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I’m particularly excited about the comet ISON. From a little I’ve read here and there, it should be visible to the whole world (at one point or another) and it will be brighter than the moon for a short period.
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: ISON, Stargazing | Leave a comment »
The fact that we all have the same genetic building blocks strongly suggests a single point of origin for all of life. That we can trace our genetic heritage and cousinships in a hierarchical and expanding way which matches morphology, behaviors, and the fossil record helps to make the case for evolution one of the strongest cases for any theory in the history of science.
Filed under: Evolution, Misc | Tagged: Evolution, Thought of the day | Leave a comment »
I know mainstream Christians, in a rare display of an ability to recognize inanity, like to pretend like Mormons aren’t also Christians, but let’s illuminate the differences between these sects with a conversation:
Mainstream Christians: It’s just silly that Mormons believe Joseph Smith received gold tablets from an angel on a hill.
Atheists: Agreed.
Mainstream Christians: Everyone knows Moses received stone tablets from a burning bush on a mountain, though.
Atheists: I do believe we have parted ways, my friend. My crazy, crazy friend.
I can’t say I see any importance distinctions.
Filed under: Religions | Tagged: Christians, Mormons | 1 Comment »
It’s worth saying this as many times as possible: Faith is nothing more than precisely belief without evidence; it is an entirely random basis for beliefs, actions, and behaviors. If you don’t believe me, just look at the results of a recent study on faith-based programs and religious belief amongst the overwhelmingly Christian prison population in America:
Serious criminals co-opt religious doctrine to permit, and even encourage, their illicit activity, a Georgia State University study shows.
Titled “With God on my side: The paradoxical relationship between religious belief and criminality among hardcore street offenders,” the research was co-authored by Georgia State criminologists Volkan Topalli, Timothy Brezina and graduate student Mindy Bernhardt. It was published in the journal Theoretical Criminology. Their findings have policy implications for correctional faith-based reforms.
“Offenders in our study overwhelmingly professed a belief in God and identified themselves with a particular religion, but they also regularly engaged in serious crimes,” said Topalli, an associate professor in Georgia State’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. “Our data suggest that religious belief may even produce or tend to produce crime or criminality among our sample of hardcore street offenders who actively reference religious doctrine to justify past and future offenses.”
The criminals who were studied were not in prison at the time of the study and the sample size was small (48 individuals), but the findings were compelling. These men had been through the system, been preached to through faith-based programs and other religious inmates, and they had come out none the better. I’m not sure I necessarily find it convincing that prisoners with these experiences would become worse than those without such experiences (again, the sample size is small), but I highly suspect that prisoners who went through philosophy- and reason-based programs (if such things actually existed) would come out far, far better people.
The authors note their results do not indicate these effects accrue from the content of religious doctrine. However, it is important to consider their policy implications.
“The growing correctional reform of faith-based programs encourages inmates’ participation in prayer, Bible studies and religious services,” Topalli said. “To the extent that some offenders misinterpret or distort religious teachings to justify and excuse crime, program facilitators may benefit from this knowledge and work to challenge or correct these errors.”
One must wonder how this could possibly be fixed. Sure, we could drill dogma and traditional doctrine into these prisoners, arbitrarily declaring that their current interpretations are wrong, but that’s hardly objective. Indeed, whereas modern day religion is, partially, just a reflection of secular morality, there is no good justification within the context of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other religion for such declarations. This inability to offer a basis of reason is most clearly the mark of faith; nothing in any religion stops these prisoners (or any other person of faith) from believing in absolutely anything.
Faith just isn’t a valid basis for belief.
Filed under: News, Religions | Tagged: faith | 1 Comment »
I never hear more respectful, civil conversations about contentious issues than when I host a meeting for Atheists of Maine.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Atheists of Maine, Thought of the day | Leave a comment »
I’ve been busy over the past week, so some of this may not be quite so recent, but it’s all worth a mention:
A baby was effectively cured of HIV. I say “effectively” because this was done via some new treatment or pill or shot. The baby was given the usual cocktail, but it received doses far earlier than is generally considered safe. The result, though, is a happy one. I’ll be interested to know if it’s possible for the child to pass on any remnants of the virus that are virtually hidden within it when it becomes an adult.
There has been an outcry over a study linking decreased housework to greater waistlines among women. Basically, researchers made a simple correlation between women getting less exercise by virtue of moving from housework to white collar jobs. It was in no way sexist or suggesting a regress to the days of Laura Petrie. It was science. And it was a descriptive claim, not a normative one. All we should take from it is that a lot of people really need basic philosophy courses.
