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Well, based on actually empirical data, probably a little bit, but not much. But in my direct experience amongst atheist bloggers and blogophiles? ZOMG, the comments on the blogs I frequent are a joy to read compared to the tripe that infests most of teh interwubz. It's not even just what is said, or the logic and critical thinking that is applied -- though that counts for something too. It's that people seem to care a little bit about spelling and grammar, at least enough to try and make themselves understandable.
What occasioned these remarks is that I happened to stumble upon this while I was Googling for something else. Neither the Creationist nor the person debating him/her comport themselves particularly well. They both come across like idiots. I didn't read the whole thing, so I don't know if "99octane" eventually got around to anything of substance. But "ViRuS"'s initial post is just hilarious. Best line of all:
If evolution is so write then hocome it's still called a theory?
This is not even Poe's Law; this is beyond Poe's Law. If someone were to present this little gem as a parody of intertubian Creationists, I would say that it is not realistic, nobody could be that dense and still manage to find the right buttons to post to a forum. I pray (figuratively!) that English is not his or her first language, because then it would be partially understandable -- although the "hocome" part just blows my mind.
Well, at least "ViRuS" used the proper form of "it's"/"its"...
Bjørn inspires me to answer Michael Egnor's questions. It's actually not a bad summation of the "Big Questions", even though some of the ordering and phrasing is clearly meant to have a polemical element. Still, probably worth each individual going through it.
Before I start, I do have to say that, first, as Bjørn points out, all that is required to be an atheist is a lack of belief in gods. The way Egnor begins his post is analogous to a philately club president asking, "If aphilatelists don't collect stamps, just what the fuck do they collect?" Clearly a dumb question. Even if we are charitable and assume Engor is specifically trying to understand the Gnu Aphilatelists, who have made a lot of press lately opposing the influence of stamp-collecting on public policy, and pointing out rampant examples of misogyny, homophobia, and child abuse that have been regularly occurring at philately clubs... he implies that "[i]f New Atheist belief can only be expressed by negation of the beliefs of others," that this is inherently a bad thing. It's not. If I protest against Canada's sanctioned baby seal harvest, that position can only be expressed as the negation of another's -- so what? When you are opposing something you believe to be damaging, naturally that opposition must be described as, um, er, an opposition. I don't see a way around that.
Lastly, Egnor's "New Atheism Cliff Notes", while I realize they were meant to be tongue-in-cheek, contains a very objectionable one: "Theists are IDiots". No, many theists are not IDiots. IDiots are idiots. Some theists (like Egnor) are indeed IDiots; some theists are idiots but not IDiots; hell, some atheists are idiots but not IDiots; and of course, many theists are neither idiots nor IDiots. I think all brands of theistic belief are kinda silly at best, and usually rather, well, idiotic.. but that doesn't mean the people who believe them are idiots. I do some idiotic things, too; we all do. But the difference is, while I may do idiotic things like I dunno, drink too much at band practice when I know I have an early meeting the next morning (not that that would ever happen...since last Thursday), I'm not out there demanding that any political candidate that gets my vote must also be foolish about how much they have to drink on a work night. In fact, it would be better if they didn't, eh? In any case, Egnor is being unfair. We only think he is an IDiot, not all theists.
Okay, with the caveats out of the way, each individual Gnu -- each individual thinking person, for that matter -- ought to at least give some thought to these sorts of existential questions, and Egnor's list, while it contains some red herrings, is not a bad jumping off point. Let's do it!
1) Why is there anything?
Coincidentally, I revisited this question in a recent post. This is a difficult question, and I have a few ways of approaching it. I will reserve one type of approach for Egnor's second question, but for this one, I think I will use a new tactic I developed in that recent post.
So what are we really asking? Any answer to this question which falls in the subset of "anything" would, by definition, fail to answer the question. Why do bananas grow on trees? Because of banana trees. No, not an answer. So really, what are we asking? We are asking, "What is the nothing that caused there to be anything?" Well that's easy! Nothing.
Of course, this comes off a bit snarky, but I think it's a better answer than anything else you will get. Physics might give us some pretty satisfying answers for how the universe came to be given very simple laws (I'll tackle that in the next question) but by definition it must start out with something, some law or way of evolving the "anything." If you want to know why that exists, you're out of luck. And God is not an answer; in fact it's a rather stupid answer because God is most definitely "something". Don't give me this Uncaused Cause bullshit, because that's just an assertion. Why do bananas grow on trees? Because of an Uncaused Cause that caused them to appear there. Yeah, you lose, try again.
