Infinity is finite

This has got to stop. The end is in sight though. I hope this is the next to last of these lists.

Just to remind you where this information comes from, it’s Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll. ( Brits. Please note. It’s not the Atheist
Bogroll
.)

halls of macadamia
Happily Godless
Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes
HASSERS
Heathen Queer
Heathen.TV
Hellbound Alleee
hell’s handmaiden
Heretic’s Altar
Heuristicism
Hokum-Balderdash Assay
Homo economicus’ Weblog
Homologous Legs
Honjii’s Harangues
Hot Dogs, Pretzels, and Perplexing Questions
http://www.skepticaleye.com/
Human Psyche of J.D. Crow
Humans: The Other White Meat
Humbuggery
I Am An Atheist
I Never Shut Up
I traded my soul for happiness
Ian’s Brain
Ice Station Tango
IDiosyntocracy
In Defence Of Reason
In the grip of hysteria
Incessant Expressions
indoctriNATION
Infidel boy in Blabber mode
INFIDELIS MAXIMUS
Infinite monkeys, infinite keyboards
Infophilia
Inkblot Icon
intelligent or silly design ?
Interested
Interesting
INTJ Mom
Intrepidon
Ionian Enchantment
Is it just me?
it’s about time
izzworld dot org
jdc325’s Weblog
Jeber’s
Jeebus Freaks
Jewelisms
Jewish Atheist
Joe’s Big Blog
Judith’s thought-provoking hard-hitting journal
Juke of Flow
Just a whisper in the wind
Just Another Atheist
Jyunri Kankei

Nor is it working seamlessly. It’s taking span tags.

K H A L A S !
KafirGirl
Kapanalig Sa Wala
Kergillian
Kieran Bennett
Kill The Afterlife
King Aardvark
le tiers monde
leaping rabbit/lapin sauteur
Leicester Secularist
Les non-sens de Jean Staune
Let Go – Forget God
Let There Be Light
Letras Nocturnas
Letters from a broad
Liars, Lunatics and What’s Left
Liberal Debutante
Life & Otherwise
Life According to Mike White
Life before death
Life is an adventure
Life Without Faith
Life, the Universe and Everything
Lifecruiser
Living the Scientific Life
Living with Missy and other thoughts
Logic’s Last Stand
LOL god
Look at the Bright’s Side
Lord of the atheists
Love the Nimbu
Lubab No More
lynn’s daughter, thinking

Madman’s Paradise
Masala Skeptic
Matt’s Notepad
Matt’s Truthonomics
Maximum Likelihood
Mechanical Crowds
mediawatchwatch.org.uk
Meet An Atheist
Memoirs of a (G)a(y)theist
Memoirs of an ex-Christian
Mere Skepticism
Merit-bound Alley
Mickipedia
Midwest Atheist
Migrations
Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant
mindcore
MINISTER OF RANTS
Mirth, Musings, & More
Misc. Musing
Mississippi Atheists
Missives from the Frontal Lobe
mister jebs blog
Modern Agnostic
Modern Atheist
Moiz Khan – The godless Liberal
Mothrust
Much ado about nothing
My Case Against God
My Elemental Muse
My Goddless Drama
My Life Thinly Disguised as Groove
My Long Apostasy
My Single Mom Life
Mystery of Mysteries

Naastika
Nanovirus
Natural Reckonings
Naturalistic Atheism
Neural Gourmet
New Humanist Blog
New National Reformer
News From the Front – Fair and Balanced
Nicest Girl and Destroyer of Planets
Nick Harding
Nihilist Future
No Double Standards
No Gods Allowed
No More Fake Gods
No More Hornets
No more Mr. Nice Guy!
Nobody’s There…
NoBS Radio Show
NoGodBlog.com
Non Credo Deus
Non-Prophet
North Alabama Rant
Not really, Alice.
Nothing Is Sacred
Null Session
Nullifidian
Nut Watch
Obscene Desserts
Odder Stories
Of Microbes and Men
ohm sweet ohm
oldcola
olio
Oliver Benen
On Fire For Reason
on the street and in my head
One Fewer God
onegoodmove
Onion Breath
Onwards and Forwards
Open Parachute
Oracle and Atheism
Order of St. Nick
Our Freedom of Espresso
Outchurched
Oz Atheist’s Weblog

Still I’m up to O. Once you get past the As, the list goes much faster.

