1. Stop distorting young minds!

Comment #200167 by Mark Barratt on June 27, 2008 at 2:29 am

Comment #200165 by epeeist

Meaning no disrespect, but a theist probably said it better than you.

2. Stop distorting young minds!

Comment #200158 by Mark Barratt on June 27, 2008 at 2:01 am

The best argument against critics of secularism has been made excellently on this thread, but I think it always bears repeating as much as possible: to wit, if you are against secularism you are taking a huge risk. There are many, many sects of many, many religions, each with poorly-hidden wishes for theocratic rule, and if secularism is defeated there's no guarantee that YOUR sect will be the one that ends up in charge.

It's not just atheists who suffer under theocratic governments, after all. Followers of other religions get it just as bad. Worse really: as atheists have no imaginary friend-allegiance, we could pretend to follow the state-mandated religious orthopraxy to save our necks with no worry about damage to our immortal souls, just a bit of wounded pride. But if your religion calls you to proclaim and publicise a "Truth" which is against theocratic law you're in a lot of trouble: either you betray your faith by keeping silent to save your neck or you speak out and are tortured/killed/maimed, whatever.

So even if you're often outraged by the behaviour of people in a secular society it's in your interest to support secularism no matter how religious you are, otherwise you're making a very dangerous gamble.

Of course, the faithful can't really understand this argument as they all appear to think that their religion is OBVIOUSLY the only one worth considering.

This is, of course, because it's impossible to make arguments for the TRUTH of specific faiths. You can only argue for "some sort of higher being" or "something greater than yourself." You can't make distinctions between the truth claims of different supernatural traditions because they are all equally evidence-free, you can only differentiate between the quality of life of adherents, which is why it's in their interest to try to get people to accept the unjustified assumption that their religion is the only one worth considering or that nice side-effects of believing something mean that thing must be true.

We see yet again that the mind-corrosion of religious belief causes very dangerous blind spots in the thinking of the faithful.

3. Band T-shirt draws charge

Comment #199244 by Mark Barratt on June 25, 2008 at 11:31 am

This is a real blast from the past. The "Jesus is a (expletive deleted. The expletive that has been deleted is cunt)" T-Shirts caused an outcry amongst the easily offended possessors of ultimate and eternal truth here in the UK about ten years ago or more.

The best response I heard at that time went something like this: We are all born at least once, and the traditional method that is used involves us being born through a cunt, and what a wonderful and natural phenomenon that is. RD does a good job of pointing out how lucky we are to have been born at all in Unweaving the Rainbow.

Some members of the species are apparently not content with being born just the once. These people, who call themselves Christians, follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the impact of his teachings on their lives is so profound that they actually claim to have been born again, but this time they have been born THROUGH JESUS. As the traditional understanding is that the thing you are born through is normally a cunt, the phrase "Jesus is a cunt" takes on a powerful metaphorical significance, and so the T-Shirt can be seen as a direct statement of the power of rebirth through Christ. So you see, rather than protesting the T-Shirt the Christians should all buy these T-Shirts and wear them proudly as statements of their faith!

If you know a Christian, why don't you buy them one?

4. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #163161 by Mark Barratt on April 18, 2008 at 3:22 am

If we want to put reviews of bad films in context, it's always worth going to www.rogerebert.com and searching for Zero Star reviews.

Choice extract, from Ebert's review of "North":

I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

5. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #162543 by Mark Barratt on April 17, 2008 at 3:58 am

That's just a very big "if", that's all.

6. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #161215 by Mark Barratt on April 15, 2008 at 3:26 am

How is attempting to get rid of manifestly untrue and unscientific ideas an "immensely unscientific agenda?"

I can't think of a more scientific agenda.

7. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #156979 by Mark Barratt on April 8, 2008 at 1:02 pm

Incredible. Just incredible.

Are these people so consumed with relativism that they don't realise that while you're entitled to your opinion you're not entitled to your own facts? Someone who doesn't believe in gravity will still fall when they jump off a building. Try it, it works every time. What the fuck are these people smoking?

And what the fuck has religion (whatever that is, last time I looked there were thousands of religions with conflicting rules whose followers hated each other) to do with morality?

The Hitler thing at the end reminded me of the furore over "Downfall", and that Hitler programme with Alec Guinness. Both times the criticism was that Hitler was portrayed as a human being. But Hitler WAS human, he was flesh and blood just like the rest of us, which is something we need to accept.

Pretending Hitler was some sort of inhuman monster only serves to free us of the responsibility of facing up to what humans just like us are capable of in the wrong circumstances. Claiming that humans couldn't have perpetrated the Holocaust, that it must have been The Devil, serves exactly the same function. It's truly pathetic that supposedly educated adults in the 21st century would speak in this fashion in public.

8. Pastor attacks scientist's talk

Comment #154942 by Mark Barratt on April 4, 2008 at 2:52 am

I've got a good Robertson story.

I went to a talk he gave at Borders in Birmingham a few months ago. The talk was curiously unbalanced, just him giving a presentation without any "CFA member" to provide an alternative viewpoint. How inconsistent.

