1. The Problem with Atheism

Comment #76767 by J. J. Ramsey on October 7, 2007 at 7:02 am

keith: "I was referring to Sam's approach of changing our name from atheists to something less negative"

Ahem, but that wasn't Sam Harris' suggested approach:

We should not call ourselves "atheists." We should not call ourselves "secularists." We should not call ourselves "humanists," or "secular humanists," or "naturalists," or "skeptics," or "anti-theists," or "rationalists," or "freethinkers," or "brights." We should not call ourselves anything. [emphasis added]

2. Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds

Comment #75631 by J. J. Ramsey on October 3, 2007 at 7:00 am

Russell Blackford: "Actually, JJ that's totally the wrong way of looking at it. The right way to make intellectual progress is to find the strength in positions that you don't really agree with, and then work out how to incorporate it in your own presumably larger view of things."

Attacking faults, though, is necessary, though, or as David Brin put it, CITOKATE.

Let's analyze Dawkins' argument, shall we?

Dawkins has two points to make:

(1) "It is easy for religious faith, even if it is irrational in itself, to lead a sane and decent person, by rational, logical steps, to do terrible things."

(2) Atheists do not have the corresponding problem described in point (1), since, as he put it, "There is no logical path from atheism to evil deeds," or as he quoted from Steven Weinberg, "But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion."

The second point is the weakest, and it depends on Dawkins making an apples-and-oranges comparison between atheism and religion that elides the difference between atheism and humanism.

Of course there is no logical path from atheism to evil deeds! Atheism is just nonbelief in the existence of certain entities. It is not a belief system, not a worldview, and thus has no moral framework. Humanism is another story, since it is a worldview and explicitly includes a moral framework. What Dawkins is doing is favorably comparing humanistic or liberal values to extremist religious views, and then giving atheism the credit for what humanism or liberalism have to offer.

Furthermore, Dawkins hasn't shown that atheists can't be led by rational, logical steps to do terrible things. Indeed, Dawkins is simply wrong here. An obvious way for atheists to do that is to pick another moral framework besides humanism that more easily accomodates extremism. Another way to do it, even within humanism, is to fall into the trap of paving one's way to hell with good intentions. Both of these ways are blocked from consideration because Dawkins elided the difference between atheism leading to evil deeds and viewpoints that incorporate atheism leading to evil deeds.

(For now, I'll ignore the difficulty in using the term "evil deeds" in the context of comparing moral frameworks, and just use "evil deeds" as a rough synonym for deeds that cause great suffering.)

The first point is left poorly supported. He points out that various religions can have different bases from morality than humanism, and points out examples of extremist views leading to extreme suffering. What he does not do is show how one gets by steps from what most of us here would call decency to those extremist views. At most what he's shown is that different moral frameworks can lead to radically different results.

3. Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds

Comment #75470 by J. J. Ramsey on October 2, 2007 at 6:22 pm

Russell Blackford: "Poseidon almighty, some of you are picky."

What's wrong with picky? A good argument should be able to hold up in the face of nitpicking, and if you pick all the nits in an argument and find that what's left is somewhat wanting, then it wasn't that good to begin with.

4. New Rules: A Religious Test

Comment #73544 by J. J. Ramsey on September 25, 2007 at 8:21 am

Summer Scale: "I feel the exact same way about Stewart's show as well. I think he's a funny guy and all, but he's also an ignorant ass. He knows a few things and thinks he knows everything. That isn't the case. He knows nothing."

How dare you blaspheme Jon Stewart! That's just so, so, um, meanie and poopyheaded of you.

Seriously, Jon Stewart has never struck me as a know-it-all. He's even been a bit disturbed that his fake news show gets taken that seriously.

5. New Rules: A Religious Test

Comment #73346 by J. J. Ramsey on September 24, 2007 at 8:00 pm

rar: "I don't understand Bill Maher's show. I don't find it funny, and quite honestly I'm not sure if it is suppose to be."

The sketch and stand-up at the beginning are supposed to be funny, and so is the "New Rules" at the end. [ETA: And often they are funny, even deadly, IMHO] The middle part is usually at least half-serious, and often isn't really meant to be that funny.

Seriously, how much of the show have you seen? It's not as if it's all religion-bashing. Usually, it's more political.

chuckgoecke: "I wish Bill would make a run for US president."

I wouldn't want him near anything to do with health care, though. He's a smart guy, but has a big blind spot for alternative[s to] medicine:

http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/03/is-bill-maher-really-that-ignorant_07.html

6. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #72438 by J. J. Ramsey on September 21, 2007 at 5:31 am

wallace: "I understand that Judaism has evolved, but it seems like the original version that emerged from its inception was strong enough to maintain a certain spiritual and ethnic identity no matter what."

Considering how little knowledge of early Judaism that we have, that's a dicey statement. Heck, we aren't even sure if it was initially monotheistic, and the strong Jewish identity seems to have been largely a reaction to the Babylonian captivity.

wallace: "Perhaps we all do have false beliefs, but do you reserve the right to have those beliefs?"

Rights or lack of rights has nothing to do with it. The point is that if it is so easy for someone who isn't nuts to acquire false beliefs such as religion, then we ought not be too quick to label that someone with a term that normally is used to describe someone who is, well, nuts, and this is especially true, IMHO, for false beliefs where the counterevidence is circumstantial or the counterarguments are nontrivial.

wallace: "Do you honestly think the conception of sin that is foisted on Catholics from birth would just be replaced by some other hang-up if Catholicism did not exist?"

I'm rather pessimistic about that, yes. I notice that while Europe is largely irreligious, other forms of irrationality, such as astrology, homeopathy, and New Age beliefs, have taken their place. Maybe we might have fewer hang-ups without religion, but we'd at least find other problems, most likely. The main advantage of irrationalities like New Age beliefs over traditional religions is that they are much more diffuse and varied and don't have the political leverage that the traditional religions used to have.

7. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #72327 by J. J. Ramsey on September 20, 2007 at 6:39 pm

wallace: "Well, it must have been successful in some sense, considering the success of Judaism. It molded a group of people into a very strong shared ethnic and spiritual identity that still persists to this day, even though Jews have been scattered worldwide."

Careful here. Bear in mind that the Judaism of the diaspora is very different from the Judaism of the ancient Jews living in a nation-state. No temple, no way to enforce rules about who to stone and not to stone, plus a whole bunch of rabbinical rules to blunt the force of the more barbaric laws. Judaism, like just about all religions, has evolved.

wallace: "As for God being NOT delusional, don't you think the fact that you can declare God an imaginary being, but still defend others for believing in it is a bit patronising?"

Hardly. There is nothing patronizing about pointing out that normal, intelligent people can have false beliefs, especially when just about everyone has them, including myself.

wallace: "It seems like you're saying 'We'll obviously I think God is imaginary, but its ok for those people to believe it and lets not challenge that because its actually normal'"

It's not about saying that the beliefs shouldn't be challenged, but that we shouldn't exaggerate the problems that they beliefs cause.

8. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #72011 by J. J. Ramsey on September 20, 2007 at 6:06 am

wallace: "Those laws were authoritarian and were successful in molding a strong ethnic unity amongst a group of people."

Judging from the books of Judges and Kings, that ethnic unity wasn't too strong. It is hard to say just how big a boulder of salt that the book of Judges should be taken with, but it looks like Israel wasn't held together too tightly at the time when the stories in the book of Judges were set. Heck, if the books of the Kings and Chronicles are roughly correct in outline, Israel was divided into two kingdoms for most of its history, and the Israelites were not that good at sticking to their own laws. So the laws--if they had even all been invented yet--weren't that successful at maintaining ethnic unity.

To the extent that ancient Judaism was authoritarian at all, it was the authoritarianism of a garden-variety monarchy, and even then, the king himself was apparently not above scandal, so we don't have quite the blind obedience and cult of personality surrounding the leader that we do in fascism.

wallace: "The difference between modern scientific thought and the Greek thinkers is that modern scientific thought does not take the existance of God as apparent"

No, the difference is that modern scientific thought does not presume that the workings of the universe can be determined from one's armchair. You still haven't read that JREF forum thread, have you? I know it's long, but it's educational.

wallace: "There is a definite break in that kind of thinking that produced skeptics like Hume in the philosophy field."

Hume's career came somewhat after the advent of modern science.

wallace: "I don't think anyone was doing science to tarnish religion, they were simply publishing conclusions that went against orthodox religious teachings."

Aside from Galileo, there wasn't much of that, and even Galileo's findings got accepted by the Church. Again, read the JREF thread. There are a lot of myths about him and Copernicus that are dispelled there. Galileo was more atypical than you think. There isn't much opportunity for science and religion to conflict until around Darwin's time.

wallace: "Isnt the worship of an imaginary being somewhat delusional?"

If Scott Atran is right, probably not. The way we so easily detect agency even when there is none is probably sufficient to start the idea of gods, and many of our other cognitive heuristics, e.g. rules of thumb like "what authorities tell us is true," "what everyone around us believes is true," and so on, probably helped perpetuate it. One doesn't need to be nuts to believe in God.

Furthermore, there isn't much opportunity to encounter evidence that directly conflicts with religious beliefs. It isn't like believing that you are Napoleon Bonaparte, where the conflicting evidence is more obvious: being in the wrong century, having the wrong birth name. One can make a strong circumstantial case against belief in God, but it is not as if the emperor's genitalia are right in front of us, waiting for us to point at them.

wallace: "What exactly is your problem with Dawkins and/or atheism?"

With atheism? Nothing. With Dawkins, it's that he doesn't try very hard to be accurate. I've pointed out some problems in other places, so I won't reiterate here.

9. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #71875 by J. J. Ramsey on September 19, 2007 at 8:22 pm

wallace: "Second classic bad move on your part: Why are you talking about religions I did not mention?"

Because you were talking about religion, period, not just specific religions. Yes, you did mention specific religions, but you then went on to compare religion in general with fascism.

wallace: "I mentioned specifically Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of whom's holy books are filled with God as the ultimate authority figure who must be obeyed upon pain of death. Sounds pretty authoritarian to me."

God is an imaginary being that can exert no authority of his own. Authoritarianism requires blind obedience to a real leader or "concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people." (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=authoritarian) Power cannot be concentrated in the hands of something that doesn't exist.

Of course, there are real leaders that speak on behalf of God, but they are hardly all authoritarian.

wallace: "The modern scientific revolution ignited by figures like Copernicus and Galileo had a more profound effect in terms of showing up the ludicrous shortcomings of religious thought"

You really need to read that JREF thread. If you think that science started because rational rebels started stickin' it to the Son of Man, think again: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=7763

wallace: "Because some religious people (many of whom were at odds with the religious authorities of their day) promoted the scientific method, that makes them responsible for modern science. But even though the religious books of the three major monotheistic religions are filled with the worst kind of 'obey or die' and 'kill those who disobey' type garbage, to make a connection from that to fascism is simply ridiculous?"

Let's see now. On the one hand, we have the influence of the Greek thinkers, who offered the idea of a rational God who created an orderly universe, plus Latin Christianity, which posited on top of this that God could do what he wanted, so there was no way to discover his order from armchair thinking alone; one had to observe nature itself. These are pretty direct links to science. On the other hand, we have holy books whose "obey or die" directives are largely ignored by the followers of the religions pertaining to these books, at least in the case of Judaism and Christianity. And this doesn't even account for the non-Abrahamic religions. So, yes, the historical connection between religion and science is a heck of a lot more real than the resemblance of religion to fascism.

jamesstephenbrown: "The point still stands that the author is pointing out that an argument that can be used to defend anything, in effect defends nothing."

The problem is that the author failed to point this out, because the arguments don't all work as well for fascism as for religion, and I pointed out the ones that didn't in a previous post.

10. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71840 by J. J. Ramsey on September 19, 2007 at 6:42 pm

Quine: "Do you have something specific?"

Actually, I do but it's in the book The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, which is a compilation of critical scholarship on the historical Jesus. FWIW, I did use it as a source for a SkepticWiki entry:

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Nonbiblical_references_to_Jesus

The main reason that I suggested IIDB is that while it isn't perfect, there is more skepticism of some of the pseudohistory circulated around by all too many atheists, such as the garbage from Acharya S or Freke and Gandy, and there are at least a few people there who actually understand the Greek, like Chris Weimer or Ben C. Smith. It's a half-decent first stop for checking whether claims like the one Dan Barker made about Josephus are actually true. Interestingly enough, Barker cites Freke and Gandy's Jesus Mysteries positively, which doesn't say much about his credibility. FWIW, I also contributed a review of that book, which mostly consists of checking their sources and finding serious gaps between what Freke and Gandy claims and what their sources back up, here:

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/The_Jesus_Mysteries

The most egregious example was where Freke and Gandy misquote S.F. Dunlap's Sod: The Mysteries of Adoni misquoting Arnobius, which ends up turning Arnobius' complaint of "OMG, they worship penises!" into something about passing around a holy cross. Yes, it really is that mangled. Go figure.

11. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #71801 by J. J. Ramsey on September 19, 2007 at 5:29 pm

wallace: "Now, as a defender of religion ..."

Excuse me? I am quite capable of criticizing religion, thankyouverymuch. I just prefer to deal with their actual wrongs, rather a caricature. Yet another example of the classic bad move of mistaking partial defense for support.

wallace:

Now lets change a few words:

"Religion is an authoritarian spiritual ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and other societal interests subordinate to the needs of God, and seeks to forge a type of religious unity, usually based on, but not limited to, ethnic, cultural, or racial attributes."

