Splendid Elles

I’ve been noticing Scientology ads everywhere from the Rational Response Squad website, to Urban Dictionary. The irony was that I was looking up the word “failboat” when I noticed it. If I weren’t so dumb as to not know how to take a screen shot, it would have been a perfect Kodak moment. I found ads for Scientology next to the definition of failboat to be as appropriate as the title of Astrology for Dummies.

I was in the Oxford English Dictionary, searching for a good dictionary definition of anti-intellectualism. It didn’t really provide that, but, it said “see fideism” and so I did. The word is perfect to describe the fallacious thinking most commonly used by theists.

fideism

Any doctrine according to which all (or some) knowledge depends upon faith or revelation, and reason or the intellect is to be disregarded, as

• a. = TRADITIONALISM;
• b. a Roman Catholic theory developed from Kantian idealism;
• c. in Protestant usage, also derived from Kant, with reference to justification by faith.

Hence fideist, fideistic a.

Why didn’t I know that this word existed before?! My Flying Spaghetti Monster, it’s a perfect word!

Happy National Day of Prayer Doing Nothing and Feeling Like You’re Helping Reason everybody! (Via Atheist Revolution).

And… it’s snowing again… in May.

When it’s snowing in May God must be on crack.

If Stein was hoping for a sympathetic audience for his film, you’d expect it to be an evangelical Christian, right?

Well, not s’much.

My friend, Created Rationalist, has posted his review of the film after his church was invited to see Expelled. It’s not very favourable. He deals at a much greater length with all the cases Stein attempted to present in the film than I did.

But some of those atheist and science bloggers are mean!

Well… yes… Yes I am. How exactly am I supposed to feel about being equated to a Nazi?

Now, unfortunately, there are a few things I must take issue with.

I agree;
–that there is some evidence one way or another of Intelligent Agency in the universe
–that the scientists don’t always do a very good job at explaining how they think life began through natural causes
–that Atheism and Philosophical Naturalism are inherently metaphysical and unprovable
–that many atheists are incorrectly equating atheism with science and trying to create a flase dichotomy of sorts
– that there is an active movement among atheists to devalue religion.
–that science (Evolution in particular) can be used to rationalize evil deeds such as killing off the weak

I suppose that evolution does not disprove god (the deist god), though I would have to say that it does contradict the Judo-Christian god who is supposedly playing an active role in the creation of life on Earth.

For example, if I were guiding evolution along, with the intent of making man in my own image, I would have avoided completely unnecessary evolutionary off-shoots such as dinosaurs. It was only after the dinosaurs had gone extinct that the age of mammals occurred, eventually leading to us. But it took another… oh… about 200 million years before this could happen.

Now, it is true that we’re not sure exactly how life happened, but we have a few equally plausible theories of how it could have started. Essentially, all you need is carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen to create organic molecules, and then you need a self-replicating molecule for selection pressure to take place. The main scientific controversies over the origin of life have to do with whether DNA or RNA came first, or if it started in the primordial soup or elsewhere (like around hydrothermal vents).

Contrary to what Ben Stein would have you believe, most scientists do not really believe in panspermia, though it certainly is the most plausible way in which you could stretch ID to be true. For the most part, all scientific theories of the origin of life are plausible and do not need to postulate supernatural jazz.

Now, as for saying that Atheism and naturalism are supernatural and unprovable… Well, you’re calling naturalism supernatural. You can’t get much of a better oxymoron than supernatural naturalism. Naturalism is based on what is observable and empirically testable. Supernaturalism is based on faith. Very different.

I suppose that you can do science and still be a religious person (Francis Crick, Newton, Kenneth Miller), but you’d definitely have to compartmentalize your brain severely. I don’t really buy into the whole NOMA, or “ways of knowing” relativist stuff. You can seek truth, or you can compartmentalize and only partly seek truth.

Alright, you got me. I’m trying to devalue religion. I was an in-the-closet devaluer of religion and now I’m out.

