Defaithed

McGill University professor and philosopher Charles Taylor had all kinds of nasty things to say about the "atheist bus" campaign in Canada:

"Putting things on buses, as though that's going to make people somehow change their view about God, the universe, the meaning of life and so on," scoffed Taylor, a defender of religious faith and the recent winner of philosophy's two most prestigious international prizes following the 2007 publication of A Secular Age, his latest acclaimed critique of modern life.

"A bus slogan! It's not likely to trigger something very fundamental in anybody," Taylor told the magazine, the most widely read philosophy publication in the English language. "This new phenomena is puzzling — atheists that want to spread the 'gospel,' and are sometimes very angry."

Pish tosh. The professor, who goes on to call the bus campaign "pathetic", entirely misses the point. As no shortage of wiser people have already pointed out, no one expects the billboard's two-sentence message to send believers to their knees (or is that get up off their knees?) in a burst of mind-clearing enlightenment. Rather, the message sends a very clear message that atheists are out there. In number. Number enough to start making public pronouncements like other, so-far more visible interest groups.

The effect is to give pause to people who imagine atheists are too few or too quiet to stand up to religion's special privileges. More importantly, it's a shout out to all the closeted rejectors of God-babble, the non-believers who thought it's not okay to rock religion's boat, the fence-sitters who'd realize they've already got both feet on the secular side if they just stop to think about it. "You're not alone in thinking these things. We're legion, and we're no longer shy about being heard. Come speak up with us."

It's a beautiful message of menticide, the systematic undermining of a person's beliefs, attitudes, and values. As such, it's...

All right, all right, fine. Yes, "menticide" was today's Wordsmith.org A.Word.A.Day feature. Okay, you caught me. Anyway:

What's being menticided (?) here is not, as the above professor imagines to be the target, religious belief per se. It's that belief that atheists are few, quiet, separated, and doomed to talking amongst themselves in little gatherings or blogs. That mistaken belief is getting a busload of menticide. With much more to come, methinks. 

The A.Word.A.Day email newsletter also contains a daily quote. Interestingly, the quote in today's well-timed issue was this:

The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke. -Ximenes Doudan, journalist (1800-1872)

Not pithy enough for a bus billboard, but good all the same. 

Warning stickers on evolution books? How about a warning sticker on this book?

Original found at nanovirus. Edited here with inset for size purposes.

Here's The Official God FAQ in its entirety:

Question: "Is there a God?"

Answer: "No."

Hmm, I suppose that could be expanded upon, like this:

Question: "But..."

Answer: "No."

Nah, forget that; the FAQ is fine as it is. Wish I'd written it myself!

Yes, they did. A man with physical difficulties attended The Amazing Meeting for his first time, and wouldn't you know it, the atheists and skeptics in attendance pushed him... 

...through doorways, to and from meetings, wherever he and his wheelchair needed to go. Here's an excerpt of the fellow's uplifting report:

Here were people I had never met, people I had only known as anonymous nicknames on the JREF forum, and yet they took me under their wing. They arranged for me to get there, got me a place to stay, met me when I arrived, invited me to join them for dinner, pushed my wheelchair around, opened doors for me, picked up all the crap I kept dropping, took the time to sit and talk with me, waited exceedingly patiently while I struggled to scribble a sentence or two, said "It is such a pleasure to meet you", and meant it. These people, every single one who made eye contact with me and smiled, they are the reason this was an Amazing Meeting. I overslept and missed Adam Savage's talk because I was up so late the night before shooting the breeze with fellow JREFers (and it was totally worth it---sorry, Adam!). If not one single speaker showed up, it still would have been well worth it.

It occurs to me that there are those of a religious bent who have said that skeptics, particularly atheistic ones, do not have a moral code to live by. And yet I spent four days in the company of skeptics who have proven that they live by the most basic moral code of all, the one most others are based on and without which would be useless: do good things on a daily basis, be kind to other people, and enjoy the time you have to spend with them. Sure, you could add another 635 rules and regulations on top, but what it really boils down to is what I witnessed. Do good. Be kind. Enjoy life. 

That sounds like most of the people I've had around me all my life, too, believers and non-believers alike. Good, kind, honest people. Oddly, there are those among them who insist that such kindness only comes via religion. It's an utterly bizarre claim – not just because real life (as in the above report) contradicts it, but because it's so sneeringly contemptuous of religious people!