I was familiar with his posts on this site (I'm a long-time lurker), so I knew what to expect. The distortions and fallacies were there in abundance. A good example was his description of Dawkins' view of the universe as indifferent as "The most chilling thing I've ever heard!" This drew murmurs of agreement from the Christian audience, but the fact that something is chilling doesn't mean it's wrong, does it? After all, being told you have cancer would be quite chilling, but that's not a reason to go about your business as if you didn't have cancer. To be honest I find the idea of a universe without a jealous, vengeful supernatural bully who loves the sweet savour of the scent of burning livestock in charge to be far less chilling than the idea of having cancer, but that's a personal judgement call, I guess.

Anyway, as the distortions and misrepresentations mounted up I realised that it would be an onerous task to explain every single distortion to my Christian friends afterwards, but Robertson made that unneccessary by literally showing himself up as a master distorter using his own words.

He told a story about a science Professor in his area who is on record as saying that "anyone who believes in Intelligent Design is an idiot" or something along those lines. Robertson proceeded to tell a story about how two guys came into his Church one day to worship, and upon talking to them he found out that they were both graduate students in this Professor's lab, and the Professor is known to only accept the best and the brightest into his research group. Robertson then, in an inspired coup de grace, illustrated the hypocrisy of this Professor by saying "And this is the man who says everyone who believes in God is an idiot!" To much approval from his appreciative audience. But the Professor in the story didn't say "Everyone who believes in god is an idiot" did he? He said "Everyone who believes in Intelligent Design is an idiot" The whole point of Intelligent Design is it's not supposed to be a religious proposition, it's supposed to be a scientific theory which fits the evidence better than Natural Selection does. Robertson replaced "Intelligent Design" with "God" in his Professor's quote in order to gain a cheap rhetorical point in an incredibly underhanded way. This allowed me to show my friends how mendacious Robertson was without having to refer to a single genuine in-context quote from TGD or anything else Dawkins has written, for which I was very grateful. It's also always good when cdesign proponentsists use God and Intelligent Design interchangeably, as it is just more evidence for what ID really is. Robertson did say he believed in a literal Adam and Eve, though, so I can't say for certain that he is a cdesign proponentsist.

To be fair to Robertson, as I recall he never actually used the terms "Dawkins' followers", "Atheist faith, or "Fundamentalist Atheists" in his talk, which pleasantly surprised me.

9. CEAI Action Alert for Science Teachers

Comment #154496 by Mark Barratt on April 3, 2008 at 11:09 am

Even better, replace "Darwin" with "Lavoisier" and "Evolution" with "Chemistry", then they'll have to reject every single product of Chemistry, and also have to try to say "Lavoisierism" over and over again. Think about that said in a really strong Southern US accent.

10. CEAI Action Alert for Science Teachers

Comment #154490 by Mark Barratt on April 3, 2008 at 10:57 am

It's not an ideology, of course. The whole "Darwinism" thing is a consequence of the religious mindset. People who feel they have a single perfect belief system that tells them how to live their entire life and how to think in every situation seem to have trouble understanding science, which has different specific theories for different subjects. Natural Selection tells you nothing about how a ball bounces, etc.

PZ Myers' "Newtonism" post is pretty good:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/why_we_need_academic_freedomto.php

Admittedly, Dawkins doesn't help by constantly using the word "Darwinism", but only in the sense that it can be taken out of context rather easily and used to paint "Darwinism" as a philosophy. When you listen to him talk it's clear what he means by it.

11. CEAI Action Alert for Science Teachers

Comment #154265 by Mark Barratt on April 3, 2008 at 2:26 am

Whenever I see something like this I always wonder how much time these Christians spend in Church presenting scientific evidence critical of Christianity.

After all, that'd be the best way to set an example.

They don't even need to use science, why don't they present the various verses in the Koran that call Christians hellbound liars as the product of possible authentic revelation?

After all, academic freedom is paramount, right? Everything should be questioned.

12. It looks like Man crucified

Comment #148420 by Mark Barratt on March 23, 2008 at 4:00 am

Yet again, as someone who has read most of the "New Atheist" books, I'm left with the impression that there must be different editions that I haven't read, which are by atheists who've lost faith in humanity and have no idea what their own opinions are.

I must try to track these down, any ideas where I should look?

13. The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism

Comment #115296 by Mark Barratt on January 24, 2008 at 12:58 am

So-called "Scientific Racism" was actually around long before Darwin, and had an entirely biblical basis.

All humanity was supposed to have descended from Noah's 3 sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, and was therefore divided into Semitic, Hamitic and Japhetic peoples. Ham saw Noah naked when he was drunk, and when Noah sobered up he cursed Ham's decendents to be "servants of servants" to the descendents of Shem and Japheth (Genesis 9:20–25). Black people were identified as Hamites. There's your perfect biblical justification for racism and slavery.

If this guy is right and "Darwinism" should be resisted because it's "laden" with dangerous values and encourages racism, then it follows that Christianity should be abandoned too. Funny how he neglects to mention that, isn't it?