Tag: atheism

Another atheist myth

Densa’s inability to understand the implications of comparing a large population to a small one got me thinking about some of the other myths about atheism. One of the many misapprehensions of the New Atheists is that the rapid growth rate of godlessness over the last 20 years will have grand ramifications for American society. And yet, the example of various former atheists such as CS Lewis and Anthony Flew indicates that atheism is nothing more than a transitive state for many individuals. The implications of this philosophical transience are often forgotten even when shifts in religious identification are being discussed. For example, the 2008 Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape Survey is often cited to show that there is a national trend away from religious faith.

“Overall, 3.9% of the adult population reports being raised without any particular religious affiliation but later affiliating with a religious group. However, more than three times as many people (12.7% of the adult population overall) were raised in a particular faith but have since become unaffiliated with any religious group.”

That sounds like conclusive proof that lots of people are abandoning their religious faith, although a closer reading reveals that 36% of those “unaffiliated” people consider themselves to be religious. But even if we take the numbers at face value and assume that a loss of religious affiliation is tantamount to a loss of faith, the statistics don’t actually show what they are usually cited as showing.

Consider this. That 3.9% of the population that was raised without religious affiliation and eventually found one represented more than half of the 7.3% of the population that was raised without an affiliation. That means that the retention rate of the non-affiliated was only 46.6%! Whereas that seemingly impressive 12.7% who abandoned their childhood affiliation represented less than 14% of the religious affiliated population. So, religious affiliation has a much better retention rate at 86.3%.

The retention rate is even worse for the full blown atheist population. 60% of those raised atheist abandon atheism; 0.5% of the population was raised atheist and 0.3% of it left atheism. And while 1.4% of the population became atheist, the fact that nearly all of the nation is not atheist means that the non-atheist population has a retention rate of 98.6%, which is nearly 2.5 times better than the atheist retention rate of 40%. Therefore, the perceived rapid growth of atheism is nothing more than an artifact of the atheist population’s statistical insignificance. Even the dying Episcopalian church has a better retention rate than atheism does and the fact that 75% of atheist households contain no children under the age of 18 merely underlines the fact that atheism would be in decline if it were not already such an insignificant portion of the population.

Anyhow, it appears that this may call for the addition of another slide or two to the Against the New Atheism slideshow.

Who’s got next?

First it was Hitchens, now James Randi comes out of the closet:

Well, here goes. I really resent the term, but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.

I’m gay.

Let me first make it clear that I don’t think there’s any reason to mock the guy for his idiosyncrasy. From what I have observed from the outside over the years, it is apparent that the lifestyle is not an easy one. But his predilection is nevertheless relevant, as it was in the case of Hitchens, simply because it calls into question the primary source of his tireless opposition to religion. It doesn’t change the strength or weakness of his so-called rationalist arguments in the least – those have to stand or fall on their own merits – but since Man is above all a rationalizing creature it does indicate the direction in which Randi’s confirmation biases have been pointing for quite some time now.

Anyhow, I applaud the man’s courage for addressing the matter in a forthright manner since it was obviously difficult for him. And I don’t think it would be fair for anyone to claim it as “proof of the perfidy of the rationalist mode of life” since to the extent there may be a causal relationship, it would tend to run the other way.

All that being said, I must admit that I will, without a doubt, laugh myself silly if Dawkins is the next atheist to come out with a Very Special Announcement.

Ed Brayton digs a deeper hole

Fresh from debating himself over whether Ellis Washington challenged him to a debate or not, Ed Brayton manages to completely miss the point of a column which was an introduction to a slideshow entitled Against the New Atheism that showed eight of the primary arguments made by the various New Atheists to be false:

I had to laugh while reading Vox Day’s most recent bit of absurdity at the Worldnutdaily. It is, like nearly everything he writes, little more than a string of ad hominems and arrogant pronouncements rather than any actual arguments. He really does seem to think that a haughty sneer and an insult regarding some entirely irrelevant trait of one of his enemies magically defeats their arguments…. Notice what’s missing from all of that? Anything even remotely resembling a substantive argument. Is that really the best he can do?

