It was a very long day here at College Park, but it was great being back where I got my first academic job nearly thirty years ago. I hadn’t returned since I moved to Chicago in 1986, so it was fun to revisit my old windowless office and see the few colleagues I had that still remain.
I gave two talks. Over at Snail’s Tails, Aydin Orstan reports on the first one, the scientific seminar on my fly research (there’s a picture, too).
The evening talk, which involved the evidence for evolution as well as some religion-criticizing and atheism-promotion, was fun, with the predictable pushback questions from faitheists. I got to meet the estimable Jason Rosenhouse (the good J. R.!), who drove three hours from his home to meet me. He was younger than I imagined.
The most frequent question, given that I emphasized religion’s deleterious effects on not only the acceptance of evolution but on numerous other aspects of human life (you know the drill) was this: how do you know that a world full of atheists would better than the religious world we have now? More than one person wondered whether there’s simply an innate evil side to human nature that finds expression in religion, but would find equal expression in a world of atheists.
My answer involved the a-religious societies (e.g. Denmark, Sweden) that seem socially healthier than religious countries like America and Iran, as well as the palpable fact that religion gives people an excuse to behave immorally—which they don’t see as immorality because they’re acting according to religious dogma. I mentioned Hitchens’s challenge: “Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever,” followed by his ancillary challenge: “Name one immoral action that could only have been performed by a believer.” There are no good answers to the first challenge, but many to the second. Now you can argue that believers perform a larger number of moral actions than nonbelievers (I believe there are some data about the faithful donating more to charity), but these must be offset by the larger number of religiously-inspired evil acts.
The belief that a world of atheism would be as bad or worse than the religious world we now inhabit seems widespread but insupportable. Would atheists throw acid in the faces of Afghani schoolgirls? Or prohibit people from using condoms? Or stone women for adultery? Or torture children with thoughts of eternal hellfire for masturbating? Why on earth would they? Or, would those atheists simply commit alternative but equally awful deeds?
I’m with Steven Weinberg’s notion that “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.” That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but there’s little doubt that when you think you have God-given truth, and are enforcing what you see as divine command, you can do terrible things that you would never even consider as an unbeliever.
“I mentioned Hitchens’s challenge: ”Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever,”
I heard Hitchens give this challenge to Rick Warren (I think) and Warren responded with something like: “I kneel down with my children at night to thank god for his blessings.”
Hitchens spluttered and said: “You might as well engage in aerobic dancing.”
But that does highlight why it’s not a very good challenge to make; religious and non-religious sometimes have different definitions about what is moral and the religious could easily fault the non-religious for not advocating the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals like a good Christian should.
Even although I claim to be a Christian I actually approve of what Hitchens is doing in that he is mounting a reasonable challenge – and since it is the fundamentalists who usually take him on he appears to now assume that their version of Christianity is the one and only version. My Church happens to accept ordained homosexuals and not advocate their expulsion or worse as do the fundamentalists.
I think if Hitchens had put the same to question to me I might have replied “while I am sure that non Christians are just as capable of good moral actions, it just so happens that the Christian World Service has been at the forefront of most of the disaster relief in recent years and I totally missed seeing the field hospitals, relief shelters and food distribution centres operated by the rationalists.
http://billpeddie.wordpress.com
As you know, making it known that was an atheist was a very bad idea in the past,up until the 21st century. You could lose your job, or certainly stand no chance for promotion. Prez George H. Bush suggested that non-believers should not be allowed American citizenship. But with second generation atheist-philanthropists leading the way (Bill Gates) you will see non-religious groups with active, full-time members, springing up in the next ten years, doing the volunteer work. Religious groups have a huge head start. They have huge funding sources ready-made, every Sunday. The tradition of helping has been built in by the organization of Christian religion hierarchy, and often state-supported with funds. Humanist groups are small in size, nascent in age. I’m certain the Christian Church was not doing much relief work the first 3-400 years.
Zynga, the online gaming group, has 250 million members, and they contributed $2.4 million for Japanese relief. I suggest that religion had no part in the outpouring and generosity. So, it will get there. Too many people =still believe= that atheist=no morals (as has just been discussed)and would not want secular people helping.
Many of the big aid charities are not religiously aligned these days, at least the ones I can think of in the UK like OXFAM or Save the Children, or like Médecins Sans Frontières, & I bet they are chock full of humanists though I cannot prove it. You do not have to start a new charity for every cause in order to help people & there is no need to star a ‘rationalist’ aid charity when there are other good ones already. Where charities are overtly religious this can harm any aid efforts, even if they are genuine & do not have proselytising motives.
Read this Guardian article from 2010 –
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/24/secular-aid-medecins-sans-frontires
Nor can we ever count the donations made by atheists to religious charities because they don’t care about the religiou aspect. I know a lot of people who give to the Salvation Army because of the work they do with alcoholics and deadbeats, regardless of the message that goes with it. Yet, all too often this is counted into the charitable work of religion and against that of atheism.
But it’s probably fair to note that both Oxfam and Save the Children were founded by committed Christians, and the Quakers seem to have been driving forces in the early days of both charities.
Undoubtedly, but MSF is not, & OXFAM is now secular, is it not?
Just as Harvard was founded by witch-burning puritans. And your point is?
One of the benefits of organised religion is that it has ‘brands’ to present itself under – so good works (and bad ones too!) are fully attributed to the religion concerned.
Atheism is not a ‘brand’ – for it is not organised. It’s more like a generic product. This is why good works (and bad ones too!) are not attributed to the ‘atheist’ organisation. There isn’t one in the same way as religions – there aren’t different competing strands of atheism. It would be like one empty shelf in a store competing with another empty shelf by ‘brand’. Pointless.
