Tag: atheism

Mailvox: homo inedicabilis

Although I am inclined to make heavy use of statistics-based probability in observing human behavior and find that it is a very useful tool in in explaining and predicting individual behavior, I never, ever forget that probability is not certainty and that even a powerful 97% statistical probability means that you can count on rolling boxcars sooner or later. Here are two examples of why I am always careful to distinguish between atheists who merely happen to lack god belief and militant/New atheists who can be expected to exhibit a predictable range of social disfunctionality and political ideology in addition to overt hostility towards that which they claim to be nonexistent.

M writes:

I love your blog. It really keeps me thinking every day. One of the most important things you have done for me is that, while not converting me from atheism, you have taught me that religious people can be just as skeptical and rational, if not more so (probably more so), than atheists. You have also really let me realize how irrational most atheists are. While I already knew most of the flaws, your retorts to their arguments are just so witty, concise, and overall entertaining…. I am a skeptic. I am skeptical of just about everything, from scientific claims to mystical claims to political claims. It’s no surprise that I would find myself loving the skeptics community, a world-wide network of people who embrace rational and critical thinking. Well, or so they claim.

Being a skeptic, I really wanted to go to the Amaz!ng Meeting 8 this weekend in Las Vegas. I forgot something, though. The skeptical community heavily overlaps with the new atheist movement, and they all seem to be, as you call them, “science fetishists”. There’s never enough skepticism about political issues. In fact, skeptics who don’t believe in global warming are quick to be called “climate change denialists.” I myself stay in the camp of “I don’t know, and I doubt you actually do either” but I don’t even say that, because I don’t want to deal with people about it.

It’s obvious that many of these people are irrational, even though they claim to embrace rational thinking. But what can we expect from a bunch of people who think Richard Dawkins has intelligent things to say? I love science. I love skepticism. I also love actually applying my rational thinking to the two. Thank you for writing a blog that actually uses critical thinking. I am glad that while I find one community is lacking, there is another community out there that has the right mindset.

Another atheist, S, writes in response to a previous atheist’s email:

I’m a big fan of your blog and although I don’t agree with everything you write, I think you’ve almost always got something interesting to say. I read your post regarding the comments by one “UberDawks”, and I have to say, I’m surprised that you were so easy on him. (I refer to Rule 1 of the blog- I thought that, given the guy’s total lack of reason or civility, you’d be a lot harsher, though the cartoon was an interesting touch.)

As an atheist, I have to say, I’m amazed at just how bad his “reasoning” really is. Unlike most atheists I find the notion of anthropogenic global warming to be deeply suspect, and I was not particularly surprised to find that the inquiries into Mann and Jones cleared the scientists involved of wrongdoing- despite clear evidence that both ignored FOI requests, deleted and manipulated data, and exercised academic privilege to quash dissenting views. One would think that any reasonably literate atheist would at least be able to read those CRU emails.

As for his comments about the Founding Fathers- I think of myself as a libertarian, and I’ve often wondered myself about the religious views of some of the Founders, but I’ve never doubted that the men who built this nation were for the most part Christian in their outlook. It seems to me as though UberDawks has never even read the Declaration- the document makes clear references to Divine Providence and “the Supreme Judge of the Universe” right there in the text. And to ignore the role that Christian theology played in creating the Constitution is to ignore all of the Constitution’s understanding, clearly articulated in the text, of Man’s fallen nature and of the need to protect free men from the depredations of over-powerful governments and less-than-moral men. In other words, one would have to ignore the very reason the Constitution was created in the first place. That’s precisely the kind of leap of faith that atheists are supposed to be above making.

Overall I find UberDawks and his ilk to be mildly worrying. It’s no wonder that atheists can’t be trusted with power- if his email to you is representative of the level of thinking that goes on within the atheist community, secular nations with atheist or humanist leadership are in really big trouble. I also think that the peculiar atheist faith in man-made global warming exists primarily to replace the human need for some kind of faith in something. That still doesn’t make it a good idea; not all faiths are productive, and that particular one is downright absurd (and for once, it’s possible to show this scientifically).

