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I don’t watch a lot of television, but whenever I catch the beginning of Law & Order, even if I’m in the other room, I can’t help but finish the episode.
The one I caught today, Episode 406 from Season 18 (”Angelgrove”) reminded me an awful lot of Jesus Camp. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s been some heavy stuff on this blog in the last little while, so here’s a video to make you smile — theist and atheist alike.
Blogger Doug from dougsploitation premiered a video by ska praise-band Sonseed called “Jesus is a Friend of Mine” a few weeks ago. Ever since then, it’s been a source of online controversy. Real? Or a goofy jab at praise music?
The general feeling on the interwebs is that it’s legit. But really, who cares? The song is catchy, and the words are good for a chuckle.
Choice lyrics (1:40):
Once I tried to run,
I tried to run and hide.
But Jesus came and found me,
And he touched me down inside.He is like a mountie,
He always gets his man,
And he’ll zap you any way he can…
Zap!
Often enough, I get visitors that read a post or two of mine and then leave a comment that they think is going to change my mind about all this atheism business. Sitting in my comments list, I routinely find nicely formatted arguments that invariably end with “Therefore, God must exist.”
Now let’s think about this for a moment. I run a website dedicated (mostly) to atheism and secular humanism. It stands to reason that I’ve done a fair bit of research about the things that I believe. I’m not just some “Sunday Atheist,” passively not believing in God. And I have no reason to cling to my ideas if I change my mind about their validity. In fact, a little over a year ago, I stopped eating meat. Previously an avid omnivore, I chronicled my decision and the reasons for my new-found vegetarianism on this blog. Clearly, I’m capable of admitting when I’m wrong about something when new information presents itself.
There’s a lot of talk among the pious about pride. They all seem to agree that pride is bad, and that bad people have pride. But what about evangelism? Is it a fundamentally proud position?
For a change, this post isn’t about the origins of the universe or the possibility of God.
I’m going to submit that evangelism is a prideful activity, and that if one believes pride is a sin, that person cannot (in good conscience) evangelize.
One of the most common theist arguments is the Argument from Design (or the Teleological Argument). I’ve discussed it before, but here’s a quick recap:
The world exhibits elements of design, therefore it must be designed, therefore it must have a designer.
The most basic refutation to this is that if there was a designer, he/she/it would also exhibit elements of design and would, by the same logic, be in dire need of a designer.
John Varley’s 1981 book Wizard takes an interesting approach to the issue.
On most demographic surveys that deal with religion, you’ll see many of the major faiths represented, and then a catch-all category for “Atheist or Agnostic.” This contributes to the popular confusion surrounding these identities.
A while ago I received a Twitter friend request from a blog called CultureFeast. I added them back, but didn’t really follow much of what they Twittered about. However, a blog link published this week caught my eye: Defend Your Faith. Read the rest of this entry »
Sacre-Couer Basilica, atop a hill in Montmarte, Paris
Hi there! Sorry for unannounced and extended hiatus of this website. I got tied up at work, and then left for Europe for most of the month.
I’ve just finally had a chance to look at the discussions that unfolded in my absence. I’ve tried to weigh in where I thought it was appropriate, but I’d like to give special thanks to Sara from la tua ucellucia, Ubiquitous Che from rhetoric sans pareil, and of course Justin from Life of a Christian College Student.
Whether or not you’re Catholic, you’ve probably heard of the Pope. He’s that old man who lives in a castle in the world’s smallest country, wears a funny hat, and emerges every once in a while to make goofy assertions — which over a billion people take at least somewhat seriously.
Even the more “liberal” Popes come up with crazy ideas, like suggesting that condoms do not effectively prevent the spread of AIDs.
The current pope (Benedict XVI) was quoted back in 1990 (when he was just a cardinal) as saying that the trial and execution of Galileo was “reasonable and just.” It seems that he’s still suspicious of this whole “earth isn’t the centre of the universe” business.
But these modern Popes have got nothing on the Popes of Yore, especially my new favourite, Pope Innocent VIII.
You’ve probably heard of Pascal’s Wager before, even if you didn’t know that it had a name. Blaise Pascal was this French fellow, alive in the 17th century, and he thought he’d come up with the ultimate answer for the question of God’s existence.
Pascal decided that the existence of God could neither be proven nor disproven using reason and logic, but that if you were a betting man, you should bet that God exists.
I received a comment today on one of my old posts, “Wait a second, are we positive Crocoducks don’t exist?” from a Christian blogger named Justin, who writes at Life of a Christian College Student. I found his comment troubling and began writing a response, but after perusing his blog, I decided to address it directly in a new post. I will deal with his specific comment at the end of all this. Read the rest of this entry »
Unfortunately, I’m studying for a Jewish-Christians relations exam tomorrow, which means that I don’t have much time to dedicate to my regular Sunday blog update.
