Vincent Buglios's new book, Divinity of Doubt: The God Question, became available today. Bugliosi, in case you don't know, has been called “the quintessential prosecutor.” In his career at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including twenty-one murder convictions without a single loss.

His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history. His other books include And the Sea Will Tell, Outrage, and Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

I received an advanced copy of Divinity of Doubt, and am still working my way through it. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out Bugliosi's guest opinion editorial published today on the Huffington Post, Why Do I Doubt Both the Athiests and the Thiests?


Here is an excerpt:

I believe that the question of the existence of God is an impenetrable mystery and beyond human comprehension. As Einstein, who was an agnostic (so was Darwin), put it: "The problem is too vast for our limited minds." But even if it were not, doubt is divine in that it impels a search for the truth, thereby opening the door to knowledge. Faith puts a lock on the door. And as knowledge increases, faith recedes. Even though I don't feel that a belief in God (theism) or disbelief in him (atheism) is unintelligent, I do feel that a certitude about either of these two positions, even a strong belief in them, which is so extremely common, is, perforce, unintelligent. Put another way, since the depth of a belief should be in proportion to the evidence, no sensible person should be dogmatic about whether there is or is not a God. I have always liked Clarence Darrow's observation about the existence vis-à-vis non-existence of God: "I do not pretend to know what ignorant men are sure of."

While I find much of what Bugliosi has written to be quite fascinating, I disagree with his entire premise. I don't find the existence of God a mystery; I find God a mystery. I will publish a complete review of his book over the weekend.



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Does Joy Behar have any idea what she believes? if you watch this (otherwise pleasant and civil) interview with Father Edward Beck, you get the impression she’s confused about religion, atheism, and everything in between. Things start to get weird at the 3:00 mark. Behar admits she’s an Agnostic, but adds she wouldn’t go so [...]

The social sciences can help us get a handle on the subject of atheism, but interpretation of sociological data is tricky

The question: What can science say about atheism?

Science has a hard time saying useful things about atheism in much the same way that it struggles over religion. The discussion inevitably differs depending on whether the social sciences are counted as part of science or whether the scope of science is restricted to the natural sciences. But all are agreed that correlation does not imply causation. And much depends on culture, geography and specific histories.

It is also quite easy to influence the message depending on how the data is presented. Quantitative sociological data can be subjected to "spin" as with the reporting of any other scientific results. This point came to mind in the reporting by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of the famous comparative studies of the beliefs of US scientists made in 1916 and 1996.

When the psychologist James Leuba reported in 1916 the results of his pioneering random questionnaire study among the US scientific community, his prediction was that religious belief would decline during the course of the 20th century as scientific education increased. It was for this reason that the historians Edward Larson and James Witham repeated Leuba's study near the end of the century using exactly the same questions to determine whether his prediction was correct. Their results were reported in Nature in 1996.

Leuba in 1916 asked his respondents to affirm: "I believe in a God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind, ie a God to whom one may pray in expectation of receiving an answer. By 'answer' I mean more than the subjective, psychological effect of prayer." Of Leuba's respondents 41.8% agreed with this statement, 41.5% agreed with "I do not believe in a God as defined above" and 16.7% were doubtful or agnostic. In 1996 the equivalent figures were 39.3%, 45.3% and 14.5%; in other words not much change, so inconsistent with Leuba's prediction.

In 1916 there was surprise that the level of theistic belief among US scientists was so low. In 1996 virtually the same figure elicited surprise because it seemed so high. Had the survey results come from the UK, then people might have imagined that a religious revival had broken out in the scientific community. "Spin" plays on prior expectations.

Beit-Hallahmi's reporting of these results is misleading when he writes that the 1996 results "showed that 60% were non-believers", implying atheism. Not so. What the results suggest is that 45% of the US scientific community at that time were not committed to the idea of a personal God who answers prayer, a characteristically Christian belief.

To gain some greater insights into such data we need to look at the more recent extensive survey carried out by the Rice University sociologist Elaine Ecklund. Published last year in her book Science vs Religion – What Scientists Really Think (OUP), the survey focuses on the scientific community in the top 21 elite US research-oriented universities. In turn Ecklund's results need to be considered against the backcloth of the general texture of contemporary US religion, recently surveyed in fascinating sociological detail by Robert Putnam and David Campbell in American Grace.

When Putnam and Campbell surveyed a randomly selected representative national sample of 3,108 Americans in the summer of 2006, they found precisely five people (0.2%) who identified themselves as "atheist" or "agnostic". Other US surveys have generated figures in the range 2% to 6%, varying according to sample size and the precise question asked. By contrast, 80% of Americans report that they are absolutely certain that there is a god, 83% belong to a religion and 40% attend religious services nearly every week or more.

By European standards the US is an incredibly religious country . And it should not be thought that the 17% of "nones" (those who declare no religious affiliation) are atheists. Far from it, 47% of "nones" say they are "absolutely sure" of God's existence and most say that religion is important in their lives.

The brouhaha about the "new atheism" can only be properly understood sociologically in the light of the tiny minority status of atheists in the US.

It is also against this background that Ecklund's survey results should be considered. The scientists from the 21 elite universities are strikingly different from the average US population: there are 53% "nones" compared with the 17% average; 16% Jewish compared with 2% average; 9% Catholic compared with 27% average; and 2% evangelical Protestant compared with 28% average. The levels of religious commitment are higher among younger compared with older scientists. Overall 64% self-identify with the atheist or agnostic position, but many of the "nones" describe themselves as spiritual and have sympathy with religion; the stridently anti-religious are a tiny minority.

The fun really begins with trying to interpret such results. An important factor is the structure of the US tertiary education system, which includes more than 900 religiously affiliated universities and colleges, nearly all Christian. Ecklund reported the unsurprising result that home environment was a key predictor of whether a scientist was a "believer" or "none". For example, the 30% of US evangelical parents very likely send their offspring to Christian campuses, which have far less in the way of science facilities and funding than the elite universities.

The success of the Jewish community in being over-represented among elite scientists, analysed in a fascinating seminar by Noah Efron, must also contribute to the data. Ecklund reports that 75% of the Jewish scientists were self-declared atheists.

The very fact of being an elite is also relevant, most striking in the high percentage of atheists in the US Academy of Sciences, much higher than in the general US science community, as the 1996 data from Larson and Witham reveal. How does that compare with other professional elites in the US? Is there something about high achievers that bias them to atheism or vice-versa?

The point about asking such questions is not because we know the answers but to emphasise that the interpretation of sociological data is a tricky business. From the perspective of science, ants and humans are far more complex than stars and rocks. A discussion of atheism and science in the US context leads us straight to a discussion of the structure of the American educational system, the role of elites, the present polarisation of the political electorate along religious faultlines, and much else besides.

And Beit-Hallahmi is misleading in his implication that US data on the tiny atheist minority can tell us much if anything about atheism in other countries. The structure of European tertiary education is radically different from that in the US. In the UK there is no option for heading into either a "religious" or "secular" higher education track. Every country is unique in its institutional structures and cultural history. Solid data is lacking to say anything at all about the relationship between science and atheism (if any) in the European context.

Can science say anything about atheism? The natural sciences can put atheists into brain-scanners but the results tell us nothing about atheism any more than they do about the doctrinal beliefs of meditating nuns.

Cognitive psychology is more useful, revealing the striking unnaturalness of atheism. But to really get a handle on the topic we need the social sciences.

The challenge then is to think hard about the complex data and not be too dogmatic about the interpretations.

Armed with fantasy and lies, Tennessee legislators are attempting to dismantle science education in their state’s public schools. Last week, the Tennessee House voted by an overwhelming 70-23 margin in favor of a radical bill to teach the “controversy” about scientific subjects “including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” During the debate on HB 368, introduced by Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville), anti-science conservative Rep. Frank Nicely (R-Strawberry Plains) argued that the “critical thinker” Albert Einstein would have wanted public schools to teach creationism alongside the science of biological evolution:

I think that if there’s one thing that everyone in this room could agree on, that would be that Albert Einstein was a critical thinker. He was a scientist. I think that we probably could agree that Albert Einstein was smarter than any of our science teachers in our high schools or colleges. And Albert Einstein said that a little knowledge would turn your head toward atheism, while a broader knowledge would turn your head toward Christianity.

Watch it:

In fact, Nicely falsely attributed his quotation to Einstein, a Jewish humanist and professed agnostic, who never argued that scientific knowledge leads one to Jesus Christ. The statement is actually a mangled paraphrase of the 16th century philosopher Francis Bacon, who argued that “a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”

“Why do we spend so much time arguing two theories, the theory of creationism and the theory of evolution, when neither side can prove without a doubt that they are right?” Nicely concluded. Nicely and climate-denier Rep. Sheila Butt (R-Columbia) are trying to reconcile their evangelical Christianity with science and democracy by perverting all three — trying to wrap the lessons of faith in pseudoscientific garb, reinterpreting lessons of the observed world to fit a preconceived fantasy, and then breaking down the walls between religion and the state that protect them both.

