While India is emerging as a powerful and modern economy based on science and technology, it still suffers from religious superstition, especially the phenomenon of ‘god-men’, frauds who prey on the gullible to fool them into thinking that they are avatars of god. It seems like all you need to do is wear orange robes, grow your hair long, utter some religious mumbo-jumbo, and perform some cheap magic tricks for people to start worshipping you and, more importantly, give you money that they can ill-afford to part with.

This video shows a heartening effort to counter these frauds, by the Indian equivalents of James Randi.

The biggest such fraud is, of course, the man who calls himself Sai Baba, who is famous in that part of the world. He has devotees from all walks of life, including politically powerful people. Three families of my own acquaintance are devotees of his, making pilgrimages to his place and, most important, giving money. When I expressed skepticism, one of them gave me a book that she claimed would convince me of his authenticity. It did not.

This video exposes the tricks he uses to impress his followers.

Exposing god-men in India is not without risk because religious nutters hate having their faith exposed as worthless and can resort to violence, so these debunkers have to be commended for their courage.

In the west we do not have god-men but we do have our equivalent frauds, evangelists and faith healers who claim to be channels for god’s actions. To be successful in this con seems to require fast-talking, ostentatious living, and a TV or radio outlet.

But while all these frauds differ superficially, the goal is the same, to separate fools and their money.

There are reports that at least eight UN workers were murdered in Afghanistan in retaliation for the burning of a Koran in a US church last month.

Taking the lives of eight people for the burning of a book? This is the type of insanity that exists in religions’ most devoted followers.

Apparently the British government is thinking about granting certain books protected status that can result in the prosecution of people for the burning defacement or disrespect of such books, after a 15-year old girl in England was arrested for ‘inciting religious hatred’ after burning the Koran. It is wonderful that in the US we have the First Amendment to protect us from this kind of legislative foolishness, at least so far.
One wag has decided to seek protection under this proposed law for the book Classical Electrodynamics by J. D. Jackson and gives very cogent reasons why it deserves it.

I totally agree. In the first year of physics graduate school, taking a course in which ‘Jackson’ (as it was informally and affectionatley known) was the required textbook was a rite of passage for every student. We all struggled with its difficult problems in order to understand the laws of electrodynamics. After that ordeal, we all ended up revering that book and instinctively go back to it when we encounter any problem in that area of physics. What Jackson says on any issue is considered definitive.

If that does not make it a sacred book, I don’t know what does.

A rabbi named Adam Jacobs has offered what he says is “A Reasonable Argument for God’s Existence.” And what would that be?

It is that because we have not explained (as yet) how life originated, it can only be due to god. Yes, that same old stale argument, the god of the gaps, gets recycled yet again, this time in the form of the mysterious and supposedly inexplicable appearance of DNA and RNA.

This is pathetic. Even Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who is now head of the National Institutes of Health, rejects that argument because he has a sufficiently good knowledge of biology to realize that we are making great progress in solving that problem and that any religious person who bases his or her faith on that particular piece of contemporary ignorance is just asking for trouble.
[Read more…]

In February, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris debated rabbis David Wolpe and Shavit Artson on the topic “Is there an Afterlife?” The moderator was Rob Eshman. The 97-minute debate can be seen in its entirety here and a summary by Landon Ross who attended it can be read here.

It was an interesting debate. Hitchens and Harris are seasoned debaters and seemed very much at ease. Wolpe is quick-witted and has a good sense of humor and an engaging manner but Artson had a pouty expression that is off-putting and he seemed to not be happy at being there at all but made a couple of good points. Although the two rabbis (especially Wolpe) got some applause, most of it was reserved for sallies by Hitchens and Harris, despite the fact that the venue of the debate was the American Jewish University, which should have given home field advantage to the rabbis.
[Read more…]

I attended the talk by John W. Loftus on Saturday. There was a crowd of around 35-40 which was very good considering that the event was organized at very short notice and Saturday evenings at 6:00 pm is not the best time to draw a student audience. The officers of the CWRU Center for Inquiry did a terrific job in arranging everything.