"If it weren't for the moral compass provided by our faith, we believers would be soulless thugs and criminals and worse." That's the line some "faithful" unwittingly insist upon. I for one don't believe it for a second; take away the religious upbringing from those people, and they'll still be just as kind and good as the atheists and skeptics above.

People are generally good. Deal with it, believers. 

There's much discussion in the atheism sphere lately over accommodation, the idea that atheism, science, or both should take care to not contest religious claims lest offended believers be driven even further into the opposing camp. The details, of course, vary among the many sub-discussions; some accommodationists take the tack "Yes, we know religion is in the wrong, but let's not tell them that", while others hold forth that science does not require atheism and there simply isn't any conflict between science and religion.

A particular recent point of contention: Unscientific America, a book by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum that decries American apathy and antagonism toward science (can't argue with that!) but, unfortunately, lays much of the blame on scientists and "New Atheists" who speak their minds without consideration of Americans' religious sensibilities. For a full overview, head to this post by scientist and outspoken atheist, PZ Myers, who receives a particularly harsh lashing by Mooney and Kirshenbaum. Follow the links therein and you'll get all sides of the story, including back-and-forth rebuttals and third-party observations.

It truly is hard to warm up to the accommodationist perspective. Don't take PZ's insightful comments alone; listen to Mooney and Kirshenbaum plead their case. In Defenders of the Faith: Scientists who blast religion are hurting their own cause, they demonstrate that they'll paint out-of-context pictures to favor a point. Like this comment intended to shock the moderates:

The New Atheist science blogger PZ Myers, for instance, has publicly desecrated a consecrated communion wafer, presumably taken from a Catholic mass, and put a picture of it, pierced by a rusty nail and thrown in the trash, on the Internet.

Setting aside the meaningfulness of "desecrated" as a concept, that claim is true – and completely misleading, thanks to a careful excising of the event from context. You'd think from the above that PZ went out of his way to anger Catholics just out of his hatred for religion. Wrong; he (like nearly all atheists, "New" or not) doesn't go out of his way to "desecrate" anything. The "cracker controversy" was specifically a response not to communion itself, but to a bizarre, inane, and frightening incident in which a student accepted a wafer without eating it – and received a national outpouring of outrage from believers, including calls for expulsion from school, death threats, and accusations of "hate crime". (I would like to ask Mooney and Kirshenbaum: 1) Why did you misleadingly leave all context out of your comment on the cracker incident?; and 2) Out of curiosity, if you didn't join PZ in decrying the demented medieval reaction of some Catholics toward a student who failed to eat his wafer, why didn't you?)

The authors continue the Newsweek article with a reminder of how popular religion is ("64 percent of Americans would hold on to a cherished religious belief even if science had disproved it"!) , then move on to a central argument: Science and religion aren't opposed, as made evident by strong Christians who are also able scientists, like Francis Collins. Yet there's a flaw there, which they manage to point out themselves:

...we find many sophisticated believers who've made a peace between their belief and the findings of modern science. 

Yes: peace between religion and the findings of modern science. But the findings of science are not science. Science is how you got those findings. It's a really important distinction.

It's utterly trivial to say "I believe that the citric-acid cycle is an important component of aerobic cellular respiration. Also, I believe that my Atlantean spirit guardian guides my lottery picks." That's the trivial sense in which Collins combines science and religion. But when you say "I believe the Atlantean theta-spirits created the citric-acid cycle in mitochondria", that's rejecting science and claiming a "finding" not supported by its methods. That's what Collins does when he claims existence of a Christian God: he makes a claim that rejects the methods of science. Where it counts – claims about the natural world – he does not combine science and religion. Nobody does.

The very next sentence of the Newsweek article is also bizarre, in that it contradicts that claim that was just made about science/religion integration:

It's not just Collins; consider the words of the Dalai Lama: "If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change."

A smart comment. In fact, it's what we atheists are saying all the time! When science and religion make conflicting claims about the natural world, they don't co-exist, they don't strike a deal, they don't flip a coin; rather, science wins. Always. 

How in the world you spin "science always trumps opposing religious claims" to mean "science and religion get along fine!", I don't understand. 

If you're interested in more, the authors have much to say in PZ Myers vs. Unscientific America: Part III and its previous installments linked therein. You'll find repeated accommodationist pleas that we not offend people with straight talk. There's little or no rebuttal of the substance of "New Atheist" talk – Mooney and Kirshenbaum claim to be irreligious themselves – just anguish over its tone. 