There is another pathway to reconcile religious faith and scientific knowledge. Religious leaders like Malcolm Brown understand that natural selection does not refute “the human capacity for love, for altruism, and for self-sacrifice.” Evolutionary biologists like Kenneth Miller see the miracle in a “vision of life that spreads across the planet with endless variety and intricate beauty.”

As Albert Einstein actually said, “To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”

(HT: Dean’s Corner)

Transcript:

Rep. FRANK NICELEY (R-Strawberry Fields): I think that if there’s one thing that everyone in this room could agree on, that would be that Albert Einstein was a critical thinker. He was a scientist. I think that we probably could agree that Albert Enstein was smarter than any of our science teachers in our high schools or colleges. And Albert Einstein said that a little knowledge would turn your head toward atheism, while a broader knowledge would turn your head toward Christianity.

Now I want to quote one other person: Thomas Sowell. In my opinion, the smartest man in America today. I’ve read him for twenty years. He’s a genius, and he is a critical thinker. And he says, why in our colleges and in our high school, why do we spend so much time arguing two theories, the theory of creationism and the theory of evolution, when neither side can prove without a doubt that they are right, when there are so many cold hard facts that our children need to know that we could be spending that time teaching? So if I was a teacher, I would teach them both as theories, and let the child as he grows up make up his own mind. And I’d spend my time teaching them cold hard facts like two and two is four and pi r squared.

When it comes to atheism, theism, and agnosticism, there are four general positions: agnostic atheism , strong atheism , agnostic theism , and strong theism .

When it comes to atheism, theism, and agnosticism, there are four general positions: agnostic atheism (don't know that any gods do or don't exist, but don't believe), strong ('gnostic') atheism (don't believe in any gods and are certain they don't exist), agnostic theism (don't know for sure that a god exists, but believe anyway), and strong ('gnostic') theism (believe in a god and are certain that one exists).

Although no limited range of categories is likely to capture the full scope of human nature, these categories do much more to accurately describe people than the far more limited range of theist/agnostic/atheist which so many try to use. This can be an effective argument against the idea that agnosticism is some sort of "middle ground" between atheism and theism, but it can also be difficult to explain.

Another good argument against this popular misconception is atheists themselves: who is a better authority on what atheism is, atheists or theists who are trying to attack atheists and atheism? Muslims wouldn't accept Christians defining Islam, and Christians wouldn't accept Muslims defining Christianity. Both, though, seem to think it's appropriate for them to define atheism.

 

 

 

 

Vincent Buglios's new book, Divinity of Doubt: The God Question, became available today. Bugliosi, in case you don't know, has been called “the quintessential prosecutor.” In his career at the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including twenty-one murder convictions without a single loss.

His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history. His other books include And the Sea Will Tell, Outrage, and Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
I received an advanced copy of Divinity of Doubt, and am still working my way through it. In the meantime, I encourage you to check out Bugliosi's guest opinion editorial published today on the Huffington Post, Why Do I Doubt Both the Athiests and the Thiests?


Here is an excerpt:

I believe that the question of the existence of God is an impenetrable mystery and beyond human comprehension. As Einstein, who was an agnostic (so was Darwin), put it: "The problem is too vast for our limited minds." But even if it were not, doubt is divine in that it impels a search for the truth, thereby opening the door to knowledge. Faith puts a lock on the door. And as knowledge increases, faith recedes. Even though I don't feel that a belief in God (theism) or disbelief in him (atheism) is unintelligent, I do feel that a certitude about either of these two positions, even a strong belief in them, which is so extremely common, is, perforce, unintelligent. Put another way, since the depth of a belief should be in proportion to the evidence, no sensible person should be dogmatic about whether there is or is not a God. I have always liked Clarence Darrow's observation about the existence vis-à-vis non-existence of God: "I do not pretend to know what ignorant men are sure of."

While I find much of what Bugliosi has written to be quite fascinating, I disagree with his entire premise. I don't find the existence of God a mystery; I find God a mystery. I will publish a complete review of his book over the weekend.

-jjm

Most explanations of the origin of atheism are simplistic – as is the notion that people turn to religion for comfort

The question: What can science say about atheism?

Last week, in a lecture presented by the Non-religion and Secularity Research Network, Jon Lanman set out to explore the evolutionary origins of atheism. Lanman, who is originally from St Louis, Missouri, recently completed his DPhil in anthropology at Oxford. His thesis explores atheism in the west including both non-theism (a general lack of belief in the existence of supernatural agents) and what he calls "strong atheism", defined as "the moral disapproval of and active stance against such beliefs".

"Is a science of atheism possible?" he asked, noting that there is a "great diversity of atheisms" and refusing to get tangled up in defining the term too closely. For him, the important thing is to ensure that the phenomenon being studied is not viewed as a constellation, which is only a pattern a human perceives while looking at a group of stars from a particular location and angle.

If most explanations of the origins of religion are simplistic – fear of death, an attempt to explain the universe – the same is true of explanations of the origins of atheism. Explanations such as intelligence, rationality, education or rebellion are too pat.

For one thing, there are significant national differences. Non-theists make up 43-80% of the Scandinavian population and 13-44% of the UK, but only 3-9% of the US. Ethnographic data disputes the notion that people turn to religion for comfort in a frightening world.

The most comfortable places – San Francisco, say, or parts of London – tend to have the most comforting religion, stripped of punishment and instead focusing on close, personal relationships with God. Non-comforting ideas can be found all over the world, but mainly in existentially non-comfortable places – Africa, for example – where people care about following rules. In any event, comparing Scandinavia, the UK and the US shows that non-theism can't be simply associated with education or with IQ.

The rationality explanation is countered by behavioural and cognitive literature: humans are good at seeing patterns where they do not exist. Basketball players believe in the "hot hand", the idea that a player who has scored a number of shots in a row should be given the ball because he's "in the zone" and is less likely to miss. This theory can be disproved by statistical analysis, but coaches and players still believe it.

Confirmation bias, for another example, inclines humans to look for confirmation of what they already believe rather than for evidence disproving it.

The conjunction fallacy leads people to believe that multiple conditions are more probable than single ones. Given that I am a sceptic, is it more probable that I am a feminist or that I am both a feminist and an agnostic? Associating scepticism and agnosticism, you're likely to pick the second option; but the probability that I am both a feminist and an agnostic is actually lower than that I'm just a feminist.

Turning to sociology, the literature indicates that threatening environments increase superstitious behaviour and strengthen commitment, communities, and attachment to ideologies. In many places, Lanman said, "religion is often the only game for social insurance".

At the same time, he cited Joe Henrich's work on "credibility-enhancing displays" (Creds). Before we had language we were taught by demonstration.

Once you have language, "you need a bullcrap detector".

That is often watching people's actions: they say they're religious, but do they practise or go to church? More Creds, less scepticism. Here Lanman cited Roger Dudley's study of Seventh Day Adventists that showed a greater likelihood of becoming apostates if during their adolescence their parents were not practising.

So consider those national statistics again: the US has massive inequality and a weak welfare state and a very small percentage of (open) non-theists. In the mid-20th century, Scandinavia built a very strong welfare state and now has a high percentage of non-theists.

Strong atheism, however, is a different matter: "Atheism can also be an identity," he said (just as religious beliefs can serve as markers for social groups), "though I wouldn't call it a religion." As an ideology, strong atheism tends to emerge under the threat of theocracy. Strong atheism found its public voice in the US under the twin stresses of George W Bush's second term in office and 9/11's demonstration of the worst dangers of fundamentalism.

"The UK," Lanman concluded, "seems right in the middle between Scandinavia and the US." The UK had Blair, and has blasphemy laws, a growing perception of the dangers of militant Muslims, and increasing numbers of faith schools – "but you don't have Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee".

A century of research has highlighted that atheists tend to be well-educated – and that top scientists are especially godless

The question: What can science say about atheism?

What can we say about individuals who are atheists or agnostics, those who do not share the common tendency to believe in the world of the spirits and in some spirits that are greater than others and control our destiny? A century of research can guide us.

Those with no religious affiliation have been found to be younger, mostly male, with higher levels of education and income, more liberal, but also more unhappy and more alienatedfrom wider society. Such findings have been reported in the US, Australia, and Canada.

Some atheists have been raised without any religious teaching; others have chosen to reject what they have been taught as children. Those who have come from religious homes and given up religion have had more distant relations with their parents, and a commitment to intellectualism.

