Reader Howie Neufeld sent me a note about two CBS television segments I missed (readers can assume I miss every show except for “60 Minutes” and the NBC Evening News):
This morning CBS News had Dr. Holly Phillips (internist) discuss homeopathy. When the anchor asked her if it was pseudoscience, she sidestepped the question, referring mainly to the lack of FDA regulation of such remedies. Having taught about homeopathy (I consider it junk, not pseudoscience) for years, I was extremely disappointed in her lackluster and inadequate responses. She should have debunked it totally, as she had a national audience. Instead, she caved in to the herbal drug industry.
Howie was right; CBS abnegated its responsibility here in refusing to say that homeopathy is not only ineffective, but dangerous in drawing sick people away from science-based treatment. You can see the 2.5-minute segment by clicking on the screenshot below (be sure to disable AdBlocker on the site, and the one below, so you’ll probably have to see a 30-second ad).
Howie added:
Yesterday, on a better note, Mo Rocca, of all people, on the Sunday Morning show, did a very nice survey of atheism in the U.S., and interviewed a diverse group of people who have become atheists (including African-Americans, where some 9o% profess a belief in God [JAC: the show says that this proportion believe with certainty]). It focused more on the psychological and sociological aspects of “coming out” so to speak, and the distress many of these people have experienced once they let their families and friends know, but I thought he did a good job of it, without prejudice or bias as far as I could detect.
And he’s right again; it’s a fair and good segment. The piece was called “Atheists: In Godlessness We trust,” and you can see the piece (and read the three-page transcript) by clicking on the screenshot below. You really should watch it; it’s only ten minutes long.
You’ll recognize some of the more well known nonbelievers, like Julia Sweeney. But what struck me was one statistic: 7.4% of Americans don’t believe in God, but only a third of those will call themselves “atheists,” for the word has such bad connotations. I think it’s time for us to stand up and say what we are: we are atheists, and we see no evidence for a God, just as we see no evidence for UFOs or Bigfoot. “Atheist” is a word that should be redolent of reason, not of Satan, and the more often we use it to describe ourselves, the less demonic the word will seem.
I am an atheist🎉
I am an atheist and an anti-theist! 🙂
Agreed…
“Atheist” doesn’t mean you have to be “athier” than the rest.
I came across a new term for the homeopathy and supplement industry:
BIG PLACEBO
I love it!
I’ve been using the terms Big Homeopathy and Big Organic and Big Alt Med, but that one is even better than mine!
Saw both when they aired and particularly rolled my eyes at Holly Phillips this morning. It was particularly irritating when they gave gratuitous credit to homeopathy as having been started by a _scientist_ in Germany over 100yrs ago.
At least at the end when they asked what she told her patients, she said she wanted them to tell her what they were taking in case of any interactions since she knew they were going to take these things regardless of what she said.
Strictly speaking I am an agnostic; there might be something “grand” that is beyond the ability of our senses, instruments or science/mathematics to detect.
I do not believe in any god that humans have come up with, though it “might” be possible (unlikely?) that some sentient beings somewhere else ( in some other galaxy?) got it right..or no sentient being got it right.
But I describe myself as an “atheist” because if I call myself an agnostic, people think that I ascribe some reasonable probability that one of the human gods exists, and I do not.
So, when some reject the label “atheist” it might mean that they are in “I doubt it but can’t be 100 percent sure”
Yes, I know “atheist” is about belief and “agnostic” is about “knowledge”; I was abusing the words in the usual manner.
Atheism is about belief and not evidence, seriously?
Yes, strictly speaking. My understanding is that “atheist” means “without belief”.
Now that belief may have resulted from a lack of evidence (or from evidence).
One can be an atheist because of having examined the evidence and found it lacking, or because one simply never considered the possibility of a deity to begin with or is just plain uninterested.
“One can be an atheist because of having examined the evidence and found it lacking, or because one simply never considered the possibility of a deity to begin with or is just plain uninterested.”
I don’t know how anyone who doesn’t believe in a deity could never have considered the possibility of a deity. I’m an atheist, but about what? I don’t even know what deity is.
Are your political views liberal or conservative? Liberal. But wait, what does it even mean? I’m just not interested in politics, and don’t know what I’m talking about, but yes I’m a liberal.
I’ve seen a few different definitions for these words floating around. And I suppose you can argue about which versions are technically correct, but words mean what people understand them to mean, regardless of what the dictionary says.
