If I'm supposed to be offended by this because I'm a Christian, I'm not. As a matter of fact, he voices many of the concerns I have with orthodox Christianity, and many of the things he described as beliefs of Christians are true of most Christians, but I'm not most.

Actually, what I'm feeling now is a profound sense of gratitude that a person can feel this way and be allowed to say it. I'm certainly there are many countries in this world where even giving voice to atheistic views, much less giving them ink, would be punished to the ultimate. What a great country!

Here's how it works in barbarian nations:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1599169,00.html

(They jailed a publisher in Afghanistan for allowing an article in a women's magazine that argued against stoning to death Muslims who convert to other religions.)

he comes off as arrogant. as an atheist i often want to rant like this too. brannon howse makes my skin crawl so i suppose that's how fundanuts feel when they read this article. et cetera.

First thing I read online this morning, and very refreshing. The part that gets to me is where he says there are many people dear to him that are religious; me, too. (Amy, too.) And I appreciate their depth of feeling, and committment, to the idea of faith (a very difficult leap, for everyone). But then you look at what they leapt for, and it's... frightening. Why? While so many of the traditions and teachings are lovely and even right, just on the other side of the fence is what begins with castigation and ends with terrorism towards those who do not believe as you do.

> it's... frightening.

Calling things 'scary' or 'frightening' only seems to happen from the left side of argument. It's borderline sarcastic in a teenage sort of way. It's manipulative, in that seeks to innoculate the speaker from responsibility if things go wrong ("I *TOLD* you he was scary!") while not actually taking a stand against anything or calling for action.

> Why? While so many of the traditions and
> teachings are lovely and even right, just on
> the other side of the fence is what begins
> with castigation and ends with terrorism...

Well, just on the other side of lawful behavior is a range of conduct that goes from a six-year-old stealing a Snickers from the drug store to grown men in body armor shooting up the Bank of America in North Hollywood with automatic weapons.

You should go to church with Patrick. You don't have to pray, you should just sit beside him for a couple weeks, and meet the people he greets every week, and see what their lives are like. Because not everyone who goes to church is capable of fanaticism, any more than every candy thief is inclined to violent assualt. Seeing the corner church as the source of Bin Ladenism is INANE. The vast majority of faiths teach the flock to keep a lid on their nastier impulses.

What people of faith "leap for" is fleeting trace of warmth on a very cold planet. I've seen people fall into faith and fall out of it. In both cases the transition is eased when their new cohort readily accepts the feelings that propel the conversion, instead of mocking their intentions. This writer isn't diminishing the righteousness of a billion people when he calls their beliefs "insane", he's diminishing meaning of the word. Let's review his rhetoric:

> nonsensical fairytales, insane, a pure charlatan,
> the blithering idiots, convenient lies, an ocean of
> frothing delusion, bloody fairytales, a class A
> imbecile, perverse and devoid of logic, a bunch of
> villagers, convenient lies, gory, bloody, violent,
> Jesus was insane, like a fool, superstition,.
> Excellent marketing, botched effort, nonsense,
> stupid... lunatic, power hungry, scam artist and
> ruthless conqueror, madmen.

OK, dude. Whutevar.

That's great!!! And what's more, you've solved the left-margin problem. How about telling the LA Times and the HuffPo how to do that trick?

Regarding the left margin problem, I think god or Gregg must have done it...but thanks for letting me know!

Crid for convenience's sake, scans what I wrote and launches into what he was going to write anyway. I did not say that the churchgoer is a step from terrorism, and as for spending time in church, I have, for months and years. I well know the comfort it can bring, and I am also a big subscriber to faith, if not religion.
I would challenge Crid to tell me a few things I don't know, such as:
* What is the correct response when my daughter's father tells me he'll pray for me because I haven't accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, and that it upsets him so terribly to think of me roasting in hell for all eternity?
* What is the proper reaction when other my Christian relatives tell me God hates homosexuals, and that he used to love the Jews, but not anymore?
* What does one say to the Jewish boy who's been crushing on you for weeks, and then brings you out to a romantic spot near a lake so that he can stand on a rock and, looking over the water like Moses, says, "We can't ever go out because you're not a Jew"? Oh, wait, I remember the answer to that one: yawn.

It's true, I was going to make the same points, and you rolled out the carpet. I often hector Amy about ridiculing people too snarkily. She never takes the point, but it's good to stay in shape.

> I am also a big subscriber to
> faith, if not religion.

I'm the other way around: I support religion, not faith. I believe in mutual support, the balance that comes from routine reflection, and the deportment that comes from social standing. I'm not so keen on belief without reason.

> I did not say that the churchgoer
> is a step from terrorism...

Who then made the connection? "...just on the other side of the fence is what begins with castigation and ends with terrorism..." It's just not a proportionate thing to say. Most religion tames weirdness rather than strengthening it.

Certain things will always be present in a lot of human life. Sexuality is one, and religion is another. You're not going to grind these things away just because it would make management easier. It's better to channel them to their proper contexts.

> ...my daughter's father tells me
> he'll pray for me...

Your "daughter's father?" Say thanks and go about your business. His quiet prayers won't help, but they cooden hoit.

