Comments by TranshumanAtheist

Comment #219578 by TranshumanAtheist on July 27, 2008 at 9:15 am

But we have the opportunity to live in a win-win world and become a Type 1 civilization by spreading liberal democracy and free trade,

This suggests a number of possible objections. One, what if liberal democracies decide to regulate trade, as often happens in the real world? Would Shermer then favor undemocratic governments that interfere less with the market? For example, a number of free market economists displayed a crush on Augusto Pinochet for the way he ran Chile in the 1970's and 1980's. Pinochet overthrew a democratically elected regime representing socialist parties and organized labor, cut taxes and deregulated Chile's economy while terrorizing Chileans who expressed progressive political views.

And two, Shermer assumes a progress narrative from the Enlightenment that has come under attack lately by the random walk/black swan criticism. If we got to our current situation through a series of essentially random events, then no reason prevents us from heading away from current trends through other random events. Nothing about the future of democracy, free markets, atheism or becoming a Kardashev Type I civilization looks "inevitable" in this view.

2. Should We Rid The Mind of God? A Debate

Comment #198411 by TranshumanAtheist on June 23, 2008 at 7:58 pm

How does a god solve the meaning-and-purpose problem, any way? A god could, without logical contradiction, have created human life without any meaning or purpose at all. For another scenario, consider:

http://www.box.net/shared/static/3v9eexfk0o.gif

3. Oklahoma: One Step from Doom

Comment #141426 by TranshumanAtheist on March 10, 2008 at 11:56 am

Ugh. The Speaker for Oklahoma's House of Representatives, Chris Benge, is my first cousin (son of my mom's sister). That could make for an awkward family reunion some day.

4. The coming religious peace

Comment #132108 by TranshumanAtheist on February 24, 2008 at 7:33 am

Thor'Ungal writes:

I wonder if the key is something like what Dennett proposed. Help lead religion into an evolutionary path that is comparatively harmless.

A few years ago an article in Free Inquiry speculated that gods could evolve into something like ghosts, which many people believe in, but they don't worship them or otherwise try to discern their ghostly will for their lives.

5. This Week's Flea

Comment #100719 by TranshumanAtheist on December 19, 2007 at 7:49 am

Responding to #64:

In fairness, I don't think he is saying that these people think that the effect of atheism is nihilism. I think the point he is claiming is that if you imagine that atheism is right, then God not existing means that there is no point and nihilism is the result.

The existence of a god doesn't necessarily make nihilism go away. A god could, without logical contradiction, have created human life without any meaning or purpose at all. And if a god doesn't believe in any power higher than itself, then what keeps it from succumbing to nihilism?

All of these nihilism, despair and meaninglessness claims made about atheism ignore empirical human psychology. People's emotional health depends to a large extent on biological components like their neurochemistry, not on whether they believe in a god or not. Otherwise the atheism = nihilism theorists have trouble accounting for the existence of chronically depressed theists and chronically cheerful atheists.

6. This Week's Flea

Comment #100708 by TranshumanAtheist on December 19, 2007 at 6:56 am

You're saying older atheists like Nietzsche and Camus had a more sophisticated critique of religion?

Yes. They wanted us to think out completely and thoroughly, and with unrelenting logic, what the world would look like if the transcendent is wiped away from the horizon. Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus would have cringed at "the new atheism" because they would see it as dropping God like Santa Claus, and going on with the same old values. The new atheists don't want to think out the implications of a complete absence of deity. Nietzsche, as well as Sartre and Camus, all expressed it quite correctly. The implications should be nihilism.

Who cares what these long-dead intellectuals thought about the effects of atheism? They didn't have any empirical evidence to support their claims. (If anything, they just accepted christian stereotypes about the consequences of atheism without thinking deeply about the matter at all.) Today we have a number of spontaneously atheizing societies with a high quality of life, and they haven't succumbed to "nihilism." American christians readily go on vacation to the UK, France, Australia and other developed countries with atheistic pluralities because they have good reputations.

7. ...and another FLEA...

Comment #96443 by TranshumanAtheist on December 10, 2007 at 2:46 pm

I wonder if the "fleas" will start criticizing each other's arguments in favor of theism.

I rather doubt it. Theists don't exert any quality control over their own arguments that I can detect, because they know that even the most blatant fallacies work on some fraction of the population.

8. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #92675 by TranshumanAtheist on December 1, 2007 at 7:20 am

Re: SurfDude's comment # 17

All religions, especially the evangelical and fundamentalist varieties, encourage their credulous adherents to breed like rabbits, thereby propagating their particular brand of nonsense. The majority of atheists / humanists etc tend to be educated and enlightened and if they breed at all, it usually results in smaller families.

But in a generation Iran (a country much in the news lately) has developed from a fecund, religiously obsessed society to one with European-level birthrates and a strong secularizing trend. If that can happen to one of the strongholds of radical Islam that quickly, then I don't see why it can't happen to other god-poisoned societies as well.

Reference:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20071125_One_Last_Thing___Irans_future.html

9. What the New Atheists Don't See

Comment #84291 by TranshumanAtheist on November 1, 2007 at 4:15 pm

we continue to long for a transcendent purpose immanent in existence itself, independent of our own wills.

A god doesn't necessarily solve that problem. What if it turns out that god's existence has no purpose?

Better yet, what if we discover that god came into existence through "random chance"?

10. Pascal's Wager

Comment #82001 by TranshumanAtheist on October 25, 2007 at 2:15 pm

Those emails from African bank clerks offering us money to help unlock the funds from dead people's accounts look like a better deal than Pascal's wager. One, a real person had to compose and send that email. Two, we know that Africa exists. Three, we know that huge sums of money exist in foreign in bank accounts. Four, we know that banks can wire money from one account to another anywhere in the world. Why not take one of these clerks up on his offer? I mean, what can possibly go wrong?

11. If you don't accept the supernatural, you obviously think life is depressing, meaningless and cold

Comment #81995 by TranshumanAtheist on October 25, 2007 at 2:05 pm

I wish more people knew about the scientific research into happiness. Scientists have discovered that humans have biologically determined happiness set points, or "happiness thermostats," that regulate our average levels of happiness throughout our lives. Changes in fortune can push your happiness levels above or below your thermostat setting, but in the long run you tend to return to your natural level. (The exhilaration from winning the lottery doesn't last very long, for example.) These happiness thermostats don't depend on whether we believe in a god or not, so we see all sorts of combinations of happiness levels and world views, like chronically cheerful atheists and chronically depressed theists.

I would add that a god doesn't necessarily solve the problem of making the universe happy any way. What if it turns out that god finds its existence "depressing, meaningless and cold" because it doesn't believe in the super-supernatural?

12. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. were atheists, and they were terrible! Answer that!

Comment #81989 by TranshumanAtheist on October 25, 2007 at 1:48 pm

First of all, Hitler died on good terms with the Catholic Church.

Secondly, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot et al. rejected religions that the theist who brings us this objection usually doesn't belong to and doesn't respect any way. Stalin rejected Russian orthodox christianity, which many American christians consider some weird foreign cult. Mao rejected Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, again religions foreign to Western christianity. Pol Pot rejected his countrymen's Buddhism as well. Which religion on this list would have kept these dicators in line if they hadn't rejected it?

13. Taking exception to Jake

Comment #72065 by TranshumanAtheist on September 20, 2007 at 8:54 am

PZ promotes what I consider a proper understanding of "atheism."

Once again, science is a method. It's a general set of procedures that rest on skepticism, induction, empiricism, and naturalism. Atheism is a conclusion. We look at the universe using the tools of science, and it does not fit any description of the universe derived from religious perspectives: we therefore reject religious dogma. We also see that the nature of the universe does not reflect any of the orthodox conceptions of what a god-ruled universe would look like. We arrive at the conclusion that there is no god.

In other words, atheists don't have some void in them called an absence or lack of belief in gods, which would also apply to babies, feral children or the profoundly retarded. No, atheists state explicitly that reality doesn't work the way theists claim. Atheism, like, say, heliocentrism in astronomy, makes a statement about the contents of reality.

14. Sam Harris Strikes Back

Comment #45949 by TranshumanAtheist on May 29, 2007 at 6:36 pm

The "meaning of life" has nothing to do with the existence of a god. A god could, without logical contradiction, created human life without any "meaning" at all!

