Stupidity, Thy Name is Frank Pastore

What is it with right-winged religious people and bad book reviews?

Frank Pastore over at Townhall.com has written a book review of four books critical of religion, that utterly fails to make any sense.

Why Atheism Fails: The Four Big Bangs

The books in question are The Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and Islam by Michel Onfray, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens, Letter to a Christian Nation: A Challenge to Faith by Sam Harris, and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
Of these, I've started on the last, but haven't gotten around to finish it yet.

Their titles sound so confident [...] Yet, like all atheists before them, they still can’t answer the fundamental questions of origins.

As I said, I haven't finished any of the books yet, and I don't even have three of the four he is reviewing. Yet, I am clearly of the impression that the books are not addressing the fundamental questions of origins - rather they are addressing the questions and problems that religion raises. In other words, his objection makes as much sense as objecting to the fact that Winnie the Pooh doesn't address what happened to the Sleeping Beauty after the Prince kissed her.

But let's see if we can address these great questions.

1) What is the origin of the universe? Why is there something rather than nothing? How do you get matter and energy from nothingness? How do you get a rock out of nothing?

To which I could ask, how do you get a deity out of nothing? Most religious people claim that there has always been a deity around, yet Pastore appears to have severe problems with the concept of matter always having been around. And we actually have evidence that matter exist (and can form different kinds of matter), while we seem to be lacking evidence for the existence of a deity, much less for the deity's ability to create matter out of nothing.

2) What is the origin of life? How do you get life from non-life? How do you go from a rock to a tree?

Abiogenisis is the study of the origin of life, and while there are no exact knowledge of how life started, there are some fairly good ideas of how it could have happened, some even backed up by proof-of-concept experiments. Wikipedia currently have a decent article about the subject of origins of life.

3) What is the origin of mind? How does a living thing become a self-conscious being? How do you go from a tree, to an animal, to a human?

How does a dog give birth to a cat? That question makes as much sense as the question "how do you go from a tree, to an animal?" The answer is of course, that you don't.
And the question, "how do you go from an animal, to an human?" makes as much sense as "how do you go from a flower, to a rose?". One is a subset of the other.

Pastore is inprecise in what he means by "mind", but I would suspect it would involve the evolution of a brain. Unless he of course is thinking of something entirely unrelated to brain activities, in which case, I would like to see his definition (and his evidence for it being unrelated to the brain).

4) What is the origin of good and evil? How does an amoral being become morally aware?

Good and evil are human constructs, as are moral. These concepts differ over time, so they cannot be said to be something precise that can be defined universally. For example, it was once considered morally just, and indeed a good deed, to burn people who were considered witches. Altruistic behaviour seems to be tied to certain brain activities, and while I haven't seen research on this subject yet, it might also explain altruistic behaviour in animals.

Atheists respond to all these types of questions with essentially the same style answer. “We know God doesn’t exist. Therefore, since we’re here, though, it had to have happened this way. Thus, like the universe itself, life, mind, and mo-rality all ‘just popped’ into existence out of nothingness.”

That would seem a rather silly answer, considering that the questions can be answered without any reference to the lack of a deity. Maybe Pastore is confused, and don't understand their answers? For example it would seem reasonable for an atheist to answer Pastore that all of his questions can be answered without any invocation of a deity, when Pastore indicates that they cannot.
And atheists rarely state "We know that God doesn't exist" - rather an atheist would say, "there is no evidence for any deity, so it's unlikely that a such exists".

I call them the Four Big Bangs:

Is it just me, or is the intentional misuse of scientific terms one of the major signs of stupidity ahead?

1’) the Cosmological (the universe “just popped” into existence out of nothingness).

Pastore should try to study up on the theories of the origin of the current universe. No one thinks it just popped into existence (love the quotemarks BTW - almost makes you believe he is quoting someone doesn't it?). What does Pastore think the "Big Bang" refers to? The loud "pop" when things just appeared?

2’) the Biological (life “just popped” into existence out of a dead thing).

There were some rather complicated chemical processes involved, but in essence I guess you can say that Pastore is right. Of course, Pastore doesn't seem to have a problem with the reverse process (dead things just popping into existence out of living things), or with similar religious claims (*cough* *jesus* *resurrection* *cough*).

3’) the Psychological (mind “just popped” into existence out of a brain).

Very long-drawn pop wasn't it? And a pretty vague one as well. Mind and brain is interconnected - what we might call mind is the specific type of use of a brain.

4’) and the Moral (morality “just popped” into existence out of amorality).

Is Pastore claiming that there is no amorality around any longer? Or that people are either moral or amoral? Moral is an entirely human construct, and few sane people would claim that it hasn't developed through the human ages. For an example that Pastore might understand, look at the differences in the moral messages of the Old and the New Testaments.

For their many obfuscating words, the authors still don’t improve much beyond the “just popped” thesis, if at all.

Has the man read the books? I haven't, but even I know that their purpose is not to address the moronic objections raised by Pastore.

I was an atheist for 27 years. I used to play on that team. I used to pick on religious people too. I knew the arguments to press and those to avoid.

Sadly he seems to have lost that last ability.

Attack with how unscientific theism is, how religious people aren’t very smart because they don’t chair any departments in the hard sciences at the right schools (it’s really called censorship).

Use a dictionary. Understand the definitions. Censorship has nothing to do with this.

