The dark side of Hitchens

It’s only fair to balance the light — Hitchens was a glorious writer and rhetorician, an advocate for atheism, and a brave human being — with the dark, and point out that there were subjects on which he was infuriating.

Alex Pareene brings up his peculiar misogyny and his support for war.

And so we had the world’s self-appointed supreme defender of Orwell’s legacy happily joining an extended misinformation campaign designed to sell an incompetent right-wing government’s war of choice. The man who carefully laid out the case for arresting Henry Kissinger for war crimes was now palling around with Paul fucking Wolfowitz.

I remember his talk at a FFRF meeting that dismayed the audience. He promoted jingoistic violence as the solution to everything in the Middle East.

Then it was Hitchens at his most bellicose. He told us what the most serious threat to the West was (and you know this line already): it was Islam. Then he accused the audience of being soft on Islam, of being the kind of vague atheists who refuse to see the threat for what it was, a clash of civilizations, and of being too weak to do what was necessary, which was to spill blood to defeat the enemy. Along the way he told us who his choice for president was right now — Rudy Giuliani — and that Obama was a fool, Clinton was a pandering closet fundamentalist, and that he was less than thrilled about all the support among the FFRF for the Democratic party. We cannot afford to allow the Iranian theocracy to arm itself with nuclear weapons (something I entirely sympathize with), and that the only solution is to go in there with bombs and marines and blow it all up. The way to win the war is to kill so many Moslems that they begin to question whether they can bear the mounting casualties.

Slaughtering civilians does not seem to be a solution that ever brings peace…unless it’s carried to the degree that an entire people is exterminated, and then the only peace is the peace of the grave.

Hitchens was a complicated fellow: talented and intelligent, and on some subjects he was warm and humane and a true child of the Enlightenment. And on others, a bloodthirsty barbarian and a club-carrying primitive. At least in his final months it was the civilized and thoughtful humanist who emerged most.

I take joy in discomfiting the godly

Ken Ham read my article on Hitchens’ death, and he didn’t like it. No sir, not one bit. So he expressed his dislike on his facebook page.

Some of you have heard of atheist PZ Myers, an American biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris. (Imagine entrusting your kids education to such a professor). I rarely read his anti-Christian blogs (and would not advise you to frequent this often vile God hating blog site), but I thought his blog today that someone informed me about, concerning the passing of atheist Christopher Hitchens, is worth reading. One wonders if Myers is trying to convince himself there is no judgment after death, in his gloating about Hitchens not being in Heaven. I think the blog is worth reading as it really does illustrate the sheer hopelessness of atheism–and also clearly shows that atheists know the truth in their heart (as Romans 1 clearly states), otherwise why would an atheist even bother writing such stuff in this blog as if he is putting his hands over his ears and shouting ‘God I refuse to listen–I refuse to believe.’ God is certainly long-suffering–but there will come a time when God has the last say. I am also reminded of the Scriptures to ““…not tempt the LORD your God.’ ”(Matthew 4:7). PZ Myers is certainly doing that.

My blog isn’t about the hopelessness of atheism — it’s about the triumph of life. We’re all going to die someday, and rather than dwelling on a lot of imaginary nonsense about what happens after we’re dead, we should revel more in all that we have before we’re dead. But then, we atheists aren’t trapped in the Christian death cult.

Anyway, ol’ Piglet Ken is just blithering away mindlessly. It’s interesting to see how the faulty mind of a Christian operates, but there’s more…a lot of his followers left comments on Ham’s post, and I try to answer them all below.

[Read more…]

Why I am an atheist – Kausik Datta

I am an academic researcher in Immunology and Infectious Disease; I have a general passion for science and scientific thought, and value science education tremendously.

Until the beginning of 2003, I was a believer. The belief was not taught, but came naturally to me as a consequence of the environment I grew up in. I was born to and raised by parents who practise the Hindu religion. As a matter of fact, to my parents, the Hindu religion (I avoid the term ‘Hinduism’) was not at all about the kind of teeth-gnashing, attention-clamoring, intemperate, uncivil hooliganism that has become the face of Hindu-ism in modern India. To them, it was a philosophy; a unifying theme of ‘One god – many manifestations’ – that easily included the god-heads of other religions of the world; a kind, understanding, all-embracing way of life, that taught temperance, the value of life and love, and worship through discharge of duties to the fellow human being. It was such a basic and deep understanding that they never stood much on ceremonies and rituals. Growing up in this environment, I never really felt any clash between my spirituality and my science, because I felt that the two belonged to two completely different non-intersecting planes.

