Defaithed

Is it just me, or are these the same faces?

Carl Sagan

David Lee Roth

If it weren't for Carl's untimely departure, I'd have to ask whether the beloved astronomer was ever spotted shouting "Bill-ions upon bill-ions of stars!" while doing high-jump splits off a Cornell podium.

Hey, it's religion week on the popular A.Word.A.Day mailing list!

A.Word.A.Day broadcasts a new word every day for the vocabulary nuts out there, and it's always a welcome ping in the mailbox. It's not a place where you'd expect to see a religion-related message of any kind, but as the list kicks off a week of sacerdotal offerings, I was surprised to see this short paean to free thought leading off today's installment:

The word religion derives from Latin ligare (to tie or to bind, as in 'ligament'), but it best serves as a tool to divide people. My religion is better than yours. My god true, yours false. What, we have the same religion? No problem, my sect is better than yours.

I recently read a thought-provoking book 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God by Guy Harrison. I found the author's patient and thoughtful discussion worthwhile reading and I highly recommend it to all, believers and non-believers. 

Yep, it sure is a tool to divide people. I'll add, though, that the "tie or bind" root still holds as well: There's nothing quite like religion to tie people to dogma and superstition, and bind them to the commandments of bejeweled priests.

Speaking of priests, did I casually pop the word "sacerdotal" up there? Why, that'd be today's word: Sacerdotal (the "c" is like an "s"), meaning "Of or relating to priests: priestly."

(Oh, Latin, is there anything you can't make sound good?)

By the way, you also gotta love the Internet Anagram Server found at the same domain. Let's ask it to make anagrams of "defaithed". Here goes... Ye gods, "Dead Thief"? "Fetid Head"? Never mind. 

(You've probably heard somewhere the awesome anagram that exists for "Internet Anagram Server" itself: "I, Rearrangement Server". Show me something that nifty in the so-called "Bible codes", and I'll take an interest in those too.)

The Age's article Beyond Belief, an overview of "new atheism" and atheism in general, is generating comment over a few points that don't ring true with actual atheists. (See Michael Bachelard's story on the New Atheism - a response by Russell Blackford.) 

My instant beef with the article was one small claim. This:

The new atheism is bigger, more organised, and much more assertive than ever before. It's based on the belief that science explains everything we need to know about the world so there's no need for religion. 

Bollocks. No one sane claims that "science explains everything"; we all know there are things that remain very unexplained, and even the most ardent admirer of science (with its incredible record of explaining so much) must admit that some mysteries might always remain outside our grasp. 

Atheism is not based on the belief that science explains everything. Rather, it's based on the demonstrable fact that religion and faith explain nothing.

Oh, and one more small beef, though it's a common flaw not at all confined to the Beyond Belief article. The discussion is the usual one about atheism vs belief in God. As in, singular God. That false dichotomy is so common we usually let it pass, but we shouldn't.

There are still believers in whole pantheons of gods; we have no business handing Abrahamic monotheists the standard as the sole representatives of religion. Any monotheists expecting to automatically advance to the final debate with belief in no gods need to first settle their dispute with belief in three gods and four gods and a hundred gods and so on. We, in turn, should force those warring parties to slug it out every time.

Over at Common Sense Atheism, Luke Muehlhauser shares how he "came out" and told his religious family about his atheism. It's a valuable experience; many, many people who lose religious faith (or realize they never had it) wrestle with the question of how to break the news to family. ("How do I tell them?" seems one of the most common questions asked by callers to atheist TV show The Atheist Experience.)

The comments below the post show lots of appreciation for Luke's tale, as well as the expected (but mostly short and civil) back-and-forth involving believers who find fault with the post. Until a comment by "Siamese", a loooong screed making God-filled claim after claim with, as you might guess, zero evidence or even argument. Out-of-thin-air assertions like these:

Heaven does last for eternity and those who chose a personal relationship with Jesus while on earth will be united with God. This unity does not imply the experience of pleasurable earthly activities; rather, it is an experience of selfless love and adoration for the God of all creation...

God desires a personal relationship with each human, in order for this relationship to occur he provided each human freedom of choice. If he had not given human beings the freedom to reject Him, all humans would go to heaven and be united with him, but their choice to be with him would have been a programmed fact...