OK, fine. I am actively trying to devalue religion. What’s wrong with that?

And as for saying that science (evolution in particular) can be used to justify evil though it does no necessarily lead to Nazism…

Evolution by natural selection was not a necessity for eugenics. If you think about it, we had eugenics around for thousands of years before Darwin had the brilliance to think of nature as doing the selection. Darwin did not come up with selection. He came up with selection by nature, which is very different from a human selecting traits that he/she likes.

Before natural selection, we were breeding pigeons, dogs, cabbages for traits that we liked. This was artificial selection, the real necessary component to eugenics.

Hitler, though he tried to make it seem like science justified him, was scientifically ignorant about some things.

For one thing, he was a racist. There is no science supporting racism. Also, based on what I read from Mein Kampf, he seemed to think that being in different races was almost equivalent to being in different species. He begins his chapter on nation and race by talking about how animals in different species can’t mate with animals in different species… and applies that to people in different races, saying that hybrids are inferior.

Being half-Chinese and half-American, I took offence to that. I take offence to anybody who says that Hitler was justifying his madness with science as that would be saying the thing that I love most passionately justifies saying I’m inferior.

I think we should make a clear distinction between Hitler’s motivations and his justifications. Hitler’s motivation was a pathological hate for Jews. His justifications were that he was “breeding a super-human race”. Whether he actually thought he could do that, I don’t know, but it’s clear that he would want to kill Jews anyway. If he hadn’t been aware of the idea of eugenics, he might have justified the holocaust by saying that the Jews deserved to die because they were ruining the economy or something.

That said, I’m glad that the Created Rationalist has enough critical thinking capabilities to see through most of Stein’s lies. Give it some time, and you’ll have both feet in the world of reason.

Dear Elles,
How well read are you on religious literature? You seem very confident in the conclusions you have reached on religious matters, as I was at 15. I could be crazy, but I don’t think a video recording of you praying to God proves anything about either the existence or non-existence of God.

I’m a student at an elite university (Duke), high IQ and SAT’s, working for a think tank, and double majoring in two departments with a minor in a third. I love to read, think, and write. I am not saying to brag, only to question your assumption that all Christians are brainless. Intelligence and religion are not that strongly correlated. Maybe in your experience the brightest people you know are atheist, but experience is so limited and proves almost nothing about factuality. IQ and degrees do not necessarily speak to issues of truth. Some of the smartest people I know are Christians—and so are many of the dumbest. Ditto atheists.

I’m not angry with you and do not want to argue. I’m simply pointing out that it is a straw-man to attack anonymous Christians from random internet forums and expose their lack of critical thinking. I hope you agree to the intellectual shallowness of that tactic. I could enter into countless atheist forums and rip naive atheists for their errors, but don’t want to waste my time doing so.

I saw a link to your video and wondered what the deal was. Thanks for posting. As a small, but maybe helpful tip, I suggest that you pray in private and without fanfare. In all seriousness, if there is something you would like prayed for, I’d be happy to do so.

–Benjamen

And my reply…

Dear Benjamen,

I would like to clarify that I do not, in fact, think that all Christians are brainless. I have many Christian friends who are very smart people who simply are unwilling to question their faith in Christianity. I eat lunch every day with a creationist because he’s the closest I can come to another intellectual at my school (lamentably enough).

Ultimately, the existence of the Judeo-Christian god has nothing to do with the intelligence of those who believe in him. It has to do with what evidence there is. I never would try to use the overall or individual intelligence of Atheists as an argument against the Judeo-Christian god.

I have read much of the Bible, and I do try to follow some of Jesus’ teachings not because I think that’s what Judeo-Christian god wants me to do, but because I think that it just makes sense to be nice to your fellow human. I’ve also perused through a few religious books, though I was unwilling to purchase them, and I was unimpressed. If there is a particular book you feel I absolutely ought to read, please recommend one.

