1. Of Dickens and Darwin

Comment #95638 by mrmatt on December 8, 2007 at 9:45 pm

I don't know how many times I have to point this out: postmodernism has had its day, it is old hat, not many people in literary studies think much of it anymore.

And as to the "science" in postmodernism; it is not science and nor is it trying to be. It is merely an analogy or a paradigm used to describe something. It does not claim it is science at all. For instance, when Deleuze speaks of rhizomes, he isn't talking about plants, he is talking about a philosophical concept similar to how the biological rhizome works. I don't see what the problem is with doing this.

Disclaimer: As a literary academic, I am not fond of postmodernism myself, but I know generally what I am talking about when I talk about it. I also know that it is nowhere near as prevalent in academia (at least in my area) as a lot of articles around here make it out to be. It is sooooo passe these days. ;)

2. American kids, dumber than dirt: Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

Comment #81747 by mrmatt on October 25, 2007 at 6:00 am

This doesn't surprise me, and I even recognise it in my own generation (I'm 25) and I despair!

May I recommend the movie "Idiocracy" (if you haven't seen it already) for an entertaining and funny dystopic vision of what might happen as a result of continued "dumbening" hehehe.

3. Science can answer how questions but only religion can answer why questions

Comment #81488 by mrmatt on October 24, 2007 at 8:25 pm

Science DOES answer why questions.

Why does a hawk fly, but not an emu?
ans: specific, inherited evolutionary traits that were favoured.

Why does the moon orbit the earth?
ans: gravitational pull

...and so on.

The scientific answers are based on observation and evidence, and FALSIFIABILITY.

Religions may offer answers, but they are easy and cheap answers, and ensure that the truth about the world is superceded by the truth of their false, unproven dogma.

4. If you don't accept the supernatural, you obviously think life is depressing, meaningless and cold

Comment #81482 by mrmatt on October 24, 2007 at 8:13 pm

Religious people can't be depressed and unhappy?

Non-religious people don't appreciate art? What about the many artists who weren't religious at all; Douglas Adams, Jose Saramago, Shelley, Vonnegut, Korsakov, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe etc etc.

The supernatural, like fiction, art, music, is an imaginative human construct. The difference is that fiction, art and music do not command us how to live. The Bible, for instance, is a fun piece of fiction (murders, rapes, magic, epic battles etc) but that's all it is.

5. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #81476 by mrmatt on October 24, 2007 at 7:43 pm

This statement presupposes (quite rightly) that a lot of evil was done in the name of religion. It amounts to saying: "well, religion has done bad things, but look at atheism."

The theist therefore admits that bad things have been done in the name of religion.

But it is not a question of religion vs atheism, and which one has the bigger body count. For starters, atheism CAN'T have a body count like religion can...atheism is not, and has never been, institutional. Religions are.

These institutions that committed the atrocities were not atheist institutions, they were Stalinist/Fascist ones. This is why there have been documented cases of people within these institutions who believed in god. Yes even in Russia! But a belief in god is not the same as a religion. Religion is a rival institution, and was often suppressed or eliminated by the state.

Communism, for example, repudiated religion because it exploited the proletariat, like most things, and Nazism had a uneasy relationship with it because it ran the risk of competing with the Fuhrer as a moral, cultural leader as well as notions of salvation etc.

Therefore, Stalin, Hitler (though his atheism is debateable) and Mao were not so much atheists as anti-religion. BIG DIFFERENCE.

6. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81069 by mrmatt on October 24, 2007 at 2:15 am

agreed infidel_michael.

but these straw men have been answered and rebutted so many times that one wonders why the apologists can't come up with anything new.

oh i know! because nothing they say is ever new! it's always millenia-old mumbo-jumbo, retroactively "rationalised." ;)

7. War in Heaven: Hitchens Meets D'Souza on Home Turf

Comment #81042 by mrmatt on October 24, 2007 at 12:25 am

Re: Communism.

One thing that both the theists and our fellow atheists overlook is that when Marx and Engels wrote about religion they were talking about the institution.

In order to achieve its revolutionary aims, Marxism relies on a dissection of the historical and institutional influences that have led to the bourgeoise inheriting the means of production and blah blah, the proletariat being exploited and so on and so forth.

Therefore, it is very much against religion AS AN INSTITUTION. i would argue that a personal belief in a deity or deities is not incommensurate with communism at all. as long as those beliefs are not institutionalised, the communist state could not and can not be concerned by this.

it is extremely probable that there were people in the USSR who believed in a god or gods, but the communist state suffers no institutional rivals.

therefore, the extent to which either russia, china or any other communist regime "did not believe in god" has to be examined by just what they mean by "god."

a case in point is china and its relationship to the falun gong practitioners. the chinese govt only began to have a problem with falun gong when it began to grow popular (and thus threatening to grow into an institution). before the numbers swelled in this meditative practice, the chinese govt was rather indifferent to it.

if you could be bothered, im sure you could find more examples of this kind of thing in the ussr and maoist china.

the communist philosophical opposition to god is not so much towards divinity, as the religious institution that transmits it i think.