Found this on a Twitter:
A Jealous God
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Tag Archives: Atheism
Why Are Atheists So Disliked?
The Washington Post published an essay titled Why do Americans still dislike Atheists? which doesn’t really address that question but does point out that atheists are smarter, richer, and just plain cooler than believers. Which is probably also why we’re disliked — atheists tend to be insufferable with all the science and reason talk (though to be fair I have known plenty of racist, homophobic, Glenn Beck-watching atheists too).
I’m not so sure I’m buying the claims by Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman about how cool atheists are (this is another problem with atheist — we’re all a bunch of pedantics). For example, Paul and Zuckerman note that many Americans seem to view atheists as amoral or immoral but,
Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.
There are a lot of reasons the U.S. has higher murder rates than secular European and Asian states, but I doubt religiosity is a major reason. If Paul and Zuckerman just want to claim that, see, Europeans don’t go around on murderous rampages and they’re much more secular than U.S., fine, but I call confounding factors on that comparison and the Louisana/Mississippi comparison.
Similarly, the United States has a huge percentage of its population in prison largely because of the War on Drugs. Depending on the study, about a quarter of all jail inmates and more than half of all federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug-related crimes.
Bring a Dish to Pass
Damn, Christianity is weird:
The Feast of the Circumcision of Christ is a Christian celebration of the circumcision of Jesus in accordance with Jewish tradition, eight days (according to the Semitic and southern European calculation of intervals of days) after his birth, the occasion on which the child was formally given his name.
The circumcision of Jesus has traditionally been seen, as explained in the popular 14th century work the Golden Legend, as the first time the blood of Christ was shed, and thus the beginning of the process of the redemption of man, and a demonstration that Christ was fully human, and of his obedience to Biblical law.
The feast day appears on 1 January in the liturgical calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It also appears in the pre-1960 General Roman Calendar, and is celebrated by some churches of the Anglican Communion and virtually all Lutheran churches.
Science Flies You To The Moon…
Found this on some Tumblr site awhile ago,
Jerry Coyne on the Irreconcilable Differences Between Religion and Science
There’s been a lot of debate over what is and isn’t a “New Atheist”, whether the term makes any sense, etc. As far as I can tell, the main difference between the “new” atheists and the “old” atheists is the former put an emphasis on the claim that religion and science are incompatible. This claim is, in fact, what seems to piss of critics of “new” atheists more than anything else (especially among atheist critics of “new” atheism).
In an October op-ed for USA Today, Jerry Coyne outlines the case against the idea that science and religion can somehow be “reconciled”, which usually seems to mean patting the believes on the head like children and assuring them everything will be okay and science doesn’t require changing their world views at all,
Science and faith are fundamentally incompatible, and for precisely the same reason that irrationality and rationality are incompatible. They are different forms of inquiry, with only one, science, equipped to find real truth. And while they may have a dialogue, it’s not a constructive one. Science helps religion only by disproving its claims, while religion has nothing to add to science.
…
In the end, science is no more compatible with religion than with other superstitions, such as leprechauns. Yet we don’t talk about reconciling science with leprechauns. We worry about religion simply because it’s the most venerable superstition — and the most politically and financially powerful.
Why does this matter? Because pretending that faith and science are equally valid ways of finding truth not only weakens our concept of truth, it also gives religion an undeserved authority that does the world no good. For it is faith’s certainty that it has a grasp on truth, combined with its inability to actually find it, that produces things such as the oppression of women and gays, opposition to stem cell research and euthanasia, attacks on science, denial of contraception for birth control and AIDS prevention, sexual repression, and of course all those wars, suicide bombings and religious persecutions.
One interesting thing that Coyne does not address is that even some atheists who disagree with him seem persuaded by his argument but nevertheless resort to a utilitarian argument against Coyne’s claims — namely that acceptance of science by the public will be undermined if non-atheists believe that science is incompatible with their beliefs.
Chris Mooney and PZ Meyers had a flame war over just this point, and it is useful to revisit how silly the secular critics of “new” atheism are. For example, here’s Mooney in his book Unscientific America trying to draw a line beyond which the “new” atheists shouldn’t cross,
It is one thing to say that scientific norms and practices preclude ascribing any explanatory force to God in, say, the movement of atoms, or the function of DNA. It’s quite another to say they entirely preclude God’s existence. In rejecting God or any other supernatural entity, Dawkins is taking a philosophical position.