> What is the proper reaction when
> other my Christian relatives tell
> me God hates homosexuals, and that
> he used to love the Jews, but not
> anymore?

Tell 'em they're full of shit. Do so unabashedly and they won't bother you with it anymore... It worked for me with the Methodists in Indiana (I'm named for my grandfather, the minister). Actually their strictures weren't so coarse, and neither was my response. But nowadays we get along famously; I $upport their worthy charities. Their interior presumptions aren't so important.

> to the Jewish boy who's been
> crushing on you for weeks....

You sound brassy, he sounds wimpy. Were you really interested?

> I remember the answer to that
> one: yawn.

I thought not.

[quote]What is the correct response...?[/quote]

try:
save your breath, i could use the oxygen.

Although I share Mr. Uygur's frustration with the use of religion as a tool by the power-hungry and corrupt, I don't consider his essay to be especially eloquent or insightful, hardly rising as it does above mere name-calling.

Ummm, where do Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot fit in this little scenario?

I am surprised to see Jesus identified as a real person. There is considerable reason to think that his existence was fictional, not the least of which is the plain fact that Nazareth, supposedly his early home, did not appear at all until more than 100 years after the time of his death. There is also a big problem with various descriptions of his activities around the Middle East; among these issues are just how such a person moves around, and has such impact as is professed, without a single person of the "multitudes" alleged to have seen him writing anything whatsoever outsde of the Bible.

Then, the popular image of "three wise men" attending his birth is not supported by either a close reading of the Bible or any other account; Luke and Matthew declare different destinations for Joseph and his infant son; two geneologies offered for Jesus differ by 14 generations; Matthew and Luke even differ on the name of Joseph's father.

If this were an ordinary long piece of fiction, like Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the editors would be really busy...

Oh, wait, they were: the Council of Nicea deleted whole books of the Bible at that. I wonder how they missed so much more, anyway?

where do Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot fit in this little scenario?

Did they proclaim that everything they did was in the name of atheism?

Calling things 'scary' or 'frightening' only seems to happen from the left side of argument.

Conservatives prefer "mean-spirited," "offensive," "abhorrent," and "hateful." Then again, wasn't it John Ashcroft who complained that liberals were scaring people with phantoms of lost liberty, thereby aiding terrorists? And Cathy Seipp who calls Laurence O'Donnell "Larry O'Scary"?

without a single person of the "multitudes" alleged to have seen him writing anything whatsoever outsde of the Bible.

Not true. The Gnostic Gospels aren't part of the Bible, nor are the writings of Josephus.

There are many reasons to doubt that Jesus did everything attributed to him, but most serious historical scholars will tell you he existed. And any serious believer in nonviolence and pacifism would have trouble with the notion that he died "like a fool."

Luke is right on. Absence of god doesn't mean absence of morality. There are many, many, many evil religiosos -- including a number of Popes.

In fact, you could say non-religious faith is a higher form of faith, since we non-believers aren't being good because we're afraid of burning in hell, but because, say, we want to "leave the campground better than we found it."

"Did they proclaim that everything they did was in the name of atheism?"

-- Well, sort of ... they claimed everything they did was in the name of an explicitly atheist ideology (an atheism that was, by the way, often enforced by state terror).

My point is that Uygur's column is really just a rather stupid -- and overheated and even fanatical -- exercise in name-calling. All kinds of people down through the centuries have been prone to irrational, fanatic ideologies (I'm not claiming, by the way, that all religions are instances of insane or fanatical ideologies). Get rid of religion, and the same people who killed in the name of Allah (or whatever God they believe in) will kill in the name of Godless Communism or History or the honor of the tribe or Racial Purity or Taxi Driver or what have you . . .

"I shall be your leader," he screamed. "And ours shall be the kingdom, and the power, and the glory! Amen!" - Adolf Hitler, in a 1921 speech to a gathering of SA, in Munich's Hofbrauhaus.

"Even among ordinary Chinese, Mao retains a hold on the popular imagination, and some peasants in different parts of China have started traditional religious shrines honoring him. That's the ultimate honor for an atheist - he has become a god." Nicholas Kristof, reviewing "Mao: The Unknown Story."

Hitler and Mao, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il, deified themselves and systematically smashed religion because they did not want their authority distilled or challenged. That it was their "atheism" that drove them to this is absurd; it was their thirst for absolute power and their will to destroy any person, idea or ideal that stood in their way. They're also all narcissists: weak, paranoid, self-deluding, with a tendency toward infantile rages and a tendency to blame others.

> Conservatives prefer "mean-spirited,"

Actually, 'mean-spirited' is a famously lefty one. That's what Robert Scheer said of Mickey Kaus when asked for a quote by the LA Times or someone, and there's probably no finer backhanded flattery for a westside politico. Santa Monica is ALL ABOUT harmonious and compassionate interior conditions.

> "offensive," "abhorrent," and "hateful."

I haven't noticed those words from anybody in particular, but if you say so. Because by cracky, they're clearly declaring a judgment, aren't they? It's possible that Ashcroft meant precisely what he said. Accusing someone of being a fear-monger is not the same a vague expression of emotional disclocation.