I’m sorry that it seemed like I was holding up Dawkinswatch as an example of what all Christians are like. I would most certainly not want to do that. Considering that he thinks that Dawkins is a New Ager, he’s an embarrassment to all of humanity.

And lastly, I have tried praying in private a few times and found no difference in the results. There is nothing I’d like prayed for for the time being, but thanks for the offer.

–Elles

Gotta hand it to him… friendly person.

As usual, a bunch of theists are pissed at Richard Dawkins and are saying foolish things. At least it seems that some of them have actually read his bookunlike some people I know.

Re “Gods and earthlings,” Opinion, April 18

Atheism has its fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins. Everyone has faith in something that is beyond science to prove. Science itself is based on the assumption that the universe is rational and logical and not absurd. Dawkins has a similar problem to those who cannot explain where a complex God came from. Where did the Big Bang come from, and what existed before? If the anthropic principle (the laws of nature seem to have been crafted for the emergence and sustenance of life) was inherent in the Big Bang, then where did that complexity come from? If it was all random, that is a faith assumption also.

Ken Savage

Palm Desert

I applaud you Ken. You have demonstrated that you have actually read the book and did not babble incoherently. However, you said that there is such a thing as a fundamentalist Atheist. Perhaps somebody could explain to me exactly what a fundamentalist Atheist is. For my definition of fundamentalism, I turn to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Fundamentalism

• a. A religious movement, which orig. became active among various Protestant bodies in the United States after the war of 1914-1918, based on strict adherence to certain tenets (e.g. the literal inerrancy of Scripture) held to be fundamental to the Christian faith; the beliefs of this movement; opp. liberalism and modernism.
• b. In other religions, esp. Islam, a similarly strict adherence to ancient or fundamental doctrines, with no concessions to modern developments in thought or customs.

So, could somebody please tell me what doctrine Atheism is supposed to follow fundamentally? We have no holy books. No strict rules on morality. The only thing that Atheism is is a lack of belief in God. Doesn’t that make every Atheist a fundamentalist Atheist?

The theist continues by missing the point of the Anthropic Principle, and asking about the Big Bang. The answer to the question about the Big Bang: nobody knows. Oh noes! Then we must throw all of science out the window and replace it with the Judeo-Christian god!

Alright, you got me again. I’m not entirely Atheist. I’m an agnostic on the technicality that you can’t disprove the deist god (yet) for that reason. However, there is the issue of explaining how this intelligence could have popped into existence if you’re going to use an intelligence to explain the Big Bang making the deist god all the more improbable and the Judeo-Christian god even less possible.

Dawkins’ atheistic rants about creationism and God’s existence are tiresome. Fundamentalist creationists are equally wrong. It is not logically contradictory to hold both that God is the author of all that exists and that the Big Bang and evolution are the ways God created and continues to create everything that exists. Neither statement can be proved nor disproved by science. Even Jesus didn’t worry about proofs for God’s existence.

James McDermott

Pasadena

True, science can’t necessarily disprove theistic evolution, but there certainly is no evidence that evolution was guided (hence, dinosaurs as an entirely inconvenient and unecessary evolutionary offshoot). And besides, natural selection works well enough on its own. Postulating another intelligence is, again, harder to explain and Occam’s razor makes a nice clean cut.

Dawkins argues that if vastly superior beings from some distant planet did indeed seed life on Earth, they could not be considered gods because someone must have created them. Thus, the only true God must be the one who created the universe itself.

This is, of course, the position that is reflected in Christian teaching. During my Catholic upbringing, I was taught that God “is,” meaning he always was and always will be. Defining God in that manner is another way of saying that no matter how sophisticated our theories become, ultimately we cannot explain how the universe got started from nothing and why the world exists. This notion embodies the ultimate mystery of life, which is beyond our power to penetrate from a purely logical and philosophical point of view, and which we must accept on that basis and learn to live with.