Now, that seems like a perfect description for the beginnings of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and many other religions. [emphasis added]

Let's see now. We don't know the beginnings of the earliest religions, such as Judaism or Hinduism or the various tribal beliefs of Africans and Native Americans, so your statement that your definition "seems like a perfect description for the beginnings of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and many other religions" is largely supposition. Christianity's origins are in dispute but, IMHO, more likely than not it began as a millennial movement (http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2005/07/millenialism-or-myth.html). Islam might arguably fit your description, but since I know little about it and am very aware of the gap between popular beliefs about history and real history, I will not say much more about it.

Also, the "seeks to forge a type of religious unity, usually based on, but not limited to, ethnic, cultural, or racial attributes" is for the most part backwards. For most religions, the ethnic, cultural, or racial came first. Greek polytheism was the beliefs of the Greeks. Egyptian polytheism was the beliefs of the Egyptians. Hinduism was the beliefs of the Indians. First Temple Judaism, at least, was the religion of those who were of Jewish ethnicity. The content of these religions isn't necessarily rigidly enforced, and from what I understand of the beliefs of the Greeks and Egyptians, it was rather a grab bag of fluid myths rather than anything that could reasonably be described as an ideology. Christianity was unusual in that it was explicitly trans-national and it was beliefs rather than ethnicity that defined the in-group/out-group boundary, rather than ethnicity. AFAIK, Judaism had some precursors to this in that some Gentiles became proselytes to Judaism.

As for ancient religions being authoritarian? Well, you'd have to ask who the authorities are and what parts of the religion demand blind obedience to them, and how total the authority is supposed to be. For the Greek religions, the control doesn't seem that total; the Athenians had their democracy, after all, imperfect as it was. For Judaism and Christianity, there is the example of David and Bathsheba to serve as a reminder that not even kings are totally unaccountable, though how often that example is heeded is another story. The Bible itself in older Christianity has been taken as an inerrant authority, but that is not the kind of authority that the definition of "authoritarian" is about (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=authoritarian). In general, religion is, again, all over the map with regards to authoritarianism.

If religions are different these days, it is not because of ruling figures in the church liberalising it, it is because of outside pressure...pressure that really began to exert force with the birth of modern science and reason.

An outside pressure? The birth of modern science and reason came from theists, from Aristole to the Roman Catholics who interacted with him and other Greek thinkers. I suggest that you read through this (long!) thread at the JREF forums:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=7763

Most importantly, the religions we have now are the ones that we have to deal with, and calling them all authoritarian is certainly an overgeneralization. One could argue that religions have changed as part of an overall zeitgeist or whatever, but those are the religions that we deal with today.

12. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #71652 by J. J. Ramsey on September 19, 2007 at 12:16 pm

wallace: "OK, if we're being pedantic, show me where somebody, anywhere, said 'Religious people ALWAYS obey their holy books'."

You attempted to use the nastier parts of the Bible and the Qur'an in an attempt to point out that the similarity between religion and fascism was closer than I was granting. That line of argument doesn't work very well if the nasty parts are routinely ignored or downplayed.

jamesstephenbrown: "The author of the parody is not relating fascism to religion...."

We've been down this road before, and what you're saying doesn't pass the smell test:

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,1622,Review-of-Richard-Dawkins-new-book-The-Fascism-Delusion,TheValveorg,page2#69401

jamesstephenbrown: "The author of the parody is not relating fascism to religion...."

We've been down this road before, and what you're saying doesn't pass the smell test:

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,1622,Review-of-Richard-Dawkins-new-book-The-Fascism-Delusion,TheValveorg,page2#69401

jamesstephenbrown: "he is pointing out that the same arguments that the reviewer uses to defend religion can be used to defend fascism."

And again, we've been down this road before, and again, the problem is that the same arguments don't work as well for fascism as they do for religion:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,1622,Review-of-Richard-Dawkins-new-book-The-Fascism-Delusion,TheValveorg,loggedIn#69114

And around and around we go ...

I'm reminded of something written recently on ScienceBlogs:

One of the least endearing characteristics of the "New Atheist" arguments is the tendency to use words very skillfully in order to construct maximally insulting statements, and then turn around and feign ignorance of the entire idea of connotative meaning to argue that what was written was not, in fact, insulting.

From http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2007/09/people_for_the_eating_of_tasty.php#c571555

Most of the comments on this thread seem in about that vein, at least the part about feigning ignorance of the entire idea of connotative meaning.

13. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #71611 by J. J. Ramsey on September 19, 2007 at 5:51 am

Back on the topic ...

Sam Harris: I have my doubts. It seems possible, for instance, that these five foundations of morality are simply facets of a more general concern for harm/care.

What, after all, is the problem with desecrating a copy of the Qur'an or taking the Lord's name in vain? Well, if a person really believes that the Qur'an is a sacred text or that God is listening, he almost surely believes that some harm could come to him or to his tribe as a result of these actions—if not in this world, then in the next.

There is another problem with Sam Harris' line of argument. Once rules about blasphemy or purity have come into existence, one might post hoc rationalize one's objections to violating such rules in terms of harm and care. Concerns of harm and care do not explain how those rules came about in the first place.

Why would there even be an expectation that the gods would care if we disrespect them or not? If one supposed that the gods acted like us and shared the instinctive social dominance hierarchy that we inherited from ancestral primates, it would make sense to expect that--but that takes us right back to treating authority/respect as a mental module in its own right. Nor does thinking in terms of harm/care explain why a culture would find, say, homosexuality disgusting in the first place and then encode that rule in its scriptures.

14. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71606 by J. J. Ramsey on September 19, 2007 at 5:33 am

Quine: "The piece from Josephus is not just 'controversial' it is completely bogus. See:
http://ffrf.org/fttoday/2006/march/barker.php"

If I were you, I'd at least search IIDB (http://www.iidb.org) for "Josephus" before making such a sure pronouncement.

15. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71380 by J. J. Ramsey on September 18, 2007 at 3:35 pm

Coel: "Where does he claim that the Trinity is incoherent? Yes, he calls it 'theological close reasoning' and 'opaque'"

Which is pretty obvious dry sarcasm. There is also the matter that Dawkins said "Thomas Jefferson, as so often, got it right when he said, 'Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them, and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity." [emphasis mine]

Dawkins is indicating that Thomas Jefferson agrees with him, and Jefferson makes pretty clear that he thinks the Trinity is not coherent.

Coel: "But repeatedly including Jefferson anti-Christian quotes, as Dawkins does in several different sections, reinforces and emphasizes the point. It's a deliberate tactic."

Yes, it does reinforce it. That hardly undoes the message, "Look, someone prestigious shares my point of view."

16. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71266 by J. J. Ramsey on September 18, 2007 at 8:48 am

Coel: "I've read your web-page on Dawkins's treatment of the Trinity in the GD, but I think you mistake his intentions. He isn't really trying to refute or nit-pick the doctrine of the trinity."

He is certainly trying to communicate that the Trinity is incoherent and presenting points meant to indicate that it is incoherent--which would certainly constitute an attempt at argument against the Trinity. I would definitely grant that he isn't trying to do anything in-depth, but it would be stretching to say he isn't providing any argument at all.

Coel: "Similarly, his quote of Jefferson is not an 'appeal to authority' to dismiss the trinity, it is instead a tactic, repeated often in the GD, of demonstrating to American readers that one of their most revered founders was highly non-Christian."

That defense would make a lot more sense if the quote from Jefferson in question were in the section where RD is explictly noting the secularism of the Founding Fathers, rather than in a section where the focus was on the Trinity.

17. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71234 by J. J. Ramsey on September 18, 2007 at 6:06 am

Me: "Once you pick out the nits in his [Dawkins'] treatment of the Trinity, there isn't anything left. [emphasis mine]"

Goldy: "There are nits in the Trinity? It makes sense?? Do go on, please..."

I noticed that you skipped right over "his treatment of". Did it ever occur to you that one can provide a bad argument even against an idea that might be found incorrect on other grounds? Sheesh.

18. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #71228 by J. J. Ramsey on September 18, 2007 at 5:32 am

Macque: "Ah, so regarding the people of Britain, the intensity of patriotic feeling seems to be exascerbated by poverty, lack of employment opportunities and social depravation? Or is this mere coincidence?"

Of course it isn't coincidence, but you would be hard-pressed to explain why WWII propaganda posters have the contents that they have based on those considerations alone. Take a look at the posters with the stereotypical "Jap" with the goggle glasses and broken English, and tell me that isn't about spurring hatred for the enemy.

19. Do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in them?

Comment #71063 by J. J. Ramsey on September 17, 2007 at 5:58 pm

Northern Bright:

It's his criticism of RD for not having studied the minutiae of the extensive and heated debate on whether the leprochaun wears curly-toed or flat-toed shoes (to use CHeard's image!) that I object to.

FIRST prove the existence of the leprochaun. THEN argue about his taste in footwear.

That line of argument works so long as RD doesn't bring up leprechaun footwear himself. Trouble is, Dawkins does deal in such footwear a bit. He does discuss the Trinity, for example, but doesn't do it that well. For example, he quotes St. Gregory the Miracle Worker as an example of theological obscurantism even though Gregory's words are rather straightforward, and then follows it up with a slightly ambiguous statement whose plainest meaning is that theology has supposedly been static since about 200 C.E., which would be a surprise the Protestants, to say the least. Once you pick out the nits in his treatment of the Trinity, there isn't anything left. Now Dawkins isn't aiming for a deep discussion, but if he is going to offer any discussion at all, it should at least be something that doesn't fall apart so easily upon examination.

20. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #70940 by J. J. Ramsey on September 17, 2007 at 9:42 am

wallace: "If people are so apt to ignore religious teachings when reason dictates otherwise, why is the Intelligent Design debate so huge?"

Wait a minute. Let's look at what was actually claimed. The contention is this: "Yet ethnographies of fundamentalist communities (such as James Ault's Spirit and Flesh) show that even when people claim to be biblical literalists, they are in fact quite flexible, drawing on the bible selectively--or ignoring it--to justify humane and often quite modern responses to complex social situations."

This contention does not mean that fundamentalists never take the fool's route of insisting on a literal interpretation when it conflicts with reality, only that they do not do this consistently. Indeed, it's that lack of consistency that makes their Scriptures a dicey prediction of their behavior.

21. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #70930 by J. J. Ramsey on September 17, 2007 at 9:23 am

Elentar: "True, but he eventually lumps all five in together under the same heading, when they have clearly very different characteristics, and ends his argument in a way that seems to affirm the validity of these three primitive emotions as genuine foundations of morality (attributing to them in a post hoc manner higher levels of charity, and ascribing wisdom to the whole package.) In treating them all as equally primitive emotions, he places tribe/authority/purity on the same footing as principles which are explicitly laid forth as philosophical foundations of morality--and, having done this, then steps back and withholds judgement."

This is not a withholding of judgment: "My conclusion is not that secular liberal societies should be made more religious and conservative in a utilitarian bid to increase happiness, charity, longevity, and social capital. Too many valuable rights would be at risk, too many people would be excluded, and societies are so complex that it's impossible to do such social engineering and get only what you bargained for." Note my emphasis.

You are engaging in the classic bad move of mistaking partial defense for support (http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/badmovesprint.php?num=52).

22. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #70722 by J. J. Ramsey on September 16, 2007 at 6:45 pm

Elentar: "Ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity are not actually 'moral' modules at all, but instinctive heuristics which are rationalized after the fact as being moral judgements"

If you followed the article, you'd recognize that moral modules are pretty much instinctive heuristics. Indeed, he would likely agree with you that the ingroup/loyalty and authority/respect are "primitive, pre-rational, tribal emotions." He surmises that ingroup/loyalty "may have evolved from the long history of cross-group or sub-group competition," and that authority/respect "may have evolved from the long history of primate hierarchy, modified by cultural limitations on power and bullying."

You appear to have made the mistake of assuming that Haidt is talking about what should be the foundations of morality, rather than describing how human beings happen to work out morality in practice, for good or ill.

23. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #70720 by J. J. Ramsey on September 16, 2007 at 6:29 pm

Dr Benway: "Still, they wouldn't strap C4 to their chests without an entire community supporting and sharing fantasies glorifying noble self-sacrifice. ... Religion intensifies the in-group/out-group conflict."

This much is at least correct, and I say this because I read it in Robert Pape's book first. (Interestingly enough, religious differences intensify the in-group/out-group even when the competing groups don't necessarily have religious beliefs, as with the Tamil Tigers. It is enough for the Tamils to be cultural Hindus while their adversaries are Buddhist.)

zenmite: "Here's an interesting link discussing the 'virgins in paradise' teachings:"

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA7401

This is at least an attempt to provide evidence. One catch, though. It's from MEMRI, which can be dicey:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=MEMRI#Issues_of_reliability_and_veracity

24. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #70702 by J. J. Ramsey on September 16, 2007 at 4:37 pm

Northern Bright: "If, however, you're trying to suggest that Islamic teachings have played no part in the creation of people prepared to carry out unspeakably evil acts in the name of Allah, then you're going to have a very much harder time persuading us."

I'm saying a couple things:

First, the claims that terrorists are motivated by nookie in the afterlife are ill-supported and contradicted by someone who actually did the field work, namely Atran.

Second, considering the goals of suicide terrorists and the relatively cold comfort that afterlife beliefs offer to those facing death, either their own deaths or their loved ones, Atran's assessment is quite plausible.