The point is not that only lefties think about fear, it's that in the last three years or so, I've never heard the timid/teenage/sarcastic/ironic use of 'scary' from anyone on the right. They don't say, "Golly Scooter, it's *SCARY* to think of Hillary back in the White House!" Their casual, conversational, nascent concerns are never described in those terms. Why is that?

Working theory: It's not just a verbal tic, it's attitudinal. It's TELLING. If you hear it from someone on the right, let me know.

"That it was their 'atheism' that drove them to this is absurd; it was their thirst for absolute power and their will to destroy any person, idea or ideal that stood in their way. They're also all narcissists: weak, paranoid, self-deluding, with a tendency toward infantile rages and a tendency to blame others."

-- Thanks for making my point for me, Nancy. Replace the word "atheism" with the word "religion" and replace Hitler, Stalin, and Mao with Osama bin Laden, et voila! The whole shaky "blame it on religion" edifice comes crashing down around you. Or would you like to argue that in Hitler, Stalin, and Mao's case, the fault lay in their thirst for absolute power and their will to destroy any who stood in their way, but in Osama's case, the fault lies with his religion. That's a *convenient* argument, but hardly a logically consistent one.

The problem is people who are guided by "magic" instead of reason. Whether they are moral is not connected to religion. And again, how noble is somebody who is "moral" out of fear or what will be in the end instead of out of a choice to be moral because they value being and doing good? I believe I'll be worm meat when I die, but I do my best to make a difference as long as I'm alive.

"The problem is people who are guided by "magic" instead of reason."

-- That's fair enough, but I'd say it's magical thinking to suggest that *all* religious people are guided by magic rather than reason. You may disagree with, say, Robert P. George, and you may find his religious beliefs "fairy tales," but you're deluded if you think he's any less guided by reason than you are.

>"I shall be your leader," he screamed. "And ours shall be the kingdom, and the power, and the glory! Amen!" - Adolf Hitler, in a 1921 speech to a gathering of SA, in Munich's Hofbrauhaus.

Yeah, but Hitler had his cabinet reading gnostic texts and Himmler employed a full-time magician, so it's hard to say exactly what the most crazy of the Nazis believed.

This could be interpreted as Hitler attempting to spearhead a battle with the evil Demiurge and its devilish minions (Jews) in an attempt to reconnect with the God that is everything. Or Hitler could just be saying he think's he's awesome. We really don't know what that man was thinking at any time.

The reason I bring this up is there's just too much religious symbolism, obsession with the supernatural, and purposeful irrationality around the Third Reich for me to agree with its classification as atheism.

>It says in the Bible that it is an abomination to wear clothes made of two different cloths or to eat shellfish

If this author did more of this when a flat-earth Christian (of which there aren't as many as the polls say) threw a fit over, say, porn or some other such nonsense social ill, instead of this:

>People walk around in clothes from 18th century Russia, thinking they have been chosen by God when they look like a bunch of jackasses

He might get better results.

Hitler's Christianity links here:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

Little Ted and Nancy are almost holding hands.

I think LT gets closer to the truth about the confounding personal ideologies of senior Nazis, which were often at odds with public speeches/yet influenced by their own religious upbringing/sometimes in line with private reported conversations and sometimes not and often open to reasonable -if sometimes wickedly self-serving - contemporary religious interpretation by the "masses".

Artemis can't possibly dismiss Nancy's deeper point about political ideologies cunningly and deliberately mimicking the contours of religious ideologies as merely atheists' logical sleight of hand.

I could go much further, but not here.

Mao's kitsch rock star tomb in Beijing also totally supports the Kristof quote Nancy used. Lines from dawn to dusk of locals worshipfully bearing expensive bouquets (tolerated rather than encouraged by the authorities) for a glimpse of the embalmed Mao - who these days actually looks rather like Sylvester Stallone's mom.

"Artemis can't possibly dismiss Nancy's deeper point about political ideologies cunningly and deliberately mimicking the contours of religious ideologies as merely atheists' logical sleight of hand."

-- If that's Nancy's "deeper" point, it's fine as far as it goes, but it simply fails as an indictment of religion per se. I like Amy's suggestion that people are prone to magical thinking. That's certainly true, but -- as the examples of Mao and Stalin prove -- magical thinking doesn't require theism or belief in theistic "fairy tales". It's not *religion* which is the cause of the magical thinking (or the ruthless will to power, etc.), but until the twentieth century religion has been one of the only vehicles through which that thinking gets expressed.

Let me put it this way. Some people -- lots of people -- are stupid. Religion doesn't *make* them stupid. You might be able to get rid of religion, but you'll never get rid of stupidity.

>Hitler's Christianity links here:

Thanks, I was looking for something like that.

"Some people -- lots of people -- are stupid. Religion doesn't *make* them stupid. You might be able to get rid of religion, but you'll never get rid of stupidity."
Yes, though I would replace "stupid" with "unwillingness to think for themselves/fervent desire to be led." For millions and billions of people, having just about all of life laid out before them, with the promise that it is not only correct now but in the afterlife, and not only for them but for the good of the world, is more than comforting; it's necessary. And there will never be a shortage of people--religious leaders, power-mongers, cultists--laying down the law for their own corrupt reasons. I've written several articles about cult leaders (Shao Ting-Jing and Bhagwan Rajneesh) and their tactics are identical, seriously, I could write a book called "Cult Leadership for Dummies." And why are they always successful? Because people crave a leader.
We started out dissing religion here, because lately, those who are not Christian are feeling the pinch; are scared about basic liberties being curtailed in the name of Jesus; are not merely suspect of but actively resistant (hello, Amy!) to others telling us how to live, and when we don't hew their line. I am rarely unhappy when someone tells me, he or she will pray for me, and Pat Robertson may not be flying planes into skyscrapers, but in his heart and in his words, he does condemn the way I live. It's a milder form of repudiation. For how long?