The one set of definitions is the one blueollie seems to be using – that agnosticism is about not being able to be certain about things, while atheism is lack of belief in gods. So, it would be possible to be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist with this set of definitions.
The more commonly used definitions I’ve seen just put agnosticism and atheism as rungs of certainty in disbelief in gods. An agnostic doubts gods but isn’t positive, while an atheist is nearly positive that gods don’t exist (or absolutely positive as used by some people who don’t usually call themselves atheists).
By either definition, I’d consider myself an atheist, since I’m reasonably certain gods don’t exist. In fact, I’d say I’m more sure there’s no god than that there’s no bigfoot, but I don’t have to go around in most of society qualifying my lack of belief or level of certainty in bigfoot’s existence.
“So, it would be possible to be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist with this set of definitions.”
Wouldn’t those “agnostics” who gravitate either toward theism or atheism simply be theists and atheists?
Using that first set of definitions, an agnostic atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in any gods, but doesn’t think the question of god’s existence can be answered with certainty, while an agnostic theist believes in god, but also thinks the question can’t be answered with certainty. A non-agnostic theist/atheist would be someone who does/doesn’t believe in any gods, but is nearly certain in that belief. Sure, you can drop the ‘agnostic’ adjective, just like if I was talking about British atheists, I could drop the ‘British’ part and just call them atheists, but then you’d know a little less about them.
Keep in mind that with this set of definitions, agnosticism and atheism are addressing different questions. It’s not the more common usage that I’ve seen.
But this kind of chart is pretty widely offered …
http://www.stanleycolors.com/wp-content/uploads/atheism.jpg
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I think that they mean the same thing in practice, but that “agnostic” doesn’t antagonize people as much.
I agree. And am surprised that some people think that atheism is just a “belief.”
I’ve long identified as an agnostic, but not one of those namby-pamby fence-sitters. More of the stouthearted, I-don’t-know-and-you-believers-sure-as-shit-don’t-know-either school of agnosticism.
My position is homologous with atheism in one teensy respect: on the existence vel non of god(s). 🙂
I identify as an atheist, and if anyone asks I tell them that. The reason is that I am one, but also if I use the term agnostic they will likely think I’m a namby-pamby fence-sitter. Agnosticism is a euphemism designed to reduce impact and provide wiggle room.
Technically the term “atheist” is a statement about a persons belief, specifically a lack of belief in deities. At least in modern usage. It is not a statement about how or why a person arrived at their non belief in deities.
Regarding usage, the original word is greek “átheos,” without deities. And despite what many suppose “atheism” predates the word “deism.” Even in modern English usage “atheism” was introduced around the late 1500s to early 1600s, and “deism” not until the later 1600s.
Yes, you said it better than I did.
I do know of some people who never have “given it much thought”; hence they lack a belief in deity X or deity Y.
Example: there are many gods in human history that I’ve never heard of. Of course, I don’t believe in them, though I never examined evidence for their existence or non-existence.
To use “atheist” as a knowledge claim is to accept the burden of proof – proof of a negative (which I believe can’t be done, though I can’t prove it).
The burden of proof, first and foremost, rests on the person making a particular claim. This seemingly basic detail about human reasoning wasn’t even recognized by ancient Greek philosophers, who were making stuff up without proper justification. That’s why Steven Weinberg in his book To Explain The World, wrote about Plato’s “insouciant attitude toward justification.” And further noted: “I can imagine the reaction today if I supported a new conjecture about matter in a physics article by saying that it would take too long to explain my reasoning, and challenging my colleagues to prove the conjecture is not true.”
I am a “gnostic atheist” then. I am damn sure that nothing that would deserve the word god exists. The god concept is internally contradictory and incoherent, therefore god/s cannot exist. The god hypothesis fails.
I can’t say that I am because there might be other concepts of “god” that I haven’t considered or am smart enough to consider.
I certainly reject all concepts of god that I am aware of.
By definition I’m an atheist and when asked whether I am an atheist or not I say I am, but I don’t care to label myself as one because it only says what I’m not. I prefer positive definitions like humanist to negative ones like atheist.
I call myself an atheist deliberately, as a positive, direct clear assertion that I am not a beleiever in nonsense.
The notion there is a god needs to be negated.
I am an atheist, and when asked I respond “Of course I am, aren’t you?”
Always a fine and appropriate response.
Usually I get… “What’s the red ‘A’ mean?”. 😉
Sometimes the surprised party turns out to be a non-believer, too. Almost makes me want to carry extra ‘A’ pins around.
