Dawkins in the Pulpit... meet the new atheists/evos same as the old boss?

Oh? Really? Like what?Look, we've tried to be peaceful about it. Live and let live with the religious has gotten us fuck-all in the past centuries. The result of trying to approach you religious folk on eggshells has been decades of discrimination against atheists.Sorry. I realize that the religious would just as soon have atheists go away somewhere, but we're not going to do that. And we shouldn't have to muzzle the fact that we think religious ideas are make-believe, and that we demand just a little more rigor when it comes to figuring out what we're going to base public policy on. When life-saving cures, for instance, could emerge from the science of embryonic stem cells, it's bullshit that this important research grinds to a halt because a bunch of people are worried about souls. Souls are make-believe! They don't exist, and it's absolutely ridiculous that they play any part in the public debate.Kudos to Dawkins for taking a stand. It's not like capitulating to religionists has done anything for us. The only result of trying to "work with the religious" has been centuries of being governed as though their make-believe was real.

There's no preoccupation. It's just that, everywhere you turn, you're confronted by theism. "Inordinate amounts of time"? What, an atheist can't have a hobby?Do you really think it takes that much time to destroy religious argumentation? Let me assure you - it's not that hard to refute religious reasoning. It hardly takes any research or work at all; religion is simply intellectually bankrupt. It's not that hard to point that out. If it were possible to escape dealing with theism, don't you think we would?I can tell you that, in my household, the subject of God rarely comes up. It's really only ever a subject when someone who does believe in God is using God as an excuse to get me to do something.The atheist preoccupation with God that you suggest is mythical. Obviously you have that experience, because you're a theist. Naturally the only thing you have to talk about with atheists is the existence of God. It's the theists who are obsessed with God and with people who don't believe in it. How - by talking about it? By making an argument that atheism is the reasonable conclusion?I realize people like you would just as soon have atheists shut the hell up and live in a hole. Maybe you'd even like to put us there yourself. Well, that's just the sort of bigotry atheists have come to expect from you people. To even assert that one is an atheist is to be "strident." Is to be "adversarial."It's pretty ridiculous. What, atheists don't have a right to be part of the discussion? That's nonsense. Hitler was no atheist. Stalin was no atheist. (Nobody who believes in their own godhead can be an atheist, by definition.) Pol Pot was no atheist.Gengis Kahn was no atheist. Torquemada was no atheist. None of the Popes have been atheists, I think we can agree on that?Even your atheist warlords used religion to cause genocide. A community of atheists has no reason to kill anybody. Whenever atheists have caused genocides, it's been the weapon of religion that they wielded to do that. Atheism doesn't give you power over people.For that, you need religion. Who gives a shit? Certainly theists have felt themselves under no obligation to treat atheists with any kind of civility. Your own criticism of atheists for doing nothing more than asserting that they are atheists is proof of that. How much sense does it make for you to recommend to atheists civility and silence when you're not at all interested in offering them the same?

Thanks for proving my point, Iano. Shorter version: Why can't atheists just shut the hell up about being atheists? How, exactly, do you propose that one promote the position that "God does not exist" without, you know, at some point actually saying "God does not exist"?The only advantage of atheism is that it's the truth.