Part 3 of infinite list

Still only up to the Cs. Arrgh.

I’m going to rattle on about converting information between sources as an example of why computers appeal to people. (Well, to me.) It’s the mental challenge.

If I was even halfway competent at using a keyboard, I’d just type lots of things. But, I’m a terrible typist.

(In case, that sounds as if I’m any better at handwriting, you’d be dead wrong. I can barely write a legible sentence by hand, since I took up spending my life at computers. I bet that’s true of many people.)

And I get bored by any repetitive task way too easily. So, if I have any task to do, I look for a more interesting way of doing it. Even if it takes MUCH longer. And fails to work.

I bet this is true of most people who read this. (Except, maybe, for the people who get here looking for Arnold Schwarzenegger or pictures of guns, about 10 and 5 every day respectively, in case you wondered.)

Of course, since it’s me and you I’m talking about, we can take it for granted that this is a good thing. “Creative thinking” and so on. (A less charitable person might say “butterfly mind.” ) But, maybe it’s part of why it’s possible to get people to do things for the buzz of working out how to do them, without thinking of the consequences.

Things like using computers and the internet to collect information from a huge variety of sources and putting them together.

cabhara’s zeitgeist Canterbury Atheists Can’t make a difference CaroLINES CASE: The Center for Atheistic Secular Evangelism CHADMAC Speaks Chaos Maniac chedstone.com Chimaera Contemplations Choosing Atheism CHRISTIAN PWNAGE 101 Christianity is Bullshit! ChristopherSisk.com Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Circular Reasoning Cogita Tute – Think For Yourself cognitive dissident Coming Out Godless Compendium of Religious Evil Conclusions worth jumping to Confessions of an Anonymous Coward Cosmic Variance Covert History Creative Century Critical Mass Crowded Head, Cozy Bed Culture for all Cupcakes in Hell

Part 2 of huge list

Next bit. In case anyone is trying out this method, I forgot to mention that this list-posting method doesn’t take out the “last updated” bit.

My idea for doing that was to paste the list into a word processor and insert commas before the word “title” and before the word “href.” Then, save the file in csv format, open it in a spreadsheet program and delete the column that fell between the commas. Then save it back into text file format and paste the text into WordPress.

But, through trial and error (scientific method :-)) I found out that you also have to insert line breaks at the end of each line. I tried a find and replace but didn’t bother to cut down the spaces first, so I missed some. I gave up at this point. After all, the “last updated” bit doesn’t matter.

Atheism and Coffee Atheism Is Not Evil Atheism Online Atheism Sucks – sucks Atheism through rationalism and science Atheism | simra.net Atheism: Proving The Negative Atheist A Go-Go! Atheist Anonymous Atheist Armaments Atheist Bitch Atheist Blogs Aggregated Atheist Ethicist Atheist Girls Atheist Haven Atheist Hussy Atheist Liberty Atheist Media Blog Atheist Momma Atheist Movies Atheist Okie Atheist Peace Atheist Propaganda Atheist Revolution Atheist Think Tank Atheist Tuesday Atheist Wisdom Atheista Atheistkiwi’s Weblog Atheists And Christians Community Blog Atheists Rule! AtheisTube Atheoi.org Atheology Axis of Jared Ayrshire Blog

Babble and Rants Babble, bullshit, blasphemy and being. Bad Thinking Barrum Bright Blog Bay of Fundie Beaman’s World Because No One Asked Being Human Ben’s Place Berto: Philosophy Monkey Bert’s Blog Beyond Belief BHA Science Group Bible Study for Atheists biblioblography Billion Dollar Baloney bits of starstuff Bjorn & Jeannette’s Blog Black Coffee Black Sun Journal Black Woman Thinks Blasphemous Blogging Bligbi Blogesque Bloggin’ Off Blogue de Mathieu Demers blurp Bob Kowalski bore me to tears Born Again Atheist brainstorms Breaking Spells British Atheists Bruises Colours BSAlert.com Buridan’s Ass BurntSushi By The Book Comics

Trailing in Barefoot Bum’s footsteps again

Taking the lead from Barefoot Bum’s post, I’ve tried to paste in the atheist blogroll in bits again. This is slice one. There are hundreds and hundreds of the buggers. Be very afraid, Answers in Genesis. (That’s a link to good HJhop discussion of its latest absurdities)