Raise the problem of evil: How could an omnipo-tent, loving God allow evil? Either God is not all powerful and can’t destroy it, or He doesn’t want to. Either way there can’t be a God because evil exists (don’t bring up the existence of good though, it’s too problematic).

I personally don't find this argument particularly good, except when addressing the idea of an all-loving deity.

And, finally, go for the jugular with the hypocrisy of religious believers (You know, mention “all the wars in the name of religion,” and “all the fallen pastors” and especially, “the founders owned slaves” stuff, it’s really a good distraction.)

Wars in the name of religion is relevant in so much that addresses the idea of religious people being inherently more moral than atheists. Otherwise it's not really relevant to wether there is a deity or not.
I wonder where the founders come into it - they were not particularly aligned with Christianity.

Avoid the pesky problem of freewill. If atheism is true, if all that exists is mere matter and energy, then I don’t have a brain, I am my brain. But if the brain is exhaustively physical, then it is just as incapable of acting freely as a computer or any other machine. Which is why the idea of Artificial Intelligence makes for such fun science fiction – the more peo-ple believe that a computer can become a person, the less likely they will have need to believe they were created in God’s image. Thus, more AI, less theism – that’s the game plan. Same with the search for ET. Find life elsewhere so we can dismiss Genesis.

We can dismiss a literate reading of Genesis by looking at the evidence that shows us that it cannot have been true. Or rather, that neither versions of the creation myth could have been true.

The problem of free will is only a problem for some people. Personally I don't have a need for a "free will" as Pastore defines it.
We are the sum of our experiences, environment, knowledge and numerous other things. Basede on all these factors, we make our choices. Given the complexity of the basis for our choices, it's pretty much impossible to figure out in advance what a given person will choose.

But, above all, avoid being cornered and forced to answer the questions of origins. Throw out lots of words that people can’t understand. Talk over them. Blind them with science. Talk about the details of the leaves on the trees but don’t allow them to bring it back to “Why the forest at all?” Assert the fact/value distinction. Claim that only science deals with knowledge. Drop in some postmodern gobbledygook. Distract them with how science deals with the “what, where, how and when” and not the “who and the why.” Especially avoid people who have had training in the philosophy of science – they’re dangerous because they see through us and know who we are – they don’t see the shimmering lab coats that everyone else sees. They don’t see any clothes at all.

Given the fact that most people who had training in the philosophy of science are scientists, that scientists work hard to solve the questions related to origins (of either of the four types he mentioned), that several branches of science actually deals with "who and why", and many other such pesky things, I think I can safely say that Pastore doesn't make any kind of sense at all.

Since the pre-Socratics, atheists have been intellectual parasites living off the host of Western Civilization. Able to con-struct so very little of their own that is either true, good, or beautiful, they live on the borrowed capital of their believing intellectual parents. Atheists have been asserting the same basic mechanistic worldview, and with roughly the same suc-cess, for centuries. They sell books and win converts from time to time, sure, especially among those gullible enough to buy the “just popped” thesis. Don’t be gullible.

Project much?

But, for me, the real value of atheism lies in bolstering belief in God. When I doubt, I can begin to doubt my doubts by returning to the Four Big Bangs. And, I eventually fall to my knees and worship, “In the beginning, God.”

Interesting. Many of the rest of us would require some kind of evidence of a deity before believing in it, yet Pastore just need to think of four rather easily answered questions.

Did people notice something about this bookreview? It didn't actually contain anything about the books themselves. It was entirely about Pastore's poorly thought out anti-atheist ideas, and his vile attacks on atheists.

Dawkins honored for his science writing

Richard Dawkins accepts 2006 Lewis Thomas Prize

The 2006 Rockefeller University Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science has been awarded to British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer Richard Dawkins. Rockefeller’s president, Paul Nurse, presented the award to Dawkins yesterday at a ceremony in Caspary Auditorium, where Dawkins gave a lecture titled “Queerer than We Can Suppose: The Strangeness of Science.”

Given that the newsrelease was written on the 25th, I presume that "yesterday" would have been April 24th.

I like the argument for why he received the prize:

“In eloquent, evocative prose, Richard Dawkins conveys the certainty that, rather than diminishing the myriad beauties of the universe and extinguishing wonderment at its mysteries, science reveals truths that are yet more awe-inspiring than the mysteries they solve,” President Nurse said at the award ceremony. “As such he has achieved the ideal of the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science.”

Also note the long list of other awards that the article mentions that Dawkins has received.

The impact of atheistic books

Via James Hrynyshyn of the Island of Doubt, I became aware of this article in Canada's Maclean's magazine.

Is God poison?

A new movement blames God for every social problem from Darfur to child abuse

A bad start, since most atheists, including those mentioned in that particular article, are well aware that atheists can cause problems as well. What we are just saying, is that there is nothing inheritly moral about religion.

God is a delusion, if his enemies are to be believed: nothing more than the creation of a species with prefrontal lobes too small, and aggressive instincts too strong, for its own good. His worship is poison: his adherents commit child abuse -- metaphoric and actual -- on a daily basis; and the murderous clashes of rival gangs of his followers are the greatest single threat to humanity's future. Whatever else God may be, he is most assuredly not dead. You can take his critics' word, and the depth of their passion, for that.

Does the last two sentences make sense to anyone? I think it might be a way of saying that religion is not irrelevant, even if you don't believe in a god, but I don't think anyone has made that claim. Rather, I think that's what many people find problematic. But it's true that God is not dead, just like Thinkerbell is not dead.

