Quote Of Note - Jerry Coyne

"Religion isn’t a search for truth, but a search for confirmation of what you were taught, what you want to believe, or what you find emotionally fulfilling." - Jerry Coyne

Some Are More Equal Than Others

AP-NORC Poll: Religious Rights Most Vital for US Christians:

Americans place a higher priority on preserving the religious freedom of Christians than for other faith groups, ranking Muslims as the least deserving of the protections, according to a new survey.

Ted Cruz supporters explain how President Obama ruined American and Christmas. Oh no, not Christmas!:

"We don't need a President like Obama no more. He's ruined our country...he's ruined Christmas..he's let the Muslims in...we can't say that word, we got to be ashamed of everything. And we're not ashamed people, we're a proud people and we're going to take our country back. So watch out Obama we're coming."

Quote Of Note - Jeffrey Tayler

"It’s time we woke up: religion is never the solution, never to be respected, and, always and ever, the problem." - Jeffrey Tayler

Extremist Views

Why Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky are Both Right:

Bringing the discussion full circle, Harris is correct in asserting that beliefs influence actions. In particular, apocalyptic beliefs can be used to excuse virtually any act of violence and treachery on the grounds that the present moment is one of cosmic significance and urgency. But beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum. The material conditions in which people find themselves can have a profound influence on the sort of worldview they adopt. And this is where Chomsky is correct. The West has an absolutely sordid history of aggressive, self-interested, and morally questionable meddling in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries. The debacle known as the Iraq War created a situation of widespread desperation that's seduced a whole generation of religiously-inclined people to latch onto extremist views they otherwise wouldn't have accepted. In turn, these views then modified their behavioral patterns in ideologically specific ways.

Religion Poisons Political Rhetoric

"In religion, faith is a virtue. In science, faith is a vice." - Jerry Coyne

Religion poisons progress.

If a person can believe in something without any proof, it follows that they can believe in anything without any proof. A large group of people such as these form the basis of the Republican Party. They believe in anything that they want to believe in. Logic and proof are not a necessary part of their thinking, hence their thinking is incredibly limited. Black and white, zeros and ones, on and off; no grey areas exist for them. Abortion is "baby killing", climate change is not man-made, birth control is wrong, marriage is between a man and a woman, and on and on. Flexibility and compromise are non-existent. They think that they are always right.

Republicans are not reasonable people because so many of them are religious. Reason and religion are like oil and water. Religion defines the current Republican Party. It defines the issues they consider to be important. It defines what and who they will vote for, and the rest of us be damned for wanting a world that isn't so medieval.

Just look at some of today's headlines:

Fiorina makes distortion of Planned Parenthood a centerpiece

Abortion, birth control, race top Supreme Court's agenda

Vatican fires gay priest on eve of synod

It looks like Pope Francis is not so liberal and progressive after all. It looks like he is judgemental after all.

To true progressives and liberals these issues are not political issues at all. In fact they are all legal in the United States. They are only political issues because Republicans force them to be issues. Somehow these issues become more important than murders, crime, infrastructure needs, poverty, pollution, etc. I think that all of us would like the world to be a better place. It is therefore ironic that the Religious Republicans impede many solutions that could do just that.

Belief trumps logic in the minds of the Religious Republican. Debate and discussion become totally useless. Evidence, science and logic become totally useless. In their minds they are always right. They are proud of their idiotic arrogance. They are not content to live in a country that allows them to have their beliefs. They want to legalize their beliefs so that the rest of us are forced to be like them.

They believe that religion is what makes America great. I believe that the Enlightenment is what makes America great, and never the twain shall meet.

Because we are a democracy, a large number of Religious Republicans can make the United States a hellish place to be for the rest of us. 

As E.O. Wilson says, we have become dysfunctional.

