religious right watch

"Does science make belief in God obsolete?" - a remarkable, welcome booklet

"Does science make belief in God obsolete?" is a booklet published by the Templeton Foundation and edited by Michael Shermer containing 13 essays of varying answers to the title's question.

Shermer notes:

Since I am aware of the reputation that the Templeton Foundation has within the skeptical, atheist, and humanist communities for harboring a right-wing Christian agenda, I would like to note that, in fact, they invited me to select the commentators and edit their essays, and insisted that I include skeptics, atheists, and humanists, which you will see that I did. There was never any hint to me that I should edit the commentaries to come out a certain way to match the alleged agenda; to the contrary, they seemed most eager to give everyone a fair shake … to the tune of over a million dollars spent in a national advertising campaign that included advertorials place in Scientific American, American Scientist, Nature, The New Scientist, The Atlantic Monthly, Commentary, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New Republic, Prospect, and the Sunday edition of The New York Times. Oh, and Skeptic magazine!

Answers to the question range from “yes” to “no” to “it depends” to “no, but it should.”

All the essays are available online.

(Photo: a recent Hubble image; M. Wong and I. de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley; click to enlarge.)

Berlet comment re "Manga Messiah" article

The discussion continues on The Huffington Post following Bruce Wilson's post about Manga Messiah, including this from Chip Berlet:

By condensing the crucifixion narrative and combining Biblical quotes from two different places, (and including more problematic later Gospel accounts) the Manga restores the narrative of Jews as the Christ Killers rejected decades ago by most Christian leaders.

For example, as Rabbi James Rudin points out, the "Second Vatican Council in Rome" begun in 1962 "adopted the 'Nostra Aetate' (Latin for 'In Our Time') declaration that among others things "deplores the hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews at any time and from any source."

The statement pointed out that

the death of Christ ... cannot be blamed upon all the Jews then living, without distinction, nor upon the Jews of today. ... The Jews should not be presented as repudiated or cursed by God, as if such views followed from Holy Scriptures. All should take pains, then, lest in catechetical instruction and in the preaching of God's Word they teach anything out of harmony with the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.

The Manga fails in this task. The images and Bible verse cited reduces the killing of Christ to a bloodthirsty crount (sic) of taunting Jews. And a Christian publishing house needs to explain why they have restored this narrative deplored as bigoted.

[T]he antisemitism here.... may seem obscure, it may be unintentional, but it is not invisible.

Richard Dawkins with Lawrence Krauss

Richard Dawkins, FRS had a public discussion with Lawrence Krauss at Stanford University on Sunday, March 9, 2008. Topics covered included primarily science education, but also religion, physics, evolution, and more. (Dr. Dawkins will retire this year from his post as the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.)

Fort Riley atheist soldier speaks out on lawsuit

From the article:

Known as "the atheist guy," [U.S. Army Specialist Jeremy] Hall has been called immoral, a devil worshipper and — just as severe to some soldiers — gay, none of which, he says, is true. Hall even drove fellow soldiers to church in Iraq and paused while they prayed before meals.

"I see a name and rank and United States flag on their shoulder. That's what I believe everyone else should see," he said.
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Hall was a gunner on a Humvee, which took several bullets in its protective shield. Afterward, his commander asked whether he believed in God, Hall said.

"I said, 'No, but I believe in Plexiglas,'" Hall said. "I've never believed I was going to a happy place. You get one life. When I die, I'm worm food."

The issue came to a head when, according to Hall, a superior officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, threatened to bring charges against him for trying to hold a meeting of atheists in Iraq. Welborn has denied Hall's allegations.

PZ Meyers -- a religion is not just a moral system

From the discussion at Edge.org. PZ Myer respondes to "Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion," by Jonathan Haidt. Myer's states that in Haidt's essay, "religion is simply assumed to be a moral system;" Haidt observers that so-called "New Atheists" like "[Richard] Dawkins and [Sam] Harris criticize religion strongly; now, suddenly, Haidt starts treating the New Atheist arguments as an assault on moral systems.

Myers insists:

This is simply wrong. I'm all for moral systems, and I suspect both Dawkins and Harris would agree that a good moral system, especially as defined by Haidt, is essential.* The argument is much narrower. Is religion a good moral system? (Our answer is no.) Are there significant aspects of religion that do not represent a moral system at all, and actually make social life more difficult? (Yes.) And can we erect a better moral system that is stripped of the supernatural and much of the pathological baggage that afflicts religion? (Yes, optimistically, but the implementation remains to be done.)

(*Haidt's definition: Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.)

He concludes:

I entirely agree with Haidt that many religious people are good people, that religion has incorporated moral systems that contribute to people's well-being, and that there are kernels of wisdom in religious thought. Where I disagree is that I see the superstition and dogma and error of religion as separable from those desirable elements — that religion is not synonymous with morality and is actually an unfortunate excrescence of the human condition that does not have to be and should not be respected.