If you want to convince me that the idea of jihadis routinely being motivated by afterlife nookie is more than just ill-informed conventional wisdom, show me the evidence. Point me to field work that contradicts Atran. Don't give me suppositions.

25. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #70657 by J. J. Ramsey on September 16, 2007 at 1:32 pm

Northern Bright: "The point I was making, JJ, is that in the Bible Jesus himself makes a link between charitable behaviour in this life, and a place in heaven in the afterlife. When the figure on which a whole religion is founded makes that connection, who can blame his followers for making it too?"

No one could blame the followers for making the connection. The question is whether the followers make that connection in practice.

(Quibble: In the account of the rich man, the rich man isn't merely called to be charitable, but called to give up everything. If anything, that verse is somewhat of an embarrassment to Christians in Western countries, and is often explained away.)

Northern Bright: "I'm not the one who invented the stories promising rewards in heaven for people who are good little boys and girls on earth; or, for that matter, threatening lakes of unending fire for those who aren't."

I won't say that heaven and hell don't motivate at all. But put a gun to the head of a believer in heaven and see how sanguine he or she is about it. When it's one's own life on the line, more primal reactions to impending death can easily take over, and it takes more than what one learned in Sunday School or its equivalent to overcome that.

26. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #70606 by J. J. Ramsey on September 16, 2007 at 9:39 am

Northern Bright: "This is akin to the discussion about whether beliefs about an afterlife motivate Christian acts of charity. I have yet to find a Christian who would be anything but offended at the suggestion that their acts of charity were somehow intended as a down-payment on a place in heaven. And I'm sure the reality is nothing so unsubtle in most cases."

Considering that much of our moral behavior is motivated by emotion and intuition, the likelihood that most Christians think in terms of a down-payment on Heaven is not that likely.

"And yet, and yet ... when so much of Christianity revolves around concepts of unworthiness and salvation and sin and atonement and penance, and when Jesus himself is said to have told the wealthy man that in order to gain eternal life he must sell all he had and give to the poor - it would be hard to rule out thoughts of heavenly reward as a motivator (even an unspoken one)."

Your example isn't that good. Notice that the in the story of the wealthy man, the man did not give up his wealth. The promise of an afterlife wasn't enough for him. Of course, that example may be legend, especially since the story is tied up neat in a bow with an aphorism about threading a camel through an eye of the needle. That said, we know that Christians cry at funerals. I remember in Fahrenheit 9/11 a Muslim woman in Iraq weeping about her own family members being killed. The afterlife is often not that much comfort. Why expect it to be that much of a motivator?

27. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #70570 by J. J. Ramsey on September 16, 2007 at 5:50 am

Northern Bright: "Thing is, it's like this: If you went for a job interview and were asked why you wanted the job, you would likewise get the door slammed in your face if you said 'Because it's offering a salary of £1,000,000 a year plus 90 days paid holiday, of course!'"

Thing is, we aren't talking about a civilian job, we are talking about a role that is perceived to be that of a soldier, and historically, the motivators for that job are wanting to benefit one's own people and/or hatred of the enemy. Furthermore, those have been motivators for suicide bombers across the board, even for those who don't believe in an afterlife. I suggest that you look at Robert Pape's Dying to Win if you haven't done so already.

The problem is that you are basing your surmises on your own intuition, not on data, not on any input of experts. This is an okay-ish way to make sense of one's local environment, where one's intuitions are likely to sort of work, but it works very poorly otherwise.

28. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #70480 by J. J. Ramsey on September 15, 2007 at 5:20 pm

Northern Bright: "No, Atran's convinced me: the jihadists only want martyrs who are so overwhelmed by their sense of Allah's love for the world that flying planes into tall buildings is the only sufficiently joyful way to express it."

Wow, way to put words in Atran's mouth. He never said anything about jihadis wanting only those who are ecstatically happy about Allah. This is something you pulled out of your rear so you could mock an expert providing contrary evidence.

And this is supposed to be a "clear-thinking oasis"?

BTW, the idea that jihadis would shut the door on someone who was after martyrdom to get nookie in the afterlife isn't that silly. If you were a recruiter for a organization that considered its members as soldiers in a war, and those soldiers had to cooperate with each other, who would you want for the job, those who appear to share your organization's goals, or those who admit to joining for selfish reasons?

29. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #70405 by J. J. Ramsey on September 15, 2007 at 10:54 am

steve99: "I was not just talking about Dawkins' readability. It was the clarity of reasoning helps with such readability."

But since his take on Aquinas' fourth way was very wrong, even when doing it right wouldn't have been very difficult, he isn't displaying a clarity of reasoning, at least not at that point. That is, his own reasoning isn't that clear.

Russell Blackford: "Any attempt to handle the issue with more philosophical rigour would have eaten up the book."

I understand what you are trying to say, but Dawkins could have displayed considerably more rigor even in the space that he had. The problem isn't the lack of detail. The problem is that his outlines aren't necessarily that good.

An example of an outline of his that was done right is his treatment of the cosmological argument. He gets to the heart of the matter: God need not be the terminator of a regress of causes. Contrast this with his treatment of the ontological argument, which kind of meanders around and doesn't get to the heart of well, much of anything. It looks like it is about to describe Kant's refutation of the ontological argument, but never does. Instead, it goes on a weaker line of refutation about existence not being better than nonexistence that rests on an ipse dixit from Norman Malcolm and Douglas Gasking's parody argument. How the parody argument helps Dawkins' case is unclear, especially since that argument involves a bit of illogic not in the original ontological argument, namely the proposition of a being creating something while not existing. Contrast that with this paragraph from Antony Flew:

Say, if you like, that by the word God we are to mean "a Perfect being"; and then go on, if you must, to gloss this Perfect as itself meaning—among other things "possessing the perfection of existence". Manoeuvre how you wish and for as long as you like with the definition. Still you will not have taken one single step towards establishing that there is actually any being such that this word so defined can there correctly be applied. (God: A Critical Enquiry, 4.10)

Simple, clear, and it at least starts to get to the heart of the problem.

There are also some places where he is flat-out wrong. I invite you to look at Robert Gillooly's article in the December 2004 issue of Free Inquiry, and then to lurk around the BC&H forum of IIDB (http://www.iidb.org). You should find that it is only slightly better than the work of Acharya S or Freke and Gandy, and Dawkins should never have used it as a source. And I already mentioned his treatment of the Fourth Way.

"Swift" and "impressionistic" is okay as long as the impression that he gives is reasonably accurate, but I don't see him doing that, not consistently anyway.

30. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #70277 by J. J. Ramsey on September 14, 2007 at 4:55 pm

Off-topic, but since steve99 brought it up ...

steve99: "Dawkins' deals with Aquinas' proofs of the existence of God in the same manner as he dealt with Punctuationism in the Blind Watchmaker - with a clarity that was a pleasure to read."

