Category: atheist-bashing

Robert Wright’s rant against New Atheism

May 26, 2016 • 9:00 am

On his Templeton-funded “MeaningofLife.TV” site, Robert Wright fulminates about New Atheism (click on screenshot below). I’m pleased to see that both Krauss and I are included on Murderers Row along with the remains of the Horsepersons (sadly, Wright identifies me as a “paleontologist,” which is bizarre.) His beef: New Atheists lack “intellectual humility,” instantiated by their belief that “we’re sure that God doesn’t exist”. But that’s not true: we think it highly probable that God doesn’t exist, which is the scientific attitude. (See The God Delusion.)

We’re also said to be advocates of “scientism” and that we see no good products of religion. The “scientism” accusation is a canard, and I’m sure that most of us accept that religion can sometimes motivate good works. The claim is not that, but, on balance, that religion is inimical to human progress.

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As he’s done so often, Wright argues (25:50) that there may be some teleological force behind the universe—something that may, for instance, have created the laws of physics. Although he, like John Horgan, claims to be a nonbeliever, they both fit Dennett’s definition of “believers in belief”: those who say, “Well, I see no need for religion, but it’s really good for all those Other People.” In fact, he’s loath to find any endemic problem with religion; when religion behaves badly, it’s often caused by people who criticize religion (43:30)! The lesson: we should stop criticizing religion, and I think Wright would be really happy if we’d do that.

The bit goes on if you click on the section called “the holy war against religion.” Here Wright takes out against antitheism, the attempt to dispel religious notions held by others.

As I said, MeaningofLife.tv was begun last year with a grant from the Templeton Foundation, and I’m sure they love the attack on New Atheism. So long as somebody attacks the antitheists and also leaves room for the possibility of the divine, as Wright does, the money will keep coming. I just found out that Wright also has an 18-month position as a Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at the Union Theological Seminary, with the mission of finding compatibility between science, spirituality, and religion. Wright’s position is, of course, funded by Templeton. 

UPDATE: At lunch I watched an hour of the 90-minute Union Theological Seminary debate between Wright and Lawrence Krauss, and I recommend it. There’s an epic quarrel about the question of “how do you get a Universe from nothing?”, and that alone is worth the time.

 

h/t: candide001

Taunton vs. Krauss on Hitchens’s “conversion”

May 20, 2016 • 12:30 pm

Here’s the BBC’s Newsnight interviewing Larry Alex Taunton, author of The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist. As you recall, Taunton’s book claims that, near the end of his life, Hitchens was flirting with accepting God.

I have to say that the BBC interviewer (I don’t know his name) goes after Taunton properly and strongly, questioning him about how two long car rides with Hitchens would given him insights into the man that his own long-time friends wouldn’t have.

Krauss comes on after 4 minutes with fists raised, calling Taunton not a friend but a “paid associate.” And then he proceeds to discuss the views of Hitchens’s widow, Carol Blue, about Taunton’s book (“disgust”). Finally, Krauss recounts exactly why Hitchens was such a strong anti-theist.

Taunton doesn’t come off looking good.

Another secular blogger hacked to death in Bangladesh

April 7, 2016 • 9:46 am

I don’t know what to do about this except to tell public secularists (or critics of Islam) living in Bangladesh (especially Dhaka) to get the hell out of there. This is at least the fourth case I remember, but Wikipedia, in its article on “Attacks on secularists in Bangladesh” lists at least nine victims as well as several more (e.g., Taslima Nasreen) who have been targeted.

In  this case the victim, first hacked up with machetes and then shot (his brains were said to have splattered the sidewalk), was 28-year-old Nazimuddin Samad, said to have criticized Islamism on his Facebook page. And he also promoted evolution! As the Guardian reports:

“At least four assailants hacked Nazimuddin Samad’s head with a machete on Wednesday night. As he fell down, one of them shot him with a pistol from close range. He died on the spot,” deputy commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan police Syed Nurul Islam told AFP.