Absolute certainty is a form of cowardly denial.
If you’re 99.999999% sure, how many more 9s do you need before you “round up” and quit screwing around?
AGREED! Do people claim “agnoticism” about fairies, Bigfoot, or UFOs? After all, they MIGHT exist! Why is God any different?
We know why: because belief in the Big Fairy in the SKY is more pervasive and socially approved.
Isn’t this one of the arguments out of Richard Dawkin’s God Delusion?
The answer I’ve seen is that they are so fundamentally different one cannot be sure.
In my view that’s precisely backwards – I’m *less* agnostic about gods because they are “more impossible” than bigfoot, which is not supernatural (usually).
You want some really abused and tortured language?
When pressed I will say I am a “positive” atheist when it comes to the Abrahamic religions*. That is I am positive (in both the state of my knowledge and “outlook on life” senses!) that those religions are nonsense.
Then I say I am agnostic when it comes to the possibility of some unthought of god-like thingie playing a role somewhere, somewhen, somehow… in answer to the question that inevitably follows the positive atheist comment.
Messy, sloppy, and inconsistent but it usually answers the question or, if they are being merciful, puts them off and we can go on from there.
*or, really, all the ones I am acquainted with.
Dear, me. I didn’t mean my post above to be embedded as a response to Dr. Coyne. I meant it just as a general comment. Guess I lost my place. Apologies.
“Privileging the hypothesis” is, I think, the technical term — why, of all the possible hypotheses unsupported by any evidence, single this particular one for consideration? (The answer for nonbelievers, of course, is that we don’t have a choice, living as we do in a culture where religion has such a pervasive, and pervasively pernicious, presence.)
I’m always a bit bemused when discussing this topic with people who grew up without personal belief, in a culture where belief wasn’t widespread — the idea of holding supernatural beliefs seems never to have occurred to them; they seem surprised, ingenuously so, that anyone actually believes any of this stuff.
The only downside to their experience, as I see it, is a lack of familiarity with concepts and language that are deeply woven into our historical cultural heritage. (In this regard, I confess a guilty pleasure in religious language itself — sin and its expiation, temptation and tribulation, grace and forgiveness, the Fall and Redemption. It’s all bullshit, of course, but in the right hands it has a rhythmic power, a beauty even, that can be profoundly moving (aesthetically). Sure, I’d trade it off in a hot, satanic second if we could be done with the whole retching, wretched mess, but our lexicon would be the poorer for it.)
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
I saw the piece on CBS about Atheist and thought it was okay but a little light. Then again, aren’t all of the media reports on the subject usually light. At least it was more honest and hit on how some people who do say so publicly get nailed.
Particularly bad I think if you are in the south where religion is just one big club and membership is almost required. The thinking is if you are a declared Atheist, you must be from outer space. Really it’s the other way around.
I am an atheist and the only god that could possibly make sense to me would be me. If someday I wake able to do and control anything that I want, I would not understand it, but I guess I would be a god then. Until then, bugger off religious folks…there’s one existence and one life to live in it. Learn what you can before your done.
Sounds like Nietzsche, who does say something similar, at least to the first sentence. (I’m not sure that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but …)
I refer to myself as an amystic. It covers more ground 😉
Huh, cool. I’ve long thought of myself as one who did not do mysticism, but I hadn’t coined the word “amystic”.
I’m an atheist. And I prefer to define atheism simply as the lack of a belief in any deity.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Unfortunately (IMHO), quite a few people (PZ is a very vocal opponent) oppose this idea, and argue that that can’t possibly be enough, and insist that there should be some social construct (preferably quite a liberal one) associated with the word ‘Atheism’.
I reject that notion. Strongly.
As I have learned especially from PZ there are a good number of atheists who are definitely not humanistic/liberal. It turns out that some who call themselves atheists are also narcissists and megalomaniacs. From links I have seen I can see that that is true.
What he was pushing was to use an expanded terminology that encompassed atheism and a particular brand of humanism. It definitely has not worked out, which is not surprising since we are a varied and uncooperative lot, not unlike a herd of cats.
Especially when it came with the harsh message that if you don’t agree with us, you are wrong and not proper, and so on. Quite off putting
I left a comment over at The Digital Cuttlefish a few months ago that already gives my point of view on this issue, so I’m just going to copy it here (I don’t normally simply copy and paste comments to multiple blogs, but this one fits and it saves me the time of typing out the same thoughts in slightly different phrasing):
There are already good terms for the types of social justice issues that liberal atheists want to promote, especially secular humanism. Why try to make the term atheist mean something already defined by those other terms?
