Tag: atheism

Dawkins and the Dark Ages

In this Twitter spat between Richard Dawkins and the Muslim community, I find it interesting that no one has noted the silliest thing that the world’s most famous atheist said:

Professor Richard Dawkins has become embroiled in a Twitter row after he claimed the last time Muslims contributed something worthwhile was during the Dark Ages.  The 71-year-old author went on to tweet that the world’s Muslims had won fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.

His comments sparked anger among high-profile Twitter users including writer Caitlin Moran and economics editor at Channel 4 News, Faisal Islam.

Moran tweeted: ‘It’s time someone turned Richard Dawkins off and then on again.

‘Something’s gone weird.’

While Islam said: ‘Actually, over the last two decades, it’s 8-4 against Trinity. I

‘I say this as a muslim alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge.

‘Of course if @RichardDawkins had any clue what he was talking about, he’d know to strip out the Economics Nobels, which aren’t quite real’

Forget the fake Nobels of economics, which Islam is correct to point out are not true Nobel prizes, but rather Sveriges Riksbank Prizes in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.  It’s more pertinent to point out that there never were any Dark Ages, in Europe or anywhere else, and even if one uses the term in the historically incorrect colloquial manner, it has nothing to do with Islamic history.

Richard Dawkins is simply demonstrating, once more, the fact that in addition to being a philosophical and theological ignoramus, he is a historical one as well.

UPDATE: It is pointed out that it was the newspaper, not Dawkins, who used the ahistorical term “Dark Ages”.  Fair enough, that is an error that should not be laid at his door.  But he is responsible for this logical error: if Muslims had contributed nothing worthwhile, then the Nobel count difference cannot matter since either Nobel Prizes are worthwhile, thus proving Muslims have contributed something, or they are not, in which case his comparison is pointless.

Of course, all of this is irrelevant, since Dawkins is merely playing his usual game of vomiting forth rhetoric in the guise of dialectic.

A fallen atheist

This self-described fallen atheist appears to have realized, as a result of up close and personal experience with the weak and the broken, that kicking away the crutch upon which people are leaning is not the act of a brave intellectual or an honest seeker after truth.  Even if the crutch is an intellectual placebo.

It is the cruel and thoughtless act of a self-centered asshole:

I heard how
the small cross in Takeesha’s purse offered her protection when getting
into a strangers car. “When I climb into that car God comes with me and
keeps me safe.”

I heard how Neecy found the strength to try and find a better life in her Bible.

I heard how Michael’s Rosary “Was a reminder that there is something better than all of this.”
Soon I saw my atheism for what it is: An intellectual luxury for those who have done well.

It isn’t a coincidence that the rise of the New Atheism coincided with the peak of the greatest credit boom in history.  And it isn’t an accident that the New Atheists are increasingly seen as intellectual embarrassments only five years into the Great Depression 2.0.

There is no shortage of scientific evidence that religion is, at worst, a placebo. Even if we assume that religion is entirely false, how can anyone who claims to possess any ethics, let alone superior and rationally determined ethics, possibly justify harming others by intentionally eliminating that placebo effect?

An atheist decalogue

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments:

The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

  1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
  2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
  3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
  4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your
    husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not
    by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and
    illusory.
  5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
  6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
  7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
  8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement,
    for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a
    deeper agreement than the latter.
  9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
  10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

I don’t necessarily disagree with all of these points, but it is remarkable to observe far they fall short of the original Decalogue, even though the original was produced with considerably less human history upon which to draw.  Let’s compare them, one commandment at a time.

One: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
Russell: “Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.”

The Decalogue sets down the basis for an objective and universal morality.  Russell, on the other hand, undermines any possibility of morality, but science as well, by establishing uncertainty as his foundation.

Two: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”
Russell: “Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.”

While the problem of graven images is somewhat mysterious, lacking any basis for distinguishing right from wrong, Russell is forced to resort to a demonstrably false justification for what would otherwise be a reasonable claim.