“It is a case of targeted killing. But no group has claimed responsibility,” Islam said, adding police were investigating whether Samad was murdered for his writing.

The Dhaka Tribune said the assailants shouted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) as they attacked Samad on a busy road near Dhaka’s Jagannath University, where he was a law student.

Samad was known to have been critical of state religion in the Bangladeshi constitution. In the first two lines detailing his religious views on Facebook, he stated: “Evolution is a scientific truth. Religion and race are invention of the savage and uncivil people.”

Here’s part of his “about me” statment on his Facebook page, mostly in Bangla but with some English:

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Imagine getting killed for saying stuff like that! A bit more from the Guardian:

Imran Sarker, who leads Bangladesh’s largest online secular activist group and is the head of the Bangladesh Bloggers Association, said Samad had joined nationwide protests in 2013 against top Islamist leaders accused of committing war crimes during the country’s war of independence.

“He was a secular online activist and a loud voice against any social injustice. He was against Islamic fundamentalism,” said Sarker.

[Mustakur] Rahman said he had warned Samad about his social media posts that were critical of Islamism and religion: “Whatever he posted, I would see as fun. But people are taking it seriously and taking revenge. As a friend I warned him about the posts, I don’t want anyone to die early. But he said he can’t change his opinion against any religion.

This is probably not the last killing by any means; there’s reportedly a hit list of 84 Bangladeshi bloggers, though its authenticity isn’t guaranteed. But several on it have been killed, and the rest surely know the danger they’re in. Nevertheless, some keep on writing. Really brave peopl.

Here’s Samad’s photo from his Facebook page:

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And really, are Islamic apologists going to blame this one (and the others) on the West? That’s not credible, for public secularism is more or less a capital crime in some Islamic countries.

Gad Saad on New Atheism, religion, the “regressive left”, trigger warnings, evolutionary psychology, safe spaces, and free speech

February 29, 2016 • 1:00 pm

It’s worth getting acquainted with both Dave Rubin and Gad Saad, and these two shortish videos give you the chance (they’re bits of a single one-hour video).

Dave Rubin is a comedian and talk-show host, best known to us nonbelievers as host of The Rubin Report (YouTube channel here), which is a good replacement for The Young Turks since the latter show went Full Leftist Authoritarian (I find it unwatchable; I’d rather listen to out-and-out conservatives like Bill O’Reilly!). Rubin has, in fact, been responsible for popularizing—and mocking—that group of identity politicians and Islam-apologists known as “The Regressive Left.” I prefer to call it the “Authoritarian Left” since not all their stands are regressive.

Saad, of Lebanese and Jewish origin, is an evolutionary psychologist and professor of marketing at Concordia University, right here in Montreal. He also has a widely read website, Homo Consumericus, at Psychology Today. His criticism of the Authoritarian Left, and his work on evolutionary psychology, are guaranteed to alienate the large section of the atheist blogosphere that rejects evo psych on purely ideological grounds while claiming that the entire field is scientifically worthless. Too bad—Saad’s a thoughtful and reasonable man, and I wish I had his equanimity. And it’s just dumb to reject wholesale the notion that while human morphology and physiology reflects our evolution, our behavior is an exception.

In the first video, Saad covers a lot of ground. For one thing, he goes after the dissimulator Reza Aslan, and wonders if Aslan knows he’s lying when he produces his “endless tsunami of nonsense.” He further considers whether there’s any difference between religiosity and lunacy, the connection between religion and sports, and whether religion that has no impact on the public sphere deserves criticism (i.e., is it injurious in any way to have unfounded religious belief on which you don’t act?). Finally, he tells us why religion will always be with us, and why “New Atheism” is demonized.

This second video, twelve minutes long, deals with evolutionary psychology, and why so many people are reluctant to give any credence to the notion that some of our behavior reflects natural selection that acted on our ancestors. Saad goes on to discuss what he calls “political correctness and the thought police,” and why their actions are harmful.

If you’d like to listen to Saad’s Ottawa lecture, “How political correctness limits the free exchange ideas on campus,” to which he refers in the video above, go here. I recommend it; Saad’s a very good speaker.

