Andrew Sullivan replies

He thinks I missed his important distinction.

Christianity flees power as Jesus did; Christianism seeks it above everything else. And there is nothing more powerful than killing others, except for torturing them. Hence my distinction, which I make from no authority. I merely think that declaring a homeless, apolitical, non-violent hippie in first century Palestine as someone who would bless a twenty-first century terrorist militia in North America is a bit of a stretch.

Funny thing, that: that was my whole point. Modern Christianity is nothing but Christianists, then, and it’s a distinction that makes no difference. His Pope runs an official state, a member of the UN, that is dripping with extravagantly displayed wealth. Would his homeless, apolitical, non-violent hippie bless this man, this Pontifex Maximus, this Goldfather?

i-c1b8f5d15e40792a8d1e7852e236584d-goldpope.jpeg

Or perhaps Urban II, the man who fired off the First Crusade, would be a man more to the hippie’s taste.

i-091a39fe6e149483246d1f9bcb8caa51-crusader.jpeg

I don’t think I’ve missed any distinction at all. If your Palestinian hippie were here today, he’d be horrified and damn the whole mad carnival that has been established in his name, and they’re all Christianists.

For that matter, the weird theology that the old hippie espoused would be a ghastly basis for a world, and any culture in which Jesus would be comfortable would be a nightmare for the rest of us.

Let’s keep agreeing

This is nice. Andrew Sullivan has a suggestion to exempt those wanna-be terrorists, the Hutarees, from the fold of the faithful.

Surely we can all assent to the notion that a Christian militia of the type now accused of planning domestic terrorism is not Christian. This is why I call them Christianist. Anyone planning to murder innocents by way of IEDs cannot plausibly call himself or herself a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.

Good thing he threw in that specific bit about IEDs, or I’d have to mention all the innocents slaughtered in Christ’s name since, oh, the Dark Ages. They are spared by a technological technicality!

But OK, if we’re going to redefine Christians, let’s go all the way.

Anyone denying the evidence of the world around them, like, say, a creationist, is a Christianist.

Anyone who denies the joys of sex and abstains because they think God likes them celibate is a Christianist.

Anyone who uses their religious affiliation as a tool to acquire temporal power is a Christianist.

Anyone who prays in public is a Christianist.

Anyone who uses their faith as an excuse to peep into their neighbors’ bedrooms and tell them that they’re doing it wrong is a Christianist.

Anyone who begs for money so they can convert other people to their Christian faith is a Christianist.

Anyone who thinks women should be a subservient sex is a Christianist.

Anyone who threatens others with the wrath of God is a Christianist.

Anyone who believes that Jesus manifests himself in this world via magic tricks, like turning crackers into flesh, is a Christianist.

Anyone who believes that all they have to do is have faith in Jesus, never mind what they do in life, in order to get into heaven is a Christianist.

Anyone who uses the phrase “God and Country” non-ironically is a Christianist.

Anyone who hides behind their religion to rape anyone else is a Christianist.

Anyone who shelters a religious rapist is a Christianist.

Anyone who complains about those lazy poor people getting health care and food stamps is a Christianist.

I could go on and on, listing lots of things that I think are foolish and reprehensible, and declaring that those who hold those views are not True Christians.

Unfortunately, I think that it all means that there aren’t any Christians anywhere, and they’re all damned dirty Christianists. I can’t tell them apart from the Christians!

I’m afraid the Hutarees were Christian, real-live testifyin’ preachifyin’ Jebus-lovin’ Bible-readin’ Christians. They weren’t Andrew Sullivan’s preferred version of Christian, but then, a weird gay Catholic has about as much authority to define who gets to be Christian as an obnoxious and flamingly anti-religious atheist.

I just can’t keep up with all the euphemisms!

At least this will be a useful one. And it is hallowed by the Pope!

Pope Benedict, facing the worst crisis of his papacy as a sexual abuse scandal sweeps the Catholic church, declared today he would not be “intimidated” by “petty gossip”, angering activists who say he has done too little to stamp out paedophilia.

Hey, Pope Ratzi. Petty gossip you, too — sideways with a rusty knife. Could you possibly trivialize child rape a little more?

Should Pope Ratzi resign?

We’ve got a good answer from Richard Dawkins:

No, Pope Ratzinger should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice – the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution – while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

Oooh, so shrill, so militant, so aggressive…yet somehow so soothing and joyful.