After various attempts to take the whole list and convert it to csv to strip out the “last posted” bit in the title, I gave up and went for viewing the source code – using the Firefox right click option that lets you choose to see the source of a selection – copying that and pasting it into WordPress visual view of the “Write post” window. Does it work? If you can see it and click on the links, yes.
(D’oh. HTML view, sorry…)
(((Billy))) The Atheist 1 2 3 Religious Comics 2000 Years of Deception 40 Year Old Atheist An Enlightened Observer A bordo del “Otto Neurath” A Division by Zer0 A geocentric view A Goat Called Nebulous A Hint of Neurosis A Human Mind A Positive view of Atheism A Voice Crying in the Metropolis A Whore in the Temple of Reason

A-Deistic AA Aardvarchaeology AASAUF Abandoning Eden About: Agnosticism / Atheism Aces Full of Links Action Skeptics After Faith Agni Setu Agnostic Atheism Agnostic Universe Blog Aidan Maconachy blog Al-Kafir Akbar! Alexander the Atheist Alex’s Heresies All that is, and all that shall be. Am I mad, or is the world? Amused Muse An Apostate’s Chapel An Atheist Woman’s Point Of View An Enlightened Observer An Insane Existence Anal Iced Bible Anatheist.net And Say We Did And That’s How You Live With A Curse Anders Rasmussen Blog Andrew Clapper on… Angels Depart Angry Astronomer Angry by Choice Answers in Genesis BUSTED! Anti Deity Militia Apple of Doubt Arcis Logos Arizona Atheist Ateistbloggen

A lie goes round the world before the truth has put his boots on

(A Terry Pratchett quote, from the Truth, possibly an old saying, possibly invented on the spot.)

A BBC article said that Birmingham City Council has banned atheist websites.

I read this news in my workplace (which seems to randomly ban or allow even this site. There is absolutely no discernable difference in cussword quotient or possible offensiveness between this site on the days when it throws up threatening warning messages that I’ve tried to access a forbidden site and should instantly alert my line manager from the days when it works normally.)

I was shocked. Bloggably shocked, even.

I didn’t – for more than a minute or so – think that Birmingham Council actually wanted to ban atheist sites. The BBC article made it pretty clear it’s some useless off-the-shelf netnanny software that they are using. (In comments on Pharyngula, Cronan, Quidam and Armchair Dissident made excellent points, about the software and way it is set up and used, suggesting that this isn’t a deliberate city council policy, so much as the unthinking use of disturbingly set-up software.)

Well, duh. It’s a local government office. Almost by definition, its software buying decisions are made by people who can’t even use a spreadsheet package. Who are suckers for any sweet-talking sales people on their Preferred Suppliers lists. Who would think it was wildly outside their purchasing remit to pay attention to the details of what the software actually does. And who would rather insert a parking permit into their own left nostril than consult the people who might actually use a program.

But, still, it’s outrageous and the National Secular Society is absolutely right to object to this.

However, tracing the evolution of the reporting of this story in the atheosphere made me aware how easily a news item becomes a myth.

Pharyngula – blogged the story. He had a link to the BBC story but there was no evidence in his text that indicated that this was Birmingham, England.

Some of the 80-odd commenters who responded to this brief reference to a BBC article clearly took it that Pharyngula was talking about Birmingham, Alabama. An easy mistake to make. (I make it in reverse whenever the BBC refers to Birmingham, Alabama.) If I had read the Pharyngula piece without reading the BBC source, I would have automatically assumed this took place in Alabama.

Quintessential Rambling obviously assumed it was Birmingham Alabama and delivered a classic rant then showed an amazingly good grace and regard for the truth by admitting his error. That is my kind of human being.

A fair number of people will now believe that Birmingham, Alabama, has banned atheist websites. That’s fair enough. It’s a mistake based on an error of fact. No blame.

It’s the way that the facts of this incident contribute to a general level of atheist myth-making that disturbs me more. Wouldn’t you expect atheists to be a bit better at processing information than the average moron? Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Well, OK, it is definitely wishful thinking, but I am going to persist with it, in the face of the evidence.

A Richard Harris comment on Pharyngula says:

I bet the feckin’ Submissionists (followers of the prophet Muhammad, piss be upon him) are behind this.

