Good Reason

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Category: religion (page 22 of 36)

Popes don’t do science

30 June 2009 / / 1 Comment

Zeus, this is dumb.

Pope Benedict XVI said scientific tests confirmed shards found in the underground chamber at the church of St Paul’s-Outside-the-Walls in Rome were from the apostle.
…
Pope Benedict XVI announced the findings during a service at the basilica, as Rome prepared to celebrate the Feasts of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.

“This seems to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition that these are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul,” he said.

And what scientific tests did they do, you ask? Oh, well, obviously they compared the DNA from the shards to another DNA sample that was known to have come from Paul… oh wait. There’s your problem right there. There aren’t any.

I wish the Pope would quit molesting science like it was some kind of child or something. I wish he’d just said he’d prayed about it and got the answer that way. It would still fool the believers, and it would be just as immune to critical scrutiny.

Dogma keeps you in the dark

20 June 2009 / / 1 Comment

Orthodox Jews don’t turn on the lights on the Sabbath. They tie it back to Exodus 35:3, which prohibits lighting fires.

But what about when a sensor turns the lights on automatically?

A couple have taken legal action after claiming motion sensors installed at their holiday flat in Dorset breached their rights as Orthodox Jews.

Gordon and Dena Coleman said they cannot leave or enter their Bournemouth flat on the Sabbath because the hallway sensors automatically switch on lights.

The couple’s religious code bans lights and other electrical equipment being switched on during Jewish holidays.

They have now issued a county court writ claiming religious discrimination.

My religious background instilled in me an ability to weasel my way around arcane rules. I can think of all kinds of ways around this, and if they can’t, it means they’re not trying.

First, isn’t there any leeway for intentionality? If you don’t trigger the light on purpose, are you really turning on the light? Or how about compartmentalising? You’re triggering the sensor, but it’s really the sensor that’s turning on the light. It’s not your fault if your action instigates a chain of events that results in a light going on.

And, in my experience, religious people are really fond of attributing all technological advances to a god, as in “God made modern medicine and the Internet.” Why not capitalise on that? It’s not their fault that the light; it’s actually God that invented the sensor that’s turning the lights on. “Oh, Lord, if you do not want the lights to go on, you have the power to stop them.” Guess it’s okay by him.

But if they can’t come up with any of these rationalisations on their own, then I say they can just sit in their flat in the dark. Perhaps they could use the time to ponder the idiocy of adopting a stupid and unworkable philosophy.

That, or hostage negotiator.

13 June 2009 / / 2 Comments

Are you thinking of going on a mission for the LDS Church? Here’s an idea of what kind of job you’ll be qualified for afterward.

Six days a week, in fair weather and foul, two-dozen door-to-door salesmen, all of whom live clustered together in an apartment complex in this suburb west of Chicago, pile into S.U.V.’s and cars and head into the big city, bent on sales of home security systems.

And on Sunday, their one day off, they drive together to the nearest house of worship of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The salesmen are mostly former Mormon missionaries from Utah who cut their teeth — and learned their people-skill chops — cold-calling for their faith. In Chicago and in its suburbs where their employer, Pinnacle Security of Orem, Utah, has shipped them for the summer sales season, they are doing much the same thing, but as a job.

“It’s missionary work turned into a business,” said Cameron Treu, 30, who served his mission in Chile and was recruited into D2D (that is door-to-door in sales lingo) by another former missionary.

After the mish, I never wanted to tract again. Imagine going from that to sales. At least as a missionary, I had someone else to talk to.

However, it was during the mission that I realised I liked teaching, so maybe that was one positive. There would have been better ways to go about it, though, like getting into my program and teaching as a tutor or something. An LDS mission makes a lousy gap year. Or two.

People discover things, religions don’t.

5 June 2009 / / 4 Comments

I’m going through President Obama’s Cairo speech. I’m very encouraged by his commitment to undo the misdeeds of the past administration.

As an atheist, though, I’d be remiss if I didn’t correct one point that the president brought up about Islam.

As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed.

This focus is misguided. Islam did not give the world algebra, the compass, printing, the ballpoint pen with erasable ink, or anything like them. Individuals can and do discover and invent such things; religions do not. Religions qua religions are not capable of advancing human knowledge because they are non-empirical belief systems. They get their data not from the physical world, but from supposed revelations. As such, they are no more likely to be right than random chance.

Religions may on occasion offer interesting hypotheses about the world or human behaviour, which someone might test. But then that’s science, not religion.

Religions have acted as a repressive force on human progress more often than a promoting force. The library at Alexandria was a repository of the great learning amassed up to that time. Its destruction over centuries is one of the great crimes against humanity. The responsible parties are the ravages of time, public indifference, conquering kings, and people acting under the influence of religion.

