1. No Admission for Evolutionary Biologist at Creationist Film

Comment #148039 by Affront on March 21, 2008 at 9:40 pm

I wonder if my fellow countryman, Professor Dawkins, (who I sincerely hope remains a British citizen, Mr Falcon) was at all miffed about not being recognised while Myers was! The organisers say that they did recognise Dawkins and decided to let him in, to which the only response must be 'Duh?!'.

I realise that you fellows are keen on free speech, as are we here in the Mother Country. But surely it's time that you amended your famous constitution to limit the freedom of dishonest people, like those behind this film, to twist scientific facts and corrupt young and impressionable minds. There is something truly evil about these creationists, isn't there?

2. Bulldozers tear down giant religious teapot

Comment #138840 by Affront on March 4, 2008 at 8:58 pm

Insane. They will drive the Teapotists underground, turn their young into fanatics and massively strengthen the cause of Teapotism. After all, 99.9 percent of us hadn't heard of Allah's Giant Teapot until the Malaysian government destroyed it. Atheists though we are, I bet many of us were more sympathetic to the poor old Teapotists that we were to the dastardly 'religious police'.

If only Islam could take on board the idea of 'having a sense of humour' but I guess that we'll have to wait a few more centuries for that.

3. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #128039 by Affront on February 15, 2008 at 10:37 pm

Actually, he isn't quite as young as he looks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)

Still, a good guy and would be excellent on the 'public understanding' part.

4. Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science

Comment #128038 by Affront on February 15, 2008 at 10:34 pm

Time to hand on to a new generation, I think. I nominate Dr Brian Cox:

http://www.apolloschildren.com/brian/

5. What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Comment #107605 by Affront on January 4, 2008 at 8:10 pm

Richard Morgan:

As is often the case, the answer is in the question - we atheists weren't "happy" with the fairy-tale happy-endings/answers. The feel-good principle didn't work with us. Our brains misfired into rational thought

That has to be true, but my question goes a bit deeper than the answer it seems to include.

Why weren't we atheists happy? What is the evolutionary advantage of some people not buying into received wisdom or settling for banal or unsatisfying answers to their questions about life, the universe and everything? This is particularly mysterious given that many religions – including Christianity – tend to exact rather extreme penalties (ranging from mental torture – the promise you'll burn in hell for eternity – to actual torture/killing etc.) on those who don't believe. In survival terms, not believing what you're told to believe doesn't seem to have a lot going for it!

My guess at the answer to my question is that, if you take the species as a whole, it obviously benefits if there are enough people around who don't accept the status quo to ensure a steady stream of change and innovation. Clearly in any given population you wouldn't want everyone – or even the majority – to be like this: it would be a recipe for chaos. But societies can tolerate – because they benefit from – sufficient people who have a sceptical, enquiring approach to the world to, say, invent new weapons or find better ways of producing food.

Clearly it also helps if the majority are simply prepared to go along with whatever invention the enquirer/sceptics come up with. Most people are not Leonardos and a society consisting entirely of Leonardos would get nothing done.

Perhaps the Trimurti concept in Hinduism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimurti - with its distinction between creators, maintainers and destroyers, reflected this idea. Perhaps the god gene is only switched on in maintainers (and destroyers)? We, of course, are the Visnus of this world. At a more prosaic level, there always used to be a recognition in the IT world that you needed two different kinds of people in a large data processing centre: those who liked to create and build new systems and those who were happy to maintain the systems built by others. Most of the time, you needed far more maintainers than creators. I expect there are parallels in many other areas.

Perhaps, also, in times of crisis – like that which may be engendered by global warming – it makes sense for the balance between creators and maintainers to shift. Perhaps that's one reason why atheism appears to be suddenly on the rise.

Just a thought!

6. What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Comment #106392 by Affront on January 2, 2008 at 7:44 pm

'And "feelings" have a an awful lot to do with handling cognitive dissonance.'