"I’m not a Marxist, but Marx got at least one thing right: for many, religion weakens the incentive to fix both personal and societal problems." - Jerry Coyne

"For good people to do evil doesn’t require only religion, or even any religion, but simply one of its key elements: belief without evidence—in other words, faith. And that kind of faith is seen not just in religion, but in any authoritarian ideology that puts dogma above truth and frowns on dissent." - Jerry Coyne

"But the God hypothesis for morality and altruism has its own problems. It fails, for example, to specify exactly which moral judgments were instilled in people by God and which, if any, might rest on secular reason. It doesn’t explain why slavery, torture, and disdain for women and strangers were considered proper behaviors not too long ago, but are now seen as immoral. For if anything is true, God-given morality should remain constant over time and space. In contrast, if morality reflects a malleable social veneer on an evolutionary base, it should change as society changes. And it has." - Jerry Coyne 

Just read Faith vs. Fact, for god's sake.

The Arguments Of The Blasphemer

Nothing Should Be Immune 
from Criticism:

Those who favor the punishment of expression critical of religious beliefs will sometimes refer to the right of believers not to be offended. But there is no such right. Obviously, as humanists we respect the worth and dignity of all persons, but that presupposes that we treat others as our equals and not condescend to them as though they were children who cannot accept criticism of their beliefs. Moreover, it is immediately obvious that if such a right were to be recognized, it would effectively prevent any critical examination of religious beliefs—which, of course, is the real goal of those who advocate for the spurious right not to be offended. Framing laws in terms of protecting religious sensibilities cannot obscure the fact that both the intent and effect of these laws is to protect majoritarian religious beliefs and punish dissent. To quote Robert Ingersoll, “The cry of blasphemy means only that the arguments of the blasphemer cannot be answered.”

Religious Weirdness About Nail Polish

The Women’s Mosque of America: Understanding Diversity and Empowerment:

One Friday afternoon, as I was settling down to listen to a sermon in my local mosque in Orange County, California, a woman leaned over to me and whispered that I needed to take my toenail polish off to properly complete ablutions. Many people believe that since water can’t touch nails because of the impermeable polish barrier, one can’t perform ablutions. Without successfully performed ablutions, my prayers would not be accepted.

My toenails have been a source of contention in mosques spanning the globe. I’ve been lectured on the moral ills of nail polish in languages I don’t understand. While I interpret lectures on ‘correct’ practices as policing, many women feel these corrections are religious and generational duties that contribute to community construction.

This Is Good

More Harvard Freshman Identify As Atheist, Agnostic Than Catholic, Protestant, University Survey Finds:

An annual survey of the university's incoming freshman revealed that more students in the class of 2019 identified as atheist or agnostic than as Roman Catholic or Protestant.

An annual survey of Harvard University’s incoming freshman class revealed in September that more students identified as atheist or agnostic than as Roman Catholic or Protestant, suggesting millennials are turning away from traditional American faiths in a country that has long had a Christian majority.

Coming Out As An Atheist

Over at Why Evolution Is True there is a discussion about atheists "coming out". For years I have mulled over this and other related themes.

I agree with Richard Dawkins and his opinion that religion is a form of child abuse:

Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.

Don't ever tell a child "you belong to this religion" that is child abuse.

I have read various thoughts on this matter, many of which I agree with. I have not discovered anyone who shares some of my opinions on this matter, thoughts that seem to be unique to me, and my way of thinking.

I have read criticisms of the indoctrination of children by a particular religion, criticisms that I agree with. The fact that so many people belong to a particular religion simply because their parents did proves that this indoctrination works. I think that this indoctrination is child abuse. To me this is some form of nightmarish "ovarian lottery".  A lottery in which everyone is a loser. These criticisms are many and varied and well documented elsewhere.

I will try to describe what I alluded to earlier, that which I have not seen described by anyone else. This indoctrination of children is insidious and monstrous. It is a form of institutionalized, immoral propaganda by institutions that claim the moral high ground. Perhaps parents think they are doing the right thing, after all they were indoctrinated as well. The way that this indoctrination is set up gives very little concern for the dissenting or questioning child. In my case, my parents gave very severe signals that dissent or even questioning doubt would not be tolerated. This is all set up in such a way that a child who thinks for himself is pitted against his own parents. How ethical is that? A child wants to believe his parents. To put a child into a position of basically telling his parents that they are liars is horrendous. If a child who disbelieves decides to go along with the status quo the child either ends up lying to their parents or they end up lying to themselves. No matter what the child decides, he or she is left in a no-win situation. That is my position on this matter and it is one reason I have tried not to "come out" to my parents.