Next month sees the publication of Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, a coruscating moral denunciation by the polemicist tutti polemicists. It will join the steady stream of atheist texts that began five years ago, after 9/11 so brutally demonstrated that religious fanaticism is still a force to be reckoned with. So too is atheism, at least as far as book sales go. Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, which combines merciless schoolboy-level mockery of religion with the lessons of evolutionary biology, has been a fixture on bestseller lists since the fall. Letter to a Christian Nation, in which American Sam Harris casually states that raising children to believe they are members of a religious group is a "ludicrous obscenity," nevertheless became a Book-of-the-Month club selection last year. And Michel Onfray's In Defense of Atheism, which drips with Gallic scorn for the feeble-minded faithful, and praises the French Revolution for turning all the churches into hospitals, was a bestseller across Europe and, in translation, now on this side of the Atlantic as well.

I hadn't heard about Onfray's book before. Might need to get hold of that. And neither had I heard about Harris' book becoming a Book-of-the-Month club selection. That's great, since it brings his message out to a wider audience than many would have expected.

"The argument between faith and non-faith is cresting again, in a way that's not been seen since the Scopes monkey trial," Hitchens says over the phone from his Washington home. "Whether we're arguing about intervening in Darfur or about the recognition of gay marriage, underneath we're always arguing about religion." He could easily have added from an endless series of other topics across Europe and North America: hot-button issues in a debate many thought was long over.

Today, 82 years after Scopes, the never-ending struggle between supporters and opponents over inserting Intelligent Design, creationism's latest incarnation, into the nation's schools is a religious fight. (It's one that invokes fierce passions: judges who have ruled ID unconstitutional have received death threats.) Angry debates over the permissibility of abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, and the public display of religious symbols and icons are all essentially faith-based. In America many of the devout not only wish to maintain the customary display of Christmas imagery in public places, but add to it, in particular by posting the Ten Commandments in courthouses.

In more secular Canada the now-settled issue of gay marriage rights was fought over scriptural grounds; so is the residual matter of whether marriage commissioners can opt out of officiating gay weddings. As with pursuing conscientious objector status in wartime, only a religious justification will receive even a hearing. A tiny Quebec town's adoption of "standards" for its (non-existent) immigrants is now internationally infamous. Across the country there have been fights over practices associated with the stricter forms of various religions -- wearing facial veils (Islam), carrying even symbolic weapons (Sikhism), gender segregation (Judaism) and the less-than-scientific biology taught in some religious schools (Christianity).

No surprise, then, that what Hitchens calls "the oldest argument in human history" is increasingly engaging the public. In London's Westminster Central Hall on March 27, some 2,000 people turned out to hear Hitchens, Dawkins and philosopher A.C. Grayling debate a trio of religious authorities on the question "We'd be better off without Religion." (The motion carried, 1,205 to 778.) Hitchens is pleased to see the interest. He thinks it's a sign of hope. "We atheists never thought religion would die out," he continues, "because it comes from fear of death, but we did think theocracy would die. Instead, those of us who used to think we'd just live a life free from religion are fed up with insults and threats from believers, with Danish cartoonists who can't work and murdered Dutch filmmakers, with saying getting AIDS is better, more godly, than using condoms. You know who's a neighbour of mine now? Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- America's first refugee from western Europe in living memory."

Hitchen is playing fast and loose with the truth about Hirsi Ali - she left the Netherlands, because she lost her citizenship, when it was found out that she had lied to obtain it. This is not to say that there were not credible threaths on her life, but those were not the reason for her leaving Europe - a job at the AEI might have a lot more to do with it.
Other than that, he is to a large degree right, even if he tries to put it in the most brutal way possible.

As Hitchens suggests, atheists were already uneasy with trends in their own Western societies when they awoke to the rude shock of Islamic terrorism -- the attacks in New York, London and Madrid, the murderous Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq. The events galvanized them, but not only against militant Islam, as one might expect. The atheist authors all agree a clash of civilizations is under way, but it's not between East and West, or Muslims and Christians, but between rationality and superstition. Onfray, who despises equally what he calls "the fascism of the lion" (the Western side) and the "fascism of the fox" (the Muslim world), refuses to take sides, while Dawkins and Harris are primarily devoted to battling American Christianity.

I think that if the author had done his research a little deeper, he would have found that Dawkins is devoted to fight against all irrational beliefs, though he is primary focused on Christianity right now, since it has the greatest direct influence on his daily life in Britain. So, no he is not "primarily devoted to battling American Christianity" - he is primarily devoted to battling the brand of Christianity that affects his life the most - this would be the fundamentalist brand, that has won some influence through PM Tony Blair, and which affects the world through US foreign policy.

The Oxford professor, in particular, seems genuinely worried over the possible emergence of the ultimate rogue state, a nuclear-armed American Christian fundamentalist theocracy. (Dawkins' anti-religious beliefs are tightly grafted to his anti-Americanism. Especially his anti-Bushism: "I just can't stand the man's style," he told the Times of London, "the way he swaggers and struts and smirks and the way he looks sly and deceitful and the way Americans can't see it.") Like Harris, Dawkins thinks something can and should be done about this -- oddly enough, through ridicule of "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads."

