Alain de Botton is right about one thing

At the end of this video, he suggests that both sides will be out to shoot him. Yes, they will…well, I’m wielding a great heavy two-handed sword, but I’ll accept the general equivalence in intent of pointy sharp nasty weaponry and projectile-flinging guns. In this TED presentation, he advocates just adapting religion to atheism, something he calls Atheism 2.0, but which is actually just Religion 0.0 again.

This is not what the New Atheism is about. It’s the antithesis of what we’re after. We’ve had a few thousand years of the godly shuffle: here’s a temple to Zeus, he’s out so we swap in Jupiter; he’s not exciting, let’s try Isis; now Mithras; Jehovah; Jesus; Mohammed; back to Catholicism; on to Protestantism; oh, you’re atheists, eh, here’s a fine altar, hardly been used, we’ll just rededicate it to your god Athe then. New gods same as the old gods, right?

Wrong. It’s that the whole structure of religious thought is wrong, that we’ve been spending these few thousand years digging the same old pit, deeper and deeper, maybe putting a little more gilt on the shovel and roofing it over with ever fancier architecture, but now we’re saying maybe it’s time to climb out of the hole and do something different. I don’t want a new label, I want whole new modes of thought.

de Botton wants to pick and choose from religion and keep the good parts for atheism, which is a nice idea, but he seems to be totally lacking in sense and discrimination in what the virtues of religion are. And then, unfortunately for him, he picks a few examples of something he thinks religion got right, and one of them is education. Fuck me.

He suggests looking at how churches teach the ‘facts’ of their faith, and is quite enthusiastic about the importance of repetition. Repeat things five times, he says, and then you’ll master it; he just suggests replacing God and Jesus with Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Has de Botton ever been anywhere near a classroom?

Let me give an example from my teaching; I’m familiar with what he proposes. For instance, I teach genetics, and one of the big concepts there is linkage and mapping. I’ve stood up and lectured on Sturtevant’s original mapping experiments; I’ve given the class the numbers from his observations, and had them do the calculations themselves; I’ve then had students come up to the whiteboard and show everyone how it is done; and then I’ve gone through it again on the board, step by step. The students nod and smile, they understand, give ’em these numbers and they can trot through the calculations without hesitation.

Then on the test I give them the same problem, but I change the names of the alleles, swap in a zebrafish for a fruit fly, and half the class is totally stumped. “But you didn’t teach us how to do that problem,” they whine.

Repetition doesn’t work. It’s great for memorizing dogma, but it’s awful for mastering concepts. Students don’t understand, they just learn to robotically reiterate.

What I do is very different. I give them the Sturtevant data and we work through that problem, sure, but then we try other angles. Here’s data on the recombination frequency between pairs of loci; assemble them into a map. Here’s a triple-point cross, and the phenotypes of the flies we get back; calculate a map. Here’s a problem; work it out in groups. Here’s a problem; teach your partner how to solve it. Here’s a map; work backwards and predict the frequencies of phenotypes of a cross. You invent a problem, give it to me, and let’s see if I can get the right answer. Here’s how the problem is solved in flies, and fish, and nematodes, and humans, and tissue culture. Here’s how we do it with molecular biology techniques rather than genetics. What if the traits are all sex-linked? What if this locus interacts epistatically with that other locus? What if the two alleles at this locus are codominant?

The whole purpose of what we do in the science classroom is to get the students to understand that you can’t master the concept by rote memorization. You have to understand how someone came up with the idea in the first place, and you have to appreciate how understanding the concept gives you the mental toolkit to grasp novel instances of related phenomena. I could just show them a fly gene map and tell them to memorize it, I suppose, and teach them this idea that genes have locations on the chromosome, and leave it at that, but then they haven’t really learned anything deep, and haven’t learned how to integrate new observations into the concept. They’re also going to be totally unprepared for going off to grad school, reading McClintock’s papers, and learning that sometimes genes don’t have fixed locations on the chromosome.

So you can imagine how appalled I was listening to de Botton tell us that one thing society could benefit from adapting from religion is their approach to education. That’s simply insane. If you want to improve people’s understanding, we should model learning more on those secular, progressive, well-honed methods you find in good college classrooms, not church. Church is where you go to learn how to hammer dogma into people’s heads.

That is not what the New Atheism wants. Apparently, it’s what Atheism 2.0 wants, though.

