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Category: atheism (page 15 of 17)

UWA Atheist/Christian debate

5 August 2008 / / 11 Comments

The debate went pretty well, actually. In the Christian corner was Tim Thorburn, and the Atheist was Michael Tan.

Atheist Michael did a great job, hitting all the main points. Humans have a need to explain things, and sometimes they make explanations that involve magical beings. But we need to use evidence and reason to sort out what’s happening, and the evidence for Christianity is not particularly strong. The most electric moment: Tim said that the Bible contained predictions that have been fulfilled, and Michael responded that many others haven’t yet, especially the return of Jesus. “How long is it going to take before we realise he’s not coming back?” he said, to gasps and applause from the audience.

Christian Tim argued that Christianity was true because the Bible said so. Okay, he didn’t put it as weakly as that. He mentioned that the Bible contained eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, and that Paul alluded to the eyewitness accounts so casually that they must have been well-accepted by the Christians of his day. So that’s the evidence.

“Except it isn’t evidence,” I said to Tim as we chatted afterwards. “It’s another claim.”

“How do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, Paul is claiming that Jesus was resurrected and that there were eyewitnesses to it. But that’s not evidence. That’s another claim, and we need to examine it.

“I mean, it’s part of the same story. You can’t use a part of the story as evidence for the story!”

“Yes, I can!” he said, looking rather surprised.

I also asked him about the Book of Mormon. At the front of every copy of the Book of Mormon, there appears the testimony of three men who claimed that an angel showed them the gold plates. There’s also the testimony of eight other men who claimed that they got to see the gold plates without any angel. I believe these testimonies to be false, to which Tim the Christian readily agreed. But if you’re going to accept the testimony of so-called eyewitnesses in the Bible, why wouldn’t you accept the testimonies of eye-witnesses in the Book of Mormon?

Tim responded that the Bible was a very reliable source of testimony because it had many different witnesses whose testimony dovetailed together so well that it couldn’t all be fiction. I’m not doing his response justice because he said it much better than I can remember, and I hope I’m getting the gist of it right — memory is unreliable. But that was basically the idea; the Bible was so much better a source for eyewitness testimony than other books because it was so complex and dense and interlocking that no one could have faked it and it must be true.

But anyone who’s heard the story of the Nottingham Lion or heard conflicting reports from eyewitnesses at accident scenes knows that eyewitness accounts are not reliable sources for what really happened. Especially when the story has had hundreds of years to get itself straightened out.

Anyway, it was a fine outing. Michael and Tim were good gentlemen to talk to. And the UWA Atheist and Agnostic Society has a Facebook group, if you’re a person of the ‘Book.

Oh my FSM! Atheist/Christian debate at UWA

4 August 2008 / / 2 Comments

UWA people: here’s an event that might be worth attending. It’s a debate between ‘UWA Atheists and Agnostics’ and the omnipresent ‘Christian Union’.

I didn’t even know there was an organisation for atheists and agnostics at UWA. So I’ve no idea who will be on the panel. But get a load of the topic: “Christianity: Truth or Fiction?”

Don’t you think that’s a lot to take on? It’s impossible to establish the existence of the Head Supernatural Being, but then you have to demonstrate which religion is his favourite. So there are a lot of places to deflate this kind of argument. I expect to see a lot of ‘Appeal to Scripture’ and maybe some ‘Appeal to Consequences’ because you know how they love that crap. Hitler and Stalin are expected to make an appearance.

That’s tomorrow (5 August 2008) at 1.00 in the Alexander Lecture Theatre. See you UWA people there, and I’ll have a full report for the rest of you.

Carnival of the Godless — featuring me

21 July 2008 / / 3 Comments

One of my blog posts — the one about Satan — appears on Carnival of the Godless this week. Welcome to all the new readers. Hope you enjoy the posts, and check out the other Deconversion Stories as well. And comment! Love to hear from you.

Oh, and the other CotG articles are good too.

Jesus rulz u r teh suxxor LOL

8 July 2008 / / 4 Comments

Here are the worst comment threads on the Internets:

3. Facebook Discussion groups. They may no longer be extant, and I don’t dare check. Some intelligent people and some of the most ignorant babbling fools on earth.
2. I Can Has Cheezburger comment threads. I love lolcats, but the comments are unreadable. So cute, you’ll think you’re diabetic.
1. YouTube comments. So many morons, it fills me with despair and makes me want to kill myself.