Dawkins is no more anti-American than I am. I thought we had reached a point where you could be anti-Bush without being considered anti-American. Apparently that is not the case in Canada.
Oh, and laughter has always been the biggest enemy of fear.

Hitchens, on the other hand, is virtually the last leftist supporter remaining for George W. Bush's war in Iraq, and finds himself rather in the position of Churchill making common cause with Stalin. ("If Hitler had invaded hell," the wartime British prime minister remarked, he, Churchill, would at least have made "a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.") As a British expat and an admirer of Hirsi Ali, who was driven from Holland by Islamic death threats, Hitchens is not inclined to see Europe as the font of all secular virtues, or America as its antithesis. (Not like Harris, an American who constantly exudes the impression his overtly religious countrymen are embarrassing him in front of the Europeans.) And he allows himself to have been a "guarded admirer" of Pope John Paul II's moral and physical courage.

Hitchens is a leftist????? Man, they most smoke some impressive weed in Canada.

From now on, I am leaving out some paragraphs here and there, since it's a quite long article. Instead I am going to c&p those parts of the article that I have comments to. Obviously, I recommend reading the article in full.

Religion kills, Hitchens says, because it is tribal and totalitarian, the most extreme form of in-group/out-group marker ever known. Although some faiths are more pacific than others, that has more to do with their relative powerlessness -- were the Amish, say, to rise to supreme authority over other faiths, they would soon begin to resemble the medieval Catholic Church. Power corrupts religion uniquely; because it considers its doctrines uniquely right, it necessarily seeks to interfere in the lives of non-believers. Thus religion offers a constantly available licence for ordinary people to behave cruelly, sometimes "in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow." The entire history of Christian anti-Semitism -- not to mention its racial offspring, the Nazis' Final Solution -- is a case in point. And the cruelty and irrationality is still enacted regularly in less violent ways in the present day.

I find it problematic that Hitchens wants to put the sins of Hitler at the feet of religion. While it is quite true that Nazism was not the atheist ideology that many religious people think it is, the crimes commited by the Nazis were due to the personality cult surrounding Hitler and the national glorification expressed through ideas of racial purity (among other things).
I think it could be more correctly be claimed that Nazism, Communism and fundamentalist religion share certain traits (claims about absolute truths and predefined rights and destinies).

The polemicists' total rejection of faith makes the very existence of religious moderates a puzzle to them. (Dawkins, in particular, seems spiritually deaf to everything from the sense of wonder to the pull of family and community.) Except, perhaps, for Hitchens, who seems to be the only one who admits to having religious friends, the atheists' own dirty little secret -- their contempt for moderates -- is never far from the surface of their books. They assert that moderates enable fanatics by allowing religious arguments a privileged place -- it was a liberal Catholic debating partner who told Hitchens that religious liberty demanded that mohels be allowed to carry out their ancient rite as they saw fit. "In a funny way," Dawkins said in an interview last fall in reference to one devout scientist, "I have more respect for a young creationist," referring to someone who proclaims that life on earth is only 6,000 years old.

Anyone who had read anything that Dawkins have written could not possible write anything like "Dawkins, in particular, seems spiritually deaf to everything from the sense of wonder to the pull of family and community". His books are a constant testimony to his sense of wonder. And why should atheists not feel the pull of family and community? We are all part of both.

That contempt, along with the stridency and a totalitarian disdain for everything to do with religion, is rooted in fear and failure. They think they're losing. The triumph of atheism, so confidently proclaimed by its prophets more than a century ago, now seems as far off as the Second Coming. In 1867, in his landmark poem "Dover Beach," Matthew Arnold could only hear the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the sea of faith, but the religious tide has turned with a vengeance. "This Letter," Harris concludes his book, "is the product of failure -- the failure of many brilliant attacks upon religion that preceded it, the failure of our schools to announce the death of God in a way that each generation can understand, failures great and small that have kept almost every society on this earth muddling over God and despising those who muddle differently."

No, they don't think they are losing. They think that they are not winning. There is quite a big difference between those two stances. The religious fundamentalists have a great influence, but they have always had that. Now is the first time that atheists are actually being heard in the US, largely due to people like Harris and Dawkins.

The mock humility of this may be worthy of a televangelist -- can't Harris see a single positive reason for religion's ongoing vigour? -- but it is the atheist perspective encapsulated. That makes it an enigma for Christians, particularly those outside robustly religious America. Aren't the ungodly in charge now, the churches empty on Sunday, religious leaders and religious viewpoints shouted out of the political arena? Are not contraception, abortion and, very soon, homosexual marriage the norm across the Western world? Who's winning this war anyway?

Since the rest of the article is mainly dealing with the US, this is a non sequitur. However, let's deal with it anyway - a number of countries, Poland among them, have gone towards a more restrictive abortion policy. In Denmark, a right-winged memeber of Parliament, who happens to be a priest, stated yesterday that the scarf worn by Muslims are equivalent to the swastica worn by Nazis, during a debate in Parliament. Does that sound like religious viewpoints are shouted out of the political arena? And to keep it more local to the author of the article, it's just a couple of weeks ago that I wrote about how religious-based bad science teaching was on the march in Canada.

There is more that I could comment on, but this post is getting overly long anyway. I can't really say that I am too impressed by the article, but at least there are now articles about atheism, and the arguments against the presumed morality of religion, out there. Hopefully they will be better written, and better researched, next time.