The main problem is that conservative atheists, while definitely a minority, aren’t negligible. I only spent a few minutes googling for stats, so I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but according to a recent Pew survey:
Granted, unaffiliated isn’t exactly the same thing as atheist, but note that about 1/5th identified as conservative. Another report on Pew’s site did break down responses to some questions all the way to atheist, not just unaffiliated, and 13% of atheists think “abortion should be illegal in all or most cases”, and 14% of atheists think “homosexuality is a way of life that should be discouraged by society”. That’s a sizeable enough minority that it can’t be ignored as a part of atheism, nor can they be dismissed with the No True Scotsman argument.
I’m all for liberal social justice issues, and I learn quite a bit and have had to readjust many of my own views based on discussions … at Free Thought Blogs, but I think it’s more proper to discuss those as secular humanist issues rather than atheist issues.
if people didn’t believe in Bigfoot, there would be no Bigfoot ale. That wouldn’t be good.
It would just be called something else and, as your post has reminded me of it, one of my favorite beer names is “Polygamy Porter” from, you guessed it, Utah!
Love Polygamy Porter, with the logo: “why have just one?” We bring a six-pack home with us every time we hike in Utah. We have on rare occasions found it available in Ontario.
I’m not a big fan of this title. I’d have preferred something like “In Gods We Don’t Trust”.
CBS is one of the few outlets that reports on medicine and Science fairly accurately and regularly. (Compare Charlie Rose on CBS morning show to the “Today Show”. )CBS regularly has doctors describing new advances or explaining nuanced issues etc…
But I was very disappointed to see such a tepid rejection of homeopathy from Dr. Phillips. It borders on being irresponsible.
The host Standing in for Rose even points out: “some would call it pseudo-science”, to give her a chance to agree to which she offered some P.C. non-response.
Very sad!
(side note: I know at least one family that killed their kid by administering homeopathy instead of chemotherapy. Although its tough to tell if she would have survived at all, at least with the chemo she had a chance…by choosing ‘holistic’ remedies they signed her death warrant! Disgusting!!)
Mo Rocca himself is an atheist.
I know that Mr. Rocca came out on the Daily Show, but I can’t find where he has said he’s an atheist. (It would make sense.) Do you happen to have a source for that?
In my brand of atheism I make the following assertions.
1) The traditional gods that are in any way concerned with human welfare (Judeo-Christian, etc.) simply do not exist. Nadda. Zero. Zilch. These gods all have the stamp of psychotic people, and so it is clear that their origin is from the human imagination only.
2) There is almost 0 chance that any other kind of extra-materialistic entity exists with the power to influence the laws of nature. I leave a teeny tiny loophole here, much like the odds that monkeys will one day come flying out of my butt. And much like the odds of there ever being butt monkeys, the odds of such a god are so small that I can safely operate as if such a being does not exist. I live for the day, sin when it harms no one else, and I have no desire to keep my pants unbuttoned in case of an un-welcomed simian materialization.
If anyone professes any other variety of atheism for their atheism then that is perfectly ok with me. It is likely that other descriptions of proper atheism are better than mine.
Hakuna Matata.
I agree, excellent segment! What do I call myself? I think of myself as a questioner. I want to know how people come to believe what they believe–including myself. Rather than say I don’t believe in God (I don’t, in the way that most people who say they do, believe), I would rather know what I do believe, and why I believe it. So that’s what I would probably say to anyone who asks me. The problem with most people is that they seem to feel that answers are the important thing, as if having questions and doubts is an uncomfortable state, akin to a disease that must be treated.
My mother showed me the atheist segment yesterday when I was visiting her. Todd Stiefel is a friend of mine and he did such a great job discussing Openly Secular. He is a really great guy.
On the homeopathy segment:
On this morning’s NPR Morning Edition they discussed homeopathy with an introduction about the “ancient” practice. I sent off a comment correcting that word, others probably did too. In their online version, I didn’t hear the word repeated. I also gave them kudos for having Steven Novella talk about it, but that they gave way too much air time to pseudoscience.
I just sat through a seminar with Bernard Fischer, DVM, PhD from Duke University discussing “Integrative Veterinary Medicine and Evidence Based Practice” at the North Carolina State University Vet School.
