Comments by _J_

Comment #62521 by _J_ on August 10, 2007 at 3:11 am

It really is a remarkable book cover. How mixed-up does your argument have to be for you to coat your book with such a glaring clash of registers as a picture of Stalin next to the phrase 'Village Atheist'? You could call Stalin a lot of things, but 'village atheist'? I don't remember the USA stockpiling nuclear weapons in a world-threatening ideological struggle against 'The Evil Village'.

As for the mystery surrounding the identity of the face next to Darwin and where it ought to fit into the chronology of atheism: problem solved - it's The Third Doctor, on a self-allocated mission to rescue humanity from ludicrous superstitions and criminally stupid publishing decisions.

352. Another Flea is Born

Comment #62517 by _J_ on August 10, 2007 at 2:59 am

BAEOZ, 16

My trouble is I waffle on and never really say anything concise that grabs you.

Rubbish! You've been snapping out theistic Achilles heels with your big marsupial jaws all over the place! It's first-rate entertainment! (This is progress. In the old days, Christians had an arena of lions to worry about. We're only threatening an internet of Tasmanian Devils. I think we score points for non-violence and imagination.)

Ewan D, 17
I love it! That's worth a wardrobe of tee shirts.

Cartomancer, 24
And that's hilarious. Could be the most boring film of all time, but the marketing campaign would be worth its weight in holy relics.

Russell Blackford, 27

I don't think anything can be done ... at least not by the state

Yes, I agree - we can't go all anti-free-speech about it. Dawkins has got this one right: what needs to be challenged is the tacit restraint on free speech constituted by the automatic respect of religion - the sort of social self censorship that makes people think 'My, that Church sign is offensively manipulative predatory mindless tosh, masquerading illegitimately as fact and wilfully exploiting the young and the emotionally vulnerable - but I'd better not say anything, else they'll be upset'.

EDIT - Agreement with tieInterceptor, below: thank you, Shuggy for your gift of church signs, which just keeps on giving.

353. Another Flea is Born

Comment #62434 by _J_ on August 9, 2007 at 5:44 pm

BAEOZ, 3,

Last night, catching the bus to the station, I saw a sign on a church saying: "Another inconvenient truth, those who don't accept Jesus will suffer eternal damnation".

You know what, it's disgusting, isn't it? When you think about it, that's just brainless, untargeted emotional blackmail. If it's not outright malicious, then it's unacceptably irresponsible. Something should be done.

What you need is a few pre-prepared signs in your car that you can swiftly stick onto hateful lies like this, so as to provide clear factual reassurance for passersby. Simple, inarguable stuff like 'BEWARE OF THE GOD' and 'GOOD HAS TWO "O"S'

When faced with repeat offenders, you are allowed to be a little more opinionated. Obvious developments of the theme are 'GOD IS FOR LIFE, NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS - WHY RUIN EITHER?', and 'GOD: MAN'S BEST FIEND'. (It's easy enough to make something church-appropriate out of the term 'GODHOUSE', too.)

I daresay you can come up with much wittier, punchier and more effectively antitoxic legends than these.

Preparing cheap signs should be easy enough, but I'm as yet undecided about the best means of fixing them up. It's a fine line between 'uselessly fragile' and 'vandalism'. Use your discretion, I suppose.

Have fun fighting the go(o)d fight and combating hatespeech!

354. Scarlet Letter Campaign Update: A Victory

Comment #62289 by _J_ on August 9, 2007 at 7:43 am

epeeist,

Possibly. But I think it's a cunning pseudonym so that no one will suspect this is the work of one Pastor Farian.

355. Scarlet Letter Campaign Update: A Victory

Comment #62286 by _J_ on August 9, 2007 at 7:38 am

I was all ready to spit flames. Then I decided, following Russell Blackford, that the site is too mad to be serious. Then I thought twice, following sane1 and others.

Then I googled Tobin Maker and found this page:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/a-righteous-e-mail-battle/

…which contains the following comment, in an email from Martin Gillespie, Mr. Brownback's national political director:

"On a further note, the website that Mr. Saltsman refers to–Baptists for Brownback–is a spoof site with no ties to the Brownback campaign. We are sorry that this obvious parody was lost on Mr. Saltsman."

But then, check the comments:

45. Although we at "Baptists For Brownback" are in no way officially affiliated with Senator Brownback or his campaign, we continue to support him 100%, and are dismayed that anyone would suggest we aren't sincere in our faith in him.

Tobin Maker,
Resident Pastor, Baptists for Brownback http://baptistsforbrown2008.wordpress.com/
— Posted by Tobin Maker

…and then:

46. I would like to add an Amen to what Pastor Tobin Maker has said. We are completely dedicated to seeing Senator Sam Brownback elected in 2008 and again in 2012. Sam Brownback is the single candidate running who has then high moral standards and dedication to the Lord Jesus Christ that this country needs.
What this entire episode has taught me is that the MSM today has no regard for reporting the news, they are simply out to make a quick buck and be darned those who get hurt in the process. Not once was anyone from my ministry contacted regarding the allegations against us.
When I founded Baptist For Brownback 2008 it was soley to show that one does not have to be a Catholic to support Sam Brownback and to spread the love of God. It is the Liberal Media and the RINOs in this world that has tried to take something beautiful and make it into something ugly. Well, Jesus always wins.

A Vote Sam Brownback in 2008 is like a Vote for Jesus!

Mrs. T.D. Gaines-Crockett
Republican, Christian, Baptist
Founder, Baptists For Brownback 2008
http://baptistsforbrown2008.wordpress.com/
— Posted by Mrs. T.D. Gaines-Crockett

Is it true? Is it false? I'd guess satire, but either way, the appropriate response is to laugh your arse off.

356. The Out Campaign

Comment #62141 by _J_ on August 8, 2007 at 10:12 am

Sinbad - excellent ideas! :D

But:

Elton John could entertain.

...I think you may have interpreted the 'Come OUT' campaign too literally.

357. The Out Campaign

Comment #62126 by _J_ on August 8, 2007 at 9:05 am

Ewan D - Yeah, that's the one.

With reference to BillySands' post: I guess Our Lord and Saviour would have a better case if the constant prints were webbed.

358. Eight-million-year-old bug is alive and growing

Comment #62087 by _J_ on August 8, 2007 at 5:48 am

So this is why eating snow makes you sick.

doodinthemood, 8

Fascinating, if rather dumbed down. ("Gene popsicles"...)

I agree. Surely most reasonably intelligent people would recognise the correct term: 'genesicles'.

On the more general theme: I'd welcome more general science, discovery and innovation. I'm not complaining, though - I have New Scientist for all that and I think the religious debate is important (and quite enjoyable). But it'd be a shame for us to be all fighty-fighty and no time to show an interest in the view of the universe we're defending.

359. The Out Campaign

Comment #62046 by _J_ on August 8, 2007 at 2:37 am

Paul Creber, 682

why hasn't your latest tome appeared on the Free Church site?

Dunno. Just noticed yesterday that yours, one of mine to Di and (sigh) Richard's had shown up. I've got two pending (one big 'un, and one to Mary on the other thread) that were posted at the same time as the one to Di. Guess they'll filter through (like boulders through a sieve).

I like your post there, by the way. You adjusted it slightly, no? 'I suppose it would be futile...'. :D

360. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61972 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 4:55 pm

Hey, Dianelos,

I think you should write the book! Don't be daunted - I reckon you'd make a good job of it. And I'd be really interested to see how it's received in the wider world.

I've not really been keeping up with this of late, just reading the odd bit here and there. (Thanks for your last substantial post to me, by the way.) Whenever I think of something to say, I'm pretty convinced that it's stuff I've already said long, long ago. So I'm trying not to just push on a roundabout.

I did take a quick look at The Hard Problem of Consciousness and the zombie thought experiment via google today, though. I'm at present pretty convinced that it's a non-argument based on a failure of conception and a mix-up between physicalism and description - but I'm still not well enough informed to argue that at any degree of detail. (However, Chalmers' zombie argument does appear to reduce to 'Physicalism is inadequate if physicalism is inadequate; and physicalism is inadequate' backed up purely with 'I think I can imagine what I'm talking about, therefore it's true' - which still doesn't impress me much. Oh, and Mary's Room seems vulnerable to several objections that make sense to me. But still, I'm not well read in this.)

Your argument still overall seems as it did when I was last posting. Though I'm behind with the details, an overall analogy for how it all feels to me could be:

It's a court case (always an obvious choice). Someone's on trial for murder. The prosecution's case is sorely short on evidence. The defence's case seems more than a decent match for it. But it's not iron clad. There are gaps in the defence. It's still just possible that the accused is guilty, but to believe as much would require a leap of imagination on the part of the jury. Sensibly, they have to conclude that the man is innocent.

But the prosecution makes an appeal along these lines. She says:

Our case works much better. You've heard the evidence for both sides. Now, if you find the accused innocent, they'll walk free. You'll know there's still a guilty party, out there somewhere. And you won't really know what the accused did on the night in question, either. All you'll have is a dead body, the knowledge that the killer is still at large and a heap of uncertainty.

But, if you find him guilty, everything then makes sense. The gaps in the evidence on both sides vanish - suddenly you know exactly what the accused was doing on the night in question. You've got one corpse and one murderer - there's no-one else out there stalking the streets. And justice will have been done, not thwarted. You can go home satisfied and peaceful.

