You request, we occasionally notice

DanG has a suggestion:

It would be useful if this whole Vox/Kelly exchange were assembled into a single site so that the rest of the world could easily compare the reviews and responses.

So mote it be. Fiat dictus! There’s also a link on the side.

Speaking of exchanges with atheists, the Reverend Jeremiah demonstrates that characteristic and always amusing atheist combination of near-complete ignorance with blind self-assurance:

So you are saying that Religion (i.e. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism to name a few) are RELIABLY correlated with mental health? Are you SERIOUS?!Have you seen what the Islamics and Christians and Hindus and Jews do? Not only to them selves, but to each other as well? Are you suggesting the protestant/catholic war in Ireland to be mentally healthy? People killing people over whos imaginary friend is better is mentally healthy? Sitting in fron of a wall all day and rocking back and forth is mentally healthy? Belief in imaginary friends in your adult life is mentally healthy? I have friends who were abused during their entire childhood because of strong Christian beliefs, and you consider this mentally healthy?

Short answer, yes. As is so often the case, this supposed devotee of science and reason ironically turns to rootless logic and personal anecdote in order to combat the settled scientific consensus on the matter. Religious people live longer, are happier, are healthier, are more likely to marry, less likely to divorce, have more children, are less likely to commit suicide, are less likely to be addicted to drugs etc etc. This isn’t news. And before some half-informed idiot attempts to quibble with the divorce aspect, remember, one has to get married before one can get divorced. The divorce rates of the minority of the irreligious who ever get married is higher than the divorce rates of the majority of religious people who do. Simply comparing divorce rates of the overall populations as percentages of the total populations will lead to error due to the much lower marriage rate of the irreligious population.

As far as Marxism goes, you tell me, because you seem to know some of the basics of marxism, what country has ever ran itself directly from marxism? Marx SPECIFICALLY said that his governmental model MUST NOT HAVE A MONETARY SYSTEM. If it has a monetary system, then it is not a true communist system. What government that calls itself communist has no monetary system? Russia? Nope. China? Nope. North Korea? Nope. These are all SOCIALIST systems that you are comparing to Marx’s communism. As far as I am concerned, I agree with what the die hard Marxists say on this subject; “Marxism has yet to be applied to civilization.” You go ahead, say what you want. Hell, you can even accuse me of being a Marxist, I dont care, but PLEASE get your facts straight before you start rambling off on a political philosophy that is so encompassing that you and me combined could still not grasp its entirety. Respectfully. Please?

RJ simply doesn’t know the first thing about Marxism. To even speak about a country running itself from Marxism is to demonstrate a complete failure to understand the essential idea behind scientific socialism, which Marx wrote was the INEVITABLE result of class conflict and the inherent contradictions of capitalism. Therefore, pointing to the presence of money in communist or socialist systems does not defend Marx, but instead damns him utterly. This is only one of the many ways in which Marxism was, over time, eventually proven to be a totally useless economic, political, and societal model. Indeed, this was true nearly from the start, as both the Leninist and Maoist revisions were required to explain the presence of communism in two backwards agrarian societies rather than in the advanced capitalist economies predicted by Marx.

“It’s a non-religious faith and the foundation of a worldview more than it is a scientific model.” Your sentence proves that you really dont know much about evolution. First off, even though I consider TENS to be a viable and useful theory, I do not have FAITH in it like the way you are using it in that context. I know many people enthralled with TENS, some of them Biologists, and they do not display this sort of “faith” you speak of. Second, TENS is patently NOT a world view.

I don’t have much to add when RJ demonstrates that he doesn’t even know the difference between a worldview and a foundation of a worldview. I agree, TENS is not a world view, but Renee and other biologists freely admit that TENS is not presently a functioning predictive model, while Dawkins and Dennett, among many others, have written at great length about how Darwin’s dangerous idea provided a powerful foundation for the secular worldview.

I am embarrassed by your ignorance Vox.

We are all ignorant of something. But it’s not mine that should embarrass you.