Correction to above: the first cult leader is Supreme Master Ching Hai (not Shao Ting-Jing, who is, um, my former acupuncturist. Clearly, I need more than one cup of coffee before posting.)

Oh, come on, Nancy. "For how long?" That strikes me as . . . well, a little irrational and alarmist. Religious leaders (and Transcendentalists, Swedenbourgians, Communists, environmentalists, SUV-haters, feminists, etc.) have been telling people how to live for a long time now. All the while, our "freedoms" have been generally expanded rather than curtailed.

I'm sure Pat Robertson codemns me, too. But I don't give a hoot. And if he can convince people to live moral lives, all the better for him (or rather for them).

"Moral lives"? How so? I don't cheat on my husband, and I don't need PR to tell me that. I think it's a whole lot more moral to do things because we are compelled to, rather than told to. (And please, let us not start to debate the cultural origins of every single action.) What happens when people do not think for themselves? How do they judge whether what he's saying makes sense or not?

I am also not saying it's PR who will lead the charge, but there will be more movements that curtail rights and then, in the name of keeping that movement alive, exterminate people. It has always been thus, and will be thus, whether it's called totalitarianism or the Inquisition or Al Qeada.

There was a quote from a professor who lived during the reign of the Nazis, and he said that watching the Nazis come to power was like watching grass grow, the rights that curtailed started out incrementally, really nothing to worry about, Jews couldn't shop on Tuesdays, say, and then, before he knew, it, the grass was over his head.

>I'm sure Pat Robertson codemns me, too. But I don't give a hoot. And if he can convince people to live moral lives, all the better for him (or rather for them).

Someone's not watching enough 700 Club.

Nancy, I'm glad you don't cheat on your husband, and I'm glad you don't need Pat Robertson to tell you so, but what exactly does that have to do with it? I think it's perfectly plausible that you are a moral person -- is there some reason that someone who listens to Pat Robertson is necessarily *not* a moral person? I'm not convinced by the "argument by assertion" tactic.

As for the potential for some sort of fascist totalitarian police state arising from the Christian fundamentalist movement (and leaving aside the fact that that's a rather amorphous group to begin with), can you provide some evidence of no-atheists-shopping-on-Tuesday or Nuremberg style curtailments of freedom that have been gradually phased in over the last few decades? I mean, you're all for reason and empiricism, aren't you? What's your reasoning here? What's your evidence?

P.S. Little Ted, I've never seen 700 Club. Do you watch it regularly? Is your position that anyone who watches 700 Club is immoral? Could you elaborate?

>P.S. Little Ted, I've never seen 700 Club. Do you watch it regularly? Is your position that anyone who watches 700 Club is immoral? Could you elaborate?

Shouldn't talk about Pat Robertson, then.

I wouldn't say that I watch it a lot, but I watch it enough to know that some of Pat's teachings include that God sanctions the murder of communists, personally kills homosexuals with hurricanes (he's been saying this for years) and that the WTC thing happened because we allow homos and feminists to live among us (the latter might have been Dobson, I can't quite separate the two) without being killed by us. Furthermore, the timeline of human history, that he trots out on occasion, suggests the Sphinx pre-existed the earth itself.

He also begs for money for half the show. If anyone has a link to an article about Robertson's relief (i.e. diamond mining) operation in Zaire it might be appropriate.

I doubt that everyone who watches the 700 Club is "immoral," but I don't really see how Pat Robertson makes anyone learn anything other than that God likes money and bodycounts.

Little Ted, I'm sure Pat Robertson is an idiot. I'm not sure why I should care about him any more than I care about all the other idiots who foist scientific and historical ignorance, lies, and distortions on a gullible public. (I mean, I could start with The Industry, a giant among idiots and panderers, and go from there).

Ouch!
Play fair, Artemis!
You asked: "is there some reason that someone who listens to Pat Robertson is necessarily *not* a moral person?"
Little Ted answered. Virtually giving chapter and verse.
Now you shift - and not particularly smoothly either - to defensive blather about "scientific and historical ignorance, lies, and distortions"?

Jody, Little Ted provided "chapter and verse" as to why *Pat Robertson* is not a moral person. He then admitted that he doubts that everyone who listens to Pat Robertson is immoral.

And I'm not shifting to defensive blather. The Pat-Robertson-is-Satan contingent here seems to believe that there's something uniquely dangerous or "scary" about Pat Robertson and other Christian fundamentalists. I'm merely asking them to explain their position, since I don't find Pat Robertson any more disturbing than any other successful idiot who spoon feeds lies to a gullible public.