So: find him guilty. Our case makes a coherent story with no gaps out of the evidence, whilst an innocent verdict leaves a massive gap where a murderer should be. Obviously a guilty verdict works better. And that's the most important thing.

That's pretty much how your claims for idealistic theism sound to me, and have sounded for a long time. It 'works better' in the sense that it tells a story you'd like to be true and it ties up all the loose ends in the evidence. But clearly in the above analogy the man must be found innocent. In future, more evidence my emerge that either shows him to be actually guilty and occasions a retrial (if the nation's legal system allows that!), or that shows someone else to be guilty. But on the basis of current evidence, a guilty verdict would be unwarranted. There's much too great a risk of locking up the wrong man - and leaving a guilty one free of the ongoing investigation that could catch him.

That was a very long-winded way of saying 'I'm not trying to re-enter the debate'! Take care,

J

361. The Out Campaign

Comment #61969 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 4:12 pm

BillySands, 678

suddenly one of them was possessed by the spitit and they all started dancing with joy - even the guy in the chair was doing wheelies because god was so great.

Oh, please. Why don't we just worship cocaine, for coke's sake?

I really dislike that kind of story (and I seem to hear it all the time). Partly because it's so twee that it makes me want to gnaw my face off. Partly because it's such a desperate retreat to emotional manipulation that I don't know whether to pity the speaker or hit them with a spade. And partly because it entails complete abandonment of trying to make any kind of reasonable argument at all - and yet still seems gleefully satisfying to whoever's telling the tale (who, moments before, you could have sworn was a sensible adult human being who was in no danger of being persuaded by gobshite that a backwards child would laugh at). It's like watching someone add a single drop of religion to a living brain and the whole thing dissolving before your eyes.

'God must be real, because he gives me such joy that I can't describe it.' Yet, if you paraphrase this into something more like an argument - 'I believe in god because it makes me really, really happy' - somehow that's not what was being said at all. Because it's substantively different? No. Because when you put it like that it's obvious that belief has nothing to do with the existence of god. And that 'I feel happy, therefore god' is bollocks. (Yet, funnily enough, I've never won a friend by pointing that out.)

Must be late: I'm being all intolerant. I must get a religious pet so I can hug it from time to time as reparation. Know any cuddly animals that are docile enough to accept Jesus?

'Night.

362. The Out Campaign

Comment #61963 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 3:32 pm

BillySands

Simple: god hates sports. He fiddles about with different athlete's performances, making the whole thing completely unfair. And he regards amputees as especially blessed and better off out of it all.

363. The Out Campaign

Comment #61959 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 3:13 pm

Sinbad - thanks for not leaving us to stew in idle speculation.

there's always more than enough evil, nonsense and silliness to go around -- on all sides.

Very true.

Don't know whether you've looked at the early part of this thread, or at the other articles on the Out Campaign, but if you do you'll find yourself in excellent company in feeling sceptical about the big A tee shirts. Plenty of people don't like them.

Still, at least they don't say 'I Belong To Dawkins'. (Nice photo, by the way!)

364. The Out Campaign

Comment #61946 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 2:22 pm

Goldy,

My guess was atheist. Sinbad's such a great name for an atheist, after all. Not just 'sin': 'Sin bad'. (Maybe a satanist?)

No offence, Sinbad. Hope you hang around to get embroiled.

365. The Out Campaign

Comment #61943 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 2:04 pm

Northern Bright, 668

Know what? I won't. [Good reasons ensue...]

Fair enough. Can't really argue with any of that.

I suppose I find it hard to call all lies and mistruths bad. Placebos are always the example that comes to mind. It's perfectly possible that this or that condition might actually respond better to a strong placebo effect than to a physical medicine. I don't know for sure of any examples, but I think this quite likely.

One of my grandparents fell in with the spiritualists late on in life. I had to bite my tongue on the subject. I don't believe for a moment that the nice lady who visited her had supernatural access to my Nan's dead husband, or that any of her wonders of divination were really more than good cold reading and paying attention to my Nan.

But I actually don't think this was exploitation. Not quite. This wasn't a stage show done to big the spiritualist's ego up and I don't think she was charging exorbitant prices. And my Nan wouldn't have been holding her cards very close to her chest! My Nan would have wanted to believe these comforting things in the last years of her life, and the nice lady who visited her and chatted with her and ran groups that she and others attended gave her sources of comfort, companionship and wonder during those years. And no amount of me reading Unweaving the Rainbow and saying 'Wow!' would have equalled that.

(She liked Derren Brown - until she saw the one where he convinced a man he was inside a zombie video game, at which point she declared him wicked and dangerous and refused to watch him any more.)

I'm no fan of religions and I think that they giftwrap dangerous fabrications in layers of immoral misdirection and ignorance. But, for all that, religons have not been universally propagated by malicious evil-doers over the centuries. They've come to include a lot of quite profound and effective memes - effective not just for self-propagation, but for genuinely helping people to muddle through - in spite of their manifest flaws and failings. I think we risk doing our own understanding (not to mention our argument) harm by characterising religion as a blanket evil. That is in itself a form of myth making.

Science ought to be able to swallow back its gut distaste of telling fibs and measure the effects. In some cases, I think, a good, well-intentioned lie is worth more than its weight in pesky, apathetic truths. I can't say that honesty really is always the best policy. But I think it's worth our doing the observation and the research so we can choose our lies sensibly.

This strategy isn't for everyone. Your tolerance for truth and my own are probably different. I expect I have a fabrication threshold somewhere - a point at which I'd just rather not know. I don't know what it is yet. I think I'd rather not find out. ;)

[EDIT - Just realised how much I've waffled, given that your actual objection was more specifically about whether 'God' throws more at us than we can handle. Well, I guess it's obvious how all of this applies! I suppose, if life does give us more than we can handle alone, then we seek help - which is why I had my little proviso in brackets in the original post. And if it gives us really more than we can handle no matter what we do, then we're buggered and that's all there is to it. I see no value in assuming this to be the case early on - from personal observation and the bits and pieces I've read (so nothing authoritative, admittedly), it appears that people generally fare better if they can retain some optimism. So I think that this idea - that you can cope, somehow, to some level, perhaps with help - is probably a good one. As long as it isn't overly strictly applied (eg sometimes coping effectively involves admitting to yourself that you can't cope with a particular issue.) Oh, I wish I hadn't started this!]

Paul Creber, 667

And that's just Genesis 1-3. Let's not go anywhere near [the other 1,186 chapters]

and

It is the liberals, not the fundamentalists, who are the true renegades from biblical Christianity.

Nice observations! Snappy and forceful.

366. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #61860 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 6:49 am

You've got to love the comments that The Daily Mail has seen fit to display (still no rise on four). Nice balanced 50/50 split between detractors and sympathisers - two apiece. The two objectors seek to clarify the difference between science and religion: fine.

Now look at the two that seem to be chipping in on Ms Phillips' side:

- Bryan Phillips (any connection?), of St Ives, Cornwall, thinks that Dawkins is the originator of the Big Bang theory. Bryan confidently rebuts this theory on the basis that if someone who knew nothing of astro physics had it described to them in a pub, they'd find it hard to believe - at least, they would if they were Bryan Phillips himself. Impressive to see someone outdoing Melanie in the field of arguing from ignorance.

- Nigel, of Ely, Cambs, who writes:

How well put! "My ways are not your ways nor my thought yours" comes to mind

Compare Ms Phillips' own remarks:

The heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the belief in the concept of truth, which gives rise to reason. But our postreligious age has proclaimed that there is no such thing as objective truth, only what is "true for me".

Gosh: agreement by outright contradiction - a new tactic, to me.

Surely it's got to tell you something when, after you've finished shouting your argument from your street corner, the only people left standing next to you are self-satisfied ignoramuses and those who have misunderstood you? With friends like these, Ms Phillips...

367. The Out Campaign

Comment #61855 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 6:26 am

Oh, and Happy Birthday Philip! Didn't realise (ta, Billy).

368. The Out Campaign

Comment #61854 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 6:24 am

BillySands

Very good! I recognise those arguments.

I'll allow them 'He never puts us in a situation that we can not handle' as there may be a useful bit of self-empowering positive psychology hidden in that idea (as long as it doesn't lead people to struggle on blindly with something they really need help with, or should give up on entirely). But I overwhelmingly agree. Noxious examples, especially the guilt about Jesus and the bogus power of prayer.

Don't let it make you angry, though, Billy! Have some tea and marvel at the ease with which one can speak The Wisdom of The LORD. Pastafarians have International Talk Like A Pirate Day (arr) - perhaps we could have a slightly more subversive Talk Like A Priest game? (After all, religious apologists have been unscrupulously indulging in some kind of global Pretend To Be A Scientist charade for years.) We could make it measurable and competitive. First prize to anyone who manages to convince an entire congregation that they are a genuine priest before coming clean. (I wonder whether Communion counts if it's led by a dissembling atheist?)

Note to religious readers: this isn't a serious plan and doesn't really happen, except with Derren Brown.

(Or does it...?)

369. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #61846 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 5:54 am

infidel_michael, 50

Good point! But:

I really doubt it, because all atheists I know are laughing at all this non-sense, and all christians I know believe at least homeopathy or faith healing, or they defend these charlatans because "science cannot explain everything".