Since God is loving and just he respects the decisions one makes and will eternally separate himself from this individual on judgment day...

And so on. Run of the mill stuff. What kills me about such blather, though – and what we too often led slide by without challenge to the claimant – is that the above claims are not only refuted by atheism, they're refuted by religion. It can't be said often or strongly enough: Every religious claim a believer can make is refuted first and foremost by the majority of religious believers not adhering to the claimant's particular minority faith/sect/denomination. When atheists want to refute a religious claim, they always have to get in line behind the throng of believers shouting "You've got that wrong" (often followed by further brilliant commentary such as "Infidel!", "Heretic", "Blasphemer!", "Hell-bound!", and the like).

Why should the atheist – or anyone – accept one minority claim over countless additional minority claims? The argument will typically bounce off the listener, but it has to be said again and again anyway. So here's my humble response left in the Common Sense Atheism comments: Readeth thou more

From The Onion:

"Ha, really funny", the believers will say, but the funny part is that this has actually been taking place over the centuries. 

The situation: A school wants to take 6th and 7th graders to a Fossil Discovery Center to attend a Rocks and Mineral Festival.

The problem: Those awful people are going to tell little Johnny – oh heavens! – that rocks are old!

From I bet that kid is popular in class at the Fail Blog: It's a simple field trip permission slip defaced by a barely-literate parent who thinks a Mineral Festival needs to begin and end with Jesus. The scrawl reads:

Note: Just to let you it is not that we don’t believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that the world is only about 6,000 years old. So why would I pay so that you can misslead my children, your world is just a revolving(?), ours has a start and an end. God created the world. He created animals and man all in the same week. It was also Adam who named all the animals, they will do the essay 'Rock and Minerals' but it might not be 5 pages long, and about billions of years, it will be according to the Bible.

(Hmm, is this from the United States? Hmm, do we even need to ask?)

We can laugh at the idiot parent, but what's being done to the poor kid is just sad.

If you've got an atheist blog, consider adding your vital info to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see a feed from other blog members to the right; head to the Blogroll site itself to see all 1000+ blogs on the list.

It's one more small way that the widespread, fractionated, largely independent, and often invisible atheist community can show off its impressive true size. Ask Mojoey at Deep Thoughts if you'd like more info.

And if you don't have an atheist blog, why not start one? Get a low-cost hosting service (I like DreamHost, which offers quick'n'easy installation of a number of blogging platforms), get a domain name, and start writing whatever's on your mind.

Oh, you're not atheist, you say? Well, that's even easier to fix. Just drop the religion – not only is it free, but you'll save money on churchy stuff! (Big money if you're shoveling cash to the Mormon church, Scientology, or televangelists.)

I was just about to write a lament over the dearth of new predictions – religious, apocalyptic, or otherwise woo-ey – fogging up crystal balls everywhere. In Death of Darwinism: Need new predictions, fast!, I had reviewed some forecasts that had either failed recently or still sat under a ticking clock. The "demise of Darwinist ideology" and similar prognostications – not as concrete as, say, "Rove and Rumsfeld will be caught in a naked love huddle in August", but still solid stuff with measurable expiration dates. 

But where were some crunchy new entrail-readings? Readeth thou more

Amidst the ongoing laughable (and sad) politicization and screaming matches that have taken over cable news programming in the US, marketing guru Seth Godin recently pointed out the problem with cable news thinking:

It has nothing to do with fires or with politics. Instead, it amplifies the worst elements of emotional reaction:

Agreed. And to push the point, Seth then lists twelve of the specific faults behind the frothing pundits. It's an interesting look at the kind of thinking that undermines truthful reporting – and, I'll add, any efforts to arrive at truth, outside of journalism as well. 

In particular, I was immediately impressed by how the list maps almost perfectly to an outline of religious thinking. Here's Seth's list of the odorous characteristics of cable news thinking, with each item followed by a theological take: Readeth thou more

It's not just the exploding human appendix. "Intelligent design" is full of idiot engineering when it comes to biology (to say nothing of the broader stage of world-destroying asteroids and supervolcanos and all that).

See an excellent catalog of in excelsis 'Doh!' at Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes. You'll find all your old favorites – Useless cave dweller eyes! Defective human retinas! Male nipples! – along with new reasons to be wonder whether the Seven Days of Creation were in fact a week-long bender.