The Independent: Another christian who just doesn’t “get it”

26 November 2006 · Comments 

In today’s The Independent on Sunday, there’s an editorial by Giles Fraser, lecturer in Philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford, where he calls for a new sort of conversation about religion. I for one would welcome it, although his analysis isn’t completely in agreement with the reasons that atheists, especially the vocal ones like Richard Dawkins and A C Grayling, promote. I don’t think that I’m being arrogant when I say that I understand their viewpoint much better than he does (he’s a christian, although he doesn’t say what flavour — I might presume Anglican).

The old one [conversation] is very tired, as in some overblown boxing match between two bruisers who just won’t topple. The slug it out. Land huge blows. Declare victory. Only for the opponent to rise again (no resurrection reference intended) and for the whole sorry circus to wind itself up for a rematch.

Yes, I agree. The old conversation is very tired. But, how many times is it necessary to have to defend science from attacks from those who haven’t taken the time to get to understand the inner working of it and have some imaginary party line thrown down from a village pulpit? How often is it required to have to explain that a claim made from a position of belief isn’t necessarily a claim of truth or actuality?

I would rather just have these points made once and then accepted, and then move onto the next challenge. Instead, it seems that we (the non-believing community) are increasingly having to defend a lack of faith in a deity, defend reality, defend science from those who think that, because they have a god on their side, their ideas are untouchable and above analysis. I’m sorry, but they’re not. If you make a claim about reality, you’d better have some evidence to back it up.

Of course, I began the project [of giving lectures in pubs in South London] with the distinct anxiety that my faith might be misrepresented by two atheist authors. After all, I am a failed atheist myself and nobody likes a turncoat.

Bzzzt. Incorrect, sir. I do believe that any discussion made with reference to your faith has nothing to do with the fact that you personally could not handle life as an atheist. This is incredibly arrogant.

But something more is needed. For a more interesting discourse about religion would also have to involve the reclamation of agnosticism, of the ability simply to admit that one doesn’t know. In the preface to Richard Dawkins’s new Christmas stocking filler The God Delusion … it cannot have been too difficult a job, for this is a book so lacking in self-doubt that it’s positively evangelical in the confidence of its self-belief. “I may be wrong” is not a sentence one could ever associate with Dawkins. And his work is so much the poorer for that.

Really? I guess you must have skimmed most of the rest of the preface in which he details exactly why he wrote the book and who he expects to get the most out of it. Of course he’s self-confident, he has no other (unlike those with a religious bent) to have confidence in!

And for “I may be wrong” to not be a phrase that he expects to come from Dawkins is just disingenuous. Has he read any of Dawkins’s other literary output, most notably that on zoology or Darwinian evolution? I doubt it, as Dawkins makes perfectly clear what ideas and thoughts (hypotheses, if you like) he cannot justify scientifically (i.e. without evidence). Fraser might want to read Dawkins’s more recent The Ancestor’s Tale for clear examples of this (which become more and more acute the further one reads).

He also doesn’t seem to get the differences between agnosticism and atheism. In brief, agnosticism deals with knowledge and atheism deals with belief — two quite different ideas. As with most vocal atheists, I am a gnostic atheist (I “know” and “believe” that they don’t exist) with regards to the various gods pimped in the likes of The Bible or The Koran, or those of the Norse or the Egyptians as the gods postulated here are just too incredible (in the correct sense of the word) and offer no evidence whatsoever. However, I would also claim to be an agnostic atheist (I don’t “know”, but I don’t believe) with regards to any other gods that may or may not exist. Of course, I don’t know — nobody does — but a lack of evidence of anything like this leads me to believe that they don’t exist either.

Of course, most of us who take pains to think about this particular issue also understand that the various philosophical arguments for gods are, for the main part inconclusive, or can be flatly rejected from the logical contradictions that they demand as reasons for acceptance.

Some atheists are threatened by non-fundamentalist faith. They reckon it a liberal alibi for fundamentalism, offering a more superficially plausible account of God which serves only to shelter fanatics from the sort of criticism that would put them out of business. On this reasoning, atheists have a vested interest in presenting the worst sort of faith as the real thing, thus enabling the whole sorry lot to be all the more easily ridiculed. This is Dawkins’ strategy.

Here’s the nub of the matter, and the idea that Fraser just doesn’t get: religion (and faith) enables acting on irrational thinking. What this means is that people (from the old granny who goes to church on a Sunday morning, right through to the fundementalist terrorists) are then allowed to make moral judgements, and then act on them, without actually thinking about things, and they have an excuse.

And then we have, as Fraser mentions, the nutters from Christian Voice, who believe that they have the final word on moral authority because they have it from The Bible, just as many (if not most or all) scripture-happy groups do. Isn’t this the same Bible that is pushed in who-knows how many thousands of pulpits and Sunday schools across the UK every weekend? There may be differences in interpretation, but who says that a liberal interpretation is correct? If one is to take The Bible in context, liberal attitudes are almost nowhere to be found, so it’s certainly not there. Why don’t the liberally religious take their Bible at face value? Why choose to interpret it in the happy-clappy way you have? Isn’t it because you find the idea of punishing the innocent for non-crimes repugnant? I bet it is.