No, you dimwitted journalist, what defeats the New Atheist arguments is knowledge of history and the citation of copious statistical evidence combined with correctly applied logic. That column was simply the introduction to blowing the following arguments out of the water:

1. Religion Causes War (Harris, Dennett, Hitchens)
2. Religion Causes Violence (Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins)
3. Atheists Commit Less Crime (Harris, Dawkins)
4. The Red State Argument (Harris)
5. The Extinction Equation (Harris)
6. Religion Inhibits Science (Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins)
7. The Improbability of Divine Complexity (Dawkins)
8. Atheists are Very Intelligent (Harris, Dawkins, Lynn)

After conveniently ignoring seven of eight of these refutations, which are not only substantive arguments but also happen to be conclusive, Brayton unwisely proceeds to comment on my refutation of Dawkins’s Improbability of Divine Complexity.

“Ai yi yi, I missed that one. The proper response would be “OR…..the mere size of a genome is not the proper measure of complexity.”

Unsurprisingly, Brayton isn’t bright enough to avoid lumbering directly into the trap. Is he saying here that variance in genome size is not variance in information? Or is he saying that “complexity does not concern information”? And what, pray tell, is the proper measure of the complexity which Dawkins is utilizing in order to attempt proving Divine improbability?

You have to be pretty stupid to claim that I do not make substantive arguments. You also have to avoid actually reading anything I write. The clueless ignorance of anklebiters like Brayton borders on the artistic, indeed, it approaches the Platonic paradigm. Not even the most rabid Neo-Keynesian or fervent Chicago School Friedman fetishist would dream of suggesting that my arguments are insubstantial. Wrong, perhaps, but never insubstantial.

Mailvox: in which the shining void is reached

MH stumbled across the column today:

I think Richard Dawkins is tremendous, and I’m not a socially maladjusted loser, although must admit that being called that is quite a convincing argument that perhaps I’m wrong! Maybe I should rethink my ways or I’ll be called names. I essentially believe in freedom, capitalism, individualism, and reason. I’m a conservative in all things non god-related, and can’t stand progressives and their broken ideas. What I don’t understand about conservative sites like wnd is that they can be so right on so many things, then at the last second have to throw in, oh we also believe in god, santa claus, and the easter bunny.

My experience tells me that people today believe in god mostly because of family pressures, or the mistaken idea that life has no meaning on Earth if they don’t so they can’t let go of the idea. But god is like phlogiston, an idea that had some usefulness before understanding of how the world works progressed to the point where it was obvious it was a human proposal that was just incorrect and needed to be discarded. The common thread between most progressive ideas is the desire to reach a certain conclusion at all costs, the determination that their conclusion must be true because they want/need it to be, then embark on a complex mission of torturing logic so they can desperately avoid reality. Most conservative ideas however embrace reality for what it is — until you get to this one glaring exception they can’t seem to let go of.

What book(s) would you recommend for someone seeking to learn more about people like yourself who seem otherwise incredibly intelligent yet can’t seem to let go of this one bad idea? I’m seeking books based on rational arguments, preferably low on the name-calling intimidation tactics you personally seem fond of that just undermine your cause.

First, I’d like to point out that I only described Richard Dawkins’s biggest fans – the former RD.Net crowd – as socially maladjusted losers. Any substantial perusal of those old forums will suffice to prove my point, further supported by Dawkins’s own reaction to his erstwhile fan club. Second, the connection that you are missing between freedom, capitalism, individualism, reason, and a belief in God is that the first four are heavily dependent upon the fifth. This is not controversial; non-Christians and even non-believers such as Socrates, Seneca, and Voltaire have subscribed to it. You would do well to examine the difference between historical pagan societies and Christian society before concluding that your phlogiston hypothesis is even remotely credible. Keep in mind that you still live in a heavily Christian society, where even the atheists, as Michel Onfray points out, are Christian atheists. And, as I’ve pointed out, it is already clear that it is not secular scientopia that is the post-Christian heir, but rather a return to paganism.