Got that? So in the mind of at least some of the critics of “new” atheism’s emphasis on the irreconcilability of religion and science, it is okay to go ahead and tell believers, sorry science says there are no miracles, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, faith healing is bullshit, Mohammed never received a message from God, and the universe is entirely explainable by naturalistic causes without any need for intervention by a supernatural force. But once you take the next step and say “Oh, and this means there’s almost certainly no God”, you’ve crossed a line that will drive the believers into the hands of the anti-science fundamentalists.
I’m just not buying that. Most of the people I meet who are religious do not think of their god or gods in some detached philosophical deist method — they believe in a god or gods who not only affects the universe, but often intervenes directly in their lives and the lives of others around them. That support for science can be preserved by conceding some deistic version of god is absurd.
Imagine No Religion Billboard
The Freedom from Religion Foundation has created quite a controversy with its atheist billboard campaigns, like this one,
Of course half the fun with these sorts of campaigns is getting people outraged at what is, frankly, a fairly tame message. The billboards are certainly no more confrontational or in-your-face than religious-themed billboards (though, in general, I find billboards to be an eyesore).
Does Chris Mooney Even Know What Is In ‘Unscientific America’?
For the past few days, PZ Myers and Chris Mooney have been going at it on their respective blogs over Mooney’s new book Unscientific America. I haven’t read Mooney’s book, but apparently it includes a chapter that is uncharitable toward Myers and other so-called “New Atheists.” Myers argues that Mooney’s book is “useless”, while Mooney has decried Myers’ alleged distortions of his claims in Unscientific America.
So far the debate has been marked by Myers raising substantive objections to Unscientific America followed by Mooney either changing the subject or urging interested parties to go read the book. However, there was a telling exchange between Myers and Mooney over at Daily Kos which cast Mooney in an extremely unfavorable light.
In the comments section of a review of UA, a commenter accuses Mooney of distorting the views of Richard Dawkins. The commenter quotes Myers’ critique of UA,
Following this, he proceeds to damn the “New Atheists” for “collapsing the distinction” between methodological and philosophical naturalism, and argues that Dawkins is taking a philosophical position and misusing science to claim it “entirely precludes God’s existence.”
This would be a misrepresentation of Dawkins’ views. Dawkins has written that he thinks the existence of God is a scientific question, and while Dawkins thinks the existence of God is highly improbable, absolute certainty on the question is impossible. Not to worry, though, Mooney replies that this is just another one of those distortions of UA from Myers,
we use that phrase
although it is not attributed to dawkins.
i’ve read dawkins book in some detail, and our objection is to his making god’s existence a scientific question. i realize he does not ascribe full certainty to his atheistic conclusion–but he claims he can reason scientifically about god’s existence. we’re saying that a lot of theologians, philosophers, etc, would say that’s a category error.
i really have to ask that you read our book, rather than its misrepresentation in skewed reviews.
by Chris Mooney on Sun July 12, 2009 at 07:05:48 AM PDT
Well that sucks — you’d hope Myers and the New Atheists wouldn’t go around distorting Mooney’s views. Except, well, they’re not as Myers notes in reply to Mooney,
Yes, you did (13+ / 0-)
Tsk, tsk, Chris. Here’s the quote in context.
But much like the anti-evolutionists do, the New Atheists often seek to collapse the distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism. In The God Delusion, for instance, Richard Dawkins makes the dubious claim that the existence of God is, as he puts it, “unequivocally a scientific question.” Quite a lot of philosophers — and scientists — would disagree. It is one thing to say that scientific norms and practices preclude ascribing any explanatory force to God in, say, the movement of atoms, or the function of DNA. It’s quite another to say they entirely preclude God’s existence. In rejecting God or any other supernatural entity, Dawkins is taking a philosophical position.
You unequivocally assign that view to Dawkins. He’s the only person you mention, twice, in that paragraph, and you are using him as your sole example of the attitude you are trying to illustrate.
Your comment is remarkable in that not only do you claim it is others that are misrepresenting your views, but right here you are misrepresenting what you actually said. My paragraph is a very accurate summation of what you wrote.