Paul Rosenberger

Manhattan Beach

Can I just ask why he’s so sure that science will never find the answer? What “unsolvable” mysteries have been solved by science before? I’ll leave him to think of some examples of his own.

Dawkins argues that “intelligent design” is not science. He is correct. But after that, he moves into less certain territory in which his reasoning inevitably moves to the problem of first causes. There he pretty much avoids the details. In the end, he, like everyone else, must confront one of two choices: Either the universe has always existed, or it was created by someone who has always existed. If the latter is improbable, as he claims, then why is not the former also? Without saying so explicitly, he clearly favors the former, which he is free to do. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to know why he favors one and not the other. Could it be that the latter might make moral claims on all of us, something that would threaten our desire to be morally autonomous?

William S. LaSor

Apple Valley, Calif.

Now there’s an interesting postulation. Either the universe has always existed or someone created it? Again, Occam’s razor. And secondly, if the universe needs somebody to bring it into exsitence, then who brought the deist god into existence? If the deist god can be passed off as being “outside of time” then why can’t the universe also be passed off as being “outside of time” as well?

And, lastly, it has nothing to do with morality. If somebody started the universe, it’s likely to be the deist god who probably doesn’t give two shits about our morality.

How could natural selection create the first living cell? There is no advantage to non-living material becoming a living cell, so the process had to be pure chance, a result of random atoms forming thousands of extremely complex molecules within a few micrometers of each other at the same time. It is statistically a highly improbable probable event, and it bears all the earmarks of design.

As a former evolutionist, I have seen the results of following the data to the most logical conclusion in today’s scientific community. Evolutionists control the scientific community, and any questioning of the current paradigm is cause for ridicule, harassment and sometimes destruction of careers. They should be ashamed, for they have created a totalitarian science community in which everyone must parrot the party line and independent thought is not allowed.

Elaine Fleeman

Bakersfield

Does the argument from personal incredulity ring a bell? Off the top of my uneducated head, I reckon that having a cell could be good protection for the self-replicating molecules. There’s all sorts of chemicals that can destroy DNA or cause “unwanted” mutations.

The ramblings about science being totalitarain are just characteristic of another person brainwashed by Expelled.

But I’ve gotta hand it to them, they were pretty darn coherent and used proper grammar. Most of them even seem to have read The God Delusion though have apparently missed some of the points. As usual, they ignore evolution now and try to use the Big Bang to prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian god. They’re evolving!

I often get asked why I’m an Atheist. That’s why I’ve decided to go ahead and do a post for Coming Out Godless and for this blog so that I can just give people linkage and they’ll know.

I was a child of Atheist parents. I, like all other children, came into the world with no concept of God whatsoever. I was unaware of my parent’s lack of belief for some time, though.

When I was… well, I don’t remember at all how old I was, I went to a Montessori school for pre-school. The teacher was a very nice evangelical Chinese woman. It was there that I first learned what God was.

I was excited my first day there. There was loads of fun games to play, nice people to play them with, picture books…

And then we sat down to lunch. I was ravenous, so I went ahead, opened up my lunchbox, and started shoveling food into my mouth.

“What are you doing?!” came a harsh whisper. I looked up from my food to see everybody’s heads bowed along with the teacher.

“She hasn’t finished praying!” said another child.

It was then that I learned that there was somebody called “God”. God was an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent being. He created us, protected us, and watched over us, sometimes granting us prayers. Cool!

I remember two major falsehoods they taught me there. God and Santa Claus. Santa Claus I debunked sooner. My first Christmas after learning about him, I was laying awake listening for him. When I heard a sound outside my room, I snuck out to be confronted by my Dad. Wasn’t much of a mystery how the presents got into the house the next day…

But God I believed in for a while.

Not only was the teacher at my pre-school teaching us about God everyday and making us pray, but my mother would take me to church. It’s not that she was a theist. She couldn’t care less whether I believed in God or not. She wanted me to go to church so that I could understand American culture.

