the central theme is “Man and his relationship with the universe”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmovitral
I don’t like other people telling me
howto think.FTFY
Parse, thank you so much for that.
I wish everyone would think critically about what they believe, why they believe it, and really start to care about whether it is true or not. Unfortunately, some people react to little seeds of doubt fluttering in front of them by covering their eyes and crying persecution.
What a clever little meme faith is, with its armor against competing ideas.
It does rather the opposite, I would say.
PZ Myers said:
Sorry, but the most powerful atheists of modern times were “fundamentalists” alright. Anyone remember Lenin, Stalin & Mao the atheist totalitarian genocidalists?
Only a “moron” would deny (or sheepishly deflect) the fact that the worlds first self-professed atheist state was also fundamentalist in every organ of its administration. The USSR and the PRC were both militantly atheist, mercilessly persecuted people of faith and perfected the apparatus of genocidal totalitarianism.
Much the same goes for the Nazis, who co-opted churches, trade unions and businesses into their totalitarian system. The SS, the core institution of National Socialism, was also militantly irreligious. Only deluded fools, idiots or liars could ignore the fact the Nazis were essentially pagan in their spirit and utterly hostile to the notion of a Christian civil society in practice.
The idea that the SS were Christian is balls. These guys were trained to perform in racial breeding farms. I dont see any warrant for this in the Bible or any church teaching. Bartlett-Jones relays how
Atheist fundamentalists need to own up to the hundreds of millions of skeletons in their own closets before rattling the bones of their religious rivals.
Ah, an idjit proving he is an idjit. After all, all atheism means is that I don’t believe in your (or anyone else’s) imaginary deity. There is nothing beyond that. Show otherwise, and cite your work. Start with basic definitions, and any holy books.
Jack Strocchi, you may want to actually check the dictionary definition of “fundamentalist”. It has actually been given at post #149
“a movement of attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles.”
Please show how a lack of belief leads to strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles. I would have thought quite the opposite would happen. In fact aren’t you guys constantly complaining about how lacking in “morals” we are? Make up your mind please. We cannot be both.
Sorry, but there is no such thing as an atheist fundamentalist and therefore we have nothing to own up for. Comparing us to nazis is insulting and demonstrably incorrect.
Christian genocide of races you don’t like however is perfectly condoned in the bible. Thus gassing the jews was perfectly acceptable within christian scripture.
You do not know your history, you do not know your bible, you know nothing of other cultures, or ideas or science. you know nothing except what has been force fed you by your religion.
You are a fool. Go learn something.
Richard Eis@#160
Of course there is “such a thing as a fundamentalist atheist”. They are called Bolsheviks and they annihilated independent religious institutions and indeed any civil institutions that did not follow the party’s atheist line. Only someone who was a self-deluded apologist for terror could deny that.
Let us never forget that the first time a party of atheists got hold of a government they turned it into a genocidal totalitarian dictatorship. Not a very auspicious beginning for the self-described promoters of freedom and reason, eh?
Its balderdash to say that atheist fundamentalists do not express a “lack of belief”. They are fanatics who believe that religion should be extinguished from public life. Consider yourself “shown” you lying fool.
Richard Eis said:
The Christian part of the Bible, the Gospels of the New Testament, does not contain any instructions on how to exterminate your neighbor. It is mostly filled with injunctions to “love your neighbor” and “turn the other cheek”.
Only a liar or fool, or foolish liar, can deny this obvious truth.
The Judaic part of the Bible, the Torah of the Old Testament, was written by Jews. It is the last place one would find a warrant for the genocide of the Jews.
Idiot.
Richard Eis said:
Nazis were hostile to Christianity in their bones, as shown by the sacrilegious attitudes and pagan rituals. They ruthlessly suppressed independent clerics and set up racial breeding farms which are an abomination in the eyes of Christian moral teaching.
I am glad that you and all militant atheists are insulted by my demonstration of your similarity to Nazi pagans. You deserve the contempt of all civilized people.
.
The Bolsheviks were fundamentalist communists who saw organized religion as a threat to their power. Their actions were led by their belief in communism, not their lack of belief in deities. To call them fundamentalist atheists is like calling them fundamentalist omnivores.
The title of this post, Christian Shame seems to have ruffled the feathers of a gentle and loving Christian by the name of Jack Strocchi who seems to desperately need to convince smart and ethical people who comment here that Christians and their beliefs are always moral, blessed with the absolute wisdom of their unproven divine entity. Perhaps Jack is not a true Christian? Yup, he is, just another liar for jebus who godwinned the thread without even realizing that when he did that, he has metaphorically stamped on his forehead IDIOT for time immemorial.
KOPD42@#162 said:
The Bolsheviks were fundamentalist communists AND fundamentalist atheists. Their fundamentalist communism led them to extirpate capitalist institutions (liquidate the kulaks). Their fundamentalist atheism led them to extirpate theist institutions (persecute the Christians). They could be two things at the same time which showed they had more mental dexterity than their thick-witted apologists on this site.
The crimes of communists were organically linked to their atheist beliefs on account of their frequently expressed rejection of any moral absolutist constraints on political action. In murdering countless millions they simply showed that they were serious about their moral nihilism.
Your analogy with fundamentalist omnivores makes even less sense than your disingenuity about atheist crimes.
Fractal wrongness. And PRATT.
Not to mention Jack apparently hasn’t heard of Christian communism.
You contradict yourself. In the first sentence you say they were irreligious, in the second you say they were pagan…
Which is it?
I submit it’s the latter, not the former.
Nope, their fundamentalist communism led them to extirpate vocal adherents of other religions. Religions don’t like competition, you see.