It was in the past eight years or so that I acutely became aware of a disconnect. I am not ashamed to admit that this possibly resulted from three major life events: (a) getting married to a wonderful woman who is a non-believer, (b) both of us moving to the US, and (c) being introduced to PZ Myers’ Pharyngula by my wife – the last two events being of seminal importance. In the US, I was far away from the overly-pervasive faith- and belief-laden environment of home – which helped. My eyes were opened to the contemporary world. The Pharyngula posts, relentless discussions, my introduction to the erudite, reasoned writings of Dawkins and Hitchens – all contributed equally to shape the way I see the world now, by making me aware, pushing me to question my beliefs, burning away my brain-fog of wishy-washy spirituality, and administering a healthy dose of rationality and skepticism. In fact, it wouldn’t perhaps be inappropriate to consider myself a “Born Again” Atheist, given how utterly radically I was transformed.

What an awakening it was! Not aware of anything more than undercurrents of Hindu and Islamic fundamentalism at home, I saw and learnt to recognize the horrible face and full import of religious fundamentalism and all the cesspits of human detritus that accompany it, such as hatred, bigotry, misogyny, homophobia and so forth. I found it grossly offensive to my sense of what is right. I saw people killing and being killed in the name of religion; I found a growing sentiment of ‘my religion is the best; the rest are all hogwash’. I watched with horror religious observances taking such precedence in people’s lives that they oftentimes forgot, or started ignoring, the basic, fundamental qualities that make us human, including logic and reason. I was shocked and amazed to find the so-called religious leaders tout faith as the panacea to all problems, when clearly blind, unreasoning faith was inciting more hatred and mindless violence in many parts of the world. All very different from the concept of faith I had grown up with. It shook the foundations of my beliefs, and I started deconstructing religion with reason. Soon it all came away unraveled.

I thought, “This cannot be right! If there is a God who cares, this is not the kind of madness that should be pervading mankind!” More and more I looked around, I couldn’t find any evidence for the existence of any god, only the very human quality of post hoc rationalizations leading to flawed arguments for the assumed presence of a deity. Nothing beyond figments of very human and very limited imagination, it occurred to me. I also realized that religion had nothing to do with a higher power or divinity. Instead, it was fraught with the basest human inequities, craze for power, greed, lust, subjugation through fear and guilt. The rest was all myths built by humans around this core to give it a lasting aura of respectability and prestige. And this was not unique to any particular religion; all of them, Hinduism, Judeo-Christianity, Islam, even lesser-known religions of the world, were full of hypocrisy and glaring inconsistencies. I came to understand that morality and ethics, in order to be viable guidelines for a way of life, did not really need the crutches of religion and observances; on their own, they could survive as eminently sound, logical and reasonable practices to build a life around.

It did not take me long thereafter, to renounce any contact with religion. What helped steel my resolve was a sense of betrayal by my parents, my country, my upbringing, my shielded existence until this point. Nothing in my prior 30 years of life had prepared me for this reality; nothing had truly opened my eyes and inculcated any questioning attitude. Nothing ever goaded me to see the now-obvious disconnect between my science education and the quavering tendrils of my erstwhile faith. I felt ashamed, small and inadequate.

My denouncing make-believe gods and coming out as an atheist must have pained my parents, although they were gracious enough to leave me to my thoughts, rather than try to impose theirs on mine. But even today, my mother keeps trying to reignite that spark of faith in me. But never again. More and more I look at the world today, atrocities fomented (and sanctioned) by the religions and committed by the religious zealots come to the fore. To find nothing wrong with religion is living in a state of active denial, a practice many of the so-called ‘religious moderates’ indulge in – and that includes my parents. They feel that people who incite violence and hatred in the name of religion are not the truly religious; the truly religious would focus on the messages of peace, non-violence, brotherhood, love and duty, central to most religions. Note that these lofty ideals are occasionally embraced by the religions when it suits their purpose. And to think that those ideals represent the whole idea of religious practices is, at best, delusional thinking, and represents the No True Scotsmen fallacy.