I still remember the song I learned on the first day there. “Jesus loves me this I know, because the Bible tells me so.” And why do we know the Bible is true? Because it says it’s telling the truth. And how do we know the Bible is telling us the truth about telling the truth? Because it says… When I grew up and became more educated I learned that the term for this is circular reasoning.

At the same time, I started reading a lot. My favourite books were about science and… dinosaurs! I dunno if I became interested in them after I was obsessed with Land Before Time or if I became interested in them because of Land Before Time. Either way, dinosaurs were really cool… except… they were dead. Quite a shame but… wait a minute… If God created us and the dinosaurs, and God protected us and loved us because we were His creations… Why would God have let the dinosaurs go extinct?!

This bothered me and kept me awake during nap time. It made no sense.

Columbine happened a short while later. If God was protecting us and loved us, why would he let something like that happen?

Then there was another paradox that really killed God for my pre-school brain.

If God wanted us to believe in him, and he made us, why not make us so that we already believed in him? Of course, he apparently gave us free will to choose, but I wasn’t born with a conception of who God was. Why not instill in me at least some knowledge that he existed so that I could rebel against him if I chose to?

And then I said to my parents “this religion stuff is really stupid” or something to that affect.

I’d like to say I’ve been an Atheist ever since but in 4th grade I tried praying to God to help me on math tests. It didn’t work. I’ve been an Atheist ever since.

I’ve been taking a lot of time on this blog to talk about Expelled. I’m sure that I could continue to debunk it, but it is getting a little tiresome to continue talking about it. Most people are actually intelligent enough to see through it (and it’s gotten bad reviews all over the place) so I suppose that I’m mostly satisfied that the truth is out there and it’s going to die quietly soon.

I imagine that most of my viewers (you mean all four of them? Naw… I appreciate y’all greatly…) are getting sick and tired of hearing me talk about that most recent well-funded piece of stupidity propaganda. So, I’ve decided to balance it out with a completely random musing about life as an Atheist.

Well, considering that Expelled made the claim that evolution leads to nihilism, I reckon you could see this as a response to that but…

Why do I get out of bed in the morning?

On most mornings, it’s because I have to. I have to go to school. I never want to go to that hell hole of anti-intellectualism, creationists, and general ignunce.

But even if I didn’t have school to go to, I’d probably only sleep for another hour before waking up to the view of sunlight out my window. My bed is rather comfortable and cozy, so why do I leave it?

Because… I get bored. Can you imagine how boring it would be to lay in my bed all day with nothing to do except stare at the picture of a bunny I taped onto my ceiling one night when I was high on caffeine and feeling random? I’d even rather watch Expelled again than do that, and Expelled was the most boring movie I have ever seen. I would rather go to school than stay in bed all day.

Even before I start to get bored, my mind begins to wander. I wonder what’s going on in the Atheist blogosphere. I realize that there are books on science on my bedroom floor that I haven’t yet gotten around to finishing. I get hungry and go downstairs to make something yummy.

Besides, there’s a whole universe out there. There’s a whole universe out there made of millions of galaxies made of millions of stars. Why would anyone confine themselves to the bed?

So, my friends who think that atheism leads to nihilism, why do we need non-secular reasons to get out of bed?

Nihilism is not sexy.

Back in those now ancient days of middle school, I was friends with a girl named Kirsten. We knew each other in Kindergarten, in fact. Her mother was a devout Catholic, though, and I still remember her stacking her little children’s bibles on her bed when I went over once so that she could try to convert me.

We bickered about many things. Politics (I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh), religion, and some other shallow shit that involved long periods of hostility towards each other even though I couldn’t remember what the hell we were mad about two days later.