Not that there isn’t fierce debate by atheists looking for a clear label… but that’s another story.
Spot on.
When X’tian organisations go out in the word to help others less fortunate than themselves – entriely worthy in itself – they almost always find a way to use it as advertising for their brand. (As Dennett has argued, they don’t even need to be aware they are doing this. But those organizations than collect habits of successful advertising with have the edge in the market place of religions!)
And, on the other hand, organisations founded by the non-religious (think of Comic Relief in the UK) don’t (so far as I know) go around advertising an explicit humanistic or agnostic or atheistic agenda. I think they understand their job is to help others, not promote themselves.
It always amuses me (or saddens me) when I see my local church raising money. A good fraction always goes on self-promotion (or in-group maintenance) Or when they organize events (with no obvious religious component) in the local community. Good idea – they’re the largest organization around doing that. But these are always spoiled because they find it impossible not to use the opportunity to advertise their brand (and pray, sermonize, etc.)
My hunch is these churches (not all, Quakers may be an exception) put self-promotion top, and helping others is a side-effect, or an advertising tool. And the people doing this don’t even realize!
I guess those Red Cross relief centres are pretty hard to spot. Despite the cross, it’s a secular organisation.
I totally wasn’t aware that the validity of the beliefs which we hold hinged upon the amount of money devoted to charitable donations and the hours spent performing charitable works. You guys are winning!
Doctors without Borders.
“Even although I claim to be a Christian I actually approve of what Hitchens is doing in that he is mounting a reasonable challenge – and since it is the fundamentalists who usually take him on he appears to now assume that their version of Christianity is the one and only version.”
This sentence is a bit of a hash. Are you a Christian, or only “claiming” to be one? Why would you imply that you might be wrong in your own sentence?
And do you approve of Hitchens for taking on the fundamentalists, or do you disapprove of him because you think he’s lumping all Christians together?
Yes, I think that is quite true. The primary issues are unthinking group think that slides ordinary people into the “outgroup” to make disliking them and worse possible. Unthinking group think (if that is somehow not an oxymoron) can happen at the government and cultural level, but religion is especially well suited to it since it is set up to praise unthinking as a virtue.
Sorry – if I might be permitted a second comment…. Since I did my PhD on the creation evolution debate I think I should comment that in my study I discovered that proponents of both sides of the debate seemed to take their position, not so much because they understood the evidence, but because of who the position aligned them with. For example a Jehovahs Witness probably understands no radiochemistry, no fossil analysis, nothing about genetics or morphology – but knows evolution is wrong. JWs dont believe in evolution. If they did believe they would not be with the JWs. Many pro evolution people havent got the vaguest clue about how to use a geiger counter or scanning microscope in aging a rock or a fossil, have never heard of varves and couldnt care less how a hominid skull is distinguished from a non hominid skull – but know they believe in evolution because that is what educated people do.
http://billpeddie.wordpress.com
I’m not surprised by that. Personally I think most people get the gist of an idea and either accept it or reject it based on their values and those of their social group. Although–maybe this is just me rationalizing–I would point out that the details you mentioned seem irrelevant to understanding the basics of evolutionary theory and the scope of the evidence supporting it.
I agree. I’ve never been to Australia, never touched its soil, but I believe it exists, based on widespread authority from a preponderance of evidence. Simply reading “Why Evolution Is True” by our champion here, gives you the irrefutable “anti-creation” evidence, which you don’t have to experience yourself to understand: life on near- continent islands versus oceanic islands. It’s what Darwin saw, and how he came to his “Origin of the Species”.
The idea that you pick a belief because of a certain group pressure may hold in some instances, but not in the case of choosing evolution. That is a matter of accepting the obvious, or ignoring the obvious.
The Jehovah’s Witness in your example is NOT basing her or his views on evidence, that would be the point. Go back a page & read Greg’s comments on Bertrand Russell – hang on, I will quote for you to save you the bother –
“(1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) thet when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.”
SO- Expert opinion agrees that evolution took place
AND- Religious people offer no credible alternative.
How convenient that the previous WEIT post discussed this!
And note that Mayer points out the difference between faith and empiricism, religious accepts belief while skeptics rejects potential falsehoods (“apportion doubt”, as Russell puts it). This reflects the fact that we can’t know what is correct until every other potential contender for explanation has been eliminated, but we can tell what is wrong.
My point being is that when skeptics accept “facts”, they are usually known to be facts or potential facts (“the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain”), not ad hoc beliefs.
And of course there is no “debate” among the experts any longer. But a social phenomena of spreading doubt where no doubt should exist. Yes, I am sorry but I do have to doubt the topic of your PhD, as I would doubt the topic of a PhD on the astronomical vs astrological debate.
So there seems to be two equivocations in the starting comment that have no support here. Science & expert opinion & skepticism # belief, spreading unwarranted doubt # debate.
Gosh, am I strident or what? 😀
Beaten with a minute! Yeah, I keep forgetting to update before posting. Sorry about that, Dominic!
Luckily there wasn’t full overlap.
Don’t apologise! You are more eloquent than I am – I was waiting for Ben to chip in, but it would have been a tad early!
“Many pro evolution people havent got the vaguest clue about how to use a geiger counter or scanning microscope in aging a rock or a fossil, have never heard of varves and couldnt care less how a hominid skull is distinguished from a non hominid skull.”
No doubt those people exist, however many “many” is. Whether one is pro-creation or pro-evolution, if one is intellectually curious and not willfully ignorant, and not lazy, one will trouble himself to read, be willing to learn the basics of operating (let alone conceiving and designing) e.g., a geiger counter, and watch presentations such as, e.g., the dissection of a giraffe tracing the path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve, and contemplate the efficacy of the “design.”