S is correct to be worried about the more rabid species of atheist; their science fetishism and political utopianism is every bit as dangerous to more reasonable atheists and agnostics as they are to Christians and other theists. Still, I didn’t really see any need to kick UberDawk’s teeth in despite his incivility since he was clearly just a drive-by critic and the unreason and ignorance revealed in his email tended to render it self-refuting. One thing that people like him who wrongly perceive me as being intrinsically “anti-atheist” fail to understand is the significance of the difference between one’s religion and one’s political ideology. While they are usually related, they are seldom identical. My religious faith certainly colors my ideology, which is why I describe myself as a Christian libertarian, but the fact remains that I would vastly prefer atheist libertarians with realistic views of human corruptibility in positions of political leadership to both Christian progressives attempting to bring about Heaven on Earth and Christian conservatives seeking to impose Biblical morality through legislative fiat.

Of course, in addition to being imperfectly predictable, Most People Are Idiots, as demonstrated by this commenter at the New York Times. If this isn’t enough to cure you of an instinctive democracy fetish, nothing will.

“I am dismayed that commentators and inquisitors like Chris Matthews let their “guests” get away with the lie that “small businesses, not government, creates jobs.” I can’t believe that these troglodytes get away with pushing such a patently false proposition. As you may guess, I’m a government employee, and my money spends just as well as a window clerk at McDonalds. Spending is spending; buying is buying. I eat food, buy housing and clothing, and pay my utility bills just like everyone else. So why doesn’t keeping my job count just as much as me opening a small business? Let’s stop the lying.”

Yes, let’s absolutely stop all this lying and simply have government hire everyone who is out of work to do… something. After all, since government creates jobs just like small businesses, then there is no reason for anyone to be unemployed ever again! Mises wept.

Help, help, they’re being repressed!

 Come see the religious oppression inherent in the system!  In tangetially-related news, this email from UberDawks may amuse:

I’ve been reading your blog and I have to say that it is chock full of the most delusional christard fundamentalist bullshit I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading.   Guess what jerkweed, the CRU was just CLEARED, and Penn State found that the “hockey stick” held up. Where is your precious “Climategate” now?! Packed away with the rest of the fundie Christian myths?

Also, the constitution was not based on the BIBLE you historically inept moron. The posters on your site are idiots. The founding fathers WERE deists and DID NOT base the Constitution on your idiotic cracker-blessed bible. You should all educate yourselves by reading Chris Rodda’s articles at HuffPo.

No wonder PZ Myers won’t debate you, you’re so ignorant that it would be like a mighty bearded hammer fighting a skinny, bald nail.  You don’t understand science, you don’t understand history and I’m pretty sure you are as batshit crazy as Jesus was, I would wait for a response…but you have NO arguments to make.
To reiterate from my previous post, there were only two, at most three Deists in comparison with the 52 Christians, most of them CALVINISTS, who were at the Constitutional Convention.  The same Christian-heavy ratio is true of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.  The CRU was “cleared” in a whitewash where the science, such as it was, was not examined in any way, shape, or form and it is a far cry from Penn State finding that Michael Mann was not guilty of professional misconduct to claiming that the university declared that the long-disproven “hockey stick” temperature graph is valid.  When did the myth of Global Warming become adopted as an article of the atheist faith?
UberDawks concludes by demonstrating that impeccable atheist logic which insists that PZ Myers regularly runs away from debating people because he is afraid he will destroy them so utterly.  And to think that these are the intellectual giants who want you to take them on faith that God does not exist.

The myth of Deist America

I suppose we can’t be surprised that atheists so often get Christian “mythology” factually incorrect when they can’t even keep their own myths straight:

The thinkers who formulated the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were deists, not theists, and were inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment movement in England and Europe.

