Flex your muscles a little, infidels

I’m seeing some mixed signals on the series “A Brief History of Disbelief” — it’s appearing in very few station’s schedules right now, and it’s tempting to suspect that it’s being buried by the media, especially since right wing groups detest it:

That "A Brief History of Disbelief" might be controversial is unsurprising. Right-wing groups, such as the Concerned Women of America, are already ramping up opposition to Miller’s program, which originally aired on the BBC in 2005. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council deemed the work of the actor-director-author Miller to be "an evangelistic piece for atheism."

On the other hand, I’ve heard from the author of the article above that stations are also reporting that it’s a problem with the source — it’s being handled by an independent distributor, and the stations haven’t had an opportunity to review it — so the problems may be less nefarious than procedural. Either way, this is probably a good time to contact your local public broadcasting station and tell them you’d like to see them pick up this program, and pretty please, don’t show it at 3am. Let’s let the godless demographic make itself known, politely but firmly.

It’s not like we’re lobbying Fox News. Don’t you all suspect that public broadcasting’s viewership is skewed our way? All it takes is a phone call, so let’s make our existence known in this simple and unthreatening matter.

Those heathenish Canadians!

I may have to learn the words to “O Canada” if Dan Gardner is representative of that great nation. His recent article is marvelous.

So I thought this is an opportune moment to say I think all three of these faiths — these mighty institutions, these esteemed philosophies, these ancient and honoured traditions — are ridiculous quackery. Parted seas. Walking corpses. Nocturnal visits to Heaven. For goodness sake, people, the talking wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is more plausible.

Preach it, brother. Referring to the habit of some to who see these “New Atheists” as equivalent to the fanatics of religion, he says:

This frames the debate in a pleasingly symmetrical way. Over on that side are the insane religious fanatics who fly jets into skyscrapers and march around with signs saying “God Hates Fags.” Over there are fanatical atheists. Between the two extremes are sensible moderates who take the Goldilocks approach to faith and reason. Not too hot. Not too cold. Lukewarm, please, keep it lukewarm.

He should have continued one sentence: “Over there are fanatical atheists … who write books and talk to people.” It’s good to see, though, that there are others who also see through the prim, squeaky in-betweeners who take pride in their weak-kneed mediocrity and whimper about “funadamentalist atheists”, equating suicide bombers for god with people who simply refuse to defer to religious poppycock.

Bravo, Mr Gardner.

Hitchens on Rose

Christopher Hitchens’ appearance on the Daily Show was a disappointment—largely because Hitchens seemed to be half in the bag, and Stewart kept stepping all over his words trying to make them funny, and the short format was not to the favor of a fellow who tends to speak in complete sentences and paragraphs. So how about a half hour interview with an alert Hitchens, with an interviewer who’s interested in hearing what he has to say, and gives him the opportunity to speak at more length? Here’s Hitchens on the Charlie Rose show.

Much better, even if I disagreed strongly with Hitchens on much of what he said.

More than half of the interview is taken up with discussing the Iraq war. I agree with Hitchens’ assessment that an important nation in the Middle East is on the road to destruction, that it is going to be a failed state, and that by pulling out we diminish the power of the US in the region. I also agree that it is a great tragedy, and that leaving Iraq will mean many of our supporters will die. Where I disagree, though, is that Hitchens thinks the war was inevitable and necessary, and that the US did the right thing by invading. I say we sowed the seeds of defeat when our government decided the appropriate response was to invade with crushing force, and make Iraq a treasure chest to be looted by military contractors. The current ongoing debacle can be blamed directly on the credulous boosters for war as a prerequisite for nation building, of whom Hitchens was one.

The last half is a discussion of his new book, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). I haven’t read it yet—my copy is supposed to arrive this next week—but I’m looking forward to it, and there’s some hope from this interview that it will be a solid piece of work. This part of the interview was much less contentious than the first half, I thought — I’d be curious to see what a Christian pro-war Republican would say, though.

Hard to disbelieve

Tomorrow is 5 May, and I mentioned in my
review of A Brief History of Disbelief that this excellent documentary on atheism/agnosticism was supposed to be aired on PBS stations all across the country around this time. It’s been hard to track down, though; I’ve looked in my local TV listings, and there’s no mention. Readers have contacted their stations directly, and some have reported back that they will be seeing it, while others have found that their stations are not carrying it. It’s very confusing.

Well, a reader found a grid listing all of the airdates and stations that will be showing A Brief History of Disbelief. If you’re in San Diego or Philadelphia, it’s well covered; otherwise, it’s scattered very sparsely on the map. It is not being shown in Minnesota.

Hitchens on The Daily Show

Eh.

It wasn’t bad. Hitchens declared some laudable objectives for his book: he wants to end the idea that calling someone a person of faith is a compliment, and he laid out his position on the origins of religion. It’s built on fear of the dark, fear of death, and hatred of sex, and those aren’t sound bases for rational thought. So the sentiment was good.

Presentation … well, that wasn’t so good. I know Hitchens can be eloquent, but he wasn’t. He bumbled about and couldn’t quite manage to put two coherent sentences together.

I’m still getting the book, but I don’t think his performance tonight would have persuaded anybody who wasn’t already one of those uncompromising atheists.

You can watch the interview yourself over at onegoodmove.

That 5 May debate …

Brian Flemming reveals that the godless debaters who will engage the two idiots on 5 May are Brian Sapient and Kelly of the Rational Response Squad. He also mentions that Ray Comfort is planning to bring a banana to the debate. Oh, man, I hope so.

If the debate rolls around to atheist morality (which it probably will) there’s one comment they could make that would discombobulate me, so I hope they stick to the banana. The troubling revelation would be the fact that Karl Rove may be an unbeliever.

Ack.

I rather doubt that Comfort/Cameron will damn atheists with the litany of “Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Rove”, but if they do, you know the Bush administration is toast. I was initially taken aback by this revelation from Hitchens, until I read a little further.

I know something which is known to few but is not a secret. Karl Rove is not a believer, and he doesn’t shout it from the rooftops, but when asked, he answers quite honestly. I think the way he puts it is, “I’m not fortunate enough to be a person of faith.”

Oh, so he’s one of those appeaser atheists. That’s all right then, and has nothing to do with me.

A brief history of disbelief

I just finished watching a copy of a three-part program that was broadcast in England three years ago — A Brief History of Disbelief, narrated by Jonathan Miller. All I can say is … wow. It’s less an advocacy of atheism than a kind of post-atheism, a historical and philosophical review of this strange, dying idea of “religion” that reveals the progressive growth of atheistic thought. It’s wonderfully dismissive. The real question isn’t how people can disbelieve, but how faith can survive and still linger on.

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