2) What caused the Universe?
Here I will fall back on the physics-oriented answers. A popular one is that "nothing" (as in nothingness) is unstable. Another similar answer is that even in nothingness, there are constantly virtual particle/anti-particle pairs being created and then annihilated as result of the natural fluctuating of the quantum field. Certain rare events could conceivably cause those fluctuations to result in a spontaneous symmetry breaking, and thus the Big Bang. Stephen Hawking appears to mount yet another answer in his new book, one which seems to be similar to multiverse theory, and which he claims only depends on gravity.
Moreover, logic is not a fundamental law of the universe; it is an emergent property that works rather well at the macroscopic level. It just may be that in the first few picoseconds after the Big Bang, asking what "caused" a thing is just using misleading language. Sure, things still had to obey physical laws, and the math seems to describe those crucial existential moments pretty damn well so far. But to try to take a high level logic of "event A caused event B, which in turn caused event C" etc., and apply it to that time in the history of the universe... I suspect it's a futile endeavor. Might as well ask about the tensile strength of an electron. Both concepts are real, but... the former does not apply at the scale of the latter.
So, more directly: What caused the Universe? I don't know, and nobody is sure... But physics is beginning to offer some rather mathematically elegant answers. Those answers may turn out not to be particularly existentially satisfying -- but the Universe is not here for our existential edification, we're responsible for working that one out on our own.
And given the context of Egnor's questions, I have to add: "Goddidit" is en even less existentially satisfying answer, at least for me. "Fluctuations in the quantum foam" leaves the romantic part of my brain asking, "That's it?" But "Goddidit" leaves the romantic part of my brain asking, "That's it?" and the logical part of my brain crying, "You've got to be fucking kidding me..."
3) Why is there regularity (Law) in nature?
Taken in isolation, this question is a tough one, and as I already hinted at in my answer to the first question, I suspect it might be unanswerable.
A modified question, though, is quite answerable: "Which poses greater explanatory difficulty: regularity or irregularity?"
If we think about the types of answers that would be required to explain regularity and/or the existential challenges posed by the lack of any satisfying answer, those answers/challenges pale in comparison to what would be required for an irregular/lawless universe. For our universe, the only question is why it should obey this small set of mathematically simple laws -- a set which is shrinking all the time, as we find how to derive more complex behavior from simpler behavior. For a lawless universe, every single event has a "why" attached to it! And even worse, if a lawless universe developed organisms stable enough to ask these sorts of questions, then you have some serious explaining to do. Why should all of these random lawless events result in humans?! That's just bizarre.
Again I cannot escape returning to the theistic subtext of Egnor's questions: I always find it surprising that people think an ordered universe obeying simple laws is evidence of a god. I think quite the opposite! One of the most convincing pieces of evidence I can imagine for a theistic explanation of the universe would be if matter and energy obeyed no consistent laws whatsoever, and yet still we had humans and trees and rocks and dirt (and two horses)... well holy shit, that would pretty much imply there had to be some sort of Intelligent Designer orchestrating the whole thing, wouldn't it?
4) Of the Four Causes in nature proposed by Aristotle (material, formal, efficient, and final), which of them are real? Do final causes exist?
Okay, I'm going to need to look this one up, because I'm not familiar with the Four Causes... but before I do, first I need to point out that Aristotle's achievement was in practicing an unprecedentedly rigorous brand of philosophy, in tackling questions where before the best answers had been of the "zeusdidit" variety. His achievement was not in having outlined a particularly good philosophy, not by modern standards. So before I even Wikipedia this, my expectation is that it will be a big shrug.
Okay, looked it up. It's not as bad as I expected, and I think that Aristotle's classification of causes is just reasonable enough that I can answer Egnor's question: I believe in the first three as properties of the physical world (with caveats -- Aristotle's understanding of 20th century physics is weak at best :p ). I believe that "final causes" exist only as abstractions in the mind of sentient beings -- and that those minds only exist (again with caveats) as a result of the first three causes. (Note that something which approximates "final causes" exists in nature as a result of natural selection... but it's not really the same thing. As Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini so impetuously and unceasingly point out in their recent aggravating book, you can never formally say with perfect certainty that a particular trait was "selected for" in order to satisfy a particular selective pressure. There's always the theoretical possibility of a pleiotropy, genetic drift, or whatever as the actual "cause". And as F&P also point out -- like people didn't know this? -- natural selection has no mind, and therefore can have no intention in mind. No, "final causes" do not exist in nature. A seed does not exist for the purpose of becoming an adult plant -- the seed just exists, and natural selection has caused it to be a thing which turns into an adult plant. Purposes are the exclusive realm of sentient beings.)