I don’t know why I bothered, but I made a comment on this YouTube thread, a video about someone whose car was crushed by a truck, but walked away. Believers are hailing it as a miracle. It’s pretty surprising, but in this wide world full of accidents, it would be more surprising if we didn’t see this kind of thing once in a while.

So, me commenting as ‘fontor’:

A miracle? So that would mean…

Thousands of people die in accidents every year. God could rescue any of them, anytime he wants… and for some reason he refuses?

What a jerk!

Response 1, from ‘gorgouesprincess15’:

ur the jerk but dont worrie ur surly going to hell have fun there loser

Response 2 from ‘adriennexxxx’:

yeah ur right
the reason god does this is because its time for us to go to heaven and live happier!!
instead of living in this shitty world!!
ur right gorgousprincess15!!
fuck u fontor!!
watch ur going to hell!!

Hateful of life and gleeful of torment. Behold: extreme Christianity.

Too much credit for the religious metaphysicists

14 May 2008 / / 14 Comments

I must be the last person to read “Why Darwin Matters” by Michael Shermer. I like Shermer, and I enjoyed “Why People Believe Weird Things”. So this book is a general explanation of evolution and a takedown of creationist arguments. It also gets into recent legal actions where ID activists, having come up empty on the science, are attempting to wedge creationism into schools. It’s a fun and interesting read.

But I’ve run aground on this bit where Shermer argues that religious people can ‘believe’ in evolution. He mentions the three possibilities for how science and religion can interact:

  • the ‘Conflicting-Worlds’ model: science and religion is describing the same thing, and one must be wrong
  • the ‘Same-World’ model, where science and religion are both describing aspects of the same thing, and both do a good job of it
  • and the ‘Separate-Worlds’ model (which is basically the ‘Non-Overlapping Magisteria’ argument): that science describes the physical world, religion describes the spiritual, and this can work because the two don’t converge.

Inexplicably, Shermer plumps for the ‘Separate-Worlds’ model:

Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. Thus, the most logically coherent argument for theists is that God is outside time and space; that is, God is beyond nature — super nature, or supernatural — and therefore cannot be explained by natural causes. God is beyond the dominion of science, and science is outside the realm of God.

And there the chapter ends.

Shermer is careful here. He’s arguing that this is the only plausible road that theists can take, without saying he’s taking that road himself. And yet, by leaving it there, he’s making it sound approving.

You could take a Carnival cruise ship through the holes in the NOMA argument. Okay, if God is outside time and space, he’s outside time and space. What’s he doing creating planets, then? Or dictating books, or appearing to prophets, or healing the sick, or finding your car keys? As soon as he interacts in the physical world like believers claim he constantly is, then the two realms collide, and we can examine things to check for goddy effects. (None so far; keep you posted.)

Not surprisingly, I’m an unabashed ‘Conflicting-Worlds’-ist. But check out Shermer’s paragraph on it:

This “warfare” approach holds that science and religion are mutually exclusive ways of knowing, one being right and the other wrong. In this view, the findings of modern science are always a potential threat to one’s faith and thus they must be carefully vetted against religious truths before acceptance; likewise, the tenets of religion are always a potential threat to science and thus they must be viewed with skepticism and cynicism. The conflicting-worlds model is embraced by extremists on both sides of the divide. Young Earth creationists, who insist that all scientific findings must correlate perfectly with their own (often literal) reading of Genesis, retain a suspicious hostility of science, while militant atheists cannot imagine how religion could contribute anything positive to human knowledge or social interaction.

To read Shermer erecting the scarecrow of militant extremist atheism is particularly disappointing. 

Imagine that he’s talking about Gershon’s equation: 2 + 2 = 4. If this equation ran up against some religious tenet, you’d hear people saying, “Oh, two plus two could equal five in a spiritual way. To say that two plus two equals four and can only ever equal four is some kind of extremist point of view. You must be a militant fourist. Who’s to say that the fiveists can’t contribute something to our understanding? Maybe the answer isn’t five exactly, maybe it’s closer to four. But coming right out and saying it’s just four… well, that just seems a bit extreme.” And then Shermer says, “The only way to think the answer is five is if you believe that it’s five on a non-material plane that doesn’t interact with this one. Therefore, you can be a fiveist, and still accept that the answer is four.”