Reminds me of what biblioblogger Chris Heard had to say about Dawkins' treatment:

I'm not especially interested in defending Aquinas's fourth way. To me, it just smacks far too much of Platonic idealism. But Dawkins has either misunderstood or intentionally misrepresented Thomas's argument. Thomas does not assert that God is the maximum conceivable exemplar, and therefore cause, of every known property. Thomas might well agree that "there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker," or at least, that there is a pre-eminently peerless exemplar of whatever is in the genus of stinkiness. But Thomas would not call this exemplar of maximum stinkiness "God" any more than he calls the exemplar of maximum heat "God." I am not really convinced that Thomas's fourth proof really proves anything—certainly Thomas is wrong about heat, so why should we think he is right when he applies the same principle to God? Yet despite this demurrer, it remains the case that Dawkins's snide reply does not actually touch Aquinas's argument at all. He mocks it, but does not engage it and certainly does not refute it with his mockery. The funny thing is, it's not really that hard to refute Aquinas's fourth way, precisely on actual scientific grounds. It just isn't true that "the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things," but this is the basis of Thomas's fourth way. Why Dawkins goes in for a mocking attempt at reductio ad absurdum rather than simply refuting the flawed science underlying Thomas's fourth proof is beyond me.

Fuller context at http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=511

Yes, Dawkins may be very readable, but that doesn't tell you anything about his accuracy.

31. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #70274 by J. J. Ramsey on September 14, 2007 at 4:47 pm

Macque: "However, if you would like a few nasty scriptures compared to the behaviour of faith heads then you need look no further than jihadi suicide bombers who are promised a plethora of virgins in the afterlife."

From Scott Atran:

Sam Harris and others at the conference tells us that suicide bombers do what they do in part because they are fooled by religion into seeking paradise, which includes the promise of 72 virgins. But neither I nor any intelligence officer I have personally worked with knows of a single such case (though I don't deny that their may be errant cases out there). Such speculations may reveal more the sexual fantasies of those who speculate rather than the actual motives of suicide bombers. All leaders of jihadi groups that I have interviewed tell me that if anyone ever came to them seeking martyrdom to gain virgins in paradise, then the door would be slammed in their face.

http://www.edge.org/discourse/bb.html#atran

32. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #69951 by J. J. Ramsey on September 13, 2007 at 9:52 am

Janus: "PZ Myers' is much, much better."

Not really. Myers pretty much misses the whole point of the piece, writing (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/arguments_for_morality_are_not.php),

He makes a good general definition of moral systems; religion is simply assumed to be a moral system; Dawkins and Harris criticize religion strongly; now, suddenly, Haidt starts treating the New Atheist arguments as an assault on moral systems.

That's not what is happening. What is happening is that in the first part, Haidt points out that we make our moral judgments by emotion and intuition shaped by natural selection rather than by scientific thinking, and then lays out four principles of moral psychology that flesh this out. In the second part, he applies these principles to the New Atheists in order to answer the questions "Do these new atheist books model the scientific mind at its best? Or do they reveal normal human beings acting on the basis of their normal moral psychology?" and comes up with the answers "No" and "Yes," respectively.

33. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #69930 by J. J. Ramsey on September 13, 2007 at 7:57 am

Dr Benway: "You appear to be interested in #1, less interested in #2, and interested in #3 insofar as you note that people are less receptive to folks yelling at them than otherwise."

More or less, yes. With #2, it is not so much that I am less interested in which groups are fraked up (sorry, too much BSG :-)) and more about how much they are fraked up and in what ways. Just identifying which groups are messed up is easy. It's the rest of the diagnosis that is tricky. Of course, that ties back into #1 to some extent, and it especially ties in to #3.

34. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69927 by J. J. Ramsey on September 13, 2007 at 7:43 am

JamPal: JJ Ramsey did that noble religious thing.
He started by losing any sense of persepctive, then lost his sense of humour, then became indignant ...

Balking at dodgy comparisons involving Nazis is hardly a particularly religious thing.

wallace: So you must support Richard Dawkins and any attacks on religion, because the less religious a religious person is, the more moral they are.

By that logic, I should endorse pseudohistory, propaganda, and sloppy methodology if it helps deconvert people.

roach: All of this "you have to look at how people practice the religions" stuff is impossible and irrelevant. Impossible because we simply cannot know the personal religious ideology of the 6.2 billion people on the planet. Irrelevant because the New Atheists are attacking ideas and not necessarily the people who subscribe to those ideas.

There's this thing called sampling, so the task that you describe as impossible is nothing of the kind. Nontrivial, yes, but people like Scott Atran have been doing it for a while. Heck, you don't even have to do it all yourself, but rather take a good look at what the experts have to say. Even a web site like Ship-of-Fools is helpful for testing one's generalizations, though its scope is much narrower. Second, it is hardly irrelevant to make sure that when one is attempting to attack the opposition's ideas, one doesn't use overgenerlizations that don't represent the opposition's ideas accurately

BTW, from W.K. Clifford:

"But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments."

Then he should have no time to believe.

From http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/w_k_clifford/ethics_of_belief.html

35. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #69915 by J. J. Ramsey on September 13, 2007 at 7:02 am

Our bets have been properly hedged (the ideology must be "longstanding" and need only have "some" wisdom).... What would Haidt have us think about these venerable traditions of pious ignorance and senseless butchery?

Sam Harris has already answered his own question: the ideology need only have some wisdom. There is nothing in Haidt's essay to indicate that such butchery would be considered part of the wisdom, and for Harris to insinuate otherwise is disingenuous. The laundry list of barbarisms is being used as a rhetorical smokescreen.

Despite Haidt's suggestion to the contrary, it actually matters what people believe.

Despite Harris' suggestion to the contrary, Haidt did not suggest that. He did suggest that there was a gap in what people professed to believe and how they actually behaved, with the fundamentalists as a case in point, but that is a different matter.

It seems possible, for instance, that these five foundations of morality are simply facets of a more general concern for harm/care.

A general concern for harm/care? I'm sure that a Muslim could justify after the fact that his reaction another Muslim desecrating the Qur'an was based on a concern about the retribution of God, but that would be as much of a post hoc rationalization as it would be for someone who justified outrage at a flag burning by concern that it would spur unrest. Moral reactions tend to be automatic and unreflective, not the outcome of utilitarian concerns of what would cause harm. The question is whether people actually think in terms of ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity, not whether in the abstract they could recast these terms into more basic ones.

36. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69785 by J. J. Ramsey on September 12, 2007 at 7:25 pm

wallace: "Your defense of religious people seems to go something like this...'You cannot judge religious people by their holy books because many of them ignore them, never read them, and are in many ways not religious'."