His approach to art is about as horrifying — “religions…have no trouble telling us what art is about, art is about two things in all the major faiths; firstly, it’s trying to remind you of what there is to love, and secondly it’s trying to remind you of what there is to fear and hate…it’s propaganda”. To de Botton, that is a virtue. He suggests that museums ought to adopt the approaches of the churches, and organize their art by themes and tell everyone exactly what it all means. Jebus. Can you imagine a van Gogh hanging on the wall, with a little checklist next to it telling you what it is supposed to mean, and everyone dutifully reading the museum’s imperative and making sure they’ve got exactly the right interpretation? Some excited little girl makes the mistake of looking at the painting not the placard and telling her mother, “Look at the light and color shining through the confusion!” and the guard has to tap his stick on the wall and tell her, “No, it says CONFORM and OBEY or suffer. Can’t you read?”

Worst TED talk ever — well, it’s competitive with that horrible drivel from Elaine Morgan, anyway. de Botton is one of those superficial atheists who hasn’t quite thought things through and has such a blinkered optimistic perspective on religion that he thinks faith provides what reason does not.

Australian hospitality

I’m looking forward to the Global Atheist Convention (have you registered yet?). I had a grand time the last time I was in Australia, the organizers have been helpful and obliging, they were responsive to the few security concerns that came up, and they’ve been accommodating — my wife Mary is joining me in Melbourne this time around. And now they’ve gone above and beyond, and the fun people of Australia are providing chew toys for us while we’re there.

Carl Wieland’s organization, Creation Ministries International, is declaring themselves pleased to have the GAC in their country — they claim it will “stimulate Christian evangelism”. I remember well their huge representation at the 2010 convention: it was one quaintly bearded guy, his wife, and their daughters, weebling about outside the convention center with a sign. It was laughable. That year they also sent out an offer to debate some of the atheists — they were salivating at the prospect of nabbing Richard Dawkins — on creationism. The organizers flatly rejected them. Then they reached out to individuals — I gave them a visual response. The snubbing was vicious and unhesitating, so they aren’t going to try that again, I guess.

Instead, they’re publishing a rag called the Regal Standard, a 12-page propaganda paper, and asking people to buy them and give them away to the heathens. Yeah, that’s gonna work. I’m hoping I’ll be able to pick up a copy while I’m there.

I’m also not going to have a formal debate with these loons, but I do look forward to a few casual conversations with the sad, deluded few who will probably make brief and pathetic appearances outside the convention center. It’s always fun to travel to exotic lands, meet strange, wacky people, and gnaw on their goofy ideas for a bit. Keeps the fangs sniny and makes for a good laugh and always seems to end up on youtube.

Why I am an atheist – Fred Young

If you throw this question out in China, “why are you an atheist?” in most cases it will be taken as a joke. This is also perhaps the only thing that the communist Party has done right to this country, that is, to seed a strong scientific spirit in China’s education system, but which doesn’t by any means excuse its brainwashing of Chinese students with Marxism and Maoism. Sadly rumor has it that Christianity is growing rampantly in China, which I suppose is due in large part to the fact that the majority of Chinese are suffering, a topic that I should spare for the thesis here. Had I grown up in a religious environment, I barely think I could break free from this sort of ideological slavery. For this reason, I always keep an extra piece of respect for the atheists in western countries, now and in history.

I came to the States three years ago as a newly college graduate, with a thirst for higher education from American universities, something I had always been dreaming of attending. My first stop was the University of Minnesota, which really didn’t disappoint me with its strong research background. In retrospective, what was sort of disappointing was that University of Minnesota is in Minnesota, a place filled with “harassing” Christians of assorted denominations.

My first clue was the ceaseless invitations from numerous churches to participate in their friendship meals. Considering that China has gone not too far away from its once massive poverty, enticing Chinese students with food is indeed a good strategy. I myself fell for many times, but every time I had to eat with prayers and preaching, which indeed undermined the flavor of the already-not-as-good-as-Chinese American food. There were some other churches taking a less confrontational way. They formed “volunteer” organizations to help Chinese students in settling down such as airport pickup and provision of free furniture, but none of their activities didn’t wind up with Jesus.

Believe it or not, back then I was not as of new atheism as I am today. For one thing, I had never heard of PZ Myzer. Candidly, I had no inkling what was really going on in Christianity, although I might have been under a vague—but, of course, illusorily mistaken—impression that Christianity leads Americans to behave. As a person (a to-be scientist!) curious about almost everything, I couldn’t help but explore the intriguing question “in such an era in which almost everything can be reasonably explained by science, why people are still believing in nonsense?”