Well, no. That seems like yet another attempt to demonise muslims to me. Is there some knee-jerk hate response that is stirred up every time the word islam is mentioned in any context? Oh, yes, silly me, Of course there is.

Leki is more rational but still manages to throw in a social disorder theme, expressed in terms of religion. S/he strings together a lot of completely disparate incidents to support a characterisation of Birmingham people as almost engaged in some sort of inter-ethnic, inter-religious war.

Birmingham is always in the news for something or another. A few years ago there were riots at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre over a play that depicted a rape in a sikh temple; there have been issues with honour killings; gun crimes have doubled (highest concentration of guns in the UK is Birmingham).
Remember the raid of January 2007? Birmingham police rounded-up a bunch of folks who were planning to kidnap a British soldier (muslim group, muslim soldier). That was big, big news.
I’ve visited Birmingham several times and there is this huge chasm between ethnicities. People are screaming on all sides about what language to teach in schools, how many mosques are allowed per block, whether or not the ‘english’ way of life is disappearing.

Well, yes, Birmingham IS always in the news for something or other. It’s England’s second city. Even the London-centric British media must mention what happens to a few million people every now and again.

Huge chasm between ethnicities? I assume you have never visited a US city? People screaming on all sides about what language to teach in schools, etc? Admit it, this is just made up.

OK, there’s nothing wrong with hyperbole in a blog comment. My point is that a casual reader of Pharyngula – who’s read the comments far enough to realise that a US city hasn’t banned atheist blogs – will be left with a vague, but probably lasting, impression that Birmingham, England, is under siege by extremist mullahs who have banned atheism.

Now, I expect the gutter press to leave this subliminal hate-residue in the back of the minds of its readers. That seems to be what it’s for. Keeping the population in a generalised low-level state of xenophobia, to make it easy to manipulate. It’s hard to understand the rabble-rousing tricks when they crop up in the atheist blogosphere.

There are some real concerns in this Birmingham situation. For instance, it’s disturbing that the effects of decisions made by blocking-software providers – with their own illiberal agendas – can be unthinkingly transmitted to become public policy. These issues are a bit boring. They don’t produce the visceral kick that seems to come with identifying an alien scapegoat. But trying to find out the truth must be the truly “rational” response.

Mail tries to make Pratchett look a prat

With the headline “I create gods all the time and now I think one might actually exist” the Daily Mail distorts the content of its interview with Terry Pratchett.

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
But it is true that in an interview I gave recently I did describe a sudden, distinct feeling I had one hectic day that everything I was doing was right and things were happening as they should.
It seemed like the memory of a voice and it came wrapped in its own brief little bubble of tranquillity. I’m not used to this.

Experiencing a feeling of transcendence is REALLY not the same as a belief in god. Pratchett himself is aware of this.

For a moment, the world had felt at peace. Where did it come from?
Me, actually….
I don’t think I’ve found God, but I may have seen where gods come from

Most non-believers have experienced transcendence. Feeling awe at the wonders of the universe doesn’t necessarily equate with belief in a divine being. Pratchett’s a fantasy writer. He earns his living by dabbling in myth and metaphor. Throughout the Diskworld series, he plays with the ideas of gods and religion. He treats them as any other component of his imaginary universe.

Pratchett has some sort of brain disease (possibly Alzheimer’s but he has had an alternative diagnosis.) A voice in his head sounds more like a neurological symptom than a religious conversion. If the voice manifested as an instruction to wash his hair in chip fat and stand on a window ledge hollering, the Daily Mail would hardly present this as proof of a divinity.

The whole tenor of the Daily Mail presentation is to suggest that Terry Pratchett has had some sort of religious conversion, in the face of his own words. This is pretty absurd, and would hardly matter to anyone but himself, even if it were true.

The sleb-obsessed press, such as the Daily Mail, treats us as if we are under the spell of any remotely-famous people. Pratchett is a well-known non-believer. So the Daily Mail credits his beliefs or lack of them as somehow influencing the rest of the population. However, if Dawkins were to become a Russian Orthodox priest, it wouldn’t matter to the average non-believer. If the Archbishop of Canterbury were to become a Jain, millions of Anglicans wouldn’t suddenly follow him.