Three: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
Russell: “Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.”

Again, the commandment is clear, though its import is unknown.  But it is still superior to Russell’s, which again relies upon an observably false justification.

Four: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
Russell: “When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your
husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not
by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and
illusory.”

Russell scores a half-point here because he has the sense to limit his commandment to an exhortation, although he again sabotages his position with a false justification.  We aren’t even sure when the sabbath day is, or understand how to keep it holy.

Five: “Honour thy father and thy mother.”
Russell: “Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.”

This commandment is the basis for civilization.  Russell’s is the road towards barbarism.  Not only is the justification again false, but the commandment is intrinsically pernicious.  Legitimate authority merits respect, it is only illegitimate authority that does not.

Six: “Thou shalt not kill.”
Russell: “Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.”

This is Russell’s first truly coherent point, but it can’t compare in significance or rhetorical power to the original.

Seven: “Thou shalt not commit adultery”
Russell: “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

And here the essential triviality of the atheist exposes itself again.  Once more, the justification is observably false.  The importance of inviolate marriages, on the other hand, is integral to sustainable societies, as is becoming more and more apparent in their increased absence.

Eight: “Thou shalt not steal”
Russell: “Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement,
for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a
deeper agreement than the latter.”

Now Russell is just babbling.  Intelligent dissent does not necessarily imply any agreement at all.  And what percentage of the populace is “valuing intelligence as you should” likely to apply in any meaningful manner anyhow?

Nine: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
Russell: “Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.”

It is a pity Russell has the need to produce a justification, even a fairly solid one, for an otherwise strong commandment.  But that points back to the flaws in his first commandment and his failure to establish a moral warrant.  Russell’s commandment is literally stronger than the original, although the latter is usually taken to be metaphorical and more broadly applied than its literal meaning.

Ten: “Thou shalt not covet”
Russell: “Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”

 So, envy is fine, so long as one is envying the happiness of those who are genuinely happy.  This is a pernicious doctrine.

It is fascinating, is it not, to see that a crude and primitive Bronze Age people, working with considerably less information to hand, somehow managed to produce a moral code that is considerably superior in terms of fact, logic, structure, scope, and style than the code produced by one of the most elite and celebrated minds of the 20th century.

By taking God out of his equations, the atheist loses everything, because he destroys the foundation upon which so much of what he values is constructed.

Go with God, r/atheists

It would appear the high-flying discourse of r/atheism failed to live up to the exacting intellectual standards of reddit:

We know many of you will wonder what happened to /r/politics and /r/atheism and why they were removed from the default set. We could give you a canned corporate answer or a diplomatic answer that is carefully crafted for the situation. But since this is reddit, we’re going to try things a bit differently and give you the real answer: they just weren’t up to snuff.

I know I’m shocked, as I’ve so often been impressed by the arguments presented by r/atheists.

Atheist rationality in action

This would appear to count as additional evidence of my scientific hypothesis concerning atheism being an indicator of mild autism. It’s impressive how many conventional atheist talking points he manages to hit on in his rant. And notice he makes false claims of being threatened as well as threats of “digging up dirt”; such actions are endemic to the more emotional elements on the Left.

And never forget, these are the people who claim to have reason on their side.

Belief in God is good for you

As I pointed out five years ago in TIA, the New Atheist attempt to
kick out the supposed crutch of religious faith is not only churlish, it is actively harmful to those individuals who happen to need a crutch in
order to walk through life.

A new study
suggests belief in God may significantly improve the outcome of those
receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness. Researchers
followed patients receiving care from a hospital-based behavioral health
program to investigate the relationship between patients’ level of
belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.

In
the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective
Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level
of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term
psychiatric treatment than those without.

“Belief was
associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but
decreases in depression and intention to self-harm,” says David H.
Rosmarin, Ph.D., an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School….

