Best wishes to everyone for a happy and prosperous 2015.
Second and Third Thoughts
This is an interesting comment on the Huffington Post survey that I posted about before.
Most British people think religion causes more harm than good according to a survey commissioned by the Huffington Post. Surprisingly, even among those who describe themselves as “very religious” 20 percent say that religion is harmful to society. For that we can probably thank the internet, which broadcasts everything from Isis beheadings, to stories about Catholic hospitals denying care to miscarrying women, to lists of wild and weird religious beliefs, to articles about psychological harms from Bible-believing Christianity.
In 2010, sociologist Phil Zuckerman published Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment. Zuckerman lined up evidence that the least religious societies also tend to be the most peaceful, prosperous and equitable, with public policies that help people to flourish while decreasing both desperation and economic gluttony.
We can debate whether prosperity and peace lead people to be less religious or vice versa…
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Whatever or whoever you believe in, I wish you the greetings of the season and hope for 2015.
The picture’s not christmassy, but it is a little bit of happiness.
Fans of the comedy, The Big Bang Theory, will probably know that producer Chuck Lorre includes a vanity card during the credits at the end of every episode. They’re usually too long to read without pausing the video; sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. This time I did. It make me smile and, considering my current interest in atheism and religion, was a little piece of serendipity. [Read more…]
I wish this Pearls Before Swine observation was not quite so on target.
I was bouncing around the Interweb today clicking on links that suggested something interesting or entertaining. I came across The Null Hypothesis Project written by Jonathon Hold (Professor of Apologetics, Iowa University of Religion).
Espousing the view that teaching is a “most sacred responsibility”, Professor H writes:
At the risk of getting terribly technical here, I’d like to help lay folks understand how atheist scientists think and explain how to defeat their odd arguments. One big error atheist scientists make is trying to worship the “null hypothesis.”
His definition leaves a bit to be desired:
You state something is not true, then nullify that incorrect statement. It is called rejecting the null hypothesis.
The good professor calls this crazy thinking. He’s not wrong.
The big finish comes as the professor demonstrates how to defeat atheists’ anti-Christian arguments with specific examples:
My null hypothesis: Professor Jonathon Hold doesn’t have a fucking clue… … Nope… Can’t reject that.
And folks wonder why, in spite of the number of LGBT-friendly churches and people and places out there, queer people cannot shake the fear that Christians hate them and want them harmed. This is the answer.
via Christian Pastor: “I’m Not Gonna Let Any of These Dirty Faggots Inside My Church”.
This guy, I guess, is definitely not going to turn the other cheek.
Although we often like to think otherwise, our personalities are just as much the products of natural selection and evolution as our upright stance and large brains.
✶
In Memory of Christopher Hitchens
Religious apologists, particularly those of the Christian variety, are big fans of what I have dubbed, the atheist atrocities fallacy. Christians commonly employ this fallacy to shield their egos from the harsh reality of the brutality of their own religion, by utilizing a most absurd form of the tu quoque (“you too”) fallacy, mingled with numerous other logical fallacies and historical inaccuracies. Despite the fact that theatheist atrocities fallacy has already been thoroughly exposed by Hitchens and other great thinkers, it continues to circulate amongst the desperate believers of a religion in its death throes. Should an atheist present a believer with the crimes committed by the Holy See of the Inquisition(s), the Crusaders and other faith-wielding misanthropes, they will often hear the reply; “Well, what about Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler? They were atheists, and they killed millions!”
Given the obstinate nature of religious…
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