I think I've satisfactorily answered the question, but before I move on, a comment about Aristotle and physics... yeah, the first three causes were an awesome attempt at a taxonomy of physical causation -- for c. 350 BC. But now we know it's pretty wrong. For instance, the first cause, "material cause", is really a subset of "formal cause" -- the material a thing is made of is a function of the form of it's subatomic particles. And in order to make the causes comprehensive, we have to stretch -- really stretch them. Does "efficient cause" cover quantum chromodynamics? Hmmmm....
5) Why do we have subjective experience, and not merely objective existence?
Now that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, in'n't it? I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this one, mostly because it requires a book-length treatment to even approach the question. (See Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop for an excellent, if flawed, attempt. Although I have not yet had the pleasure, I understand Daniel Dennett has done great work on this topic as well.) For now, suffice it to say that, at the very least, we have some damn good explanations for how a purely objective reality could give rise to beings who looked, acted, and quacked like conscious beings with subjective experience... and since I think Chalmer's P-zombies don't hold up to scrutiny, I suspect it might just be philosophical fair game to say that the positive result on the Duck Test justifies the existence of subjective experience.
I also am questioning to what extent subjective experience is real to begin with. We already know that personal identity is somewhat of a hallucination. The difficulty in isolating a true present makes me wonder if you even need to posit the existence of the hallucination. I don't know. These are very difficult existential questions, and almost by definition we cannot be equipped to know the answer.
In any case, I'm going to dodge this one for now just because it's too damn long and deep. Again in the theistic context: Even if I were convinced that some sort of immaterial soul was somehow "responsible" for subjective experience, these same questions would remain. After all, we already have a physical mechanism to explain how an organism could act as if it had subjective experience... why would a spiritual explanation of that same thing be any better?
6) Why is the human mind intentional, in the technical philosophical sense of aboutness, which is the referral to something besides itself? How can mental states be about something?
This post is getting long... but I have to say, given a material answer to question 5, I don't see how this is even a question. The brain is a naturally selected aboutness machine... isn't it? It would be like asking how the pixels on my computer screen can be about something. They're built to do that. What's the question here? I guess I'm just not a good philosopher...
7) Does Moral Law exist in itself, or is it an artifact of nature (natural selection, etc.)
I've written quite a long post on this, so I'll merely direct there. In a nutshell: Mostly the latter, and there is no problem with that. (Nor does that make it relative... the fact that the sole reason I don't like to be kicked in the balls is because of an artifact of natural selection does not diminish the absolute fact that if you kick me in the balls for no reason, you are a fucking asshole! Some "morality" is purely relative, though in most cases I question whether that is truly moral. Most worthwhile morality is relative to our species, but not relative to culture or individuals -- within our species, it is absolute! And that's why I will not apologize for saying, for example, that FGM is a disgusting and barbaric practice, and "cultural tolerance" is not a valid reason to allow sick fucks to chop off little girl's clitorises. kthxbye)
The post I directed to has some ideas for a species-transcendent morality... but it's just that, an idea. I dunno if it makes sense. In any case, even if my ideas for a species-transcendent morality are sound, it still exists only as an inherent artifact of natural selection... it still requires natural selection to exist.
Notice that this is a much better answer than God-says-so. Even theologians agree that morality must exist independent of God, or else it's not morality. If the only reason child-rapin' is wrong is because you're afraid of getting burned in hell, that is not moral (and it's offensive to say so, by the way!). Even if we accept a belief in God, morality must exist independent of Her, with God helping us to determine what is moral rather than dictating it. Otherwise, it is not, by definition, moral.
8) Why is there evil?
Yo mama.
Sorry, post is long. On the home stretch now!
First of all, does Egnor mean "evil" or "Evil"? If he means the latter, then I don't believe in it. If he means the former, does he mean natural evil, like earthquakes and shit; or human-caused evil, like the Holocaust and New Country music; or both? I'll divide it up.
Natural evil exists because the universe doesn't care about us. In fact, in a way, natural selection could not work without natural evil... we are what we are because the universe is constantly randomly killing us, and it turns out that an error-prone digital method of replication allows us to develop better survival mechanisms in the face of this unending danger.