It must not have been hard to debunk religion in elementary school because one day, I can’t remember when, she just stopped wanting to go to church and her mother wasn’t going to force her. I honestly thought that this had been a personal revelation on her part. I didn’t think that it had anything to do with me. I now had a fellow Atheist with a mother who was still a devout Catholic (a source of some amount of grief for her… I once heard her mother say to her in the car in relation to her lack of faith “I feel failed as a parent”.)

I had the fortune to attend a K-8 school with her, and she was a really great friend but… alas, 8th grade came and was soon gone. We might have gone to the same hell hole (high school) together, which might have made the whole shock of entering the anti-intellectual public school system easier for me with a friend like her, but she moved to Washington state.

Thanks to the Internet, I maintained contact with her, though I still missed her ever so terribly.

After another taxing day at school, I logged in to my IM services to be informed by my ex-Catholic friend that she had started reading The Selfish Gene. We started talking about science and how wonderful it really truly is to be able to understand the universe through science and then she told me that if it weren’t for me, she would still be religious, unable to fully enjoy the awe and wonder of the universe as told by science. She told me that if she didn’t know me she wouldn’t be an Atheist.

I had actually de-converted somebody! I must say that I must be much more optimistic about de-converting religious people than others, but in all our little squabbles over religion, she never showed any sign of swaying to my arguments but… she did.

But in all those fights, she was so stubborn and evasive, like all religious people. Surely something was wrong! Surely it could not have been true! The astonishing news that I had actually changed somebody’s mind made my head spin. It seemed to go against the laws of the universe. What was going on?

I opened my eyes when it became clear that the space-time continuum was not about to collapse.

So, my fellow Atheists, it is possible. It seems so impossible sometimes, I know, but it is possible. Keep fighting the good fight.

I learned something today.

And so the stellar casting in Doctor Who continues with the news that Professor Richard Dawkins, biologist and bestselling author of The God Delusion, is to appear in the current series as himself. On Outpost Gallifrey, the definitive Doctor Who website, I read that Russell T Davies, the show’s executive producer, and all the crew were delighted to see Dawkins. “People were falling at his feet,” says Davies. “We’ve had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins that people were worshipping.”

It’s a great tribute to our age that a scientist can still be greeted with more adulation than a pop princess. But I can’t help noting the irony of the imagery that Dawkins’ reception has conjured up. Falling at his feet? Worshipping? It all seems oddly reminiscent of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem in the days before his Passion; a strange resonance for the scientist who has declared himself the champion of secularism in a world where, he claims, the delusions of faith are gaining an increasing stranglehold.

From: The Guardian

All this time, I was bragging about once having dinner with Richard Dawkins when I actually had dinner with the self-appointed champion of secularism!

Christianity is a myth. But it’s a myth that has helped us - and continues to help us - ask searching moral and philosophical questions.

Searching philosophical questions? Like what? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? When I was in pre-school and I was introduced to the concept of the Judeo-Christian God, the first question I remember asking about the Judeo-Christian God was why he let bad things happen. When you really ask searching philosophical questions about religion and you get unsatisfactory answers, I find that it’s the searching philosophical questions that makes the concept of a supreme-being quickly seems to be a load of rubbish.

But most laughably, the article makes the case that Dawkins’ Secular Army should be stopped because you can’t appreciate literature without the Bible.

Hell, I agree that I appreciate literature more than my fellow classmates because I have more biblical knowledge than they do, but so does Dawkins.

Now, can we all agree to stop reading books by title only? Actually, no. Keep reading stuff by title only. It makes it much easier to tell you why you’re wrong when you do that, and it gives me people to laugh at.

I’ve heard loads of people are angry about this. I suppose that if I had gotten a little less sleep last night, I’d be angry to about the article’s misrepresentations of the book and ignunce it spreads to the public but really, I think it’s all a good laugh. If… well, I don’t even care who wrote it that much… If the guy who wrote this article wants to make an ignunt fool of himself, that’s perfectly fine.

Just tell him why he’s wrong…