I don’t read apologetics, so I’m afraid I can’t recommend much in the way of a positive, non-argumentative case for Christianity although I’m sure a number of commenters here will have some recommendations for you. My Christian faith and my allegiance to Jesus Christ stems from my experience and observation of evil, so it’s not a line of reasoning that is likely to make a great deal of sense to anyone who lacks it. But I would greatly encourage you to read Thucydides and his History of the Peloponnesian War, Caesar’s Commentaries, and other works of pre-Christian history so that you will have a more accurate picture of what a society without God is like. Then, perhaps you will have a better perspective on the connection between those things you accept and that which you reject.

JC also shares his two cents:

Day:

Your slide show isn’t all that impressive. I’ll cross the IQ bridge first and get it out of the way. My IQ is 156 and I’m an atheist. I suppose that stupid ignorance would be blissful, but I can’t swallow Christianity.

Religion has been around longer than modern science – your point?

Here’s the deal, Vox. I don’t believe that an invisible man in the sky is talking to you. I think you’re blowing smoke – like the religious have done for centuries.

JC
Member and Sponsor – American Atheists

The relevant question isn’t if the slideshow is impressive or not, but is it accurate or not? It’s interesting how nearly every atheist who has emailed or commented today hasn’t dared to take any direct issue with any of the refutations and claim that the New Atheist arguments are, in fact, correct. And anyone with an IQ of 156 should have absolutely no trouble understanding the point regarding the significance of the degree to which religion preceded science in light of Sam Harris’s claim that religion + science = human extinction.

But, since even atheists with 156 IQs apparently have some trouble applying basic logic, I will spell it out. Since religion has only caused 7% of the wars in human history and has never once threatened the existence of the species in 11,600 years, at least 93% of the threat to continued human existence will remain even if religion is eliminated tomorrow. This means that the threat of extinction has virtually nothing to do with religion, it is the direct result of science. If the threat is real – and naturally we must assume that Sam Harris, PhD, knows whereof he speaks – then logic dictates the only way to eliminate it is to end science. To the extent that religion and science are in opposition, then, the only rational response to the threat of human extinction is to embrace religion, regardless of one’s personal beliefs in any religious tenets, and make full use of it to the maximum extent possible in order to eliminate science.

But I am humbly grateful to JC. While I can envision a more perfect state of indifference, it would take ten Siddharthas medidating ten centuries to reach this amazing state of Śūnyatā to which his assertion of his opinion has propelled me…. I can see… everything! I can feel… everything!

Monday column

Against the New Atheism

Now that its moment in the media sun has passed, the New Atheism is fading fast. Richard Dawkins has repeatedly demonstrated why he needs to be put out to intellectual pasture. He published an entire book dedicated to passing off an inference as a fact before belatedly discovering what everyone else knew already; his biggest fans are an unpleasant collection of socially maladjusted losers. Christopher Hitchens was repeatedly beaten up in debates by various Christians before being physically beaten by Syrians he had provoked. He then took Dawkins’s OUT campaign a little more literally than anyone had expected and announced that he was an occasional homosexual. Sam Harris’ two accomplishments have been to create the amusingly misnamed Reason Project, which was founded for much the same reasons and is expected to have about the same success as Air America, and to publish a wildly irrational attack on one of America’s most celebrated and accomplished scientists in the New York Times that was completely disregarded by the Obama administration as well as everyone else.

No one has any idea what Daniel Dennett has been doing, but that’s understandable because no one, including the atheists who claim to be his fans, actually reads his books.

Here is the slideshow addressing the seven New Atheist arguments mentioned in the column.

Atheist argument query

I’m in the process of putting together a tool that I think people may find useful in confronting aggressive atheists making spurious arguments. TIA has its place, of course, but the reality is that few people on either side of the debate are never going to read more than a few pages of any of the books that address the matter. Here are the seven New Atheist arguments that I’ve already addressed; you may note that I have chosen to select arguments that can be easily and graphically refuted utilizing empirical evidence.