I am often asked by friends and family why I choose to denounce religion so stridently (Yes, I am a Gnu Atheist!), why I can’t simply ignore the perversions of religion, and let everyone choose what they want to believe in – even if I don’t believe in religion or any god. I found out long ago that I cannot change anybody else, except myself. As a working scientist, I deal with empirical evidence. There is no evidence for existence of a god, any god, but there is plenty of evidence that the responsibility for much of the plight of human beings in today’s world devolves directly on religious belief and blind adherence to dogma. That is the core problem. Religion cannot submit itself to logical enquiry; it demands blind acceptance, ‘faith’ and unthinking acquiescence to utterly ridiculous, often outdated, and superstitious belief systems and traditions.

The nature of religious belief is so insidious, that it needs to pervade, to spread like a cancer away from its source. An astonishing majority of the population of believers is deeply busy in trying to disseminate their odious doctrine to others, and none-too-gently, too! It is more often ‘My religion is better than yours, so convert or die’ kind of treatment, or it is done on the sly – ‘Want medical care? Come to Jesus’ kind of way. Religious indoctrination has progressed to such ludicrous levels that the ‘faithful’ often pull out the ‘religious belief’ card at every possible instance to explain their intransigence and imperviousness to common sense. They are trying – very actively – to spread their brand of stupidity to education, healthcare, politics, and other walks of life. If this is not actively countered, it will end up destroying our basic humanity.

Kausik Datta
United States

Hitch is not in heaven

The great ferocious talent of Christopher Hitchens is gone — he died last night of complications from esophageal cancer. We knew him well; that is, he was one of those people who opened himself up so thoroughly, who expressed himself so excellently, who had a personality so strong, that millions of us can hold him in our mind’s eye. I can see him now — there’s a glass in his hand, his eyes are calm and steady, and he’s speaking in measured tones and with flawless English sentences with passion and reason perfectly intertwined. Even if I didn’t agree with him, I’d be standing awed and respectful before his clarity and elegance.

But I do not say farewell to Hitch. I do not say “rest in peace”. I definitely do not say that he has gone to a better place. I actually find myself already bracing myself for the next sign of deep disrespect that is destined to appear soon: the hackneyed political cartoon that draws him standing at the pearly gates.

Hitch is dead. We are a diminished people for the loss. There can be and should be no consolation, no soft words that encourage an illusion of heavenly rescue, no balm of lies. We should feel as we do with every death, that a part of us has been ripped from our hearts, and suffer pain and grief — and we are reminded that this is the fate we all face, that someday we too will die, and that we are all “living dyingly”, as Hitch put it so well.

As atheists, I think none of us can find solace in the cliches or numbness in the delusion of an afterlife. Instead, embrace the fierce strong emotions of anger and sorrow, feel the pain, rage against the darkness, fight back against our mortal enemy Death, and live exuberantly while we can. Confront mortality clear-eyed and pugnacious, uncompromising and aggressive.

It’s what Hitch would have wanted of us.

It’s how Hitch lived.

Creationist abuse of cuttlefish chitin

A few weeks ago, PLoS One published a paper on the observation of preserved chitin in 34 million year old cuttlebones. Now the Institute for Creation Research has twisted the science to support their belief that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. It was all so predictable. It’s a game they play, the same game they played with the soft tissue preserved in T. rex bones. Here’s how it works.

Compare the two approaches, science vs. creationism. The creationists basically insert one falsehood, generate a ludicrous conflict, and choose the dumbest of the two alternatives.

The Scientific Approach

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find traces of organic material in ancient fossils

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Cool! We have evidence of ancient biochemistry!

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Science!

The Creationist Approach

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declare it impossible for organic material to be ancient

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steal other people’s discovery of organic material in ancient fossils

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Cool! Declare that organic material must not be ancient, because of step 1, which we invented

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Throw out geology, chemistry, and physics because they say the material is old

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Profit! Souls for my Lord Arioch!

You see, the scientists are aware of the fact that organic materials degrade over time, but recognize that we don’t always know the rate of decay under all possible conditions. When we find stuff that hasn’t rotted away or been fully replaced by minerals, we’re happy because we’ve got new information about ancient organisms, and we may also be able to figure out what mechanisms promoted the preservation of the material.