Hi Richard. I nearly mentioned cognitive psychology but thought better of it. Cognitive dissonance is my all time favourite theory - it's so useful and explains so much.

Its close relation 'cognitive closure' is second on my list of ways of explaining why we believe in stuff for which their isn't much evidence. We hate incompleteness - we can't stand stories that don't have a comprehensible beginning, middle and end.

Two good examples of this in the UK (from whence I write) are the Princess Diana and Madelaine McCann stories. Neither of these stories - particularly the latter, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Mccann - has a neat 'ending'. The media love stories with missing endings because it provides them with a ready market. http://www.express.co.uk/home is particularly willing to exacerbate and exploit our need for 'an ending' to this awful story although even the quality press - like www.guardian.co.uk are guilty of the same fault.

We seek cognitive closure - we want to know how the story ends –and if the press can provide an ending for us we will lap it up.

Myths and religious texts also meet our evolved need for cognitive closure. Those who buy-into the closure provided by god myths use cognitive dissonance to protect their beliefs. (Incidentally, cognitive closure also explains all those surveys which show that believers are happier' than non-believers'. Of course they are: they've chosen to accept what for them is a plausible 'ending' to the story. Those of us who choose not to accept that life, the universe and everything is easily explicable will forever be frustrated and, therefore, 'unhappy.)

The question which currently interests me is, given the ,my last point and the strength of cognitive dissonance/closure, why do we atheists even exist? Why don't we all use strategies based on cognitive dissonance/closure to provide easy answers and, therefore, live happier lives?

The answer to this must, I think, also lie in the evolution of the human brain and its astonishing capabilities.

Andrew


PS – can someone please tell me how to use quote boxes in these posts: I can't see an explanation of this anywhere on this site and my need for cognitive closure needs to be satisfied! Many thanks.

7. What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Comment #106147 by Affront on January 2, 2008 at 12:29 pm

'Humans aren't purely rational animals, and we do make decisions based on both rationality and feelings.' Paula Kirby

I know what you mean when you talk about feelings, but to my mind the important question is why do we have feelings which can - for some people - lead to a belief in god? What's the underlying cause? I think the best explanation can be found evolution. We have a very strong urge to ask 'Who's there?' (as Dan Dennet points out)and to find explanations for things generally. This evolved drive to seek explanations has a very strong survival value. But it creates problems when the answer or explanation isn't obvious. The easiest way to reduce an unsatisfied 'explanation drive'is to provide a simple catch-all explanation. Hence gods.

So as I say, I think this is about more than just feelings, it's to do with how our brains function as a whole.

8. Changing my Mind

Comment #106141 by Affront on January 2, 2008 at 12:10 pm

"It's like arguing with children."

Most of the children I know are pretty good at arguing and, of course, persistently asking questions. What's so sad about fundamentalism is that it assumes it has all the answers.

Anyway, a nice piece by Prof. Bateson. Christians - even the moderates who I know - find it very difficult to accept the idea that it's possible to call oneself an atheist without excluding completely the idea that gods might exist. When I point out to them - as I did to an Oxford educated lawyer not so long ago - that even Richard D doesn't totally discount the possibility of their being gods, they get very upset.

The idea that atheism could be treated as a religion might hold water if we atheists asserted that gods don't exist. We can't, of course. But we can say that we believe very strongly that there are no gods and that the onus is on those who do believe to provide some falsifiable evidence to support their position.

9. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #97945 by Affront on December 12, 2007 at 9:36 pm

"The followers of Jesus, Stalin and Hitler all believed that their leader was infallible...that is the rub."

Good point, although I'd qualify it by saying their followers either believed they were infallible or decided that the dire punishments that each of them attached to non-belief (Jesus - no redemption/burn in hell, Stalin and Hitler - long term imprisonment in atrocious conditions) made it preferable to pretend to believe, even if you didn't.