I’m sure Shermer knows this terrain, which makes his support for NOMA all the more baffling. Is he trying to trick the rubes into thinking that evolution’s okay? In that case, what you’ll get is people making a nominal committment to science being okay, while being ignorant of what science is, or any of its implications. Which seems kind of dishonest to me. 

The fact is, religions are trying to describe the physical world, and they’re getting it wrong, and science is getting it right. And if they’re trying to describe the spiritual world, they’re doing a pretty crap job at that too, since they can’t seem to agree with each other on any but the most obvious ethical points. Science, on the other hand, gives us better and better descriptions of the physical realm, with a way of disproving bad explanations.

Do your worst

17 March 2008 / / 1 Comment

This is great: a rationalist challenges a magician to kill him with magic.

Of course, magic failed.

On 3 March 2008, in a popular TV show, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, challenged India’s most “powerful” tantrik (black magician) to demonstrate his powers on him. That was the beginning of an unprecedented experiment. After all his chanting of mantra (magic words) and ceremonies of tantra failed, the tantrik decided to kill Sanal Edamaruku with the “ultimate destruction ceremony” on live TV. Sanal Edamaruku agreed and sat in the altar of the black magic ritual. India TV observed skyrocketing viewership rates.
…
India TV, one of India’s major Hindi channels with national outreach, invited Sanal Edamaruku for a discussion on “Tantrik power versus Science”. Pandit Surinder Sharma, who claims to be the tantrik of top politicians and is well known from his TV shows, represented the other side. During the discussion, the tantrik showed a small human shape of wheat flour dough, laid a thread around it like a noose and tightened it. He claimed that he was able to kill any person he wanted within three minutes by using black magic. Sanal challenged him to try and kill him.

The tantrik tried. He chanted his mantras (magic words): “Om lingalingalinalinga, kilikili….” But his efforts did not show any impact on Sanal – not after three minutes, and not after five. The time was extended and extended again. The original discussion program should have ended here, but the “breaking news” of the ongoing great tantra challenge was overrunning all program schedules.
…
After nearly two hours, the anchor declared the tantrik’s failure. The tantrik, unwilling to admit defeat, tried the excuse that a very strong god whom Sanal might be worshipping obviously protected him. “No, I am an atheist,” said Sanal Edamaruku.

I gotta hand it to the tantrik. He really thought he was the real deal, accepted a challenge, and was Unambiguously Disconfirmed.

Maybe he could take a few cues from Christians. They do a lot of spinning when their claims are disconfirmed. Pick any of the following:

  • He’ll die… eventually! It may take 70 years, but the magic will work.
  • The important thing is not whether I managed to kill someone or not, the important thing is that we learn to accept Gods’ will and build our faith in them.
  • Sometimes Kali says ‘no’.

Ethnicity v. religion

13 March 2008 / / 2 Comments

Islam is my least favourite religion. Has been, even before 9/11. It’s a very problematic religion; it hasn’t gotten a grip on its most extreme elements, it does the most harm to its believers (physically and mentally), and its adherents are, in general, the least tolerant of any religion I know. Its size and influence only serve to magnify the difficulty.

But I always felt uncomfortable about Islam-bashing, not because it was disrespectful of others’ beliefs (they have to be true to earn my respect). The discomfort was this: take a walk around the seedier right-wing hate sites like Redstate or Malkin, and you’ll see Islam-bashing in spades. So if I’m saying something against Islam, what’s the difference between the right-wing haterz and me? Might I not be mistaken for the racists I despise? Even good ol’ Christopher Hitchens, when he gets going on the danger of Islam, seems to blend in with the racists on the right. And it’s taken him to some horrifying conclusions: the invasion of Iraq, and some saber-rattling on Iran. Even Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose anti-Islam cred is impeccable, isn’t usually mentioned with Dawkins or Harris, and I think it’s because the Left feels uncomfortable with her since she sits so comfortably with the anti-immigration nutbars in the Dutch right-wing. And so my criticism of Islam, if I were inclined to make any, has been muted.

Only recently have I been able to see a crucial distinction that would resolve this conflict. It’s the difference between religion and ethnicity. I’ll oppose the religion of Islam — by means of reason, science, and education — because it teaches absurdities, and it’s dangerous. I’ll oppose every other religion on earth for the same reason. I’m an equal opportunity opposer. But when it comes to Arabs, Indonesians, Africans, or any other ethnicity, I have nothing to say.

