Hey, I just checked my mailbox for a fancy gilt envelope, but no joy. I was hoping to hear from the Pope.
The Pontifical Council for Culture has announced that it is creating a foundation to focus on relations with atheists and agnostics.
See? They should be calling me any minute now…oh, wait.
The president of the Council announced the initiative on Wednesday as a response to Pope Benedict’s call to “renew dialogue with men and women who don’t believe but want to move towards God.“
Well, I’m out. That’s like putting out a call for healthy men and women who want to move towards degenerative neurological disease.
Maybe Chris Mooney is available?
Like an ad for Close Up toothpaste featuring Karen Armstrong and Michael Ruse.
Even if I wanted to “move towards God” why would I choose the RCC as my religion? The church opposes progress of all kinds that directly benefits people. They protect people who abuse children. If you’re out looking for a religion, the RCC doesn’t seem to be a very good choice.
I got mine! They just don’t like you PZ. I’ll put a word in for you!
The Blessed Atheist Bible Study @ http://blessedatheist.com/
To have any such desire, one already has to believe. By definition, then, one is not an atheist; and unless one is a fideist, one is also not an agnostic.
I have spent a quarter of a century with no desire to get up close and personal with an imaginary genocidal maniac. Why change now?
How can anyone want to move towards something that they don’t believe in?
Ah, i see. The pope’s nose thinks there’s only one god, which is his fellah, naturally. But what if he’s wrong, & it’s that Vodou Yawa fellah? Or Zeus, or Thor?
…has to already believe, that is. I think I’ll really go to bed as early as I’m now contemplating.
No idea where that error even came from. It’s not German, or French for that matter.
Pygmy said “If you’re out looking for a religion, the RCC doesn’t seem to be a very good choice.”
I agree Pygmy, but being an atheist homeschooler living deep in the heart of fundamentalist paradise makes me view the Catholics as the reasonable ones. You gotta start hanging with the deep deep Baptists sometime. Those people are crazy!
The Blessed Atheist Bible Study @ http://blessedatheist.com/
How do you move towards something that doesn’t exist? I mean, if you really don’t believe.
Wait, sorry. For a second there, I was expecting the RCC to make sense.
How can you move towards something that is in between your ears?
Hey, I enjoy this advice from Sam Harris:
How to Believe in God in Six Easy Steps
1. First, you must want to believe in God.
2. Next, understand that believing in God in the absence of evidence is especially noble.
3. Then, realize that the human ability to believe in God in the absence of evidence might itself constitute evidence for the existence of God.
4. Now consider any need for further evidence (both in yourself and in others) to be a form of temptation, spiritually unhealthy, or a corruption of the intellect.
5. Refer to steps 2-4 as acts of “faith.”
6. Return to 2.
—–
The sort of apologetics designed to help people who want to believe are always remarkably loose. They mostly seem to consist of attempts to find ways to show that faith in God isn’t all that different than faith in sunshine, or your mother, or the value of love. Don’t you want to be that kind of person? Don’t you want to be a better person?
Once you’ve got a disposition to help an argument along, you’ll find all sorts of confirming evidence. As Dawkins says, God can’t lose. You’ll also stop asking hard questions, and convince yourself that no, you’re asking even harder questions, now that you’re trying to relate to God, and change your life. But those are different sorts of questions, with a different focus.
You won’t get an invitation, because
YOU FAIL AT RELIGION :P
They’re probably starting with people who are already registered with a Catholic church. There’s no way that 90% of Catholics actually believe what the church is teaching.
The Pope should be very afraid of promoting this, actually. If I got close enough to God, I’d kick it in the balls as hard as I could and immediately go for its throat on full kill mode.
What feckin’ chutzpah! These Catholic eejits are living in a fantasy world of their own misconceptions here on Earth that’s just as crazy as their feckin’ Heaven.
One wants to move toward what is attractive. What do they imagine is attractive about their nebulous-but-monstrous “god”? Or their hideous death-cult?
Why would anyone want to be a christian if one could possibly avoid such an miserable fate?
so they’re trying to woo the faitheists and other “believers in belief”?
or is this just one more of the “atheists do know there’s a god, they’re just in denial” idiocies?
AdamK,
For access to choirboys?
A new meaning for the phrase ‘confirmation bias’?
I know you’re all competent adults and you don’t believe in Santa Claus but for those of you who would like to move towards Santa…
I did LOL. I don’t do that very often. You a funny muthahumpa, dude.
Jon A, you can’t fool me! Everybody knows there ain’t no such thing as Sanity Clause.
Oy. I’m way too slow for this place. Paul W. beat me to it for my second comment too.