15. Jerry Falwell's Hit Parade

Comment #42192 by TranshumanAtheist on May 17, 2007 at 9:24 pm

Dower, addressing Bizarro Dawkins, writes,

I am an apostate, a former hard-core Calvinistic Christian.

You claim there is a heaven and a hell.

Am I going to hell?

If so, prove it to me.

But, but if hell doesn't exist, and we can't go there when we die, how can our lives have any meaning?

16. Thought vs. feeling in religion

Comment #41522 by TranshumanAtheist on May 16, 2007 at 8:29 am

In Latin America, impoverished people depend on religion for meaning and hope, but it is important that their beliefs not reinforce what keeps them impoverished.

Latin Americans tend to reduce their dependency on these beliefs when they migrate to the U.S.:

http://richarddawkins.net/article,884,For-Some-Hispanics-Coming-to-America-Also-Means-Abandoning-Religion,Laurie-Goodstein

Does this indicate they renounce "meaning and hope" as soon as they cross the border? Or does it suggest they find meaning and hope from realty-based sources because of the better living conditions here?

17. Unintelligent Design

Comment #39903 by TranshumanAtheist on May 12, 2007 at 8:38 am

Atran sounds like a follower of Leo Strauss: Religion for the sheep, atheism for their shepherds.

18. The torture of the grave Islam and the afterlife

Comment #37994 by TranshumanAtheist on May 6, 2007 at 3:38 pm

What if some of the dead Muslim's organs get transplanted into living infidels' bodies?

19. The moment a teenage girl was stoned to death for loving the wrong boy

Comment #37909 by TranshumanAtheist on May 6, 2007 at 8:04 am

Christian Reconstructionists in the U.S. (a surprisingly influential element in American conservatism) want to reinstate the judicial use of stoning:

Invitation to a Stoning, by Walter Olson
http://www.reason.com/news/show/30789.html

20. The Damned

Comment #36900 by TranshumanAtheist on May 2, 2007 at 5:36 pm

But if hell doesn't exist and we can't go there after we die, what gives life meaning?

21. The God Delusion

Comment #36466 by TranshumanAtheist on May 1, 2007 at 8:31 am

For a few decades, Ayn Rand's "philosophy" looked a lot more competitive than humanism, at least in the U.S. market. When humanist publications occasionally took notice of the Rand phenomenon, they didn't quite know what to make of it despite the convergence between humanist and Randian criticisms of religious belief and a similar emphasis on enjoying life in this world. Until recently you had trouble finding titles by Prometheus Books authors or other critics of religious beliefs in most bookstores, for example, whereas you could almost always find several copies of Rand's novels. Rand's influence (now apparently in decline, since her death about 25 years ago) shows that even a cartoonish, empirically indefensible challenge to religious world views can gain a foothold with people who see the problems with religious beliefs but don't have access to the better thought out secular alternatives.

BTW, I recommend Greg Nyquist's critique of Rand's ideas, Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature.

22. God Is in the Dendrites

Comment #35453 by TranshumanAtheist on April 27, 2007 at 7:56 am

The rational, "Tollanized" civilization of the future can certainly integrate these scientific data without all the primitive cosmological and moral notions long associated with "spiritual" experiences. We'd have Darwin, modern physics, a liberal morality and a clinical understanding of "mysticism"; but not creationism, exorcisms, faith healing, the killing of heretics and other traditional religious nonsense.

23. The Empty Wager

Comment #32938 by TranshumanAtheist on April 18, 2007 at 7:02 pm

Those Nigerian email solicitations look like a better deal than Pascal's Wager. One, we know that humans had to compose the spam that keeps winding up in our computers' mailboxes, while we don't have any evidence that a god exists and has offered a human anything. And two, we know that large amounts of money in foreign bank accounts exist (though you won't ever get any of it this way!), whereas we don't have any evidence that a heaven exists.

In other words, Pascal's Wager looks worse than a blatant scam.

24. For Some Hispanics, Coming to America Also Means Abandoning Religion

Comment #32260 by TranshumanAtheist on April 16, 2007 at 1:20 pm

Hispanics from Cuba were the most secular national group, at 14 percent,

This suggests that many Cubans who've migrated to the U.S. have grievances against Castro's regime other than religious ones.

