Relativism & the Pope

Posted on April 20, 2005 by Dwight

Ratzinger, the new Pope, wrote

“Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching’, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” – Pope Benedict XVI

Which is a very confused description of relativism. On the one hand it sounds like relativism = being open to “every wind of teaching”, that is to say it looks like our new Pope confuses relativism with open-mindedness — and opposes open-mindedness. The desire to be sure of the truth, to not be misled as a result of lack of exposure to ideas, which leads one to listen to “every wind of teaching” (the Pope says “swept along by” but that is mere hyperbole) he equates with being selfish.

It is selfish to want to know the truth, says our new Pope. It is selfish to listen to what reform Catholics — or God forbid non-Catholics — think. Relativism means simply “not bowing down to the wisdom of the Pope”. Continue reading →

Posted in Christinsanity, Ethics & Morality | 2 Comments

Eve’s Breasts

Posted on February 25, 2005 by Dwight

With apologies to Christ (who I’m certain would have been as perplexed as I am), we have more evidence of the moral insanity of American Christians. An artist in Roseville, Michigan and an art gallery owner in Pilot Point, Texas have been arrested and convicted (Edward Stross of Roseville) or threatened with arrest (Dwight Miller of Pilot Point) for painting murals depicting God’s creation of Eve. Read about it here. Both artists had the apparently not-so-original idea of painting a variation of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam (the original graces the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) using Eve in place of Adam. The problem? Eve has breasts—naked breasts. God forgot to create her with clothing, it seems.

For that, the artists had to be charged with pornography.

These are the same Christians going apoplectic over breasts who don’t seem to have a problem in the world with torture.

The flaw with the Christian religion (and from my point of view it is an unforgivable flaw) is that it loves pain and hates bodily pleasure. Pleasures are “deadly sins” which God will, according to Christinsanity, punish with eternal pain. Sex, of course, is a horror, but so is the entirely innocent pleasure of being a body and having breasts—if you can be seen by anyone. Continue reading →

Posted in Atheist Culture, Christinsanity | 2 Comments

Intelligent Design Unveiled

Posted on February 21, 2005 by Dwight

Natural History magazine (4/02) has a set of articles on intelligent design: three by intelligent design advocates Michael J. Behe, William A. Dembski, and Jonathan Wells, followed by three responses by Kenneth R. Miller, Robert T. Pennock, and Eugenie C. Scott. Then an interesting article about the history and strategy of intelligent design advocates by Barbara Forrest. And last, Ian Tattersall weighs in on science vs. religion and argues that they are not really in conflict!

At least, they would not be in conflict, he seems to say, if religionists would only stay in their place — which is to reveal timeless, absolute truths–and stay out of the scientific realm — which deals with knowledge that is provisional and anything but absolute. Tattersall writes:

“How can we make progress in science if what we believe today cannot be shown tomorrow to be somehow wrong or at least incomplete? Religious knowledge is in principle eternal, but scientific knowledge is by its very nature provisional.”

He goes on to say

“scientists are in pursuit of knowledge about mundane realities and are not in the business of revealing timeless truths.”

True enough. But has he succeeded in setting up “non-overlapping magisteria” (as I believe Stephen J. Gould described it) between science and religion?

He has not. The distinction between absolute and provisional truth is not a distinction of subject matter but rather a distinction of the nature of knowing. Continue reading →

Posted in Evolution & ID, Naturalism | Comments Off on Intelligent Design Unveiled

Clone and Punishment

Posted on February 18, 2005 by Dwight

Imagine that someone took some stem cells from your bone marrow and created a clone of you. Imagine, however, that you have never met this clone, that it lives in a different place. A few months later you learn that this twin of yours has been injured. What is the likely effect of learning about its injury? It is natural to feel sympathy for the clone’s pain, but probably you would not react as strongly as you would to the injury of a close friend or sibling, someone you knew and loved.

Imagine the news now comes that an enemy of yours has captured the clone and has begun to torture it, under the assumption that torturing your clone will have the effect of torturing you.

Undoubtedly you consider this behavior barbaric and evil. But you will probably also find it bizarre that your enemy honestly believes that inflicting pain on the clone will literally inflict pain on you—as if the clone was some kind of voodoo doll. You will consider the enemy’s behavior evil, certainly, but also stupid.

But what now if the clone is somehow downloaded with your memories, so that it becomes not just a duplicate of your body but also a duplicate of your mind. Would this new twist make a difference when the bad guy tortured the clone? Would it make it so that torturing the clone now had the literal effect of torturing you?

Quite obviously, it would not. Continue reading →

Posted in Afterlife & Immortality, Articles Highlighted, Atheology, Christianity | 13 Comments

Ingersoll Reviews “The Passion of Christ”

Posted on February 16, 2005 by Dwight

Suppose, however, that God did give this law to the Jews, and did tell them that whenever a man preached a heresy, or proposed to worship any other God that they should kill him; and suppose that afterward this same God took upon himself flesh, and came to this very chosen people and taught a different religion, and that thereupon the Jews crucified him; I ask you, did he not reap exactly what he had sown? What right would this god have to complain of a crucifixion suffered in accordance with his own command?”— Robert G. Ingersoll, “Some Mistakes of Moses”

Posted in Freethinkers, Ingersoll, The Bible | 4 Comments

The Devil’s Christianity

Posted on February 14, 2005 by Dwight

When I was in my mid-twenties, it seemed that small saddle-stapled religious pamphlets were everywhere. Someone would ring the doorbell, smile and hand me a pamphlet explaining that Jesus was Lord. Someone else would accost me in the street and press into my hand a little booklet warning me that I would go to hell unless I believed. And in the bus station in Athens I found an entire rack of them, often complete with horned devil and pitchfork on the cover.