I spent a great deal of time and energy moving towards God. Eventually I realized I was going in circles.
Oh, Janine, I love you for that.
“[honk!]” “Make that three hard-boiled eggs.”
This desire to move toward nothingness is why religion tends toward nihilism in its later stages.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
We the uninvited should reply offering to enter dialogue with those who do believe but would like to move towards rationality.
Maybe after the hocus pocus stuff is dealt with they can move on to the reality of child molesting priests and the churchs’ part of shuffling this evil from parish to parish. Do the right thing Mr.Ratzinger and own up to your part in all this tragedy.
Oh, really? Theology has scientific dignity? I guess so, in the same way that any experimental negative result has scientific dignity.
I simply fail to understand the mindset, despite being raised Catholic. The whole point of faith is believing the unbelievable. Why do they appeal to science? If science could prove God, then there would be no need for faith.
Oohh, I think I see what he’s doing here. Bait and switch from a common ground. He wants to get the atheists on board with the idea that moral values, peace, nature, art, love, philosophy, and the sense of wonder are all part of their own “spirituality” — a natural spirituality, it’s okay — and, from there, slowly move towards calling them “religious.” Or, perhaps, religious values “too.”
And faith is important to everyone, in some way. Atheists have faith in their mother’s love, or that the sun will come up tomorrow, or that if we work hard, the environment will improve. All common ground, see? Superficial resemblances linking it all together, bringing us all on the same side.
And then the stuff that makes no sense, will slip by on the back of the stuff that does make sense. Maybe they can even call God “natural.” Or Nature.
That should work. We’ll never see that one coming. Fools us every time.
It’s the same as their protestant outreach program(s). The councils are largely made up of patronizing Catholics and Protestants who want to be Catholic. Non-Catholics who have more self respect tend to stay away.
Astrid Storm’s piece on the subject was interesting:
http://bit.ly/3Jyl6s
Theology is opinions about imaginary beings. Discussion about whether angels dancing on the heads of pins are waltzing or doing the macarena are hardly scientific/
The Catholic Church recently upset the Church of England by offering to take all the misogynists and bigots of the latter’s hands.
Personally I would have thought the C of E would have jumped at the chance. For a long time it has been divided over whether it should treat gays and women as human, with a large element of those opposed to such a move coming from the Catholic end of the Anglican movement. Had I been the Archbishop of Canterbury I would have rejoiced at the though of being free of the nastier element within the Church.
“That’s like putting out a call for healthy men and women who want to move towards degenerative…disease.”
Oh.
So they should target smokers.
LOLPOPE:
I CAN HAS FAITHIESTS?
Ah. Of course, coming at it from the other direction, any Catholic who suggested that this is all that religion is would be condemned as a modernizing heretic by the traditionalist/fascist faction (Piltdown Man, SSPX, et cetera)
Well, the Anglican Church is complicated. Most major religious sects have a moderate wing and an extremist insane wing. The C of E, by contrast, has a large moderate middle, and two separate insane wings – the “High Church” Anglo-Catholics and the “Low Church” evangelicals – who really don’t like each other. The evangelicals and the Anglo-Catholics are both equally loony (though in different ways), but they balance one another out, allowing the moderates to be the dominant force. If the more conservative Anglo-Catholics were to leave en masse and convert to Rome, the danger would be that the evangelical faction would become more dominant, leading to the Anglican Church becoming less liberal overall.
PZ – As I posted on another thread, Miss M emailed the Pope recently – still no reply.
Why should you be different?
Something is seriously fucked when you have to keep one lot of bigots around to counter another lot of bigots.
It reminds me of those gay conversion therapies: you identify as X but really, honestly, truly you can’t want to be X so we’ll help you fix that.
It’s a general lack of respect thing and also shows how completely out of touch the church is. Personally, I consider it an achievement when I manage to break one of the RCC’s tenants and not once ever in my atheism have I felt a deep-seated need to move towards God. And I really love living in sin with my partner.
I imagine he has a large backlog of messages. In about three years’ time, you’ll probably get a reply from some deputy assistant sub-junior private secretary, saying something along the lines of “The Holy Father thanks you for your message” and some platitudes which have nothing to do with what you actually wrote. This is how most heads of state and of major organisations do business.
FTA:
It’s a trap!
I suspect that this means that the Catholic Church has still not given up on Natural Theology. “Nature is the work of God; studying Nature is therefore a proxy for studying God; therefore, studying God (theology) is another way to study Nature.”
Or something to that effect.
How exactly do you move toward god? Does that take a winged horse as was the case for prophet Mohammad?
