It’s all science’s fault

The Dallas News has drawn in a group of theologians to discuss the thesis that science is responsible for literalist religion. At least they aren’t blaming atheism for creationism this time!

British theologian and Anglican cleric Keith Ward contends that the growing role of science in the world, where countries depend upon scientists and inventors to drive their economies, has led to a growing literalism.

Or so reports Michelle Boorstein on the Washington Post’s On Faith blog. Writes Boorstein;

“Keith Ward, a British philosopher who was for years the canon of Oxford’s cathedral, argued that the rise of science has led in the Judeo-Christian world to two things: literalism, because people no longer value things they can’t prove, and secularism, because critical thought can tend to shift people to look at the Bible like any other book.”

I like that last line…”because critical thought can tend to shift people to look at the Bible like any other book.” Why, yes, it does, and it should. The Bible is just another book; why should we view it as anything different from Shakespeare’s plays, the Aenid, or Harry Potter? These are people who are simply affronted that anyone dares question the privileged position of their holy book — especially since they can’t justify it.

But I want to take exception to the other part of the claim, that because of science, we no longer value things that we can’t prove. It’s utterly ridiculous, because science isn’t about proof, in the sense of acquiring absolute certainty. It’s about proving things in the old sense of the word, of testing claims — we don’t have proof that anything is true, we at best have evidence that a claim is false, or that a hypothesis is compatible with reality. That’s all. So what question does this column ask?

But does Ward have a point? Has science, with its emphasis on empiricism, led to a new literalism, where we value things we can prove more than things we cannot?

It’s hilarious. They start off with a false premise, and then 12 theologians cheerfully drive off the cliff to assert it is true. All you’ll learn from this is that professional god-botherers don’t know bugger all about science.

I’m not going to dissect them all — to be honest, I got bored with the whole mess after the first couple — so let’s just look at the first essay, by James Denison, Theologian-in-Residence and Texas Baptist Convention President. He’s an idiot. Right off the bat, he tosses one of the oldest canards in the book at us.

Alfred Lord Tennyson believed that nothing worth proving can be proven. Prove that your children love you. Prove that you love them.

I can’t, and I’ve never claimed to be able to. They could come sneaking back some dark night, and all three of them might pin me down in my bed and smother me with a pillow for their inheritance (the joke will be on them, ha ha!), and that would be pretty good evidence that they don’t love me. Otherwise, the fact that their parents made some sacrifices to get them to where they are, and that they aren’t estranged from us and still call now and then and come visit at Christmas, and that we all exhibit outward signs that we find pleasure in each other’s company, is good evidence that we do love each other. What more could you ask for?

I don’t take the love of another on faith. I don’t believe it because it’s written in a holy book, or because a god whispered in my ear that they really do. If I did, that would be creepy and psychopathic: I, like most psychologically normal human beings, make judgments about what someone else thinks about me on the basis of evidence.

Science is just common sense, in a lot of ways — a disciplined, organized process of looking before you leap.

To the degree that Ward is right, our culture is moving in the opposite direction from scientific progress. Advocates of Newtonian physics did indeed view the supernatural as unprovable and therefore irrelevant. But contemporary science has long since left this mechanistic worldview.

Say what? Don’t tell me he’s going to dredge up modern physics as validating his medieval theology…yes, he is.

Albert Einstein once noted, “The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. . . . His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”

The poetical maunderings of Albert Einstein do not reflect the rigor of contemporary science. They are personal reflections. Just because it’s the only expression of science that Denison’s mind can grasp does not mean it is at all representative of good science.

A relationship with God is like any other relationship — we examine the evidence, then take a step that transcends it and becomes self-validating. If I had waited until I could prove that Janet and I should be married, I would still be single. If you needed proof that this essay was worth your time before reading it, you wouldn’t have gotten this far.

First of all, where is the evidence of this relationship? Where is the evidence that this invisible intangible being even exists? You don’t get to just assert evidence that you can’t show, and expect me to fall for it.

Secondly, what’s with this “transcending” evidence and self-validation? What does that even mean? Did James decide unilaterally that he should marry Janet, and he then sat and muddled over it until he had definitely decided that Janet should marry him, and then he threw a bag over her head, tied her up, dragged her into the basement, and had his invisible friend in the sky authorize consummation? Or did he ask, “Janet, will you marry me?”, followed by Janet providing confirmation by saying “Yes, James, I will.” The latter is what civilized, rational people would do, at any rate — they seek evidence that their assumptions are actually true.

As for his argument about getting this far, it wasn’t about proof. It was about evidence. I read that far to get evidence and make a decision about whether to continue with his essay and the series of 11 more that follow. I discovered that he’s actually not worth reading, and I stopped.

No celestial magic man was involved. All it took was a critical examination of his very own words.