Grandeur beyond what holy books' authors knew

(Photo: The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies; credit: Jim Misti, Misti Mountain Observatory. "Each of the fuzzy blobs in the above picture is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster.... It takes light roughly 300 million years to get here from this region of the Universe, so we see this cluster as it existed before the age of the dinosaurs.")

The number of external galaxies beyond the Milky Way is at least in the thousands of millions, each of which contains a number of stars more or less comparable to that in our own galaxy. So if you multiply out how may stars that means…It’s something like one followed by twenty-three zeros, of which our Sun is but one. It is a useful calibration of our place in the universe. And this vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, in my view has been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially no Western religions.

- Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience. The Penguin Press, 2006, p.27. (The author's 1985 Gifford lectures.)

From deism to Laplace's remark: the unnecessary God hypothesis

(Image of Joseph Wright's Le Philosophe faisant un exposé sur le planétaire, 1766. Click to enlarge.)

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory.
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[T]here would be no...churches...if humanity had not been afraid of the weather, the dark, the plague, the eclipse, and all manner of other things now easily explicable. And also if humanity had not been compelled, on pain of extremely agonizing consequences, to pay the exorbitant tithes and taxes that raised the imposing edifices of religion.
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Before Charles Darwin revolutionized our entire concept of our origins, and Albert Einstein did the same for the beginnings of our cosmos, many scientists and philosophers and mathematicians took what might be called the default position and professed one or another version of "deism," which held that the order and predictability of the universe seemed indeed to imply a designer, if not necessarily a designer who took any active part in human affairs. This compromise was a logical and rational one for its time, and was especially influential among the Philadelphia and Virginia intellectuals, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson....
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[Pierre-Simon de] Laplace (1749-1827)...the brilliant French scientist...took the work of [Isaac] Newton a stage further and showed by means of mathematical calculus how the operations of the solar system were those of bodies revolving systematically in a vacuum.... [Napoleon Bonaparte] asked to meet Laplace.... [H]e wanted to know why the figure of god did not appear in Laplace's mind-expanding calculations. And there came the...response, "Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothese.".... [Laplace] simply stated that he didn't need it.

And neither do we.... [T]he end of god-worship discloses itself at the moment...when it becomes optional, or only one among many possible beliefs. For the greater part of human existence, it must always be stressed, this "option" did not really exist.... [F]rom the time of Socrates, who was condemned to death for spreading unwholesome skepticism, it was considered ill-advised to emulate his example.... The pathetic vestiges of this can still be seen, in modern societies, in the efforts made by religion to secure control over education, or to exempt itself from tax, or to pass laws forbidding people to insult its omnipotent and omniscient deity, or even his prophet.

- Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great, Twelve, 1st ed, p 66-67

Is philosophical exploration alive?

Salon.com's advice column recently featured a letter--given by Salon the provocative and rather misleading title, "Is Atheism Dead?"--from a 38-year-old with questions about atheism and faith. The responses to the letter make for an interesting read. (No matter who you are, your reactions to the various letters in reply will probably range from infuriated to encouraged.)

Among the noteworthy responses:

"Welcome to existentialism" -- excerpt:

[T]he idea of no God at all...explained that all of the horrific things in life were for reasons other than "God's will" or variations thereof. [Such existentialism] means that we aren't chess pieces in the cosmos.... It also means that acts of goodness aren't bargaining chips for heaven -- they are Meaning Itself.

This to me...means every moment counts, it means we (all of humanity) create most aspects of the world we live in, it means we are often our brother's keeper and that compassion is crucial toward understanding the human condition. Create meaning by helping people or contributing to the world - 'God' certainly won't do it for you. The shock you feel is the realization of this fact.

"You do seem ready for some spiritual exploration" -- excerpt:

I'm not sure my prayers are heard by a Higher Power, but I do know that focusing on my problem/needs through prayer often and visualizing solutions is helpful in and of itself.... I'm way too lazy to go to Church every Sunday, but when I go, I find it refreshing to be in a big room full of people who share the common goal of learning to be more loving and generous to one another and the rest of humanity.

Yo!

Recently added to Spotlight links category: http://www.yoism.org/

GREAT site for exposing pseudo-science silliness and the religious right.

New Humanism conference

According to the AHA, humanism is "a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment, aspiring to humanity’s greater good."

From the poster about the conference at Harvard, "The New Humanism," April 20 - 22. (Registration here.) (The the post for the list of special guests ranging from A. O. Wilson to Ned Lamont.)

The Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard has long been among those representing a non-religious philosophy that is much more than anti-religiosity.
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One billion people around the world, 30-40 million Americans, and 1 in 5 Americans age 18-25.
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If you call yourself: Atheist, Agnostic,...Non-Religious, Freethinker,...Rationalist, Secular, Spiritual, Skeptic, Cynic, Secular Humanist, Naturalist, Deist, 'Nothing,' or any number of non-religious descriptives, you could probably count yourself a humanist.