I think all of us are behooved to listen to those who oppose our views. How else can we critically examine our beliefs, or sharpen our arguments should we decide to retain them? But if you’re sick of The Young Turks or miscreants like Reza Aslan, Rubin’s show is a good palliative.

Peter Boghossian accused of hate speech for correctly defining “faith”

February 2, 2016 • 10:15 am

I’m not quite sure who “James Bishop” is, as I hadn’t heard of him previously, but he writes at the website Historical Jesus Studies, and the header of his public Facebook page is strange. Has anyone else described their official position as “apologist”?

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What brought Bishop to my attention was his bizarre article called “Answering Peter Boghosssian—atheist hate & the definition of faith.” And I want to say a few words about it because, although the piece is abysmally written, it appears to support a criticism leveled at many atheists, and at me in particular: namely, our conception of the nature of “faith” is completely off the rails. Moreover, Bishop goes farther, saying that those who use the classical conception of faith are promoting hate speech.

I’ve been told by some believers, especially after Faith versus Fact came out, that religious “faith” does not mean “belief in the absence of evidence”, or “pretending to believe something”, but is much more than that. What the “much more” constitutes is often unspecified, but Bishop appears to tout something called “evidence-based faith”. That apparently means “religious belief based on evidence”. In other words, it’s like science. In fact, Bishop argues that there’s no substantive difference between the nature of scientific “belief” (I don’t like to use that term for science) and religious belief.

The good thing about Bishop’s admission is that, since he claims there’s evidence supporting his Christianity, we can now engage him in a debate about the nature and strength of that evidence—in other words, a scientific debate. He also clarifies, as have some other Christians, that belief really is about evidence—that religion is more than just communality, fellowship, values, and morality, but, to be meaningful, must at bottom rest on verifiable epistemic claims.

I’ve taken my own definitions of “faith” from the Bible itself as well as statements by philosophers and some believers. Here are two ways it’s construed in The True Book:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. (John 20:29)

There and elsewhere in the Bible, demands for reason and evidence are seen as inimical to religious belief. But if, like Bishop, you construe “faith” as “belief based on evidence”, then you don’t even ned the word “faith”. We can just use “belief” and argue about evidence.

As a sidenote, the “belief” section of the Oxford English Dictionary‘s definition of “faith” starts like this (with some of its early uses), while the notion of “evidence” as a part of faith is much lower down on the definitional list:

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But there’s no denying that many—perhaps most—religionists do see faith in the way Boghossian and the OED do, even though they would welcome evidence that buttresses their beliefs. But at bottom, if you ask them why they’re Christians rather than Jews or Muslims or Buddhists, most will cite not evidence, but feelings, i.e., revelation or preference or “what makes sense”.  We can argue about this, and of course different believers will have different definitions of “faith.”

But Bishop goes further, claiming that Boghossian’s definition constitutes HATE SPEECH. Yes, it’s true (my emphasis in Bishop’s quote below):

The atheist Peter Boghossian authored a book called A Manual for Creating Atheiststhat attempts to assist his fellow atheists in conversing with religious believers. The goal is to hopefully end up converting them to atheism – in other words this is atheistic evangelism 101.

However, at one part in his book he redefines faith to be “pretending to know things that you don’t know” and “belief without evidence” (1). He even goes beyond this to actually define faith as being a “virus” and thus he makes it his goal to “ultimately eradicate faith.”

I consider Boghossian’s view to be bordering on hate speech. It’s not simply Boghossian’s redefinition of a word that appears hateful but it is the implications it has when it comes to human people – since many religious people do in fact match Boghossian’s  definition of faith. In other words, history well tells us that it is an incredibly dangerous thing to single out a people or a group in such a way as to ostracize and demonize them. That is what it would appear Boghossian is doing here. It’s indeed a tactic somewhat dangerously similar to the method utilized by some of humanity’s worst despots, and of a similar view Schumaker believes that “Boghossian’s incendiary language is very dangerous and can easily be classified as hate speech. History is replete with examples of various atheist regimes “eradicating” faith by eradicating the people who held that faith” (2).