Also, those are peculiar examples showing that we aren’t really discussing science, education or how to access and assess knowledge.
I had 4 for 4 (if only because I’m swedish and “varves” was an easy guess). But that doesn’t mean I remember how to operate a geiger *now* (as opposed to a physics lab on radioactivity and measuring half-lives). SEM operations are off and on, most of the time you have experts doing it, rarely you save time by doing it yourself (and having to learn the specific instrument first). And the hominids is a special interest.
I mean, not even evolutionary biologists need to know any of that. Science, education and knowledge is a social concern, not a personal viewpoint.
“both sides of the debate seemed to take their position…because of who the position aligned them with. ”
Probably true, but proponents of evolution have aligned themselves with the educated and intellectually honest segments of the population, which seems a more rational bet than siding with ignorant religious dogmatists.
Count me as one of those people. But the point is, I don’t have to. I merely have to listen with an open mind to those who DO know how to do those things, and sequence DNA, and construct phylogenetic trees, and study the morphology of dinosaur fossils, and listen to the quasars, and point the Hubble telescope to the deepest regions of our knowable universe.
Your argument seems to imply that only an expert in any specific field of scientific endeavor is allowed to justify his or her beliefs based on their personal investigation.
Sorry, that argument won’t fly. I acknowledge that there are many, many scientific fields I will never understand. I have sat in convention halls where I understood every third word of the presentation on a highly technical aspect of biomedical information. And I understand that the modern process of science relies on cooperative specialization and converging lines of evidence from a multitude of fields. No one can be an expert in more than one of those fields, if that.
Do I then place a “trust” in the authorities? Well, I trust the output because I see the ultimate results. I see the development of new medicines, the incredible grandeur of the recent cosmology, the mundane-but-important advice regarding this year’s influenza strain.
This doesn’t mean that I accept any darn thing that comes down the pike, however. Nor does it mean that merely because a putatively authoritative voice says something that I must accept it without question. One does not turn off one’s own brain while listening to the experts talk. One turns it on.
Your attitude towards science is very 19th century. I suggest you look around more at what’s going on today.
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.”
I think what it takes is not religion as such, but a sense that the action is mandated/approved of by some higher authority. Recall the psychology experiment in which subjects were convinced by investigators to electrically shock people for incorrect answers to questions (of course no shocks were actually administered – the recipients were actors pretending to be shocked, and the people being studied were those administering the shocks); recall the collective behavior of the Nazis (difficult to believe each of them would have individually engaged in such behavior); etc. But religion is perhaps the worst of these when it is bad, because the appeal is to the absolute authority of the supernatural rather than the temporary and limited authority of some person or group.
I have carefully investigated this claim. It is false.
“I got to meet the estimable Jason Rosenhouse (the good J. R.!)”
I always get Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau confused. Whenever I want to resolve the confusion I google “evolutionblog” and enjoy some fresh reading material. One of these days those two are going to be involved in some kind of ironic tragedy.
another commenter here on WEIT had this great mnemonic device:
Josh writes tosh.
Technically I drove two hours and then did the third one on the train. Well worth the trouble, though. I enjoyed the talk, but I must say you stole my thunder by posting this. I was planning to put something up tomorrow!
No thunder stolen. I’d be happy to read your account.
The idea that the religious give more to charity depends entirely on your definition of charity. If you exclude money given to churches which goes to proselytising rather than actual practical help to the poor, then it is quite untrue. Less than 5% of the money given to religious institutions goes to assist the poor, the rest goes to support and expand the institutions.
16 years after Hitchens exposed ‘Mother’ Theresa most people still don’t get the message
My parents feel very strongly that giving to their church equals giving to charity. However, I have seen people in church meetings argue with a straight face that the church shouldn’t make charity work their priority, since they were here to worship Jesus as their primary concern, rather than doing anything he actually said to do.
A lot of churches charity works are done completely by volunteers, and the church is just big pool of workers to draw on for it, and a lot of the money that actually gets donated is raised specially by bake sales or junk sales. The money that people spend on the church by and large goes to the costs of the church staff and the maintenance of the buildings.
Which, of course, is why only whatever percentage of the money given to a church that is actually used for truly charitable causes should qualify for tax relief. Such a requirement would remove probably 90 – 95% of church revenue from ‘tax-deductibility’.
Years ago I was affiliated with an Episcopal Church that, as part of its annual fund drive, wanted money to buy statues to put into two empty niches on the street front of the church. I said (in writing) that I would not contribute to the annual fund unless an equal sum of money were set aside by the church fathers (as they all were, then) to “help the poor.”
As a parishioner, I never received an answer. Neither did I give to that annual fund nor any subsequent one.
The poor you will always have among you, but statues are forever.
The pithy reduction of Steven Weinberg’s saying occurs on a tee-shirt; to wit:
Science Flies You to the Moon
Religion Flies You into Buildings
Well, honestly speaking, people can do very nasty things for ideological, tribalist, racist or nationalist reasons. As soon as they can convince themselves of either (1) some higher good justifying the atrocity or (2) the victim not being an ingroup member, i.e. they don’t really count as people, some of us are good to go.
The point I guess is that (3) imagining the creator of the universe to be on your side is a much more powerful justification than those two.
I think it’s all too easy for human behavior to be influenced by structure of any kind. The famous Stanford prison experiment was a perfect example of how circumstance and role-assignment can turn otherwise “good” people into willing abusers. This has nothing to do inherently with religion; any social construct will do.