Loftus’s talk was very interesting for me in that he presents an insider’s view of how American evangelical Christians see the world. One has to understand that world view if one is to engage effectively with religious people in the US. As a former evangelical preacher, he is aware of what kinds of arguments might reach them. He presents believers with what he calls the ‘Outsider Test for Faith’, asking them to apply to their own faith the same criteria that they use to reject competing faiths.

I think that the alliance of people like Loftus, who were once committed Christians and are now atheists, and atheists who come from a scientific background could be very fruitful since we bring complementary knowledge to bear on the problem of how to deal with religion and can learn a lot from each other.

He and I were able to spend some time together before and after his talk and I found him to be as engaging in private as he is as a public speaker. He and I shared books and ideas and I will report on his book The Christian Delusion once I’ve had a chance to read it.

Meanwhile, his blog Debunking Christianity is lively and well worth visiting.

The Catholic Church has complained to the UN Human Rights Council that “People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views.”

I had not realized that bigots had such sensitive feelings. No doubt the Catholic Church will next complain about criticisms aimed at those who support pedophilic priests.

It is amazing how people think that saying that one’s views originate from one’s religion automatically confers immunity from the normal rough and tumble of public political discourse.

(via Machines Like Us)

That’s what a new Northwestern University study seems to find.

The study, which tracked 2,433 men and women for 18 years, found normal weight young adults ages 20 to 32 years with a high frequency of religious participation were 50 percent more likely to be obese by middle age after adjusting for differences in age, race, sex, education, income and baseline body mass index. High frequency of religious participation was defined as attending a religious function at least once a week.

While the result seems pretty conclusive, the causal connection between god and obesity is not clear. Matthew Feinstein, the study’s lead investigator suggests, “It’s possible that getting together once a week and associating good works and happiness with eating unhealthy foods could lead to the development of habits that are associated with greater body weight and obesity.”

I find that unconvincing. Is the food at these religious get-togethers that bad? In my experience, they are usually potluck events, with home-cooked dishes that are actually pretty good. Even if it is bad for you, eating it just once a week seems hardly sufficient to produce this effect. It seems more likely to me that that the desire for food and the desire for god both spring from the same source, a neediness that is never satiated.

Given Americans’ obsession with their weight and their propensity to rush out and adopt any and all kinds of diet programs, perhaps atheist organizations should adopt a new recruiting slogan: “Lose god and lose weight!”

The BBC reports on a new paper presented this week at the annual March meeting of the American Physical Society (of all places) that used mathematical modeling on religious affiliation trends over the last century and arrived at a conclusion that supports my thesis in the recent series on Why Atheism is Winning that religion is in a state of rapid decline.

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team’s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

[Read more…]

It is a well-known phenomenon that people overestimate their capacities on traits that are deemed to be socially desirable. In the US, since being religious is seen as a good thing, people seem to feel obliged to put on a facade.

But it is becoming increasingly clear that Americans are less religious that they claim to be. The Pew survey of religious knowledge in the US says that 4/7 (about 55%) attend church once a week but a University of Michigan examination of actual time diaries kept by people indicate that the figure is only about 25%, much like many European countries, while self reports were about 35-45%. The gap between self-perception and reality in the US was around 18% whereas the highest gaps elsewhere in the world were only about 4-8%, and these were in Catholic countries.

Given that fact, should we believe the Pew results that say that “more than a third (37%) say they read the Bible or other Holy Scriptures at least once a week, not counting worship services”? I find that really hard to believe. The Bible is not a great read, frankly. There are a few occasional well written and poetic passages but most of it consists of turgid prose dealing with dreary lists of rules.

My guess is that even if we use the same inflation factor of two that exists for church attendance to arrive at about 20% for weekly Bible reading, that would still be too high.