Political Figure Antonin Scalia called the right to vote a “racial entitlement”. I think Rachel Maddow said it best in a recent interview on The Daily Show when she called Scalia a troll. The guy wants nothing more than to get people riled up at his idiotic, legally incoherent views. The day he retires or dies will be one of the best days this country has ever seen.
Richard Dawkins will be on The Simpsons this Sunday. It’s unclear what his role will be, but the plot revolves around Ned Flanders, so hopefully there will be an interaction between the two of them.
A federal judge is taking a look at Michigan’s bigoted state constitutional amendment against marriage equality. If it turns out that the correct interpretation is made and such amendments at the state level are found to be a violation of the U.S. constitution, then the end of discrimination in marriage may be closer than I think anyone ever thought.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Recent news | Leave a comment »
The Problem of Evil goes something like this: There is evil in the world, God is responsible for creating the conditions for that evil and he knew it would occur, and so that conflicts with a commonly argued-for property of his – that he is all-good. There’s more to it, but that’s it in an eggshell. And I find it pretty convincing. There is a clear logical contradiction between the characteristics theists claim God has and what we actually see in real life. However, I often find people using this as an argument against the existence of any god. To me, they are in clear error. There is nothing which says a god must be maximally good or all-knowing or all-powerful. It could simply be that some powerful douchebag created everything and that’s all there is to it. This probably wouldn’t be a satisfying god for most believers because he doesn’t fit their all-too-common comfort-seeking, but there isn’t necessarily a good philosophical or scientific argument against such a being.
So, use the Problem of Evil against the Christian God and any other God with similar characteristics – there is no good rebuttal to it. But let’s stop pretending like this justifies a robust reason for calling one’s self an atheist.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Problem of Evil, Thought of the day | Leave a comment »
I hear over and over how Christians have doubts all the time. They question their beliefs, the story goes, on a daily basis. This doesn’t always show through in the certainty of their often logically flawed arguments, but I suspect they do sincerely have doubts. How couldn’t they? Their religion is asking them to use the vacuity of faith to believe something that is totally preposterous. And this leads me to wonder: How intense must their feelings of emptiness be?
It’s a common position for Christians to look down their noses at others for not having what they’ve deluded themselves into believing they have, but let’s just ask ourselves about the sort of people who tend to turn to Christianity. There are, of course, all the wealthy white people who are paranoid of minorities (and thus, generally, become Republicans), but most of these people didn’t “turn” to Christianity. They were simply indoctrinated by their parents. (What a happy coincidence that they were born into a particular family in a particular culture that got the right particular religion!) The people who tend to find themselves moving towards the Christian religion as adults are quite frequently those who have hit rock bottom: drug addicts, prisoners, divorcees, and those whose lives have otherwise taken a turn for the worse. For adolescents, it’s frequently enough those who have had a rough time with bullies and the pressures of being a teenager. It should be clear to anyone that this is nothing more than comfort-seeking.
So, again, I’m left to wonder just how intense the feelings of emptiness must be for those who need to escape the trials of life with religion. I had a tremendously difficult time transitioning between junior high and high school because all my good friends went to different districts (plus, hey, I was a teenager), but I never turned to God. Indeed, my junior high (and grammar school) was a Catholic institution; I actually slowly lost my faith through high school, though not in the difficult transition year I had. And so knowing just how hard that was for me and that I never even came close to feeling as though I needed God, I actually find myself feeling genuinely bad for people who feel they need to turn to Christianity, just as I feel bad for those who feel they need to escape through drugs.
Filed under: Religions | Tagged: Christian emptiness | Leave a comment »
As I’ve mentioned numerous times, I’ve been participating in a fundraiser for Camp Sunshine, a sort of retreat for children with life-threatening illnesses. I did this as part of my group Atheists of Maine; we raised more than any other group, coming in at $2,169 (though donations are still being accepted). To commemorate the experience, all the participants did a polar dip in Portland (no, not the hipster, faux Portland in Oregon) this past weekend. My GPS brought me to the wrong place, so I unfortunately missed the main event by literally minutes. Of course, that wasn’t going to stop me from following-through on my promise to do something stupid:
Take a stroll on over to the AoM Facebook page to see a few more pictures.
Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Local | Tagged: Atheists of Maine, Camp Sunshine, Charity, Polar dip | Leave a comment »
1. To believe without evidence is to believe randomly.
2. Faith is belief without evidence.
3. Faith is random.
(It’s also a scourge, but it’s harder to put that into such a simple form.)
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: faith, Thought of the day | Leave a comment »
For the Sake of Science 