The creationists start with dogma — in this case, a false statement. They declare

Chitin is a biological material found in the cuttlebones, or internal shells, of cuttlefish. It has a maximum shelf life of thousands of years…

and

Because of observed bacterial and biochemical degradation rates, researchers shouldn’t expect to find any original chitin (or any other biomolecule) in a sample that is dozens of millions of years old—and it therefore should be utterly absent from samples deposited hundreds of millions of years ago. Thus, the chitin found in these fossils refutes their millions-of-years evolutionary interpretation, just as other fossil biomolecules already have done.

But wait. How do they know that? The paper they are citing says nothing of the kind; to the contrary, it argues that while rare, other examples of preserved chitin have been described.

Detection of chitin in fossils is not frequent. There are reports of fossil chitin in pogonophora, and in insect wings from amber. Chitin has also been reported from beetles preserved in an Oligocene lacustrine deposit of Enspel, Germany and chitin-protein signatures have been found in cuticles of Pennsylvanian scorpions and Silurian eurypterids.

So the paper is actually saying that the “maximum shelf life” of chitin is several tens of millions of years. And then they go on to describe…chitin found in Oligocene cuttlefish, several tens of millions of years old. The creationists are busily setting up an imaginary conflict in the evidence, a conflict that does not exist and is fully addressed in the paper.

The creationists do try to back up their claims, inappropriately. They cite a couple of papers on crustacean taphonomy where dead lobsters were sealed up in anoxic, water- and mud-filled jars; they decayed. Then they announce that there’s only one way for these cuttlebones to be preserved, and that was by complete mineralization, and the cuttlebones in the PLoS One paper were not mineralized.

…mineralization—where tissues are replaced by minerals—is required for tissue impressions to last millions of years. And the PLoS ONE researchers verified that their cuttlebone chitin was not mineralized.

Funny, that. You can read the paper yourself. I counted 14 uses of the words “mineralized” and “demineralized”. They state over and over that they had to specifically demineralize the specimens in hydrochloric acid to expose the imbedded chitin. And of course the chitin itself hadn’t been mineralized, or it wouldn’t be chitin anymore! Did the creationists lie, or did they just not understand the paper?

The scientists also do not claim that the chitin has not been degraded over time. They actually document some specific, general properties of decay in the specimens.

β-chitin is characterized by parallel chains of chitin molecules held together with inter-chain hydrogen bonding. The OH stretching absorbance, at about 3445 cm−1 in extant chitin, is diminished in the fossil and shifted to lower wavenumbers, showing that the specimen is losing OH by an as yet undetermined mechanism. The N-H asymmetric stretching vibration is shifted to slightly lower wavenumbers, showing that it is no longer hydrogen bonding exactly as in extant specimens. Changes in the region 2800–3600 cm−1 indicate that biomolecules have been degraded via disruption of interchain hydrogen bonds.

So, yes, the creationists seem to have rather misrepresented what the paper said. Here’s another blatant example of lying about the contents of the paper.

The question they did not answer, however, is why the original organic chitin had not completely fallen apart, which it would have if the fossils with it were 34 million years old…

Actually, they did. A substantial chunk of the discussion was specifically about that question, a consideration of the factors that contributed to the preservation. It was a combination of an anoxic environment, the presence of molecules that interfered with the enzymes that break down chitin, and the structure of cuttlebone, which interleaves layers containing chitin with layers containing pre-mineralized aragonite.

In vivo inorganic-organic structure of the cuttlebone, in combination with physical and geochemical conditions within the depositional environment and favorable taphonomic factors likely contributed to preservation of organics in M. mississippiensis. Available clays within the Yazoo Clay in conjunction with suboxic depositional environment may have facilitated preservation of original organics by forming a physical and geochemical barrier to degradation. One key to the preservation of organic tissues, in particular chitin and chitosan, is cessation of bacterial degradation within environments of deposition. Bacterial breakdown of polymeric molecules is accomplished through activities of both free extracellular enzymes (those in the water column) and ektoenzymes (those on the surface of the microbial cell) such as chitinases. Chitinases function either by cleaving glycosidic bonds that bind repeating N-acetyl-D-glucosamine units within chitin molecules or by cleaving terminal N-acetyl-D-glucosamine groups. These enzymes adsorb to the surface of clay particles, which inactivates them. Strong ions in solution like iron may act in the same manner. Once bound to functional groups within these polymeric molecules, Fe2+ ions prevent specific bond configuration on the active-site cleft of specific bacterial chitinases and prevents hydrolysis, thus contributing to preservation.