People like to divide totalitarian countries between the “corrupt” rulers and the “oppressed” populace, but there are patterns that tend to filter through the whole society like mental viruses. One big one is the tendency for ordinary citizens to become a sort of voluntary secret police, betraying their neighbors for real or imagined crimes. The more powerless and spied-upon the people feel, paradoxically the more willing they seem to become to participate in the system, perhaps because they feel that loyalty is a zero-sum game that can be “won” by convincing the authorities that others are disloyal. And of course if the authorities introduce quotas and/or rewards, the effect can be further encouraged.
The idea that any particular absurd evil would be beyond the pale of atheist behavior is, I think, a vast underestimation of human nature. Much as the absence of a full explanation of natural phenomena does not necessitate divine intervention, neither does the absence of irrational religiosity necessitate a rational worldview. The sad history of applied Marxism shows that atheism is no vaccine against irrational, deleterious beliefs and behaviors. While I don’t at all dispute that “when you think you have God-given truth, and are enforcing what you see as divine command, you can do terrible things that you would never even consider as an unbeliever,” the key is more the idea of belief than the idea of God per se. The early Soviets believed themselves to be creating the perfect environment to unlock the full potential of humanity, and if members of the current generation threatened the existence of the enlightened supermen to come, their deaths, sterilizations, “relocations,” etc., would be more than justified in the long run. In practical terms, there are few differences between this line of reasoning and an afterlife-based one. Even notions of sexual purity and so forth that seem absurd to the nonbeliever can have analogs in atheist thought; Lenin’s revolutionary character was informed in large part by an ideal of ascetic, singleminded dedication to the cause. After his death, Soviet culture remained remarkably prudish; whereas in today’s Russia men of power flaunt their mistresses, in the Soviet era an affair could end a man’s political career. (My understanding is that North Korea is still this way.) That’s not quite the same thing as stoning adulterous women, but it’s still the kind of thinking of which one might reasonably ask, “Why on earth would they?” And the answer is because their societal structure supports it, and human beings don’t need God to invent ridiculous ideologies.
I think these examples show why “atheism” is not a worthwhile end in itself — we have to build a humane, reasonable secular humanism as well.
Atheism is just a starting point in our path out of religion-induced craziness.
I think many people think of a secular humanism when they say “atheism”, although the two are not necessarily synonymous. People can not believe in gods and still be oppressive, irrational and destructive.
I completely agree with both Some Matt or other and Ray Moscow, here. As often as these sentiments come up, however (religion is not the only ideology that can lead to evil, atheism is not a moral philosophy), I am continually startled that so many of today’s eager atheists either dispute or don’t recognize the distinctions.
I can agree with most of that.
Except for marxism as “atheism” or even mostly “atheists”. They were pretty religious by definition as marxism was a political belief system (unsubstantiated ideology). And you have only to see their “marxist physics” to recognize the shades of “design” and “christian science”. We have yet to see an “atheism first” political organization, and I don’t believe it would be a good social idea.
But the thing is that religion and autocracy supplies bad social constructs that are more amenable for abuse and abusers than constructs like secularism and democracy. (Historical examples abound.) The latter is what provides a core of a humane society.
Atheism is as much a result of provided social security as a provider of such in its opposition to religion; as such it is orthogonal to specific politics (outside of religious parties).
I’m pretty sure that secular humanism can supply the same social function. What remains as the core of atheism is an acceptance of empiricism and its modern consequences.
How much we want to expand on the core is the question. I have no guideline as of yet, but the practical: to act for secularism, democracy and secular humanism, and to act against beliefs and its stepchild beliefs in beliefs (accommodationism), as much as practically possible. Any ideas on better guidelines?
In his book “The Germans” (1982) distinguished historian Gordon A Craig lays much of the development of the peculiar German attitude toward authority (unquestioned obedience) that existed for centuries, at the feet of the Swedes. The Swedish Protestant army of Gustavus II Adolphus utterly laid waste to some astronomical number of German villages and towns (see the book for the number) during the years of campaigning after 1630. In those days, soldiers were paid mostly by what they could plunder. My grandfather left Sävsjö in 1902, so I wash my hands of any association ;^).
I strongly disagree with the Marxism=religion=/=atheism formula, since that muddles the definition of atheism to possibly the point of nonsense. We atheists hold theists to account for more tenuous connections, and it’s dishonest of us to play the same kind of word games with “religion” that they do to distance ourselves from unsavory philosophical cousins.
Rather, we should face up to the fact that disavowing the old gods and professing allegiance to science isn’t enough to necessarily carry the human mind through to enlightenment. As you say, the idea of “scientific Marxism” is just as paradoxical as “Christian Science.” You’re probably aware of the disaster of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union’s scientific endeavors (Coyne even used it as an example of dogmatic thought in this blog’s namesake book). While it’s easy for us to pooh-pooh the Soviets for not practicing true science, the fact is that they thought they were. Sure, there were actual researchers who saw Lysenko for the fraud he was and paid heavy prices for trying to go against him, but for the rank-and-file Communists, the common belief was that Marxism was in fact THE proper scientific worldview. Simply rejecting theism wasn’t enough to save them from false dogma.
Hence my point that I’m very skeptical of the claim that religion creates evils that atheism never could. While you can surely drill down to a granular level and find absurdities so specific to particular god-beliefs that their existence in atheistic dogmas is statistically impossible, I think on a practical level the core problem of irrational dogma is a function of the human brain mechanism that isn’t necessarily subverted by changing the window-dressing of theism. Focusing on the granular differences is missing the most important point.
As for your question of “guidelines” for applied political atheism, I think that recognition of the dangers and ubiquitousness of dogma is an argument for secular democracy. If people are allowed to choose their own dogmas (or lack thereof) while the state remains officially agnostic, the negative effects of dogmatism are mitigated as much as possible while the free marketplace of ideas allows philosophical progress to churn away in its time.