Atheism in Australia

The Age has an interesting article about atheism in Australia, where atheism is even more rare than in the US. The article relates the issues with the new "atheist" books coming out in increasing numbers.

Against God

From what the article explains, Australians are more relaxed about religion than Americans, but also less willing to publicly declare themselves atheists. The new books by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens etc. make more Australians embrace atheism publicly, and increase the debate about religion, but there is still a long way to go before Australia is anywhere close to Europe.

Has Nisbet and Mooney lost it?

Ok, first of all, I have a great deal of respect for Chris Mooney and his writing (Nisbet's I don't really know, so I can't comment on it), and I think Mooney and Nisbet have some good ideas that they are trying to sell to scientists and science communicators. As I said before, I think their ideas are flawed, but I am withholding futher judgement until I've read the papers Nisbet has sent me on the subject of framing.

What I won't withhold judgement about is their Washington Post opinion piece Thanks for the Facts. Now Sell Them

It contains some good parts, but the start of it is so completely and utterly problematic that I can't help disregard everything else in it.

If the defenders of evolution wanted to give their creationist adversaries a boost, it's hard to see how they could do better than Richard Dawkins, the famed Oxford scientist who had a bestseller with "The God Delusion." Dawkins, who rose to fame with his lucid expositions of evolution in such books as "The Selfish Gene," has never gone easy on religion. But recently he has ramped up his atheist message, further mixing his defense of evolution with his attack on belief.

I know this is not a science paper, or even an opinion piece in a science magazine, but basing you whole premise on some undocumented postulate is exactly what science is not about.
Dawkins is a best-selling author, and The God Delusion has been on the top 10 NY Times bestseller list, and Dawkins was chosen (by readers) as the Reader's Digest Author of the Year (British Book Awards). So he is obviously doing something right with The God Delusion.

Also, seen from the outside, it seems like Dawkins (and Harris, Dennet etc.) has managed to change the whole US debate about religion, arguing that religious claims must be evaluated in the light of science, or be disregarded. In other words, Dawkins (and others) have changed the debate in the US so religious people must make positive claims in defense of the their religion, rather than dismiss science when it doesn't fit the religion.
How does that help the adversaries of evolution? The hard-core fundamentalists cannot be convinced of evolution, and no matter how you phrase it, they won't be convinced. The moderates on the other hand, can be convinced, but they need to hear that there is another side - something they didn't until people like Dawkins came along.
They might find Dawkins' ideas frightening, but they will make them think. Then, when a moderate atheist or a theist who believes in evolution explains the concepts in a more religious friendly way, they will perhaps believe.

In other words, Dawkins has reframed the whole US debate. Instead of using him as an example of how not to do things, Mooney and Nisbet should look at what he did, and use it as an example of how you can change the whole frame of the public debate, rather than reframe your own ideas to fit the debate on the premise of others.

To borrow a creationist principle, Nisbet and Mooney are talking about micro-framing, while Dawkins have been doing macro-framing.

Now, I am willing to admit that I could be mistaken in all this, but unless Nisbet and Mooney has some documentation for their postulate, I find it unlikely. Instead I would suggest that Nisbet and Mooney in the future focus on explaining their ideas, and leave out personal opinions about other peoples' books out of it. It will only drown out their message, and make those of us who disagree with their postulates about those books (and authors) ignore the real message they want to put forth.

There is of course a whole bunch of posts about the op-ed over at the ScienceBlogs, but instead of pointing to all of them, I'll point to a post by ERV: Okay, Chris, Matt-- Stop digging. Stop it.

More garbage from DI fellows

David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute has an opinion piece in The Seattle Time

Prophets of the new atheism

Unsurprisingly, much of it's content is pure garbage, as anything that the DI is connected to in any way is wont to be.

While the American cultural landscape includes many religions, it's still fascinating to watch closely when we have the chance to observe a new faith being born. Consider, for example, a religious phenomenon that has been dubbed the "new atheism," prominently represented by some bestselling books.

The first paragraph, and the atheism as religion shows straight up. Atheism, be it called "new atheism" or otherwise, is not a religious faith. It's the exact oposite - the lack of faith. Anyone who fail to udnerstand this fundamental difference should not be in any position to make their opinion on the subject known.

Can disbelief in God be considered "religious"? Sure. Just ask Zen Buddhists, who worship no deity. By religion, I mean any faith-based set of values that makes exclusive claims for its truth and explains the mysteries of the universe. Yes, atheism begins with a faith, namely that only material and physical (not spiritual) causes make the world run.

Many Zen Buddhists would claim to belong to a philosophy, rather than a religion, but aside from that, Klinghoffer is quite right, a religion doesn't require a deity. It does however require a belief in something unobservable. In other words, it requires "faith" as the word is commonly understod.

Atheism doesn't begin with, or require, a faith in anything. Instead it's the logical consequence of the lack evidence. Does Klinghoffer also think that lack of belief in conspiracy theories is some kind of religion? That the lack of belief in fairies is some kind of cult?

Two recent atheist gospels, by Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion") and Sam Harris ("Letter to a Christian Nation"), are the country's top two bestsellers among "religion" books, according to Publishers Weekly. The books are outselling even a Christian megahit like Rick Warren's "The Purpose-Driven Life."

These leading lights contend that traditional religions are not only false, but dangerous and morally grotesque. The title of another hot atheist tract, by journalist Christopher Hitchens and forthcoming in May, says it all: "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."

