The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

Gimme that Old-Time Irreligion

A book review by Norman Levitt.

The very first thing I did in drafting this review was to Google Chester Alan Arthur. I trust my readers will recall the name, if only after a bit of head-scratching, as that of one of the most obscure and unmemorable of American presidents, a run-of-the-mill New York politician who attained to the highest office in the land by virtue of the assassination of his almost equally obscure predecessor, James A. Garfield, who picked the party wheel-horse Arthur as his running mate for reasons now totally forgotten.
Continue reading Gimme that Old-Time Irreligion…

The curse of faith

Why God’s in a Class by Himself

Intelligent Design (ID) creationism has resurfaced in the news again after President George W. Bush’s remarks were (mis)taken by IDers to be a solid endorsement by the president for the teaching of ID in public school science classrooms. (Bush’s science adviser, John H. Marburger 3rd, said in a telephone interview that “evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology” and “intelligent design is not a scientific concept.”)

There was considerable media hype over the story, and I did a number of interviews, including a query from a reporter who asked for my opinion about whether one can believe in God and the theory of evolution. I replied that, empirically speaking, yes you can, the proof being that 40 percent of American scientists profess belief in God and also accept the theory of evolution, not to mention the fact that most of the world’s one billion Catholics believe in God and accept the theory of evolution. But then this reporter wanted to know is if it is logically consistent to believe in God and the theory of evolution. That is, does the theory of evolution — if carried out to its logical conclusion — preclude belief in God? This is a different question. Here is my answer.

You can believe in God and evolution as long as you keep the two in separate logic-tight compartments. Belief in God depends on religious faith. Belief in evolution depends on empirical evidence. This is the fundamental difference between religion and science. If you attempt to reconcile religion and science on questions about nature and the universe, and if you push the science to its logical conclusion, you will end up naturalizing the deity because for any question about nature — the origins of the universe, life, humans, whatever — if your answer is “God did it,” a scientist will ask, “How did God do it?, What forces did God use? What forms of matter and energy were employed in the creation process?” and so forth. The end result of this inquiry can only be natural explanations for all natural phenomena. What place, then, for God?

One could argue that God is the laws and forces of nature, which is logically acceptable, but this is pantheism and not the type of personal God to which most people profess belief. One could also argue that God created the universe and life using the laws and forces of nature as his creation tools, which is also logically fine, but it leaves us with additional scientific questions: which laws and forces were used to create specific natural phenomena, and in what manner were they used? how did God create the laws and forces of nature? A scientist would be curious to know God’s recipe for, say, gravity, or for a universe or a cell. For that matter, it is a legitimate scientific question to ask: what made God, and how was God created? How do you make an omniscient and omnipotent being? Finally, one could argue that God is outside of nature — super nature, or supernatural — and therefore needs no explanation. This is also logically consistent, but by definition it means that the God question is outside of science and therefore religion and science are separate and incompatible.

Bottom line: teach science in science classes, teach religion in religion classes.

Source.

Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit

Fundamental Truths
by Tim Callahan
Most of us involved with issues of critical thinking are accustomed to dealing with what we think of as fundamentalism, which implies specifically Christian fundamentalism. Bondage of the Mind deals, specifically, with Jewish fundamentalism. Just as evangelicalism, and particularly evangelical fundamentalism, is a potent force in Christianity, so too is modern Orthodox Judaism a potent force among Jews today.
Continue reading Bondage of the Mind: How Old Testament Fundamentalism Shackles the Mind and Enslaves the Spirit…

Christians = stupid & ignorant crackpots

Bill White on Christian Identity

I don’t share Bill White’s respectful treatement of CI kooks, CI people tend to be low I.Q. dregs with whom I absolutely have nothing in common. CI theology makes Mormonism look like a credible, historical, level-headed belief-system. Whites need to ostracise them and not cosy up to these lunatics.

“Bashing” Yahweh
The Simple Truth Of The Jewish Tribal Deity
Continue reading Bill White on Christian Identity…

Appeasing Islam in Europe

Creationists ‘peddle lies about fossil record’ [they have a lot in common with holocau$t promoters, like a wilful disregard for truth for political reasons]

IF YOU’RE NOT AN ATHEIST, YOU’RE A DELUSIONAL, CHILD-LIKE CRETIN!