Organic layers within cuttlebones are protected by mineralized layers, similar to collagen in bones, and this mineral-organic interaction may also have played a role in their preservation. Specimens of M. mississipiensis show preserved original aragonite as well as apparent original organics. These organics appear to be endogenous and not a function of exogenous fungal or microbial activity. Fungi contain the γ form of chitin not the β allomorph found in our samples. Also, SEM analyses shows there is no evidence of tunneling, microbes, or wide-spread recrystallization of the aragonite. Therefore the chitin-like molecules detected in fossil sample are most likely endogenous. Similar to collagen in bone, perhaps, organics could not be attacked by enzymes or other molecules until some inorganic matrix had been removed.

Like I always say, never ever trust a creationists’ interpretation of a science paper: they don’t understand it, and they are always filtering it through a distorting lens of biblical nonsense. They make such egregious errors of understanding that you’re always left wondering whether they are actually that stupid, or that sleazily dishonest. Or both.

But imagine if the creationists hadn’t screwed up royally in reading the paper, if they had actually found an instance of scientists being genuinely baffled by a discovery that should not be. What if there was actually good reason to believe that chitin could not last more than ten thousand years?

Then the only sensible interpretation of this observation of 34 million year old chitin would be that the prior estimation of the shelf-life of chitin was wrong, and that it could actually last tens of millions of years. What the creationists want to do is claim that that minor hypothetical is actually correct, and that instead the entirety of nuclear physics, geology, radiochemistry, and modern cosmology is wrong. On the one hand, uncertain details about the decay of one organic molecule; in the other, entire vast fields of science, already verified, and with complex modern technologies built on their operation…and which hand would the creationists reject? The trivial one, of course.

I’m leaning towards “stupid” as the explanation for their bad arguments.

Oh, after I started this dissection, I discovered someone had already beaten me to it: here’s another analysis of the creationist misinterpretations.

(Also on Sb)

Why I am an atheist – Steve Beck

I had the good fortune to be born into a family of secular Jews who did not believe in god or go to temple. I never believed myself, and I am puzzled to this day why anyone would believe such nonsense. Some years ago, I began to wonder whether there was any chance religious people were on to something, so I read a lot of objective books and articles on religion and atheism, and I did not find a shred of evidence for god, and saw that religion was a pathetic tangle of lies and wishful thinking. After my initial bout of reading, I became hooked, and I love to read about atheism, and I read you and Jerry Coyne every day. I am still mystified, however, why any sane person could believe such rot.

Steve Beck
United States

Dr. Dan Golaszewski is a quack!

Once again, it’s time to call out a chiropractor. Not only is Dr Dan practicing a phony pretense of medicine, chiropractic, but he’s full of woo in other ways, too: his business is “Aligning spines and lifestyles with God’s ultimate intentions”, and he happily muddles together chiropractic mythology with his religious baloney — he believes that vertebral subluxion “results in a lessening of the body’s God-given, innate-ability to express its maximum health potential.” Chiropractors are awful enough, but chiropractors who actually babble about “subluxions”…run away. Run away very fast.

But here’s what prompts me to single this goon out today: in response to criticisms, he is threatening lawsuits. What is it with these woomeisters? Christopher Maloney, Burzynski, it’s a sure sign that you’re dealing with a delusional dingleberry when their reflex response to any criticism is to go running to the lawyers or start harrassing people’s employers to silence those who dare to question their methods (I’ve been hearing similar things about Chris Stedman’s lackeys* lately, which doesn’t surprise me). I guess it comes with the territory: if you’re a purveyor of quackery or woo, you’re also likely to be chickenshit.

*The initial attribution to Stedman has been changed to place the blame properly on his sycophantic lackeys.

Who is your favorite skeptic?

It’s an online awards thing that is accepting nominations and votes online — another online poll, in other words. I always feel brutish and clumsy around these phenomena, so it is with trepidation that I mention the The Skeptic Awards 2011 — it’s a poll for a good cause, increasing skepticism, and it’s one I’d rather not damage. You’ll vote your conscience, right?

Anger doesn’t make the irrational more sensible

I actually enjoyed this little rant by a fervent Catholic, Mary Kochan: You Whiny Sniveling Little Atheists Are Pathetic! She’s in a rage because the Freedom From Religion Foundation challenged the declaration of a “Day of Prayer” in Arizona (a case they lost, by the way).