Irreligiosity is tied to greater political liberalism, and to being less prejudiced.

Radical students who were members of the students' Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964 (which started the 1960s upheavals on American campuses), were more likely to come from families that were identified as Jewish, agnostic, or atheist.

The claim that atheists are somehow likely to be immoral or dishonest has long been debunked. Studies that looked at readiness to help or honesty showed atheists standing out, not the religious. When it comes to the more serious matter of violence and crime, ever since the field of criminology got started, and data collected of the religious affiliation of criminal offenders, the fact that the unaffiliated and the non-religious had the lowest crime rates has been noted.

Starting in 1925, LM Terman and his colleagues studied 1,528 gifted youth from California with IQ levels higher than 140 who were about 12 years old. Members of this group were followed up throughout life, and were found to be consistently irreligious. Studies on the religiosity of scientists and academics have shown consistently low levels of religiosity, and the prevalence of atheism. Moreover, the more eminent scientists were less religious than others.

In the 1990s surveys of working scientists and eminent scientists from 1914 and 1933 were exactly replicated. First, a random sample taken from American Men and Women of Science in 1996 showed that 60% were non-believers. Then a questionnaire was sent to 517 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences from the biological and physical sciences (that is, mathematicians, physicists and astronomers). Many members of the National Academy are Nobel laureates. The return rate was slightly over 50%.

The results showed that the percentage of believers in a personal God among those more eminent scientists in the US was 27.7% in 1914, 15% in 1933, and 7% in 1998. Belief in personal immortality was slightly higher: 35.2% in 1914, 18% in 1933, and 7.9% in 1998.

The findings demonstrate first, that the process of turning away from religion among the most eminent scientists has been continuing, and, second, that in the US, eminent scientists, with only 7% believing in a personal God, are at odds with the general population, where the corresponding percentage hovers around 90% in various studies.

What we are able to conclude about the typical atheist in western society today is that person is more likely to be a male and of higher education.

Can we speak about an atheist personality? A tentative psychological profile can be offered. We can say that atheists show themselves to be less authoritarian and suggestible, less dogmatic, less prejudiced, more tolerant of others, law-abiding, compassionate, conscientious, and well-educated. They are of high intelligence, and many are committed to the intellectual and scholarly life.

This is likely very touchy. But I find this so interesting. I joined here a few weeks ago after discovering my husband is very likely aspergers (self diagnosed, fits all descriptions and has stuggled through life because of this quirks, we just never had a name for them). I have been reading the boards and noticed a TON of people in their siggys have quotes about God not being real. I told my husband I think there is a link between being asperger or autism spectrum and being atheist. Now this is where it gets interesting... My husband is a twin. HIs brother is JUST like him, his brother maybe even a little worse in some areas. They were both atheists, my husband maybe a little more agnostic but his brother very atheist. After alot of people talking to my husband, my husband got saved (this isnt a debate about God please) when he was 22 and he is now 29. He is now called to preach, and be a missionary. His brother on the other hand is still very very much atheist from a very r ...

original link

Atheism on college campuses is certainly nothing new, but there's something different about today's secular students. Unlike their parents' generation, atheist, agnostic, and humanist college students today more often consider their secularism to be an important, primary aspect of self-identity.

Nothing demonstrates this point more clearly than the rapid growth of the Secular Student Alliance, the umbrella group for organized atheism and humanism on college campuses (and now high schools as well). SSA chapters have grown from less than 50 in 2007 to over 250 today, and there is no sign of slowing down.

...

With religious skepticism on the rise among young people and online social media making visibility and organization easier than in the past, the secular student phenomenon is unlikely to fade. Students see it as an effective and necessary response to the Religious Right, a sensible means of combating religiously motivated activism. Moreover, from a practical standpoint, it is a great way of meeting like-minded friends, people who perhaps have also read and enjoyed bestselling books by "New Atheist" authors Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.

Thus, today's campus atheism is a far cry from that of the past. It is organized, well-funded, identity-oriented, and populated by young people who will not back down in the culture wars, who see their non-theistic lifestance as something that can contribute to a better world.

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It's common for Christians to insist that atheists are "really" agnostics. Indeed, if you have very many conversations with Christians you'll inevitably come across this at least once and probably multiple times. Why are Christians so fascinated by this claim? Why do they invest so much time and effort into getting you to change the word you use to label your position rather than trying to change the position itself?

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Comment of the Week: When Christians Claim You're Really Agnostic originally appeared on About.com Agnosticism / Atheism on Tuesday, March 29th, 2011 at 08:00:30.

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By Kremer ~

When I first dropped Christianity, it was because of the shear nonreason that religion seemed to display: the ease at which I knew others religion to be false taught me that my own was as well. This observation was made when I was lying in bed trying to sleep, when all of my doubts creep out and haunt me. All of my worries and all of my stresses are amplified at night for whatever reason. Most of my "Enlightenment" moments would either occur during those times, or when I would obsessively pace for hours on end talking to myself.

After I made the conclusion that Christianity was probably false, I became a Theistic Agnostic. I was really torn up about it, after all, there was so many years of falsehoods I had believed in?

It wasn't terrible though. I lived in a family of religious moderates, not crazy Fundamentalists. Science was open to me, and me and my family had political and philosophical discussions that would go on for ages. As a kindergartner, I had believed in a literal interpretation of Genesis. Then I heard of things like evolution and the big bang. I was always a Naturalist it would seem; when I natural explanation was given, the bible was dropped.

I was one of those weird kids who had very little friends and who would rather watch educational television than play soccer; and so I did. I would watch something like five or six hours a day for years. From second grade to eighth grade. As you can imagine, I acquired an impressive intellect about myself.

I had never had many friends and was tormented by my peers constantly for my social awkwardness. Later, I was tormented because it was discovered that I had High Functioning Autism, which most people lack the ability to distinguish between Full Autism. My knowledge and my ability to solve intellectual problems was the only thing that gave me self esteem. So I learned more.

Moving forward again though, my abandoning of Christianity wasn't terrible. Sure, I cried for a little bit. There was the fear of what would happen after I died, and I grappled with that for awhile.

To help grapple with it, I googled some weird thing and found this place. I read through a lot of the post and the comments, and found a reference to Zeitgeist, with the claim that it would explain a lot of it.

I realized Jesus was just some pagan rehashing of Judaism, which was itself a rehashing of a particular bread of Egyptian paganism that only lasted until King Tutankhamen ascended the thrown.

Now broken from my last ties to Christianity, I had no reason to believe in god. I suppose the idea that Jesus was a historical figure was all that kept me from Atheism. I guess I still had a bit of attachment to it... lol.

I became angry at all of the nonsense in the world. It wasn't a burning, heat of the moment, kind of anger. It was a calm, logical, and cold sort of anger, not quite hate. It was because of this that I began to debate the worst of the bunch: the Fundamentalists.

Weeks upon weeks of debating them, and with the help of the other Atheists who happened to be there, I learned more about evolution and what science is than I had for those years of educational television that had come previously. The best way to understand science is to understand pseudoscience.

It seemed like each day I found another reason to not believe in god. Another fallacy, another atrocity, another lack of reason, and more disbelief.

Eventually, I realized that Zeitgeist is a bunch of crap made by a crazy conspiracy theorist spouting half-truths, much like the fundamentalists, and I dropped that reason for Atheism. I had all of the other reasons though now.

I hear many people agonizing about how much of their lives they lost to religion. For me, I'm glad to say it wasn't like that. I wouldn't have wanted myself to give up religion earlier, but I wouldn't have wanted to lose it later either. My faith wasn't crushed by some outside source, leaving me vulnerable and without direct. I crushed it. I left it when I was ready.

It was like a favorite blanket. As a little kid, I would not have wanted it taken from me. I'm glad I had it. As I got older though, I matured, and I gave it up when I was ready. It was never ripped from me. On that regard I am lucky.

Dear Charles: I have read your last two letters in Holy Post about faith as well as Father Tim Moyle's. Technically they weren't addressed to me because I am an agnostic and not an atheist but I felt the need to respond nonetheless.

Craig Scarberry used to have 50/50 custody of his kids with his ex-wife, but a judge recently reduced Craig's access to his kids to just four hours a week. Why? Apparently, because he is an agnostic who doesn't participate in the same religious rituals as the mother. It seems that this judge decided that being an agnostic makes a person a poor parent who should have only limited access to his own children.

But remember, it's Christians who have the most to fear in America today because they are the ones being discriminated against.

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Dad Loses Custody of Kids Because He's Agnostic? originally appeared on About.com Agnosticism / Atheism on Thursday, December 9th, 2010 at 12:00:43.