...Phillips may still have a point, though. There may well be a (possibly quite large) number of people in whom the desire to believe something is pretty strong, but who no longer have a strong religious faith, either because they were brought up in a broadly secular culture or because folks like Dawkins have done a good job of kicking its teeth out. It's entirely possible that such people might fall short of secure sceptical atheism and instead collect other, non-religious superstitions as a result. There might be a correlation between secularity and superstition. It's possible.

None of this amounts to a criticism of Dawkins, science or atheism, though. In fact, it just reinforces the point. Dawkins is doing exactly the right thing by taking on pseudoscience and unreason more broadly. A better job needs to be done by the media, by education, by politicians and by scientists of giving people an ability to think critically and a fuller sense of the methods and discoveries of science.

I guess it's like this: My carpets are dirty. I vacuum the kitchen and I dust off my socks - everything is wonderful. Then I walk into the next room and my socks pick up a load of crap off the floor again. Phillips thinks this is an argument to just leave the kitchen floor dirty. I'd say I need to vacuum the other rooms, too.

370. The Out Campaign

Comment #61839 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 5:27 am

Hey, Philip,

I want to do something a bit weird here. David's in Bulgaria now, I suppose, so it might be a while before you get an answer. But I want to have a go at guessing an answer for you.

Please bear in mind that the opinions I'm about to express are not my own. You know me well enough to be sure that I don't believe any of the following. I'm just writing it to make a sort of a point about the kind of logic we're dealing with here and the kinds of responses it provides for certain arguments.

So, were I still a Christian, as I was a few years ago, and had you asked me the question you've asked David, the thoughts in my mind would be along these lines:

God was not ignoring her and never abandoned her. God was with her in whatever strength she found to carry on. God was with her in every good experience she had amidst the bad. God was there encouraging her to survive her ordeal and to find a way to bring an end to it.

It is always a mistake to think that God has abandoned you. God does not abandon us - He is always present and always attentive, but we can never expect to predict His actions. We are to submit to His authority. ['I' might refer to Mary Stevenson's well-known 'footprints in the sand' story about being supported by Jesus.]

It is also a mistake to assume that God is punishing us. He is a loving God who knows what is best for us all, and this may sometimes be something that seems completely at odds with what you or I would think best. His plans are plans for the life beyond as well as for this world, and so may seem very strange – even wrong – to us, with our limited perceptions. It is important that we retain our trust and love for God.

The world's evils come from the fact that we have all turned away from God and his goodness. Your friend was suffering at the hands of someone whose heart was hardened against God. No matter what his stated beliefs, his actions show that he had not accepted Jesus as his saviour, but was acting out of his own sinfulness. Your friend's torment came from the consequences of godlessness.

You noted that:

This woman had made a PROMISE to god to stay with that man through sickness and in health, till death do they part.

That's true, but that man had broken his part of the bargain through his actions. He was already defying his promise by abusing her.

As Alister McGrath tried to explain in the clip on this site, God does not usually intervene in obvious and direct ways. He does not block tsunamis with His divine hand. Perhaps it was not God's plan to intervene directly against your friend's suffering (by incapacitating her abuser, for example) but to challenge her to accept His love even in a time of hardship and to use the strength she could draw from Him to challenge her abuser and to bring about an end to this painful period in her life. We are challenged by God to believe Him fully, not only in our statements but in our thoughts and actions, and to integrate His word and His love into the ways in which we live our lives. We are not to challenge him – to demand or expect Him to behave in particular ways – but to ask Him into our lives and then to know that He is with us.

'I' am glad that your friend found strength through her friends to end this horrible episode, but saddened that she also lost her faith in God. God did not abandon her, no matter how difficult the situation may have been to comprehend. I hope that she may in future, in less painful times, come again to feel His love and to understand the nature of our relationship with Him more fully.

Urgh, I'm really sorry – it made me feel quite sick to write the last bit of that. I hope I haven't offended you, Philip. From a non-religious perspective (like yours or mine) that kind of explanation is very distasteful. And I'm personally very glad to hear that your friend was rescued by her friends and her escape from religion.

The only reason I thought it worth going through this exercise is to show that I don't think this kind of argument ever really presents a rational problem to a believer. At least, not to a fairly intelligent Christian. Once you've accepted God's existence, and that it doesn't need anything as simplistic as clear evidence, any event on earth can be rationalised.

I was a little surprised that McGrath didn't defend himself a little better against Dawkins in the discussion left out of The Root of All Evil? when Dawkins spotted him contradicting himself on 'God doesn't make physical interventions/God rescues little girls from tsunamis'. I thought he'd avail himself of the obvious escape route: God doesn't make physical, wave-parting miraculous interventions, but he influences the little girl to run over here, climb onto this, grab hold of that, thereby using his infinite knowledge to preserve her life (whilst letting thousands of others drown, for reasons of his own). Of course, to you or I or Dawkins, tinkering with someone's thoughts is making miraculous physical interventions, but here we slide towards the convenient gap in our understanding of consciousness that allows Christians to go on believing that there's such a thing as a soul.

Should the Christian apologist's imagination fail to provide them with these sorts of 'God might have been doing [whatever]' explanations, even the most outright, silver-lining-less, appalling events can be made safe by the idea of judgement and heaven, because even the most apparently unjust happenings can be assumed to be just within the greater context of eternal life and God's judgement.

Which is what makes religions like Christianity so immoral, really – to make justice in our world less important than imagined justice in a made-up one.

So, I don't think that religions have much to worry about so far as theodicy is concerned – at least, not in rational terms. All of this can be rationalised away just fine once you believe in god. But I do think that examples like yours, even though they can be glibly reasoned away by an apologist, are definitely worth making, over and over again. Because doing so keeps up the emotional pressure and forces the religious apologist to pit their rationalisations against real examples of suffering. Maybe this just equips some of them to rationalise better, I don't know. But whatever the case, it puts them within spitting distance of the important question: 'Do I have any right to believe this, given the existence of human suffering, on such evidence as I have? Is it right for me to make and trust these rationalisations?'

I'll be interested to know whether David can offer anything better than this. I can't imagine what it might be.

What a lot of wittering. Sorry. Cheers.

371. Leading Article: Divine inspiration

Comment #61827 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 3:21 am

How else to explain the top position among Labour MPs of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion?

I wonder if the free copies sent to MPs by visitors to this site had anything to do with it.

[EDIT - Nefrubyr - sorry, just noticed you'd had the same thought.]

(USA_Limey - that definitely looks inflamed. I recommend drops.)

372. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #61823 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 3:00 am

Donald, 36

failure by the media to present science responsibly coupled with a focus on the sensational, the absurd, the attention-getting, and the ill-informed

Clearly you can't be talking about The Daily Mail.

(I can't see my comment appearing on their list, either. For people who are happy to put the boot into entire fields that they know nothing about about, they're a sensitive lot.)

373. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #61818 by _J_ on August 7, 2007 at 2:25 am

epeeist, 17,

Unfortunately yes, one of the aims of Lord Northcliffe (the owner of the paper) was to give its readers a "daily hate".

It still aims to do that.

Yet what The Daily Mail does even more effectively is to provide non-readers with an ongoing hatred of The Daily Mail.

I think what makes my blood boil is the unearned certainty with which Ms Phillips states her case. She's allowed her uninformed lunacy if she wants it, but it maddens me to find her advancing it in such confident terms: 'The Bible provides [...]', 'There is no evidence [...]', 'the West [...] is turning the clock back'. She gives no evidence to support her contentions (which themselves indicate her profound ignorance of all the relevant areas) yet speaks in terms that an academic with a bibliography a metre thick would shy away from.

That little bracketed aside on ID - 'Whether or not they are right (and I don't know)' - sticks out like a sore thumb. I wonder whether this is simply what passes for adequate journalistic caution in Daily Mail offices, or whether even Ms Phillips is aware that ID is so far away from science as to have been found so in a US federal court.

The shallow certainties of religious reasoning are manifest again. Ms Phillips should absolutely have the right to express her views freely, just as supermarkets should be able to sell microwave meals loaded with salt. But in both cases a good clear health warning should be attached.

374. Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

Comment #61509 by _J_ on August 5, 2007 at 12:37 pm

Perfect memory is the one that remembers all that is good and forgets all that isn't

Defence lawyers would be falling over themselves to get God in a jury.

375. The Out Campaign

Comment #61460 by _J_ on August 5, 2007 at 8:14 am

I once met a child who wanted to be a boxer. Neither of his parents were boxers. It is clear that the desire to wear big gloves and hit people is intrinsic to all human beings and that boxing is therefore the one true religion.

Although, being a fireman was a more popular choice, so perhaps we should be worshiping the god of hose-pipes. (Who had presumably taken over from the god of train drivers.)

Nowadays it seems that most kids just want to be famous. Is there a god of flashing one's baps on reality TV? There's a religion we could do without.

