Tag Archives | Atheism

I sometimes feel like I’m walking in a world of stupidity. Some examples why:

1) From this weeks New Scientist. A comment article by Michael Zimmerman who founded the Clergy Letter Project to counter the anti-scientific nonsense that many religious people are fed about the fact and theory of evolution. This is a fine thing to do. However within the article we have the following paragraph:

The clergy involved in Evolution Weekend do not set out to provide detailed information about evolution to their congregations. Rather, the aim is to outline the complementarity of religion and science, while recognising the power of science’s dependence on the scientific method and on the concept of falsifiability, along with its limitations. That is, they understand that there are areas of importance to humans that fall outside the reach of science – subjective areas that are not open to rigorous hypothesis testing.

Why are there any areas of importance that fall outside the reach of science? Who says so? Granted the imaginary deities and made up stuff the religious believe is beyond the reach of any form of investigation in the real world. They don’t exist after all. But there are things related to why people believe them that are very much open to scientific investigation. We can use neuroscience to investigate why people believe in things without evidence. We can also investigate the evolutionary advantages in belief systems within early human societies and groups. We certainly don’t have to ring fence some groups belief in the supernatural just cause they say its outside the realm of scientific investigation.

2) Looks like the UK Government is going to allow some faith schools in the UK to have their own inspectorate. That’s just so daft I couldn’t be bothered commenting on it past highlighting it here.

3) Church dentistry. That’s not an attempt at a Googlewhack. The Bishop of Carlisle, who is a mad as a fruitcake, has let it slip in a speech in the House of Lords that some church groups are bidding to offer dental services in the UK. He also said that the church should be exempt from the usual scrutiny that government welfare providers are subject to. Read the whole gory details here. The question is whether the government are actually considering things like this or they are just humouring the Bishop and his crazy fellow travellers?

Is it the 21st Century? Didn’t we settle all this tripe in the Enlightenment?

The Bishop of Wales is whining about atheistic fundamentalism. The money quote –

But he said “virulent, almost irrational” attacks on it were “dangerous” because they refused to allow any contrary viewpoint and also affected the public perception of religion.

Oh, the irony. Has he done any history? Does he know what happened to people who gainsaid the church teaching in the past? Has he heard of Giordano Bruno? Has he heard about the others persecuted in the name of religion?

Us atheists, fundamentalist or not [1], don’t want to burn anyone at the stake or deny them from practising their religion. We might think it is superstitious nonsense but that’s not the point. The point is that some of the religious wish to impose their irrational beliefs on the rest of us. They want to restrict a women’s right to choose what happens to her own body. They want to restrict our choices in medical research. They want to use tax payers money to pay for repairs to churchs when they have huge property portfolios that they could sell to fund the repairs. And so on.

All this whining about christianity being downtrodden looks like the last gasps of a dying organisation to me. The Enlightenment is still working to smoother the last irrational life out of it. The sooner the better.

[1] How can you be fundamentalist about a lack of belief?

Mark Morford does it again.

Bill Maher tells some truths. See the video on onegoodmove.

Thanks to Pharyngula for the link.

Well almost. A short announcement episode has been published. See the iTMS feed.