To some extent, yes, though mainly what I was pointing out was that quoting nasty scriptures doesn't get you very far. You have to go by what people actually do.

wallace: "It seems like you're making the perfect case for people to ignore holy books and religious teachings."

And I'm supposed to have a problem with that, why?

Dr. Benway: "That's got to stop. People have to take responsibility for their written policies & procedures. If they disavow something, they have to put that in writing if they want to prove they're sincere. We are sick of the bullshit."

Oh, please. You write as if you were castigating a nice neat organization, rather than something, or really several somethings, evolving messily over the centuries. We aren't even talking about a straight-up disavowal here, but a far more unconscious process. As is usual with human cultures, there are the stated rules, and then there are the often unspoken rules that people actually use.

37. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69778 by J. J. Ramsey on September 12, 2007 at 6:17 pm

Ahh, the time-honored way of judging the character of a religion. Very common-sensical, but wrong:

The new atheists assume that believers, particularly fundamentalists, take their sacred texts literally. Yet ethnographies of fundamentalist communities (such as James Ault's Spirit and Flesh) show that even when people claim to be biblical literalists, they are in fact quite flexible, drawing on the bible selectively—or ignoring it—to justify humane and often quite modern responses to complex social situations.


From http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge222.html#haidt

I've been getting questions about what's wrong with trying to figure out Islam by sitting down with the Quran. I'll go ahead and start a new heading—this deserves a significant rant, not burying in a comment on an entirely different topic....


What's wrong here? First and foremost, it ignores how most Muslims approach the Quran. Very few Muslims flip open a Quran and read through it to get their God's commands for their lives. That would be a most peculiar thing to try and do anyway: the Quran is, by and large, a remarkably opaque and incoherent document if taken at face value. Sitting down and figuring out what the Quran says is simply unworkable. You try to do that if you want to get confused, or if you're the stupider variety of nonbeliever who thinks ripping through an ancient text and selecting out the lunatic bits produces great insights.

The vast majority of Muslims only make heavily mediated contact with the Quran. The various centuries-old scholarly traditions of Islam are central to their experience of religious prescriptions. Muslims do not read the Quran in the way that Protestants read their Bible translations. In fact, a typical ordinary Muslim may never read the Quran.... Even the rootless modern born-again Muslims who have become visible in "fundamentalist" circles lately are not an exception.

From http://secularoutpost.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-not-to-understand-islam.html

There's no shortcut to observing how religious people actually behave. Don't assume that their Scriptures, however revered they are, are really a good measure of what to expect of them.

38. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69756 by J. J. Ramsey on September 12, 2007 at 3:08 pm

Dr. Benway: "JJ, I now understand why you're in PZ Myer's killfile. I read his note: ..."

Much as the occasion for banning was not one of my better moments to say the least, the note is misleading in a couple ways. First, here is the comment that got me banned:

PZ Myers: "Now, define 'strident'. Near as I can tell, it's simply being an atheist and publicly arguing against god-belief."

No, this is the attitude I'd call strident:

"Next idea for a blog post is 'Why I don't believe in god.' I suddenly realised how necessary it is for me to condense my beliefs and reasoning in retard-friendly format. This format is important for the audience I am targeting with it" [emphasis mine]

Luckily, these are just the words of an adolescent. A full-grown adult would never write something so immature.

(Note: PZ's daughter, Skatje, defends herself in a further comment.)

The insult was aimed at the "full-grown adult," which you can probably figure out is PZ Myers. The note is wrong in saying that I insulted her multiple times, or that there were multiple warnings on the matter, since there was no multiple times. But then, Myers has shaded the truth before out of anger. I suppose I could quibble as to whether it is an insult or just an observation to call a statement immature for referring to a broad swath of people as retards, but I won't push it. Again, not one of my better moments.

As for me "teaming up" with "Rage Boy"? Considering what happened when I let Myers' rage rub off on me, I'd really hate to see how I'd react to him. :-p

On to much more trivial stuff ...

Dr. Benway: "Right. I was too uncomfortable saying that some religions can be like fascist organizations."

Actually, I suspect that you didn't want to write this:

Some religious organizations are very fascist.
Some corporations are very fascist.
Some schools are very fascist.
Some deli owners who serve soup are very fascist.

The last line would have looked trivializing and out of place compared with the first three.

kkant: "J. J. Ramsey, are you a Christian?"

I'm no more a Christian than Dr. Benway is a Poseidonist. And speaking of Poseidon:

http://coffeeghost.net/2007/09/02/see-god/#more-28

Now that is much better that the "Fascism Delusion" parody. No implications that religious believers are worse than they really are, and not nearly as many problems with dodgy analogies, though I could quibble here and there.

39. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69465 by J. J. Ramsey on September 11, 2007 at 10:53 am

Dr. Benway: "you seem to take exception to the notion that religions can be like fascist organizations."

No, I take exception to the broad-brush analogy of religion as similar to fascism, emphasis on the broad brush. It is one thing to say that, for example, the dominionists are fascistic. It is another thing to blithely substitute fascism for religion.

Dr. Benway: "you're missing the primary point of the parody, which is more concerned with the fallacious arguments offered in response to TGD."

No, I understood what the parody was trying to say. It just didn't say it very well, or at least not in a way that stands scrutiny.

BTW, don't think I didn't notice that you substituted the weaker term "authoritarian" for "fascist."

Russell Blackford: "... and the point is that you don't need to explore every nuance and variation of some phenomenon to be able to show that it is fundamentally harmful."

There is a difference, though, between a good argument that religion is fundamentally harmful that doesn't go over the top by implying an exaggerated comparison, and, well ... the parody that we have been discussing.

40. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69401 by J. J. Ramsey on September 11, 2007 at 6:00 am

Dr. Benway: "I'm lost. Are we talking about arguments for fascism, against fascisim, against Dawkin's criticism of fascism? Too many turns of the table. Perhaps a specific example would help?"

See an earlier post: http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,1622,Review-of-Richard-Dawkins-new-book-The-Fascism-Delusion,TheValveorg,page1#69114

Dr. Benway: "Lots of things can be compared to fascism, often with humorous effect, e.g., Seinfeld's 'Soup Nazi.'"

But we are talking about a satirical polemic, something in the "Ha, ha, only serious" vein, which the "Soup Nazi" is not. Even then, "Soup Nazi" is only funny if you don't think too hard about Nazis being mass murderers.

keith: "Are you saying that analogies have to have equivalences in every detail?"

No, but they should be close enough. Furthermore, when one of the objects of an analogy is notorious for its use in fallacious appeals to emotion, one had better be very guarded in its use. There is a reason we have Godwin's Law. If the parody had been a review of "The Zeus Delusion," we would not be having all these denials that a comparison of Zeus and God was being made, because comparisons to Zeus aren't the polemical dynamite that Hitler comparisons are.