376. Are antidepressants taking the edge off love?

Comment #61327 by _J_ on August 4, 2007 at 5:07 pm

cartomancer (and also cynthax's and detox's input),

Just wanted to say I'm finding your comments here very interesting and worthwhile. The angle you're pursuing, cartomancer, has been playing on my mind for a couple of years while I've been on-and-off trying to write a play that relates (a little bit) to them. There are some interesting questions about how we see ourselves and our emotions, what we regard as desirable and undesirable, what seems essential to the human experience and so forth in this topic. And you're spot on that romantic love is fetishised in our culture (well, in mine, anyway) to the point that it's peculiarly difficult to make any reasonable criticisms of it. (After a recent reading of a little extract from my script-in-progress, someone enthused about how interesting they thought it would be to see the play go on to compare 'real love' with the 'just chemicals' idea. Ah yes: because there's no way super-duper magic love could be just about chemicals, of course.)

It does all relate interestingly to the religion theme on this website, too. If our criticism of religion conceives of its target as a common human delusion capable of empowering its holders to extreme acts and emotions, some positive and productive, some agonising and destructive, then we could equally well be describing romantic (/manic) love. It's fascinating to think about whether the train of thought that leads us to criticise religion ought also to lead us to similarly criticise love - and if not, why not.

Anyway, just thought I'd chip in my thanks and applause. (Time for bed - better take of my pointy ears.)

377. The Out Campaign

Comment #61325 by _J_ on August 4, 2007 at 4:23 pm

stevencarrwork, 626,

That was fascinating. Thank you for sharing it and making it easy to understand.

378. The Out Campaign

Comment #61295 by _J_ on August 4, 2007 at 1:34 pm

Hi, David – 613,

Somewhere along the line you are choosing how you take all this stuff. I'm sure it's not as simple as your personal taste. But there's still a choice there.

No – its not just choice. Its basic principles of reading. Context etc.

Okay, we have an agreement here (hooray!) but I think you're not quite appreciating what's being agreed. '[B]asic principles of reading. Context etc' covers a hell of a lot of interpretative scope. (At last we're in my area! It's not often Eng. Lit is relevant, but theories of authorship, meaning and intention are actually something I've read about.)

Let's talk about something uncontroversial, like Pride and Prejudice. There are as many Pride and Prejudices as there are readers of Pride and Prejudice. Obviously Jane Austen only wrote one Pride and Prejudice, but the precise meaning of the book is something that is re-invented in collaboration with each individual reader – indeed, on each individual reading, as a reader returning to the book after a few years may understand it quite differently.

We have the same situation with all books, including the bible. You'll have noticed that there are quite a few different denominations of Christianity – within a single town, one could visit several churches with quite different takes on the bible and how it is to be understood and acted upon. Now, it's not reasonable to suppose that somehow yours is the only church in the world that is sufficiently competent in its reading abilities to have worked out what the bible really means, and that everyone else is wallowing in varying degrees of illiteracy. It's simply the case that the meaning of any text is established between the text and the reader.

What this means, counter-intuitive though it sounds to put it like this, is that the NIV sitting on my desk doesn't mean the same as the NIV on yours, because mine is read by me and yours is read by you.

This is why it's not a sensible thing to suggest that a book can give you all of your important rules and ideas about life. Hand that book to Fred Phelps and it becomes something quite unlike the tome you'd thought you'd lifted from your bookshelf. (Hand it to me and it becomes indescribably wonderful, because I'm so lovely.)

In practice, thankfully, what happens is much more sensible than all that sounds. The bible is capable of aging pretty well. Someone taking exactly your approach to the bible a few centuries ago or in a different culture than yours today will find a bible that applies readily to their particular culture. They might find a bible that supports their misogyny, or their deep seated hatred of their neighbouring state whose land they've always wanted. Or they might find a bible with much-needed messages of tolerance and peace that might bring an end to a period of strife. And you, reading in 21st century Scotland, can find a bible that fits in pretty well with contemporary British ethical consensus, and that develops and challenges you to live up to your moral ideals.

But you can see, I hope, that this also means that it's inaccurate to see this as meaning all the truth you need is in the bible. It isn't. The truth you find is forged from a sort of discussion between you and the bible, such that much of what you take away from the encounter was brought to it by you in the first place. Hence the Phelps' bible of hate and your bible of toleration, and the many different interpretations the world over.

Recognise this, and you recognise that you have every right to challenge troubling aspects of the bible. There is a large element of choice in your interpretation of sexual morality, even if you do not feel it is a choice that you are consciously making. Once you are aware of this, you will find that it raises an important question: 'Since I am to a large degree responsible for my interpretation of the bible, do I have the right to take from it an interpretation that conflicts with the prevailing morality of my culture, and which perhaps even conflicts with my own feelings about sexual morality (in the case of your stated non-homophobia)? Do I have a responsibility to make my interpretation a more consciously chosen act?'.

My recommendation would be one I've made to you before. By all means, keep using the bible, but don't give it such priority over everything else. Take it as one of many, many, many valid contributors to your ethical choices: books, plays, films, current affairs, conversations and so forth. You can still believe it was divinely inspired, if you like, and you certainly don't have to renounce god to take this path. You just need to be realistic about what a book is and how we derive meaning from it as readers. If the word of god is in there somewhere, we can't find it its pure form – it's just not possible. It's simplistic and dangerous to suppose we can. So take the bible off its pedestal and let it contribute its part alongside all the other sources of wisdom you have available to you. If god is real, he'll speak to you all the more clearly if you give him all these extra avenues through which to express himself.

Just food for thought, I hope.

You will excuse me pointing out that this thread is about atheists coming out.

Not really. The article that instigated the thread is about that, but there's no law about what we can talk about – hence the highly important discussions of tea and the divine right of Quetzalcoatl. Go again to the Dawkins/McGrath thread. Only a tiny fraction of it is about McGrath – it's overwhelmingly about the idealistic theism of Dianelos. Welcome to unmoderated democratic free-speech discussion.

Quite what this has to do with the WCF is beyond me. And why would you and others want to talk about it? Just accept my word that I do not believe the Pope is the anti-Christ and get back to the subject. Otherwise it becomes nonsensical.

It was a simple question that would have come and gone with most people not even noticing it if you hadn't spent so long squirming your way around it. That was all I was pointing out. You give undue prominence to trivia when you behave as though its touched a raw nerve.

But you are assuming that atheists all have the same beliefs about human beings. Even on this thread I was yelled at for suggesting that human life was more precious than animal. It is not self evident that atheists were treat all humans as being equal etc. In fact the original atheistic evolutionists used evolution to justify racism etc.

True. An atheist could have any number of non-theistic beliefs about life and its value. That's a completely fair point. To clarify, I was trying to show the basis for regarding human life as valuable without use of beliefs in the imperceptible.

Discussions about the value of animal life are interesting and tricky. Being humans, none of us has first-hand experience of being anything else… I can't value the life of an animal for you, and I don't find it a comfortable activity to discuss relative value of life in its different varieties. Yet this is something that ethicists need to address – and try to. I don't envy them. I just know that basic, vanilla, WYSIWYG atheism has an iron-clad basis for appreciating the value of human life, and that this basis is available to all and sundry in a way that specific religious alternatives are not.

As for the stuff about justifying racism – yes, sometimes people manipulate knowledge in unjustifiable ways to suit their existing prejudices. It's human nature and its something we need always to be alert to. Our broadly-accepted racism was something we threw in alongside our growing knowledge of things, rather than something that followed logically from that knowledge. The more we've learned, though, the more our racist impulses have proven unfounded. 'Calm down, stop making things up, look at the facts' was and remains the way forward.

If you have time to respond to me again, I'd be interested to hear your response to the main point in my last post to you, which was:

[…]when you are acting in such a way as will affect anyone else at all, it's only ethical that you should do so within an agreed framework about what's real.

…and the implications that go with that.

Thanks.

379. The Out Campaign

Comment #61275 by _J_ on August 4, 2007 at 12:38 pm

bls

What a marvelously sane comment - thank you!

(I used - briefly - to try to argue with someone on a different website whom we referred to as 'The BLR', because she gave herself the moniker Bobby's Last Reply. She was extremely aggressive towards atheists. She also thought that she was the reincarnation of The Virgin Mary and that she could influence the baking of cakes by praying. BLR, bls - what a difference a letter makes!)

380. Response to the God Delusion

Comment #61195 by _J_ on August 4, 2007 at 5:36 am

Nice post, Northern Bright.

381. The Out Campaign

Comment #61060 by _J_ on August 3, 2007 at 1:35 pm

Hello, David

I'm behind with this thread now (which is actually a really nice feeling) but I'd like to say thanks for your last reply to me, which was more like it!

Your replies about homosexuality: okay. I still don't get why you support the Bible's teachings on sexuality, but I'm grateful for you clarifying things a little. I don't know what you actually do believe now, but I guess the book recommendation you gave me might help me out there. Am I to take it that it's too complicated for you to give a short, one-paragraph summary?

You wrote to kkant:

Like life it really is not that simplistic. I do not believe that the Mosaic civil law still applies – I do not believe that homosexuals should be killed or even that homosexuals should be criminalized. And I believe the Bible.

I agree that life, and this sort of matter, are not simple. You also said this (to me):

If the only comments on homosexuality were in Leviticus then the position would be different. I take my position from the NT. I do not discard the stuff I do not like the taste of – there are parts of the Bible that I do not like the taste of but I accept that my personal taste should not be the determining factor.