But just so I don’t break my Sunday post promise, here is an excellent picture I found while reading the news this morning. Read the rest of this entry »
This afternoon I watched For the Bible Tells Me So, a documentary about religion and homosexuality. The film didn’t have any atheists, secular humanists, naturalists, post modernists, or any of the usual critics of Christian fundamentalism. Instead, the interviewees were all Jews and Christians, speaking from religious perspectives and largely conservative backgrounds.
For a moment, I’ll stop playing the role of vitriolic atheist and say that if all theists behaved the way that many of the theologians in the film did, then I probably wouldn’t even be writing a blog about atheism. I doubt I’d suddenly start believing in the super natural, but the passion with which I oppose such belief would certainly flag. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not sure I quite understand this poster, but they’re up and down Granville Street today. I’ve noticed similar advertisements at one time or another in the last few months, one of them a sandwich board with a guitar player rocking out, presumably for the lord.
This type of aggressive, testosterone fueled ministry is becoming increasingly popular - and seductive. I remember being in highschool and attending a few Pentecostal youth groups: doing super fun stuff, always totally free. Unfortunately, before and after there was always the requisite babbling in tongues and sobbing in ecstasy. I always felt a little bit left out, but hey, free bowling was free bowling. Read the rest of this entry »
Caution! This is an article about postmodernism. Lots of people don’t like postmodernism, and even more people don’t really understand it. It’s ok, I don’t really understand all of it myself, so maybe you and I aren’t too different when it comes to that sort of thing.
What I do know about postmodernism is summed up nicely by William Gibson, who thoughtfully penned the words that would eventually become the title of my blog. In the same book, he also wrote:
“Aerol tells you it happened, well, it happened to him. It’s not like bullshit, more like poetry. Get it?” (Neuromancer, page 106 in my edition) Read the rest of this entry »
This post is a response to a comment left about my piece on Ben Stein and Intelligent Design. Read the comment here.
I don’t want to present myself as “evolution-only fascist” or an “anti-ID Nazi” as Keith suggested. However, I would like to position myself as carefully and thoughtfully opposed to Intelligent Design.
He is right, of course, that all ID scientists are not Christian Creationists. The Intelligent Design hypothesis is certainly favoured by many Christians, but it’s also popular with the agnostic and apathetic crowds (as well as other religious systems that require a Creator God).
Here, I’m going to outline the primary reason that I think Intelligent Design is not an intellectually useful position to argue from. For clarity’s sake, I’m going to pose the Intelligent Design in its most basic and non-demoninational format. If you’d like me to address the argument in a way different from how I’ve formulated it, comment back. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Stein & Friends are introducing a new bill to fight the injustice of evolution education. Why does this stuff keep happening?
Read the rest of this entry »
To people that aren’t English students, the idea that language actually creates ideas rather than simply conveys them can seem a little strange. But this is exactly what language does.
Take these two examples:
- Fundamentalist Christians are attempting to inject religious propaganda into science classrooms by teaching the baseless notion of Creationism alongside the scientifically supported Theory of Evolution by natural selection.
- Evolutionists are attempting to silence some scientists that are raising questions about Darwinism and Evolution by Natural Selection. These scientists are suggesting that the Theory of Intelligent Design may be able to account for life on Earth just as well as the Theory of Evolution.
Both passages convey similar information, but in addition, they both create information.
I work downtown, and every once in a while I come across some enthusiastic religious people handing out flyers for their faith-of-choice. I’ve always though it’d be kind of fun to have a flyer of my own to hand back to them.
On that note, I whipped up the following image…
Richard Dawkins recently appeared on The Enright Files, (a CBC Radio program), along with his mirror-world counterpart, Father Richard Neuhaus. The episode is available as an MP3, here. (Apparently CBC only archives their shows for 4 weeks. If it’s no longer there, I’d be happy to send it to anyone that asks.)
The Dawkins portion of the interview didn’t contain much new material if you’ve read The God Delusion or The Blind Watchmaker, or seen any of his numerous lectures on YouTube, or his made-for-TV documentary.
However, when Michael Enright asked whether it was not possible, within the realm of speculation (not probability!), that our brains have not evolved enough to encompass the idea of a creator, Dawkins had this to say…
In 1921 Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics. Since then, his work has continued to hold a priveleged place in the realm of science. In 1999, TIME Magazine named him “Person of the Century.”