If I were to drift back to goddism I certainly wouldn’t go to the sexist, homophobic Catholic Church. Some of the Catholic dogma, like the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary, sex only for procreation, and the bureaucracy of the faith, are either silly or the result of old men grasping for as much power as possible.
If one were a believer, it would make sense to understand God through nature.
It would seem that in order to promote the understanding of this premise, the premise needs to be demonstrated…get cracking! But on the subject of dignity, one could do worse than this quotation I found, which I add for comedic and ironic value.
“Those who insist on the dignity of their office show they have not deserved it.” — Baltasar Gracián
Well having been raised a catholic, I’m pretty sure the vision they have of atheists is the condescending one, instead of just plain intellectual enemy bullies, like other religions think.
In their twisted view, an atheist is a tortured soul, who wants to want to believe deep inside, but the adversities of life (a.k.a. emotional issues) just have them in denial.
They hold similar views of teh gay as mentioned above. In short, they’re not only assholes, they’re self-important condescending assholes.
How is this any different to a slightly more wordy version of Ray “Red Lobster” Comfort’s Creation proves a creator argument? Seems to be exactly the same illogic just with a smoother delivery! Perhaps Ray should adopt the Prada loafers and magnificent gold hat in order to be taken more seriously!!!
Here’s another invitation that must have been lost in the mail or caught by your spam filters, PZ.
Zing!
“The Pontifical Council for Culture has announced that it is creating a foundation to focus on relations with atheists and agnostics.”
Hey, look on the bright side, it beats burning at the stake!
But atheists don’t have a problem with saying that theology has a ‘founding in nature.’ Well, yes. Religion is explainable as a natural phenomenon, the evolved human product of neurology, psychology, social forces, etc. It can be taken apart, and studied scientifically, like anything else.
The Catholics are the ones claiming theology has a supernatural foundation.
I was so bummed when my husband, again, turned down an event at the Vatican. Sure, it would be tedious for him, but amusing for me.
#15: “…theology has scientific dignity”
Is there any evidence for this? Put up or shut up, Catholic Poobahs!
wrt my previous post, I messed up the blockquote, and just now saw the previous post (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/congratulations_to_chris_moone.php).
You know, I can’t help but feel incredibly offended by what I see as a half-assed attempt at patronization.
Kind of like a parent telling me “It’s okay if you don’t believe, we know you’re just being pouty ;)”
Fuck you church – maybe I’d lend you a little more respect if you actually arrested your sex offenders instead of hiding them, and actually pulled your head out of your hairy ass to see why your stance on Reproductive Health does more harm than good.
Sort of a cheap shot at Chris Mooney, honestly. Guy’s doing some really nice work with CFI lately.
Cheap shot? Cheap shot?
Yes, it was.
And that excuses everything else?
How can you move towards something that does no exist?
What the hell does that even mean?
Like there atheists moping about, pacing their small and lonely rooms, constantly glancing over at their big “I Want To Believe” posters?
Where is this market?
Ragutis at #49: Yeah, I noticed that. It seems that the Religious right don’t like that meeting at all.
I guess they don’t want the gov’t to have anything to do with treating atheists like people at all.
You want chutzpah? I’ll give you chutzpah – these people think we’re living in their fantasy world!
theology has scientific dignity…WTF? Oh I get it, we’re playing a game!
Immaculate conception has scientific dignity.
Meanwhile, the Coalition of Baby-Eating Beer Worshippers shall launch its new initiative into outreach with people who think they’re Catholics but want to move away from the Pope.
Hmm, I also don’t believe that money grows on trees, but I’d like to “move towards” filthy richness.
Ya think the Pope will invite me to share in the Vatican’s huge piles of cash?
Wait, He’s supposed to be omnipresent, right? Doesn’t that mean we’re positively dripping in Him no matter where we are? And how does one move towards something you’re already floating in? Aren’t we all just really fruit bits suspended in the Jell-OTM of His love? How can a Catholic Hell exist where one is away from God, unless God isn’t in Hell, or God is Hell, or if that’s the case wouldn’t it still be impossible to be away from God in Hell if he’s both…?
And why didn’t Alf just asked to be called Gordon Shumway if that was his real name, it sounds a lot more normal than “Alf” anyways…
Or am I mixing up my fictional metaphysics and my eighties television shows again?
Someone on Mooney’s blog left a comment that Mr. Accommodationist was awarded a Templeton Fellowship.
Wait! What? There’s something very, very wrong here.
Weren’t we all told in the Unity Convention thread that when atheists get together, all they could possibly discuss is how they don’t believe in god?