When I was a kid, there were lots of Iranian uni students in my hometown. This was at the height of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. Listening to the Charlie Daniels Band on AM radio does something to a kid, and some of those Iranians seemed pretty scary. Scarier than normal uni students, which is pretty scary anyway. Fortunately, I had a wise father who took me to some cultural events on campus and got me to meet the students. (He liked the lamb.) I came to realise that even though Iran had just gone crazy, there was a segment of Iran that was secular and moderate, and who hated the new government. Understanding the difference between religion and ethnicity could have helped me a bit.

In connection with this, I’d also like to echo the sentiments of Dave at exchristian.net, who feels that while opposing religion is fair game, being horrible to actual people sucks. I now feel embarrassed when I think about the believer I used to be. Some are okay people, I was not. I knew the truth, dontcha know, and Jesus was my homeboy. I was good at getting around objections to the one true faith, and I must have been an intolerable pain. Fortunately I reformed and learned to question my received wisdom without fearing the wrath of hypothetical beings. Maybe someone in a religion now might be a future unbeliever. No need to be horrible to my future friend. I’ll point out bad reasoning, but I hope I’ll spare the messenger. Just in case I can learn something from them.

What happens when you stop believing in god?

6 March 2008 / / 28 Comments

Youngest Boy asked me, “What happens when you stop believing in God?”

“Absolutely nothing!” I said. “You’re still the same person you were, and everything goes on like normal.”

And that’s one way to tell that God’s not real. If you stop believing in cars and decide to walk out in the road, reality will soon disconfirm your belief. If you disbelieve in food and water and stop eating and drinking, you die. But if you stop believing in supernatural beings… it’s amazing how irrelevant your past belief can seem, so quickly.

It’s like Philip K. Dick said:

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Youngest Boy thought about all this and said, “But you could not believe in atoms, and nothing would change.” He’s very smart. You have to watch yourself with this kid.

“That’s true,” I said, “With atoms, it would take a long time to notice you were wrong. You probably wouldn’t know until you tried to do some research involving atoms. Then you’d realise that people who know about atoms could predict things you couldn’t.”

But what does belief in god help you predict? You can’t work out who will be cured of illness when you pray. Most people get better with most diseases, some don’t, and some die. Then you say, well, that was god’s plan. It lends itself to loads of ex post facto rationalisation, but not prediction.

It’s not all true that nothing changes though. You are finally able to embrace reason without having to fear it. Because, post-deconversion, reason has already knocked down your rickety system. There’s no more harm it can do you. You are free.

Celebrity deconversion story

24 February 2008 / / 21 Comments

I enjoyed reading this “My Defining Moment” piece from actor and writer Ricky Gervais.

He became an atheist at age eight, over one afternoon. How smart must he be? It took me years! Sometimes I get envious of other people’s intellect.

Secular school

3 December 2007 / / 8 Comments

Are people good because they have an evolutionarily-endowed drive toward compassion? Or is it because parents teach them? That’s one of the arguments for taking kids to church, isn’t it? — that they learn moral principles. Of course, kids learn a lot of immoral brain-crippling things in church too, like belief in non-existant entities and short-circuiting reason via faith. So wouldn’t it be good for secular parents to be approaching their children’s moral upbringing in a more structured way?

That’s the idea behind Atheist Sunday school for kids.

The lives of these young people would be much easier, adult nonbelievers say, if they learned at an early age how to respond to the God-fearing majority in the U.S. “It’s important for kids not to look weird,” says Peter Bishop, who leads the preteen class at the Humanist center in Palo Alto. Others say the weekly instruction supports their position that it’s O.K. to not believe in God and gives them a place to reinforce the morals and values they want their children to have.

I like the idea of inoculating children from religion by educating them about it. Too many people raise their kids without any knowledge about religion, only to have them get older, hear about Christianity (or whatever) and think it’s the greatest thing.

So you think, great, now we can bore children with secularism like we bore them with religion. But don’t be like that. It’d be good.

Imagine starting out with a child reading a quote from Tom Paine. Then an opening song: John Lennon’s Imagine. (Well, maybe something else.)

Then a story; perhaps a Norse creation myth. The children could then make up their own creation story and illustrate it.

After a quick round of Spot the Fallacy, it’s TV time: something about dinosaurs.

Wrap it up with something about any of the following areas:

  • critical thinking
  • science and nature
  • logic and reason
  • self-worth and confidence

I think it’d be great. Just make it no more than an hour long, and have ice cream. They love that.

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