Advice from believers is demonstrably worthless

Speaking of the ABC, I revisited their Global Atheist Convention blog, which I can say without hesitation was absolutely the worst effort any of the media put out. I think I prefer the blatant stupidity of a Gary Ablett to the mawkish blitherings of a gang of pious apologists — at least it’s honest. And that’s all they’ve got — the blog is still limping along with a series of tepid guest posts by people making weak excuses for their faith. It was supposedly a blog about the convention, but it never quite rose to the standard of even meeting their own aims — instead, it’s an exercise in breast-beating by sorry-assed theists.

It’s utterly negligible and irrelevant, unless you like the spectacle of Christians going boo-hoo-hoo. I did catch one gawdawful post by Chris Mulherin, though, which adds the additional fillip of seeing a Christian getting everything completely wrong. It’s embarrassing. I even addressed several of these points in my talk, and said the exact opposite of what Mulherin claims are truisms for atheists. Maybe I put him to sleep.

Anyway, here are 5 things that Mulherin claims are ‘unscientific beliefs’ that must be held to get science off the ground.

Five things that atheists (and others) believe that cannot be shown by the evidence of science:

  1. The universe is governed by the law of cause and effect.

  2. We can normally trust human rationality and the evidence of our senses.

  3. The axioms of mathematics and the laws of logic are true.

  4. Moral language makes sense and cannot be reduced to personal preferences. Racism, paedophilia, destroying the planet and chauvinism are wrong in a more binding sense than “I/we don’t like those things.”


  5. Humans have freewill and are not totally determined by the laws of science.     In order to live, converse, decide what I will put on my sandwich, or whether I will attend an atheist convention, I must have the freedom (within limits) to make decisions.

There is more to be said, and the debate can be complicated, but the gist of the idea is that science must take some things as given before it can start its work. Most atheists take the above truths as givens, despite the fact that none of them can be derived scientifically.

Ugh. See? This is what happens when you gather a band of happy theists to interpret the words of a convention of atheists — it goes plunging off the rails.

  1. Wrong. I think chance is a significant factor in the universe. Cause and effect are important but not necessarily assumed; causal relationships are what we test for in scientific experiments.

  2. Completely wrong. Quite the reverse, actually; science is a tool we use to correct for the unreliability of our minds and our senses. I know I don’t trust my perceptions at all, and consider independent confirmation a great reassurance.

  3. In an utterly trivial sense, “truth” is an outcome of logic and math, so yes, this is accurate, by definition. We do believe that there is a real universe, and we attempt to probe it empirically, and in that sense we suspect that there is an actual deeper material truth, but that’s about it.

    I do wonder, though, if logic is false, how Christians interpret the world. Wouldn’t that make everything arbitrary and chaotic? In that context, maybe the Bible is useful after all, since it is an awfully arbitrary book.

  4. Mulherin needs to read some Hauser. A lot of morality is driven by personal revulsion, nothing more. There is a greater binding sense, however: a rational decision that says that discriminating against fellow human beings, abusing the next generation, reducing the carrying capacity of our environment, and treating women as objects has long term consequences to our society that are deleterious to the preservation of culture. We do make an assumption our culture is worth preserving, of course, but then, so do people in all viable cultures.

    It’s very Darwinian reasoning, though. Maybe Mulherin hasn’t quite grokked that major insight.

  5. Free will is philosophical bullshit. You can have an entirely natural biology that is subject to investigation by science that is not some kind of clockwork, predestined sequence of events. I decide what to put on my sandwich, but “I” is an unpredictable product of very complex neurological activity, colored by history over a baseline of biological predispositions.

It’s extremely annoying to be told by a delusionist precisely what beliefs I must hold because I’m an atheist, when I don’t. It’s a bit like concern trolling: the helpful faith-head erects a squad of five straw men which he’ll then kindly offer to demolish from us to clear the illusions from our eyes. No, thank you: you believe in ritual sacrifice, god-men, magical supplications, and supernatural beings. Your advice on science is worthless except for comedy purposes.

Ayala fires a shot across the ‘New’ Atheist bows

The London Times has a piece on Ayala’s Templeton prize, and it annoys me early:

Professor Francisco Ayala, who won the £1 million Templeton Prize for scientific thought,

Say what? There’s no amount of science you can do that will win you a Templeton prize. It’s a prize for religious apologetics, nothing more.

And then Ayala reveals why he won the prize. Not for science, but because he doesn’t like those annoying atheists.

said that attacking religion and ridiculing believers provided ammunition for religious leaders who insisted that followers had to choose between God and Darwin. “Richard Dawkins has been a friend for more than 20 years, but it is unfortunate that he goes beyond the boundaries of science in making statements that antagonise believers,” he said.