I also feel that Boghossian is slandering & damaging the reputation of the many good religious people in the world. It is quite one thing to disagree with fellow people who hold beliefs that are contrary to one’s own, however, Boghossian has gone far beyond simply claiming religious people to be delusional & irrational. Claiming that religious people possess faith that ultimately needs to be eradicated comes over as extremely militant, dangerous and hateful. It’s such a view espoused here that has so fueled the bloody machine of atheistic despotism within the 20th century.

I’m not sure if this is muddled thinking or muddled writing, but saying that “many religious people do in fact match Boghossian’s definition of faith” is giving away the game at the outset. But even if we ignore that admission, criticizing the epistemic (or nonepistemic) basis of religious belief hardly “ostracizes or demonizes” believers. Such a claim is that of of a Special Christian Snowflake who is offended when we question the underpinnings of his religion.  And I can’t be troubled to sympathize with Bishop’s argument that it’s hateful to call faith a “virus that needs to be eradicated.” I happen to agree with Boghossian, but we’re talking about a worldview, not people. Nobody argues that the believers themselves should be eradicated! If I said “racism is a virus that needs to be eradicated,” would Bishop argue with me that I’m unfairly demonizing and ostracizing racists?

I see that I’m spending too much time on this apologist, so I’ll just provide a couple of quotes about Bishop’s notion of “evidence-based faith” and then, as you’re undoubtedly wondering, show the kind of evidence he gives for his own Christian faith (my emphasis):

The problem with atheists like Boghossian is that they seem to willfully misunderstand the nature of faith. Indeed, there is something known as blind faith of which many religious people (as well as many atheists) possess. This is what Boghossian, and other atheists, mean by the word “faith.” Which is ultimately to believe based off of insufficient evidence or in the face of powerful contradicting evidence.

However, there is also evidence based faith. This is faith that, although goes beyond what one can prove, is reasonable to hold based on what we already do know. When I board a flight to a holiday destination a level of faith is immediately involved. I have faith that the plane is durable enough to withstand the elements, I have faith that the pilot is well trained enough to fly a 500 seater airliner, I have faith that I will arrive at my destination based off of the latest statistics on airliner accidents. In other words, I cannot prove for absolute certainty that I will arrive at my destination alive, but I can be extremely confident that I will. If I knew that the probabilities were not in my favour and that my certainties were outweighed by the uncertainties (in other words, if I thought I’d have a 40% chance to arrive safely at my destination) then I would not take the flight. However, if I know that I have a 99.99% chance at arriving safely at my destination then I can fly confidently.

What Bishop is talking about here is in fact scientific belief: what I call “confidence based on evidence and experience”. But surely Bishop can’t see Christian truth claims as being supported by as much evidence as that of a safe plane landing, can he? Well, yes he does—because the Bible tells him so:

This clearly applies to Christianity. For example, I cannot “prove” that Jesus rose from the dead. Yet I can believe that he did is a rational position based off of historical data. I believe that making sense of data such as Jesus’ empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, the radical transformations of Paul, James & the disciples etc. can be used to support the case of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. In other words I believe that my faith in the truth of Christianity is evidence based & not wishful thinking. But the faith element remains since no-one can prove with absolute certainty that Jesus was really resurrected – but I believe that I am rational in concluding that he did. So faith is not necessarily a dirty word as atheists would have us believe.

This is a classic case of “begging the question” in the genuine sense, for it assumes what it wants to prove: that stuff in the Bible is true. But if you go that route for Jesus’s resurrection, then how can you rule out any scriptural claim, for all are supported by “historical data”? The Exodus? Didn’t happen, but it’s historical data? The Flood? Historical data! Adam and Eve, still thought by the Vatican to be real people and the ancestors of us all? True, because it’s historical data. And how is Bishop going to argue with a Muslim who cites the Qur’an and hadith as showing completely contrary “historical data”? If faith is based on evidence, let believers decide among themselves what the true faith is, just like we scientists argued about the true structure of DNA and settled the issue. At least we can usually come to a consensus!