Human-caused evil exists, first, because of the same reason as natural evil. Humans are part of the universe, and there's no magic wand being waved with the incantation, "Universe, don't kill stuff." Moreover, there are all sorts of reasons for humans to behave in immoral ways. For one, it appears that fairly simple genetic mutations or brain injuries can "break" that mechanism, e.g. in the case of sociopaths. For another, there are models which predict evolutionary stable states (ESS) where some fixed portion of the population "cheats" due to their genetic makeup. And even those of us who are normally functioning "moral" humans have still evolved to only be moral some of the time... there are competing impulses, as well as a likely selective advantage to cheating "some" of the time. Lastly, our modern conceptions of morality and ethics are a prioritization and synthesis of our often contradictory and self-defeating naturally-selected moral imperatives -- so obviously our naturally-selected selves are not always going to be driven to behave according to this modern conception.
This again is a question that I think is fairly boring if you already have a material view of the universe. Why wouldn't there be bad shit in an unguided universe? It would be like asking, "Why is there yellow?" Well, there's a certain range of wavelengths of light... So what?
So there you have it. My answers to Egnor's questions. But notice, while I may have some answers in common with other Gnus, these are my own answers. You will tend to see the Gnus giving materially-oriented answers, but what form those take will vary highly from individual to individual. The Gnu Atheism is about opposing the destructive social and public policy influence of religion. Yes, Egnor, the Gnu Atheism is defined as a negative -- so what?
What Egnor asks would be like asking a bunch of anti-war protesters about their views on abortion. Oh sure, you might tend to get a high percentage of them being pro-choice, just because of the left-leaning association... but it will be by no means uniform. Anti-war protesters are defined as those who oppose war, not as those who have pro-choice views, etc. That opposition is made up of individuals, just like Gnu Atheism.
The National Center for Science Education has generated a flyer to be passed out at college campuses tomorrow in order to counter the distribution of bananaman Ray Comfort's mangled version of Origin of Species. I noticed in the flyer that the NCSE strike the perfect tone for "accommodating" the religious in the fight for evolution, while not alienating atheists or making explicit theological statements:
Comfort implies that it is necessary to reject evolution in
order to be a good Christian.
Ironically, although Comfort quotes Francis Collins, the geneticist who led the Human Genome Project and is now in charge of the National Institutes of Health, he fails to mention that Collins is a committed evangelical Christian who accepts evolution!
People of all faiths and of none have accepted evolution on its scientific merits. The fact that Comfort fails to acknowledge this suggests that he is arguing in bad faith.
Right on. Notice how they never actually say that there is no contradiction between evolution and Christianity (which would be an explicit theological position, and not appropriate to the NCSE's mission statement). They also put in a positive acknowledgment of atheists ("people of all faiths and of none"), a la Obama's inaugural nod to "non-believers".
This is accomodationism done right. They make only factual statements, not theological or philosophical ones1. They are inclusive. And they don't belabor the point. If this is as far as accomodationism ever went, I would have zero complaints.
1As is often overlooked, prominent "anti-accomodationists" like Jerry Coyne have clearly stated that the NCSE should also not be saying there is a contradiction between faith and science, because that would also constitute a theological/philosophical position. Based on the NCSE's mission, they need to stick to the facts -- and the bare facts merely say that there are Christians and other theists who believe in evolution. End of sentence.
Okay, the title of this post is needlessly inflammatory, but given how nasty the whole accomodationism debate has gotten, I figure I need to be inflammatory to get anybody's attention, right?
The latest volley from the accomodationist side has been Chris Mooney's contention that Dawkins' atheism advocacy is diluting his pro-evolution message -- specifically, that The God Delusion effectively undermined the mission of The Greatest Show on Earth.
There have been various responses to that argument, mostly focusing on Mooney's very premise, which I agree is weak on evidence. However, I want to pose a completely different response to Mooney's argument:
Yeah, so?
Let's assume for a second that Mooney is completely right: The success and visibility of The God Delusion has had a net negative contribution to the mission of The Greatest Show in Earth to bring people over to the pro-evolution side. However, getting people to come around on evolution is not the only goal in the whole wide world... is it?
Jason Rosenhouse points out:
To this point I have been focused specifically on the evolution issue. Obviously, though, I think religion lies at the heart of a great many other societal ills. It is the primary factor in issues like bigotry towards homosexuals, repressive attitudes toward women, assaults on public education, and a political system in which people must profess the strength of their religious faith to have any hope of a future. Those are just a few examples.