I thereby accepted many of those invitations—again, partly for the meals. I went to church on an almost weekly basis, which perhaps outperformed most Christian peers, and I attended quite a few bible studies. My best friend was an American Lutheran, who doubted evolution because scientists haven’t figured out the origin of life yet, which, translated in our words, means because evolution conflicts with the literal version of Bible. And I even had an American grandpa, who was, to cite his own words, “still open about whether the earth is 6,000 thousand years old or billions,” under which circumstance, I rarely bothered to spell out the number 4.6.

Looking back, along the years of intensive interactions with Christianity, I did grow in my knowledge of what a thing it really is, thanks to both the repulsive content of their holy book and, more importantly, all the speeches, debates, blogs, books by those outspoken, heroic atheists whose names are too familiar to be mentioned here. It may sound a bit implausible that a person from the far East has joined in this New Atheism movement, but I did turned from a mere listener to now a brave—brave in the sense of in a foreign country—refuter whenever I hear nonsensical religious ramblings.

I am an atheist partly because of the environment in which I grew up, but more because of the fact that, even though physicists haven’t figured out how the universe begun, posing creators does not answer any questions whatsoever, let alone a monstrous one as the Judeo-Christian god.

More excitedly, atheism has become such an important part of my life. I will continue combating religious doctrines, as should all atheists, for protecting our lovely and innocent kids. My resolve has been especially reinforced upon seeing Hitchens’s special care for a nice-year-olds in this latest reception of the Richard Dawkins Freethinker of the Year Award. The contrast between the dying hero and his attempt to list suitable reading material for a thriving young mind is exceedingly heartwarming and stimulating.

I could go on and on, but let me stop here. One last point, let us atheists help those personal faiths be kept personal.

Fred Young
China and United States

A little comparative religion would do Ken Ham a world of good

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a Christian give a series of stupid “proofs” that his religion is the One True Faith, but it never fails to surprise me. They’re always so blindly oblivious, and they always say exactly the same things. So here’s Ken Ham, answering a child’s question, “How Do We Know Other Religions Aren’t True?”, in one crazily breathless paragraph.

No religion other than Christianity has a book like the Bible that tells us about the origin of everything, and who we are, where we came from [The Analects, the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the Talmud, the Tao-te-ching, the Upanishads, and the Vedas are all books that lay down a code of ethics, make assumptions or explanations about the nature of the universe, and in many (but not all) cases explain the origins of everything. This is pretty much what holy books do], what our problem is (sin), and what the solution to our sin problem is[Other religions have different systems of ethics; each one is unique. The question isn’t which one is different, because they all are, but which one is true]. No other religion has a Savior who is alive (He rose from the dead)[Dead gods that rise again are dime-a-dozen; it’s a common theme in seasonal/agricultural deities]. All other religions require people to do something to work out their future—only Christianity has the solution that we can’t save ourselves, only God can do it[Again, that some interpretations of Christianity have this weirdly psychopathic and nihilistic delusion does not make them true, only different]. So how can we know if other religions aren’t true? Well, if they don’t agree with the Bible they are not true![Circularity!] There are two main tests I want you to use though. First of all, any religion that claims to be true MUST believe that Jesus is God![More exclamation marks does not make it truer!] Remember, Jesus Himself told us that He and the Father are one. Many religions talk about God a lot . . . but if they don’t believe in Jesus and that He is God, and they don’t believe that Jesus’ death on the cross and His Resurrection results in our sin being forgiven if we will receive it, then it is not the truth![OK, this is just silly. Saying over and over again that your religion is true because your religion says it is true does not make it true. They all say that.] The other test is to find out if they believe that salvation is given to those who trust in Jesus. There is nothing you can do to save yourself. We could never do enough good works to get us to heaven, but Jesus did it when He died for us![This villainous attitude that living life in a virtuous and worthy way is futile is one of the reasons I despise Christianity, but that’s irrelevant, too. Restating the dogma of your faith is not a way to argue for its truth] Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.[Yeah? Prove it.]

You know, I have this crazy idea that if you’re going to say that something is objectively true, you ought to have some source of evidence external to the something; otherwise it’s just hamster-wheel logic. Internal consistency would also be nice (Christianity doesn’t even have that), and some kind of empirical way of validating truth claims is kind of essential. The wackos at Answers in Genesis even have some vague understanding that those are good ideas, since that’s the whole raison d’etre of creationism, is to contrive the appearance of having evidence for their beliefs. If that weren’t the case, they could just declare Noah’s Flood a miracle, an event and its associated consequences that were conjured together by an omnipotent being, free of our restrictions of cause and effect and evidence and even contrary to reason, and not fuss over their fallacious rationalizations.

