51. The God Delusion

Comment #36607 by DNAtheist on May 1, 2007 at 6:09 pm

MrEmpirical wrote

Objectivism is rubbish.

Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things" provides an excellent chapter on objectivism and its problems.

It has been a while since I read WPBWT, but I believe that his criticisms were primarily focused on the cultural aspects of objectivism rather than the philosophy. That the objectivist community manifests many of the many of the characteristics shared by religious cults doesn't necessarily mean that it has no useful ideas. I think Shermer even suggested that Rand's epistemology was worth studying even though he disagreed with much of it.

I'll check on this when I get the chance.

52. The God disunion: there is a place for faith in science, insists Winston

Comment #35010 by DNAtheist on April 25, 2007 at 11:47 pm

I find it hilarious that someone who uses the title "Lord" and believes that he is one of the chosen people of the omnipotent creator of the universe is calling anyone else arrogant.

53. Vote for the Time 100 - Are They Worthy?

Comment #34673 by DNAtheist on April 24, 2007 at 9:23 pm

You know if every person who voted 100 for Richard also voted 1 for all of the people ahead of him he would move up considerably faster in terms of average score.

54. Atheists split on how to not believe

Comment #34424 by DNAtheist on April 24, 2007 at 2:42 am

weefree posted:

'a worthless fart', 'out of touch with reality''ignorant prick' - I see that you boys are keeping up the high standard of intellectual debate on this site! And you are saying this about someone in your own camp who just disagrees on methadology - and you wonder why we can label this a fundamentalist website?! Every day provides new examples.

wednesdayguevara posted:

Weefree:
You picked out three examples of name-calling. Before your post there were 39 other comments that did not call Epstein any names. There are many interesting and civil discussions going on in this thread, but you chose to pick out three name-callers and make them representative of the entire website.

Are you two seriously going to equate my post with calling Epstein 'a worthless fart' or an 'ignorant prick'? Where did I call him any names?

Epstein claims that the work of Harris and Dawkins is retarding what would otherwise be an "explosive growth" in the humanist movement. I've heard Epstein speak on humanism before and he strikes me as an intelligent, thoughtful, and caring person, but if he can't see that Dawkins and Harris have encouraged the "explosive growth" that he applauds, then I do believe that he is out of touch with reality on this issue.

55. Atheists split on how to not believe

Comment #34029 by DNAtheist on April 23, 2007 at 4:45 am

Epstein and other humanists feel their movement is on verge of explosive growth, but are concerned it will be dragged down by what they see as the militancy of New Atheism.

Epstein is out of touch with reality. Dawkins and Harris have done more than anyone to create the "explosive growth" in the non-theistic community by encouraging us to come out of the closet and take an active stand against superstition.

56. Sam's Flea!

Comment #32819 by DNAtheist on April 18, 2007 at 10:22 am

Pun King wrote:
"Well, how exactly can you have objective morality without some objective standard?"

Please provide an example of an objective standard for morality.

57. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #31058 by DNAtheist on April 10, 2007 at 8:26 pm

LordelX, you make a very good point. I was a very firm believer for a good portion of my life, and I was no less intelligent than I am now. I have always valued the truth but having been indoctrinated in religion from an early age, I lacked the perspective necessary to evaluate the truth of religious claims.

Specifically I needed two things:

1.) Knowledge of the history of religions. Reading the Bible, studying other religions, and examining the early history of the Christian church made it clear that the evidence for Christianity's truth was far less than I had always assumed.

2.) The skills necessary to recognize my own biases. College courses in philosophy, physics, anthropology, and comparative religions all helped me to recognize my unquestioned assumptions.

So I agree with you that the atheist/theist divide is not simply a matter of intelligence/stupidity. However, intelligence does make it much easier to acquire the things that I mentioned above, so I suspect that those people who "deconvert" from religions to atheism would be statistically biased toward higher intelligence. I also suspect that the majority of highly intelligent theists are still believers largely because they have never bothered to give such ideas much thought.

58. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #31054 by DNAtheist on April 10, 2007 at 8:02 pm

A religious faith is not, primarily, a set of propositions, although it will contain such propositions and must use all human intellectual resources to understand and explain them.

I notice that he smuggles reason back in here. You can use reason to understand and explain things that you asume to exist, but you can't use reason to address the question of whether they exist in the first place.

Apparently applying reason to the fundamental assertions of religion - such as the existence of a God - is "dry and unnourishing", but once you have accepted the basic supernatural framework, reasoning within that framework is exciting and fulfilling.

This is just another argument that atheists should shut up because they are spoiling everyone else's illusions.

59. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30797 by DNAtheist on April 9, 2007 at 9:44 pm

Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

If I read this correctly, he is suggesting that the atheist movement would be more successful if our most visible spokepeople were dumber. My first reaction was derision, but then it occurred to me that having stupid leaders has certainly worked well for religion.

60. The God Debate

Comment #29162 by DNAtheist on April 2, 2007 at 12:24 am

At the beginning...

WARREN:
All of the religions basically point toward truth.