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At Dragon*Con earlier this year, I took part in the “Raising Skeptical Geeks” panel, moderated by Desiree Schell (of the “Skeptically Speaking” podcast), and joined by Adam Savage, Laura Phillips, LaVerne Angela Knight-West, Daniel Loxton, and Barbara Drescher. [You can find the complete audio of the panel discussion here.]

One of the subjects we discussed was what to teach your children about fantasy figures like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. (Unfortunately, there were apparently some young children in the audience, on whose behalf a few parents subsequently expressed disappointment in the panel’s inadvertent “spoilers.” This was certainly unintentional and recently, when I attended a “Jill & Julia” show — my friends Jill Sobule and Julia Sweeney — I made sure to find out in advance if there were any Santa spoilers, and this gave me the chance to walk my seven-year-old twin boys out for a bathroom trip at a critical juncture!)

On the panel I explained that while my partner, Kandace, and I (along with the boys’ birth father and stepmother) are all raising our children with the hopes that they will adopt the same atheist beliefs we all do, in our household we celebrate a secular Christmas that upholds the magic of Santa Claus. I grew up in a New York City reformed Jewish household (that typically experienced December days with both a Christmas tree and a lit Chanukah menorah), and today we continue a tradition from my own childhood.

On Christmas Eve, our boys hang their stockings (as do Mama and I), and leave out milk and cookies for Santa, along with a snack for the reindeer. At bedtime, these are the only signs of Christmas in our home.  

When the boys awake in the morning, the apartment is transformed. There is a full decorated, live, ceiling-scraping Christmas tree, beneath which are a mountain of wrapped presents. The stockings are stuffed to overflowing. The milk is drained and only some crumbs remain from the snacks. Clearly, Santa has stopped by in the course of his appointed rounds!

I possess strong memories of the experience of awakening to these magical mornings in my childhood. But in addition to wishing to share that experience with my children, I also think that the experience of believing in Santa — and the eventual loss of that belief — can provide a powerful lesson, later in life, about supernatural and religious claims. It’s easier to understand how someone can believe in a god or gods when you’ve had the experience of strong belief yourself. It has certainly served as such a lesson for me.

When I discuss my atheism, I make it clear that I am an atheist in the theological sense; that is, I live my life as if there is no god. By the same token, I recognize that this is a theoretical assumption on my part; in the epistemological sense, I cannot prove a negative. But the distinction is important. I cannot live my life as if I lack the answers to an infinite quantity of unprovable negatives. If you insist that you must remain agnostic on the subject of God because you cannot prove nonexistence, then it seems to me you must remain equally agnostic on the subject of Santa Claus; but if you’re willing to be atheist on Santa then there’s no reason to remain agnostic on God. After all, I’ve got better evidence for the existence of Santa: I there’s a photo of me sitting on his knee.

I was reminded of these subjects just last week by one of my boys — Dexter, a boy who is by nature philosophical and contemplative, who readily thinks in metaphorical terms. Even at seven, he has already long been interested in the subject of god and religion, and frequently poses questions about these subjects. He is invariably puzzled and amazed as to why people maintain beliefs he finds obviously irrational, despite our best and repeated efforts to present religious beliefs and believers in empathetic light. 

A few nights ago, he and I were eating dinner alone, and he suddenly asked, “Is Santa Claus real?”

Oy! At that moment, I would rather he asked me where babies came from. 

I took a deep breath and thought about how I might best test the waters of his question. So I turned it back to him. “What makes you ask?”

“Because,” he said, the deep thought showing in his eyes, “he seems like a god.”

My heart sang.

“Well, you make a very, very good point, Dexter. That’s an excellent reason to ask the question.”

I can’t think of a better one, really.

I wanted to answer Dexter’s penetrating question, but without prematurely demolishing his sense of mystery. It was a daunting task that lay before me – but I thought I had grasped an answer.

“But even though it might seem that way, I don’t think Santa’s a god. I think he’s a magical being. There’s a difference. After all, people think their gods tell them what to do, give them rules for living their lives. Gods take from people, and punish them for not following the rules.”

“But Santa mostly just gives. He reminds you to be good, but mostly he just makes people happy by giving everyone gifts, using his special magic. Because he gives all these gifts around the world, and yet he doesn’t get the gifts himself. And that teaches us a lesson. Instead, he gets the greatest pleasure of all – he gets to feel the happiness and joy people have. And if you ever hear anyone talk about ‘the spirit of Christmas,’ that’s what they mean. If you hear someone say ‘It’s better to give than to receive,’ that’s what they mean. That’s what Santa does, and that’s the spirit of Christmas. So I don’t think that Santa is really a god.”

Dexter thought about this, rolled it around in his fertile mind – and was satisfied. He agreed with the conclusion, and the conversation moved on. One of the challenges of dealing with children’s questions is trying to answer the actual question, and not the question we adults imagine is being asked, because of all the answers we know but of which our children are not yet aware. Sometimes all you have to do is explain that every mother has an egg – and no further explanation is necessary as to  “Where do babies come from?” At least, for today…

I suspect that Dexter still harbors some skepticism about Santa. But it’s also fun to believe in Santa, and with his most important and disturbing concerns addressed to his satisfaction, perhaps he’ll get another magical holiday – or two or three, if he permits it – before the final debunking comes. I think I lasted until about age 11 myself, but the news didn’t come as a shock either. So somewhere along the line I probably knew I was helping to fool myself – perhaps not unlike the audiences in my magic shows. My audiences allow themselves that indulgence because they get the pleasure of their temporary amazement and wonder in return.  For the same reasons, I probably chose not to disbelieve in Santa probably just a bit longer than I actually believed in him. And by the time I stopped believing in him, I was well on the way to disbelieving in gods who didn’t stuff my stocking every year.

I've often said that the fantasy world I create as a magician is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. But as children, we get an all too brief chance to live there, and I wouldn’t take that away from my kids for anything. There was a brief time they believed I was real magic; now they already know a little something about conjuring. Those experiences are two sides of the same glorious lesson. Long live Santa — for a little while, at least.

Jamy Ian Swiss is a magician, author, speaker, and longtime skeptical activist. He serves as Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the President of the James Randi Educational Foundation.

I know it's a respectable field; kinesiology is the study of human movement, and I've known some who are sensible and well-trained (applied kinesiology, on the other hand, is total bunk). But it's becoming a bit like engineers and the Salem hypothesis — I also run into creationists who proclaim their kinesiology degrees, like the frothing mad Joseph Mastropaolo. I'm beginning to think there must be some deep conceptual hole in the formal educational background of kinesiologists.

Anyway, here's another example: a professor of kinesiology, Phil Bishop has written the most wonderfully condescending and wrong letter to the Crimson White at the University of Alabama. I have to marvel at the ignorance of an individual so handicapped by stupidity and religion (whoops, pardon my redundancy), yet who still managed to flop his crippled way upwards to achieve a position with some intellectual authority.

Show compassion for atheist friends

Evolution has been a hot topic in the CW as of late. I understand the emotion that evolutionary theory carries for my atheist friends, but I can't figure why my theist, deist and agnostic friends feel so much passion against Darwinism.

For Muslims, Jews and Christians, whether or not evolution happened is irrelevant. For these people, God created, but how He did so is not specified in detail.

However, for my atheist friends, Darwinism is essential. A Christian can believe in evolution or not, but an atheist must contrive some natural means for life and speciation that must, for philosophical consistency, exclude any Divine intervention.

An attack on evolution threatens the very foundations of atheism, so it is a "life and death" issue, and consequently an emotional one. Darwinism may have some serious problems, but hey, it's the best they can do for now. So, Christians, show a little compassion for our atheist friends.

Ah, such a lovely illustration of the backwardness of religious thinking. Evolution is not a philosophical rationalization; it is not a desperate exercise in weird, wild apologetics that exists solely to justify an ideology. It's the hard rock of reality in the path of your philosophical peregrinations. You can look like an idiot and try to butt heads against reality, or you incorporate it into your understanding. Creationists do the former. Rational people do the latter.

Get it? For atheists, evolution and other aspects of reality and the natural world come first, and the atheism comes second as a consequence, not a cause, of our understanding of the universe. For the fanatical Christian, apparently, their delusions come first, and any natural, real phenomena must be warped in their imaginations to fit their weird and unsupportable interpretation of how the universe ought to be. And they seem to think other people's minds are distorted in the same way.

It's like looking at a dancer and arguing that she must have invented the concept of a floor in order to carry out her heathenish gyrations, and oh, fortunate Christian that he is, Phil Bishop gets to pretend that his dance is free of the constraints of gravity and frames of reference and the stage and the music. Which is probably why he looks like a spastic klutz with no rhythm when he trips onto the dance floor.

