Scott Adams makes his argument against atheism. Let’s just say that Adams makes McGrath look like a brilliant, nuanced genius by comparison. All he’s got is the cartoonist’s version of Pascal’s Wager, and his own profound misconceptions about what atheists are.
You’ve got to take it with a grain of salt — a politician’s self-reporting of what books he is reading is more about image than a reflection of what they are actually reading — but it’s revealing what British members of parliament think will impress the citizenry:
In the annual survey of MPs’ holiday reading, released today by the bookshop chain Waterstone’s, first place was taken by William Hague’s biography of William Wilberforce, which was published to coincide with the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. It came well ahead of books that received more hype at the time of publication, such as the latest Harry Potter fantasy, or the diaries of Alastair Campbell.
It is perhaps not surprising that Mr Hague should be the top seller among Conservative MPs, but what is less predictable is that the survey showed the same book to be the Liberal Democrat’s top summer read.
A new mood of religious scepticism seems to have taken hold of Labour MPs, who have made The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, their main choice. This follows the loss of Tony Blair, who looked to God as the ultimate judge of whether it was right to invade Iraq.
I am reminded of Bush’s announcement that he was reading that godless Frenchman, Camus. Now there was a cryptic message to the electorate…I think he was relying on the likelihood that his base wouldn’t have any idea what the The Stranger was about, so he was actually just trying to convince them that he is too a smarty pants. The title The God Delusion doesn’t leave a lot of room for ambiguity, though, and is well-known enough that everyone knows what it’s about.
Maybe some reporter should ask W if he has read any Dawkins lately…
(By the way, the Wilberforce biography is also on my to-read list, although I don’t know that I’ll get to it before the new term slams into my face.)
Go read Carnival of the Godless #72.
Then Revere’s Sunday Sermonette takes on the clueless Steven D. Levitt.
Hemant links to the freakiest mindset. This is not a satire, although I wish it were.
Jesus implies that those who brought him this news thought he would say that those who died, deserved to die, and that those who didn’t die did not deserve to die. That is not what he said. He said, everyone deserves to die. And if you and I don’t repent, we too will perish. This is a stunning response. It only makes sense from a view of reality that is radically oriented on God.
All of us have sinned against God, not just against man. This is an outrage ten thousand times worse than the collapse of the 35W bridge. That any human is breathing at this minute on this planet is sheer mercy from God. God makes the sun rise and the rain fall on those who do not treasure him above all else. He causes the heart to beat and the lungs to work for millions of people who deserve his wrath. This is a view of reality that desperately needs to be taught in our churches, so that we are prepared for the calamities of the world.
I’m sorry, but the author of that piece is an evil freak representing an all too common view that can’t help but cripple our culture. You do not deserve to die. God is not keeping you alive. You will one day perish whether you repent or not, and your goal now should be to live this one life you have as well as you can.
A few readers sent me a link to this interview with Alister McGrath; most thought it was worth a laugh, but one actually seemed to think I’d be devastated. I’m afraid the majority were correct: everything I’ve read by McGrath suggests that here is a man whose thoughts have been arrested by a temporal lobe seizure that he has mistaken for a lightning bolt from god. He’d probably be flattered to be compared to C.S. Lewis, but I see some similarities in the shallowness of their thinking that they believe they’ve deepened by tapping into theological tradition, but I’m sorry — my bathroom tap could drip for millennia, but it’s a nuisance, not Niagara.
It also doesn’t help that his argument is basically one of dogma and contradiction.
OK, I don’t know quite what to make of this: it’s a site called The Atheist Conservative. I know there’s no obstacle to being both godless and conservative, but this one is ’round-the-bend freaky far-right Bush-lovin’ conservative. I don’t know how an atheist could write a review of Ann Coulter’s Godless that contains gooey dollops of praise for Coulter — that book was one flaming bonfire of stupid. But hey, if there are conservative atheists out there with tears running down your cheeks because you’re reading this pro-atheist site by a crazed liberal, maybe you’ll be happier over there.
Oh, and they’ve got their own symbol for atheism: it’s the square root of 2. Oy. Everyone’s gotta be different.
(via The Friendly Atheist)
The researcher behind this study is “surprised and disappointed,” but I’m neither.
Although most religious traditions call on the faithful to serve the poor, a large cross-sectional survey of U.S. physicians found that physicians who are more religious are slightly less likely to practice medicine among the underserved than physicians with no religious affiliation.
In the July/August issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that 31 percent of physicians who were more religious–as measured by “intrinsic religiosity” as well as frequency of attendance at religious services–practiced among the underserved, compared to 35 percent of physicians who described their religion as atheist, agnostic or none.
Charity, service, self-sacrifice, generosity, and kindness are human properties, not religious virtues. I wouldn’t expect a group of people from a common culture to show much substantial variation in empathy and public service along religious lines.
Despite the fact that he is disappointed in the result, I do have to commend the author for making a positive policy recommendation:
Policy makers and medical educators hoping to increase the physician supply for underserved populations should take these results into account cautiously, said the authors. “No one knows how to select medical students in a way that would actually increase the number of physicians eager to serve the underserved,” Curlin said, “but our findings suggest that admissions officials should ignore both the general religiousness of candidates and their professed sense of calling to medicine.”
Richard Dawkins defends the Out Campaign. I really have to stress to everyone who complains that they don’t like the design, that it’s too bold, that it’s too timid, that they don’t believe in joining anything, etc., that this is not about conformity — you don’t have to wear the big red “A” t-shirt, and no one is going to draft you into the Atheist Army. This is a plea for everyone to get loud and make your beliefs known. Atheists generally are not joiners or conformists or big fans public displays of unity, but we have to start forming some kind of loose interessengemeinschaft — a fellowship of interests — if we want to stop being marginalized. This is nothing but a start.