But there is a determining factor somewhere, isn't there? I'm not great in terms of bible knowledge, but speaking very broadly:

- the OT gave us some strong (though not always good, in my opinion) principles and some extremely draconian recommendations for enforcing them.
- in the NT, Jesus exhorts his followers to follow the old laws
- but he also does lots of things that adjust the way we see those old laws. For example, the 'Let he who is without sin throw the first stone' principle in John 8 is a great demonstration of how the OT's laws can be modified into something more reasonable. Sometimes these are actions on Jesus' part, sometimes they are parables. Often they leave his disciples somewhat mystified, but they certainly give us food for thought.

Now, this opens up a wide range of possible interpretations. Let's just stick with 'Let he who is without sin…' as an example. A reader could decide that this is an incitement never to act in enforcement of any laws, because none but Jesus are sufficiently upstanding to act in judgement of anyone else. Another reader could take this as a strong warning against hypocrisy, and bump that to the top of their list of sins. A third might decide this only applies to adultery.

Overall, there's a wide spectrum of possible interpretations, which is why we can find you with your church of happy homosexuals (apparently) on the one hand, and those lunatic Phelps' on the other. Somewhere along the line you are choosing how you take all this stuff. I'm sure it's not as simple as your personal taste. But there's still a choice there.

I think it is completely unreasonable for you to expect me to write pages of material in response to all the posts.

I'm not really expecting that, though. Sure, you're here on your own terms. Feel free to define them. Say 'I'm not here to talk about X' and then just ignore all posts about X. You'd be well within your rights.

Thing is, if you gave straight answers, you'd find a lot less questions! Like this:

You said to scottishgeologist:

Our Church is committed to the WCF – but we do not regard the Pope being the anti-Christ as anything other than an historical identification which was actually wrong. Not only do we state that but in my 25 years as a Free Church minister I have never heard anyone claim the Pope was the anti-Christ. I think the WCF was wrong at that point. Is it possible for me to be any clearer than that. And I am still intrigued as to why, in a discussion about atheists coming out, you consider this to be a significant point?

At last! Now, that paragraph would have been very welcome back near the beginning of this thread. But time and again, you gave half-answers like 'I've never said the Pope was the anti-Christ' – which immediately makes us think 'Why hasn't he mentioned the WCF? Is he hiding something?' And, as is usually the case, as is usually the case, the result is just that you'll hear the same questions over and over again.

Why not stick to the subjects of this thread?

I'm pretty sure I've only asked you things that were in response to your comments on this thread before me. If you make an argument that looks dodgy to me, I generally think it's okay to point that out and see if doing so gets us anywhere. If the comments of yours that I've picked up on were themselves responses to issues that you didn't want to address – well, sorry for pouring petrol on the fire, but in future, I recommend not lighting it in the first place!

You said to roach:

"Love your enemy" has got to be the dumbest precepts one could attempt to live up to. You're attempting to do the impossible and setting yourself up for failure and guilt."

Yes – but remember according to your colleagues it is subtle ploy to get power! I think it is a great precept and one that would change the world.

'Love your enemy' is one of those interesting principles that's great for challenging some of our automatic destructive instincts and encouraging us to be thoughtful, sympathetic people. To that extent, I think it's wholly laudable. And I'm one of those soppy fools who thinks that most of the world's ills would be solved (or a lot more solvable) if everyone did care about each other more.

However, like most extremely simple rules, it needs to be used with some caution, especially if it's tagged on to 'Turn the other cheek'. In our sadly violent world in which we cannot expect our enemies to give a fudge about us, this is a recipe for coaching innocent, loving people to give themselves up to exploitation and slaughter by apathetic predators. I can't and won't support that. It's wholly unjust.

You said to Henri

Why would I want to beat you?

It was a fair presumption. Everyone wants to beat Henri. There just aren't enough sticks.

( ;) , Henri)

You said to BAEOZ:

This is a fundamental difference. I do not believe the universe consists only of what I can perceive. It is far greater than that.

This raises an old but worthwhile point. You're welcome to believe in the imperceptible, where your belief affects no one but yourself. But when you are acting in such a way as will affect anyone else at all, it's only ethical that you should do so within an agreed framework about what's real. That includes all perceptible facts, which are available to both parties. But if your beliefs about imperceptible things are going to influence your actions, you need to ascertain first that the other party shares these beliefs. Right?

So, for example, if you believe Behaviour X to be wrong based only on your religious beliefs, it isn't acceptable for you to tell someone who has committed Behaviour X that it is wrong, unless they share your beliefs. All you can say is 'It's wrong within the context of my personal beliefs, but I have no basis for asserting that these apply to you'. You would certainly be outside your rights to pursue any action attempting to constrain Behaviour X, except among fellow believers (ie with their consent).

You could politely request that no one should include you in any enactments of Behaviour X. However, your objection would be outweighed were Behaviour X justified with reference to the realm of the perceptible. A mild example might be if your religious beliefs stated that taxation was sinful, whilst your government could explain to you that the life you lead in your country depends on your contributions of taxes. An extreme example could be a jihadist, who may personally believe that killing himself and others is hunky dory within the context of his personal beliefs in the imperceptible. These beliefs are not shared by his victims. The realm of the perceptible, which is accessible to all parties, only shows that we humans live until we're dead and that's our lot, and gives no indication of a post-mortem vindication for 'martyrs'. This judgement, based on knowledge available to all parties, overrides private beliefs in the imperceptible, no matter how vociferously they are maintained (and so it must, if we don't want to live in an unchecked chaos of rampant conflicting demands).

I just want to check that I have your agreement on this. I expect that I do. It's relatively uncontroversial, but of course it cuts completely against fundamentalist believers. Without it, we'd be saying that it's okay for fundamentalists to assert their personal beliefs in face of our opposing opinions.

Having made that point, let's just finish:

You also said to BAEOZ:

" All faiths seem to lead to believers seeing non believers as less than human. "

- absolute rubbish. Biblical Christianity teaches that all human beings are created equally in the image of God and are fully human and should be treated and respected as such.

You see, this is both good and bad. It's great that your belief encourages you to value all people equally and I'm glad you are too intelligent and compassionate to support a faith that would not.

But the reasons you give are unacceptable. You're basing your evaluation of the value of all human life on your personal belief in the imperceptible. I don't think – for the reasons described above – you have any right to think about the value of my life in terms such beliefs that I do not myself share. When you are judging the value of something common to all people, you have to use a standard that applies to all people, and that means the realm of the perceptible again.

Atheism has no problem here. Our conception of the value of human life comes from what we can observe to be true about human life – that it's the medium through which we experience everything that we ever experience, and that it's all too easily impaired or ended. This, as I've pointed out to you often, means that we must regard human life as the most valuable thing going.

The practical problem with your misuse of personal belief in the imperceptible in this instance is its psychological side effects. To a fellow Christian, this presents a huge disincentive to abandon Christianity. Why? Because such a person's entire conception of the value of life is (unjustifiably) entangled with their belief in God. To lose one's belief in God would be to lose one's current sense of the value of life – potentially a very traumatic event.

Secondly, and less upsettingly, this misuse also earns you some of the rancour you get from atheists. To hear that you think we are valuable only because of your belief in an imperceptible god makes you (I mean 'you' generally, as in all Christians) seem arrogant, presumptuous, patronising and completely out of touch with the world we're living in. 'How do they think we manage to value each other?', we wonder. 'How dare they reduce our lives to their apparently made-up beliefs?'

I'm not sure whether it's possible to reverse this situation to recreate the feeling for you, but I'll try: imagine if atheists habitually smiled and told you that they regarded you as every bit as valuable as themselves purely because they know that God didn't make any of us. Don't be confused: this is not quite what we actually say. Atheists believe there's no god based on the perceptible evidence available to all of us, and that we're equally valuable for the same reasons. That's a bit different. Instead, I'm asking you to imagine that atheists said: 'We are sure there's no god, evidence or no evidence, and that we are only valuable as human beings because there is no god. And it doesn't matter if you carry on being quaintly wrong with your silly god ideas – you're still valuable, because god didn't really make you, no matter what you think'. How do you think you would like that?

To recap: I'm glad you think all humans are valuable. But you've no real right to judge that value in the way you do, and a lot of harm floats in the wake of your good intentions.

So, did you really agree with me up above when I wrote:

[…]when you are acting in such a way as will affect anyone else at all, it's only ethical that you should do so within an agreed framework about what's real.

…and pointed out how this argument is our defence against fundamentalism? If so, then you have a bit of cold facing-up to your own contraventions of this principle to do.

I invite you to raise this as a discussion point in Bulgaria! (I won't claim a proportion of your fees.)

Cheers,

J

382. The Out Campaign

Comment #60705 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 5:55 pm

Dr Benway

I can't see any samurai in your arse, either. I'd take this as a cause for relief and be done with it.

Henri Bergson,

Yes please! Tell us a story, old bear! (But do stop flirting with Dr B. You scoundrel - almost had me convinced with that 'I don't talk to gay fascists' routine.)

383. The Out Campaign

Comment #60698 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 5:44 pm

Hello again, David,

I'd say 'thanks for responding' but I'm not sure you actually did. Three years of English gave me the opinion that it's impossible to make an utterance without content but you're forcing me to revise my position. You were polite, but politeness does not an argument make.

You got three solid posts of argument out of me, plus another of restatements and links back to the others. You are still misrepresenting me and choosing answers that don't address questions.