Indeed, and in fact I have to criticize Jason just a little bit for failing to follow up on this point as much as he might. I'm going to go out on a limb and argue that bigotry and repression of women and homosexuals are more important issues than evolution education. Not that the latter isn't critically important, and I believe there is synergy between these various goals -- but if I were offered a choice between ending Creationism and ending bigotry, I wouldn't even have to think about that one.
So, as I said, let's say Mooney is right. So what? Is he saying that The God Delusion was completely worthless in all respects, then? That it has not had any positive effect on the public conversation about the false respect accorded to religion and religious prejudice? Well, maybe Mooney is saying that, but I think that's ridiculous.
Rosenhouse says something very similar, that the long-term goal is moving towards a more godless society, but he puts it firmly within the context of the Creationism problem, i.e. he argues that as the American and UK mainstream stop giving so much undue deference to religious belief, ideas like "Teach the controversy" will fade into crackpot obscurity, where they belong.
I think Rosenhouse is exactly right, that there is synergy here. But I'm going to go one step further and say that the goal of tearing down religion's wall of protection is the more important aim even if it had no effect, or even a negative effect, on the fight against creationism. As atheists and other nontheists are further emboldened to speak out, it helps in so many other struggles as well: In countering those who would use religiously-motivated scare-mongering to fight against marriage equality, in deflating the silly faux-liberal belief that equates criticism of misogyny with ethnocentric intolerance, and in combating dangerous nigh-genocidal prohibitions issued by a certain "rat" of a pontiff. All of these things are important -- at least as important as whether evolution gets taught properly in schools, don't you think?
When making grand pronouncements on the wisdom of writing The God Delusion, one cannot take into account only the costs and benefits in regards to evolution education and future books on evolution -- one must look at all the costs and benefits. And I say, even if The God Delusion did have some small deleterious effect on evolution education (an unproven allegation to begin with), it still would be a net positive, because it helped to bring atheism and frank religious criticism into the mainstream. It seems to me that to argue otherwise is rather short-sighted and narrow-minded.
But only on real actual faith.
I was reading Jerry Coyne's musings on the Ray Comfort-mangled Origin of Species that is about to hit college campuses, and for about the umpteen-billionth time, I got really annoyed at the whole idea of religious apologetics.
I would be far from the first to point out that this whole NOMA/alternate epistemology business is undermined as soon as you start trying to make "scientific" claims in favor of your idiosyncratic religious beliefs, e.g. Creationism. More than that, the absurdity that comes from trying to make science conform to faith is just so goddamn annoying.
So, I'm calling a truce on faith. On actual NOMA. I'll let it slide from now on, even if it involves truth claims that are clearly false/falsifiable. If you want to say, "I believe in Creationism just cuz," I'm down with that from now on. Sure, all the scientific evidence is against it, but if your position is that you don't care about scientific evidence, well, alright then. Let's "coexist" as the bumper sticker says.
Just spare me these tiresome apologetics. I've taken all I can standz, and I can't standz no more.
PZ writes this morning about some asshats who are offended that the awesome band They Might Be Giants sings a children's song that (gasp!) promotes the idea of evolution and refers to angels as unscientific.
Later, I was checking out some stunning photos of volcano lightning (seriously, you gotta see that shit) and when I I have a dream... that someday my children's children will be able to look at a stunning and starkly beautiful picture like this without some fuckhead ruining the whole thing by insisting that GODDIDIT. |
get to the bottom, lo and behold, there is an argument in the comments over whether this is some kind of penis-wielding display by an angry god.
Meanwhile, I've been conversing with HuffPo's resident "yoga chickie" over in the comments section at Joel's blog, trying to explain to her why us "atheist fundamentalists" feel the need to be so vocal. It's because the other side1 will not shut the fuck up, and uses every possible context to prattle on not just about their absurd delusions, but also why we should all cower in terror of their warmongering sky daddy.
I did not go looking for some theological discussion today. Well, okay, I got pointed to the TMBG thing via a hardcore atheist blog, but PZ originally posted about it just because TMBG is awesome, and I would have clicked the link and listened to the song anyway. In the case of the volcano lightning, I was just looking at some cool pics that I found out about from Snopes. And yet, everywhere I turn, there are theistic blowhards trying to tarnish everything that is beautiful and wondrous in this world with their dumbass sectarian viewpoint.
You can't escape it. Not in today's world. And given that, we have two choices: Run away, or take a stand.
