Religious Skepticism
August 05, 2011
July 09, 2011
S.E. Cupp: Atheist, Theistic Apologist
Most of the religious skeptics that I know all have advanced degrees. They're pretty smart people, and many of them started out as religious people. But, there are clearly some pretty stupid atheists running around. Here's a clip of one on Bill Maher's Real Time.
S.E. Cupp is an atheist, as she points out. But, she's also a conservative commentator and as such she thinks the godless, liberals are just too mean to realigious people. I guess her disgreement over religion with those she defends is supposed to be evidence of her impartiality and objectivity. But, really she just repeats some of the dubious, yet popular reasoning of many theists use to avoid confronting the possibility that their views are mistaken.
First, she suggests that non-belivers, like Maher, are not in a position to understand religious beliefs because they do not ascent to their truth. Believers often adopt this argumentative strategy as a way of discounting any criticisms that the non-believer might make. They simply claim that the non-believer doesn't understand religious beliefs and therefore is not in a position to evaluate their truth/falsity. The problem with this claim is easy to see. If you must first accept a belief as true in order to properly understand it, then theists are not in a position to evaluate atheism. Obviously, the problem here is that first you have to understand what the belief actually is before you can evaluate it's truth or falisty. You don't accept the truth of a claim, then gain an understanding of its content. To do otherwise is completley backwards.
The second point is related to the first. Cupp appeals to the notion of a personal relationship with God or religious experience as the main basis and justification for religious belief. Have you ever noticed that when believers talk about their personal relationship with Jesus or God that the nature of this experience is left unspecified. They never describe the content of it in anyway that could be said to give intersubjective confirmation of their interpretation (e.g. "God told me to . . .") of their experience (i.e. their inner psychological, experience). This personal relationship and experience of God is never described in anyway that is analogous to our actual personal relationships. If you have to base your religious beliefs on some unspecified, private experience or personal relationship with God, then you do not have a very good argument for your beliefs. In fact, it's not an argument at all if they the truth of the premises cannot be intersubjectively confirmed. Our reasons and evidence have to be open to public scrutiny and evaluation.
Maher is right to mock Cupp here because she's giving credibility to a view that does not deserve credibility. Her views on religious belief, which are really just the same views that so many theists take up popularly against non-believers, rely on a radically incoherent form of epistemological subjectivism and a dubious claims about having a personal relationshp with a disembodied person.Cupp treats these popular theistic views as if they deserve intellectual respect, but they don't. So, I think Maher is basically correct to poke fun at her for suggesting that the brains of some people pick up a different channel that the brains of people that do not hold the same religious beliefs. When debating a theist, especially a conservative one, you have to understand that they are not engaged in argument to get to the truth of the matter, they are arguing to maintain their belief and to produce certain social arrangements. They aren't arguing evidentially or logically. They are arguing prudentially and ideologically. The fact that many theists adopt such dubious argumentative strategies, ones that they'd probably reject if the debate had different subject matter, in debates with non-believers is a symptom of it.
June 18, 2011
Herschel Telescope Spots a Star Spewing Powerful Water Jets into Interstellar Space | Popular Science
Researchers looking for signs of life elsewhere in the universe often start by looking for one key ingredient necessary to complex life as we know it: water. And just 750 light-years away, they’ve found quite a bit of it spewing from the poles of a young, sunlike star that is blasting jets of H2O into interstellar space at 124,000 miles per hour.
This discovery is interesting on a number of levels. For one, it indicates that throughout the universe young protostars could be distributing vast quantities of water, potentially seeding life elsewhere.
via www.popsci.com
One of the key premises of the contemporary design argument is that the conditions required for life to emerge as so improbable that they must have been fine-tuned by a supernatural, intelligent designer. But findings like the one above as well as here on Earth suggest that the conditions required for life are not as narrow as traditionally thought.
June 11, 2011
Catholicism: No Faith Needed.
Catholicism and Islam have objective content: one is true, the other false;
via www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net
It's true? WTF? At best it's some stuff he hopes is true. Religion involves faith.
May 31, 2011
Skepticism about Michele Bachmann's Divine Calling
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appears to be inching ever closer to a run for president -- and as she has now said in her latest public statements, her prayers on the subject have now yielded a calling from God himself.
via tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com
If God wants Michele Bachmann to be a Congresswoman or President, then he should give the rest of us a clear, public, and unambiguous sign that this is his will so that we don't act contrary to divine will and thus immorally. I doubt we'll get such a sign.
May 21, 2011
Tennessee Senate Bans Teaching the Debate Over Homosexuality
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A bill passed Friday by the Tennessee Senate would forbid public school teachers and students in grades kindergarten through eight from discussing the fact that some people are gay.
Opponents deride the measure as the "don't say gay bill." They say it's unfair to the children of gay parents and could lead to more bullying. Supporters say it is intended to give teachers clear guidance for dealing with younger children on a potentially explosive topic.
The bill isn't likely to be taken up by the House before lawmakers adjourn this spring, but the sponsor there has said he would push it forward in 2012 when the General Assembly comes back for the second year of the session.
Passage would make Tennessee the first state to enact such legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In 2003, Washington defeated a proposal similar to Tennessee's, as did California in 2005 and 2006. A Louisiana law forbids the use of sexually explicit materials depicting homosexuality in sex education classes.
Under the proposal, any instruction or materials at a public elementary or middle school would be limited to age-appropriate lessons about the science of human reproduction.
The legislation was amended from the original version, which said no elementary or middle schools will "provide any instruction or material that discusses sexual orientation other than heterosexuality."
To review. Do not talk about homosexuality, but be sure you "teach the debate" over Evolution. As another critic of the law points out, it may have other consequences.
However, a critic said the new wording could create other problems.
Sen. Roy Herron, D- Dresden, said it "may inadvertently prevent the teaching of ethics, morality and abstinence."
April 30, 2011
Why do Americans still dislike atheists? - The Washington Post
A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.
Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.
As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought.
This "science" clearly has a liberal bias since its findings are contrary to the self-image of religious believers.
January 07, 2011
Bill O'Reilly Does Not Understand 8th Grade Science, Basic Logic
If you are religious and want to understand why so many atheists seem angry about religion that clip should explain it all. For O'Reilly, like many others, God serves as an explanation for what he does not understand. Perhaps the most charitable way to interpret O'Reilly's remarks is as an example of design in nature. But, of course there's a really good scientific explanation for why the tide goes in and out, as most with an 8th grade grasp of science know. So, it's simply not the case that we cannot explain the tide. But, even if it was an unexplained phenomena, why should we conclude that God does it? The conclusion that 'God directs the tides' does not follow from the absence of another explanation. O'Reilly's line of reasoning is based on factual error and an appeal to ignorance fallacy. It's pretty bad reasoning but he seems convinced that he's correct and the skeptic is wrong nonetheless.
October 23, 2010
Miracleworkers in India? Probably Not.
I don't think there are any knock-down, drag-out arguments that definitively show miracles are metaphysically impossible. But, I sure don't believe that they occur based on the testimoney of impassioned advocates of religion or because they are recoreded in works that claim to be divinely inspired.
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