That Dawkins antagonizes believers is a given, but then, antagonizing them is a trivial exercise — run a sign past them that says “Don’t believe in God? You aren’t alone” and they’ll scream “oppression!” Many of us are quite happy to antagonize deluded believers in superstition, and we aren’t too happy with scientists who suck up to them instead.

But that other comment about going “beyond the boundaries of science” is a curious one. Where? I think that when you invoke an invisible, undetectable ghost in the sky who diddles quanta or turns into a man who raises the dead, then you are going beyond the boundaries of science. When someone points out that there is no evidence of such activities, that the claims of supernaturalists are contradictory and unreasonable, or explains that the material claims of priests are fair game for critical examination, they are actually operating entirely within the domain of science.

I would like to see a specific example from Ayala of an invalid scientific argument from Dawkins or any of the other ‘New’ Atheist scientists — or is it his belief that antagonizing believers is sufficient to make a claim unscientific? In which case we’d have to argue that the Catholic Church was acting ‘scientifically’ in their treatment of Galileo.

Ayala has more Templeton-worthy comments to make.

The professor, who was born in Spain and is a naturalised American, says science and religion cannot be in contradiction because they address different questions. It is only when either subject oversteps its boundary, as he believes is the case with Professor Dawkins, that a contradiction arises, he said. “The scientific fundamentalism proposed by Dawkins implies a materialistic view of the world. But once science has had its say, there remains much about reality that is of interest. Common sense tells us that science can’t tell us everything.”

Again with the boundary. Where is this boundary, please, and where does Dawkins cross it? Be specific.

It is absurd to claim that science and religion can’t be in contradiction. Look at Ken Ham’s Creation “Museum”; that’s pure religion through and through, and it is clearly in contradiction with science. QED. Perhaps Ayala wants to claim that his religion (if he has one) is not in contradiction to science, but that’s also bogus; science obtains its information from empirical observation of the real world, not magic and not revelation and not the interpretation of sacred texts. Almost every religion proposes an alternate source of information from a supernatural entity; science challenges those explanations.

What aspects of reality are not subject to science, or materialism, or natural investigation? I’d like to know. Is Ayala proposing ghosts or angels or gods capable of intervening in the world? (I will do him the credit of assuming that he’s not going to trot out the idiotic claim that love is not natural, which is the usual inane example that gets thrown at us.)

One interesting thing about Ayala is that he always avoids the topic of his own personal beliefs about gods, which he claims is to avoid biasing people about his views, but which instead to me looks like intellectual cowardice: if you will not lay your ideas out on the table plainly, no one can criticize them. Here’s a standard disclaimer from Ayala in a Spanish source (google translation).

Question. In his youth he was ordained a Dominican priest. Are you still a man of faith?

Answer. Never answer that question. Do not want any of the parties, faith or religion, influence how people perceive my views.

Either he’s one of those faitheists, who doesn’t personally believe but thinks other people should, or he holds a few ideas about gods that he knows are indefensible. Either way, I’m unimpressed. It means he’s going to hide his opinions safely away, and as we can see in the Times article, snipe away at atheists (we already know he won’t snipe at his fellow travelers in the Templeton world, which hints at where his loyalties lie already.)

He also gives two of the usual NOMA arguments for religion: that it’s domain is answering the “why” questions and providing morality.

Science and religion are two windows to look at the world. The world is watching it. But what is seen from the windows is completely different. Religion is the meaning and purpose of life and moral values and science attempts to explain the composition of matter, the origin of organisms. Areas are different, but not at odds. It is possible to maintain a scientific position and being religious.

Total nonsense.

An answer on the meaning and purpose life built around an untestable and often falsified proposition is no answer at all. I could declare right now that the meaning of life is found in the worship of Saturn, which is where the aliens who created life on earth reside, and where our souls will return at death, and sure, it is an answer, but it’s wrong and it’s a lie. Christians can declare that the meaning of life is found in Jesus all they want, but I don’t believe it (and neither do the Muslims or Hindus or Shintoists), and it isn’t a good answer, since they’ve got no reason but tradition and fear to back it up. Religion is a free-floating myth, completely wrong and therefore invalid as an answer.

As for morality…what a joke. Has he looked at the ethical shambles of his former church? The child abuse revelations keep pouring out. We cannot possibly take religion’s leadership in moral issues seriously — the purpose of the church is to maintain power and an exalted status for its leadership, not to provide any insight into the beneficent desires of a heavenly patron of our species. Unless, of course, the message is that raping children is a good and kind act.