As individual atheists, certainly contributing to that philosophical progress by openly debating theists is a good thing. But finding and promoting a positive philosophy such as humanism is also very important, since ultimately life is about building, not tearing down. Not only is it healthier for yourself, but also it’s just plain more appealing to those who aren’t already on your side. Unfortunately that probably means submitting yourself to a form of dogma, but perhaps at least being aware of the nature of that decision puts you at an advantage… I personally don’t know which atheistic philosophy to go with, as I’m still in the tearing-down stage. Hopefully discussions exactly like this one will help bring clarity.
Who said such problems are unique to religion? On the contrary, people often claim that the “one true religion” (the one they follow, natch) is exempt from such problems.
I feel similarly to Hitchens, that religious (well, Christian really) claims to enforcing morality amongst the people is strongly undercut by the ease in obtaining religious forgiveness (rather than secular justice) for ones misdeeds. Most of the rituals in church involve absolution for sins, and Jesus is supposed to forgive everything if you believe in him. Never mind actually atoning for the things that are done wrong. Its one of the things that irritated me most about GW Bush… he spend most of his life goofing off, doing cocaine and drinking, but he suddenly converts to Christianity and all of that part of his life is off limits? Imagine if someone else ran for president that kicked their habit without religion, they would be beaten over the head with it and it would likely exclude them from office.
I can see why Churches would make forgiveness so easy, but at the same time, it seems like it lessens the real impact of the *real* crimes, both to make it possible to be forgiven in a way meaningful to a person without being forgiven by the person wronged, and because notions of an afterlife really detract from the horror of people having their one and only life spoiled by some jerk.
“Name one immoral action that could only have been performed by a believer”
Fornication, homosexual behavior, abortion. The non-believing world has fooled themselves into approving these actions. If the believer were to do them, they would be wrong. Therefore, only believers can commit these and consider them immoral.
Aren’t you the guy from last week who hopes that Hitchens finds the Savior before he dies?
You called sex “fornication”. You must be a dickhead.
It’s very telling that you’re offended by that word. Maybe you think it’s wrong deep down.
You’re a credulous god botherer. Oh? You’re offended by those words? Then you must feel guilty about being a credulous god botherer deep down, right?
Actually Dan what is more telling is your use of vulgar terms to describe human physiology. Does mommy know you troll the web when you get a break from sucking your thumb?
No, you’ve fooled yourself into believing that, for example, consensual sexual behavior between two people of the same gender is immoral. On the contrary, your implicit demonization of people is the true immoral act. And all you have to justify it is faith in other humans and their transmission of that despicable text you so credulously deem “holy”.
Would you explain to me how you made the jump from pointing out bad behavior to demonizing people?
Maybe it was your webtrolling?
No, you have leveled specious accusations. That’s the demonization. Or is that logic too difficult for you?
My statements are not without merit. Even if they were, they still aren’t the kind that devalue people and paint them as something they’re not. Did you react the same way when your math teacher told you that you did the problem wrong? Did you feel demonized?
Dan the liar, telling you you got a math problem wrong is not the same as calling you a murderer for performing abortions.
The thing is, you have no basis to support your claim to being right. A math teacher does. And if someone tells me I’m wrong, I’m justified, nay required, to ask “How do you know?” If that question can be answered, fine. If not, then it isn’t worth the time to consider. So Dean, how do you know?
His name is not Dean:)
Hahah. Yeah, I was swyping on an Android smartphone. So sorry for all the Deans unfairly maligned by my comment!
You point out that a kid has a math problem wrong, and the kid fixes it and learns to do it correctly.
You point out that a person’s intrinsic sexuality is wrong, not because of any data, but because of an old book, and you give license to people who seek to disenfranchise gays, force them to choose between living true to themselves and their families, or even providing people with cause for bullying and violence. You’re unproven, unjustified idea that something is “wrong” and “evil” leads to all of that, even if its not you doing it.
Ted Haggard fornicated with a gay man. PASTOR Ted Haggard.
In 2005, 6 of the 10 highest teenage pregnancy rates by state were “Bible Belt” or southern states, which were Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. NINE of the lowest 10 teenage pregnancy rates included northern states, which were New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Iowa.
Unwed teens and 20s who attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools.
You really don’t look around the world much, do you?
Are you saying that if religious people break the rule then it was not a rule to begin with? I don’t see how breaking the rule devalues the rule.
It shows the hypocrisy that is part and parcel of religion.
So there’s hypocrisy. What does that do to the rule?
Well… maybe that should show you holier than thou jackasses how stupid thee rule is, and all it does is generate hypocrisy because it is against human nature?
Is it better to get rid of the rule to make you feel better, or take responsibility for your actions.
People having been killing throughout history, should we lift the rule against murder, or tell them to take personal responsibility.
Yeah right. It worked like magic in the case of Prohibition, didn’t you know? Just as well as it has been working for homophobic gays. In case you forgot, Prohibition was also pushed by holier than thou religionists like you, on biblical grounds.
Also, the same book of rules you get the proscription against homosexuality from you also get dozens of other rules, rules that are death penalty offenses. So, are you in favor of capital punishment against gays, people who commit bestiality (including the animal too!), and do you favor allowing rapists to marry the people they rape as punishment? How about slavery?
Why do you hold fast as homosexuality being a sin, while not keeping kosher, and working on the Sabbath? How do you cherry pick, exactly, and how do you justify it to yourself?
Frankly, it makes perfect sense, since God in the Bible applies his rules piece meal, murdering everyone in creation for eating fruit, but sparing kin slayers like Cain and murderers like King David and Paul.
It shows that the “rule” is arbitrary nonsense.
So, Dan the troll, morality us defined by sticking to religious rules, and nonbelievers are immoral for not following those?