Both Dawkins and Bill Dennet (my wife is reading his book "Breaking the Spell") explore the reasons why this might be so.Just because religion survives and persists doesn't mean that it's doing anything beneficial for us. Like a parasite, religion could simply be adapted to benefit itself. Plenty of natural human mental behaviors are not reasonable. Confirmation bias, for instance. My "aversion" is that religious belief is unreasonable. That it is common doesn't make it any more reasonable. I don't "seek" anything. I came here to talk about evolution. But when people impugne atheists, or engage in sloppy woowoo thinking in scientific contexts, I speak up.I realize you'd rather I just shut the hell up, but why should I do that? I don't seek out theists to destroy, but when they come and attack me, what choice do I have? Why should I be expected to just roll over and take it? If we couldn't, how could we ever know anything? Seems to me to be perfectly obvious that if something doesn't exist, we should eventually be able to find out. Why wouldn't we? Especially for something as big as God is supposed to be?Don't you think it's possible for me to know that there's not a blue whale in my bedroom? If not, is that something you check under the bed for? If not, why not? How do you know there's not a blue whale there? Theism need not serve any purpose for us to persist. Parasites serve no purpose for their hosts. Evolution is not human-centric. Because they're wrong, but they're in power. They're making decisions for the rest of us from a basis that isn't true: "God exists and he wants us to do so-and-so." The objections to pursuing embryonic stem cell research are entirely religious. If I have Parkinson's or some other degenerative disease, why should my hopes for a normal life be dashed because of some complete stranger's religious beliefs? What? No, he was a Lutheran. Known fact. Nonsense. Darwinism wasn't even allowed to be taught in the Societ Union, because the idea of species competition smacked of capitalism.You've never heard of the Soviet Union's official biology, Lysenkoism? I don't know where you're getting your bibliography, but the book that Stalin discovered during his seminary years wasn't anything by Darwin; it was Marx's Communist Manifesto. I don't. You've never heard of Torquemada? The fucking Spanish Inquisition? You're having trouble guessing what kind of theism he subscribed to?Pol Pot was a Therawada Buddist. Theists invented communism. It was developed by religious communities. Communism has nothing at all to do with atheism; the Soviet Union only pursued a course of name-only official "atheism" because the Orthodox Church was the major power base behind the Tsars. The Soviet government was not actually atheist, because they believed in the divine supernatural power of the state and of their leaders. It was merely an official position designed to place them in opposition to the Orthodox Church. Not an actual statement that the supernatural did not exist; they were parading their armies in front of magical paintings of Stalin, for pete's sake. Not to mention trying to develop psychic powers for use in intelligence work.The Soviet government embraced supernaturalism. By definition then they can't be atheists. Why would they be required to do anything? They have the power. When Christians discriminate against atheists, they find themselves in a court that openly asserts the existence of God, makes people swear on Bibles, and has a legal tradition of disallowing the testimony of atheists on the grounds that they can't take a meaningful oath to truthfulness without a God to be swearing to. No, you just think we're all liars. You think that, contrary to what we tell you, we all have a "secret" belief in a God we can't stand.I don't find that terribly respectful, being called a liar right to my face with no cause. It's cute that you think you know me better than I know myself, but you're not my wife, I assure you; I don't find your arrogant presumption in this matter particularly civil.Keep pretending otherwise, though. I'm sure it makes you feel a lot better.

Oh, you mean like the Rand et al. paper?Eh, don't mind me. Don't even bother replying (or even implying a reply, as you did earlier in this thread.) Just get on back to criticizing a work you haven't even read, as usual.

I don't feel any doubt, honestly. None whatsoever. I'm as equally confident that God doesn't exist as I am about the non-existence of those other two myths.

...oh, one "n". Never mind.

D'oh! I'm sorry; it's actually "Rind et al." My honest mistake. Papers in evolutionary psychology pass the same peer-review process, but that doesn't seem significant to you. I guess peer-review is only legitimate in so far as their conclusions are in line with the Great and Powerful Holmes. Well, that's absolutely false. The Rind study is deeply, methodologically flawed on a number of levels. Firstly, the metastudy restricts itself to convenience samples of college students, introducing a bias against victims so scarred as to leave their lives devastated with no realistic possibility of entering college. Moreover, Rind et al seem to have no clear criterion for which studies they chose to include and which they chose to omit, opening them to charges of cherry-picking data. Furthermore they make no attempt to standardize variables between studies, making the results of their metastudy difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from.The contention of "character assassination" seems unsupported; the only instance of character assassination I can see comes from Rind et al, who assert that their critics are "victimologists" obsessed with discrediting science to further an agenda; Rind et al give no reason why the same charge can't be leveled at them, considering their years of involvement in controversial studies advocating the legitimacy of child-adult sexual contact.The study is methodologically flawed, Holmes. But you overlook those flaws because the study tells you something you think is true. Who, exactly, is acting like a creationist? Any time you feel capable of doing that, feel free. But I've never seen you offer a legitimate criticism of the science of those papers; merely statistical quibbles that are far more minor than the major methodological flaws that you readily overlook in the Rind et al study. (Oh, and of course, plenty of misrepresentation of my arguments. That's an old Holmes favorite.) Of course, that's not what I accused you of, so there's another Holmes-brand misrepresentation. Using the passive voice to address an argument I made to someone else isn't consistent with your stated desire not to respond to my posts.If you want to reply to my argument, reply to me. Don't half-ass it. Just, don't get all indignant when I point out another round of your constant misrepresentations and straw-men. I've got no problem with pleasantries. I assumed that there would be no way you could argue with advice on how to refresh your browser cache. Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