25. Genie shows barred by Islam, clerics say

Comment #32020 by TranshumanAtheist on April 15, 2007 at 8:56 am

A.C. Grayling may have stumbled onto something when he traced the genealogy of the gods back to "fairies" (animistic forces in nature). Muslims feel that these lesser gods threaten the authority and status of their monopolistic mega-god. It makes me think of local mom-and-pop businesses taking costumers away from a big corporation.

26. The God Debate

Comment #29140 by TranshumanAtheist on April 1, 2007 at 9:10 pm

If life is just random chance, then nothing really does matter and there is no morality

Christians like Warren can't seem to make up their minds on the role of "chance" in the universe. On the one hand they object to the idea that we got here through "chance." Yet they depend on "chance" (Warren explicitly calls it a "gamble" in the last paragraph) that a god exists which can stuff them into heaven.

27. Believers are away with the fairies

Comment #28085 by TranshumanAtheist on March 27, 2007 at 10:35 pm

I deny Tinkerbell, and I am not afraid.

28. Peanut Butter, The Atheist's Nightmare!

Comment #28068 by TranshumanAtheist on March 27, 2007 at 7:37 pm

Does this make Vegemite the Australian atheist's nightmare?

29. Saving believers: Former Christian finds calling to preach the good news of atheism

Comment #26766 by TranshumanAtheist on March 21, 2007 at 2:45 pm

Thinking more about Dillahunty's dad's claim that atheists have to renounce love, I wonder if the old man has confused atheism with the Rhine Gold or something.

30. Saving believers: Former Christian finds calling to preach the good news of atheism

Comment #26696 by TranshumanAtheist on March 21, 2007 at 7:38 am

Dillahunty's father reportedly said,

he regretted that his son would never be able to love anyone because atheism is a selfish belief.

Oh, yes, of course! People stop believing in god because they don't want the burden of having to love others. Why didn't I think of that?

31. Lonely Atheists of the Global Village

Comment #26314 by TranshumanAtheist on March 18, 2007 at 4:27 pm

For instance, never before our own time have so many millions of persons of Biblical faith been thrown into concentration camps, tortured, and murdered, as they have been under recent self-described atheist regimes.

Many of today's Muslims feel similarly besieged by the Bush Administration, but Novak doesn't give a crap about them because they have the "wrong" beliefs about god. If a foreign occupying army defiled, shot up and bombed churches in the U.S. while murdering or imprisoning untold numbers of christians, Novak would think that the "end times" had arrived. Yet the U.S. occupation force in Iraq has done something similar to that country's Islamic population.

32. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24587 by TranshumanAtheist on March 7, 2007 at 1:17 pm

Conversely, when one presses a purported atheist, one almost always finds that the person believes in various propositions that simply don't make sense without a belief in some source of an ultimate moral order, i.e., what most people would call "God." For instance, almost everyone who claims to be an atheist still makes lots of "ought" statements, as in "we ought to preserve biological diversity," or what have you.

So if your dentist says you "ought" to floss your teeth regularly, that means he has just imparted a divine revelation to you?

33. Presentation on Atheism

Comment #22779 by TranshumanAtheist on February 22, 2007 at 7:14 am

Poor, rural, America is fertile ground for the atheist movement.

I come from a long line of poor white Southerners, probably of Scotch-Irish ancestry. I'd like to think this could happen, but my kindred will have to stop believing in this rapture nonsense first.

BTW, Dominionist kook Gary North has written some reasonable criticisms of belief in the rapture. He points out how the rapture appeals to people with lower class orientations, characterized by a strong present-orientation or "high time preference," as some economists characterize it. In other words, the rapture belief draws people who lack the self-discipline and foresight to work hard, improve themselves, save money and plan for their futures.

34. Blashpemy Challenge Interview

Comment #20049 by TranshumanAtheist on January 31, 2007 at 7:03 am

The point is, that by singling out a specific religion, and denying a specific part of it, all you're really doing is validating the beliefs of the members of that religion that there actually IS something there to deny.

In response to the effort to restore the worship of the classical Olympian deities, a Greek clergymen denied the existence of the Greek gods, calling them "monstrous dark delusions of the past." Does this mean the clergyman really acknowledges the existence of Zeus etc?

35. Zeus devotees worship in Athens

Comment #18580 by TranshumanAtheist on January 21, 2007 at 6:44 pm

I say, bring back Baal.