Standard small town saga

File this under “religion unites people”. Sure it does. It unites them to harrass unbelievers. Damon Fowler of Bastrop, Louisiana asked his school to obey the law and not impose sectarian prayer on his high school graduation, and for that he’s being ostracized.

My graduation from high school is this Friday. I live in the Bible Belt of the United States. The school was going to perform a prayer at graduation, but due to me sending the superintendent an email stating it was against Louisiana state law and that I would be forced to contact the ACLU if they ignored me, they ceased it. The school backed down, but that’s when the shitstorm rolled in. Everyone is trying to get it back in the ceremony now. I’m not worried about it, but everyone hates me… kind of worried about attending graduation now. It’s attracted more hostility than I thought.

My reasoning behind it is that it’s emotionally stressing on anyone who isn’t Christian. No one else wanted to stand up for their constitutional right of having freedom of and FROM religion. I was also hoping to encourage other atheists to come out and be heard. I’m one of maybe three atheists in this town that I currently know of. One of the others is afraid to come out of the (atheist) closet.

Though I’ve caused my classmates to hate me, I feel like I’ve done the right thing. Regardless of their thoughts on it, basically saying I am ruining their fun and their lives, I feel like I’ve helped someone out there. I didn’t do this for me or just atheists, but anyone who doesn’t believe in their god that prayer to Yahweh may affect.

Moral of the story: though the opposition may be great, majority doesn’t necessarily mean right. Thank you for reading. Wish me luck at graduation.

EDIT: Well, it hit the fan a couple hours ago. They’ve already assembled a group of supporters at a local church and called in the newspaper. I’ve had to deactivate my Facebook account and I can’t reason with any of them. They refuse to listen. The whole town hates me, aside from a few closet atheists that are silently supporting, which I don’t blame them looking at what I’ve incited here. Thanks for the support though.

If anyone would like to offer support, the superintendent is who I emailed and the school’s website is mpsb.us

Thanks for the support. It’s really helping. This has just gotten sickening.

Edit: I’ve had requests for my Facebook info… I don’t mind giving that out at all. Damon Fowler – Bastrop, LA. I could use all of the support I can get. Not sure if this link will work: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001146281052

If you want to give Damon some support, here are the administrator emails and school board emails. They need to have the law patiently explained to them. They also need to learn that this is not a restriction on their right to pray — they can sit in the auditorium and pray up a storm (non-disruptively, of course) throughout the entire ceremony. The point is that they don’t get to tell other people to pray to their weird and cultish little god.

Christian evangelists scrambling madly backwards in Victoria

I hope Australians are getting good and mad. They’ve been exploited into supporting this dishonest chaplaincy program in their public schools, and recently Evonne Paddison, one of the cult members pushing for more chaplains, was caught openly, even proudly, admitting that it was a program intended for Christian evangelism. Now the local priesthood is desperately trying to cover their tracks, including Paddison herself, who has lately been waving her hands frantically and claiming she isn’t advocating christian proselytization in the public schools.

Unfortunately for her, she’s on tape. This nice video interleaves her recent disavowals with her own words in the damning speech, and it’s shockingly (but entirely unsurprisingly) true that yes, these people want to use the chaplaincy programs as opportunities to convert children to their version of Christianity, and yes, she is now lying. Not that anyone with any sense would have ever imagined otherwise.

I hope this soon scuttles the whole program and the waste of money thrown down the rathole of using public schools to sponsor sectarian religion. The wonderful thing about it, though, is that it wasn’t atheists who demolished it — it was Christians opening their mouths and being unable to hide their ulterior motives.

Australian poll needs your help

I knew it would come to this. There’s been long-running contention over the government-sponsored chaplaincy programs in Australia — those crazy mad independent godless Aussies actually pay good money to have these goofy Christian wankers sit in their public schools and provide…heck, I don’t know what. But now it has suddenly and justifiable led to public outrage because the chief executive for one of the cults that provides chaplains has openly stated that Christians from other countries envy the access their proselytizers have to public school kids, and has bragged about converting kids.

In Australia, we have a God-given open door to children and young people with the Gospel, our federal and state governments allow us to take the Christian faith into our schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples.

Australians, what did you think this whole chaplaincy business was about? Of course it’s been about converting children.

And now The Age is running a poll on the subject, and although the results are going in the right direction, they clearly need some help from the international community. Go forth and adjust the poll to be more realistic.

Do you support religion in schools programs?

Yes

42%
No

58%

For your end-of-the-world planning…

Salon has a tidy summary of the end-of-the-world claims of Harold Camping.

On May 21, “starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake, such as has never been in the history of the Earth,” he says. The true Christian believers — he hopes he’s one of them — will be “raptured”: They’ll fly upward to heaven. And for the rest?

“It’s just the horror of horror stories,” he says, “and on top of all that, there’s no more salvation at that point. And then the Bible says it will be 153 days later that the entire universe and planet Earth will be destroyed forever.”