Let’s get this straight. The atheists are suing because they had to turn off the television to avoid the topic of religion or news announcements about the Day of Prayer. They had to alter their conversation to avoid the topic of religion. This made them feel like “outsiders”.

No. We atheists are quite accustomed to silly people praying, and we see religion on TV all the time; it’s entirely within everyone’s personal rights to believe whatever they damn well please, as long as it doesn’t infringe on others’ rights to do likewise. The case was about an elected official using the apparatus of our common government to endorse sectarian religious belief. We don’t mind altering our conversation to avoid religion, and sometimes we’ll alter it to confront religion. It looks like the atheist case was poorly argued, but the crux of the problem is the violation of the establishment cause.

Once upon a time, in a country containing diverse religious views, Catholics and Baptists could appreciate the fact that the absence of a state religion allowed both to flourish, and would have been standing right up there with the atheists demanding that the government not meddle in religious belief. Now, though, as atheists get louder and more prominent, they instead find common cause in this myth of a “judeo-christian nation” to start using government to enforce belief. Let’s hope for their sake that the Mormons never take over the government!

But let’s move on to Ms Kochan’s entertaining fury, built on a false understanding of the substance of the complaint, and in which she throws in further stupidities.

You whiny, sniveling, little, pusillanimous cowards. You have the audacity to tell us Christians that we are “weak” and that our religion is a “crutch.” You are supposed to be so “courageous”, venturing forth boldly into the existential mystery of being alone, facing with stoicism the nothingness that awaits you at death, priding yourself on your realism and self-reliance. You are a bunch of feeble fakers.

Yes, you are outsiders. Go start your own damn country. This one was started by Christians, you puerile dimwits. It is Christians who established and largely Christians who fought and died to maintain the freedoms you enjoy. And Christians are still the majority. Apparently your vaulted belief system doesn’t equip you to handle being in the minority. That’s interesting, isn’t it? After all, this was and is a societal situation valiantly handled by millions and millions of Christians who suffered — and currently suffer — real oppression, violence, torture, economic deprivation, and cruel deaths. But you have to go through turning off the TV once in a while and so your precious puny feelings are hurt. How delicate and frail your mental architecture is!

You are a pitiful joke. Trembling over the mere mention of God. Running like babies to court because of your brittle feelings. “Oh, but judge, but judge, I saw a cross and I just can’t stand it.” “I heard someone say ‘Merry Christmas’ and it hurt my feelings.” “I just can’t sleep knowing there is a manger scene at the courthouse.” “The sight of the Ten Commandments makes me wet my pants.” Now we see how inadequate and feeble you really are. Rage, therapists say, is the flip side of helplessness. And so we see your rage against religion in the public square for what it is: a product of your own insubstantial internal resources. Go look at yourself in the mirror if you can bear the pathetic, contemptible sight of yourself. Our merest martyr shows you to be a wimp – fourteen-year-old Kizito of Uganda singing hymns while being burned alive. But you, you anemic, lily-livered worms – you quail at pushing the off button on the remote! Hah!

Right there in the second paragraph is the justification for the FFRF’s lawsuit, and she doesn’t even notice it. She wants to use religion as a criterion for citizenship, something clearly in violation of the letter and spirit of the American constitution. There certainly were Christians involved in the founding of the United States, but also freethinkers — and the US Constitution is largely a product of the Enlightenment, not Christianity. If Christianity had its way, we would be living in a theocratic monarchy, like those in the Bible, not a representative democracy.

The praise for the bullying capability of a majority is ironic, too. One of the concerns at the founding of the country was giving protection to minorities — they tyranny of the masses is always going to be a worry in a democracy. Perhaps Ms Kochan would be more appreciative of that if she recognized that America was also largely founded by Protestants, and Catholics through most of our history have been a mistrusted minority, despised as Papists, and the focus of a great deal of hatred, particularly when Catholic immigrants started to enter in large numbers. It’s kind of amusing in a sad, bitter way to see members of an oppressed minority now sidling up to downplay their differences and claim membership in the biggest gang of bullies, in order to shout down another minority. The worm has turned.