Rushdie interview

Salman Rushdie spoke about religion and atheism, in an interview on the Canadian CBC news site

Q: ……. Is this a comment on the current vogue for atheism?

A: Maybe it’s making a slight comeback. In the ’60s and ’70s, religion was in extreme retreat. It really felt as if that subject was over. The idea that we would have to reckon with religion as a major force in public life would have seemed absurd, if you had suggested it to me when I was in my 20s.

For someone of my generation, what’s been shocking is the way that religion has rushed back and returned to public life. And it’s only happened since the 1980s. In the Eastern hemisphere, it’s the rise of radical Islam and here it has to do with the Christian right.

Absolutely right. Ideas that seemed twenty years ago to have only historical value are now powerful mass motivators.

Rushdie says that he differs slightly from Hitchens or Dawkins in that:

… I have no problem with religion, as long as it’s private. If people find it consoling or uplifting or nourishing – not my business. Why should I dictate to people what they should enjoy? I may think they’re dumb, but it’s not my business. Where it becomes my business is when it comes into the public arena and is a social and political force that seeks to impose certain norms on society. Then, I think it becomes a malicious force.

Well, yes. I tend to agree with him here. We all have an infinite number of false beliefs and they are noone else’s concern, no matter how dumb, unless we act upon them in ways that have an impact on other people.

But, playing Devil’s Advocate, religion can never really be a wholly private matter. It’s socially transmitted. A patchwork of individually derived superstitions is one thing. A (more-or-less) internally coherent belief system is another. It requires central authority to propagate its ideas. mechanisms for transmitting its message and, apparently, having been organised, it needs to strengthen its internal cohesion by defining non-believers as other. (*)

Can you have a personal god belief that’s not produced through society? It doesn’t seem likely. Believing in a concept of “gods” isn’t an automatic response to the wonders of the universe. Otherwise, people wouldn’t bother to indoctrinate their young into their belief systems. We would all be born fully formed christians or muslims or hindus or whatever. Or, at least, all religions would be singing from the same hymnsheet.

I’m not convinced that a personal god can be so easily separated from socially organised belief. However, if anyone knows what can happen when you challenge organised religion, it’s Salman Rushdie. So, I take his point that individual folly hardly matters when mass folly is so dangerous.

(*) Sorry, sociological and philosophical pedants, I know I am reifying religion here. It’s just a rough description, OK?

Religious stupidity (Is this an oxymoron?)

The silly – albeit flattering – view that atheists are not as stupid as religious people, according to some deeply spurious IQ -based research, has suddenly got a boost from an unexpected quarter.

“God is not just for the stupid, say Christianity’s clever people”, according to the Telegraph.

Who are these clever people?

“The Christian think tank Theos “

Well, that still makes none, by my reckoning.

The post about this daft research on the Register also brought a swathe of Christian commenters who all seemed to know their “IQ” to the exact unfeasibly high last digit. (Thereby suggesting, if nothing else, that a high level of belief in the objective validity and accuracy of IQ scores correlates with a high level of belief in, well, anything.)

Nice comment, from “Carl”

I always thought that the reason that there were less stupid comments on El Reg articles on a Sunday was because IT pros don’t work weekends – now I know it’s because they’re all at church…

The Atheist Thirteen

It has been a while, but it seems we’ve been hit by another “meme” – this time it is the Atheist Thirteen from Nullifidian. For anyone who has already read Null’s post, I must apologise that a lot of the responses are similar.

(Null, if you read this – why is it called “Atheist 13” when there are 10 questions?)

Rules: If you’d like to take part, copy these questions, and answer them in your own words on your own blog.

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?

“A lack of belief in anything divine.”

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

Not at all. While Religious Education at school talked about the various religions there was never anything resembling a serious effort to convince me any particular religion was more valid than any other (or even more valid than no-religion at all). This is the case even though I went to Church Sunday school for quite a time.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?

Idiocy.

Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?

Astrophysics and related disciplines – astronomy, space travel etc. (I only picked astrophysics because Null beat me to Astronomy).

Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?

I’d like people to stop talking about an “atheist community” as if it were a homogeneous group that shared more than a single idea. I cant think of any real meaning of “community” that seems to apply to the global network of atheists.

Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?

“That’s nice, dear. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Q7. What’s your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?