1I want to clarify that by "the other side" in this case I do not mean moderate theists, and especially not "imaginary friend"-style pseudo-theists like Lauren... I waffle on whether moderate theism is potentially harmful or not -- and you can read a lot of my thoughts about that in my conversation with Lauren at Joel's blog -- but that's a subtlety that's not very important right now. I'm not inclined to spend much time arguing the finer points of whether a mature form of theism is a net positive or a net negative, when our politics and our daily lives are under constant assault by an infantile and intolerant form of theism.
Answers in Genesis has a book called Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it, which purports to be based on a "first scientific study of its kind" which they refer to as "The Beemer Report" (after one of the co-authors of the book), that was really just a big phone survey of ex-Evangelicals.
It's weird that they refer to it as "The Beemer Report" like it is some external and readily available thing, when as far as I can tell the "Report" seems to exist purely within the realm of promotional materials for the Already Gone book. Methinks that's a little disingenuous, and it makes me wonder if they are trying to hide something about the methodology... but that's not what I want to talk about. For now, I am going to accept the claims of the Beemer report at face value.
And this brings us to:
Those who regularly attend Sunday School are more likely to believe that the Bible is less true.
Heh. Assuming this is true, the conclusion to be drawn from this data is so painfully obvious I won't even bother to state it.
A few other various guffaws about Already Gone:
- On the AiG web page pimping the book, there is only one endorsement of the book... provided by Ken Ham, the primary author. Facepalm!
- The books are sold by the case. And not just if you ask; that appears to be how AiG prefers to sell them. The pricing for a case of 48 is listed first, followed by the pricing for a 10-pack. You only see the pricing for a single copy if you go to buy one. In addition, any time the pricing is mentioned on the Already Gone blog, they refer to buying a case.
- Chapter One of the book is available online, and I noticed that the majority of the footnotes are URLs. Really scholarly work there, Ham.
- The chapter frequently uses "church" as a verb, as in, "20% [of ex-evangelicals were] churched as teen, spiritually active at age 29" (emphasis mine). I can't quite put my finger on why this bothers me, but I find it creepy as all hell.
I got tired of reading the online chapter, but I'm sure there is plenty of other weird shit in there too.
Normally I don't post anything that merely echoes an entry on PZ's blog (I sincerely doubt there is anybody reading my blog who isn't also reading his) but in honor of my very first pro-Creationist commenter, I'd just like to present this image captured from a talk given by Terry Mortenson at the Creation Museum:
Now, just like the apparent endorsement of Hamite theory in the Creation Museum proper, I am sure Ken Ham had nothing to do with this directly. But nonetheless, he is ultimately responsible for the content presented at his museum, and he ought to be deeply embarrassed by this. Not only does this once again implicitly endorse the racist Hamite theory, but the use of the outdated terms "Negro" and "Mongoloid" are truly cringe-inducing.
I'll reiterate exactly what I said before: Ken Ham is probably not consciously racist. However, he is clearly ignorant and intellectually lazy. He lacks the intellectual curiosity to understand the historical background of the ideas presented in his museum, and the result is major foot-in-mouth moments like these.
What do Ken Ham and Stephen Colbert have in common? They both have at least one black friend! Clearly they cannot be racists.
I am not taking this out of context, either. In a post in which Ham ham-handedly (har!) tries to defend himself from accusations that he was ignorant about the racial implications of one of the Biblical theories he was promoting, he implies that he can't be a racist because last Sunday he was hanging out with a black guy. Classy.
The funny part is that nobody ever accused Ham of being racist. Rather, he was accused of promoting an idea which has a close historical association with racism, apparently ignorant of this association and its implications. I don't imagine Ham is racist (although the "I have a black friend!" retort doesn't inspire confidence...), I just think he is ignorant and intellectually lazy.
One of the crazier pictures to come off the #CreoZerg Twitter feed (the hash tag for the PZ-led SSA visit to the Creation Museum) is the one to the right which pictures a Ken Ham book entitled Effective Evangelism: How to turn "Greeks" into "Jews" (credit to @hemantmehta). Needless to say, people are baffled.
Luckily, there is a PDF of the entire book available online. The somewhat awkward premise is that when Paul was preaching to the Jews, he had an easier time than when he was preaching to the Greeks, because (according to Ham) the Greeks were evolutionists while the Jews were Creationists.
I think it's quite a stretch to say that "the Greeks were evolutionists", though certainly their creation myths were quite dissimilar to the Jews and the Christians, while of course those groups shared the same Judeo-Christian Creation myth (go figure, eh?). This seems like a subtle difference, but it's actually an important point, as we will see below.