In the end, Apologist Bishop levels the usual criticisms of atheism: our “belief” is also based on faith. Since I dispel these arguments in Faith versus Fact (and in an article in Slate), I won’t reprise my analysis here, but you might amuse yourself by mentally critiquing Bishop’s conclusion:

Contrary to popular atheistic belief, atheists also have faith. Naturalism, the worldview that most atheists hold to, contains many faith based assumptions. The naturalist can’t prove that the natural world is all that exists since to assume such goes beyond the available evidence. The same naturalist has to have faith that his cognitive faculties are reliable in interpreting data from the natural world so that he can make sense of it. The same naturalist has to assume that biological life originated from inorganic material, that in the universe order can come from chaos, and that consciousness and rationality can come from unconscious and non-rational forces of nature. He also has to hold that no supernatural reality exists & that all religions are man made thus false. These, and many more, are all faith based positions that the atheist naturalist has to maintain in order to believe in his naturalism. As fellow apologist Tyler Vela informs us:

“Even though “atheism” may technically amount to simply a lack of belief in a deity, the fact that atheists commonly label themselves “atheists”, (and ascribe attributes to such a label, such as rationalism, empirical validity, etc.) reveals that functionally speaking “atheism” may in fact actually be what people say that it isn’t – a belief; a system of thought”.

The people Bishop should be engaging, however, aren’t atheists, who, after all, don’t find his evidence for Jesus convincing. He should be going after Muslims, Jews, and Orthodox Christians—at least the ones who agree that faith rests on evidence.  Since they all share a quasi-scientific basis for religious belief, let them have a big conclave and decide what the TRUE RELIGION is. And because there are far more believers than atheists on our planet, isn’t it more pressing to settle issues about God and His/Her/Its dictates among believers, and simply leave the tiny titer of atheists alone?

Surprise! National Public Radio touts unrepentant atheism, defends the idea that atheist lives have meaning

January 25, 2016 • 8:45 am

At last! After years of assailing our ears with the wet smacking of faith-osculation and the unbearable blather of Krista Tippett, National Public Radio (NPR) has published a piece defending atheism and dismantling one of the commonest criticisms tendered by the Unthinking Faithful: atheism sucks the meaning out of life.

And I’m proud to see that the piece, “An unkillable myth about atheists,” is by a faculty member at my alma mater William & Mary: Barbara J. King. She’s a professor of anthropology and author of several books, most recently How Animals Grieve.  More good stuff: here’s her picture from her website (the caption is mine), which also includes the statement, “Together with her husband, she cares for and arranges to spay and neuter homeless cats in Virginia.”

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Cats: the Official Companion Animal of Atheists

But onto King’s short piece on Cosmos & Culture (she writes there frequently), which was inspired by a new book written by accommodationist Alister McGrath. McGrath is a professor of Science & Religion (!) at Oxford, an ordained Anglican priest, and a man whose writings I’ve slogged through with great distress. According to King, McGrath says stuff like this:

“Since science discloses no meaning to the universe, the only reasonable conclusion is that there is no meaning to find.”

By now all of us can respond to this as King does:

Here, yet again, is the unkillable myth, the persistent blind spot about atheism that apparently no amount of explaining can make go away. No matter how lucidly atheists explain in books, essays and blog posts that, yes, life can and does for us have meaning without God, the tsunami of claims about atheists’ arid existence rolls on and on.

. . . First is the understanding, emergent from evolutionary theory, that neither the universe as a whole, nor we humans within it, have evolved according to some plan of design. Cosmic evolution and human evolution unfold with no guiding hand or specific goals. Most atheists do accept this, I think.

Second is to embrace as a logical next step the idea that our own individual lives have no purpose or meaning. Do you know of any atheists who believe this? I don’t.