Patients with “no” or only “slight” belief in God were twice as
likely not to respond to treatment as patients with higher levels of
belief. Investigators believe the study demonstrates that a belief in God is
associated with improved treatment outcomes in psychiatric care.

It’s
fascinating to see how some atheists believe that Templeton funding
renders a study intrinsically unscientific, while blithely citing
studies funded by Big Pharma to argue for the safety of
government-mandated chemical injections.  All the while ignoring the
disproportionate tendency of atheists to kill themselves and others.

I
suspect it won’t be long before there is additional scientific support
for my hypothesis that atheism is a consequence of a mild form of
autism.

Public intellectual = godless intellectual

In his speculation on whether public intellectuals matter, AC Grayling somehow manages to avoid noticing the giant elephant voiding its bowels in the room.

Can one give a catch-all definition of what it is to be a “public
intellectual”? Consider this list: Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein,
Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, Stephen Jay Gould, Norman Mailer, Susan
Sontag, Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, indeed anyone on Prospect’s
list of people who merit or are thought to merit the label. They have
very little in common other than intelligence and engagement, and the
fact that they speak out. Those three things, accordingly, might be
taken to capture the essence.

Very little in common other than intelligence, engagement, and the fact that they speak out?  I don’t know, my highly developed pattern recognition skills suggest to me that there just might be something else these notable public intellectuals all have in common. Let’s look over his list one by one and see what the Internet has to say about their religious beliefs.

Bertrand Russell = atheist
Albert Einstein = agnostic
Edmund Wilson = atheist
Lionel Trilling = agnostic
Stephen Jay Gould = atheist-leaning agnostic
Norman Mailer = atheist (during his years as a public intellectual)
Susan
Sontag = atheist
Noam Chomsky = atheist
Richard Dawkins = atheist

My goodness, isn’t that an astonishing surprise! It goes without saying, of course, that A.C. Grayling is himself an atheist.  This failure to note this common point is so massive, and so glaring, that it is either intentional, or worse, an indication of the very small scope of the so-called public intellectual’s perspective. Of course, we should probably keep in mind that Grayling is known for his convenient memory lapses, having once falsely accused William Lane Craig of a false claim to have debated him.

This leads me to conclude that the correct answer to Grayling’s question is that public intellectuals matter very much to other public intellectuals.  As to their importance to the vast majority of the rest of the world, who don’t give a damn what a few self-important, self-promoting, godless individuals may happen to think about anything, they clearly don’t matter at all.

As I have previously shown, despite the statistical overrepresentation of the irreligious among the highly intelligent, there are still far more highly intelligent religious individuals than there are highly intelligent irreligious individuals.  To be precise, the ratio of theists with +2SD IQs to atheists with +2 SD IQs is more than 10 to one. The more significant question, therefore, is why are all of these much more numerous highly intelligent religious individuals so few and far between on this year’s list of celebrated world thinkers?  Why are so few of them invited to give TED talks?

Do their religious beliefs somehow negate their intelligence? Or could it be that there some other mysterious factor at work? This is all so very inexplicable in light of the fact that GSS studies over the past 40 years show that the MAJORITY of atheists have IQs of 100 or less.

Mailvox: the innumerate atheists

SM has a request that is appropriate for National Autism Awareness Week.  Let’s not forget to be aware of our Socially Autistic friends such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris:

hey vox, can you show me some evidence that dawkins sucks at math? would be awesome thanks.

 “The anthropic principle has been an embarrassing problem for secular scientists in recent decades due to the way in which the probability of the universe and Earth just happening to be perfectly suitable for human life is very, very low. The extreme unlikelihood of everything being not too hot, not too cold, not too big, and not too small, to put it very crudely, has often been cited as evidence that the universe has been designed for us, presumably by God. 

Now, Richard Dawkins is arguably not an individual particularly well-suited to play around with probability. He may not be quite as mathematically handicapped as Sam Harris, but he is known to have some issues in this regard, being openly mocked for his “comic authority” and “fatal attraction” to mathematical concepts by the French mathematician Marcel-Paul Schützenberger.