It’s also telling that in her last paragraph she has to invent imaginary quotes. My response on seeing a cross publicly displayed is a sneer of contempt, a roll of the eyes, a snide curl of the lip, not fear. But I recognize that the deluded are also citizens with the right to erect whatever personal exhibitions of their foolishness they desire. I don’t object to “Merry Christmas” at all, and even say it myself now and then — the War on Christmas is a nonexistent Christian boogeyman that makes atheists laugh. I lose no sleep over Christian myths, nor am I incontinent at the sight of the ten commandments, that irrelevant collection of silly rules that are unenforceable and mostly ignored even by believers, except for the few that are actually common to every lawful society, including that of atheists. We aren’t afraid of Christians, but we are rather tired of seeing their useless delusions promoted as solutions to real problems.

It’s also ironic that her own post full of rage and fury tries to make the claim that rage is a symptom of helplessness. Oh, really? Just how self-unaware are you, Mary Kochan?

And that parting snipe is so Catholic — to find smug satisfaction in the brutal, painful death of a fellow believer is beyond barbarous. It does not justify your superstition to have people suffer pointless agony while under its spell — atheists find greater virtue in living for our ideals.

A common atheist delusion

This is just the weirdest thing: Julian Baggini discovers that believers believe. Baggini is an atheist who has in the past sniped at the New Atheists a fair bit; he’s argued that we’re an uninformed bunch who rail against straw man theism, because, he has argued, most practitioners of religion are followers of practice, not belief — they go to church for ritual and community, and all the dogma is dispensable. Now he has surveyed a few hundred believers, and learned that they actually do think the superstitious stories they have been told are very important.

So what is the headline finding? It is that whatever some might say about religion being more about practice than belief, more praxis than dogma, more about the moral insight of mythos than the factual claims of logos, the vast majority of churchgoing Christians appear to believe orthodox doctrine at pretty much face value.

Jerry Coyne is boggled. So are Eric McDonald and Ophelia Benson. So am I, a bit.

I think I’d call this the Atheist Delusion. Many of us find it really hard to believe that Christians actually believe that nonsense about Jesus rising from the dead and insisting that faith is required to pass through the gates of a magical place in the sky after we’re dead; we struggle to find a rational reason why friends and family are clinging to these bizarre ideas, and we say to ourselves, “oh, all of her friends are at church” or “he uses church to make business contacts” or “it’s a comforting tradition from their childhood”, but no, it’s deeper than that: we have to take them at their word, and recognize that most people who go to church actually do so because they genuinely believe in all that stuff laid out in the Nicene Creed.

It makes the phenomenon of religion even scarier, doesn’t it?

What brought me to this awareness is that the primary angle of conflict in my religious encounters has been creationism: people who believe against all the evidence that the earth is less than ten thousand years old. There is absolutely no practical reason for this; no moral reasoning; no excuse of community; not even an absolute literal requirement in their holy book. You can have a perfectly functional church that worships Jesus and follows all the traditional conventions and yet also accept that geology tells us that the planet is 4.5 billion years old. The praxis requirement simply doesn’t apply. Yet 40% of the people in our country blithely accept a narrow, modern interpretation that imposes a time limit on the age of the creation.

Yet another example was a trivial little incident in which I desecrated a cracker. I knew that people believed, but I expected that the response would be more of a rationalization: I, as an unbeliever, was completely irrelevant to their beliefs, so I anticipated that what would happen is a solid round of excuses in which I’d be belittled, told I just don’t understand the nature of the sacrament, condescendingly explained down to that as a non-Catholic, my actions were petty and unimportant and that I couldn’t really harm Jesus. I got precisely the opposite: a deluge of mail accusing me of doing great harm to God, ruining their religion in a way that demanded retribution, and intensifying their certainty that Jesus was in that communion wafer.

Basically, they did not bow to social realities and adapt to what was a truly trivial event; they doubled down.

I think this is another important element of the New Atheist movement. We take religious people seriously when they tell us what they believe. We don’t indulge in our own rationalizations, trying to second guess what they say and invent a more sensible excuse for their behavior: when someone tells me that they have faith that Jesus’ second coming is nigh, I accept that they’re a deranged and demented fuckwit rather than trying to cobble together a lofty sociological story about individuals fitting into community mores and building rhetorical interfaces to meld with group dynamics. Nope, they really believe in an apocalyptic messiah and are wishing the world would end in a catastrophe before they die.

I don’t believe in fighting against the little social accommodations people necessarily make to get by. I do believe in fighting hard against bad ideas. And that’s a difference between many atheists: do you see religion as a kind of social glue, or do you see it as a disastrously stupid collection of bad ideas? If you are in the latter camp, you’re a New Atheist.