There you have it: plan your parties for next week at 6pm in your local time zone (how convenient!). You can all count down to the great big 6pm earthquake, and brace yourselves and your drinks just before it hits.

I’ll be hanging out with Jamie Kilstein just before our event at the Washington DC CFI. I’ll have the iPad with me, ready to blog about all the Republicans zooming up into the sky. I’ll be sure to mention any unusual signs and portents on Twitter (hashtag: #RAPTURE) as I stand in the heart of Babylon during the big show.

Obstinate and oblivious

This past weekend, I was feebly confronted by a Canadian creationist, David Buckna, with a list of his objections to evolution. I spent a fair amount of time trying to hammer him with the answers, and the most remarkable thing was that every time we’d start digging into a topic, he’d suddenly change subjects to another item on his list, and then, later, he’d switch back to the original topic at the very beginning of his harangue, as if I’d never said anything. And now he’s pestering me in email, sending me more quotes (that’s all he’s got — no thoughts, just quotes) and rehashing pointlessly the same things I explained to him before.

I thought of him when someone sent me a link to Dare2Share Ministries. It’s an evangelical site that supposedly teaches you how to argue with people of different beliefs. I believe I may have run into some of their zombies before.

Take, for instance, the section on how to convert Erin the Evolutionist. The first part is a section describing what Erin believes about evolution, god, the trinity, Jesus, the bible, the afterlife, and salvation — and oh, wondrous world, it actually gets it right. Erin thinks the Bible is a collection of myths, and doesn’t believe in any of those other things.

Then the second part is supposed to be about how a good Christian would handle each of those topics in a conversation, and there’s where it all goes wrong. Every entry on god, Jesus, etc. simply cites the Bible’s claims. That’s it. Somehow, they nominally recognize that we don’t accept the authority of the Bible, but their bot-like brains can only react with Bible verses. This isn’t a tactical guide to openly discussing ideas, it’s a regurgitation game that can only produce more mindless Bucknas.

And then they have suggestions for ideas to break through those Evolutionists sciencey minds.

For example, the earth is the perfect distance from the sun. If it were just a few miles closer, we’d all burn up. A few miles further out, and we’d all freeze to death!

They also suggest trying “Paschal’s [sic] Wager” on ’em. Or this:

If they ask questions like: “how do you know which God?” — focus on the claims of Christ as being the only way and his proving it by coming back from the dead.

I’m not impressed. Anyone following the suggestions at Dare2Share is simply going to flop there looking dead stupid. Is this a sneaky game by some clever atheist trying to sabotage evangelicals?

Wait, I thought they believed in an absolute morality?

It’s always interesting when some god-walloper honestly follows through on the logical implications of his beliefs — he basically is compelled to admit that if you worship a tyrannical monster, you have to end up rationalizing monstrous tyrannies. The latest to enlighten us with excuses for bronze age barbarisms and brutalities is William Lane Craig, who thinks that tales from the Bible of God’s Chosen People slaughtering babies is A-OK:

Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

Therefore, if I station myself outside a church door with an AK-47 and murder all the happy saved Christians exiting the service, I am doing the Lord’s work. Well, gosh, Willie, not only do I get to be a mass-murderer for fun, I can be self-righteous about it, too! It’s too bad I’m one of those atheists who doesn’t believe in a Happy Fun Land for the dead, so I can’t honestly do that in good conscience.

I will be interested to see if Craig now has a Christian perspective on abortion, that is, that it is a process that releases blameless innocents to heaven’s incomparable joy, and is therefore to be encouraged.

But you know who was really suffering when soldiers rampaged through a village, smashing babies’ heads against walls and raping the women and stabbing them to death afterwards? Not the women and children, oh no. Think of the rapists and murderers!

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

No. No, I can’t imagine that. I can imagine parts of it: I can imagine a long, heavy piece of sharp metal in my hands. I can imagine a frightened, unarmed woman in front of me, trying to shelter her children. The part I can’t imagine, the stuff I’m having real trouble with, is imagining voluntarily raising my hand and hacking them to death. I have a choice in that situation, and I know myself well enough that if have to choose between killing people and letting them live, I’d let them live, not that it would be a difficult decision at all. I also have no illusion that, in this imaginary situation where I have all the power and my ‘enemies’ are weak and helpless, I am the one who is being wronged.

I also tried imagining myself with a nasty cruel weapon standing before a cowering William Lane Craig. Nope, still doesn’t work; I’d set the blade aside. Except in this case I’d take a great more care to make sure Craig couldn’t get his hands on it — I don’t trust that amoral bastard.

Greta Christina makes a very good point about this. I don’t think William Lane Craig is an intrinsically evil human being. But this is a case where it is clear that religion is a tool that allows good people to bypass decent moral positions and find justification to do evil.