Pure.. Unadulterated.. Poppycock. This flies completely in the face of serious scholarship on the subject by Dr. Miles Bradford (University of Dallas) in which he careflully examined the religious beliefs of 55 of the framers of the Constituional Convention and found only 3 whose religious leanings were a bit unclear.

For crying out loud, there were nearly as many MINISTERS signing the Declaration of Independence as there were deists. The lesson is to always treat atheists spouting “facts” like Jehovah’s Witnesses “quoting” the Bible. Always, always, always, ask them for their source. Most of the time, when you force them to trace it back, it will turn out to be pure fiction.

Atheism: the anti-Game

PZ Myers considers why women don’t like atheists:

It’s an odd way to put it, I know, but it gets your attention. I could have called this the Atheist and Skeptic Problem, which is more accurate, but leads people to start listing all of our problems, starting with how annoying we are, and just for once I’d rather not go down that road. So here’s the Woman Problem, and it’s not a problem with women: it’s a problem with atheist and skeptic groups looking awfully testosteroney. And you all know it’s true, every time I post a photo of some sampling of the audience at an atheist meeting, it is guaranteed that someone will count the contribution of each sex and it will be consistently skewed Y-ward.

Let’s me get this straight. Women don’t like a group of men who are known for being socially difficult, taking every excuse to pick arguments, launching unprovoked attacks on other’s beliefs, throwing hissy fits at the drop of a hat, and basically behaving like drama queens on all occasions. And on top of this, they tend to be inordinately interested in science.

This is a mystery? Seriously? All that’s without even taking the high Creepy Guy factor which some of the atheist women report of the skeptic conference attendees and even atheist leaders into account.

Now, obviously not all atheists are hapless when it comes to women. Consider the examples of Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins, who managed to marry seven women between them…. But I would be interested in hearing from the women here why they are disinclined to find atheist men attractive beyond the obvious desire to marry a man of like religion.

Let the slaughter begin

Australia has an atheist leader!

As a child, she was a Baptist, now she’s an avowed atheist. Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard this week completed the image of a thoroughly modern Australian leader by telling the nation she doesn’t believe in God.

Oh relax, all you hyperventilating godless pansies. Not all ambitious atheists are mass murderers. There’s only a 3 in 5 chance that she’ll be bathing in the blood of Australian virgins as Australia’s Dictatrix-for-Life ten years from now.

Atheism and action

In which the connection between godlessness and the commission of acts of mass violence is explained by Napoleon, as per his personal secretary and biographer, Bourrienne:

During the negotiations with the Holy Father Bonaparte one day said to me, “In every country religion is useful to the Government, and those who govern ought to avail themselves of it to influence mankind. I was a Mahometan in Egypt; I am a Catholic in France. With relation to the police of the religion of a state, it should be entirely in the hands of the sovereign. Many persons have urged me to found a Gallican Church, and make myself its head; but they do not know France. If they did, they would know that the majority of the people would not like a rupture with Rome. Before I can resolve on such a measure the Pope must push matters to an extremity; but I believe he will not do so.”—”You are right, General, and you recall to my memory what Cardinal Consalvi said: ‘The Pope will do all the First Consul desires.'”—”That is the best course for him. Let him not suppose that he has to do with an idiot. What do you think is the point his negotiations put most forward? The salvation of my soul! But with me immortality is the recollection one leaves in the memory of man. That idea prompts to great actions. It would be better for a man never to have lived than to leave behind him no traces of his existence.”

It is those last three sentences that demonstrate the connection between atheism and large-scale tragedy that Richard Dawkins and other historically illiterate atheists have so much trouble recognizing. It is not atheism itself that is the problem, but as I explained in TIA, atheism combined with a burning ambition to achieve immortality through material ends. Whether this immortality is achieved through military glory, the creation of a New Man, or the construction of a new society on the ashes of the old one is not important, the point is that the underlying motivation to commit acts of horrific violence involves more than the simple absence of the belief that one will face judgment for one’s actions in this life.