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Richard Healy replied to Christine Richards's discussion 'Wouldn't it be nice.......' in the group Atheist Singles

Richard Dawkins' atheism has provoked a series of intelligent books about religion, from Marilynne Robinson's Absence of Mind and K aren Armstrong's The Case for God to this anthropological and philosophical enquiry by Robert Wright, an agnostic.

Richard Dawkins' atheism has provoked a series of intelligent books about religion, from Marilynne Robinson's Absence of Mind and K aren Armstrong's The Case for God to this anthropological and philosophical enquiry by Robert Wright, an agnostic.

Via an article by Ophelia Benson on her blog Butterflies and Wheels

Is it accurate when the media portrays the atheist movement as a club for old white men? It’s undeniable that most of the time men outnumber women, whether you’re looking at conference attendees or conference speakers, blog readers or best-selling authors. But when Monica Shores wrote that “no women are currently recognized as leaders or even mentioned as a force within the movement,” the atheist community cried out.

Why? Because it’s blatantly untrue.

Women atheists not only exist–we’ve played pivotal roles within the secular community. The most vocal atheist activist at the beginning of the modern movement was Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who founded American Atheists in 1963 and was instrumental in the removal of compulsory prayer from public schools in the US. While her personality was off-putting to some, it is undeniable that she brought atheism into the public eye.

Since then, women continue to fill leadership positions in the movement. Lori Lipman Brown is the founding director of Secular Coalition for America, the only lobbying group for atheist, agnostic and humanist Americans. Annie Laurie Gaylor is co-founder and current co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an organization devoted to upholding the separation of church and state. Camp Quest, a summer camp for children of parents with naturalistic worldviews, was co-founded by Helen Kagin and currently has Amanda Metskas as its executive director. Lyz Liddell is director of campus organizing for the Secular Student Alliance. Debbie Goddard is the director of African Americans for Humanism and campus outreach coordinator at the Center for Inquiry. Before someone quips that there are no atheist women in foxholes, Kathleen Johnson is the founder of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, in addition to being vice president of American Atheists.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

... Read more and numerous links

Matt VDB replied to Christine Richards's discussion 'Am I really agnostic?' in the group Atheist Singles

[link] [334 comments]

Oscar-nominated film director Roland Joffe describes himself as a "wobbly agnostic." "There's easy atheism, there's easy agnosticism, and there's easy faith," he explained during a Sept.

Joseph P replied to Christine Richards's discussion 'Am I really agnostic?' in the group Atheist Singles

Joseph P replied to Christine Richards's discussion 'Am I really agnostic?' in the group Atheist Singles

Filotheya: Prudence, you are an agnostic, right? Prudence: I am, yes. Filotheya: By ‘agnostic

NO, we have seen a trend of websites were Big mouthed atheists and agnostic can report others while no one is so weak as to report them in the midst of their cry baby rants! BUT NOT A TREND IN ATHEISM OR AGNOSTIC OR ANY OTHER BELIEF OUT GROWING THE NEW BORN AGAIN CHRISTONE'S WHO ARE AWAKENED EACH DAY! I have had atheists cuss me, scream at me in type, and even use authored lies too try and make point, but never have "i" been so weak as to report them, this morning they reported a man asking about his now maybe due death! That is weak.....THEY have the biggest mouths, by mouths do not make numbers, it is christianity which is growing in NUMBER...LOUD DOES NOT MAKE RIGHT...FOR WAKING PROOF ... go to your yahoo search engine and type in "Word In Classic Painting" and the list of websites that pop up the site with the same phrase in its listing "Word In Classic Painting"" enter into it, and on the about page near the bottom are many proofs, even pictures of satan/death/unclean spirits fought by Adam and Our Lord Jesus Christ! You must be of an age to visit this Epic gathering website where Gods mystery if now finished, and His code/key for the now end of premature aging and sickness Rev:21:4 is exposed, Gods enemy exposed for what it was/is merely an unclean spirit! Contact page is for questions, and for proofs being sent and received and for declaring your gathering....IT HAS BEGUN...The Epic gathering

The Pew Forum surveyed Americans on their knowledge of religion, and discovered that the group most generally knowledgeable about world religions was…those unshriven hellbound godless folk. This does not sit well with many believers, who have long preferred to relegate atheists to a hell of total unawareness of the gods, smugly assuming that if only we knew what they knew, we'd be True Believers in god in general and their specific, narrow sect in particular. That we might actually know what they believe and not only choose to not believe, but also to regard their superstitions as ridiculous, is unthinkable.

You will have a difficult time finding someone more offended by reality than John Mark Reynolds, professor of Catholic rationalization at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. He's got an excuse: atheists are trivia kings but bad thinkers. We'd do well on the home Bible version of Jeopardy, but you see, we really don't understand the facts, and we lack the wisdom to hear the secret music of theology.

This surprises me. Apparently, the Trinity is trivia, an idea I can sort of sympathize with, but Professor Reynolds' own Catholic faith waged bloody wars over the Arian heresy—people by the thousands were slaughtered because they didn't believe that Jesus and the Holy Ghost had equal status and substance with the One True God. Ask the Visigoths. Oh, you can't — they're all dead.

And now we learn that transubstantiation is also trivial! Where was John Mark Reynolds a few years ago? I could have used his help calming the raging hordes of Catholics who were outraged that I should desecrate a cracker. He was on their side, damning me as a vandal of all that was right and good, you say? Oh. I guess it wasn't all so trivial after all. And again, representatives of his faith have in the past used the sanctity of their magic crackers as an excuse to slaughter thousands of Jews, men, women, and children, for imagined slights against that trivia. What a shame that they died over something so unimportant.

John Mark Reynolds is not done undercutting his own points right there in the title of his article, though. No, he pens an incoherent, inconsistent, contradictory mess of assertions because atheists outscore his team in trivia contests. The Christian martyr complex is on full display here.

As a boutique belief system in the United States, atheism has a good many advantages. There are so few atheists and agnostics that they do not run all the risks of a populist movement. Not for them is the burden of dealing with the masses of a global population, their idiosyncrasies, worries and all.

Since Christians make up three-quarters or more of the American general population, we have the burden of accounting for almost everybody's problems. Sadly, we are much less well represented in elite education, media, and government. This is not because religion is incompatible with elite education, but because "skepticism" about religion has become a sociological way for the elite to mark themselves off from the rest of us. In this sense, anti-religion (and in particularly anti-Catholicism) serves the same function that joining the "right" church used to serve in another era.

See, atheists are the ones who are trivial — we're so few in numbers that we hardly count, and since we make no difference at all we escape responsibility. We're negligible, just the thin scum riding on the surface of the deep ocean of Christianity. And Christianity…oh, man, poor Christians. They're the responsible ones who have to take care of all those sick people and maintain the economy and work so hard to maintain everyone else's moral probity. Atheism is just the fashionable façade of the "elites" (I do so wish the people who sneer at "elites" would look up the meaning of the word. It is not a synonym for "dregs").

I did learn something new here. Despite the pitiful fact of our miniscule numbers and complete irrelevance, teachers are mostly atheists, Fox News and CNN are run by atheists, and most our senators and representatives and governors are atheists. It's as if we belong to a secret sinister cabal that has sneakily taken over the entire culture.

I wish!

It's a strange state of civilization that Reynolds imagines. Christianity is entirely responsible for all the important stuff, but somehow, this insignificant film of godless elitists are entirely responsible for every one of the faults of society. We have a culture of entertainment that is all the fault of a tiny minority, and no, no, no, Christians didn't participate in or create any of it.

The secular elite has provided most of us with wretched religious education by all but banning it as a topic for serious enquiry or discussion. Meanwhile, they know just enough about religion to get some "facts" right on a pop-religion quiz, but have no grasp on why, despite all temptations, some thoughtful folk remain religious. They know some of the lyrics of religion, but cannot hear the music.

You might blame Christian education in churches for this problem, except a culture of entertainment has reduced most Americans ability to tolerate difficult discussions. Pity the pastor, with seminary training in ancient languages and a carefully constructed sermon, who must face a congregation taught by television to anticipate education with Muppets and Katy Perry.

Damn you, Veggie Tales, you spawn of the Global Atheist Conspiracy! Elmo is Satan!

Reynolds returns to his contradictory message that only Christianity does good, while atheism tells people to commit criminal acts that will get them sent to jail.

Weirdly, Christians must clean up the mess of broader culture, but we have had little power to create pop culture in the last fifty years. The poor and the disadvantaged are always the first to bear the brunt of bad cultural ideas and only the religious remain on the ground to try to help. Christians, for example, try to keep people from doing the things that get men sent to prison, but then work hard to help prisoners once people fail.

In this sense it is easier to be an agnostic or atheist. You have rejected the mainstream of American history, which means you don't have to take responsibility for its failures, though you can appropriate its successes.