Trying to spare my parents pain and hurt worked out in regards to my father. He is dead now and as far as I know never knew that I am an atheist. Somehow my mother found out. She is in her nineties and confined to a wheel chair in a nursing home. Recently, to my surprise, she brought up the topic of my disbelief. "What did I do wrong?" she said. "Did I not raise you right?" she said. This is why I did not want to come out to my parents. I did not want to hurt them. I do not know who told my mother that I don't believe in the God that she believes in.

This has been difficult to write about.

Oh My!

Deny Christ or die

Wacked out right-wing religiosity. I suppose I must be dead.

Quote Of Note - PZ Myers

“Religion is an act of sedition against reason. Whatever religion is most seductive and likely to draw in victims to surrender their skepticism is the worst.” PZ Myers

Most Religious And And Least Prosperous

Matthew and Mark were close. They just left out the part about the first being last at the same time.

From Who Needs God When We've Got Mammon? by David Villano:

In a paper posted recently on the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, independent researcher Gregory S. Paul reports a strong correlation within First World democracies between socioeconomic well-being and secularity. In short, prosperity is highest in societies where religion is practiced least.

Using existing data, Paul combined 25 indicators of societal and economic stability — things like crime, suicide, drug use, incarceration, unemployment, income, abortion and public corruption — to score each country using what he calls the "successful societies scale." He also scored countries on their degree of religiosity, as determined by such measures as church attendance, belief in a creator deity and acceptance of Bible literalism.

Comparing the two scores, he found, with little exception, that the least religious countries enjoyed the most prosperity. Of particular note, the U.S. holds the distinction of most religious and least prosperous among the 17 countries included in the study, ranking last in 14 of the 25 socioeconomic measures.

Misguided?

From Atheist billboards are misguided by Jan Ainsworth:

In their latest poster campaign, Ariane Sherine and members of the British Humanist Association appear to have decided that it is a Very Bad Thing that parents might try and bring up their children within a religious or philosophical framework of their choosing. They suggest it is wholly unacceptable that anyone might suggest that their own child might belong to a particular religion.

While I know I risk offending the loyal and noble readers of Cif here, I genuinely can't believe that people actually donated good money to spend on billboard advertising that proposes such a misguided and patronising argument.

It is telling that Sherine resorts to quoting Richard Dawkins when she needs to find someone to explain the rationale for the campaign: "Children are routinely labelled with the religion of their parents", Dawkins suggests. By who, exactly? And if the answer is by their parents, who are the BHA to tell them to stop?

It is surely central to the role of a parent, whether committed to a religious faith or not, to want to pass on to their child the things they value most, the beliefs and world view that shape how they live. It is also consistent with that role to want to have those beliefs and world view acknowledged and affirmed as part of their children's education.

Read the rest here.

Why does this seem to bother Jan Ainsworth so much? Her spurious arguments and reasoning can simply be reversed and used to support Ariane Sherine and to denigrate herself. Of course this would be as useless and as pointless as what Ainsworth is trying to do. Yes, people should have freedom of religion. People also should have freedom of speech. If Sherine wants to spend money to express herself, then who is Jan Ainsworth to tell her to stop? All of this seems so pointless.

Speaking from personal experience, what matters the most to me about this issue is that people can end up getting hurt. If the child makes the choice to turn to another religion, or to atheism, there is immense potential for things to get very ugly.

The indoctrination of a child into a religion puts the child who doesn’t believe in their parent’s religion in a terrible position. The child must choose between what he/she sees as the truth, and his or her parents. Were his parents lying to him, or simply misguided? This is not an easy thing to deal with. The more that the religion defines who the parents are, the harder it is for the non-believing child.

This also puts the parents in a terrible position. If they truly believe, then their child will suffer for being a nonbeliever. Look out below, my kid’s going to hell.

I realize that some parents may be able to respect the wishes of their child to not believe as they do. However, simply by definition, their religion will not allow them to see their child as whole anymore. God will not accept him anymore. If they truly believe, then how can they accept him anymore? To me, this is absolutely monstrous. I find all of this to be very hard to put into words adequately, so I hope that some sense of what I mean is coming through.

Religious people claim to be compassionate. To me, they never seem to be very compassionate when this issue is brought up.