Anyway, now you can see why Ayala won the Templeton Prize. He’s a master of the non-committal waffle, the pious denial of any problem with faith. He’s definitely not acting on the side of science in his declarations about religion, because science tends to be a bit more open and bold than that.

I’ve always wondered what he looked like

i-db0932358e358f67101f38c641673abe-holyghost.jpeg

The regal figure to the right is Terrill Dalton. He had a vision that revealed that he, personally, was the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ’s dad. Who knew the Holy Ghost would look a bit like the Pillsbury Doughboy?

Anyway, the Holy Ghost has come down a bit in the world. He’s now living in a collection of campers and vans on a 5 acre lot in Montana, leading a breakaway Mormon sect that was too crazy for Utah.

Members of the Church of the Firstborn and General Assembly of Heaven had fled to Idaho from Utah last year after their large home in a Salt Lake City suburb was raided by federal officials investigating claims of child sexual abuse and assassination threats against President Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

i-dd7aa7e2218111d7090f94214f2ade1b-doughboy.jpeg

He also has a webpage with an anorexic Jesus and a mushroom cloud background; he’s been busy rewriting the Bible, which is good — a hobby might distract him from the molesting children and assassinating people gigs.

And the Templeton Prize goes to…

…a politically brilliant choice, Francisco Ayala. He’s a former priest who has argued for respect for religion while not going quite as far as some of the other possibilities in endorsing it, he’s been fairly circumspect about not presenting ridiculous rationales for religion, but he’s also an excellent and reputable scientist.

It’s definitely an astute decision. The foundation went for someone whose primary claim to renown is as a scientist, not as an apologist. They are a canny bunch, those rascals — they avoided the obvious targets and picked someone who isn’t quite as easily mocked.

How much support is the NAS willing to give to religion?

Imagine that a well-funded astrology organization were to establish a prize awarding a good chunk of money to a scientist who best affirmed the validity of astrology, all as part of a campaign to bestow a whiff of credibility to the belief that the position of the stars at the time you were born influenced your fate. Astrologers certainly want to pretend that they are scientific, so it’s exactly the kind of thing many of them would love to do; their only problem is that real scientists would laugh them away, and they certainly wouldn’t get the support of any of the major scientific institutions.

So why is the National Academy of Sciences supporting an organization claiming to reconcile science and superstition, and why is the president of the NAS nominating scientists for such an award? It’s exactly analogous; religion has no more validity than astrology, is openly unscientific, and I would argue is anti-scientific, so no legitimate scientific institution ought to be endorsing it. I know that some of their members may be church-goers, but some of them will also be following their horoscope in the newspapers, so that’s still no reason to pander to folly.

Here’s something else that’s odd: we’ve got the Templeton Foundation desperately looking for respect by marrying ancient superstitions to modern science, but we’ve got nothing on the other side. You don’t see American Atheists or the American Humanist Association funding research that would promote the idea that godlessness and science are compatible; they don’t have as much money, for one thing, but also we take it for granted that not invoking supernatural forces is a pretty reasonable thing to do in science. The godless don’t have to strain to wedge their ideas into a domain that excludes them.

We also don’t have an organization awarding a prize to the scientist who “has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s [natural, material] dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works” (that’s the description of the Templeton Prize, with one little change). It would be redundant, since that’s what science does. We also don’t have a major atheist organization giving out awards specifically to the scientist of the year who has made the greatest contribution to actively promoting secularism, even though they could: Dawkins, Harris, Kroto, Atkins and many others would be on the shortlist, easily. Maybe they should, but most atheists aren’t so insecure that they need to make a special effort to show that their ideas are compatible with science.

One reason they should, though, is just to see what would happen when they asked a major scientific institution to host the award ceremony. I predict a very rapid back-pedal from an organization that wouldn’t want to get into a political tangle…a consideration they apparently don’t worry about when what is being promoted is religion, despite the fact that religion is a fraud.

Greece leads the way

Greece is rapidly heading towards economic collapse, and this has finally motivated tho do something that should have been done long ago:

The Greek government has announced it will start taxing churches as part of its efforts to get out of its financial crisis. A new draft bill to be tabled in parliament next week imposes a 20 per cent tax on the Orthodox church’s real estate income, reportedly worth over 10 million Euros (US $14.8 million) a year, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Greek Orthodox church is squealing like a stuck pig, of course.

However, the Greek government has a debt of €216 billion; belatedly taxing €10 million isn’t going to make much of a dent. Let’s hope Greece isn’t leading the way into catastrophic economic failure.