Religion Causes War
Religion Inspires Violence
Religion Inhibits Science
Sam Harris’s Extinction Equation
Sam Harris’s Red State Argument
Atheists Commit Less Crime
Richard Dawkins’s Improbability of Divine Complexity

What arguments most demand attention in your opinion? Which arguments are most often brought up by the militant atheists of your acquaintance? Alternatively, if you are an atheist, what are the arguments that you feel most powerfully make the case for atheism?

Letter to Vox Day VIII

Luke continues our dialogue. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this isn’t going to end anytime soon. I will respond before the end of the month, but in the meantime, I will put a few of Luke’s commenters straight:

1. Vox happens to be a genius by the dictionary’s numerical definition. Nevertheless, Vox does not believe he is a genius because he rejects that definition in favor of alternative and less specific definitions that are based upon uniquely superlative intellectual accomplishments. Writing the occasional novel, demolishing the central New Atheist arguments, and correctly anticipating the global financial crisis are certainly intellectual accomplishments, but they are neither unique nor superlative.

2. As will eventually become clear, Vox is not rejecting any of the suggested criteria out of concern for their potential effect on his theories. As a general rule, it is a mistake to project one’s own predilection for intellectual dishonesty on others; at the very least, one should wait to see what the justifications are before passing judgment.

3. Vox has no authority on these matters and has no problem whatsoever with having his epistemology examined or exposed. This accusation is ironic, for as Luke and many of the VP readers know, it is usually the atheist camp that prefers to avoid epistemological examinations.

4. The fact that you don’t understand a point Vox made is not prima facie evidence that Vox is being obscure or even insufficiently clear. If a majority of the readers understood it without any trouble, logic dictates that you consider the probability you are either insufficiently informed or insufficiently intelligent to understand it.

Hitchens outs himself

This self-outing isn’t exactly a jaw-dropping revelation. It may also explain an amount of Christopher Hitchens’s obsession with religious strictures on sexual behavior, to say nothing of his bizarre, quasi-Islamic vision of secular paradise provided in god is Not Great:

Which two ministers of Margaret Thatcher’s government had gay relations with the writer Christopher Hitchens while at Oxford? Since Hitchens’s extraordinary claim emerged this week, the louche figure, now 60, who has been married twice, has fended off all requests for further information…. For although he has always enjoyed a reputation as a womaniser, at Oxford Hitchens was known to be bisexual. According to one contemporary: ‘He had a reputation for being AC/DC and, although a Trot, he was fancied by quite a few gay Tories and moved in those circles.’

Let’s face it, it’s only a matter of time before Dawkins comes out too. All that incoherent rage against the Christian faith exhibited by the New Atheists doesn’t come from an intellectual or even a rational place. It wouldn’t surprise me if pictures of Hitchens dressed in Nazi regalia surfaced at some point in time either. Unlike Dawkins, Hitchens is a likable, if roguish, character, but sometimes he really appears to be more of a likable caricature.

Mailvox: the implications of evolution

John C. Wright responds to the recent CNN report on religion, political tendencies, intelligence, and evolution that cited a 6-point average IQ advantage for liberal atheists:

I love how these ‘Just So’ stories always just so happen to flatter the person telling it. Just for the sake of contrast, I’d like to see an evolutionary sociobiologist
say something along the lines of: “Being an atheist, like being a sociopath, is a defective mutation of the genes human beings use to recognize meaning in life. Robbed of this basic faculty of human thought, atheists tend to retreat into paranoid fantasies of superiority, as if their inability to grasp reality were a result of greater, rather than lesser, intellectual activity.

“Consequently they tend to be bookish, and selfish, and to cut social ties to family and friends: but this crippling isolation and arrogance, ironically, allows some of them to score well on I.Q. tests, which do not, after all, measure those social skills that tribes of hunter-gatherers need to survive.