I have nothing bright to add; PZ and others have made all the good rebuttals already. In fact, I have to turn to someone else to better say the one thought that is in my mind: 

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.

This is the crux, the spot where accommodationists part ways with the "New Atheists". The former ask that we handle religion in the light of what's safe, politic, and popular. The latter are concerned first with what's right. To put it bluntly in a manner that Mooney and Kirshenbaum won't appreciate, it's the way of cowardice, expediency, and vanity, versus the way of conscience. 

Hey, who came up with that crazy quote, anyway? Just a guy named Martin Luther King Jr. A guy who most decidedly did not mumble polite nothings to avoid upsetting the masses.

I'd love to hear the accommodationists explain how Martin Luther King Jr went about it all wrong. Anyone?

We all have a collection, great or small, of critical thinking tools to detect baloney. And yes, "everyone" includes the New Agers and Creationists too, even if their Altoid tin-sized thinking kits are half-missing, rusty, and only dragged out to debate used car salesmen or faraway American Idol judges. 

Those of us who treasure our kits are always questioning what we should pack inside. Fortunately, just as there's no shortage of recommendations on how to stuff the perfect outdoor survival kit or travel gadget kit, we're lucky to enjoy a wealth of smart thinkers willing to share the contents of their baloney detection toolboxes. 

Here's an overview of a few great ones: Readeth thou more

Via Debunking Christianity comes the video Proving that the Bible is Repulsive, from website God is imaginary. It's another foray into the pages of the greatest horror story ever written:

Not much need be said about the content, other than to note that it's a great way to explain to believers why so many tenets of Abrahamic religion are not merely unbelievable to the rational mind, but are outright disgusting. Death to anyone working on the Sabbath... Death to rebellious children... Death to adulterers... Death to homosexuals... Death to followers of other gods... Eternal fiery torment... Subjugation for women... Ownership and even murder of slaves... Massacres of children... Repulsive is too kind a word for such an immoral, subhuman code.

Needless to say, over in the Debunking Christianity comments there's the predictable-as-death-and-taxes attempt to weasel out of the Bible's grotesque commandments:

The 10 commandments weren't given to people who work at Burger King or Wal-Mart. They written for and to the Israelites only.

Israelites only – true or false? It doesn't matter. Just as it doesn't matter whether God got mellow and toned down the bloodlust around 2000 years ago when He became a pappy. What matters is this: If the Bible's alleged God ever forced those inhuman laws upon anybody, then He needs to be hunted down and killed. Period.

In all of Christian apologetics, there's nothing that strikes me as repulsive as "Oh, well, God inflicted those horrors on other people, not on me. So it's OK!" As I don't want to wear out the word "repulsive", I'll just label that apologetic response as sick.

The Word Of Christ

Surprisingly indistinguishable from one’s personal opinion, actually.

(In case you don't recognize this theological genius, it's the loony child abuser from Jesus Camp.)

Source of graphic unknown. Via Pundit Kitchen.

Sure, the "atheists discredited" prediction didn't come to pass by its deadline of February this year. But fear not, for the faithful have another chance at prophetic jackpot waiting in the heavenly wings. 

I stumbled across another prediction over at The Panda's Thumb, via a 2004 post on Pharyngula. This one comes from famed Intelligent Design (née Creationism) proponent William A. Dembski, in a Touchstone Magazine interview: 

Touchstone: Where is the ID movement going in the next ten years?  What new issues will it be exploring, and what new challenges will it be offering Darwinism?

Dembski: In the next five years, molecular Darwinism — the idea that Darwinian processes can produce complex molecular structures at the subcellular level — will be dead. When that happens, evolutionary biology will experience a crisis of confidence because evolutionary biology hinges on the evolution of the right molecules. I therefore foresee a Taliban-style collapse of Darwinism in the next ten years. Intelligent design will of course profit greatly from this. For ID to win the day, however, will require talented new researchers able to move this research program forward, showing how intelligent design provides better insights into biological systems than the dying Darwinian paradigm.

– (Anonymous (Touchstone Magazine), (July/August 2004).  “The Measure of Design: A conversation about the past, present & future of Darwinism and Design.”  Touchstone, 17(6), pp. 60-65.)

A little background for those not up on their devotional readings: Readeth thou more

From failblog.org.