I wasn't aware that Hitchens is coming out with a book - that explains why he has been mentioned so much lately when talking atheism. I hope it's better than much of his recent journalism and opinion pieces.

Who are the new atheists? While only 5.2 percent of Americans identify themselves as atheists, according to 2006 Baylor University polling data, it's a privileged demographic category, disproportionately college-educated and affluent. Atheists tend to live on the West Coast or East Coast. In its polling sample, the Baylor study found not one atheist African American. Meanwhile, those of us from Jewish backgrounds are represented well out of proportion to our national numbers, with 8.3 percent rejecting belief in God.

The Baylor University study (.pdf), which was funded by the John M. Templeton Foundation, surveyed 1,721 individuals, and spetacularly fails to include any information about methodics for their sampling, except for stating that they used a mixed-mode sampling design (telephone and self-administered mailed surveys). They also fail to give a confidence interval for their results.
In other words, as surveys goes there are some problems - as a matter of fact, most social scientists would probably dismiss any study lacking such basic information out of hand.

When looking a little closer at the survey results, I find some other troubling trends. The population is divided up into two groups "White" and "African-American" (with no numbers given for how many are in each groups) - no mentions of "Asians" (3.6% of the US population in 2000), "Hispanic" (12.5% of the population in 2006) or even "Other" (totalling 8.9% in 2000, including mixed races and Native Americans).

Also, when looking at the numbers for African-Americans it seems like they are undersampled. Of all respondends, 5% are self-described "Black Protestant", but 62.5% of all African-Americans are so. Since there is 0% of the White who desribes themselves so, it can be concluded that African-Americans makes up 8% of the people surveyed. Since African-Americans made up 12.3% of the population in 2000, it would seem like a undersampling of more than 5 percentage points.

In other words, I wouldn't trust the Baylor University study's numbers on anything.

The numbers for the population is from the 2000 US census (.pdf)

Now back to the opinion piece. Klinghoffer of course ignores the many atheists living outside the US, but I guess that's only to be expected.

You can see how influential atheism has become by noting how the media and academia deal with traditional faith. A recent New York Times Magazine cover story detailed the big debate among academic psychologists: Did God-centered religion evolve in prehistoric man as a useful adaptation or as a surprising byproduct of other evolutionary processes? The possibility that it developed in response to a living God was not considered.

Doesn't that make you stop up and wonder? No? Well, maybe it wasn't considered because these people are dealing with science, not religion. There is no evidence of any "living God" giving any kind of input into the process, so the scientists naturally don't consider this an option. If such evidence would show up, they would certainly take it into consideration. Much like when scientists debate the causes of thunder and lightning they don't consider the possibility of Thor riding through the sky.

Also, which living God are we talking about? Ra? Odin? Zeus? Baal? There have been quite a few candidates through history, many before the Christian God.

The new religion has a scientific appeal, with orthodox evolutionary theory recruited to provide a rationalistic "proof" for atheist teaching. For this reason, Oxford University biologist Dawkins devotes the "central argument of [his] book" to an attempted refutation of intelligent design (ID), the alternative to neo-Darwinian evolution that has been spearheaded by Seattle's Discovery Institute (where I work).

Unfortunately, Dawkins does not grapple with the latest arguments for intelligent design as formulated by their chief proponents. Harris is similarly preoccupied by ID, which evidently provoked the new atheism's present evangelistic push.

Science is atheistic in nature. It doesn't require any gods or other supernatural powers. As a matter of fact, it explicitly rejects such things.

What are the latest arguments for intelligent design? All the arguments I've heard are (wrong) arguments against evolutionary biology.

The books by Dawking, Harris, and others are probably somewhat due to religious movements like Intelligent Design which tries to push religion into the class-rooms, however they are likely more due to the simple fact that religion has become more and more dominating in debate and politics both inside and outside the US. One example of this can be seen in the policy for US sex-ed.

Darwinism, of course, is hardly new. The novelty here lies in the new faith's missionary fervor. Dawkins writes explicitly about making "converts."

Darwin also talked about converting Huxley to his idea of natural selection, yet he didn't imply anything religious in this. It's a common English phrase used to explain winning people over to your side of the argument.

Another novelty: In the 18th and 20th centuries, respectively, the atheist French and Russian revolutions sought political power above all else, with terrifyingly violent results. Luckily, far from being politicians, the new atheists seek religious influence for its own sake.

At least he didn't wake the Zombie Hitler.
Something that's worth considering is that the groups of people he is speaking about are generally not remembered for their atheism, so it was perhaps not their defining characteristica.

Despite these novel features, in other ways the new atheism will be familiar to historians who have studied the trajectory of upstart faiths. A favorite strategy of such groups has long been to attack cartoon versions of older rival religions.

Actually, if the Bible is anything to go by, the traditional strategy has been to (literately) demonize the older faiths. See for example Baal.

And again, the lack of faith is not a faith in itself.

Dawkins, for his part, mocks the God of the Hebrew Bible as "arguably the most unpleasant character in fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

Such a wild caricature will be unrecognizable to any believer (like me) in the God of Israel. But Dawkins and Harris seem unfamiliar with religious tradition as biblical monotheists know it from personal experience and deep study. Frankly, the success of the new atheist faith would be hard to imagine without today's soaring levels of societal religious illiteracy.