Please step away from the Pope
I long ago moved out of the City of Belief in Imaginary Beings, Zombie Worship, and Cannibalistic Communion, with its government of out-of-touch misogynistic, homophobic, child-rapist protecting, I-talk-to-sky-the-sky-fairy-and-lots-of-dead-humans men.
Why in the hell would I want to move back?!
But can you really have a dialog with irrational people?
Is it me but does it seem that Christians know so little about us, not only do they show a clear ignorance of the facts, but have such egos, the pompous arrogance in the there “truth” that they think they can just make up gross misrepresentations of atheist/agnostics so they can reject it and feel all warm in fuzzy in their security blanket.
You hit on some thing PZ when you said, “That’s like putting out a call for healthy men and women who want to move towards degenerative neurological disease.” Religion is a neurological disease,(I am sure you were alluding to this.)and one that is self inflected, for the most part.
There are many non-theist that would not mind some form of afterlife, but if they think for one minute that it would be their idea of heaven or God then they just show their total lack of brain power.
#61: “How can you move towards something that does no exist?”
How can you move towards someone who is supposedly everywhere?
Come on guys,at least they aren’t burning us at the stake anymore.
I moved towards god once. Found myself in the middle of nowhere…. Bellefontaine, Ohio
VATICAN CITY Nov. 30, 2007: Papal Letter Blames Atheism for World’s Worst Woes
As he reaches out to renew dialogue with atheists, any chance he will moderate his hatred of us?
Posted by: CalGeorge | February 27, 2010 12:11 AM:
No. The pope says one thing when he talks out of his hat, and something different when he talks out of his ass.
Cannibalism has scientific dignity.
I like this game :D
This is just a trick to sell more indulgences. They figure the secular community has to have at least three generations of pent-up indulgences demand, all they have to do is get us to believe, and they can instantly turn around and tell us we don’t believe hard enough. Ka-Ching!
Clap, everyone! Clap if you want Jesus to live!
Maybe the invitation is meant for fictional atheists such as Gregory House, who are just waiting for a particularly stiff breeze to knock them into the belief that’s already right under the surface.
“. . .promote the understanding that theology has scientific dignity” and a founding in nature”
[with apologies to Freud] I think the Pope has Science Envy.
(singing) ” . . . and these papist persons plunge-in and they throw me in a dungeon and started playing ping-pong with my balls! . . .”
(Mel Brooks, History of the World Part 1)
Gee, maybe the Pope would like to apologize to all the Jews, Gays and non-believers his outfit whacked out in grisly ways over the centuries.
Somehow I doubt it.
patt #76
It’s not like they don’t want to.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor described a lack of faith as “the greatest of evils” and blamed atheism for war and destruction, implying that it was a greater evil even than sin itself.
I’ve been burned at the stake in my past lives. Several of them.
Walton #40
‘In about three years’ time, you’ll probably get a reply from some deputy assistant sub-junior private secretary, saying something along the lines of “The Holy Father thanks you for your message” and some platitudes which have nothing to do with what you actually wrote.’
Cynicism is not an attractive trait in one so young.
I’m shocked.
I’m sure you’re right though. The email in question was copied to the Archbisop of Westminster and the Bishop of Plymouth. Only the Archbishop has replied, and in exactly the way you indicated.
Miss M did point out her atheism in her email but he sent his prayers anyway.
‘Tis Himself, OM #85
Thanks for that reminder.
I’ll point it out Miss M when I get home from work, although I shudder to think of her reaction.
She is already planning some sort of direct action at Mass tororrow over our little local difficulty – this could cause an escalation, possibly involving napalm.
aratina cage wrote:
Easy. You just have someone spank you so hard your ass disappears up your foramen magnum.
In other news, the Imperial Knights of the Klu Klux Klan announced today that it would be seeking greater dialogue with people of colour. At a press conference this morning the Imperial Grand Dragon called on Klansmen to “renew dialogue with men and women of colour who want to move towards a white-power philosophy.”
“Firstly,” he said, it is “to create a network of black or brown people who accept dialogue without being, you know, uppity. People who know to stay away from our white women.”
The Imperial Grand Dragon listed further objectives of starting relations with minority organizations, studying the “place” of other races in society and how they can be made to accept it.
“With this initiative, we would like to help everyone to step out of a poor conception of white supremacy, (and) promote the understanding that the white power movement has scientific dignity” and a founding in nature, he continued.
In other news, the Imperial Knights of the Klu Klux Klan announced today that it would be seeking greater dialogue with people of colour. At a press conference this morning the Imperial Grand Dragon called on Klansmen to “renew dialogue with men and women of colour who want to move towards a white-power philosophy.”