Jeepers, Artemis!
It was hardly an "admission" from Little Ted that he couldn't personally vouch one way or the other for the moral recitude of every single person who watches the ghastly Pat Robertson!
Successful public liars, I think we can agree, come in all flavors.
Some powerful Christian fundamentalists exploit their fan base by feeding them a selective version of religious dogma.
A fan base made up of people likely to follow dogma are more easily manipulated by unscrupulous leaders who can push the right buttons.
That's essentially my own broad position and where I think religious fundamentalism and stupidity are an especially combustible combination.

"A fan base made up of people likely to follow dogma are more easily manipulated by unscrupulous leaders who can push the right buttons. That's essentially my own broad position and where I think religious fundamentalism and stupidity are an especially combustible combination."

-- I can agree with everything in that statement, except the word "especially."

>Jody, Little Ted provided "chapter and verse" as to why *Pat Robertson* is not a moral person. He then admitted that he doubts that everyone who listens to Pat Robertson is immoral.

Not only do I admit that watching PR doesn't make one automatically immoral-I never suggested that it did in the first place. You said I said that, which I didn't, if you'll reread.

I just made a crack about the kind of 'moral lives' that he's wants to 'convince people' to live.

>I don't find Pat Robertson any more disturbing than any other successful idiot
>I've never seen 700 Club

If you don't know who PR is, then why keep citing him and voicing an opinion on him? I don't know exactly what it is that you want to say here.

>My point is that Uygur's column is really just a rather stupid -- and overheated and even fanatical -- exercise in name-calling

It would be best to stick with this point and leave PR out of it.

Little Ted,
I trust you're not confusing me with Artemis?

> Hitler and Mao, Stalin and Kim Jong-Il, deified themselves and systematically smashed religion because they did not want their authority distilled or challenged. That it was their "atheism" that drove them to this is absurd

But, Nancy, the claim that started this part of the fight was not merely that atheism wouldn't drive leaders to do such things; it was that atheist leaders would never do such things. And that's clearly untrue.

Trackback's not working for some reason, so here's my answering post.

Hitler wasn't an atheist, first of all, and atheism is simply a belief in the provable. Your statement is equivalent to grouping them together as "people who don't believe in the tooth fairy."

Don't tell me, you're religious. That "faith" thing is a polite way of saying, "I'm loosey goosey in the logic department," but I'll turn it into a virtue by not thinking about it too hard.

I was attempting to quote Artemis, and in the quote I quoted, he happened to reference you, which might have made it look like I was addressing you. Sorry for the confusion, Jody.

Amy,

It kind of looks like you're replying to me, but, then again, it doesn't. Are you?

Amy,

Do you really believe only in the provable? You talked about the morality of leaving the campground like you found it, or some such thing. On what basis is that a moral action? What provable principle or claim explains why one should do that? If it makes me perfectly happy to trash the campground and I not only couldn't care less about future generations but maybe even like the idea of the human race dying out, how can you *prove* to me that I shouldn't do that?

Squander Two's post in response to the Uygur drek was excellent, by the way.

Logically speaking, if a person can "leave the campground better than they found it" it makes things better for everyone, theoretically giving others incentive for returning the favor out of a pack mentality, thus making things better for his or her self.

Furthermore, human beings (all animals) that have survived up until this point have survived because they are biologically hardwired to pass on their genes (excluding stupid pandas). So human beings are also genetically hardwired to care about the continuation of the species, if only because the continuation of the species is necessary for a human's genes to be passed on.

Of course, this is cold and there is more to it than this, but all that was requested a plausible, testable, logical claim.

Squander Two,
I have taken the trouble to read your self-referenced post to the Uygur article [above] and I have to ask: is it meant to be some kind of joke?

I stopped cold after this paragraph of yours:
"In all of mankind's history, we have come up with only two good explanations for biological diversity: the theory of evolution, and some form of god. Prior to Darwin's publication, atheism was the stupid option. Science is the search for explanations for the universe. To refuse to consider giving any explanation at all for the existence and variety of every organism on Earth is not the scientific approach."

Just unpicking this mess is hard to do in brief. Try these handy study bullets.
1.Atheism is not an alternative to science.
2.Science concerns itself with testable theories about how the universe works (not "the search for explanations for the universe" as you sloppily wrote).
3.Atheism has never been the pre-Darwinian "stupid option" for people who somehow went blank when considering an option to God. Ever heard of Erasmus? It loosely describes a different philisophical approach and has existed side-by-side with developments in science.
4. Religion has also co-existed with attempts to understand biological diversity before Darwin.

I shall stop here.

Amy,

1. Didn't say it was. Especially since I'm an atheist scientist myself.

2. Your description of how science is done and my description of what it is do not contradict each other. I rarely write sloppily: had I wanted to describe the scientific method, I would have said so; had I wanted to say that science is this and nothing else, I'd have said so. Science is, among other things, the search for explanations; it is borne of curiosity. Do you seriously mean to imply that we would have the science of biology if scientists hadn't been driven to look for explanations of flora and fauna? I bet you can't find a single scientist who'd agree with that.