A leading scientist accuses creationists of peddling the lie that there is no fossil evidence of evolution.

Pew study confirms non-religious are significant bloc

Survey shows Those Choosing No Religion Outnumber Those of Every Single Faith (But One)

The most detailed estimates to date of Americans’ religious affiliations reports that a significant portion of U.S. citizens claim “none of the above,” placing the unaffiliated second only to Roman Catholics in number. Monday’s release of the 35,000-respondent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows that 16.1 percent of Americans have no particular religion at all, while 23.9 percent identify themselves as Catholic. The next largest “belief group” is Evangelical Baptist at 10.8 percent. All other denominational groupings show in the single digits or less.

The study also shows the number of Americans who identify as atheist or agnostic has risen from 3.2 percent to 4 percent, while a “remarkably high” 44 percent have rejected the religion placed on them in childhood.

“People are finding out that what they’ve been handed in youth doesn’t work, or isn’t important enough to defend when confronted with marriage or some other life situation that forces them to examine it,” said Paul Kurtz, founder of the Council for Secular Humanism. “But when the shuffling is done, this study shows that three people are dropping religion altogether for each one gaining a faith.”

The study also confirms the previous 2004 Pew Forum-University of Akron study findings that those who identify as strictly secular comprise more than 10 percent of the population, only on a much larger scale.

“The breakdown is interesting, in that it distinguishes between the vaguely religious and those who fall squarely in the secular camp,” Kurtz said. “But I would venture to say that there is a significant number of Americans who sympathize with secularism, but who may still be nominal members of religious organizations. It’s apparent that a significant percentage of the population identifies with secularism, and I trust politicians will bear this in mind.”

Susan Jacoby on American Unreason

Susan Jacoby, author and program director of the Center for Inquiry/New York City, has recently been seen making the rounds in the national media promoting her new book “The Age of American Unreason” (published by Pantheon). Jacoby’s trenchant analysis of America’s banal and disintegrative culture (and public sphere) is at once both arresting and troubling.

From the publisher:

This impassioned, tough-minded work of contemporary history paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a culture at odds with America’s heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society—on the political right and the left. America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.

Hear Susan Jacoby:

Interviewed on Bill Moyers Journal
NPR’s “Book Tour”
US News & World Report interview

My war against credulousness and stupidity continues

Baby Bible Bashers (Part 1 of 5).

BAFTA award-winning director Amelia Hann uncovers the unsettling and often disturbing world of child evangelism, following pint-sized preachers Samuel Boutwell from Mississippi, crowd-pleasing Terry Durham from Florida and Brazilian sensation Ana Carolina Dias who began preaching at just three years old and regularly commands TV audiences of millions.

More here.

UK: Divorce Sharia Style (Part 3 of 5)

More here.

Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0

As you watch the conversation in Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0, it might help to know about one of the sources that was helpful to me in formulating the agenda, assembling the cast of characters, and setting the tone for the meeting. I quoted this passage from Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover (who directs the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics at King’s College, London):

“Now we tend to see the Enlightenment view of human psychology as thin and mechanical, and Enlightenment hopes of social progress through the spread of humanitarianism and the scientific outlook as naïve…One of this book’s aims is to replace the thin, mechanical psychology of the Enlightenment with something more complex, something closer to reality…another aim of the book is to defend the Enlightenment hope of a world that is more peaceful and humane, the hope that by understanding more about ourselves we can do something to create a world with less misery. I have qualified optimism that this hope is well founded…”

I say Amen to that. If Enlightenment 1.0 took a thin and mechanical view of human nature and psychology, I think Enlightenment 2.0 can offer a much ‘thicker’ and cognitively richer account - less naïve and also, perhaps, less hubristic. If there’s one thing we’ve learned - particularly from cognitive neuroscience - it is that we need to have some strategic humility about the hobby horses we are inclined to ride.
-Roger Bingham
Director, The Science Network

See it all here.