As I mentioned above, shame father morris won't be listening. I'd be fascinated to hear his views about pedophile priests.

10. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #97942 by Affront on December 12, 2007 at 9:29 pm

It would be nice to think that Father Morris is reading any of this. He won't be, of course, and if he is good old cognitive dissonance will filter out any views he doesn't already agree with. (To be fair to him, we'll probably do the same.)

I think he wrote the open letter because he obviously lost the online BBC Have Your Say debate. If you watch it you'll see he switches from grinning bonhomie to a scowl right after Richard D points out that the atheist movements that Morris mentions weren't driven by advancing the cause of atheism.

My guess is that he wrote the letter because his lords and masters at the Vatican would have been somewhat angry with him for losing the argument.

His letter, btw, is really addressed to believers and his bosses - he doesn't care what we think about it.

11. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #97449 by Affront on December 12, 2007 at 5:23 am

Was Morris's letter really so awful?

Actually, I was going to answer 'it had it's strengths' but I've just re-read it and it truly does stink.

His 5th paragraph goes:

i. you say that if there is a god, he clearly isn't good because he lets terrible things happen
ii. you think god's terrible! Just look at those pesky atheist tyrants if you want to find out what terrible is like.
iii. I'm going to ignore i. and just stick to arguing about pesky atheists.

Let's put the atheist/theist headcount thing on one side, shall we Father, and focus on i.

Given that your starting point is that there is, without doubt, a god the onus is very much on you to prove that this is so - we don't have to lift a finger in the meantime.

Your god allows tsunami, child abuse, genocide, rape, torture, earthquakes, famine, suicide bombing and the rest.

What point is he trying to make? If you say that he's just testing us I'll think a lot less of you (and, of course, of him).

12. Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Comment #16958 by Affront on January 9, 2007 at 7:15 pm

John, many thanks - the point about the leaflet certainly passed me by.

As a wishy washy liberal, I have problems with the 'threat of a growing Islamic community' point. On the one hand I'm supposed to be politically correct, open, and - er - liberal. On the other hand - and you should know that I've stood in 'chop chop square' in Riyadh (as it's known to the ex-pat community there) and have seen at first hand what an admittedly rather extreme 'Islamic commmunity' looks like - I feel that most of the tenets of Islam are about as illiberal as it's possible to be.

But on yet another hand, I appreciate that the far right (Le Penn, etc.) will exploit any criticism of Islam I venture to make.

What's a boy to do?

AndrewC

PS Chop Chop Square is rather a pleasant spot, strange to tell. I've only visited Riyadh for brief periods and certainly haven't witnessed any of the frequent choppings (of limbs and heads) from which the square gets its name.

13. Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Comment #16792 by Affront on January 8, 2007 at 7:52 pm

'In fairness, the issue he wants to address is a real issue of public policy - ie rules governing the wearing of religious symbols by civil service and other personnel.'

How did you come to that conclusion? I didn't read that into it at all. When he says, for example, 'With the hijab ban in French schools, a state was banishing religion not only from its corridors, but also from its citizens' surely he's either just getting very confused or deliberately trying to confuse readers. Were't the French just saying 'you can believe whatever you like about supernatural beings and their self anointed prophets, but if you really want to repress women please, at least, don't do it in your own time and not on public premises'?

The idea that this amounts to 'banishing religion' is just sloppy sensationalist spin from someone whose main motivation is to grab a few column inches in the Grauniad. To return to your point, I thought his main target was the totalitarian, eradication-minded atheists and that he just dragged the French into it in a desparate attempt to bolster his logic-free case (or maybe just for effect: another Rod Liddle in the making, perhaps?).

14. Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Comment #16657 by Affront on January 7, 2007 at 11:23 pm

Greetings from West Berkshire, Lionel.

Tobias Smith is - at least based on the fact that he attended Jesus College, Oxford - a reasonably bright chap although as he read English I suppose that it's possible that he doesn't grasp, or has a low regard for, science.