Later...

WARREN:
The truth is, religion is mutually exclusive. The person who says, "Oh, I just believe them all," is an idiot because the religions flat-out contradict each other.

It didn't take long for Warren's facade of ecumenicalism to break down. Harris and Dawkins really scare the crap out of these people.

61. The God Debate

Comment #29159 by DNAtheist on April 2, 2007 at 12:14 am

Sam makes the statement in his book that religion is bad for the world, but far more people have been killed through atheists than through all the religious wars put together. Thousands died in the Inquisition; millions died under Mao, and under Stalin and Pol Pot.

The Inquisition? Yes indeed that atheistic Inquisition was terrible. It is too bad that Europe wasn't dominated by a strong Christian organization at the time. That would have prevented all of those evil atheists from torturing and murdering people who wouldn't accept Catholic dogma.

Warren clearly neglected his history classes along with his science studies.

62. Postmodernism Disrobed

Comment #29158 by DNAtheist on April 1, 2007 at 11:53 pm

drive1 said:

Honestly .. sex, sex, sex .. that's all these post-modernists ever think about. That and, of course, multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis.

And my postmodernist-to-english dictionary defines "multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis" as "sex." ;)

63. Hell is real and eternal: Pope

Comment #28095 by DNAtheist on March 28, 2007 at 12:52 am

Vatican officials said the Pope - who is also the Bishop of Rome - had been speaking in "straightforward" language "like a parish priest". He had wanted to reinforce the new Catholic catechism, which holds that hell is a "state of eternal separation from God", to be understood "symbolically rather than physically".

Am I actually supposed to be afraid that I will be separated from an eternal and omnipresent "source of joy"? How could you possibly be separated from such a being? Do words mean anything to theologians?

Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a church historian, said the Pope was "right to remind us that hell is not something to be put on one side" as an inconvenient or embarrassing aspect of belief. It was described by St Matthew as a place of "everlasting fire" (Matthew xxv, 41).

It is interesting that he attributes this description to Matthew, as if it is merely that author's opinion. Matthew attributes the statement to Jesus, but I suppose that having one third of the trinity clearly describe Hell as a place of everlasting fire doesn't allow enough wiggle room for re-interpretation.

Of course this quote comes just one chapter after Matthew quotes Jesus as claiming that the end of the world will occur within the lifetimes of the listeners, so I can see why believers would want to say that these were all just Matthew's ideas. But if they can't trust that the gospel writers accurately recorded the words of Jesus, then why would they trust the accounts of the far more extraordinary claim of the resurrection?

64. Atheists Take On Religion

Comment #24213 by DNAtheist on March 5, 2007 at 10:15 am

The 2% number is ridiculous. Even the recent Templeton-funded Baylor study, biased toward religion as it was, found that 5.2% of the U.S. population were atheists. But even if the 2% number were correct we would still outnumber muslims and practising jews combined.


FiremanCarl,

I know how you feel. My son has decided to leave out the "under God" in the pledge like his parents do. Earlier this year he came home from kindergarten upset because the other kids were telling him that he needed to start praying with the rest of the class. Out of the mouths of babes.

65. 'God Is Not a Moderate'

Comment #22694 by DNAtheist on February 20, 2007 at 11:12 pm

"Your excursus into philosophical skepticism was also unnecessary-the "puddle-jumps of faith" that lie at the foundation of our reason are not a problem for atheism... There is still a difference between jumping a puddle and walking on water."

Sam is such a pleasure to read. If I were prone to magical thinking I might suspect that he was Samuel Clemens reincarnated.

66. Native American populations share gene signature

Comment #22462 by DNAtheist on February 19, 2007 at 1:51 am

That isn't the position of the Catholic church, Mind Rebel.

67. Interview with Chris Hedges

Comment #22252 by DNAtheist on February 13, 2007 at 5:50 pm

Sancus,

I know of protestant and deist Founding Fathers, but which ones were Catholic?

68. My critics are wrong to call me dogmatic

Comment #21938 by DNAtheist on February 12, 2007 at 12:32 am

Get 'em, Dawkins! It's high time someone confronted theists on their false claims of humility.

69. Believing In Things Unseen Is Not Delusion

Comment #20920 by DNAtheist on February 7, 2007 at 2:59 am

"curious, coming from the editor of the unabashedly liberal Newsweek" -Blue State Mike

Why would you find that curious? There is no shortage of the religiously deluded among liberals. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joseph Leiberman, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Jim Wallis, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson spring to mind, but the list is endless.

70. Give us back our bones, pagans tell museums

Comment #20898 by DNAtheist on February 7, 2007 at 1:42 am

I am certain that the bodies in the museums belonged to ancient atheists who rejected the religious superstitions of their time. As an atheist, I claim the right to speak for these bones, and I know that these ancient people would want their remains to be studied in the hope that science might one day be able to prove a thing or two. It is true that my claims can't be proven, but they also can't be disproved, and so should be taken seriously.

Honestly, is someone actually paying this Professor Bienkowski a salary?