3. You might be surprised to learn that that point was originally Richard Dawkins', not mine. Yes, of course I've heard of Erasmus, and Hume. But I agree with Dawkins: showing that there's no logically necessary reason to believe in a god while simply ignoring Earth's biology is a total cop-out. It's there. Explain it. Darwin did. Hume didn't even try. To stand on Planet Earth, built out of mitochondria, firing the synapses in your brain, digesting food, surrounded by insects and trees, and claim that your explanation of the universe is superior to religion even though religion offers explanations for all these things while yours simply ignores them, is to invite derision.

4. Religion was an attempt to understand biological diversity before Darwin.

> is it meant to be some kind of joke?

No more so than a professional giver of advice singing the praises of a man who tries to change people's minds by calling them deluded idiots.

> I rarely write sloppily

Except, of course, when I put the wrong bloody name at the top of my post. Oops. Sorry, Amy. That lot was in reply to Jody.

If anyone has the idea that they'd like to find out what the religions of the world think and practice, they should at least look at http://www.adherents.com/ .

And by the way, Luke, there are plenty of reasons to think Josephus was altered; there are no "historians" who wrote about Jesus during his life; there is considerable geological evidence that the story of Jesus was fraudulent. See

http://www.atheists.org/church/didjesusexist.html

http://www.americanatheist.org/win96-7/T2/ozjesus.html

http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm .

The idea is wonderful. Mithra did it all.

> there is considerable geological evidence that the story of Jesus was fraudulent.

See the way the strata slopes down towards the seabed? And see this layer of sandstone? Well that proves it, doesn't it? He can't have come from Nazareth.

Squander Two,
Fair enough about the names confusion - happens easily.
Nope, I still can't get your thesis.
I don't understand how "some form of god" is a "good" explanation for biological diversity, except in the dogmatic,circular sense of "and god created biological diversity".
I don't understand how not believing in god is an "idiot option" UNLESS you have been exposed to the groundwork for molecular biology that begins to be implicit from Darwin onwards. In which case, you seem to be saying, it's okay not to believe in god because you now -and only now - have an excellent alternative authority for theories about how the universe works.
I don't understand who you mean when you refer to godless folk with absolutely no interest otherwise in the workings of the universe.
And I certainly don't understand your weird linear concept of religion, science and religious scepticism.

> I don't understand how "some form of god" is a "good" explanation for biological diversity, except in the dogmatic,circular sense of "and god created biological diversity".

You're looking at it the wrong way around (and misusing the term "circular": if anything, evolution is more circular than genesis, since it involves organisms being created by other organisms, rather than by a root cause). Biology is so complex and ordered that its existence requires some sort of design to have taken place. Prior to Darwinism, there was only one sort of design: by intelligence. Post-Darwin, we understand another way in which things may be designed, without a guiding intelligence. Well, some of us do. The only other explanation for Earth's biology is "It's just there, for no particular reason." "Because God made it" may not be up to much, but it's a zillion times better than that.

(Yes, I'm aware of all the logical flaws in the teleological argument, but I'm not making the extreme claim that belief in design is a logically necessary consequence of the structure of the world, merely the much weaker claim that any explanation of the world that doesn't attempt to explain biology is inadequate.)

> you seem to be saying, it's okay not to believe in god because you now -and only now - have an excellent alternative authority for theories about how the universe works.

Yes, I do seem to be saying that, because that's exactly what I am saying.

> I don't understand who you mean when you refer to godless folk with absolutely no interest otherwise in the workings of the universe.

I referred to a failure to attempt to explain, not to a lack of interest. And I did mention one of the most famous by name: Hume, who proved logically that God needn't necessarily exist, and who offered no explanation whatsoever for biological diversity. That's a cop-out.

> And I certainly don't understand your weird linear concept of religion, science and religious scepticism.

I honestly wasn't aware I had one.

And so to bed.

Dear Squander Two,
You are mildly cracked. But probably relatively harmless:)
Pepys and out too.

Little Ted,

You're having a little trouble getting from "is" to "ought." You have made a logical, if sketchy, case for why people in general cooperate with each other. I asked you (or rather, Amy) to make a case for the *morality* of leaving the campground as you found it. Moral codes deal with "oughts." I am a particular (hypothetical) individual. I don't care about future generations. I want the human race to die out. Furthermore, even though I understand I might be "better off" were I to cooperate and keep the campground tidy, etc., I make it a sick hobby of mine willfully to act against my own self-interest (see Dostoyevsky), and therefore I care little whether cooperating will make me happier, healthier, live longer, etc. Again, I ask you, please *prove* to me why I should "leave the campground as I found it" instead of trashing it to my heart's content.

>What provable principle or claim explains why one should do that? If it makes me perfectly happy to trash the campground and I not only couldn't care less about future generations but maybe even like the idea of the human race dying out, how can you *prove* to me that I shouldn't do that?

I was answering this, which I feel I did adequately, which was all that was requested.

>I asked you (or rather, Amy) to make a case for the *morality* of leaving the campground as you found it

Not exactly. You mentioned morals before but that looked to be a separate question. Reread your post.

>I am a particular (hypothetical) individual. I don't care about future generations. I want the human race to die out

How can I reason with a hypothetical individual whose biological hardware is misfiring? That's like giving law students the following hypothetical: you're the defense attorney. You have a pretty good case. The judge has late stage syphilis. You can't get a new judge. How do you make your case?