But wait, Professor Reynolds! Isn't this whole essay patently about denying Christian responsibility for the current state of affairs, placing the entire blame on the shoulders of a minority you simultaneously deride as being so tiny they can't take credit for anything? How do you get a professorship when your brain is so confused and inconsistent?

Oh, right. He's at Biola. Never mind. Being a fervent defender of the faith is enough there.

But wait, we have to look at a peculiar tangent the Catholic professor takes. He's open-minded, he's advocating learning more about lots of religions, so he has to suggest that we learn more about all kinds of weird cults and sects and beliefs, and that means even learning about the Latter Day Saints.

For example, one of the most influential books first published by an American is the Book of Mormon. It appears in almost no American government school curriculum, though it exercises a global influence and impacts the lives of millions of Americans. This is foolish. I am, to say the least, no Mormon partisan, but there are entire states in our nation that cannot be understood without some grounding in Mormon thought.

How many American college graduates have a more charitable comprehension of the indigenous culture of Paris than of Salt Lake City? Mormon Utah can only wish it were treated as gently as "other cultures" are in a politically correct curriculum.

That's interesting. I lived in Salt Lake City for seven years. I frequently left the walled enclave of the University of Utah to explore Mormon culture — I've heard the Tabernacle Choir, I read parts of the Book of Mormon and The Pearl of Great Price (but not their entireties, there are limits to the schlock I can digest), I took the official tours, I've read on the history of Utah, I visited the genealogy archives, I've shopped at ZCMI and played with my kids at Liberty Park. I know Mormon culture about as well as a curious Gentile can, so once again, here's an atheist with significant knowledge about a faith he denies.

And you know what I learned about Mormonism? It's a lot of wacky bullshit, with some very nasty misogynistic undertones. I also encourage everyone to learn more about this foolishness, one of the many brands of pretentious nonsense advocated under the guise of religion, but I will not suggest that our views of this poison have to be "charitable". Why should they be? It's far wiser and not at all trivial to recognize that millions of people live lies and believe in fairy tales that are wrong.

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By Cheryl Ensom Dack ~

Contrary to common Christian belief, the average atheist is not in fact someone who needs to have the Gospel presented to them in a clear way. They don’t need to have “the bridge illustration” doodled on a napkin for them. The average agnostic is NOT “not sure about God” because he or she doesn’t want to think too hard or is chronically fickle. In fact, according to an article in today’s L.A Times, “a survey that measured Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths.”

Say, what? Yup…you read that right. Why, you ask, would an atheist or agnostic know more about religion than a Christian?

The L.A. Times interviewed Alan Cooper, the associate director for research at the Pew Forum, the organization that released this survey earlier this week and he answers this very question. He thinks the reason atheists and agnostics know more about religion than those who ascribe to those religious beliefs is because they are more likely to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and went through a process of reading, reflection and decision before leaving that tradition. In other words, atheists and agnostics are not in fact people who don’t want to hear about, read about, or understand the “Gospel.” Rather, they are people who have grappled with it in a more serious way than the average believer; their atheism and agnosticism is something they came to thoughtfully.

“These are people who thought a lot about religion,” Cooperman said. “They’re not indifferent. They care about it.”

The study also found a correlation between atheism/agnosticism and being well-educated. However, this is not to say that the most educated people became atheists and agnostics, since Christians with similar education levels still knew less about their beliefs than non-believers.

The L.A. Times article also quotes Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Methodist minister and author who, commenting on the survey’s findings said, “I think that what happens for many Christians is they accept their particular faith, they accept it to be true and they stop examining it. Consequently, because it’s already accepted to be true, they don’t examine other people’s faiths.”

I’m someone who, as an evangelical Christian, assumed that, if atheists/agnostics just examined Christianity, they would get on board with it. I also told myself that atheists and agnostics liked sinning and therefore found their unbelief more “convenient.”

Today, as a not-atheist-and-sort-of-agnostic-but-definitely-not-Christian, I can say, looking back at my former thought process, that I couldn’t be more wrong. I’m not interested in finding an excuse for sinning. I ate, drank, breathed and lived the Christian gospel for the first 30 years of my life and very thoroughly understand it. I have beyond-average knowledge of biblical facts and Christian theology. I wanted to believe it, more than anything I’ve ever wanted.

When I say I’m not a Christian, this is not something I say lightly. It’s something I say a little sadly, because I wanted so much to believe it. I can’t. That’s not because I want to live in a certain type of “sinful” lifestyle and need to believe things that make that lifestyle o.k. If only it were that simple. My belief/unbelief came at a high cost. It’s something I wrestled with for decades. My saying that I’m not a Christian is very simply, honest.

These days I’m reluctant to publically state that I’m not a Christian anymore, mostly because my hard-won belief/lack thereof is immediately written off by most Christians as “lack of understanding.” I can’t even explain the process I’ve been through without a Christian trying to “better explain” the Gospel in a condescending voice, no less. I’m not stupid, believe it or not, and neither are most other atheists, agnostics and otherwise “un-believing” folks. More knowledge about the Bible or Christian theology isn’t going to convince me to change my mind. That’s because, according to this survey, chances are I understand Christianity better than the average Christian does and, with brain intact, I’ve opted out.
  
How do you score on religious knowledge? Take the Pew Forum Knowledge Quiz by clicking here. 

I am compelled to write this article after an atheist friend of mine said that: i think agnostics ar

“With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has always been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy,” wrote Charles Darwin. “Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”

Although Darwin admits he wasn’t much of an abstract thinker, he could not shake the “inward conviction” that “the Universe is not the result of chance.” Unlike many who followed after him, he appears to have intuitively understood the paradox of combining naturalism with evolutionary theory: If evolution is a non-teleological process, it undercuts our ability to trust that we can form true beliefs and convictions.

To have trustworthy convictions, we have to have properly functioning noetic equipment (i.e., a brain, spinal cord, sensory apparatus, etc., that recognize reality). But can a strictly materialistic, non-teleological, evolutionary process produce such reliable equipment? The philosopher Alvin Plantinga, one of the greatest thinkers of our era, thinks the answer is “no.” Although his argument is too complex and tightly argued to be adequately summarized, the basic outline of his case shows his point to be all but incontrovertible.

Plantinga claims, not that evolution is untrue, but that the truth of evolution is incompatible with the truth of naturalism. “As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go,” he argues. “Hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life.”

What does imply that life is not directed, he adds, is not evolutionary theory itself, but the theory of unguided evolution: the idea that “neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing, or orchestrating the course of evolution.” For our purposes, we’ll call this view “evolutionary naturalism.”

Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage. This equipment could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalis, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties.

Take Zed, a prehistoric caveman. Zed is the first to cross the line over to homo sapien (his parents are very proud) and is the first to develop functioning noetic equipment that is the equivalent of our own. His equipment could produce four types of beliefs.

Option #1: Option #1: Beliefs that are effects but not causes of behavior, whose truthfulness is irrelevant since they have no place in the causal chain leading to behavior. These beliefs are sort of the garnish on the plate of behavior; they are there but they have no purpose. For example, Zed may feel pain when he is bitten by a sabertooth and yet have a physiological reaction that is correlated, but not caused, by his pain sensation. Zed’s beliefs would be invisible to evolution and therefore can play no role in survival. (This view, called epiphenomenalism, is surprisingly popular among biologists.)

Option #2: Beliefs that are caused by and cause behaviors but whose truthfulness does not affect the behavior. For instance, Zed has discovered both language and singing. He notices that singing “UGGA BOO UGGAGA BOO” at the top of his lungs scares off birds and small animals. He believes that the words “UGGA BOO” have a magical effect on the animals that causes them to run away in fear. The words, of course, have no effect on the animals. It’s Zed’s horrendous voice that is scaring them away. (This view, called semantic epiphenomenalism, is surprisingly popular among philosophers of mind.)

Option #3: Beliefs that are caused by and cause behaviors but don't help Zed survive. For example, he could develop a belief that letting a sabertooth bite his brain will make the animal happy—which leads him to constantly be putting his head in the mouths of the great cats.

Option #4: Beliefs that are caused by and cause behaviors and have an evolutionary advantage. Zed develop a belief that letting a sabertooth bite his brain will make the animal happy—which leads him to stay far, far away from brain-eating animals.

But what are the chances that that this evolutionary advantage is results from the belief being true? According to Plantinga, we have no reason to believe that it is necessary for a belief to be true in order to be advantageous.

Zed needs to act in certain ways to survive. For example, he needs to avoid the saber tooth tiger taking a bite out of his big brain. We’ll call this “Tiger Avoidance Behavior.” Now Tiger Avoidance Behavior could be produced by Zed’s desire not to get eaten plus the true belief that Tiger Avoidance Behavior will increase his chances of not having his brain eaten.

