1. Car dealership advert tells atheists to 'shut up'

Comment #185438 by Thadd on May 27, 2008 at 7:39 pm

Did anyone else notice their math is wrong. 86 percent believe in god, but not necessarily as Christians.

2. Discussion on PZ Myers being expelled from Expelled

Comment #148126 by Thadd on March 22, 2008 at 6:43 am

I would love to go see this, does anyone have a link. I doubt they would expel me, thought it would be interesting, because I am an actual biblical scholar and not a biologist.

3. Believe it or not

Comment #97511 by Thadd on December 12, 2007 at 8:15 am

I think it really stinks that they are just saying that atheists should be quite and allow for the constitution to be abused so that their minority doesn't get a negative representation.
I love too how they bring up the War on Christmas, like there are actually atheists out telling people to say Happy Holidays etc. I know I don't and I know many atheists enjoy Christmas, its just bull.

Thadd
archaeoporn.wordpress.com

4. Statement of Concern about Impact of AIG's Creation 'Museum'

Comment #41298 by Thadd on May 15, 2007 at 8:12 pm

As a religion scholar, I am terribly affraid of the impact this museum will have on children.

Teaching incorrect history of the bible and literal interpreattion that goes against all textual, archaeological, and scientific evidence.

Such museums impact more than just science, and it is trully a shame that children will be exposed to this without any actual scientific counter.

5. New Noah's Ark ready to sail

Comment #35809 by Thadd on April 28, 2007 at 11:38 pm

Any puclication that begins an article by stating that Noah's Ark occured 1000 years (give or take) after the beginings of early complex socieites has absolutely no credability. Even the smalles addition of something like "is said to have" etc would save this statment. Otherwise it is just terrible reporting.

6. Prophets of the new atheism

Comment #30574 by Thadd on April 8, 2007 at 8:45 pm

I sent the author this Email:"
Hello, I recently read your Seattle Times Article on "New Atheism". I am going to skip the argument over your misuse of faith for atheists and simply say this.

I am a student in religion, I am finishing my MA this year (Columbia University Dept of Religion), and will move on to a PHD in archeology focusing in Iron Age Syria/Palestine next year(SUNY Stony Brook). As an undergraduate I studied under Dr. Alberto Green and received highest honors for my thesis (Rutgers University Dept of Religion). To say: "Frankly, the success of the new atheist faith would be hard to imagine without today's soaring levels of societal religious illiteracy." Is very offensive and lacks any incite into the current make up of American religious scholarship. This is especially true of those coming into religion scholarship's graduate programs right now, but could also be said of those like Dr. Bill Dever, Prof. Emeritus from U of Arizona, an agnostic that does not believe in a personal god and sees such belief as standing in the way of religious scholarship (see the latest BAR). This idea has recently become a cop out used by religious individuals willing to ignore atheists/agnostics/secular humanists/etc who are advancing onto the stage of religious scholarship. It misses the point that those at seminaries still think Isaiah had Christ in it and the fact that many religious religion scholars don't bother taking into account historical or contextual studies or bothering to learn languages in which to approach the texts (whereas as an atheist I have studied both biblical Hebrew and Ge'ez and plan to add more as I go along.) I will be thinking about this tonight as I finish my paper on Gender Imagery in Lamentations I. I do not write this all to blow my own horn, but because your statement was generally offensive and ignorant of scholarship and the population of atheists in general. Many of us have read the bible and other books, such as the Gita, the Tao, Sutras, the Koran, and have studied religion in sociological, historical, and scientific contexts.

Your comment "The possibility that it developed in response to a living God was not considered." Does not show the influence of atheists, but that the authors were taking a scientific and naturalistic viewpoint. Additionally, they would have been presenting research and a specific opinion. If you can write a scientific piece that isn't fully "The Bible said this" then it might be considered for such an article. There is no reason for such a publication to recapitulate the divine idea of religion, but new research might be worth an article.

You state "Such a wild caricature will be unrecognizable to any believer (like me) in the God of Israel.". Um have you ever read the Bible? I started out my religious study looking for something, and their was never a point, even when I hoped for theism, that I was unaware of this person in the Bible. Additionally, how many religious people in America, Christians and Jews, characterize Allah and Islam as this, yet it is the same god, just another interpretation. How can you ignore this with killings going on following direct biblical example, ie murders of homosexuals or abortion clinic doctors? While Christians and Jews can often see Yhwh in a positive light and gain positive guidance from this, this derives from their own moral compass and not the bible, to say otherwise shows an extreme societal religious illiteracy.

Your statement "Certainly, you can have an ethical individual atheist, an instinctively caring, generous person who happens to disbelieve in God. But an atheist society could not survive. It would first live on the fumes of ancient moral traditions. In the end, racked by despair at life's apparent meaninglessness, its members would return to more nourishing faiths." makes no sense. Certainly you have not even read the God Delusion, which you are writing on. To begin with, no one is altruistic, a basic fact of social evolution theory. This pertains to almost all individuals of all species, and certainly humans. Pre-human hominids lived in groups, which would require some basic group dynamics or morals, yet we poses no shred of evidence considering religion in these groups, thus religion cannot be the route of their societies. To look at more complex societies of modern humans, you can consider those in atheistic religions. Their is no divinity behind their morals, but they still get them from some natural human source. And of course when you say "Which might sound like the new religion has a promising future. I doubt it. For one thing, God gives objective definition to our ideas of right and wrong, crucial for civilization. Equally important, he provides meaning to life itself.", you neglect the fact that it is man's interpretation of texts and past interpretation which gives us objective definitions of right and wrong. The bible says to stone women who are adulterous etc, but we now say such behavior is wrong. Either you say that the text was wrong, or that human understanding was wrong (or that Jews and Christians should stone adulterous women). The texts are great, they are interesting, and people can gain things from them, but in the end it is man and not god or texts which define morals.


I am sorry to turn this into a long discussion mail, but I am so upset over your cop out statement concerning religious literacy, which has not real scientifically support, other than your feeling that those who aren't religious must just not understand it, that a lot more came out. I hope that you reconsider this blatantly offensive and derogatory position, as it is truthfully flat wrong. (Also see Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't by Stephen Prothero for the fact that religious people have very low religious literacy in general in America).


Sincerely
Thaddeus Jacob Nelson
Columbia University Dept of Religion 2007
"

7. Prophets of the new atheism

Comment #30568 by Thadd on April 8, 2007 at 8:09 pm

"Frankly, the success of the new atheist faith would be hard to imagine without today's soaring levels of societal religious illiteracy."

Im sorry I'm sick of this offensive idea that has been comming out more and more lately. I am finishing my MA in religion this semester, I am an atheist, I am going on to a PHD in archaeology, focusing in ancient Syria/Palestine. I think I have quite high religious literacy, and find this an obnoxious cop out.