Those who trouble to actually read the words of the historical individuals will see a striking similarity in the mindset of men as superficially different as Napoleon, Lenin, and Mao. Again and again, it becomes apparent that the ideology that supposedly drove each of them was merely cover for their burning personal desire to seek immortality through action. This is the most obvious in the case of Napoleon, who secretly loathed both the liberty and the bloody regicides of the Republic whose armies he led so effectively, because his biographer was privy to his private thoughts long before his actions began to contradict his supposed republicanism. But, the same concept quite obviously applies to many of the more lethal Communist leaders as well, since most of them were no more genuinely committed to Communism than Napoleon was to liberty, equality, and the French Republic.

For such men of burning ambition, ideology is nothing more than a means to a self-serving end. Men have little to fear from an atheist libertarian or a Christian monarch, but they have everything to fear from an ambitious atheist who dreams of great actions and is determined to leave the world with the recollection of his existence.

Scientific American and social autism

Scientific American reports on a study which implies that atheism may be a form of virtual Asperger’s Syndrome:

Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild type of autism that involves impaired social cognition, about significant events in their lives. Working with experimental psychologist Jesse M. Bering (author of the Bering in Mind blog and a frequent contributor to Scientific American Mind), she asked them to speculate about why these important events happened—for instance, why they had gone through an illness or why they met a significant other. As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response—for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way.

In a second experiment, Heywood and Bering compared 27 people with Asperger’s with 34 neurotypical people who are atheists. The atheists, as expected, often invoked anti-teleological responses such as “there is no reason why; things just happen.” The people with Asperger’s were significantly less likely to offer such anti-teleological explanations than the atheists, indicating they were not engaged in teleological thinking at all. (The atheists, in contrast, revealed themselves to be reasoning teleologically, but then they rejected those thoughts.)

This sounds a more than a little sketchy in the usual social science manner; it’s actually a smaller sample size than was the case in the utterly unscientific comparison of the high AS Quotient average reported by atheist Pharyngula readers to the neurotypical range reported by regular readers here at VP, which involved more than 100 individuals. I think it would be more illuminating to learn whether those diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome or full-blown autism are more or less likely to be atheists, as the reported predilection for non-teleological thinking suggests that those suffering from this form of mental impairment would be tend to be predisposed towards atheism and materialism.

Of course, the existence of neurotypical atheists should not be a surprise since many atheists do not exhibit the impaired social cognition that is the hallmark of the militant New Atheists. This is why it is always important to distinguish between the individual who merely happens to lack belief in gods from the anti-religious socially autistic crusaders who simply cannot understand that your religious beliefs, whatever they might be, are no legitimate concern of theirs.

And while we’re on the subject of impaired social cognition, I found this comment on the article to be as amusing as it is ironic. “Socially speaking, the world is full of all kinds of people, but the atheists I choose to associate with are outspoken because of their innate consideration and compassion in light of another’s plight with respect to primitive irrational superstitions.”

Contra Nietzsche and Mises

I don’t think atheists who strive to argue in support of the existence of non-religious objective values, regardless of whether they are based on philosophy or science, have any idea how weak their case is from the atheist perspective:

“There are no such things as absolute values, independent of the subjective preferences of erring men. Judgments of values are the outcome of human arbitrariness. They reflect all the shortcomings and weaknesses of their authors.”
– Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy

It seemed strange to me why atheist arguments related to objective morality were always so crudely simple and vaguely familiar until I realized that this is because I had seen very similar arguments before in a different context. As it happens, the current atheist attempts to determine an objective basis for morality are following exactly the same path that economists of the 18th and 19th century trod in attempting to determine the objective basis of value. They are literally 200 years behind the best efforts of economists from Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen to find something that does not exist, and due to their general ignorance of economics – Michael Shermer excepted – they have no idea that their quest is destined for complete failure.

I can only conclude that sometime around the turn of the next century, the marginal utility of morality will become the dominant paradigm for a time prior to the whole quest being abandoned in response to a series of massive and inexplicable moral depressions.