Well, how about drinking alcohol, or women failing to cover their heads? Those are immoral acts too? Or not, because they are the rules of a religion other than your? Never mind that they are equally arbitrary.
What is your foundation for calling any behavior right?
I asked first. Why is homosexuality immoral, but eating after dawn during the Ramadan isn’t? Don’t try to dodge by answering witha question.
Well, for starters, a behavior could be called wrong if it inflicts pain and suffering.
To which, I find it hard to believe that consensual homosexual relations cause anyone pain and suffering. And people like you tend to be the ones that cause pain and suffering by hounding gays, preventing them from enjoying relationships, and in some cases, beating them to death and hanging them on barbed wire fences.
You, who claim to have a god, must I suppose claim a basis for your primitive view of morality in your holy book?
I have no foundation for calling anything right or wrong – but then I am what you most detest – a nihilist!
🙂
Oh dear – we’ve got a prize one here.
Look at Daniel’s web page if you are not dyspeptic –
“Questions that originate in man leave us lost at sea. Questions that originate in God set us on dry land.”
Thanks so much for coming out here! I wished I could have stayed to talk afterwards, but I needed to get home. I’m sure the students (in particular) appreciated the talk.
Insightful Ape,
I know nothing of Ramadan and cannot speak to its requirements. This is way off topic, but I will talk about homosexuality. There’s no simple answer, but here is an answer:
These statistics come from Thomas Schmidt, Straight and Narrow? (Downer’s Gove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1995) You can find the book at Amazon.
Many people would agree with the principle that it’s wrong to engage in self-destructive behavior. For such behavior destroys a human being who is inherently valuable. Thus, many people, I think, would say that it is wrong to become an alcoholic or a chain-smoker. They would say that it’s good to eat right and stay fit. Moreover, I think almost everybody would agree with the principle that it’s wrong to engage in behavior that harms another person. For example, we restrict smoking to certain areas or ban it altogether so other people won’t have to inhale second-hand smoke, and we pass laws against drunk driving so innocent people won’t be hurt. Almost everybody agrees that you have no right to engage in a behavior that is destructive to another human being.
But it’s not hard to show that homosexual behavior is one of the most self-destructive and harmful behaviors a person could engage in. This fact is not widely publicized. Hollywood and the media are relentlessly bent on putting a happy face on homosexuality, whereas in fact it is a dark, twisted, and dangerous lifestyle, just as addictive and destructive as alcoholism or smoking. The sobering statistics I’m about to share with you are all fully documented by Dr. Thomas Schmidt in his remarkable book Straight and Narrow?
To begin with, there is an almost compulsive promiscuity associated with homosexual behavior. 75% of homosexual men have more than 100 sexual partners during their lifetime. More than half of these partners are strangers. Only 8% of homosexual men and 7% of homosexual women ever have relationships lasting more than three years. Nobody knows the reason for this strange, obsessive promiscuity. It may be that homosexuals are trying to satisfy a deep psychological need by sexual encounters, and it just is not fulfilling. Male homosexuals average over 20 partners a year. According to Dr. Schmidt,
“The number of homosexual men who experience anything like lifelong fidelity becomes, statistically speaking, almost meaningless. Promiscuity among homosexual men is not a mere stereotype, and it is not merely the majority experience—it is virtually the only experience. Lifelong faithfulness is almost non-existent in the homosexual experience.”
Associated with this compulsive promiscuity is widespread drug use by homosexuals to heighten their sexual experiences. Homosexuals in general are three times as likely to be problem drinkers as the general population. Studies show that 47% of male homosexuals have a history of alcohol abuse and 51% have a history of drug abuse. There is a direct correlation between the number of partners and the amount of drugs consumed.
Moreover, according to Schmidt, “There is overwhelming evidence that certain mental disorders occur with much higher frequency among homosexuals.” For example, 40% of homosexual men have a history of major depression. That compares with only 3% for men in general. Similarly 37% of female homosexuals have a history of depression. This leads in turn to heightened suicide rates. Homosexuals are three times as likely to contemplate suicide as the general population. In fact homosexual men have an attempted suicide rate six times that of heterosexual men, and homosexual women attempt suicide twice as often as heterosexual women. Nor are depression and suicide the only problems. Studies show that homosexuals are much more likely to be pedophiles than heterosexual men. Whatever the causes of these disorders, the fact remains that anyone contemplating a homosexual lifestyle should have no illusions about what he is getting into.
Another well-kept secret is how physically dangerous homosexual behavior is. We all know what this behavior consists of. As a result of this behavior, homosexual activity, 80% of which is carried out by men, is very destructive, resulting eventually in such problems as prostate damage, ulcers and ruptures, and chronic incontinence and diarrhea.
In addition to these physical problems, sexually transmitted diseases are rampant among the homosexual population. 75% of homosexual men carry one or more sexually transmitted diseases, wholly apart from AIDS. These include all sorts of non-viral infections like gonorrhea, syphilis, bacterial infections, and parasites. Also common among homosexuals are viral infections like herpes and hepatitis B (which afflicts 65% of homosexual men), both of which are incurable, as well as hepatitis A and anal warts, which afflict 40% of homosexual men. And I haven’t even included AIDS. Perhaps the most shocking and frightening statistic is that, leaving aside those who die from AIDS, the life expectancy for a homosexual male is about 45 years of age. That compares to a life expectancy of around 70 for men in general. If you include those who die of AIDS, which now infects 30% of homosexual men, the life expectancy drops to 39 years of age.
So I think a very good case can be made out on the basis of generally accepted moral principles that homosexual behavior is wrong. It is horribly self-destructive and injurious to another person.