Oh, and it’s even worse if the child is gay or has had an abortion.

Before I go, here is one final quibble. Why the hell does Ainsworth write: “It is telling that Sherine resorts to quoting Richard Dawkins when she needs to find someone to explain…” Why is this “telling?” Could someone tell me? The only reason I can think of for Ainsworth to write this is because it comes off as some kind of insult directed towards Ariane Sherine. Poor woman, she can’t think for herself, she has to quote Dawkins. Yet, it’s not an insult to say that she quoted Dawkins, is it? I hate it when people do this kind of thing. It serves no useful purpose. Is it telling when Ainsworth quotes from the Bible? (I assume that she does, frequently.)

Recovering Religiholics

From Welcome to Recovering from Religion by Darrel Ray:

If you are one of the millions of people who have determined that religion no longer has a place in your life, this may the the right spot for you. Many people love the social support they get from religion, but can’t deal with all the crazy ideas they are required to espouse. It can be difficult to leave a religion because family and culture put so much pressure on us to stay and pretend to believe. If this is you, we want to help you find your way out. We are Recovering Religionists™, people who have given religion our best shot but just can’t bring ourselves to believe in virgin births, resurrections, 2000 year old miracles and the “power of prayer.”

Read the rest here.

First, Furthermore, And Finally

From A Life With Religion, and Without by Owen C. Thomas:

First, if you follow John Dewey in his assertion that “whatever introduces genuine perspective is religious,” then there is no such animal as the nonreligious. Furthermore, historians of science now know that biblical religion was a major factor in the rise of the empirical side of modern science.

Finally, since following Dewey and many others, if everyone has a worldview, whether implicit or explicit, and none can be proved to anyone else who does not share it, then we all “walk by faith, and not by sight,” as Paul put it.

First, what if you don’t follow John Dewey and his assertion? (Or perhaps the better question is: what if you don’t follow the Owen C. Thomas interpretation of John Dewey and his assertion?

Furthermore, how many ancient scientists were burned at the stake for being heretics? What effect did these murders have on the development of the “empirical side” of modern science? (Is there a non-empirical side to science?)

Finally, faith in one’s own worldview does not equate to faith in God.

The Wilderness Of The World

From The End of Christian America by John Meacham:

Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

Have all the Christians left the building, flew the coop, and abandoned ship? I don’t think so.

I also don’t think that religion is crucial to the life of the nation. (Must the media sensationalize everything?) I do think that “America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience.” Several Christians like to lie, and claim that we are a Christian nation, and that we were founded as such. We are not a Christian nation. Our founders did not found the country as a Christian nation. We are, however, supposed to be about freedom and equality. Where is the freedom if everyone must be a Christian in order to be an American? In other words, to be an American means believing that freedom takes precedence over religion. Not the other way around.

I’ve been in “the garden of the church.” I prefer “the wilderness of the world.” And freedom.

If Only This Were True

I think that a more secular America would be a very good thing.

From Obama's 'war against churches and charities' by Jim Brown:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says President Obama's plan to raise taxes on upper-income earners is designed to create bigger government and a more secular America.

Religion As A Nonissue

Perhaps I should move to Scandinavia. (Why is the New York Times misspelling Scandinavian?)

From Scandanavian Nonbelievers, Which Is Not to Say Atheists by Peter Steinfels:

Phil Zuckerman spent 14 months in Scandinavia, talking to hundreds of Danes and Swedes about religion. It wasn’t easy.

Anyone who has paid attention knows that Denmark and Sweden are among the least religious nations in the world. Polls asking about belief in God, the importance of religion in people’s lives, belief in life after death or church attendance consistently bear this out.

It is also well known that in various rankings of nations by life expectancy, child welfare, literacy, schooling, economic equality, standard of living and competitiveness, Denmark and Sweden stand in the first tier.

Well documented though they may be, these two sets of facts run up against the assumption of many Americans that a society where religion is minimal would be, in Mr. Zuckerman’s words, “rampant with immorality, full of evil and teeming with depravity.”

Which is why he insists at some length that what he and his wife and children experienced was quite the opposite: “a society — a markedly irreligious society — that was, above all, moral, stable, humane and deeply good.”