The problem is that Tiger Avoidance Behavior could also be produced by false beliefs. Perhaps Zed likes the idea of being eaten and wants to run toward the tiger, but he always confuses running toward with running away from tigers. His false belief actually aids, rather than hinders, his survival. Therefore, a belief could have a survival advantage and yet be false.

The point of all this is that Zed’s noetic equipment does not need to produce true beliefs for him to survive. This is true for all four types of belief unguided evolution can produce. Since this holds true for even the most basic survival behavior, it is especially true for abstract ideas (e.g., evolutionary naturalism). Whether it is right or wrong is purely accidental. While it is possible that any particular belief can be true, it is not, from an evolutionary perspective, necessary that any beliefs be true.

If, as evolutionary naturalism claims, our noetic equipment might have developed in different ways, then a belief in evolutionary naturalism itself could be any of the four types of belief listed above. What is the likelihood that evolutionary naturalism has produced in us cognitive equipment able to reliably form true beliefs and know that they are true? Extremely low. Even then, we could never truly know that we knew the truth, because we would know our belief might merely be the most advantageous to us.

In order to accept the naturalistic evolutionary explanation for the development of our noetic equipment we have to be agnostic about its reliability. All we would really know is that it works for evolutionary purposes, not for the purposes of discerning truth from falsehood. Evolutionary naturalism, it turns out, is a self-defeating argument. If we believe the theory, we have no reason to believe the theory is true.

Joe Carter is web editor of First Things.

RESOURCES

Charles Darwin’s Letter to William Graham
Alvin Plantinga’s Naturalism Defeated
Alvin Plantinga’s Theism, Atheism, and Rationality
Philip E. Johnson’s Creator or Blind Watchmaker?

A new Pew survey on religion in America finds that atheists and agnostics are more likely to be well-versed about different religions' beliefs and practices than people who profess a belief in those religions. For example, atheists and agnostics are more likely to know that during Communion (Catholicism's central rite), the wafer and wine are meant to transubstantiate into the literal flesh and blood of Christ -- they aren't merely symbolic, as 40% of Catholics believe. Atheists and agnostics are also more likely than Protestants to know that Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation (the majority of Protestants could not identify him).

Interestingly, Mormons are, on average, better versed on the traditional New Testament Bible than evangelical Christians and mainstream Christians, many of whom consider Mormonism to be apostasy.

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

The groups at the top of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were unaffiliated with any faith (but not atheist or agnostic), black Protestants and Latino Catholics.

Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says (Thanks, Quercus, via Submitterator!)

Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac He was lying awake all night wondering if there was really a DogHow many atheists did it take to fix the light bulb Two one to change the bulb and another to videotape the job so that others would not claim that it was Gods doing
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One of the key myths of the American Catholic imagination is this: After 200 years of fighting against public prejudice, Catholics finally broke through into America’s mainstream with the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy as president. It’s a happy thought, and not without grounding. Next to America’s broad collection of evangelical churches, baptized Catholics now make up the biggest religious community in the United States. They serve in large numbers in Congress. They have a majority on the Supreme Court. They play commanding roles in the professions and in business leadership. They’ve climbed, at long last, the Mt. Zion of social acceptance.

So goes the tale. What this has actually meant for the direction of American life, however, is another matter. Catholic statistics once seemed impressive. They filled many of us with tribal pride. But they didn’t stop a new and quite alien national landscape, a “next America,” from emerging right under our noses.

While both Barna Group and Pew Research Center data show that Americans remain a broadly Christian people, old religious loyalties are steadily softening. Overall, the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation, about 16 percent, has doubled since 1990. One quarter of Americans aged 18-29 have no affiliation with any particular religion, and as the Barna Group noted in 2007, they “exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a decade . . . the Christian image [has] shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people.”

Catholic losses have been masked by Latino immigration. But while 31 percent of Americans say they were raised in the Catholic faith, fewer than 24 percent of Americans now describe themselves as Catholic.

These facts have weight because, traditionally, religious faith has provided the basis for Americans’ moral consensus. And that moral consensus has informed American social policy and law. What people believe—or don’t believe—about God, helps to shape what they believe about men and women. And what they believe about men and women creates the framework for a nation’s public life.

Or to put it more plainly: In the coming decades Catholics will likely find it harder, not easier, to influence the course of American culture, or even to live their faith authentically. And the big difference between the “next America” and the old one will be that plenty of other committed religious believers may find themselves in the same unpleasant jam as their Catholic cousins.

At first hearing, this scenario might sound implausible; and for good reason. The roots of the American experience are deeply Protestant. They go back a very long way, to well before the nation’s founding. Whatever one thinks of the early Puritan colonists—and Catholics have few reasons to remember them fondly—no reader can study Gov. John Winthrop’s great 1630 homily before embarking for New England without being moved by the zeal and candor of the faith that produced it. In “A model of Christian charity,” he told his fellow colonists:

We are a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ . . . That which the most in their churches maintain as truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practice; as in this duty of love, we must love brotherly without dissimulation, we must love one another with pure heart fervently. We must bear one another’s burdens. We must look not only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren . . . We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So we will keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Not a bad summary of Christian discipleship, made urgent for Winthrop by the prospect of leading 700 souls on a hard, two-month voyage across the North Atlantic to an equally hard New World. What happened when they got there is a matter of historical record. And different agendas interpret the record differently.

The Puritan habits of hard work, industry and faith branded themselves on the American personality. While Puritan influence later diluted in waves of immigrants from other Protestant traditions, it clearly helped shape the political beliefs of John Adams and many of the other American Founders. Adams and his colleagues were men who, as Daniel Boorstin once suggested, had minds that were a “miscellany and a museum;” men who could blend the old and the new, an earnest Christian faith and Enlightenment ideas, without destroying either.

But beginning in the nineteenth century, riding a crest of scientific and industrial change, a different view of the Puritans began to emerge. In the language of their critics, the Puritans were seen as intolerant, sexually repressed, narrow-minded witch-hunters who masked material greed with a veneer of Calvinist virtue. Cast as religious fanatics, the Puritans stood accused of planting the seed of nationalist messianism by portraying America as a New Jerusalem, a “city upon a hill” (from Winthrop’s homily), with a globally redemptive mission. H.L. Mencken—equally skilled as a writer, humorist and anti-religious bigot—famously described the Puritan as a man “with the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

In recent years, scholars like Christian Smith have shown how the intellectual weakness and fierce internal divisions of America’s Protestant establishment allowed “the secularization of modern public life as a kind of political revolution.” Carried out mainly between 1870 and 1930, this “rebel insurgency consisted of waves of networks of activists who were largely skeptical, freethinking, agnostic, atheist or theologically liberal; who were well educated and socially located mainly in the knowledge-production occupations, and who generally espoused materialism, naturalism, positivism and the privatization or extinction of religion.”

This insurgency could be ignored, or at least contained, for a long time. Why? Because America’s social consensus supported the country’s unofficial Christian assumptions, traditions and religion-friendly habits of thought and behavior. But law—even a constitutional guarantee—is only as strong as the popular belief that sustains it. That traditional consensus is now much weakened. Seventy years of soft atheism trickling down in a steady catechesis from our universities, social-science “helping professions,” and entertainment and news media, have eroded it.

Obviously many faith-friendly exceptions exist in each of these professional fields. And other culprits, not listed above, may also be responsible for our predicament. The late Christopher Lasch argued that modern consumer capitalism breeds and needs a “culture of narcissism”—i.e., a citizenry of weak, self-absorbed, needy personalities—in order to sustain itself. Christian Smith put it somewhat differently when he wrote that, in modern capitalism, labor “is mobile as needed, consumers purchase what is promoted, workers perform as demanded, managers execute as expected—and profits flow. And what the Torah, or the Pope, or Jesus may say in opposition is not relevant, because those are private matters” [emphasis in original].

My point here is neither to defend nor criticize our economic system. Others are much better equipped to do that than I am. My point is that “I shop, therefore I am” is not a good premise for life in a democratic society like the United States. Our country depends for its survival on an engaged, literate electorate gathered around commonly held ideals. But the practical, pastoral reality facing the Gospel in America today is a human landscape shaped by advertising, an industry Pascal Bruckner described so well as a “smiling form of sorcery”:

The buyer’s fantastic freedom of choice supposedly encourages each of us to take ourselves in hand, to be responsible, to diversify our conduct and our tastes; and most important, supposedly protects us forever from fanaticism and from being taken in. In other words, four centuries of emancipation from dogmas, gods and tyrants has led to nothing more nor less than to the marvelous possibility of choosing between several brands of dish detergent, TV channels or styles of jeans. Pushing our cart down the aisle in a supermarket or frantically wielding our remote control, these are supposed to be ways of consciously working for harmony and democracy. One could hardly come up with a more masterful misinterpretation: for we consume in order to stop being individuals and citizens; rather, to escape for a moment from the heavy burden of having to make fundamental choices.