Obviously Klinghoffer hasn't read the Bible very closely. Dawkins provides specific examples of the behaviour he describes. And perhaps Klinghoffer is not aware of teh very public experience many of us have with religious leaders speaking about their religion. Think about a Ken Ted Haggard, a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson. The later have made it real clear that the God he believes in is a vengeful one indeed.

Oh, and repeating that it's a faith doesn't make it so. Just like clapping your hand and believing in fairies doesn't make Thinkerbell come alive.

Which might sound like the new religion has a promising future. I doubt it. For one thing, God gives objective definition to our ideas of right and wrong, crucial for civilization. Equally important, he provides meaning to life itself.

Given the religious rifts within the Christian religion because of different stances on what's rigth and wrong, I find it funny that anyone would claim that "God gives objective definiton" to any idea of what is right and wrong. Indeed the presumed existence of a God has been used to justify terrible evils, which obviously goes against any claims of such objective definitions.

Since Klinghoffer is an Orthodox Jew, he believes in many Kosher laws that defines what is right and what is wrong. Yet other religious people, believing in religions based on the same fundamental book, doesn't believe in the Kosher laws (here I am speaking about the other relgions of the Book, Christianity and Islam).

And as I've said before, you must have a sad, sad life if you require a god to have a meaning to your life. Isn't living meaningful enough in itself? Religion can add something to some people, but I would sincerly hope that it's not the only meaningful thing they can think of in their life.

Oh, and if you haven't noticed, there are plenty of atheists outside the US.

Certainly, you can have an ethical individual atheist, an instinctively caring, generous person who happens to disbelieve in God. But an atheist society could not survive. It would first live on the fumes of ancient moral traditions. In the end, racked by despair at life's apparent meaninglessness, its members would return to more nourishing faiths.

What a load of bullshit. I dare Klinghoffer to provide any shred of evidence for his claim. It has been repeatedly shown that the more religious the society, the more amoral it is. Does this in any way lend credibility to his claims? I don't think so.

That's what we see happening now in formerly communist Russia, with its Christian and Jewish revivals. The evaporation of atheist communism is a lesson worth pondering, and a sobering one, for the new atheists.

What lesson is that? A personality cult can only survive as long as the person lives? That totalitarian repression of religion is bad? That Communism is not a viable form of rule?
I think most atheists already knew that.

So what is the point of this opinion piece? Klinghoffer obviously tries to redefine atheism as a sort of religion, but is that really of such relevance that The Seattle Times find it worthwhile to publish his garbage? No, rather it seems like it's just another hit piece on atheism (look, the big bad communist racist atheists are coming to get you). Isn't it getting a little old? Shouldn't the DI people be out and do some of that research they have promissed us? Of course, Klinghoffer can't really help with that, given his only qualifications seems to be that he is an Orthodox Jew who used to be an editior at National Review.

A bad review of The God Delusion by AiG

There has been a number of reviews of Dawkins, quite a few of them bad, but now comes the objective review we've all waited for. A review by one of the creationists from Answers in Genesis.

Paul Taylor of Answers In Genesis critques[sic] 'The God Delusion'

Why don't I think the headline uses "critiques" (however the spelling) in the meaning of a neutral look, but rather uses it in the every day usage of a negative look?

Have you ever wondered why an atheist believes what he/she does? Richard Dawkins wants you to know why he is an atheist. Dawkins, the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, is arguably the world's best known atheist.

With the publication of his new book, The God Delusion, we now have an expanded version of his atheist manifesto. One would have at least hoped that he would have taken the opportunity to present a more intellectually rigorous case. Indeed, some Christians may have been afraid of opening the book, in case the sheer weight of evidence might have destroyed their faith. For my part, I was looking forward to getting to grips with an intellectual argument. I was to be disappointed.

Given the fact that the sheer evidence of the age of the Earth, the supporting evidence for the Theory of Evolution, and a number of other things, including the self-contradiction of the Bible, haven't been able to convince you that a literate reading of the Bible is nonsense, I don't think it's actually possible to show you anything that might convince you of anything.
And I am not certain that you would recognize an intellectual argument if you saw it.

Dawkins' arguments, far from having intellectual clout, are mostly like this example: "The argument will be so familiar, I needn't document it further."

Dawkin's paucity of argument is best illustrated by his poor use of logic.

Someone from AiG saying that others use poor logic? This gotta be good.

Poor Logic

Examine this extraordinary sentence.

Although Jesus probably existed, reputable biblical scholars do not in general regard the New Testament (and obviously not the Old Testament) as a reliable record of what actually happened in history, and I shall not consider the Bible further as evidence for any kind of deity. (p97)

Look first at the use of the word "probably" in "Although Jesus probably existed". Why is Dawkins doubting this fact? There is no question that Jesus existed. It is illogical to add the word "probably".

Given the fact that there is no other evidence of the existence of Jesus than the books of the New Testament (and the testaments rejected when the New Testament was put together), written decades after the facts that they were supposed to document, I personally find it quite reasonable to use the word "probably" - not only do I find it reasonable, I even find it (dare I say) logical.

Personally, I would used the word "might" instead of "probably", but that would certainly not have be better in the eyes of Taylor.

Look next at the use of the word "reputable". What is a "reputable biblical scholar"? The test of reputation has been left undone by Dawkins. Presumably, a "reputable biblical scholar" is one who agrees with Dawkins' attempts to rubbish the Bible. Such people can be found, though whether the adjective "reputable" is appropriate for such people is a matter of opinion. In the opinion of Answers In Genesis, a "reputable biblical scholar" is one who approaches the Bible with respect, believing it to be the inspired, inerrant and authoritative word of God, from the very first verse.