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t move to Scandinavia. Socrates said that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The idea of living somewhere where religion is unimportant is appealing, but the idea of living among people who think that the Bible "is full of nice stories and good morals" is scary.

Beyond reticence, Mr. Zuckerman found what he terms “benign indifference” and even “utter obliviousness.” The key word in his description of their benign indifference is “nice.” Religion, in their view, is “nice.” Jesus “was a nice man who taught some nice things.” The Bible “is full of nice stories and good morals, isn’t it?”

Beyond niceness came utter obliviousness.

Thoughtful, well-educated Danes and Swedes reacted to Mr. Zuckerman’s basic questions about God, Jesus, death and so on as completely novel. “I really have never thought about that,” one of his interviewees answered, adding, “It’s been fun to get these kinds of questions that I never, never think about.”

This indifference or obliviousness to religious matters was sometimes subtly enforced. “In Denmark,” a pastor told Mr. Zuckerman, “the word ‘God’ is one of the most embarrassing words you can say. You would rather go naked through the city than talk about God.”

Then again, maybe I should move to Scandinavia.

Social conformity or not, Mr. Zuckerman was deeply impressed with the matter-of-fact way in which many of his interviewees spoke of death, without fear or anxiety, and their notable lack of existential searching for any ultimate meaning of life.

A long list of thinkers, both believers and nonbelievers, have posited something like an innate religious instinct. Confronted by the mystery of death or the puzzle of life’s ultimate meaning, humans are said to be hard-wired to turn to religion or something like it. Based on his experience in Scandinavia, Mr. Zuckerman disagrees.

“It is possible for a society to exist in which most people don’t really fear death all that much,” he concluded, “and simultaneously don’t give a great deal of thought to the meaning of life.”

At one point, he queries Jens, a 68-year-old nonbeliever, about the sources of Denmark’s very ethical culture. Jens replies: “We are Lutherans in our souls — I’m an atheist, but still have the Lutheran perceptions of many: to help your neighbor. Yeah. It’s an old, good, moral thought.”

I have never understood how believing in fairy tales and lies makes death more tolerable. I have never understood why life must have meaning. I have never understood why the universe must have a beginning. If God always was and always will be, why can’t the universe? Atheists can be moral people. Religious believers can be immoral people. God does not make any difference.

I believe in helping my neighbor. I do not believe in God.

"This threw evangelicals into a tizzy"

From Heaven for the Godless? by Charles M. Blow:

In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life.

This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” But the survey suggested that Americans just weren’t buying that.

The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn’t actually believe what they were saying, could they?

So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them.

And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.

What on earth does this mean?

It means that when it comes to religious beliefs people believe whatever the hell they want to believe. I believe this is a sign that eventually religious belief will go the way of the dodo bird.

No matter how hard they try to hold on to the things that the Bible and other religious anachronisms tell them, many religious people are becoming more and more secular, whether they know it or not. The more religious people that drift away from the fundamentalist beliefs of religion the weaker religion will become.

From page 19 of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris:

Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone did two thousand years ago - and much of this knowledge is incompatible with scripture. Having heard something about the medical discoveries of the last hundred years, most of us no longer equate disease processes with sin or demonic possession. Having learned about the known distances between objects in our universe, most of us (about half of us, actually) find the idea that the whole works was created six thousand years ago (with light from distant stars already in transit toward the earth) impossible to take seriously. Such concessions to modernity do not in the least suggest that faith is compatible with reason, or that our religious traditions are in principle open to new learning: it is just that the utility of ignoring (or “reinterpreting”) certain articles of faith is now overwhelming. Anyone being flown to a distant city for heart-bypass surgery has conceded, tacitly at least, that we have learned a few things about physics, geography, engineering, and medicine since the time of Moses.

Even though it seems like it is taking forever, and even though things like intelligent design, trying to ban stem cell research, all the bitching about the "new atheists", and Barack Obama sidling up to Rick Warren may slow the process down, at some point the rubber band of religious belief has to break as more and more people become unable to reconcile their beliefs with reality.

Lumping Together

Personal Religulosity, Part One

Update:
Meanwhile, over at the Multiplexcomic forum many words have been written about Personal Religulosity.