The whole debate about whether homosexuality is something you were born with or is a result of how you were raised really doesn’t matter in the end. The important thing is not how you got your orientation, but what you do with it. Some defenders of homosexuality are very anxious to prove that your genes, not your upbringing, determine if you’re homosexual because then homosexual behavior is normal and right. But this conclusion doesn’t follow at all. Just because you’re genetically disposed to some behavior doesn’t mean that behavior is morally right. To give an example, some researchers suspect there may be a gene which predisposes some people to alcoholism. Does that mean that it’s all right for someone with such predisposition to go ahead and drink to his heart’s content and become an alcoholic? Obviously not! If anything, it ought to alert him to abstain from alcohol so as to prevent this from happening. Now the sober truth of the matter is that we don’t fully understand the roles of heredity and environment in producing homosexuality. But that doesn’t really matter. Even if homosexuality were completely genetic, that fact alone still wouldn’t make it any different than a birth defect, like a cleft palate or epilepsy. That doesn’t mean it’s normal and that we shouldn’t try to correct it.
-written by Dr. William Craig lane
Man, I just hate bigots like you.
Will you do me the favor of watching the “It Gets Better Videos”, and see what people like you are really doing to people?
Please?
Because you are HURTING PEOPLE. This is the opposite of what Jesus would have wanted.
Here are Dr. William Craig Lane’s credentials
Craig was born in Peoria, Illinois. Craig became a Christian at the age of sixteen, and his vocation and academic studies have reflected his commitment to Christian beliefs within the Evangelical tradition. Craig received a BA in communications from Wheaton College, Illinois in 1971 and two MA degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, in 1975 and 1976, in philosophy of religion and church history. He earned a Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham, England in 1977 and Th.D. under Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich in 1984. From 1980 to 1986 he was an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He also briefly held the position of associate professor of Religious Studies at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California in 1986. Between 1987 and 1994 Craig pursued further research at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Since 1994 he has been a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, California. He is a fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which is the hub of the intelligent design movement,[2] and a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID).[3]
Note, no neuroscience, no psychology, no nothing. Just a bigot who gets all his information from the Bible.
Dan getting his medical info from Craig is precisely what Jesus had in mind when he warned his followers about “the blind leading the blind”.
Let me guess, serial adulterer?
What a long piece of hate that was. Let’s take it apart piece by piece.
-Drug use, alcoholism, depression and suicide are common among homosexuals. You never think a little bit of that may be due to persecution and discrimination against them? When you ask me how I know right from wrong, this is the answer. I see a religion that harasses its victims into drug use, alcoholism and suicide. Your religion is the biggest abomination of them all.
-Gays don’t form long lasting bonds? Well maybe we should let them get married and then see what happens. I doubt many of their bonds will be as weak as the marriages of homophobes like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich.
-Being gay is bad for their health? Got news for you, Dan, red meat is bad for your health. Likely it causes many more deaths than all things attributable to homosexuality together. Want to “correct” that too?
-Pedophilia is common among gays? Gosh, that reminds me a little of Roman Catholic priests. Maybe they wouldn’t go after something else if their own impulses weren’t repressed by families, and society?
–Homosexuality should be corrected like epilepsy. I don’t know where you got your MD, but they are different. In that one is a disorder, the other isn’t. Also see what I said above, about your religion being evil.
“I come from a god fearing family. That’s because every Sunday god used to come around & beat us up.” – Alexie Sayle.
If you’re going to quote someone that wrong, you should at least have the decency to spell his name correctly.
William Lane Craig. aka Lame in my book.
Never met a piss-poor argument for god that he didn’t like.
It does nothing to help your cause to quote someone that well-known for being a loony right-wing fundamentalist nonsense peddler. In fact, it defines you to the point that we no longer even have to respond to your nonsense.
God damn, but you’re an evil fucktard.
And I’m not even teh ghey — I can only imagine the seething fury our homosexual brethren must be feeling right now.
You’ve told us what you think of faggots. How ’bout niggers; are they dirtying your precious bodily fluids? Did us kikes murder your beloved Jesus? Do the nips deserve what Jehovah just righteously dished out to them?
I’d go on at greater length, but our host likes to keep the shouting matches to a minimum. I don’t blame him.
Let it suffice that I have utterly no respect whatsoever for you; only deepest contempt.
b&
William Lane Craig
Mr. Craig is a fellow of the Dishonesty Institute, a congregation of liars and quacks, including evolution deniers, HIV/AIDS deniers, CFC/ozone depletion deniers, Holocaust revisionists, cigarette smoking/lung cancer deniers, and, apparently relativity deniers. Mr. Craigs’ views on homosexuality are about as scientific as are his views on evolution.
GOATS ON FIRE!
These monstrous lies are completely disgusting and dehumanizing. You should be ashamed of yourself for writing it, Daniel!
And no, I don’t agree with the bullshit notion that it is anyone’s business what behavior another person engages in if it doesn’t harm anyone else. It is quite alarming how much of religion is devoted to propping up the Pleasure Police. Bunch of sanctimonious, passionless, asinine gits.
Homosexuals are more promiscuous than heterosexuals?! And that is why homosexuality is Eeeveeel?! Really?! Have you been to college?!
I’m amazed at how quickly these moral conversations always get to homosexual behavior. I listed things that are considered immoral for believers and non-believers reacted negatively to them. They aren’t necessarily non-believer’s rules. Yet, non-believers feel they must discredit the rules that they think don’t apply to them anyway.
This is evidence that there is actually a law of human nature instilled in us. This is the stamp of God upon man. That we even argue over right and wrong is amazing to me. If there is no God, then all we have are beneficial and non-beneficial behaviors which have no bearing on whether the actions are right or wrong. What’s beneficial means very different things to different people, but if non-believers would change their rhetoric and substitute beneficial for right and wrong, I would be satisfied.