Yes, it shows

PZ Myers provides an illuminating example of the careful logic and deep thought that goes into so much atheist reasoning:

A couple of years ago, I sat down one morning, bemused by yet another bit of empty apologetics from god’s sycophants, and banged out a short bit of amusement called The Courtier’s Reply. It got picked up everywhere, to my surprise. I mean, seriously, I have to confess that I whipped that out in 20 minutes, no edits or rewrites, just shazam, it’s done.

That’s certainly amusing, if not exactly surprising to anyone who has read it. As I have mentioned before, The Courtier’s Reply is a blitheringly stupid attempt to justify atheist ignorance of that which they are criticizing. In his recent post, PZ tries to claim otherwise, but the fact of the matter is that whatever PZ’s original purpose may have been, that purpose is not synonymous with either its logical consequences or how it is habitually utilized by atheists who refer to it. He states “they see the Courtier’s Reply as an attempt to excuse atheists from bothering with theology at all, when it’s quite the opposite: it’s a rebuke to theologians, pointing out that going on at length about rarefied epiphenomena and delicate points of dogma is a waste of time when you haven’t even established the central point of the matter, a reasonable justification for believing in a god or gods, period.”

Of course, being cited to excuse atheists from bothering with theology at all is exactly how The Courtier’s Reply is utilized; it is the ONLY way it is utilized. PZ’s attempt to provide a belated defense is easily proven to be false by no less than Richard Dawkins himself, who publicly cited it as an excuse for his own ignorance of theology in the Times.

You can’t criticise religion without detailed study of learned books on theology.

If, as one self-consciously intellectual critic wished, I had expounded the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus, Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope (as he vainly hoped I would), my book would have been more than a surprise bestseller, it would have been a miracle. I would happily have forgone bestsellerdom had there been the slightest hope of Duns Scotus illuminating my central question: does God exist? But I need engage only those few theologians who at least acknowledge the question, rather than blithely assuming God as a premise. For the rest, I cannot better the “Courtier’s Reply” on P. Z. Myers’s splendid Pharyngula website, where he takes me to task for outing the Emperor’s nudity while ignoring learned tomes on ruffled pantaloons and silken underwear.

As if Richard Dawkins knows the first thing about the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Tertullian, or even CS Lewis. But this example of Dawkins is far from the only one and many more can be found on PZ’s own site for those with the fortitude to slog through that swamp of pseudo-scientific smuggery. The core problem with The Courtier’s Reply is that it is a category error. PZ does not understand that while the discussion of God’s Will or divine characteristics are conceptually related to discussions of God’s existence, they are not synonymous. The Courtier’s Reply is that of the innumerate individual claiming that because no one has ever shown him a “one” or a “two”, it is a waste of time for mathematicians to go on at length about rarefied imaginary numbers and delicate points of calculus. The fact that religion and the theology from which it derives makes real, material, and observable differences in the lives of its practitioners, be they for good or for ill, is sufficient to justify its study regardless of whether one can establish its ultimate source to the satisfaction of scientists or not. And only a complete ignoramus who knows nothing of history, economics, socionomics, or demographics would be foolish enough to assert that the material effects of theological differences are too unimportant to bother with the matter.

The thing that is so ridiculous about latter day atheists like PZ is that they are not only theologically ignorant, but they know next to nothing about secular philosophy either. Intelligent atheists have known for decades that science can never provide the replacement for religion that fantasists like PZ and Sam Harris believe it can for the simple reason that science does not and cannot dictate values. This is why a strong dedication to rational science, with or without the additional complication of atheism, so readily produces monstrous leaders like Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin in such short order, monsters of the sort that were so few and far between in the centuries prior to the Enlightenment.

Theology is the precise opposite of useless because it provides that which science intrinsically cannot; a basic framework upon which guidelines for human behavior can be structured in a viable manner that is coherent, self-consistent and understandable even to the non-believer. Consider how it is entirely normal for the atheist to criticize the Christian for failing to live up to the standards set by Christian theology; to what scientific standard can the non-atheist ever hope to hold the atheist?