No, you still don't understand my point. Natural selection doesn't select what's best for humans; it selects what's best for survival.Not the survival of humans; the survival of what's being selected. Religion in this case. What about this are you having a hard time understanding? Religion hasn't been selected for qualities that are advantageous for humans; it's been selected for qualities that are advantageous to religion. Fair enough. But guesses seem to be all we have. You certainly haven't put forth anything better. Um, no, I pretty much can. People make the choice to be reasonable or not. Plenty of people have naturally negative proclivities that, through reason, they keep in check. If you couldn't tell the difference between things that exist and things that don't exist, how could knowledge exist? Nonsense. Look, two guys come up to you. One of them tells you that magic pixies exist, and the other tells you that they don't exist.After some pretty thourough research, you don't find any evidence at all for magic pixies. And you're going to sit there and tell me that you have absolutely no idea which one of those two guys is right? That their contradictory positions are both equally well-supported?That's idiotic, and if you really believe that it's significant reason to question your faculties of reason. What, do you check your bedroom every night for blue whales? But when you pray, you don't say "Ra-men" at the end, right? You don't believe in the FSM any more than you believe in Zeus or whatever, right?Why do you suppose that is? Their function is to survive and spread. The function of religion may very well be the same, and nothing more. Really? I'd like to marry another man, perhaps. Funny, though, a bunch of theists seem to think I shouldn't be allowed to do that.Of course decisions are being made for me. Every time the theistic majority demands that their peculiar morality be reflected in legislation with no compelling secular purpose, decisions are being made for me. There you go, proving my point. Abortions happen long before you'd be able to see limbs. Your objection to reproductive freedom, your advocacy of forced birth is not based on reality but on religion. False statement based not on reality but on religion. People aren't killed during research on embryonic stem cells. False statement based not on reality but on religion. Adult stem cells are not plenipotent, and no researcher believes that adult stem cells hold the same potential as embryonic cells. Adult stem cells do not "work just fine." Their capacity for theraputic use is quite limited. The theraputic capacity of embryonic cells is unknown, which is why research should be allowed to continue.You continue to prove my point. Your objections are not grounded in reality but in religious dogma and misinformation, whereas mine are informed by factual information. But our viewpoints are supposed to be considered equal? It's ridiculous. Patently untrue. Even towards the end of the war, before his suicide, he consistently reiterates his Christianity and what he believed to be his Christian duty to promote his Aryan race. That's the point. They promoted Lysenkoism because it wasn't Darwinism. Seriously, try to keep up. I'm not a Buddist; it's not for me to say whether or not Pol Pot violated the tenants of his faith. I can only relate his faith as he reported it. If his actions were sufficient to belie his statements, you'd be unable to point to a single person who was a real Christian. Yes, exactly. Does that mean you'll drop the ridiculous premise that the crimes of Soviet communism had anything to do with atheism? Somehow, I doubt it. And yet, the government was viewed to have the power to supernaturally listen in on your private conversations through ordinary radios. Paintings of Stalin were held to have the power to act as a conduit through which Stalin could view things. And everybody knows that the KGB was trying to develop psychic powers as an intelligence tool.Sure, the Soviet government was opposed to the Orthodox church, obviously. With the Tsars gone the Church was the last opposing power. But atheists? Not hardly. They certainly imbued themselves with supernatural powers, and demanded worship of the state by the populace.That's a religion. "God is the state; the state is God." Don't you remember that famous saying? Not exactly the position of atheists, don't you think? You've repeatedly asserted that I have a secret belief in God, even after I've told you that I know that's not true. So you're calling me a liar.It's pretty simple, NJ. If you didn't intend to brand me a liar, stop telling me I'm lying to you.