I mean:

I believe the Bible's teaching about human sexuality.

Yes. I know you do, David. We all know you do. What I'm asking is: why? You don't believe its commands that you should murder disobedient kids. You don't consider moving things about a bit on the Sabbath a capital offence. I strongly doubt you obey its tips about mixed-blend fabrics. I bet you don't follow its decree that you should annually kiss an elephant seal (there you go: a made up detail. Why not ignore all the meaningful points and use that one alone to complain that all atheists ever do is lie about your faith? For the first time ever. If it'll help you out I can stoop to calling you names, too).

You pick and choose your interpretation of the bible, David Robertson. Your own beliefs and practices are a testament to that. You select your own notion of moral sexual practice. The bible's just raw material: like making pies from pigs, you discard the stuff you don't like the taste of. For some reason, you like the taste of homophobia. Yet I don't think you are personally homophobic. Come on, David. I wish you could see this matter as clearly as it appears to me. If I'm seeing it wrongly: for God's sake help me out and make a proper argument Surely the combined might of the Word of the LORD and your experience as a preacher can equip you to evangelise to people who require that big, belief-shaping arguments should actually make sense? And, if not, does that suggest anything to you?

As for your fondness for misrepresentation: you use both edges of that blade, don't you?:

I do find it amusing that you think this site is not primarily about religion

I expect there's a pristine process of reasoning by which you distilled that interpretation from my words, to whit:

Many articles here are about religion and even more discussion threads head that way, since that's been by far and away the most emotive and attention-grabbing subject, but there are a lot of straightforward science items knocking about, too.

...but bugger me if I know what it is. I say 'many', you say 'primarily'. Fine, you're welcome to 'primarily': you're right. What a world of difference. If you 'find it amusing', you're laughing at your own joke. And if this - a quibble about emphasis - is really the most interesting thing you could think of to say in response to all I have asked you, I despair of this discussion. And I wonder what your faith is made of, that you allow serious challenges to plunge into it undefended whilst you instead spend your time being amused by trivia.

What of the other arguments I've made to you? Whilst steve99, BillySands and others cling tenaciously to particular issues in the hope that one day before we are all dead you might give them a full, straight answer (a perfectly sensible tactic, by the way), I've been playing the 'challenge as many points as possible' game. Your response? You just stop addressing them. If I keep at this, are you going to you stop talking entirely?

I'll race you to it, because this looks like an impasse. If you're not wilfully ignoring my arguments, then you're failing to appreciate what they are saying. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. But no one's going to benefit from my finding more and more ways of rephrasing them. I think you've had the usual three strikes. There's no point in talking past you any more. Sincerely: take care, best wishes for Bulgaria, and thanks for your time.

This is the sound of speechless frustration:

...

384. The Out Campaign

Comment #60623 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 1:37 pm

it means it that the best thing that can happen to new-born children is death
(steve99, 414)

Oh, absolutely. The Christian 'All you need is God, God, God (God is all you need)' doctrine is all kinds of wrong. You could make a case that the ideal thing would be for every newly converted Christian to be immediately executed, to eliminate the chances of their backsliding. That'd confound Satan alright!

'Course, that'd never work in practice - evangelism would become a bit of a nightmare job (and who'd be left to do it, after all?). Bit crazy that it makes theoretical sense, though, eh?

I guess that the absolute best thing for any Christian really serious about saving the human race from sin would be if, harnessing the magic of 21st century communications, everyone in the world could be persuaded to accept Jesus - just for a day, on a no-commitment, money-back basis. Wait till noon on Jesus Day and hit the nukes...

Mind, plenty of Christians reckon god's already decided who's saved and who's damned, so the nukes can rain down any time as far as they're concerned - hence our Rapture-Ready friends.

From what I remember of briefly studying Calvin, he was of this ilk - that god has already determined his Elect and there isn't diddly squat you or I can do about it. This raised a serious ethical problem for Calvin, trying to maintain something like order in his Genevan theocracy: 'If God's already decided who's going to heaven and who isn't, why should we obey your [Calvin's] mad laws against dancing and so on - or any laws at all?'.

Calvin (a sharp lad) came up with this blinder: 'If you are among God's Elect, you will be capable of being good, whereas if you're not, you won't. Therefore you should strive to follow the rules, as success in doing so is a fair indication that you're on the Stairway to Heaven rather than the Road to Hell'. (For a puritan, Calvin was musically ahead of his time.)

That's all well and good as a psychological motivation for keeping one's nose clean, but doesn't do anything to change the fact that in Calvinism, everyone's either doomed or saved from the moment they're born. So, logically, Calvinists ought to be among the Christians who don't need the global 'Accept Jesus for 24 Hours' campaign as a precursor for a good apocalypse: like the Rapture-Ready crew, there's no time like the present for ending it all.

Without wishing to scare-monger, John Knox earned his place in religious history by bringing his version of Calvinism to Scotland. I don't know the details of his interpretation, or the way its modern inheritors have adapted it. But I gather that David has indicated somewhere that his church has debts to Calvin. Food for idle thought.

(David, please feel free to put this very partial and speculative account right.)

385. Are antidepressants taking the edge off love?

Comment #60575 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 9:42 am

I read about this suggestion two years ago. I'd been a bit surprised it hadn't been picked up more broadly by the media then. It makes such a good scare headline, after all.

386. The Out Campaign

Comment #60570 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 9:22 am

Yorker. I thought I could see a picture of Jesus in it.

Though an unbeliever, I can see a picture of Quetzalcoatl in Quetzalcoatl's avatar. Another sign.

387. The Out Campaign

Comment #60556 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 8:16 am

401, Yorker,

That's the funniest thing I've read today.

Can't shake the image of you being freaked out by Dr Benway's tufted pals. Or making a very unfortunate mistake in medieval Japan.

388. The Out Campaign

Comment #60552 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 7:56 am

Wow, Quetzalcoatl, the signs really are racking up! How long can it be until Mel Gibson makes a movie about you?

389. The Out Campaign

Comment #60510 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 5:31 am

Thanks, Henri! That seems reasonable, and worth remembering. It's nice to have something stronger than 'Oh, stop talking bullshit' to fall back on.

390. The Out Campaign

Comment #60507 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 5:24 am

Billy

And a' the glory shall be Thine―

God, he was good, that Burns. I can see why you Scots think of him like Shakespeare.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's ᗋ

One of my favourites.

391. The Out Campaign

Comment #60505 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 5:17 am

Henri,

I don't usually speak with self-confessed gay fascists[...]

On my 'gay fascist' rant:

Here's a totally bollocks, off-the-cuff, late at night, probably nonsensical one that I'll later wish I hadn't written: [...]

That's the one part of it I'm standing by - the rest is exactly as this preface describes it. The point was just that anyone who doesn't know too much about the science (like me) can bollocate a theory. It being PC or otherwise has nothing to do with whether it's accurate. As you know.

At the minute, steve99's winning this one. He may have more of a personal interest in it than most commentators, but he's also the only person citing data. Oh, and Goldy too.

Anyway: looking forward to learning of Kant. Cheers.

EDIT - Oh, you've added some info, above. Thanks!

RE EDIT - And now it's down below. Thanks again!

392. The Out Campaign

Comment #60491 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 4:24 am

Henri, Henri - tell us of Kant! I'm an eager vessel of ignorance, waiting to be filled by... whatever.

What's Kant's criticism (in an idiot-friendly nutshell) and how have RD and CH damningly failed to tackle it?

393. The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!

Comment #60485 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 4:09 am

aitchkay,

Here's David 'Wee Flea' Robertson himself giving a nine-minute YouTube wee plea on behalf of god and his book:

http://www.fcosonline.org/index.php?topic=5.msg31#msg31

I believe there's a second video somewhere, too.

His church's site also now boasts a radio interview about the book. I've not heard it, but here it is, for your audio delight:

http://www.freechurch.org/popups/07radio.htm

Lastly, the Free Church site has a sequence of articles by David which I believe provided the basis of the book. I don't want to do David out of a potential sale, though; I'm sure the book holds many wonders that are not contained in these articles.

394. The Out Campaign

Comment #60477 by _J_ on August 2, 2007 at 3:05 am

Hi, David,

It seems that the more questions I ask, the less answers I get. Dealing with all comers as you are offers you altogether too much opportunity to ignore challenges whilst making token nods to the challengers.

I was responding to Ellis comment that RD was backing up substantive evidence with personal impressions.

Okay, you were responding to a specific comment of Elli's – fair enough. But I've (twice, I think) tried to explain how Dawkins' use of data in the above article (and I can barely believe this even an issue, given the nature of the article) is reasonable, and that his open acknowledgement of it is more than reasonable. If you can understand this, please just concede the point, for heaven's sake, and stop trying to diffuse it into side issues ('Well, one of the other people posting says…').

As regards your take on Leviticus etc and homosexuality you are not really asking questions you are making accusations.

Not really. I took care to acknowledge that my assumptions about your interepretations might be inaccurate and invited you to correct them, and I explained the reason for my spending time on a sequence of examples: to show how any law-abiding Christian must necessarily do a lot of interpretative work to arrive at an acceptable reading of the bible. This, I clearly pointed out, gives you plenty of precedent for rejecting the bible's comments about homosexuality, which, I also pointed out, would be a decision in keeping with your country's scientific and ethical consensus. All of which was setting the ground for my asking: why won't you do so?