As Christians gained dominance in the region, they felt uncomfortable with pagan temples full of pagan documents. In 391 AD, Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, urged a mob to destroy the temple at Serapis, presumably at the same time destroying whatever books were left in the daughter library. This was hailed as a great victory of the Christians over the pagans.

The final fire was in 645 AD, when the Moslem caliph Omar conquered Egypt. The story is that Omar was asked what to do about the books in the library, and gave the reply: “If the books agree with the Koran, they are not necessary. If they disagree, they are not desired. Therefore, destroy them.” According to tradition, the scrolls were used as fuel to provide hot water for the soldiers’ baths for six months.

The story may be bunk, but the sentiments are real. In the days of Galileo, churches tried to suppress knowledge. It didn’t work. Now they attempt to wall off their theology from scientific scrutiny (perhaps by saying that their god is ‘outside of science’), or they offer up ersatz science with fake facts to misinform.

I see human progress as the triumph of empiricism and reason over superstition. The credit belongs to the people who invented and discovered, not to the religions that for too long have stood in the way.

Problem solved!

31 May 2009 / / 5 Comments








Shopping for religions

15 May 2009 / / 2 Comments

When I left my religion of origin, it was because it didn’t live up to its hype. It claimed to be the one and only way that God had chosen to reveal his truth to humans. Then it turned out that not only was it not the Only True System, it wasn’t even a true system. Once that became clear, the choice was simple. I got out.

If you’ve left a religion, my hat’s off to you. I don’t really mind which reason was the one that got you out. And yet it seems to me that if you do the right thing for the wrong reason, there’s a very good chance you’ll end up reverting to an earlier wrong opinion.

I’m thinking about this because I’ve noticed this result from the latest Pew survey.

More than half of all Americans have switched religions at least once, according to an in-depth survey released this week.

And that may still be “a conservative estimate,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

First off, religious mobility is a good thing. If people are becoming disaffected with their current religion, at least some of the movers will give up on religion altogether, and that will boost the numbers of ‘nones’. But to me at least, the reasons people give for leaving seem a bit weak.

The reasons people give for changing their religion – or leaving religion altogether – differ widely depending on the origin and destination of the convert: 71 percent of Catholics and nearly 60 percent of Protestants who switched to another religion didn’t think their spiritual needs were being met or they just liked another faith more, or they changed their views on religious or moral beliefs.

I know religion is a commodity, but it still seems weird to me to approach religion like a shopper. Maybe that’s because Mormons are used to putting up with their faith even if they don’t like it very much or disagree with it sometimes. After all, it claims to be the Only True Et Cetera, so what are you going to do?

This could be the scientist in me talking, but it seems to me that the only valid criteria for determining your belief system is: is it true? If it’s true, you accept it, even if it’s unpalatable. But look at these folks wandering around. They escape one religion only to bounce into another one. And how will they know if it’s the right one? Because of how they feel. Or they’ll like it more. Both poor reasons to accept an idea. They’d be better off it they’d realise that ideas are true to the extent that they match up with available data from the real world. And if they did that, they’d abandon the baseless doctrines that form the basis of all religions.

Ex-Catholics seem to have the right idea though.

Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change: Those who have quit the church, 10 percent of U.S. adults, vastly outnumber incoming Catholics, 2.6 percent of adults. Two in three of Catholics who became unaffiliated and half of those who became Protestant say they left the church because they “stopped believing its teachings.”

Well done.

Theologian and linguist of the week

6 May 2009 / / 7 Comments

I’ve done my best to ignore Not-Joe the Not-Plumber all these months because I’m hoping he’ll go away. Unfortunately, he keeps poking his head into the public discourse, and I’m going to comment this time because ignoring dangerous things can get you hurt somewhere along the line.

Joe’s used to speaking outside his expertise — he’s opined about politics and economics, badly — but now in his recent interview with Christianity Today, he takes a hatchet to gay people, and along the way, he makes a truly strange argument about language.

Interviewer: In the last month, same-sex marriage has become legal in Iowa and Vermont. What do you think about same-sex marriage at a state level?

Joe: At a state level, it’s up to them. I don’t want it to be a federal thing. I personally still think it’s wrong. People don’t understand the dictionary—it’s called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.

If I understand his argument, he’s saying that being queer is “strange and unusual”…because the dictionary says so. And there’s only one dictionary. You know — the dictionary! That one.

People have all kinds of attitudes about language, but it takes an especially obtuse individual to insist that a dictionary definition is the true meaning of a word. Words have different senses, as with ‘queer’. It’s hard to make the argument that the dictionary definition for one sense of a word should determine the meaning of a completely different sense. It’s like going to the bank for some cash and being surprised not to find a river there because ‘the dictionary’ says that a bank is ‘sloping land by a river’.

There’s a lot more to the article: his “state’s rights” trope that was used to justify racism in the South. And his admission that he’s ‘had some friends’ who are gay. (Why do they always say that?) But of course he won’t let his friends near the kids. Feel the Christian love.