It’s not as if you’re being asked to join the Atheist Alliance or American Atheists, although those are good organizations — the only thing you have to do to join this particular movement is to be vigorous in asserting your godlessness, in whatever way you choose. Here in the US, we must make it clear that there is a significant slice of the electorate that wants our government kept entirely secular.
And if you don’t like the scarlet letter, Dawkins points to the CafePress site where you can pick from 9,430 atheist designs. Pick one or design your own. It’s not dogmatic adherence the campaign is looking for, it’s independence and some slight measure of dedication to increasing secularism.
Minnesota Atheists notes a new policy at Borders Books — they’ve put up a small display section dedicated to books about atheism.
If you’ve ever been frustrated in a search for books on nonbelief in your local bookstore or annoyed by their inclusion in the comparative religion section, Borders Books has remedied the situation. “Atheism and Agnosticism” has been added as a new section for the works of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and many others. We hope other bookstores will follow this example, and encourage our members to suggest they do.
A reader actually sent me a photo of this miracle.
Of course, compare the size of that to the “New Age” or “Religion” section of your typical bookstore, and you can see we’ve got a ways to go yet. I’m going to have to insist that everyone go out and buy these books. After you’ve finished reading them, I expect you to write a book of your own, so we can fill up a wide rack of our own.
If you have doubts that you can write a book … have you read any of the books in the New Age or Self-Help or Pop Psych or Religion sections? Lobotomized monkeys could do better.
A while back, I floated the idea of a logo for the godless. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea, and a lot of good design ideas came out of it … maybe too many good ideas. And being a mob of atheists, there was absolutely no consensus on what was the best symbol to use. Finally, I didn’t want to impose a logo on anyone, so I just let it drop to see if anyone would simply start using one of the suggested designs, that maybe a consensus might coalesce. I saw a few of the logos on scattered sites, but there wasn’t much of a spontaneous response, and alas, every single site used a different logo. Typical atheists.
Now, though, there is one possible option: the RDF has started the Out Campaign, an effort to get atheists to publicly and proudly declare their status. It has a slightly different meaning — it’s not exactly a symbol of atheism, but more a symbol of the willingness to come out about your disbelief — but it’s nice, it’s simple, it’s clean. It’s a simple red Zapfino “A”, the scarlet letter.
Go ahead, use it. I’ve got one on the sidebar to testify to my openness about my ideas of the nature of the universe, we should all spread it far and wide. I’ll even make it easy for you: you can use this code to put one on your website, if you’re one of us loud and proud atheists.
<div style="text-align:center"><a href="http://outcampaign.org/"><img src="http://pharyngula.org/images/scarlet_A.png" border="0" alt="image" width="143" height="122" /></a></div>
One weird thing about this development, though, is that it sure
brings out the whiners and concern trolls. I’m a little bit surprised at the response at the Dawkins site, with far too many rushing to complain. You’ll see two kinds of negative reactions.
The nay-sayers who complain that this is too much like Christianity, it’s a uniform, it’s Dawkins trying to enforce conformity. How ridiculous. It’s a freakin’ t-shirt or bumper sticker, not the High Holy Cathedral of the Sacred Letter A. You can wear it or you can skip it. You can use it to wipe the sweat off after a workout. You might wear it to a barbecue at the park. Wear it while you’re doing the dishes. It’s casual wear. It’s a nice shirt that sends a straightforward message about your willingness to be unafraid, nothing more, with no other deep significance. It will not be part of the dress code.
The shrinking violets who complain that it’s too bold, it’s too in-your-face, it’ll make us a target. Talk about missing the point: yes, it’s supposed to be bold. You are supposed to be bold. Begging for a tiny little delicate bit of subtle embroidery on a shirt pocket means this movement is not for you. Don’t wear the shirt. Don’t put the bumper sticker on your car. Don’t say a word — it’s easy to pass as a Christian or a Muslim, you know.
Just don’t try to claim that you’re helping.
The Myers family ordered a few t-shirts, and my car will have the bumper sticker on it. We aren’t afraid. Especially not to make such a trivial commitment.
Let’s bring up that atheists and civil rights issue once again — it makes everyone so happy. The Science Ethicist is really peeved with DJ Grothe, who in a recent Point of Inquiry podcast repeated his assertion that a) atheism is not a civil rights issue, and b) lots of atheists are making their civil rights a major issue.
The curious twist here is that he’s interviewing Peter Irons, author of God on Trial, who at the very beginning makes the point strongly that religion is the most divisive issue in the country after race, and that there is a deep intolerance towards atheists. Then Grothe springs his traditional assertion that those other atheists are making too big a deal of civil rights. Irons comes back with the argument that the discrimination against atheists does make it an issue of civil rights. I don’t quite get the point of Grothe’s argument. I agree with Irons that it is a civil rights issue, but I also agree willingly that there is no comparison with the oppression faced by women and homosexuals and blacks; most of the atheists I know would probably agree, that it’s a real issue, but it’s probably not the most important struggle we face right now.
I’m not quite ready to give up on the podcast as Aerik is since they get such good guests (and the Irons interview is very good), but I do think Grothe is flogging a dead horse. Can we at least agree that it has been settled somewhere close to the position that it is a civil rights issue, but not one that imposes the kind of discrimination that we need to resolve by new legislation? And that Grothe can stop complaining about all those nonexistent atheist leaders who think they are the next Martin Luther King?