By all accounts, Einstein was a bright fellow. And like all bright fellows, it feels nice to have him on your team. When you believe the same things that smart people believe, you can claim intelligence by proxy.
Which is why it’s not surprising that theists have claimed Einsteinian support for their particular brand of belief. The most common argument is that Einstein believed in the Abrahamic God. In an impressively acrobatic series of logical contortions, some people use Einstein’s words to support specifically Christian doctrine.
R.I.P. Jerry Falwell: your unfailing moral compass will be sorely missed in the war against tolerance, compassion and rationality.
Unfortunately, Falwell’s departure from the realm of the living is only a drop in the big bucket of progress that is required to save the world from itself. Falwell was merely endemic of a larger problem: the rising tide of fundamentalism.
When I tell people that I oppose all forms of religion, no matter how moderate, I’m always faced with the question: “What does it matter to you what people believe, if it’s not hurting anyone?”
Well, like the Rev. Falwell and his ilk, I too believe in slippery slopes — except that I’m not talking about homosexuality and bestiality. I believe that the continued existence of moderate religion validates the emergence and growth of extremist sects. But that’s another post altogether…
In any case, lest we forget Falwell’s Good Christian Values, I will record some of his divine pearls of wisdom for generations to come, thus ensuring that we do not remember the Rev. Falwell as anything but the hateful bigot he was.
Jerry Falwell…
…on diversity:
“When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”
…on the enemy within:
“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen.’”
…on the the value of hard work:
“Labor unions should study and read the Bible instead of asking for more money.”
…on compassion and tolerance:
“AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
…on success:
“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”
…on the separation of Church and State:
“The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”
… on gender equality:
“It appears that America’s anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men’s movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.”
If we look at the universe as a sum total of positive and negative forces… Well, the universe got its holiday bonus early this year. Happy holidays, universe.
Quotes from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_falwell
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/foulwell.htm (C) Cliff Walker
Thanks the tireless efforts of Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron, atheists no longer have a leg to stand on when they show up with their pesky science and rational thought. The crocoduck? Flawless argument! Point: theists.Unfortunately for Cameron, his rather lackluster rebuttal of evolution has already been done. And even more unfortunately, thanks to the wonders of scientific method, lots of people haven’t had any trouble seeing through the holes.
The “Argument from Design”(or the Teleological Argument for God’s Existence) is old hat. William Paley came up with that one years ago. 207 years ago, in fact. Essentially, Paley says that we can prove God’s existence by the fact that we (humans) are too complex to have happened “accidentally”. If we see a watch in the field, we know it was designed by someone because it is too complex to have just formed by coincidence. Humans, in turn are so complex that we were obviously designed, ergo, there must be a designer, ergo, God is the designer, ergo, God exists. Ta da!
There are a lot of problems with this argument, and well written refutations can be found in excess on the internet… And in most first-year philosophy classes.
The key problems are as follows:
- Even if we concede that complex objects must have more complex designers (watches must have been created by humans, humans must have been created by something more complex, etc.) this line of thought simply turns into an argumentum ad infinitum. For, if all complex things need a creator, who created God? There is no logic in the argument that validates exempting God from the argument from design. Argumenta ad inifinita don’t prove anything, they’re just rhetorical tricks.
- The ultimate designer is simply assumed to be God. The classic refutation of the argument from design is Richard Dawkins’ book The Blind Watchmaker. There is no logic in Paley’s (or Kirk Cameron’s) argument that would lead us to believe that if a designer exists, it must be a sentient, personal God. Dawkins successfully argues that the examples of perfect and specific design commonly used for the argument from design, (e.g. the human eye, or bat echo-location faculties), were, in fact, designed. A strange stance for an internationally reviled atheist. However, he contends that the forces of natural selection and evolution were the designers. These forces, like gravity or friction, are not agents: they just are. Gravity doesn’t have an intention when it sucks you down to earth, nor does natural selection have an intention when it weeds out undesirable genes. Highly complex and specialized objects cannot not exist, for if they didn’t fulfill a desirable function perfectly, natural selection would have prevented the genes from passing on.
- And finally, the argument from design, even without the first two problems, could only possibly prove the existence of a God, not the God. However, the most vocal theists that have glommed onto this idea are Christians. More specifically, fundamentalist Christians. The argument doesn’t go, “… ergo, God created humans, the Christian God exists.” Once again, no logic in any version of the argument from design proves the existence of the Christian god. The argument from design could perhaps be used to make a case that humans were designed by aliens, who were designed by talking dogs, who were designed by… Wait, I see where this is going.
As a side note, Bill O’Reilly is really quite a tool. The “No Spin Zone” routinely leaves me so dizzy that I can barely stand.
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