(“But look, the construction of the relevant space cannot proceed until a preliminary analysis has been carried out, one in which the set of all possible trajectories is assessed, this together with an estimation of their average distance from the specified goal. The preliminary analysis is beyond the reach of empirical study. It presupposes—the same word that seems to recur in theoretical biology—that the biologist (or computer scientist) know the totality of the situation, the properties of the ensemble of trajectories. In terms of mathematical logic, the nature of this space is entirely enigmatic.” )

Schützenberger’s contempt for Dawkins’s mathematical abilities is well-founded, as it’s generally not considered to be a good idea to adopt a casual approach to mathematical probability, as Dawkins does with the “one in a billion” chance of something like DNA spontaneously arising which he invents ex nihilo, before reaching the shocking statistical conclusion that if there are a billion billion planets and a one in a billion chance of life spontaneously arising on a planet, then life must exist on a billion planets throughout the universe! Dawkins is genuinely surprised by his astonishing discovery of mathematical division, so much so that he repeats it twice.”
– TIA p. 151

As a bonus, this was the reason behind the reference to Sam Harris:
“The first thing one notices is that Sam Harris can’t even manage elementary school math. The percentage for the safest cities determined by state voting patterns is not 62 percent; seventeen blue state cities divided by twenty-five total cities equals 68 percent safe blue cities.“
– TIA p. 124

I suspect a connection

Ed Trimnell observes that not only are atheists far more inclined to attack Christianity than Islam, but some are even willing to publicly declare that Islam should be off-limits to atheist criticism:

“It seems that a writer at Salon.com is upset because the so-called “New Atheists” have been rather unkind to Islam of late. In a piece entitled “Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens: New Atheists flirt with Islamophobia” Nathan Lean suggests that these New Atheists should simply shut up about terrorism, sharia courts ordering death sentences for apostates, and honor killings in the Muslim world. Then they can go back to doing what atheists in the post-modern West are supposed to do: talk about the threat that evangelical Christianity poses to humanity. (After all, some of those hillbilly reactionary Christians still haven’t fully embraced same-sex marriage!)”

I suspect that this sort of thing might have something to do with the atheist hypocrisy:

“Hundreds of thousands of people have held protests in Bangladesh to
demand that the government introduce an anti-blasphemy law that would
include the death penalty for bloggers who insult Islam…. Supporters of Hefazat-e-Islam, an Islamist group which draws support
from tens of thousands of religious seminaries [and that has the backing
of country’s largest party, Jamaat-e-Islami], converged on Dhaka’s main
commercial hub to protest against what they said were blasphemous
writings by atheist bloggers, shouting “God is great — hang the atheist
bloggers”.”

Apparently the old chestnut about there being no atheists in foxholes isn’t all that far from the truth. Christians are holding to their faith even as they are murdered for it by Muslims in Nigeria and Egypt and by atheists in China and North Korea. Atheists, meanwhile, are showing that they don’t have the courage of their lack of conviction, thus proving my point that post-Christianity in the West is unlikely to look any different than post-Christianity in the Middle East.

A post-Christian West will be pagan, not secular. It will be in the form of dark gods like Santa Muerte and Damballah Wedo, and it will be rooted in death and cruelty. It should be recalled that whereas there never was any medieval “Dark Ages”, there is a very good reason why Jesus Christ was considered “the Light of the World” by civilized and scholarly men who were familiar with the darkness of pagan cultures that preceded Christian society. Merely having to compete with that Christian society considerably improved paganism, as even Julian the Apostate implicitly admitted in his futile attempt to build a paganism capable of rivaling it.