Myers further demonstrates his astounding ignorance when he claims: “Science provides tangible evidence of its accuracy and importance. Religion makes excuses for its absence of the same. There is no “rich tradition of rigorous inquiry” in religion, as we can see from its lack of progress, and the apologists are deluding themselves when they claim there is.” And yet, ironically enough, there is no shortage of empirical evidence, scientific evidence, demonstrating both the accuracy and importance of religion. PZ’s incompetent blathering would be entirely amusing, were it not for the panoply of self-deluded idiots at Pharyngula that actually take the man’s illogical meanderings seriously. But, if nothing else, the forthcoming book he mentions should provide for a deliciously target-rich environment.

UPDATE – Buttressing my point about how mathematics, among other disciplines, demonstrates the philosophical absurdity and irrelevance of The Courtier’s Reply, wrf3 quotes from Introduction to Artificial Intelligence by Philip C. Jackson:

“[T]he mathematical theory of Euclidean geometry gives us certain axioms or postulates concerning the undefined concepts of “point,” “line,” “plane,” “between,” etc.; the “thing” described by this theory is a “geometry,” consisting of interrelationships existing among lines, points, planes, circles, spaces, etc.

The ingredients of a mathematical theory, then, are the following:

1. A set of basic words (e.g. “point,” “line,” “between,” “distance,” “x,” “y,” “not,” “implies,” “for all,”) that refer to different objects, relations between objects, variables, logical connectives, quantifiers, and so on. These are the undefined words or symbols of the theory.

2. A set of basic sentences made of these basic words. These basic sentences are the axioms or postulates of the theory.

3. A set of logical rules, also made of these basic words, that tell us how to derive new statements from the ones we are given.”

If one is so foolish as to take The Courtier’s Reply seriously, one must then throw out all mathematics since mathematicians haven’t established the central point of the matter, a reasonable justification for believing in the undefined words or symbols of the theory. As I have said on numerous occasions before, the New Atheists are logical incompetents and philosophical ignoramuses. This is precisely why I have referred to them from the very start as The Clowns of Reason.

Always call their bluff

Never forget that the smarter and more knowledgeable act put on by many atheists is inevitably nothing more than that, an act, and one that has absolutely no basis in empirical reality except for a three-point average advantage in IQ which is almost surely a statistical artifact of their insignificant numbers and self-selected identification. Do ANY of them, from the Antipope of Oxford on down, know even the first thing about history? Here’s a lovely example:

WorldNetDaily columnist Vox Day bends over backwards to argue that James Watson’s recent criticism is worse than the Spanish Inquisition’s threats of torture against Galileo. Seriously.

I wouldn’t think a great deal of bending is required in order to establish that simple fact. Seriously. Monty Python had it right, no doubt Galileo wasn’t expecting them! And, I wonder, to whom has James Watson been directing his criticism of late?

On a related note, Chad the Elder quotes David Hart’s piece on the decline of intelligent atheism: “The utter inconsequentiality of contemporary atheism is a social and spiritual catastrophe. Something splendid and irreplaceable has taken leave of our culture–some great moral and intellectual capacity that once inspired the more heroic expressions of belief and unbelief alike. Skepticism and atheism are, at least in their highest manifestations, noble, precious, and even necessary traditions, and even the most fervent of believers should acknowledge that both are often inspired by a profound moral alarm at evil and suffering, at the corruption of religious institutions, at psychological terrorism, at injustices either prompted or abetted by religious doctrines, at arid dogmatisms and inane fideisms, and at worldly power wielded in the name of otherworldly goods. In the best kinds of unbelief, there is something of the moral grandeur of the prophets–a deep and admirable abhorrence of those vicious idolatries that enslave minds and justify our worst cruelties.”

And now we have the spectacle of Dawkinsian atheism, which warns of how a revival of the Spanish Inquisition’s terrible witchburnings during the Thirty Years War, which cost Galileo, Bruno, and Sarah Good their lives at the siege of Jerusalem, poses an imminent threat to science.