This would be the first time I've seen you do that. In other threads you've challenged me when I've referred to Rind et al as methodologically flawed, but now you seem to accept the reality of those methodological errors.Well, that's fine. It goes to credibility; yours, I mean. For instance the methodological flaws present in the Rind study - the selection bias, drawing conclusions from a panopoly of surveys with nonstandard variables, etc - are deeper and far more pernicious than the objections you raised to the t-shirt smell paper, which, as I recall, was essentially "T-shirts might not capture all the body smells of an extremely asymmetric human", even though you provided absolutely no evidence that that might be the case or that it would be relevant to the scope of the study.In other words, contrary to your spurious mudslinging, there's only one person here acting like a creationist - you. When you accept the results of the Rind study (which you have been a staunch defender of until this, your surprising 180-degree turnaround) but reject the far-better supported conclusions of evolutionary psychology, you're simply waving away serious methodological flaws when you have a personal stake in the results, but siezing on the same minor methodological quibbles that appear in absolutely every scientific paper to reject an entire field of study whose results you find troubling.Just like a "creo", as you're so fond of accusing others. I have no idea what you're talking about. Journal articles in evolutionary psychology go through the exact same peer-review process as any other research. Articles in the popular press are irrelevant (there's certainly plenty of those about child sexuality, by the way) to the discussion except as they might provide a layman's explanation of a technical paper.Popular press articles are not, to my knowledge, used by evolutionary psychology and its proponents in lieu of actual research, as you charge. Your assertion that EP supporters are just like creationists is a scurrilous and unsupported personal attack, your hypocritical threat to invoke moderation in response to personal attacks apparently notwithstanding.

Don't get too excited. The Amish's desire for community self-sufficiency often leads them to resist attempts by police to enforce laws or prosecute offenders. In a recent case in Minnesota, a woman reported being raped and abused by an Amish man. Rather than allow him to be turned over to the police, the Amish community hid him from prosecution, felt that the issue was an internal matter, and decided that the appropriate punishment was to ostracise the man for a week.

Wait, what? The understood criticism of empiricism is that it can't be deductively validated; but you're sitting right in front of the empiric validation of empiricism.The idea that you can't empirically validate empiricism is a non-starter. The practical results of empiric processes such as science are the validation.

Well, we tried that. Unfortunately, you chose to respond to statements that you later admitted I had not made rather than substantiating your arguments or showing how your methodological quibbles actually undercut the conclusions as presented in the research (and not simply the conclusions predictably overstated by the public press reporting.)I'm sorry that you found that discussion insufficient or otherwise unsatisfying; your odious debate conduct was once again the sole cause of that. It's nothing of the sort. If you didn't want to address your assertions that the proponents of evolutionary psychology are as bad as creationists in this thread, you should not have made them in this thread.Instead you chose to once again level snide and spurious charges against an entire scientific field without providing a single supporting example, instead referring others to a thread where you yourself behave in exactly the way you're accusing. These accusations are pulled from thin air, Holmes. There's been no personal insult or emotion in my posts - only the proof that you're precisely guilty of what you're accusing everybody else of.

Well, that's patently false. Empiricism is a method, not a position. It's a means of developing knowledge. There may be other means, but as yet, you have not supplied any, despite being asked to do so for over a year now. (I guess you're still "thinking about it.") If you've already stipulated that this "evidence" is not that which can be sensed, then it would by definition (your definition) be impossible for a person to truthfully claim to be sensing it. If they are sensing something, then whatever they're sensing is empirical evidence, again by definition.The idea of evidence that can be sensed and is yet not empirical is a contradiction in terms; therefore it makes no sense to talk about the consequences of that. You're describing an impossible situation so it's irrelevant to discussions of evidence. But faith, by definition, is belief in the absence of evidence; thus, faith cannot be evidence. Faith cannot be what it is defined as the lack of.

All of the ones for which no evidence has been brought forward. In the case of the supernatural, what evidence could anyone possibly bring forward for something that even it's proponents can't meaningfully define? I imagine that the majority of people don't even think about it. They probably don't even have a position on evolution because it's not something they think about. And in a country where more than 50% of the population are creationists, I don't think you have a leg to stand on in terms of accusing people for accepting the results of science on nothing more than faith. I think you're right, and I hope it's in that spirit that you approach your dealings on this forum. But I don't see it as an act of faith to accept the conclusions of accredited experts. It's an act of trust when you accept your doctor's recommendations without being able to understand the medicine. It's an act of faith when you accept the position of a clergyman on a subject he has absolutely no training or credentials in.