The point is: I don't know how to make some kind of panhuman rational case for anything to someone who doesn't follow the rules of a human being.

>You're having a little trouble getting from "is" to "ought."

You're right. I don't know what you mean. It seems to me you "ought" to do what's in your best interest.

>Again, I ask you, please *prove* to me why I should "leave the campground as I found it" instead of trashing it to my heart's content.

Here goes:
Logically speaking, if a person can "leave the campground better than they found it" it makes things better for everyone, theoretically giving others incentive for returning the favor out of a pack mentality, thus making things better for his or her self.

Furthermore, human beings (all animals) that have survived up until this point have survived because they are biologically hardwired to pass on their genes (excluding stupid pandas). So human beings are also genetically hardwired to care about the continuation of the species, if only because the continuation of the species is necessary for a human's genes to be passed on.

Of course, this is cold and there is more to it than this, but all that was requested a plausible, testable, logical claim.

Squander Two,
This is where your argument staggers out of the bar and trips over its shoelaces:

You write: "Hume, who proved logically that God needn't necessarily exist, and who offered no explanation whatsoever for biological diversity. That's a cop-out."

Well, Hume wasn't a biologist, was he?
I've never studied him, but I'm more than prepared to accept the judgement of experts and history that he was a damn fine empiricist philosopher.
Erasmus was no mental slacker either in the 16th century. Yet he, too, failed to attempt to explain biological diversity, which makes him another "cop-out" on your terms - and to hell with his profoundly influential humanism.
By using Darwin as your line in the sand, you make irrelevant all those thinkers who concerned themselves with astronomy, physics, ethics, maths and all other non-supernatural disciplines throughout mankind's history.

On what planet were THEY taking the "idiot option"?

It IS cracked - and that's putting it politely - to argue that Darwin's Big Idea somehow negates centuries of enquiry independent to the "holistic" Biblical dogma.

(For anyone who can't do without this squabbling between me and Jody, it's continuing over at my place.)

Little Ted,

My point is simply that there's a difference between description (explaining why human beings might behave altruistically) and prescription (explaining why it's morally incumbent on each particular human being to behave altruistically).

You have given me one prescription -- that human beings ought to behave in their own self-interest. I will leave aside all the different ways that rational people might define self-interest, and simply ask you *why* someone ought to behave in their own self-interest? Why, for instance, is rationality better than irrationality? If you claim that people are happier when they behave rationally, why is happiness better than suffering? At some point in this process, you're going to have to make a claim that you can't prove, because any moral code involves defining some motivating principle as better than other motivating principles, at which point you are always dealing with unprovable claims.

>and simply ask you *why* someone ought to behave in their own self-interest? Why, for instance, is rationality better than irrationality? If you claim that people are happier when they behave rationally, why is happiness better than suffering?

This is utter nonsense, I can't believe I'm even responding.

Why is a ten dollar bill in my front pocket better than a bad case of Shingles? Why is having full use of my limbs better than using one to take a hacksaw to three others? Why is eating better than vomiting?

I don't know why happiness is better than suffering except that it always feels better. And I don't know what the point of any of this bullshit is or what it has to do with anything.

I still don't know what your point was originally going to be as there doesn't appear to be any cohesion in your lines of thought. I think you need to reread all of your posts here and decide where you were trying to go in the first place.

So, Little Ted, in other words, you have no answer. Let's start here ... do you understand the difference between description and prescription? A moral code is a form of prescription. When one prescribes actions, one necessarily bases one's prescriptions on claims about which principles underlie one's prescriptions.

If I see my beloved dog and a human stranger drowning in the swimming pool, and I only have enough time to save one of them, why should I not save my dog? It would make me happy. It would be in my self-interest. I'm under no legal obligation to save the human being (I don't live in a "Good Samaritan" state). Do you think I should save the human being? If so, why? It makes no sense whether you can provide evidence to me that human beings in general behave altruistically as an evolutionary adaptation or advantage; that may be true but it's only true as an observation about general human behavior -- it does *not* constitute proof that it's better for me to save the human than the dog. So I'm asking for you to make a provable claim about which course of action is better. My contention is that you can't.

It's not really so difficult to understand, either. All moral codes ultimately rest on unprovable claims.

Correction to above comment: Replace the phrase "It makes no sense" with "It makes no difference . . ."

Happiness is better than suffering by definition. Asking why happiness is better than suffering is like asking why dogs are more canine than cats.

Irrational beliefs, by the way, are not the key to happiness they're claimed to be. Witness all the gay people forced into fake marriages by religion. I don't care who anyone has sex with or pairs (or triples or quadruples) up with, as long as they're all consenting adults.

"Happiness is better than suffering by definition."

-- Not really, Squander (happiness or pleasure may be defined as the opposite of suffering or pain, but I don't recall ever seeing a claim that it's *better* than suffering as part of its definition) . But let's leave that aside. Would there be anything wrong with my saving my dog instead of the human stranger since that's what would make me happy?

And just for the record, Amy, I have never claimed that irrational beliefs are the key to happiness. I do claim that rational beliefs *aren't* the key to happiness that you seem to claim them to be.

Dogs innately know how to swim, so the only way your dog would be drowning in a swimming pool is if the stranger was drowning it.