I guess you don't watch Stargate SG-1. Baal has had a recurring role on that show for the past few seasons.

36. Skyway to Heaven

Comment #18553 by TranshumanAtheist on January 21, 2007 at 5:04 pm

I'd worry more about having a Muslim pilot flying my plane.

37. Zeus devotees worship in Athens

Comment #18536 by TranshumanAtheist on January 21, 2007 at 4:02 pm

At least the Greek gods had better poets working for them than that Canaanite deity, Yah-what's his name?

BTW, the Olympians' worshippers can also reclaim the foundations of medical ethics. The classical Hippocratic Oath requires to physician to swear by "Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses."

38. God's Hostages

Comment #18375 by TranshumanAtheist on January 20, 2007 at 7:11 am

When a bible writer speaks disapprovingly about a "loose woman," I suspect he meant that in the same sense as a stray cow or a runaway slave.

39. Ancient religion may face extinction

Comment #16472 by TranshumanAtheist on January 6, 2007 at 6:22 pm

The Zoroastrians provide a counter-example to the argument that:

Selective Pressure Grows For Belief In God
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003856.html

40. No religion and an end to war: how thinkers see the future

Comment #15906 by TranshumanAtheist on January 3, 2007 at 6:08 pm

These forecasts make it sound like we'll turn into the Tollans from "Stargate SG-1."

41. America's Holy Warriors

Comment #15822 by TranshumanAtheist on January 3, 2007 at 7:47 am

Eh, a military coup could turn into a good thing. It depends on whom the coup leaders round up and send to the soccer stadium.

42. Let's Hope It's A Lasting Vogue

Comment #15549 by TranshumanAtheist on January 1, 2007 at 8:21 am

Regarding the "What do you replace it with?" argument, I guess our ancestors had to trash the Hippocratic Oath and abandon medical ethics after they stopped believing in "Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses":

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath_classical.html

43. Now we know how to make the IDists dance in their petticoats: blaspheme.

Comment #14170 by TranshumanAtheist on December 21, 2006 at 10:44 am

In Spanish:

Niego el espíritu santo, y no estoy asustado!

44. Now we know how to make the IDists dance in their petticoats: blaspheme.

Comment #14111 by TranshumanAtheist on December 21, 2006 at 7:00 am

I deny Allah, the Koran, and the false prophet Muhammad.

Does that mean I get to go to the Muslim hell now?

45. The Blasphemy Challenge

Comment #13200 by TranshumanAtheist on December 16, 2006 at 6:38 am

Skeptics! All of you! This sort of activity is absolutely necessary, especially in the US. This is about breaking taboos, exactly like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have spoken about extensively.

Precisely. The "Deny the Holy Spirit" meme symbolizes victory over superstitious fear.

46. The Blasphemy Challenge

Comment #13120 by TranshumanAtheist on December 15, 2006 at 4:05 pm

I deny the holy spirit!

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

Comment #12784 by TranshumanAtheist on December 13, 2006 at 8:34 pm

Sancus writes,

The association of modern atheism with Stalin and Mao has long got out of hand.

I just dismiss this tactic with prejudice by pointing out that nobody really cares about communism any more, especially younger generations who can't relate to these historical figues because have no memory of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. Christians who keep boring us with stories about Stalin and Mao sound like our great-grandfathers who complained about the Kaiser's atrocities during the First World War. Who cares about the Kaiser now?

48. Atheists' bleak alternative

Comment #12783 by TranshumanAtheist on December 13, 2006 at 8:27 pm

But belief tethered to clear ethical values -- Judeo-Christian monotheism -- is society's best bet for restraining our worst moral impulses and encouraging our best ones.

Why doesn't that seem to work for Muslims? They believe in one all-powerful god who created the universe and enforces moral absolutes -- but they go around killing "infidels" and adherents to interpretations of Islam they consider wrong-headed any way.

49. Religion for a Captive Audience, Paid For by Taxes

Comment #12676 by TranshumanAtheist on December 13, 2006 at 8:13 am

Apart from the tax support angle, I don't have a problem with prison evangelism. I like the fact that god-botherers have acknowledged that religious indoctrination belongs in prison because it's a form of punishment.