1. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #144328 by jburdoo on March 15, 2008 at 3:54 pm

Nothing by Isaac Asimov? Scandalous!

2. Secret Life of Brian

Comment #16637 by jburdoo on January 7, 2007 at 7:15 pm

Jack: How about Judaism? One saying I learned growing up as a Jew was something along the line of "Jews are the only believers who argue with God," and there is a strong tradition of deprecatory Jewish humor, as collected by, for example, Isaac Asimov and in the Chelm stories.

I agree in general, but I have met believers who can laugh at themselves. My Dad, who is pretty much Deist, cannot read through the Haggadah on Passover without breaking up at the point where four Rabbis argue over EXACTLY how many plagues God hit the Egyptians with (not ten, not fifty, not two hundred, but two hundred and fifty, in the form of God's fingers and presumably his thumb). While I grant that the important (and morally confusing) point is that God hit Egypt with any plagues at all, the Talmud is full of hair-splitting (and inadvertently side-splitting) passages like this. And while I have met Jews who take Talmud lessons seriously, I've met more with tongue in cheek, and I have NEVER met one who thought everything actually happened exactly as stated in the Bible, six days, Noah and all. There are fundamentalist Jews, but in proportion they're much fewer than the Xian ones, especially in the United States. It is even theoretically possible to be an atheist Jew. That may sound like an oxymoron, but I think of myself as Jewish more for cultural and historical than religious reasons; I'm functionally atheist.

I have not, however, found Xians about whom I could say the same thing. Either they truly believe that Christ died for their sins, or they don't think about it at all and treat the holidays as vacation time. And the gulf between Life of Brian and Passion of the Christ is yawning. I look at both films, one of which pokes fun at Xianity and the other of which treats it with utter seriousness, and I know which one I would NOT want to subject my children to. This is what they teach their kids?

Whereas Monty Python takes the mickey out of magical thinking, in scenes like the one where Brian is chased by groupies who would rather believe he's the Messiah than what he himself tells them. The lack of critical thinking is pretty obvious in this section, where the groupies spot a juniper bush and decide Brian has conjured it up just for them, and when they decide that dropping his sandal was a sign of... well, they can't decide what, and their new religion starts fracturing right there.

This might be a good movie to show and discuss at a skeptics' meeting.

3. Secret Life of Brian

Comment #16625 by jburdoo on January 7, 2007 at 4:42 pm

One of the things I dislike most about religion is that, in its fundamentalist form, it has NO sense of humor. A group that can't laugh at itself isn't really to be trusted, I feel.

4. General Synod's Life of Christ

Comment #16567 by jburdoo on January 7, 2007 at 11:25 am

From the BBC show:

'Cleese, in defence of the film goes on to say that it was about "closed systems of thought, whether they are political or theological or religious or whatever: systems by which whatever evidence is given to a person, he merely adapts it, fits it into his ideology".'

Hmmmm.

5. God-less

Comment #16457 by jburdoo on January 6, 2007 at 4:29 pm

Perhaps I should have said "secular" rather than "mundane." But I don't believe in God and I wouldn't murder even if I thought I could get away with it. As an atheist, I believe that life is precious, it is the only chance we have to make something of ourselves, and therefore to cut it short for any reason is among the greatest crimes. Nonetheless, there are justifications for murder, including ones that God has sanctioned. I would not consider killing an enemy soldier in wartime to be murder; I would consider it murder, however, to massacre entire cities, man, woman and child, as seen in Joshua and other books of the Bible.

Society legalizes many forms of murder for various reasons, including capital punishment, abortion, assisted-suicide/"pulling the plug," and war. Under some circumstances, these actions are not necessarily wrong. But altruism has its own rewards. Defend, protect and assist your fellow man, and he will do the same for you, and society will prosper. There is no need for a God to insist upon a civil society when we can make it ourselves.

As Bruce Monson once said, I believe in life BEFORE death. Any atheist who thinks the same will certainly want to make this life the best possible one rather than waste it killing and raping... it is people who think they will live forever, rather, who waste their lives. Praying instead of doing, for example.

6. General Synod's Life of Christ

Comment #16424 by jburdoo on January 6, 2007 at 2:48 pm

Never seen this before. Hilarious.

7. God-less

Comment #16421 by jburdoo on January 6, 2007 at 2:39 pm

Justification for humanist morality is remarkably simple -- "do not unto others as you would not have them do unto you." I don't kill others because I wouldn't want to be killed. There is also the distinct threat of mundane police and other society members in general to keep me in check, which is somewhat more effective than the threats of an invisible god. If someone considers rape "good," society will do something about it -- he will be arrested, tried and imprisoned. The bottom line is that killing, rape, robbery, etc destabilize society, and the vast majority of people do not want to live in a state of anarchy and so toe the line and encourage their neighbors to do the same. Religion is not necessary for this particular purpose and can in fact have detrimental effects in addition to the good ones. Humans, for example, even the evil ones, can not torture wrongdoers for an infinite length of time!

In general, mundane society treats "good" as "what is good for society and the human race." And the things that help societies survive are hardly arbitrary.

8. Pat Robertson: God told me of 'mass killing' in 2007

Comment #15985 by jburdoo on January 4, 2007 at 5:07 am

When I went to Kansas State University (the buckle of the Bible Belt), Pat Robertson came to speak one year. I was told that a group of local Wiccans formed a prayer circle around the auditorium he was in to keep the evil from escaping... I've never found confirmation of it, but I thought it was just a delicious story. Pity it can't really work that way.

Also, wasn't his own center in North Carolina once hit by a hurricane?

Being a skeptic, I have to assume these are urban legends until proven otherwise, but still.

9. William Crawley, BBC Belfast, names Richard Dawkins as Person of the Year 2006

Comment #15551 by jburdoo on January 1, 2007 at 8:27 am

A balanced and witty article. Congrats to Dr. Dawkins.

10. The Only One in Step

Comment #14419 by jburdoo on December 22, 2006 at 11:28 am

A lot of people seem to think Dr. Dawkins is too stern and curmudgeonly; in some cases, I think, he doesn't go far enough. Now, I grant that explaining the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics was not the entire point of this essay, but that explanation, while good (as a professional librarian, I love the analogy), could be made clearer, perhaps, in a dedicated letter rather than a single paragraph. Most importantly, the point might have been made that ultimately, the entire library has lost more resources than it retained by improving the place -- so, say, to put ten books in order, the librarian had to move a hundred. Or the sun has lost vastly more energy than we received on Earth, and continues to run down.

11. It is possible to respect the believers but not the belief

Comment #14413 by jburdoo on December 22, 2006 at 10:47 am

Mr. Ash seems to find Jesus a good man (if just a man) and one to emulate. I see it differently; after all, the man in question believed in demons, promised hellfire and damnation, encouraged his disciples to steal... and it goes on. See the list linked below:

http://www.ffrf.org/nontracts/jesus.php

12. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12769 by jburdoo on December 13, 2006 at 6:05 pm

"... whose highest ideals are mercy, peace and love."

Well, if that were true we wouldn't have a problem, would we?

Dr. Dooley is openly missing the point. He believes Dawkins is against mercy, peace and love? More like against the de facto lack of these things in religion. I fear religion not for what it claims to be, but for what it actually is.

13. Atheists' bleak alternative

Comment #12766 by jburdoo on December 13, 2006 at 6:01 pm

Why do theists think that atheists are nihilists and pessimists? (Too many ists?)

If one is frightened of the darkness, all one needs to do is light a candle.