Given the utterances that atheists have made about violence and oppression in religion, the likelihood that a substitution of something known to be violent and oppressive, such as fascism, for religion isn't echoing those past complaints is about nil. Cynically speaking, an advantage of using an implied analogy is that one can sneak the complaints in through the back door and bypass a discussion of their validity.

41. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69251 by J. J. Ramsey on September 10, 2007 at 7:04 am

atp: "This piece does not rely on comparing religion and facism. What it does is taking the arguments against the attack on facism is the same as the arguments against the attack on religion. And since the arguments works and we still know fascism is bad, we have an absurd situation."

Trouble is, several of the arguments don't work as well for fascism as they do for religion, so the claim that "the arguments works and we still know fascism is bad" is wrong. The argument not only doesn't work, but it blatantly doesn't work, which would indicate that the author's point is "See, the arguments look obviously absurd when we substitute fascism for religion." And considering that the point of the article was to make fun of reviewers who were originally commenting on religion, the implication is that the arguments were absurd when applied to their original target, religion. Again, we are back to the implication that religion and fascism are roughly equivalent.

Eric Blair: "But most believers would not find this funny because they don't accept the new paradigm Dawkins et al. have presented."

Most believers wouldn't find this funny because they would see the obvious implicit analogy that nearly all of you are trying to pretend isn't there, and they would see it as over the top. As Russell Blackford admitted, much of religion "has evolved into relatively benign modern variants."

42. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69114 by J. J. Ramsey on September 9, 2007 at 6:19 pm

Lightbulb: "It was probably not meant to compare religion and fascism except so far as to say that neither are healthy."

The problem is that some of the substitutions don't make sense if the only thing they have in common is that they are unhealthy:

* "Right from the get-go he makes the mistake of talking about 'Fascism' as if it were some unified quality." The variant forms of fascism have a heck of a lot more in common than the variant forms of religions. There is at least a kernel of truth about the difficulty of making general statements about religion.

* "many Fascists are wholly peaceable." The statement looks silly for fascism, which really isn't peaceable, but religions are all over the map when it comes to brooking violence.

* "Though he accuses Fascism of being an extremism ..." Fascism is generally extremist, while religion, again, is all over the map when it comes to extremism and moderation.

Saying that fascism and religion are both unhealthy isn't saying much. Both mercury poisoning and a high-fat diet are unhealthy, but there is a pretty big difference in how much we can tolerate them.

43. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69098 by J. J. Ramsey on September 9, 2007 at 5:44 pm

Dr. Benway: "You dodged the question: what sort of man is like a Schwinn?"

Your example of an analogy is a bad example: It is comparing the usefulness of a man to a woman to the usefulness of a bicycle to a fish. The "Fascist Delusion" analogy is far more direct. The idea is that religion and fascism are rough equivalents, and the absurdity that is manifest when fascism is substituted for religion in critiques of The God Delusion is an absurdity inherent in the critiques rather than an absurdity that arises from the substitution. Of course, for this to work, religion and fascism have to be rough equivalents in relevant aspects, so asking questions about how close the religions that don't look fascist are to real fascism is legit.

Bookman: "Parody, thy name is J.J. Ramsey."

Loose translation: I don't want to confront that a grossly unfair and inflammatory analogy has been made.

44. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69076 by J. J. Ramsey on September 9, 2007 at 4:43 pm

AntonAAK: "Er.. I think you might have missed the point just a tad."

Not at all. The parody only works if the analogy between religion and fascism is close enough.

45. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69044 by J. J. Ramsey on September 9, 2007 at 3:31 pm

Jack Rawlinson: "I hope RD sees this. I think he'll appreciate it."

His opinion of it would certainly say what kind of man he is.

46. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69040 by J. J. Ramsey on September 9, 2007 at 3:24 pm

Dr. Benway: "Funny, isn't it, how things change. Matisse is entirely compatible with middle-brow taste today."

You dodged the question: which brand of fascism is supposed to be analogous to Reform Judaism, etc.?

47. Review of Richard Dawkins' new book 'The Fascism Delusion'

Comment #69035 by J. J. Ramsey on September 9, 2007 at 3:11 pm

I'll ask the same question here as I did on the Valve: which brand of fascism is supposed to be analogous to Reform Judaism? Which brand is analogous to, say, the Episcopalian Church? Or Buddhism? Or Jainism?

48. The Rise of Atheist America

Comment #68957 by J. J. Ramsey on September 9, 2007 at 9:11 am

automath: "I'd certainly like to get my hands on these angry, in-your-face atheist manifestos ... "

Well, they are certainly in-your-face, and "How Religion Poisons Everything" does look angry, if you'll pardon me for judging a book by its cover. (I can't say that I'm that interested in a book from a guy who tried a "reverse David Barton" on Thomas Jefferson.) As for The God Delusion, with which I am far more familiar, comparing religious indoctrination to child abuse looks kind of angry to me.

PeterK: "I'm not really sure what the point of this article is."

It's a Two-minute Hate, I think. The idea is to encourage the audience to be angry and afraid of the menaces to the Party, and vote for those who will supposedly save them from the menace, such as good, righteous Christians of the Republican Party.

I'm not sure if sending e-mails to WND would help much. It strikes me as a hopelessly ideological organization, and rather tabloidy to boot.

49. A Matter of Faith

Comment #68716 by J. J. Ramsey on September 8, 2007 at 8:52 am

OhioAtheist: "Let the Nisbets and Epsteins of the world say what they will about the tactics of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, but it is because of those same tactics that atheism is enjoying the spotlight."

The forthrightness of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens has been a boon, but it doesn't mean that we have to accept the whole package. I don't have to accept the idea that Dawkins was right to coin a rhetorical cheat like "faith-head" meant to imply that theists were stupid or deluded in general, or the rhetorical cheat of using the word "deluded" where the word "mistaken" is often more accurate, or of the sloppiness that led him to credulously parrot a quote mine of John Adams, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it," that was the opposite of what Adams meant, etc. And I could go on.

Luckily, CBS was kind enough to lead with Julia Sweeney, who projects a kinder outlook.

50. The Out Campaign

Comment #61214 by J. J. Ramsey on August 4, 2007 at 7:41 am

Northern Bright, if we are talking about the Mithras celebrated around December 25, then we are talking about the Mithras of the Roman mystery religion, who was born from a rock, fully grown, not from a virgin woman. There is a lot of crap about Mithras out there. Actually, there is a lot of crap about comparisons between pagan religions and Christianity, but with Mithras, there seems to be more outright fabrication rather than distortion.

That said, the infancy narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke certainly look like attempts to match or even one-up the stories of divine birth attributed to, for example, Alexander the Great or Augustus Caesar.

FWIW, I do have a SkepticWiki page on Mithras here: http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Mithras

I don't expect you to take my word for it, though, and would recommend that you look up works like _The Roman Cult of Mithras_ by Manfred Clauss for yourself if you can.