Yes, we need a new conversation on religion. But the old one isn’t finished, and won’t be until the religious accept that allowing dogmatic non-thinking based on confused scriptures to continue without criticism is a bad thing and something that they must accept responsibility for. Perhaps if this comes to pass, we won’t need a new conversation, and people will continue to believe what they want, and not need to act irrationally on it or force their attitudes on others.

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Spinning cotton

23 June 2006 · Comments 

In a recent post on MediaWatchWatch there are photographs of a protest group albeit in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way (I hope!) protesting JS:TO on the pretense that clothes - worn, I presume, by the cast as costumes - are against the scripture of the bible.

In particular, they show two of the protestors holding a placard that proclaims 60% cotton, 40% polyester, 100% evil and refer to Leviticus 19:19 as the source of their moral outrage:

Lev 19:19 (KJV)

Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

(My emphasis, of course.)

What are the two materials mentioned therein? Linen and wool. What does it say one should do? neither let a…come upon thee which I presume is an archaic expression in the translation of the time to mean “don’t wear it”. So, the whole clause basically translates as “don’t wear clothes made of linen and wool”. Fair enough…

While I consider this a bizarre ‘law’, at least it’s not telling you to kill babies and rape women.

Anyway, there’s no mention that clothes made of this mixture of materials are in fact evil - it just says “don’t wear it”. So, that part of their protest, that it’s 100% evil, is out of the window.

They also make the claim that the offensive clothes in question are of a cotton/polyester mix. The bible verse they refer to mentions a linen/wool mix instead. How strange: they’re not the same thing.

Contrary to the obviously ignorant thought, linen (from flax) and wool (from sheep) have nothing to do with cotton (from cotton plants) and/or polyester (there are a couple of natural polyesters - the ones used in clothes are man-made). The other two parts of their objection therefore make no sense either.

There it is, in black and white, for anyone to check: any interpretation you decide to attribute to it isn’t worth a jot.

If you’re going to be a literalist and use your scripture as a method of intimidating people, your really should read your bible as it stands, don’t spin it. Then you should learn what the words mean. Then read it again with your new-found wisdom. Only then are you qualified to even contemplate shoving your scripture in other people’s faces.

Until that time, STFU.

This article was originally posted at In Defence of Reality.

Update:

It seems that I’ve been fallen for a bit of spoofing. The protestors are, in fact, taking the piss and not the genuine fundie article. Natch.

It just goes to show, though, how wingnuttery can manifest itself is so many forms that one really can’t tell when someone is genuinely bigotted, or simply faking it to make a point.

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The Evidence Race

6 June 2006 · Comments 

I think it’s amazing that there an increasing tendency for those of faith to claim that there’s more and more evidence (e.g. intelligent design/creationism) to the answers of life, the universe and everything, when in fact no new evidence for any of it has emerged in the past however-many years (or whenever it was that the church leaders of the day for any particular religion decided what was ’scripture’ and what was not).

Take intelligent design: this pseudo-science (although nothing of the sort) tries to debunk scientific evidence with opinion, bluster and general nay-saying. There’s no evidence for any of it.

I was listening to a podcast of an interview with Kent ‘Dr Dino’ Hovind the other day, and every single one of his arguments was based upon bone fide scientific articles, taken out of context, and then he attempted to debunk them based on semantic jiggery-pokery, or just ignoring the actual conclusions that were reached. However, at no point in this interview, even when asked directly, did he even try to pretend that he had any actual evidence.

So, my question to the creationists is this: what evidence do you have, apart from the contradictory nonsense of the first two chapters of the book of genesis (or whatever your cultural creation myth of choice is)?

  • lack of specifics in past scientific research is not applicable, as this is simple straw-man nonsense.
  • “because god did it” is not evidence; it’s opinion.
  • “because the pope/bishop/imam/Bush/my granny says so, and they wouldn’t lie!” is not evidence; their authority is no more than that of myself.
  • ‘holy book’ references are not evidence; one can read almost anything into the bible if you want to ‘interpret’ it enough.
  • personal “revelations” are not evidence; they’re purely subjective and can’t be experienced by anyone else.
  • ‘irreducible complexity’ is not an argument; there is no evidence that evolution cannot have arrived at the same conclusion. It is also only opinion.

Bring us evidence - real evidence. Something tangible, something measurable, something observable and repeatable - something that can be tested by anyone who has the wherewithall to do so. Then you’ll be allowed take part in the discussion.

Otherwise you’re out of the race. Sit on the bench, be quiet, and contemplate your navel.

This article was originally posted at In Defence of Reality.

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6th of June, 2006 - A Day to Forget

6 June 2006 · Comments 

There is nothing special about this date, even if a nasty volcano has just erupted.

What people seem to conveniently ignore:

It’s a purely human construct, and has no significance whatsoever, no matter which films are released today.

This article was originally posted at In Defence of Reality.

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