Ham wants to extend this premise to assert that undermining evolution is the first step in making people receptive to Christian evangelism. But wait! As I pointed out above, the difference he really pointed out between the Greeks and the Jews is that the Jews share a shitload of scripture with the Christians, while the Greeks didn't. In fact, last time I checked, the Creation story comprises less than 0.14% of the words in the Old Testament (sources: Genesis chapter 1, Bible word count) So why does Ham zero in on the Creation story as the only important similarity between Judaism and Christianity?
Oh wait, I remember... because he's got a fucking museum that makes money off of bashing evolution. That's right.
Also, I have to say, I find this picture kind of offensive:
Blech. I know, I know, they are just trying to be smug, but given the history of anti-Semitism, particularly Christianity-motivated anti-Semitism, this is a type of smugness that makes me kinda queasy.
There is a lot of discussion over at SciBlogs about the recent announcement that Bill Maher is the winner of the Richard Dawkins Award (important note: given out by the Atheist Alliance, not by Richard Dawkins). My opinion on whether Maher should have won the award or not is fairly boring -- I think his lunatic views on vaccines and alternative medicine make him a questionable choice, but I'm not up in arms about it either -- yet one allegation that has come up in the discussion has troubled me: Folks have been pointing out some uncomfortable similarities between Maher's movie Religulous and Ben Stein's pro-Intelligent Design flick Expelled!
I have to say right up front that I really enjoyed Religulous. I thought most of the movie was unfair-but-funny, in a sort of Borat-esque way. No, Maher wasn't using carefully reasoned arguments to critique religion, he was just brutally ridiculing it in a very entertaining way. More than that, the closing monologue, which juxtaposes images of destruction wrought by religion with a call to arms for nontheists to be more vocal about their beliefs, was somewhat of an awakening for me. It was what brought me "out of the atheist closet" and inspired me to finally read Dawkins and Hitchens. I particularly liked the line, "Faith is making a virtue out of not thinking."
I knew that he obtained some of the interviews on false pretense, neglecting to say he was making an anti-religion movie, and it was very clear that the interviews had been edited less for accuracy and more for maximum comic effect (I thought this was obvious enough that to keep it from being truly disingenuous). At the time, this didn't really bother me, because, as I said, it was a bit like Sasha Baren Cohen's technique: his uncompromosing unreasonableness jostles people out of their carefully rehearsed scripts, and gets them to betray their true beliefs, no matter how bigoted or stupid those beliefs may be.
But then there is Expelled!... I was as incensed as anyone about the false pretenses that Stein and his producers used to obtain interviews with Dawkins and Myers which they mercilessly quote-mined for out-of-context nonsense. The "Dawkins believes in space aliens!" canard is particularly galling. It just really, really pissed me off.
So how is that any different from Religulous? Maybe it's not. Maybe I am employing some pretty hypocritical double standards here. Or maybe, one's intention really does make a difference... maybe it really is okay to be a little unfair when you are taking down bigoted and unthinking authority figures? But then, I suppose that's how Stein's Creationist fans view his actions... Does that mean that I have to choose between enjoying Religulous and labeling fans of Expelled! as hypocrites?
I dunno... it's troubling. I think ultimately I'm going to be a bit of an absolutist here: Maher's conclusion was right, despite his questionable methods, and that justifies a little shenanigans. Stein's conclusion was wrong, which makes his questionable methods all the more egregious.
Maybe that's a double standard, but I think I am at least consistent in applying this double standard... if that is possible. For instance, Michael Moore's movies kind of fall in the middle for me, i.e. I guardedly agree with some of his conclusions but have a problem with others, and not surprisingly I am more troubled by his methods than I was by Maher's, but not enraged the way I am at Ben Stein's dishonest idiocy.
Bah, I suppose in the end, it doesn't matter. I enjoyed Religulous and found the end inspiring. Do I really have to decide whether it is "okay" or not that Maher had to be a big liar to make the movie?
Here I am getting all of this traffic from PZ's site as a result of a discussion about the faithiest controversy/Mooneybaum incident/Accomodationgate, and I don't even have a single post about it on my blog. Okay, time to fix that.
I've offered my opinion in the comments on various blogs, so I'll just resummarize it here -- this time with pictures!
On the issue itself, I fall in the so-called "New Atheist" camp, in the sense that I do not think religion and science are compatible1, and I don't think there is some sort of social responsibility and/or critical pragmatic imperative that ought to prevent me from saying so. Others have expounded on this position at great lengths, so I won't bother to rehash any of that.