Well, of course we would react to you hypocrisy, Dan. You denigrate us as immoral. So give us a long, discredited list of bad things attributed to homosexuality, and you are “shocked” that it got debunked? Lol. You are really wacky, Dan.
That we do not find your stone age rules nonbinding by no means indicates we shouldn’t condemn them. As Jerry pointed out, the Taliban think it is perfectly “moral” for them to perpetrate acid attacks again girls who dare go to school.
Incidentally Dan, don’t you think right and wrong maybe the stamp of Zeus, Vishnu, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster upon us?Because to paraphrase your own words, god means very different things to different people
Well, homosexuality is just one of those issues that really highlights a lot of the problems with religious airs about ‘morality’. What harm, exactly does a homosexual relationship do, when you divorce it from the problems of being gay in the US? Probably no more harm than any sexual relationship. I’ve got a fair number of gay and bisexual friends, and they have committed, loving relationships that are not any different from a heterosexual one. So, when you say “its wrong!” it really rings hollow to me, when I can clearly see that my friends have loving relationships that meet their needs.
Its also to be noted that not every religion takes your view, either. Everything is cherry picked… I know gay religious people who have their church march with them in our local Pride Parade. They read the same Bible as you do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Theodor_Kittelsen_-_Skogtroll,_1906_(Forest_Troll).jpg
Your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise. Your logic is childish. Perhaps you ought not post here if you can’t do better than this.
You’re AMAZED? YOU were the one who brought it up!
Asshole.
I’m left wondering why you chose those acts…after all, according to the bible, eating shellfish is an abomination (the very same book that decries fornication and homosexuality). Why not choose that?
I think someone has a very sad lonely life. And maybe has some issues with regard to his own sexuality that he needs to work through if the first “immoral” act that pops into his head is sex, and the second is gay sex.
Abortion was just an after-thought, wasn’t it?
And says nothing about abortion.
Or, if God does not exist, then it evolved. That’s an origin debate. And the dispute about where humans got a generally reliable moral sense to which we can appeal is very different than the debate about whether we need God — belief in God — to be good.
When you talk about a “law of human nature instilled in us” with regard to morality, you’re actually undermining your own argument — that believing in God is necessary, significant, or important when it comes to deciding what is good, and what is evil. If our conscience is itself authoritative, we don’t need an outside authority. Instead, you’re now appealing to a universal, shared, human-based ethical foundation which allows people to see that God’s laws make sense.
But, if they make sense, then people can discover them through reason, in the world. Or … come up with them.
And if they don’t make sense — then someone is going to come along and argue that God has nothing to do with moral obligations or rules that don’t make any sense. That person may even be you. It ought to be you. Because what is the alternative?
I think that your statistics on homosexuality are wrong. But, even if they weren’t, you don’t have an argument. For homosexuality to be immoral per se, on a secular basis, then it would have to be immoral even when you separate it from drug abuse, disease, etc. It would have to be immoral even in a hypothetical “best case” scenario, where two people are committed in love to each other, and are of the same sex, and there is no other harm.
It’s not.
So here you have God’s morals not making sense in the world, and going against what you call our own “law of human nature.”
This is an ‘oops’ moment for you. Think about it.
Trolling is not nice.
Another thing to consider, Daniel, is why you get so worked up about homosexuality. Why? Why are you so obsessed with it? What draws you to this topic? Could it be something deep within you that you are desperately trying to suppress–and failing at it?
Despite the rancor, I think we’re all basically in agreement with Daniel the Troll here. There are sins that I, as an atheist, can never commit. I couldn’t blaspheme if my life depended on it. I couldn’t fornicate with anyone of either gender. I cannot break fast or eat non-Kosher/Halal food, and I cannot fail to observe the Sabbath on either Friday or Sunday. I can’t fail to venerate my ancestors. I can’t not practice dharma. The list goes on and on.
I cannot commit these sins, because there’s no such thing as sin.
On the other hand, I can choose to value family, friendship, and community, and express those values through my actions. I can choose peaceful coexistence and to value diversity. I can do well by doing good. And I don’t need any supernatural coercion to do these things, because all of these things make me happy and give me pleasure.
And Daniel, you can choose all these good things, too, and you don’t even have to give up your religion.
Well said, HP.
Spot on.
The difference between believers and non-believers is that believers consider these things (fornication, homosexuality, abortion) wrong and non-believers don’t. It accents the difference between us. Believers have a commitment to the truth as defined by their creator, and even though it’s not the culture trend they will stick to their principles because it’s better to obey God than men. I don’t condone the beating or killing or even discrimination of a homosexual because I value human life. And for the same reason, I don’t condone abortion.
Do you acknowledge the differences between what you personally condone and whom you personally obey, and what you can demand the state prevent or encourage? You don’t condone abortion, but do you acknowledge that you can’t force a pregnant woman to want a child that she doesn’t want? You consider homosexuality wrong, but do you acknowledge that marriage which the state recognizes is not Christian marriage?
Fornication – is that what ants do?
Oh no, that’s formication..!
“And for the same reason, I don’t condone abortion.”
Oh, good for you.
The exit is that way————>. Please take Daniel with you when you leave.
Meant as a reply to Tim above, of course.
+ 1
Tim does not condone either one – but that is passive. More to the point, does he comdemn?
And speaking of challenges, this was a new one to me: http://www.lifescienceprize.org/ Talk about wackos!! I note that Coyne is on the long list of Debate Dodgers, which actually is a very distinguished group!
Oh dear…
I won’t dignify their presence with a hit…however.
“Debate Dodgers”? Let me guess…defined as “people for whom it would look good on our resume to suck into a useless show debate about the complete and utter failure of our god to actually show up and prove it exists”?