Mooney then concedes the point,
PZ,
I’ve looked at the passage again (should have been a lot more careful before), and you are right–and I made an error. It does clearly ascribe this view to Dawkins.Now that I’ve read your criticism on your blog, I think “entirely preclude” states too strongly Dawkins’ position, and we should have been more nuanced here. However he does still try to claim that God’s existence is a scientific question.
Thanks for catching this.
by ChrisMooney on Sun July 12, 2009 at 01:35:59 PM PDT
Wow. What a dunderhead.
And leaving aside Mooney’s confusion about his own damn book, for a book about scientific illiteracy to suggest that part of the solution is to simply wall off this or that particular problem as beyond scientific investigation is insane.
Yet Another Survey Reporting Decline in Religious Belief in the United States
The Ada Evening News has a nice story on a Trinity College survey of religious attitudes in the United States that has found the same rise of secularism as similar studies,
Trinity College conducted the American Religious Identification Survey, which analyzed religious trends occurring in the U.S. during the last 18 years. The results were not good for people of faith.
According to the survey, the groups that experienced the largest increase were those belonging to no religion, which had a 138 percent growth in the 18-year period. The number of non-religious groups, which includes atheists and agnostics, grew from 14.3 million in 1990 to 34.1 million in 2008.
While atheism and agnosticism have increased, the number of those who consider themselves Christians has decreased, with 86 percent claiming to be Christian in 1990 compared to the 76 percent in 2008.
One of the more interesting questions that is rarely answered sufficiently is “why?” For example, there has long been an obvious disparity between the level of religious belief in the United States vs. Europe. A current favorite explanation of that difference is that religious institutions act as a bulwark against economic downtimes and, as such, is not viewed as favorably in Europe where the welfare state tends to take on that role, but is popular in the United State which has the highest level of economic inquality of any modern industrial nation. Which would not explain at all why people are suddenly turning to secular ideologies over the past 20 years which have hardly seen a turn to a European-like welfare state.
Similarly, another claim is that since the United States doesn’t pick and choose religious winners with targeted subsidies and official approval, that competition between denominations and religions has meant those organizations had to innovate to meet the needs of people, whereas in Europe supposedly direct state funding and endorsement of specific denominations and religions led those winners to stagnate and become distanced from what people were genuinely looking for. Again, that doesn’t hold up very well if people are suddenly abandoning that religious market for non-religious views.
It would be interesting to see a survey of atheists, agnostics and other non-believers to see if there are one or two factors that stand out that are driving them away from religion.
Pew Poll: 25 Percent of 18-29 Year Olds Identify as Atheist / Agnostic / No Religion
American Atheists points to this Pew Poll that surveyed both old and young people in order to measure the similarities and differences in their lives. AA focuses on the stated difference between the two on the importance of religion in their lives,
Religion is a far bigger part of the lives of older adults than younger adults. Two-thirds of adults ages 65 and older say religion is very important to them, compared with just over half of those ages 30 to 49 and just 44% of those ages 18 to 29. Moreover, among adults ages 65 and above, a third (34%) say religion has grown more important to them over the course of their lives, while just 4% say it has become less important and the majority (60%) say it has stayed the same. Among those who are over 65 and report having an illness or feeling sad, the share who say that religion has become more important to them rises to 43%.
American Atheist responded to this with,
“Translation: 56% of the younger generation thinks religion is not very important. That’s more than half, folks!”
I wanted to dig into the numbers to see if that excerpt was overstating the degree of irreligion among the young, and so downloaded the full report (1mb PDF) If anything, however, the situation is even better/worse (depending on your point of view) than that excerpt lets on — significant percentages of young people classified themselves as atheists/agnostics/no religion,
| Age Group | % Atheists / Agnostics/ No Religion |
| 18-29 | 25% |
| 30-49 | 18% |
| 50-64 | 13% |
| 65+ | 7% |
For the 18-29 year old group, more people identified themselves as atheist/agnostic/no religion than identified themselves as Catholic. This is, of course, entirely consistent with other surveys of religious belief that have shown dramatic increases in unbelief/lack of religious affiliation over the past couple decades, but is still kind of amazing to actually see accelerate.
David Attenborough on Creationist Critics
Nice David Attenborough response in The Guardian to the creationists who apparently send him hate mail,
Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give “credit” to God, Attenborough added: “They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.”
Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was “terrible” when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. “It’s like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five … Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066.”
Ah, the problem of evil — or in this case, the problem of banal cruelty.