“Julian’s heart was set on a civil and religious reformation. He longed for amendment in law and administration, above all for a remodelling of the old cult and the winning of converts to the cause of the gods. He himself was to be the head of the new state church of Paganism; the hierarchy of the Christians was to be adopted — the country priests subordinated to the high priest of the province, the high priest to be responsible to the Emperor, the pontifex maximus. A new spirit was to inspire the Pagan clergy; the priest himself was to be no longer a mere performer of public rites, let him take up the work of preacher, expound the deeper sense which underlay the old mythology and be at once shepherd of souls and an ensample to his flock in holy living. What Maximin Daza had attempted to achieve in ruder fashion by forged acts of Pilate, Julian’s writings against the Galilaeans should effect: as Maximin had bidden cities ask what they would of his royal bounty, did they but petition that the Christians might be removed from their midst, so Julian was ready to assist and favour towns which were loyal to the old faith. Maximin had created a new priesthood recruited from men who had won distinction in public careers. his dream had been to fashion an organisation which might successfully withstand the Christian clergy; here too Julian was his disciple. 

“When pest and famine had desolated the Roman East in Maximia’s days, the helpfulness and liberality of Christians towards the starving and the plague-stricken had forced men to confess that true piety and religion had made their home with the persecuted heretics: it was Julian’s will that Paganism should boast its public charity and that an all-embracing service of humanity should be reasserted as a vital part of the ancient creed. If only the worshippers of the gods of Hellas were once quickened with a spiritual enthusiasm, the lost ground would be recovered. It was indeed to this call that Paganism could not respond. There were men who clung to the old belief, but theirs was no longer a victorious faith, for the fire had died upon the altar. Resignation to Christian intolerance was bitter, but the passion which inspires martyrs was nowhere to be found. Julian made converts — the Christian writers mournfully testify to their numbers —but he made them by imperial gold, by promises of advancement or fear of dismissal. They were not the stuff of which missionaries could be fashonied. The citizens were disappointed of their pageants, while the royal enthusiast found his hopes to be illusions. Mutual embitterment was the natural result.”
– The Cambridge Medieval History Vol. I, pp 362-363

That was 1,650 years ago. There is truly nothing new under the sun. Even today, we see “the passion which inspires martyrs was nowhere to be found.” The reason Richard Dawkins’s attempt to set up an atheist charity will ultimately be no more successful than the Emperor Julian’s efforts is because the Christian customs they seek to imitate are not inspired and encouraged for their own sake, but by the particular religious impulse. Both history and observation clearly indicate that it is no more possible to maintain the tenets and various aspects of Christian civilization considered desirable by non-Christians without the Christian faith to support them than it is to maintain intellectual function without a beating heart.

Such efforts can be maintained, for a short time, by extraordinary artificial measures. But they will fail soon enough. And then the true nature of pagan darkness will reveal itself again.

A profile in atheist courage

Richard Dawkins isn’t so keen on criticizing the God of the Koran:

Asked if he thought the same of the God of the Koran, Dawkins ducked the question, saying: “Well, um, the God of the Koran I don’t know so much about.”

How can it be that the world’s most fearless atheist, celebrated for his strident opinions on the Christian and Jewish Gods, could profess to know so little about the God of the Koran? Has he not had the time? Or is Professor Dawkins simply demonstrating that most crucial trait of his species: survival instinct.

Whoops. It’s funny how these confident, cocksure prophets of atheism-who barely have time to take a breath between slamming the tenets of Christianity and Judaism-often get curiously tongue-tied and shy when the subject of Islam comes up. The idea that Dawkins doesn’t “know so much about” the God of the Koran is absurd. Of course he knows about Islam. And the same disdain and disregard that he has for Judaism and Christianity should surely apply to Islam as well.

The truth is that bashing and mocking Judaism and Christianity is easy and painless. You’ll get praise and admiration from those within the “right” circles of academia, media, and entertainment. Your opponents will argue with and debate your views and they may even offer (gasp) to pray for you. There’s no real price to pay at all.

Well, I know I’m shocked….