Patmos mushrooms are primo

17 April 2009 / / 1 Comment

Reverend Smith, creator of the Brick Testament, has finally gotten up to Revelation.

It’s surreal to see the beasts with the six wings and and eyes all over. Seeing them depicted makes me think, “I believed this?”


The greatest part for me was how Jesus was depicted. You will remember, of course, from your reading of Revelation that John says Jesus had eyes like fire, and a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth. Well, so it is here. Like, every time Jesus appears, there’s that sword!


Wonder if he has a hard time making himself understood. Perhaps he just has exceptionally clear diction.

Separated at birth

13 April 2009 / / 1 Comment

Dear Sister sent me a lovely Easter email with a picture of Jesus coming out of the tomb.


Phwoar, smells like someone’s been dead for three days in here.

Anyway, I’m no expert on Middle Eastern physiognomy, but I’m reasonably certain that Jesus wouldn’t have looked like the lead singer of Boston.

Backlash! The Freak-Outening

10 April 2009 / / 2 Comments

It’s been nothing but bad news for Christian bigots. First the ARIS poll shows that the percentage of self-identified Christians has dropped by 10% — oh my lack of god! from 86% to 76%! It can only mean one thing: the end of Christian America! Which is funny, because that’s the title of the Newsweek article.

Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler [president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. “A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us,” Mohler wrote. “The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture.”

I hope I’m around when they get down to 50.

But that’s not all. It’s been an amazing week for marriage equality in America. Iowa allowed gay marriage, then Vermont, and finally D.C. has decided to accept the marriages of same-sex couples from out of state. I think the religious haters are used to thinking of the world as a cesspool of evil, and they love to imagine that (like Abraham in Sodom) they’re the only reason god is forestalling judgment on the nations. But I don’t think they’re used to seeing setbacks like this.

And predictably, they’re freaking. Never mind the laughable NOM ad. There’s a lot more crazy out there. Try this article on for size:

‘Gay marriage’ in Iowa more damaging than a 500-year flood
…
Flood waters erode the soil. “Gay marriage” erodes the soul. A flood impacts for a decade. “Same-sex marriage” destroys generations. A flood draws a community together. “Homosexual marriage” tears the family apart. Communities recover from floods. The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence.

As always, vague on details. How does homosexual marriage tear anyone’s family apart? How does it destroy generations? Aren’t you worried of running out of scare quotes?

As a native Iowan and as a pastor, I cannot remain silent. In light of this, I would exhort the church in Iowa to do three things:

— First, we must honor biblical marriage in the church and in the home.

Hawt! Polygamy and concubines! Oh wait, that’s Old Testament. What about New Testament marriage? Hmm. Paul says don’t bother. Hmm. The bible doesn’t sound too traditional to me.

But the prize for delusional pattern matching goes to Morality in Media President Bob Peters in his essay ‘Connecting the Dots: The Link Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murders’. He argues that mass murders are caused by things he’s afraid of: black people (and their rap music), sexual liberation, and gay people.

The underlying problem is that increasingly we live in a ‘post-Christian’ society, where Judeo-Christian faith and values have less and less influence. Among other things, Judaism and Christianity taught that murder was wrong and that included murder motivated by anger, hatred and revenge. Both religions also taught that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves and to forgive others.

People God kills in the Bible: 2.3 million plus.

“For many citizens, what has replaced Judeo-Christian faith and values is the secular value system that is reflected in films, rap/music lyrics, and videogames and on TV and now the Internet, where the taking of human life for just about any reason is commonplace and is often portrayed in an appealing manner and in realistic detail. Murder motivated by hatred and revenge is also justified.

Yeah, I was just getting ready to watch some murder on the Internet.

“This secular value system is also reflected in the ‘sexual revolution,’ which is the driving force behind the push for ‘gay marriage;’ and the Iowa Supreme Court decision is another indication that despite all the damage this revolution has caused to children, adults, family life and society (think abortion, divorce, pornography, rape, sexual abuse of children, sexually transmitted diseases, trafficking in women and children, unwed teen mothers and more), it continues to advance relentlessly.

Yep, an unbroken line straight from gay marriage to mass murder.

People see what they want to see, of course, but religious people are especially skilled at it. The defense of their illusory worldview depends on being able to see illusory patterns, and they must defend the worldview because without it nothing makes sense to them. And it’s even worse than usual because, like I say, the latest setbacks on gay marriage has hit these believers especially hard, leaving them without a feeling of control. There’s a pretty interesting psychological study on the effects of lack of control here. From the abstract:

Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions.

It’s making them even more delusional than even they would otherwise be.

I hope the next state to allow gay marriage does it within the next month or so. The bigots will be so rattled, you’ll be able to hear them coming down the street.

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