. . . An anthropological perspective teaches us that we humans are a quintessentially meaning-making species. We create love and kindness (hate and violence, too), and also work that matters. We recognize and protect (or, too often, harm) our sense of connection to other animals, to plants and trees, to all of nature’s landscapes. What are those acts if not ones of meaning and purpose?

. . . I’m yet another atheist voice chiming in to say that my life, thanks very much, is full of meaning.

Now, how to make this unkillable myth about atheism into a moribund myth?

I’ve often agreed with King, arguing that we nonbelievers imbue our lives with our own meanings—things like satisfying work, hobbies, raising a family, communing with friends, helping others, drinking good wine, and wearing cowboy boots. But after thinking about King’s essay, I’m not sure if I could really answer the questions, “What is the meaning of your life?” or “What gives your life meaning?”

I won’t get into the tedious and perennial philosophical argument about “the meaning of meaning” here. But what I want to say is this: what nonbelievers see as the “meaning” of life is simply what we like to do and prefer to do—the things that give us satisfaction.

Thus I much prefer the question, “What gives you satisfaction in your life?” That sounds a lot less portentous than the word “meaning”, for I’m not sure what it means to say things like “studying evolution gives my life meaning.” I enjoy studying evolution, and it gives me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction to learn the diverse ways plants and animals have evolved, but I don’t walk around imbued with the feeling that those endeavors have given my life “meaning”. I’m just doing what I like to do. In fact, I’d prefer that nonbelievers entirely avoid the notion of “meaning” because of its religious overtones. Why try to ape the faithful? Saying what gives our life “meaning” is like trying to create secular churches so we can satisfy a supposed need.

Now “purpose” is a different issue, for atheists can argue more credibly that we do give our lives purpose. And that purpose is to do those things that bring us satisfaction. Usually, though, “purpose” isn’t taken to mean pleasurable activities like reading or traveling. Rather, it denotes satisfying activities that seem “higher” because they help others. But again, I’d be hard pressed to say what the “purpose” of my life is. Can you tell us what yours is?

As an example of the idea she opposes, King discusses When Breath Becomes Air, the popular new book by the late neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, diagnosed at age 36 with terminal cancer. Here’s one of the book’s passages she criticizes:

“To make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning — to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life doesn’t have any.”

But in some sense I agree with that. If you construe “meaning” as “something given from the outside,” then yes, for the faithful that kind of meaning comes largely from God. (Not entirely, though, because others can also imbue you with a “purpose”.) But I wonder, when Kalanithi makes the following statements (as described by King), he’s not just justifying his profession the same way nonbelievers do: it gives us satisfaction. He dresses up his words with religious overtones, but that may just be a trope:

Kalanithi describes the “sacredness” of his work as a neurosurgeon, the burdens that make medicine “holy.”

Well, you could say the same thing about many professions, especially those that help others, even when practiced by atheists. I haven’t read Kalanithi’s book, but I’m not sure he means here that God has endowed medicine—as opposed, to, say, plumbing—with sacred overtones.

By and large, though, it’s great to see such an unrepentant defense of atheism, especially on the NPR site. I’d love to see King interviewed, for instance, by Krista Tippett. Imagine Tippett squirming when she can’t get King to accept anything “spiritual” or “numinous”!

As lagniappe in her piece, King proffers this tidbit, a criticism of accommodationism (as I said, McGrath is a vociferous accommodationist.):

Let’s return to McGrath. His central theme in The Big Question revolves around “the ultimate coherence of science and faith.” I’d like to say that open dialogue about the interweaving of scientific and religious narratives that McGrath champions — dialogue asking if that interweaving is really a possible, or even a desirable, goal — is the way forward. At the same time, I find intriguing and persuasive the perspective of physicist Sean Carroll, who explains why he takes no money from the John Templeton Foundation by saying it is because its underlying goal is to further this very notion of consilience. [JAC: Add me to that no-Templeton list.]

“Intruiguing and persuasive”, indeed. For that is the underlying goal of Templeton. Yay for Carroll! Yay for King! And boo to Templeton and McGrath!