1. Dumb and Dumber: A discussion between Ben Stein and Glenn Beck

Comment #175532 by burkbraun on May 5, 2008 at 2:43 pm

"I loved Nixon like a father" Part 3, 5 minutes

2. Dumb and Dumber: A discussion between Ben Stein and Glenn Beck

Comment #175499 by burkbraun on May 5, 2008 at 2:03 pm

This discussion and the first film clip prompted me to think of a good answer to the "hope" question. What if a very nice lady from Nigeria offered you the hope of getting a million dollars?? Hope is something to evaluate very carefully, not something to pick and choose from a spiritual smorgasbord.

3. New Atheists Are Not Great

Comment #145170 by burkbraun on March 17, 2008 at 10:35 am

"None of the atheistic alternatives has survived because reason just doesn't make a satisfying god"

Mr. Snow explains what he is really about- making a nice god, and then imagining that this god actually exists. What could be more transparent, except, sadly, to himself? No wonder he merrily flacked for the most self-deluded administration in history.

4. Interview with Richard Dawkins: On Christmas

Comment #100798 by burkbraun on December 19, 2007 at 10:47 am

Hi, All-
I think a concise response to this question would be to say that we are also happy to sing "Frosty the Snowman", "Santa is coming to town",and "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer", knowing full well that these characters are each fictional. Don't you sing these songs as well? Or do you change the lyrics, sotto voce, to signify that you do not believe in these entities? Doing so would be absurd as well as unnecessary. Atheism is about separating fact from fiction, not about social unpleasantness or cultural fire-bombing.

If I may add.. the question about barring unbelievers from churches was stunning. Such a policy against thought-crime would be even more Orwellian and insecure of the church than I would credit. It bespoke the interviewer's prejudices rather clearly.

5. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #99119 by burkbraun on December 15, 2007 at 4:26 pm

It is delightful to see the honesty of this discussion, and its complete openness in showing all cards to the opposition, such as it is. I can just imagine a bunch of reverends having a similar discussion... "How many new sheep did you bring into the fold today? ... Jeez, I am having trouble shoveling this BS all the time. I mean, who could ever take this seriously? ... Boy, did you see that alterboy? ... What do you think about prosperity gospel? I've got to think about my retirement, you know."

6. What is the role of free will to an atheist?

Comment #98406 by burkbraun on December 13, 2007 at 2:55 pm

Free will is a fascinating question. Firstly, this is far more of an issue for religious people than it is to atheists. Christianity solves its problem of evil by saying that God has decided, despite his benevolence, to let humans suffer and hang themselves if they so choose- by giving them free will. Some (like 7th day adventists) even think that there is an ongoing wager with Satan (like in the book of Job) where God, for some inexplicable reason, is allowing evil to flourish in the world by way of the free will of humans, as an object lesson in our lack of morals and lack of ability to govern ourselves, only to come back at judgement day to resume running the show again in earnest.

One can see that it is the paradox of a benevolent god overseeing a suffering world that, for religious people, necessitates a special theory of free will.

For rational people, however, free will is also a problem, in a different way. That is, if we are truly mechanistic beings, down to our cognitive and neural processes, then aren't all our thoughts determined in advance? Are we actually making decisions, or do decisions happen to us in a pre-determined way? Is the conscious sensation of making choices a true representation of some de-novo event in the universe?

The answer is no- all mechanistic phenomena have reasons and causes, and the brain is not immune from this logic. This is spelled out in a nice book by Daniel Wegner "The illusion of conscious will". The neurobiology is not crystal clear yet, but it is clear that our sensation of conscious choice follows by a substantial lag the actual mechanism of choice made elsewhere in our brains. Thus our brains make choices, based on experience, on reason, on happenstance... whatever, and then our consciousness is informed of the result, at which point an idea "pops" into our heads.

What this means is that we have free will, insofar as we are not aware of the subconscious processes that lead to all our decisions, or conversely can cite and use reasons for some decisions (however inaccurately rationalized in retrospect). We also have free will in that we take moral responsibility for our actions, even when they are desperately at odds to our more considered desires (addictions like smoking, gambling, eating). But in the end, we do not have free will in the atomic sense that there is an inner homunculus that purely reasons its way to action and represents our instant consciousness of that decision-making.

7. An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

Comment #97547 by burkbraun on December 12, 2007 at 10:28 am

The irony of an imaginary "father" arguing for an imaginary doctrine is always fetching. Anyhow, Morris presents an interesting opening for approaching the question of Stalin and other monsters.

"... I think you would do a great service to humanity to reject, as John Paul II did for Christians, the evil actions of a tiny percentage of atheists who have, in your opinion, acted in a way that poorly represents your belief system, in particular your common denial of the existence of God."

It is all too easy to renounce in retrospect what we now abhor, without reflecting on what caused it and what distinguished the right aspects from the wrong. That is, without taking full responsibility for correcting our views in the light of evidence.

In his apology, did John Paul say that the orthodoxy of the church was incorrect? No- only that believers in that orthodoxy should not take it to extremes of killing those suspected of being less than orthodox. Though anyone who takes that orthodoxy seriously can see that laxity in belief threatens the soul with everlasting hellfire, and thus deserves extreme sanction, as an example to others if not for the good of the lapsed soul. Needless to say, an exhortation to tone down extremism does not solve the problem of fanaticism in the service of a belief that is intrinsically irrational and absolute.