I understand that you don't want to discuss the Pope and homosexuality every time you come on here. That's why I quoted you on saying as much, and asked you to simply give a reference to somewhere else where you'd covered this if you have already done so. You didn't take me up on this, though it would have been a moment's work and saved us going round this same loop again.

When someone says 'I just don't want to discuss that right now' and turns out, on inspection, never to discuss it, this gives the suspicion that they have other reasons than their own boredom for not wanting to tackle it. It's as if OJ Simpson, in his legendary trial, had turned up in court every day saying 'Murder, murder, murder – always with the murder! Can't we talk about something else?'

Why is it irrelevant to ask when RD last produced a scientific paper which was peer reviewed?

Well, what's it relevant to? If it was merely a case of:

I was just curious

…then it would be irrelevant to this thread and to all of your complaints, because your curiosity about Dawkins' workload is nothing more than your curiosity about Dawkins' workload (like me saying 'How many sermons have you delivered this year, David?' would have no relevance to anything). But the context you provide is:

[...] just curious as to when he last did some serious science, as opposed to atheistic propaganda.

I have already explained to you in terms that I think were wholly reasonable, in the course of two posts, how Dawkins' writings and actions appear to fill perfectly his role as Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. Unaccountably you have failed to acknowledge this, and still return to your default position of making snide, sidewise accusations of propaganda. If this is the level of discourse you prefer, I'll join you: at least Dawkins doesn't have to nail anyone to a stick to make his case. (Not very productive, is it?)

It's depressing that none of the above needed to be written at all. I could simply have included links back to my previous posts to you (100, 288 and 302) and you would have found your most recent comments already challenged there, alongside many other challenges that you have simply ignored. Arguing with you is like taking a jog around a Möbius strip. All one can hope for is that observers will be able to see what's going on. And, on a site like this, since the vast majority of observers are likely to be on my side, there's not much point. So I give up. There's a limited amount of fun to be had in kicking a roundabout.

Oh yes, and – you said to Yorker:

I must be missing something. I thought every thread was religious on this site?

Yes, you're missing something, perhaps in the same way that you seem to be with The Ancestor's Tale. Many articles here are about religion and even more discussion threads head that way, since that's been by far and away the most emotive and attention-grabbing subject, but there are a lot of straightforward science items knocking about, too. It's not all atheism talk. But it is interesting how the pursuit of science seems to keep treading on religious toes.

Sorry for getting tetchy here. Please don't take it personally. It's nice to talk to you again. I do wish you'd actually address my arguments, though. Until you do, I'm done. I won't be holding my breath. Have a nice time in Bulgaria.

395. The Out Campaign

Comment #60393 by _J_ on August 1, 2007 at 6:39 pm

If human ugliness represents bad physiology and thus leads to general non-reproduction, is it not feasible that homosexuality represents bad physiology and thus entails general non-reproduction?

I get your point. But that comparison don't make no sense. Let's say you're right about the ugliness thing (which may be making too big a point out of a grain of truth, but...etc, etc). The reason uglies don't reproduce so well in this example is that people have evolved an ability to perceive symptoms of some genetic badnesses as uglitude. There's a kind of genetic competition going on, between the genes that create the 'beaten with the ugly stick' look and the genes that are thriving on their ability to avoid pairing up with the ugly ones.

In the case of homosexuality, there's none of this. No one is avoiding having reproductive sex with gay people. The gay genes themselves are programming for counter-reproductive behaviour (counter reproductive for that particular individual).

Anyway, I don't want to go on. It's interesting to think about these details, certainly. But I have a suspicion that your suggestion won't pan out - not for PC reasons, but because it looks to me like it runs against the grain of our understanding of evolution. I may be wrong. (It happens, every once in a while.)

Please don't give me PC responses.

Okey dokey. Here's a totally bollocks, off-the-cuff, late at night, probably nonsensical one that I'll later wish I hadn't written:

Gay people are better than straight people. That's why they're frequently so goddamn buff and why so many creative people and innovative thinkers have been gay. Gay is good. Perhaps it's got something to do with the organism's resources not being spent on the costly pursuit of reproductive sex and rearing young and all that bullshit. Steve's theory is right up to a point: a certain frequency of occurrence of homosexuality tends to be positively useful for propagating genes, for reasons that people who do the maths on genetic evolution may be able to work out. But it's evolutionarily unstable for too great a proportion of the population to be homosexual, for fairly obvious reasons. However, in our days of advancing reproductive science, this barrier may soon be lifted. We'll be able to knock up babies by artificially introducing a lesbian's egg to a gay man's sperm. The superior race of happy homosexuals will gradually form a larger and larger proportion of the global population. People will stop fighting over mates, the misogyny that fuels some of the worst gobshite of religion will evaporate and a lot of Elton John records will be sold. The future's bright - the future's pink.

I'm not going to win a Nobel Prize for this (and I hope I haven't been offensive, steve99). But it's an un-PC theory. Gay people aren't equal to straight ones. They're better. Bow before your homosexual masters.

396. The Out Campaign

Comment #60382 by _J_ on August 1, 2007 at 5:47 pm

Hi, Henri,

No hard feelings, nothing personal – but:

The flea has a point; one which I once remarked upon: you play the 'gay card' constantly. In the words of Jack Nicholson, "think straight and get serious"!

Visit The Never Ending Story (Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath) and you'll find steve99 posting at extraordinary length and never (or rarely enough for me to be unable to remember an instance of it) mentioning his sexuality at all.

David does have a bit of a habit following the path of least resistance, letting a lot of valid arguments slip away unacknowledged. Steve's hit on one with homosexuality, and it's a sensible argumentative strategy to dig his teeth in and not let go. Every time David fails to give an answer, credibility bleeds away from his position. Thrashing about and accusing Steve of being hung up on one point is bit of a cheap chaff-and-flare tactic and I'm surprised that someone as keen on a good fight as you are would go for it.

Others are already forming a neat circle to kick this next one to death, but to add another observation:

- Secondly, the obvious evolutionary reason for homosexuality is that it is nature's way of stopping the reproduction of feeble genes. I can't prove that, but it seems more likely than your PC version (which can neither be proved). Both are hypotheses at this stage.

This seems to betray a profound misunderstanding of what evolution is. It reads as though you imagine some kind of genetic intent: 'This individual's got shitty genes – make it gay and have done with them'. As an explanation it may be obvious to you, but as viewed from what I understand to be the basic principles of evolutionary theory, it's more heretical than Lamarckism. 'Nature' isn't watching. Stuff that works survives; stuff that doesn't, doesn't. The unit to keep one's eye on is the gene and Steve's account – speculative though it is – makes sense of how homosexuality could prosper at a certain level of frequency of occurrence within a community of organisms. Obviously, it's a reproductive dead end for the homosexual individuals, but that's not the only thing to bear in mind when thinking about genetic success. You probably know this, and people whose minds retain more details than mine does can probably flesh this out a bit.

Michel Foucault may be right…

…certainly not something to be taken as read with Foucault! ;) (Don't debate me on it – you'll win. I only have my dim memories of the impression I got from a little study some years ago.)

Bad grammar is always an indication of a bad argument.

Jesus wept, Henri, does this pass for an argument in philosophy? Epeeist, can you remind him of elementary logic?

Cheers.

EDIT - Damn it, you are fast typists!

397. The Out Campaign

Comment #60294 by _J_ on August 1, 2007 at 1:44 pm

Yorker

You're off? Suppose I can't blame you. I just - can't - resist - the - argument...

My metal pot'll be fine. I always scrape the rust out first.

398. The Out Campaign

Comment #60286 by _J_ on August 1, 2007 at 1:32 pm

David, 291

Thanks for the reply.

On your reply to Elli:

That is not empirical evidence and is utterly worthless.

The empirical evidence for god being…?

Besides, the evidence Dawkins is using here is reasonable enough for the use he puts it to. Which is:

As far as subjective impressions allow and in the admitted absence of rigorous data, I am persuaded that the religiosity of America is greatly exaggerated. Our choir is a lot larger than many people realise. Religious people still outnumber atheists, but not by the margin they hoped and we feared.

Fair enough, no? If I say 'As far as subjective impressions allow, based on my own observations and on conversations with other locals, there don't seem to be very many Hasidic Jews in my home town', that's a reasonable statement. It's not hard, empirical evidence (like, say, a full survey in my town, with contrasting data from a range of other towns to establish what 'very many Hasidic Jews' means) and you wouldn't want to rely on it for very important or precise decision-making. But it's the sort of casual first-hand hand experience that will certainly influence my opinions in the absence of stronger data. There is nothing wrong with may holding such opinions in this conditional manner, and it is only fair and responsible of me to draw your attention to the manner in which I have formed them.

What exactly have you to object to in all this?

As you know from our discussion on your site, ultimately, our debate all seems to come down to what you consider to be 'evidence'. I'm not yet persuaded that you have a stable conception of what evidence is. And the current juxtaposition between your rejection of even broad personal opinions among atheists without cast-iron, and your personal maintenance and evangelism of an entire worldview based on evidence like 'the beauty of the Creation' and 'the coherence of the Bible' does nothing to suggest to me that you are making progress in this area. I'd be delighted if you could convince me that I'm wrong about this.