A reputable biblical scholar is someone who does research on the subject in a scholarly way, ignoring their own feelings, and take historical evidence into account. They then publishes works that are generally accepted in the field, and shows a willingness to correct any mistakes that might come to light.
In other words, they don't let their faith come in the way of facts.

They don't have to agree with Dawkins, and indeed many of them don't, but they are willing to admit when facts are on Dawkins' side.

There is a good reason why AiG isn't the arbitrator of what is good biblical scholarship. They are unwilling to let facts get in the way of their faith.

Thirdly, why is it "obvious" that the Old Testament should not be regarded as reliable? He has clearly not read a detailed apologetics of scriptural inerrancy, such as that provided by Brian Edwards in his masterly book, Nothing But The Truth. That is again down to his presupposition, that evolution is true so Genesis is wrong. Merely making a statement, or using the word "obvious", does not make a statement true, when it is not true. Just from these three points, we see that there is no logical reason given by Dawkins for rejecting the use of the Bible as evidence.

A good example of the Courtier's Reply.
All evidence supports the theory of evolution, the age of the Earth etc., while none supports a literate reading of the creation story in Genesis (which of the two creation stories should we go with BTW?).
The stories in the Bible are not supported by historical evidence, biological evidence or by science in general. The story of the Ark alone, has so many problematic issues that TalkOrigins has an entire page dedicated to them.

Infidels.org has a list of biblical contradicitions and errors, which includes listing bats as a type of bird.

Do you really want to claim this to be the "inerrant and authoritative word of God"?

Articles on the use of logic are easy to find on the website. An important element in the use of logic is to recognise logical fallacies. Dawkins has committed several of these.

So far I haven't been impressed with the quality of Taylor's logic, so it would seem like he should re-read those articles.

Ad Hominem

This sort of fallacy involves attacking the opponent instead of the argument. In the UK, this is referred to as "playing the man instead of the ball" - a soccer reference, implying that the tackler has deliberately aimed to kick his opponent, rather than attempting to kick the ball.

There are several examples of this. There is a particularly nasty attack on a schoolteacher, who happens to be a creationist. Notice, on page 95, how Dawkins describes certain American educational establishments.

He moved up the hierarchy of American universities, from rock bottom at the "Moody Bible Institute", through Wheaton College (a little bit higher on the scale, but still the alma mater of Billy Graham) to Princeton in the world-beating class at the top. (p95)

Why are the three institutions arranged hierarchically? What is the basis for Dawkins assessment of standards at each place? He doesn't say, but we assume that it is to do with belief in the Bible. Why is it implied that, because they number Billy Graham among their alumni, that this is a negative for Wheaton College?

The book is full of such examples.

Interesting that Taylor doesn't actually provide any examples of the ad hominem attacks.
Attacking someone for being a creationist is not an example of ad hominem, unless they were discussing something irrelevant to this (for example his opinion on taxes). For example, to say that a creationist is unqualified to teach biology is not an ad hominem attack, since his stance shows a lack of understanding of the fundamental principles of biology.

Ranking American universities might not be very relevant, but again, it's not an ad hominem attack. Impling that counting Billy Graham as an alumni counts against Wheatin College is more properly called "guilt by association", and has absolutely nothing to do with an adhominen.

Straw Men

The well-known "straw man" logical fallacy occurs when the debater invents their opponent's position for them, then argues against their own invention, rather than the real position of the opponent. An example of this is seen in the mocking tone used, as he attempts to dismiss arguments based on intelligent design.

I [insert own name] am personally unable to think of any way in which [insert biological phenomenon] could have been built up step by step. Therefore it is irreducibly complex. That means it is designed.

Although Dawkins uses this argument frequently, it is a complete misrepresentation of the intelligent design position. A biological mechanism is not labelled as irreducibly complex, because it is complicated and the labeller cannot think how it could have evolved. It is so labelled, because it can be shown that it is not possible for it to have evolved.

Given how often we encounter the argument from incredulity, and that it's basicly what Behe's irreducibly complexity reduces to, I can't see that this is a strawman. A strawman is a position that the opponent doesn't hold after all.

Every biological mechanism labelled "irreducibly complex" so far, has as a matter of fact not been shown impossible to evolve. As a matter of fact, the evolutionary path for all of them have been since been demonstrated. In other words, they were labelled "irreducibly complex" because the labeller couldn't understand how it could have been evovled, and thus decided that it couldn't - the very definition of an argument from incredulity.

Conclusion

The God Delusion is far from being a reasoned argument for atheism, it is a hysterical rant. Maybe there will one day emerge a book that has a little more intellectual rigour. Dawkins' new book is weak, even by atheist standards. We note that Dawkins is now planning to send atheist material to government schools in the UK. That might be a good opportunity for British school pupils to exercise their critical thinking!

Did anyone notice any relevant critique of the content of the book? Taylor attacked Dawkins' logic (rather poorly), but didn't actually address any of the book's points. Not only didn't he do that, his entire critique was based upon the premise that the bible should be read literately - a minority position, even among the religious.

Note on comments: People are very welcome to disagree with me, but personal attacks and comments that just amounts to links to AiG (or similar pages) will get deleted without hesitation.