Speaking for atheists, we can say that Stalin, Mao, and other leaders who were atheist (even Hitler, insofar as he was atheist), were factually correct in that view. That was not where they erred. They erred in devising or adhering to other systems of belief that were not only false, but prone to do extreme harm to humanity. Hitler believed in the inferiority of Jews. Yet if he had taken seriously even the most crude Social Darwinian theory, he would have treasured the Jews rather than killing them, since their cultural achievements were exemplary and disproportional to their numbers. His prejudice, that of his country-men, and that of Europeans generally, was formed by the church in which he was raised, which had preached the culpability and the other-ness of Jews for centuries. Also, he adopted the "Führer-prinzip" which placed his absolute authority at the head of a vast temporal and spiritual hierarchy, reminiscent of that of the "infallible" pope, whom Morris unquestioningly cites.

A proper lesson to draw from all this would be that the intrinsic political and social equality of all persons is the touchstone of a humane social system, as is thorough-going and open democracy. The Catholic church has made substantial amends in the first area over the last half-century, but not in the second.

Stalin and Mao, among other communist totalitarians, adopted what can only be called the theology of communism, with its triune deity of Marx, Lenin and themselves (insert Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. here). Marx was an interesting thinker, still taken seriously for his innovative thoughts and eloquent writings on the society of the nineteenth century. Yet his claims to have devised a "scientific" theory of history, of social relations, and of prophecy for the future were ridiculous from the start- they were no more scientific than the claims of Christian Science, or of Scientology. This is where actual scientists can shed some light on this historical matter, since the patina of science has been abused a number of times, and to grievous effect.

The long-suffering Russian people were duped by the utopian propaganda of communism, as well as its evident effectiveness in sweeping away the brutally oppressive and church-sponsored tyranny of the feudal system. Yet to replace it, the Communist leaders adopted their own "Führer prinzip", in the form of the Orwellian "Dictatorship of the proletariat", extending not only over the government, but over the most minute details of each person's life, encompassing the entire economic and social system as well. It was this proposition of absolute power that led to the corruption and abuse that flowered with Stalinism, combined with various theological principles relating to the organization of agriculture/society that disregarded millennia of empirical experience with human nature.

Again here, the proper lesson is not that atheism is bad, but that absolute power is bad, and that a humane social system must be engineered with institutional restraints and dynamic feedback (that is, "checks and balances") on top of an open democracy.

In short, Morris evades the lessons of history by lobbing the "Stalin bomb" at atheists. It is true that the weakening grip of traditional Christianity over the last few centuries opened the door for new theologies to take their place, occasionally ones that inflicted vast suffering. While this experience has certainly proven that some of these new theologies were less humane than the old, it does not speak to the truth of any of them. Nor does it indicate that better theologies (or non-theological modes of existence) are not possible, especially since the secular west has, despite all these theological competitors, achieved wonders in humane self-government.

Note to the webmaster: Perhaps you could order the comments with most recent on top. That would freshen up the site for frequent visitors, and also value thought over speed. Thanks!

8. Atheists don't believe in anything

Comment #82011 by burkbraun on October 25, 2007 at 2:27 pm

Well, we sure don't believe in Santa Claus, if that is what you mean. Or in beings that are formally equivalent to Santa Claus.
1. invisible, except in school plays
2. plays good cop/bad cop to make us behave
3. documentary evidence- stories and myth
4. rich artistic heritage
5. changes likes and dislikes with time and culture

9. Science owes its origins to Christianity or Religion

Comment #82002 by burkbraun on October 25, 2007 at 2:15 pm

Wonder gives rise to religion, and wonder also gives rise to science. The historical sequence was that immature and narcissistic methods of addressing our wonder (we are the center and measure of everything, the universe loves/hates us, etc.) were gradually replaced with mature, evidence-based methods that we now call science. Christianity helped to put some distance between humanity and the natural world, and also incubated theories of an orderly universe. Scientific methods then observed and documented the universe to be empirically orderly in many ways, which is a far stronger and more durable form of knowledge. Early scientists were all religious, since they did not have any choice in the matter given the bullying nature of religion. The history is very interesting and lengthy, but to say that science relies on religion now is like saying that I rely on my childhood self for survival, let alone want to return to that state of reasoning.

10. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23559 by burkbraun on March 1, 2007 at 2:32 pm

"But from a naturalist point of view the thought that our cognitive faculties are reliable (produce a preponderance of true beliefs) would be at best a naïve hope. The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive, but nothing follows about the truth of the beliefs depending on that neurophysiology."

This quote, from late in the piece, is an interesting one to refute. This was what the Enlightenment was all about, after all- discovering methods of perceiving and understanding the empirical world that rise above the limitations of our immediate senses. Whether it is methods of closely calibrating instruments, or of developing whole new senses of perception, or of sceptically considering as many relevant hypotheses as possible, the enlightenment was founded on replacing freely imaginative conceptions of our world with empirically-based ones.

Our senses are evidently adapted to our immediate outer world, but not to our inner world. Introspection, which is one of the main supports of religion, is horrible at gathering knowledge of how our minds work- to whit, we still do not really know how our minds work, and all the meditation in the world will not tell us. Incidentally, the counter-hypothesis that our perceptions are true apriori (via some attenuated image of god) has been demolished by modern neuroscience if not before, so if that were an argument that this author is trying to slip in, it is also feckless.