“The fact that no civilization and no tribe in the history of the world has been atheist, except for a very few malignant Twentieth Century regimes of unparalleled savagery and bloodshed, might indicate why atheism has had no positive influence on the philosophy, art, culture, law or advancement of civilization since the dawn of time. Natural selection culls this unfavorable mutation, and only in the
luxurious modern day, when science can keep alive even worthless and backward members of the bloodline, has it been possible to preserve a statistically significant moiety of this evolutionary dead end.

“Sufferers of what is now called ‘The Dawkins Syndrome’ are generally acknowledged to be harmless irritants in their host sociieties, but, as the cases of Russia and China make abundantly clear, when this dangerous ‘meme’ of self-centered defensive arrogance spreads to others, the result is genocidal levels of mass murder.”

There are several amusing aspects to this. First, I find it very funny indeed to see people whose IQs are more than thirty points lower than mine attempting to cite a six-point average IQ advantage as proof of their superior intelligence, and therefore, their belief systems as well. I’m impressed, to be sure, albeit not exactly in the way they intended. An appeal to authority is bad enough, but an appeal to average statistical advantage is insane.

Second, this appears to be confirmation of something I described in TIA. Atheists are going to be more intelligent than the average by literal self-definition. The ability to understand and identify with an abstract concept that departs from the norm requires some basic level of intelligence, which excludes many less intelligent and non-religious individuals who are by every meaningful definition atheists but do not self-identify as atheists. Libertarians, for example, would benefit from the same self-selecting mechanism. It is possible that the Kanagawa study corrected for this identification bias, but that is unlikely as I am unaware of any study of atheism and religion that has done so.

To me, the most interesting and counterintuitive discovery is the reported link between sexual exclusivity and male atheism. That surprised me, although I suppose it shouldn’t have if I had thought about it more. Now, one can’t read too much into this yet, since we don’t know what exactly what “sexual exclusivity” means, but it does tend to contradict what one would expect given the male atheist obsession with religious sexual restrictions. The hint is the divergence between male and female atheists, so my suspicion – and at this point it is nothing more than that – is that the Kanagawa report will provide some evidence of the link between atheism and social autism. The dichotomy between the theoretical sexual freedom of the male atheist provided by his belief system and his actual sexual limitations caused by his sub-standard attractiveness to women suggests that male atheists, on average, are more inclined to be gamma/omega males whose sexual options are more restricted than the norm. This hypothesis is supported by observing the consistently gamma behavior of male atheists on this site and around the Internet in general.

A crack in a wall of blind faith

It’s very difficult to read this touching atheist declaration of faith in his idol without laughing:

Of course, it is a possibility that Dawkins knows this and is lying to us all. You never know. But my personal opinion is that he isn’t. Richard may be saying awful things about us that aren’t true, but that doesn’t stop me from being on his side. I may be wrong (I sincerely hope not), but I personally believe that Richard isn’t aware of all this and that his team have successfully kept him in the dark as to what really happened…. He has been as much of an inspiration in my life as the community we helped create, and he still is. I support his cause, and everything he helps us do by promoting critical thinking and attacking the idea of ignorance being taught as a virtue.

This is quite funny. First, the idea of RichardDawkins.net as a place of genteel, high-flown reasoned debate is absurd on its face. As a number of reasonable atheists and agnostics eventually discovered to their chagrin, it was little more than a place for petty little people who are insufficiently intelligent or knowledgeable to engage in debate to hide without having their idols and ideas confronted. Longtime readers here will recall the pathetic response to the publication of TIA, in which the recommended response was to hunker down and hope not too many people noticed that Dawkins’s specious arguments such as the Ultimate 747 had been obliterated.

Futhermore, the idea of Richard Dawkins as an opponent of ignorance borders on the oxymoronic. With the exception of Christopher Hitchens, the man is one of the most ignorant public ideologues still active today. I’ve seen contestants on Jay Leno’s old Jaywalking interviews with better grasps of history. Clearly Reality is My Religion is about to have a religious experience, because reality is about to slap him in the face with the discovery that some people are not assholes because they are atheists, they are atheists because they are assholes.