But this whole business of responding to evidence for the truth of claim X by simply repeating claim X endlessly…it’s stupid. Maybe it works as a kind of brute-force psychological hammer when abusing the mind of an 8-year-old, but as an example of rational thought, it falls flat.

What’s the matter with the United States?

This just isn’t right. The United Kingdom is this small little country way off in Europe, and the United States is this giant powerful country, and they managed to put creationists in their place while we debate about electing them to the presidency. It makes no sense.

Leading scientists and naturalists, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, are claiming a victory over the creationist movement after the government ratified measures that will bar anti-evolution groups from teaching creationism in science classes.

The Department for Education has revised its model funding agreement, allowing the education secretary to withdraw cash from schools that fail to meet strict criteria relating to what they teach. Under the new agreement, funding will be withdrawn for any free school that teaches what it claims are "evidence-based views or theories" that run "contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations".

Which reminds me…where are the American Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough, huh? The world just isn’t fair. On the basis of the population difference alone, we ought to have 10 Dawkins/Attenborough equivalents here.

You don’t think…could there be a relationship between a compromised educational system and the shortage of outspoken advocates for science?

(Also on Sb)

Why I am an atheist – Ellen Rees

Unlike most atheists I have come across, I am an atheist because I am a profoundly irrational person; my life is dominated by narrative, by fictions and lies, performance and artifice. In other words, I am a literary scholar. Two factors shaped my early life: I was raised without early first hand exposure to religion by an artist and a psychology professor who self-identified as atheists, and my extended family concealed a dark secret about my grandmother. Because I was not exposed to religion until the fourth grade, when little friends started trying to “save” me, the Bible stories I encountered struck me as no more believable than any of the many, many other narratives I had been reading. Middle Earth, Wonderland, Oz, Avonlea, Villa Villekulla, the court of King Arthur, and even Narnia had primed me to look upon the Biblical Judea as just another historical fiction.

The fact that no one in my family would tell me why my grandmother had only one leg sparked any number of possible explanations in my overactive imagination, each one embellished until it became a pathos-filled romance of suffering and redemption. This early lesson in my own brain’s ability to speculate wildly illustrates perfectly the psychology of religion and the drive to find unambiguous answers to things that, for various reasons, are beyond our ken. And even when, as a young adult, I was given the “real” answer in the form of newspaper articles describing the incident, it quickly became clear that this “answer” contained yet more unanswerable questions (no one will ever know why my grandmother’s step-father attempted to murder her in a drunken rage, or why he missed and ended up shooting her in the knee). I am a relativist through and through, largely at ease with ambiguity. Science per se has almost nothing to do with my atheism.

Ellen Rees
Norway

A fabulous strategy for annoying fundagelicals and conservatives

I remember discovering Laci Green on YouTube several years ago — she was a great advocate for unabashed atheism. She still is, but she’s discovered a very effective way to piss off the Christians: by speaking frankly and truthfully about sex. Here’s her latest example, which just cheerfully explains the clitoris…and managed to throw a few prudes into censorious hysterics.

(via Camels With Hammers.)

Unleash the Kraken on Peter G. Palumbo!

Palumbo is a Rhode Island representative; he just called one of his constituents, Jessica Ahlquist, an “evil little thing” who was “being coerced by evil people”. I think he needs to apologize. No, scratch that; he needs to lose his next election. Contact him! Palumbo’s email address is rep-palumbo@rilin.state.ri.us. His office phone number is (401) 785-2882.

Char Margolis and amazing powers

Char Margolis is one of those ditzy book-peddling Newagers who claims to have psychic powers and can see spirits and auras and crap like that. She appeared on WGN, and tried to “read” one of the news hosts. Watch as she pulls the boring John Edward bullshit (“I see an ‘M’ or a ‘J'”…jeebus, do ghosts all wander around in the afterlife wearing monogrammed smoking jackets or something?) and belly-flops ignominiously.

But the title of this post promised amazing powers, you say. I didn’t say whose, and they sure aren’t Char’s. I was really impressed with the news host Larry, though, who demonstrated the amazing powers of skepticism, coming right out and telling Char, “you failed!” I was less impressed with the woman who tried to make excuses for her.

That’s what I’d like to see more of, though: interviewers who can come right out and do a Johnny Carson and call the fakes fakes.