Perhaps the more unique take I have on it is that I think that, strategically, it is important that we have both "New Atheists" and accomodationists -- and maybe even desirable that the accomodationists distance themselves from us, though certainly not as loudly or as shrilly as Mooneybaum feel compelled to do.
Modern atheists often draw an analogy to the gay rights movement, and while we certainly do not face the level of discrimination that gay people did and still do (the state of NY has never barred Atheist Marriage, AFAIK...), I think there are a number of areas where the analogy is apt. Certainly the Out Campaign is an idea I support, as you can see a few hundred pixels to your right.
This is Dawkins and PZ... |
Another place where I think the analogy is apt is the answer to the question, What kind of people are necessary to enact social change? Riddle me this: In the case of the gay rights movement, which archetype is more responsible for the progress over the past decades? Is it the guy marching in the Pride parade wearing almost nothing except a few bits of leather, at all times being unashamedly himself? Or is it the nice quiet lesbian couple that lives next door, where your mom didn't even realize they were gay until you pointed it out to her?
...and this is Mooney and Kirshenbaum. Dunno who the kid is... |
Answer: Both. Social change is not possible without "loud and proud" elements -- whether they be gay or atheist -- to push the boundaries of what is acceptable. To coin a phrase, "We're here, we're godless, get used to it." At the same time social change is not possible without people who are so moderate that the other side can't even really find anything about them to criticize. The same way your conservative mother might say, "Patty and Selma are gay? But they act so normal! Huh, I guess it's not true that all gay people are evil," we should hope that a young fundie might say, "Chris Mooney is an atheist? But he is so holier-than-thou!" Oh wait, that didn't come out right, but you get my point...
So, even though I disagree with the NCSE's position on accomodationism, I am secretly glad that they do it. It probably is strategically desirable, but only if at the same time you have us vocal atheists saying, "Uh, no that's not quite right." If the accomodationist position were the only active one, it would be a strategic dud, because the other side would always be paddling harder.
I think the accomodationists and the "New Atheists" actually compliment each other quite well. As entertaining as this little blogowar is (and now you can buy the book! When is the movie coming out, Mooney?), I really hope it just kinda quietly goes away. It doesn't do anybody any favors. Well, except me, because I indirectly managed to get a lot of blog hits from it, but I don't think that was Mooney's or Coyne's original intention...
1That is, I think religion as most people understand it is logically contradictory to science -- not that a reasonable person couldn't believe both... I think I'm a reasonable person, and I believe a number of irrational things, e.g. that my wife and I were meant to be together, that my son is the smartest four-month-old on the planet, that anybody will still be interested in my blog after next week... The differences are 1) I know these beliefs are irrational, 2) I don't try to convince anybody else of my own personal irrationalities, and 3) I don't pretend they are compatible with a scientific worldview, so that if it eventually becomes undesirable or dangerous to continue to hold these irrational beliefs I will have no trouble discarding them. In fact, if theists would apply those three criteria to their beliefs, I don't think there'd be much of a role for the so-called "New Atheists", because what would we have to complain about?
From Florida Citzens for Science:
(Click for a larger version)
When I was writing about the vaccine meeting, there was a term I wanted to use but it escaped me at the time. I remember it now. It is the "Gish Gallop", named after a Creationist douchebag named Duane Gish. The term was coined by NCSE director Eugenie Scott to describe Gish's propensity to rapidly switch from topic to topic, while never rebutting any criticisms of his ideas.
Duane Gish, Creationist Douchebag |
To put it more generally, the "Gish Gallop" is the phenomenon where a denialist -- whether it be a Creationist, an anti-vaxer, a homeopath, a 9/11 truther, a Holocaust denier, or whatever -- can throw out fallacious arguments, or even make up facts out of whole cloth, faster than any rational person could possibly rebut.
At the vaccine meeting, there were a number of claims made which I was almost certain were either completely false, or else a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of some other fact. Some of them I was able to rebut in real-time using my enV2, which has a totally shitty web browser, so if I can rebut your claim using that thing that's gotta tell you something... but for the majority of these claims, I just had to maintain a skeptical posture and move on.
I suppose I could have just made shit up too, but ultimately that undermines the whole point. I am not an activist, I merely can't stand when people make statements that are false or misleading. I suppose a pro-vaccine activist might lie to promote vaccines, but that is not my agenda. Can I lie in order to insist on the truth? No. It is inherently self-defeating.
This sign is for a team in a homeschool football league:
Via PZ Myers.