But if he does understand the implications of the current state of scientific knowledge, he's left with the problem of squaring his belief in an omnipotent, creator, interventionist god (I assume that's what he believes) with the complete lack of any tangible evidence that one exists.

Also, if he has read some psychology, he'll know that when we're faced with incompatibity between a belief and our experience of the real world we get uncomfortable: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

We don't like this dissonance, so to reduce the discomfort we can either change our beliefs or attempt to explain the new information in a way that enables us to keep our beliefs intact.

That, perhaps, is what Smith is doing. I'd guess that his belief is, like that of most Christians, a little tenuous. He has to work very hard to hang on to the idea of an immortal, invisible, god only wise (not least because he is by light inaccessible hid from Smith's eyes). He can't deal with Dawkins arguments head on, so instead he constructs his straw man and, in doing so, mounts an ad-hominem attack: a double whammy! Many of the Christian responses to atheists the work of Dennett, Harris and Richard D are like this: very unchristian of them, but they have nothing else offer.

Incidentally, I think we should add another reason for belief in gods to those that Dawkins lists in chapter 3 of The God Delusion: the Argument from Dawkins' Ignorance. It goes like this. Dawkins isn't qualified to criticise religion because he's not a believer If he'd read scriptures properly, understood theologians interpretations of them and – above all – opened his mind to god, he would believe. Ergo, he hasn't understood and that means god must exist. OK, it's a bit weak but not as weak as the ontological argument!

15. Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Comment #16551 by Affront on January 7, 2007 at 9:51 am

PS - have just read the Observer review of Jones' latest. It includes this:

'In a recent interview with John Humphrys, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained that, for him, to have faith necessitates some doubting. Jones is impressed with the idealism in these communities that arises from a similar lack of conviction: '[It] existed not because they thought they had reached perfection, but because they realised how far short they were.' He makes a good case for the compassion encouraged by anxious faith, by the fact that these communities appear 'much less certain, much less absolutist' than the world described by Richard Dawkins.'

He certainly does have a thing about Richard D and seems to ignore the fact that Dawkins, like Dan Dennett, both point out that many church-goers 'doubt' to the extent that they don't actually believe in the deities their chosen religions were founded to adore! Do you think he has actually read any Dawkins properly? Perhaps he just tossed the books aside after the first chapter.

It's not at all surprising that Jones (and the Rabbi) mentioned see doubt as an important element of faith. The actual believers (as opposed to those who see churches primarily as a social club) have to challenge themselves constantly on the point of the existence of their God, as anyone who has been to any kind of church service will know. But by winning through time and again in the absence of any actual evidence prove to themselves that they really are true believers! Hallelujah!

(I know, a bit, whereof I speak: for a few years, a long time ago, I was a member of an evangelical Church of England congregation myself. Thankfully I'm now fully un-saved and completely de-redeemed.)

16. Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

Comment #16546 by Affront on January 7, 2007 at 9:35 am

Hallo everyone - nice to meet you all. Have just posted to the discussion at the Guardian website under this user name.

Am coming to the conclusion that the theists have come up with another reason for believing which we can probably call 'The argument from Dawkins' ignorance'. God exists, so this argument goes, because Dawkins doesn't believe in him. Dawkins is a nasty person for not believing in God when it's so obvious that he should. Believers are, by definition, nice so that proves that God exists! (Well, it makes about as much sense as any of the other arguments.)

As I said in my post to the Guardian, it strikes me that the people like the author of the piece we're discussing must be very insecure in their faith. They are, very obviously, rattled. They show no signs (unless I've missed them) of dealing directly with arguments like those in The God Delusion and it's obvious why that is: they can't.

Surely, being Christians, they should be trying to persuade us of the error of our ways rather than launching ad-hominem attacks. Odd, isn't it? We could be forgiven for thinking that, after all, they are feeling a touch insecure so far as their faith is concerned.

Ta ra for now