On your response to me:

You may be surprised to find this, I actually agree with your comments in the main on homosexuality and homophobia. Far too many people in the church seem to use religion as an excuse for their own homophobic fears. I think that is inexcusable.

That's wonderful.

However, I still accept the Bible's teaching on all forms of sexuality.

But that sure baffles me!

We've talked about biblical interpretation before, so we're both well aware that when you say 'the Bible's teaching on [anything]', the only thing you can sensibly mean is 'My [your] personal interpretation of the bible's teaching on [that thing]'.

I assume you mean, by your statement (apologies if I am wrong in this assumption), that whilst you personally would happily share a conga-line with the Village People, you still regard the act of one man lying with another man as not good practice in the eyes of the LORD.

Here's the NIV on the subject:

If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Leviticus, 20:13 [I imagine that by now this passage reference is etched in you memory!]

I expect (again, I may be wrong) that you extend this to include one woman lying with another woman as one lies with a man, though I don't think this is explicitly mentioned in the Bible. Is it?

I also expect that you dissent from the suggestion that men who lie together as if one was a woman (and, by the way, one is doing a bit of interpretation just to piece together what that euphemism means - I mean, gay men can't practice phallic/vaginal intercourse, can they? And I suppose it doesn't mean one of them going to sleep while the other still wants cuddling?) should be put to death. I like to think that if your church was stoning homosexuals, it would at least have been in the news. But if you think the UK's laws contradict God's, I would expect you to at least campaign for a change to bring us in line with His righteous Word. Since I haven't spotted that story in the news either, I guess that you're not doing that.

I've brought up the 'killing disobedient children' passage as well. I'm sure you don't support that, except in some watered-down 'children should respect their parents or God will frown and tut to Himself' way.

So, look. You're making your own mind up about what all this stuff means. And that's just as well for those of us who like to throw sticks to dogs of a Sunday without being stoned to death. So why, when you're doing such a sterling job in so many areas, can't you accept that there's not a single good reason for supposing homosexuality to be upsetting to God? It's hardly a big concession considering all the others that you are making just in order to be a decent, non-homicidal, human being. Why not just accept this and leave this ludicrous issue behind?

Because – trust me on this – no matter how many gay men you pat on the head and say nice things to, as long as Christians maintain that God's unhappy about homosexuality, this argument is not going to go away. It doesn't matter how cheerfully you smile when you say 'You're going to hell because the all-loving Father rejects you to the core of your being', it's never going to be an acceptable message. And if it's neither ethically acceptable not evidentially justifiable, surely it's time to leave it behind?

When I die discovering there is no God.

Please don't insult your intelligence (or mine, such as it is). You are being asked to investigate the basis of beliefs you hold now, in this life. It is nonsensical to appeal to outside this life in giving your answer. If I said, in discussing, 'I won't believe in God until I die and find out if he's there or not', you'd rightly dismiss me as a fundamentalist or a fool, and a facetious one at that.

And a consistent atheist!

Am I so inconsistent? Are all of the others discussing with you inconsistent in the their positions? Sure, some will be, and we all mis-speak and make contradictory arguments from time to time – we all do. But when held to account, we try to address these, don't we? What are my inconsistencies?

And, as mentioned above, I await your assumption of a consistent application of the word 'evidence'.

but we did refer to Scripture and that was the basis on which we encouraged her to leave her husband.

Ah. Disappointing. Just as well her kids hadn't been disobeying her.

hence my, still an answer, question about when he had last submitted a peer-reviewed scientific paper.

A reasonable question, but an irrelevant one, as I have already discussed in my previous posts to you. You have not yet indicated where I was wrong. I suspect this is because I was not wrong.

When were your claims for 'the beauty of Creation' and 'the coherence of the Bible' accepted, by a community of critically-minded investigators, as empirical evidence for the existence of God? I suspect it would have made headlines.

if you had read my earlier post you would have seen that I believe in both nature and nurture.

Great – my apologies for the omission on my part. So then: what argument did you think you were making against Charlou, then…?

O, J – please get your facts right. They were not Scottish. The baggage handler who dealt with them was…

Again, my bad. Apologies to the entirety of Scotland here (just in case).

But, whilst I enjoy your flashes of wit (no sarcasm, I promise), you do seem to have dodged the argument…

399. The Out Campaign

Comment #60216 by _J_ on August 1, 2007 at 10:31 am

Yay – I thought maybe you were in Bulgaria by now!

Hello, David,

On your response to steve99:

Why don't you get Richard to write something on homosexuality – how in terms of evolutionary biology it makes perfect sense and is a good way of preserving our genes

That's a bit of a cheap shot! Kinda sly, but it relies on straw-man misrepresentations of evolutionary theory and of non-theistic conceptions of morality and society. Is Down's Syndrome good for preserving the genes? Is it a sin? How about those people who have absolutely no sex drive or interest in sex? Are they sinful?

I understand that you don't want to 'answer questions about homosexuality or the Pope etc every time [you] post on a thread', but if you've covered this elsewhere, can you quickly post a reference to the thread here? Religiously-sanctioned homophobia was one of the things that got me started on questioning my own Christianity – not because I'm gay (though it seems that in life's grand genetic lottery I could easily have been) but because the whole thing seemed like a baseless excuse for acting on destructive personal prejudices. When I raise this with nice, reasonable Christians, they usually start walking crab-wise around the issue. I'd love to see a clear, sensible response on the subject.

On your response to scottishgeologist:

[…]what you have done is create a tremendous opportunity for us to reach the vast majority of people who profess to be agnostics. Thanks!

Well, it's good news for everyone! You started out your post by saying:

the current 'Out' campaign […is designed…] to encourage atheists to … actually to what?

You, who are accustomed to missions and ministries as intrinsic parts of your worldview, surely can't find it that baffling that another view that has hitherto not bothered with such evangelism might start to speak up for itself. If our doing so increases your opportunities for expressing your own position – well, it's champagne and party hats all round, isn't it?

I get the impression that the evangelistically religious have tended to see evangelism as like fishing, plucking converts out of placid, yielding water. There's been nothing to remind you that when you say to an outsider 'There's a God', you are also saying 'So your current beliefs are wrong'. Now that atheism speaks up for itself, you find that it's not so much fishing as an arm-wrestle. Either you're wrong or we are (or we both are). In truth, it's always been that way, but our lot tended not to make much of it. Things like the 'Come OUT' campaign are just examples of our attempts to level the playing field. I'm sure you don't object.

On your response to me:

Why won't he step up to the plate?

Come now, David: my point, made quite clearly (I thought) was that he does. In fact, he's rarely been off the plate for the last twelve months. On TV, radio, and paper and in face-to-face encounters during his book tour, seminars and debates, he's spoken up for himself against all many, many religious apologists and devil's advocates. What exactly will satisfy you? Does he have to debate you personally? What's a reasonable thing for him to do? Suppose your book was whipping up the same sort of storm as his. How would you go about representing your views in person?

On your response to huxleyleopard:

I am a Christian and I admit I could be wrong.

That's great. I've heard you say this before and it's cheering. Now, to prove that it's not just words designed to make you sound reasonable, can you tell us: what would make you change your mind? What would need to happen to make you decide that your current beliefs are false? (For example: giving up the triple jump.)

(For my end of the bargain, I've written to you about some of the many things that could happen to change my mind. They're in the post waiting to go through at your site.)

I have certainly experienced a great deal of hatred, discrimination, intolerance and even violence because I am a Christian.

We all need to work to prevent such behaviour, certainly. But 'What if your lifeboat sinks?' isn't a good argument against escaping the Titanic. Sure, atheists can bugger things up. They need to take care not to. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be atheists.

On your response to Philip1978:

We advised her strongly that it was her Christian duty to get out and thankfully she did.

Well done – sounds like you did the right thing at your church. But it's much easier to explain your good deed by reference to your (and your colleagues') sense of morality than by reference to scripture. Your actions were wholly in synchrony with what the vast majority of reasonable, sympathetic people in the UK would recommend, irrespective of their faith (or lack of it). But if you mean to support your good actions through reference to your faith, how can you differentiate it from the deeds of those who use the bible to support actions that contradict commonly-held morality? Like the examples you were given? (And like – shibboleth time – homophobia?)

To everyone else, regarding the response to gr8hands:

I'm afraid that this is the kind of atheist urban myth which gives you guys such a bad name. Could you list please the 'many religions' which encourage men to beat their wifes? Without empirical evidence please be silent.

I made this mistake when talking to David, too, and was equally sharply pulled up for it. I found that referring to the bible's authorisation of lethal force against disrespectful children was safer ground.

Back to you, David.

On your response to Corylus:

Of course Ellie, Corylus can not trust you to read it for himself (maybe its because he is an inherent sexist?).

I'm half-remembering earlier posts, but I think you may have made an assumption here that Corylus can refute with embarrassing ease…

On your response to Henri Bergson:

Henri – be careful. I predict that your reasonable point will soon be swamped by a wave of vitriol.

I wouldn't worry. Henri is never happier than when he is surfing waves of vitriol. He's very good at it.

On your response to BAEOZ:

"Belief in something that we have no knowledge of and which we can't be said to have experienced is a dishonest belief."

I agree entirely. So whats your problem