He was followed at the podium by Armstrong Williams and Ward Connerly, who acknowledge that the African Americans might be suspicious of the Klan, but that lynching activity today is only make-believe, with the real ropes reserved for faggots.
I move my level 15 thief toward god. I roll to-hit… NATURAL 20! Critical backstab! God goes down like a ton of bricks.
Several months ago he said atheists are “not fully human.”
“For Jesus, the inability to believe in God and to live by faith is the greatest of evils.” – Archbishop of Westmminster (see ‘Tis link at 85)
Ok so we have established that Pharyngulistas and the rest of our ilk are the “greatest of evils”. Can’t wait to see how the Catliks “renew the dialogue.”
Thus the hubris of the papacy. They believe that deep, deep down everybody really believes that their God exists. From the Catholic’s I’ve talked to, and the Catholic Radio I have listened to, it seems that they define atheist as someone who hates God, not someone who disbelieves.
They really don’t get us, do they?
Because they mean “philosophy” when they say “science”.
I mean, they still use terms like “doctrine” when talking about science! The Pope did that just a few months ago.
…?
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”– Mahatma Gandhi
Hm.
A cracker that has been mumbled over by a guy in a fancy dressTransubstantiation has scientific dignity.Setting people on fireThe Inquisition has scientific dignity.Absolutely a cheap shot at Mooney. Is there any evidence at all that he “want[s] to move toward God”? He’s an out atheist who, yes, happens to disagree with PZ and other atheists about the way to communicate and advocate.
A wise man once said “Don’t fall for their subtle attempts to divide the unbelievers. Religious institutions would love to see atheists continually demonized, even by, especially by, agnostics. It furthers their ends, not ours. There is no meaningful division — we are all abandoning the old superstitions together.”
If only that author, one PZ Myers could chat with the author of this post.
Did you read Mooney’s last book, Josh? It’s a bit late to tell ME that I’m taking cheap shots.
“Nice work”?
I really wanted to enjoy the interview with Paul Offit, but I nearly had to retch when dr Offit started to gush lyrical over Mooneytits’ book. Fuck you, Mooney. If I wanted to hear about your book, I’d find someone interviewing you.
(Offit rocks! though.)
I’d like to hear Michael Mann this week, but the prospect of more Mooney ruins it.
Perhaps you need a brain lesion:
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/02/neurosurgical_patients_get_closer_to_god.php
KKBundy,
I do. They’re called my extended family :)
There is no path to reality.
Yes there is a path to reality, it’s called the scientific method! If you don’t know what reality is I suggest you go get some anti-psychotics to try and sort things out.
PZ, I’m not writing to defend anything in Chris’s last book, but two wrongs don’t make a right. If you were sincere and correct in your post quoted above, then this would seem like exactly the time to show yourself to be the better man, to rise above past offenses and ongoing disagreements, and to keep your and your readers’ focus on the issues that you identified as most important.
“[man] cannot want what he wants”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
If you “want to believe”, you already do believe, but you are waiting on a rationalization (a defense or excuse, the word people are really looking for when they inappropriately reach for the word justification) before exposing themselves to ridicule. This indicates prior experience being ridiculed for believing in things without understanding anything about them. Having been confronted with a “How do you explain this?” and not being able to answer, and looking stupid.
It is absurd that there could be a person who does not believe in god but wants to. I want to believe that broccoli tastes like chocolate. I want to believe going to the dentist will not be unpleasant. I want it not to be unpleasant, but I know it will be. Insisting “it will not be unpleasant” is a little thing called denial. Don’t deny us our denial, it’s what makes the dentist bearable!
“I WANT TO BELIEVE” is a symptom of conspiration. Conspiration is the act of waiting on evidence of conspiracies (high secrets) while ignoring the actual human origin of the conspiracy theory.
So Jesus, I heard you were looking to get crucified by breaking Jewish law. Good thing for you this is Roman territory.
Real conspirators are usually too incompetent but if they’re not you wouldn’t even know about it.
For example, Birfers ignore the human origin of the birth certificate conspiracy and instead appeal (whine) to the conspirators to please pretty please give them the material evidence of their wrongdoings (giftwrapped) thusly confirming their conspirations (self-worth).
If Birfers were right they would be the last to know it.
My “favorite” conspirators are end-of-the-world cults. There’s nothing quite like raping the news for evidence that the world is on the verge of Armageddon. Jack Van Impe, Pat Robertson, for them it should be renamed Smarmageddon.
Will Mooney have to declare his fellowship in any article he writes from now on ?