In that case it would be better to let the stranger die, because, when it comes to someone who would be willing to die so he could drown your dog in your pool without ever having met either you or your dog, there's no telling how much more miserable he's going to make your life if you save him.

>It's not really so difficult to understand, either

Really? You appear to have lost yourself as well.

>So I'm asking for you to make a provable claim about which course of action is better.

So I'm going to guess at where you might have been going before you got confused. You wanted to say that the Bible (or faith or something like that) is a bedrock upon which to rest your actions, even though it can sometimes be indirectly. An ultimate source for knowing what's right, because you cannot without it.

I hope I'm wrong because that just makes these examples even more ludicrous. Where is the section addressing why self-hating ascetics shouldn't attempt to destroy the world? Where is the section that dictates the order in which you save things from drowning?

I guess Genesis, but Noah put more animals than people on his ark, so I guess the Bible says to save the dog, which is not the one you seem to think is right.

So if you are saying that we as humans need a Bible as a bedrock with which to judge moral absolutes, don't be surprised how many people don't share your horror at the playing of football (handling a dead pig's skin is forbidden in either Deuteronomy or Leviticus or both) and don't be surprised at how many people are outraged when you sell your daughter into prostitution (permitted in Exodus; I remember that it gives a suggested retail price).

I'm not a full-blown atheist, but I'll certainly line up with them over whatever nonsense you're trying to peddle here.

Squander is advancing a straw man, because evolution does not deal with the origin of life. That term is "abiogenesis".

Meanwhile, the whole story of Jesus remains hearsay. Any student studying the geography of the area would uncover big holes in the story.

Again: http://www.adherents.com shows us that a) no creed has a monopoly on any truth, quoted or otherwise; b) even Christians do not know what to think, how to bow and scrape, or what to say in order to guarantee their passage to a place for which none of them has anything but dreams.

Ummm, little Ted, try to stay focused. A hypothetical is usually posed to work out some moral/ethical problem or conundrum. I wouldn't have expected you, as someone who is supposedly interested in logic/reason/rationality, to have needed a crash course in the purpose of the hypothetical. Since you chose to evade the hypothetical rather than answer it, let me modify it to fit the pedestrian literal-mindedness you seem to subscribe to. Assume that both the dog and the human stranger have just accidentally eaten poisonous mushrooms and then gone swimming. They are now both drowning because the poison has taken effect. Neither one can help the other.

When I asked for a provable claim about which course of action is better, the courses of action I was referring to were keeping the campground nice or trashing it. Why do you assume I'm making some case for belief/Biblical interpretation, etc., which I haven't once mentioned or referred to? My point, which I'll reiterate for at least the third time, is this -- an "atheist" moral code is no more based on provable claims than a religious moral code, and the smugness that some atheists exhibit about their morality is unfounded, since it ultimately is no more provable than religious moral codes. If you want to make an attempt to provide evidence/proof for your moral code (*not* an explanation for why humans generally cooperate with each other, but why each individual human *should* adhere to the code), please go ahead. I'm waiting.

For crying out loud, Artemis, just rescue the bloody dog.

And I find it interesting that to challenge the myth that atheists adhere to a moral code that is somehow "provable" prompts the knee-jerk accusation that I am trying to "peddle" something. The attempt to put me in the "religious" camp, apparently so that you can ridicule and dismiss me without having to, you know, engage my argument smacks of the kind of adherence to dogma that you profess to find so disturbing.

Jody, I have performed mouth-to-mouth on the dog, and administered syrup of ipecac, and he's resting comfortably on his doggie bed. The stranger is floating face down in the shallow end of the pool, near the filter. There are some leaves and a few dead bugs stuck to his shirt. The dog's happy; I'm happy. Darwin's food for worms, and all is right with the world.

>Assume that both the dog and the human stranger have just accidentally eaten poisonous mushrooms and then gone swimming

And I'm the irrational one. These just get worse and worse. What does it matter who you save when they're both dying of poison anyway?

>an "atheist" moral code is no more based on provable claims than a religious moral code

That's your point, now? Are you sticking to it this time? Well, that's good, because I answered that one already. Self-interest.

>*not* an explanation for why humans generally cooperate with each other, but why each individual human *should* adhere to the code

Fine. To avoid reprisals by the adherents. It's in one's best interest to adhere to whatever code you're speaking of.

> Squander is advancing a straw man, because evolution does not deal with the origin of life. That term is "abiogenesis".

No, that's a straw man, because evolution does deal with the origin of every single individual form of life apart from the one original cell or molecule, whatever that was. The idea that religion merely explains the ultimate origin of the first life-form is a very modern one; in Darwin's time, religion explained the creation of each life-form, and Darwin offered the first good alternative explanation.

> an "atheist" moral code is no more based on provable claims than a religious moral code, and the smugness that some atheists exhibit about their morality is unfounded, since it ultimately is no more provable than religious moral codes.

I thought the smugness atheists exhibit about their morality comes from the fact that they're not moral merely because they're being threatened with eternal hellfire if they don't follow the rules; nothing to do with provability.

I'd rescue my dog, unless the stranger was a small child. I'm not a strong enough swimmer to save a fully grown adult. And a dog, unlike a human, would display gratitude.