Fischer is an editor of the Journal for Holistic Veterinary Medical Association http://www.ahvma.org/. He is also a graduate of our CVM. That journal doesn’t happen to be here at our CVM library–funny, isn’t it? There is, however, a holistic medicine club for students.
He started by comparing evidence-based medicine (EVM) and “evidence-based practice” (EVP) saying basically that most pharma research can’t find rare and unusual side effects (therefore it is bad) but that EVP looks at individual case-based studies so it is more valuable (he didn’t say it exactly that way, of course).
All the while I’m hoping he’s not going to discuss homeopathy because it is such bunk. But he led with it. He lost any credibility with me–I hope with others there. Then he got into other alt med treatments.
All of the “evidence” he brought up was case-based, no refs either. Nearly all of those patients had been treated with conventional medicine, he didn’t know about the others.
At the end I asked him to explain how homeopathy could work when any “remedy” over 12C has only a tiny chance of containing even 1 molecule of the original substance. He said “because I’ve seen it work” and relayed long anecdotes about his wife and his own dog and flower essences. He also explained that the first time his wife was treated by a homeopath, she got worse, so I asked why he accepted the instances that worked and discounted those that didn’t as his evidence for the efficacy of homeopathy. His answer was that the first practitioner was not trustworthy.
Anyway, it was a waste of my time, unless my question made some others wonder too.
Oh yeah, Todd Stiefel will be on a podcast Dogma Debate tonight. Check it out here: http://www.trianglefreethoughtsociety.org/events/event_details.asp?id=589207
According to Dogma Debate’s website, it looks as if anyone can listen live at 6:30 EDT. http://dogmadebate.com/
Another friend Harry Shaughnessy, whose family was recently featured on CNN’s website, will be on the show as well as the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church were we hold our meetings. It should be interesting.
I’ll check that out.
I’m an atheist, (philosophical) naturalist, secularist, and humanist.
Which will be no surprise to anyone who’s seen my Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter pages. Or my comments here, of course.
Although I’ve identified as a humanist on Facebook (against, ach, “Religious Views”!) for some years now, it’s only recently that I’ve started positing things with an atheist or humanist flavour.
It’s been interesting to see the responses of some of my (mostly U.S.-based) friends at work to these. Several have “Liked” them or made favourable comments, when I’d had no inkling from their own posts that they were of like mind.
There’s definitely something about being openly atheist that’s contagious…
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Reblogged this on JerBear's Queer World News, Views & More From The City Different – Santa Fe, NM and commented:
I saw the 60 Minute’s piece on Atheists. I really related to the experiences the interviewees had coming out. I have come out multiple times as I unveiled different parts of myself and being atheist resulted in some of the most negative feedback.
One more thought on this thread. I know when I first became an atheist, I liked to tell people I was a free-thinker, because I’d rather focus on the methods than the answer. And generally, I still think that’s a decent way to look at things. I mean, I don’t identify as a round-earther or an a-unicornist – those just fall out from looking at the universe rationally. But atheism is a worth-while label in this day and age because it does identify a certain belief that’s counter to the mainstream, even if it’s characterized by not believing in something rather than believing in something. Perhaps in a few generations the term, atheist, will be superfluous, because it will just be the default. But for now, I’ll call myself an atheist because it does tell people something useful about me.
I thought Moe did a decent job, assuming he had some editorial input, for a network. One thing I like to do when discussing my lack of belief is to dismiss childish Abrahamic faiths right out and start talking to people about my belief in probabilities, and the two slit experiment and quantum mechanics. I find that after that they leave me alone.
Atheist subbing, here.
Yeah well, I can happily say I’m an atheist and not raise a ripple. Jerry, your country is weird 😉
Of course NZ wasn’t always that way. Our (NZ) TV is currently commemorating World War 1 and they just mentioned a heroine named Ettie Rout who decided to do something about the 15-20% rate of VD among New Zealand soldiers. She checked out the Paris brothels and would meet NZ soldiers arriving on leave and direct them to safe ones. She also promoted prophylactic kits. For this she was quite predictably vilified by the sanctimonious fuckwits in New Zealand, who even issued a regulation forbidding newspapers to mention her efforts, even after the Ministry of Defence belatedly adopted her idea of prophylactic kits.
Oh, and I’d loosely describe myself as a socialist (recognising that term has many varied meanings, only some of which I fit). And it’s not a term of opprobrium here.
I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a communist (large parts of my philosophy do not fit) but if somebody else called me that, I wouldn’t regard it as the deadly insult they might have intended. If somebody called me a fascist, now, they would die screaming…