Now, where do Catholics fit into this story?

The same Puritan worldview that informed John Winthrop’s homily so movingly, also reviled “Popery,” Catholic ritual and lingering “Romish” influences in England’s established Anglican Church. The Catholic Church was widely seen as Revelation’s Whore of Babylon. Time passed, and the American religious landscape became more diverse. But the nation’s many different Protestant sects shared a common, foreign ogre in their perceptions of the Holy See—perceptions made worse by Rome’s distrust of democracy and religious liberty. As a result, Catholics in America faced harsh Protestant discrimination throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This included occasional riots and even physical attacks on convents, churches and seminaries. Such is the history that made John F. Kennedy’s success seem so liberating.

The irony is that mainline American Protestantism had used up much of its moral and intellectual power by 1960. Secularizers had already crushed it in the war for the cultural high ground. In effect, after so many decades of struggle, Catholics arrived on America’s center stage just as management of the theater had changed hands -- with the new owners even less friendly, but far shrewder and much more ambitious in their social and political goals, than the old ones. Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox, despite their many differences, share far more than divides them, beginning with Jesus Christ himself. They also share with Jews a belief in the God of Israel and a reverence for God’s Word in the Old Testament. But the gulf between belief and unbelief, or belief and disinterest, is vastly wider.

In the years since Kennedy’s election, Vatican II and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, two generations of citizens have grown to maturity. The world is a different place. America is a different place—and in some ways, a far more troubling one. We can’t change history, though we need to remember and understand it. But we can only blame outside factors for our present realities up to a point. As Catholics, like so many other American Christians, we have too often made our country what it is through our appetite for success, our self-delusion, our eagerness to fit in, our vanity, our compromises, our self-absorption and our tepid faith.

If government now pressures religious entities out of the public square, or promotes same-sex “marriage,” or acts in ways that undermine the integrity of the family, or compromises the sanctity of human life, or overrides the will of voters, or discourages certain forms of religious teaching as “hate speech,” or interferes with individual and communal rights of conscience—well, why not? In the name of tolerance and pluralism, we have forgotten why and how we began as nation; and we have undermined our ability to ground our arguments in anything higher than our own sectarian opinions.

The “next America” has been in its chrysalis a long time. Whether people will be happy when it fully emerges remains to be seen. But the future is not predestined. We create it with our choices. And the most important choice we can make is both terribly simple and terribly hard: to actually live what the Church teaches, to win the hearts of others by our witness, and to renew the soul of our country with the courage of our own Christian faith and integrity. There is no more revolutionary act.

Charles J. Chaput is the archbishop of Denver.

While secularism is on the increase, immigration from Poland and the Indian subcontinent could reverse this trend

A blue plaque on a white stucco house just off the seafront in Brighton is a rare monument to atheism in a country where religion is a minority belief.

It marks the former home of George Holyoake, the last man to be jailed for refusing to believe in God and an overlooked hero of the secular cause.

Holyoake, a free-thinking radical, was jailed in Cheltenham in 1842 after suggesting, at the end of a lecture on socialism, that religion was a luxury the poor could not afford. The town's conservative establishment prosecuted him for his outspokenness – one priest called it devilism – and it is said he was threatened with being taken from Cheltenham to Gloucester jail in chains.

After his release from prison, he retreated for the last part of his life to Brighton. It was an appropriate refuge: the city is now, according to demographers, the least religious place in Britain.

Yet even today Holyoake would stand out as an exception in Brighton – a man prepared to speak confidently about his lack of belief rather than fudge the issue.

Most people in the Sussex city do not go to church: 27% said they had no religion in the last census. But most still described themselves as Christians. In Britain, cultural ties remain strong, even as belief fades.

"People here look at you a bit strangely if you say you are a regular churchgoer," says Bill McIlroy, a member of Brighton's humanist and secular association. "But while many people here don't believe, they have still got a misplaced respect for the church."

That sense of tradition frustrates campaigners against the influence of what is now politely described as the faith community.

"People cling to the idea of religion as a source of morality," says Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. "There is a general apathy: people don't want to make a fuss."

Many Britons have at best a shallow belief in God: the most recent British Social Attitudes survey found that just a third of the population held firm religious beliefs, with another third deeply sceptical and the final third uncertain.

But far fewer are prepared to go further and describe themselves as openly atheist. It was telling that Nick Clegg caused a stir when he did so soon after becoming Liberal Democrat leader.

"People prefer to talk about spirituality rather than religion, which can mean anything you want it to," says Sanderson.

Even Holyoake – who went on to invent the term secularism – professed himself more sceptical about religion than opposed. "You cannot be an atheist – you do not look like one," his memoirs record the magistrate telling him during his trial for blasphemy.

Holyoake held firm: "Though sorry to say what might outrage them or look like obstinacy, yet out of respect to my own conscience I must say that I was an atheist."

But by the end of his life he preferred to use the newly devised term agnostic. That still best fits the mainstream British view.

According to demographer David Voas at Manchester University: "The part of the population that is properly religious is a minority, but so is that part which is overtly secular. In the middle is an informal group of fuzzy people who don't really care."

Britain is not, as some think, the most secular nation in Europe; it is less so than Scandinavia and parts of the former Soviet bloc.

Migrant communities are the most committed – even long-standing ones, such as Irish Catholics who dominate what Voas calls "the British bible belt running from Merseyside to Wigan pier".

Most other people are less engaged, although measuring belief is difficult and the data conflicting.

Much depends on how questions are asked and whether they refer to broad cultural identity or practical belief.

The census, which records the highest level of religious belief, assumes people are adherents of one religion or another and actively asks them to choose from a list.

In 2001, more than two-thirds selected Christian and well under a fifth no religion. That, says Voas, overstates the reality of British religious belief. Asked to choose Christian rather than Muslim or Hindu, people see it as an ethnic identity. Voas argues that the British Social Attitudes survey, which found over half the population holding no strong religious views, is a better measure.

Other polls go further. In a 2006 Guardian/ICM poll only 33% described themselves as religious, against 63% who said they were not – including a majority who described themselves more broadly as culturally Christian.

Women and older people were more likely than average to believe in a god, but overall only 13% said they went to a place of worship at least once a week. More people saw religion as a force for harm than for good.

That suggests a country where religion is on the retreat. "There is a huge change – the trend is towards secularism," says Sanderson.

Others, pointing to the impact of migration, from Catholic Poland as well as the Indian subcontinent, are less sure.

The country's religious makeup is fragmenting as the Church of England declines. "It is not the case that Britain is getting more religious," says Voas.

The pope will find himself on an island full of doubters.

Dear Richard, I am a 14 year old. At the age of around 12 I told my parents that I was an agnostic atheist. They were quite repulsed at first, as they saw atheism as a form of baby eating cult. I have slowly given them a more realistic approach to atheism over the years, [...]

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Dear Richard, I am a 14 year old. At the age of around 12 I told my parents that I was an agnostic atheist. They were quite repulsed at first, as they saw atheism as a form of baby eating cult. I have slowly given them a more realistic approach to atheism over the years, [...]

Agnosticism is not the middle position. The definition of atheism is "without a belief in any gods or deities" (I felt that needed to be made clear). You are either one of these: 1. gnostic theist 2. agnostic theist 3. gnostic atheist 4. agnostic atheist So "agnostics", do you call yourselves agnostic because you don't know the definition of atheism? to escape from religious persecution? Or what? Maybe to seem more intellectual while holding onto childish superstitions? See these, they are pretty good clarifications of this subject: http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/9093/nvoavp.jpg http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/8020/sq0cd3.gif http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/4833/292llys.gif

John B Hodges commented on John B Hodges's blog post 'Passive and Active Atheism'

Bill_S replied to Jennifer W's discussion 'Have you ever converted someone to Atheism?`'

Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to make decisions that could end the lives of their terminally ill patients, compared to doctors who are very religious, according to a new study in Britain.



Atheism - Terminal illness - Medicine - Health - Agnosticism

Doctors who are atheist or agnostic are twice as likely to make decisions that could end the lives of their terminally ill patients, compared to doctors who are very religious, according to a new study in Britain.



Atheism - Terminal illness - Medicine - Health - Agnosticism

Leon replied to Jezzy's discussion 'Is Atheism A Choice?'

Next month, leading atheist Christopher Hitchens is scheduled to debate leading agnostic David Berlinski on the topic, “How Atheism Poisons Everything” in Birmingham, AL. Hitchens is the author of the bestseller “Hitch 22” and the controversial “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” Aside from his books, he has also written columns for The [...]