Now please show us how atheism logically leads to communism. We’re waiting.
Only deluded fools, idiots or liars could ignore the fact that the Nazis were Protestants and Catholics who took the inspiration to build death camps at least partially from the violently anti-Jewish prescriptions of Martin Luther and John Chrysostom, and actually closed down atheist and freethinker clubs.
Only deluded fools, idiots or liars could ignore the fact that after Kristallnacht a Protestant bishop published Martin Luther’s works, including his own approval of the destruction.
Only deluded fools, idiots or liars could ignore the fact that that the Nazis reprinted John Chrysostom’s anti-Jewish theological works, and otherwise exploited centuries of Christian anti-Jewish sentiment.
[citation needed]
Numbers 31:17-18
Deuteronomy 20:14
Deuteronomy 21:10-13
The religious need to stop lying about the billions of skeletons in their closets.
In other words, they were fundamentalist Communists first, and atheists only secondarily.
You mean a party of genocidal totalitarians who happened to be atheists turned a government into a genocidal totalitarian dictatorship.
But they did not promote freedom and reason. Much like Christians do not promote freedom or reason.
Sure it does.
Luke 19:26-27
Matthew 10:34-36
Acts 5:1-10
Only a liar or fool, or foolish liar, can deny this obvious truth.
You don’t know the bible much, do you?
Funny how the hypocrite Jesus went from all that “love your neighbor” and “turn the other cheek” bullshit to whipping the money-changers and telling people to hate their families.
And it’s funny seeing how malevolent and hate-filled you yourself are. But if Jesus Christ could be a violent, hate-filled hypocrite, I suppose you don’t hold yourself to any better moral standard.
Christianity has always supported the suppression of heresy.
What “Christian moral teaching” calls such a putative thing an abomination?
And you demonstrate your similarity to Nazi Christians with your hypocritical malevolent hatred.
You do indeed deserve the contempt of all civilized people.
Just like the Nazis were fundamentalist Christian anti-Semites AND fundamentalist nationalists?
You are indeed a thick-witted apologist.
Feel free to cite the official atheist* document that includes a list of atheist beliefs with particular reference to the specific tenets of atheism that justify the rejection of moral absolutist constraints on political action.
*Note: if you are going to claim that Bolshevik = atheist then you’ll also have to demonstrate that no non-Bolshevik atheist has ever existed.
Jack Strocci #164 wrote:
The Communists did not reject moral constraints: they imposed moral constraints. The Communists were not nihilists: they were Utopians.
You can’t have it both ways: that atheism both encourages lax rules, and encourages harsh rules. As it is, the Communists were impelled by a political ideology which was compatible with atheism — and compatible with theism as well. There are many ways to justify mass slaughters.
One of the easiest ways is to claim that one is purging the earth for God, acting as servants to His Will. As it is, Communism wasn’t derived from the need to follow God’s dictates — but it could have been. The religious views were incidental.
Anyone who has read anything about Marxism, Stalinism, Leninism, etc (and they are all subtly different, though obviously related) understands that they were political ideologies, first and foremost. It is not even correct to claim that those ideologies inevitably lead to oppression, never mind mass murder, but it is utterly absurd to make that very claim of atheism.
The criticism of religion came not from a belief that religion was necessarily a false belief, as is the case with almost all modern atheists, but from a belief that religion was being used as a tool of oppression against the working class, and that it was therefore necessary to attack it. It is certainly possible to arrive at atheism in this way, though it is not common, in my experience, but that is hardly a damning conclusion, in-and-of-itself.
As it says in “Lenin As Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism”:
And Marx admitted as much in his essay Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (A Criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law):
This is not atheism, but political struggle — a means to an end, where religion is attacked in order to further the ideological aims of Marxism, against increasingly capitalist and “oppressive” class-based societies.
Even if atheism did logically lead to some of the ideas of Marx, et al., it should be fairly obvious that mass murder and oppression neither logically nor inevitably follow from that.
So, Jack Strocci’s problem is doubly difficult. First he has to demonstrate that atheism logically leads to anything other than simple non-belief, and he then has to show that the criticism of religion within those political ideologies are logically linked to anything other than an attempt to defeat what was considered to be detrimental to the working class. A belief must have content for it to be said to logically lead to anything at all, but that doesn’t appear to have occurred to Jack.
In other words, you cannot simply assert that this leads to that, which leads to this, which then leads to that, as if that is a demonstration of an inevitable, or even likely or possible, logical outcome. The very fact that it was necessary to develop systems of thought such as Marxism, Leninism, etc, is a pretty clear indication that atheism doesn’t exactly get you very far. And even then, there is no clear and unambiguous link between many of the ideas contained within those political ideologies and a justification of either murder or oppression.
And if Jack Strocci was right, then every criminal act by a Christian could be said to be a logical conclusion of the teachings of Christianity, regardless of what those teachings are. That is, of course, utter nonsense. To even suggest such a thing shows a profound misunderstanding of influence and belief formation.
Still the same god. You worship the god of the jews. Time and church schizms don’t change a supposedly omnipotent god.
Pagans are not atheists. Just as romans weren’t atheists because they didn’t believe in “your” god and persecuted christians. Just as christians have persecuted pretty much everybody. Theres a lot of persecution around, you might not want to bring that up too much.
You need to show that it was “lack-of-belief”, not “hate-of-religion” that lead to communism, stalin etc… and not that atheism was merely an effect of the government trying to control everything.
Linking atheism to nazis is going to be a pretty tall order when the nazi uniform had “God with us” written on it. Hardly atheistic.
Suck it.