I longed to have something to retaliate with. So I made plans to create my own pamphlets to give in kind. I made lots of notes, and had titles planned out like: Is God Real? , Christian Vanity , Bad News for Modern Man , Is God Any Good? , The Faithlessness of Faith , and Make-Believe God.

But my favorite had the title, The Devil’s Christianity. I imagined it with a red and black devil lurking on the cover, much like many of their booklets. Only this one would put Christianity on the run—and do so using nothing but God and Genesis.

And I more or less completed it, though I never managed to turn it into a pamphlet. This was partly because I found myself exposed to pamphlet-bearing Christian far less frequently after moving to Atlanta.

But here is the text. And yes, it does put Christians on the run! Continue reading →

Posted in Afterlife & Immortality, Christianity, The Bible | Comments Off on The Devil’s Christianity

War or Reason? a reply to Rev. Charles Stanley

Posted on February 13, 2005 by Dwight

In early March of 2003, a few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, relatives sent me the tape recording of a then recent sermon by the Rev. Dr. Charles Stanley entitled “A Nation at War”. Rev. Stanley is not some minister on the religious fringe: his credentials are very mainstream. As senior pastor of the 16,000 member First Baptist Church in Atlanta, his “In Touch” TV broadcast is heard on more than 200 TV stations, 7 satellite networks, and 450 radio stations. It reaches over a million viewers a week. A former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Stanley has written 45 plus books of which more than 3,500,000 copies have been sold.

The focus of Stanley’s sermon was two-fold: God loves war, and it was wrong for protesters to oppose the Bush administration’s forthcoming invasion of Iraq. Since I was both atheist and protester, the tape was undoubtedly sent my way in an effort to change my outlook on each count.

Instead, I responded with a long emailed reply, which follows: Continue reading →

Posted in Articles Highlighted, Bush Wars, Christinsanity | 8 Comments

An Irreverent Look at God, Sex & Design

Posted on February 13, 2005 by Dwight

Theists like to argue that design—especially the complex design we see in organisms—is proof there must be a Designer. And theists denigrate evolution precisely because it provides an alternate explanation for design. If evolution suffices, then not only does there exist a viable competitor to God, but it is a competitor without the contradictions and supernaturalism of theism.

It follows that the debate between atheism and theism is to a significant extent a debate about which viewpoint—God or evolution—provides a better explanation for the design we see around us.

One prominent observation about organisms is that they often come in sexes. Pretty much all complex animals have male and female sexual organs and engage in a variety of sexual behaviors. I will now proceed to look at which explanation—God or evolution—better addresses this aspect of animal design. Continue reading →

Posted in Articles Highlighted, Atheology, Non-Existence Arguments, The Bible, Unsacred Texts | 12 Comments

Competing Moralities & Perfect God

Posted on February 13, 2005 by Dwight

The existence of evil is difficult to understand if we assume the universe is the product of a perfect God. However, embrace the scientific/evolutionary viewpoint and evil becomes understandable. After all, what is supremely “good” for the ebola virus is extremely “evil” for the primate infected by ebola.

Natural selection provides a framework which enables us to understand why species are so often in conflict with each other. If each species has its own morality or “rightness”, it follows that the result of the evolutionary process is a world of competing moralities.

Evil exists, from the evolutionary perspective, simply because other species exist with their own conflicting needs and rights. Why conflicting? Because there is a limit to resources—so much sunlight, so much oxygen, nutrients, energy resources, and no more. Sometimes, it’s true, one species will develop a symbiotic relationship with another species in situations where the two use resources in a mutually beneficial way. But far more common is conflict.

The simple truth is that species often feed on each other. The delicious meal which is profoundly good and necessary for the wolf is profoundly evil from the lamb’s perspective. This is understandable within the context of natural selection, but not easily explained if there is a perfect God.

Why would a perfect God create a world of such limited resources and resulting competing moralities?* Or, to turn this question around into an even more devastating form for theism: why would the existence of a world of limited resources and competing moralities, be best explained by postulating a perfect God? Continue reading →

Posted in Atheology, Non-Existence Arguments | 3 Comments

Thoughts, Feelings & Faith

Posted on February 13, 2005 by Dwight

People don’t like to be told that their feelings are wrong.

Which is understandable. Feeling are, after all, not thoughts. They can’t be proved—or disproved. They just are.

Which is why religion animates us, and philosophy does not. Religion is built of feelings, not thoughts. That’s why we refer to a religious outlook as a “faith”, and insist one must “have faith”. Religion gaming is a matter of feelings.

And feelings are never wrong.

Nor right. Continue reading →

Posted in Atheist Culture, Faith & Reason, Religious Atheism | 1 Comment