God is really kind and benevolent but if you dont bow to his ever wish, no matter how capricious, you will suffer worse punishment than you can imagine for all of eternity. It is self refuting unless the person is a genuine idiot – and then it isnt worth refuting. Just wait until they forget to breathe and die.

Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?

That there isn’t an Atheist Community.

Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?

Dawkins because, although I used to hate him, he has grown on me. I like his “posh English scientist” TV demeanour. Hitchens is too arty and there isn’t enough scientific rigour in his comments. Harris really annoys me and I don’t know Dennett well enough.

Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?

The Pope, because it would be a MAJOR achievement… (Unless he is, as I sometimes suspect, not really a Catholic).

Now name three other atheist blogs that you’d like to see take up the Atheist Thirteen gauntlet:

This is always the hard part. There are zillions of good atheist blogs but tagging them all would be close to insane. There are a lot of good ones who will be annoyed if they are tagged and a lot of good ones who will be annoyed if they aren’t tagged. For this, almost insurmountable, challenge I have picked three from our blogrolls at random:

  1. The gorgeously designed and always entertaining “X is …
  2. The Snarling and Growling “Grumpy Lion
  3. The militant Bligbi.

Please don’t be upset if you have been missed out – if you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged. Likewise, if you are one of the three above and don’t want to be tagged, I am OK with that.

For entertainment purposes only

Matthew Parris is much saner than a former Tory MP has any right to be. He proved this again with a good piece in the Times. He was arguing against thought crimes.

I am driven to my wits’ end by my fellow humans’ feeble grasp of principled reasoning. .

I feel your pain, brother!

He discussed the new proposal that “anyone found with drawings (or computer-generated images) of child sexual abuse will face up to three years in prison.” Parris pointed out that making images of abusing real children is genuinely different from making imaginary representations, however repellent such imaginary images are.

Maria Eagle, the Justice Minister, said that the move was not intended to curb creativity or freedom of expression but to tackle images that had “no place in society”. Crikey – the intellectual sloppiness!….. The logical extension of Ms Eagle’s principle is almost boundless.

That is, there are an endless number of things that “have no place in society.” But, as soon as we start restricting expression to things we like, we start down a dangerous road. Surely, almost every TV show or Hollywood movie shows things that we don’t want to be true. And not just the endless shootings and stabbings in crime shows and action movies. What about the bickering morons portrayed in soaps? These definitely should have “no place in society”.

In fact, if it was left to me, there is no end to the things I don’t think have a place in society. Luckily, it’s not left to me. Thank your personal deity for that, all you women carrying miniature dogs in your handbag and masquerading as Paris Hilton, for example.

In fact, on the topic of deities – personal or otherwise – Parris extended the point about attempts to outlaw people’s chosen means of expression, however repugnant, to the issue of the new law

requiring fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers and mediums to stipulate explicitly that their services are for “entertainment only”

He pointed out that this principle should surely apply equally to faith-healing and, indeed, to all churches.

Is Parliament aware of any harder evidence for the efficacy of faith-healing than for the reliability of clairvoyance? I’d like to hear it. Otherwise, let the collecting boxes in church display a sign “for entertainment purposes only” and let Catholics buy candles to light “for entertainment purposes only”; and let trips to Lourdes be sold “for entertainment purposes only”. And let the raiment of the priest administering the Sacrament be embroidered likewise.
Imagine the churchyard billboard: the Power of Prayer (for entertainment purposes only).

Well, we can but dream… All the same, if laws to save people from their own gullibility are going to be passed, why should more mainstream official churches be exempt?

Will wonders never cease

Aside

Blimey. The subtitle “Archbishop sees sense, sort of” was tempting here, but I resisted it. A news item on the BBC today is titled ‘Respect Atheists’ says Cardinal. Basically, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, has called for more understanding of atheists! Wonderful. He also reportedly said: “Believers may be partly responsible for the decline in faith by losing sense of the mystery and treating God as a “fact in the world.‘” Strangely, I agree.

Hitler was no Atheist

(Hat tip Pharyngula)

For all those sensible people infuriated by the claims that Hitler was an atheist…

Hitler Loves Christians

The text reads:

“The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life” (‘My New Order‘, Adolf Hitler, Proclamation of the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933)

The Nazis burned books trying to teach evolution.

Does all this sound familiar?

What is prayer, anyway?

There’s very interesting post on the un-biblical nature of Prayer in schools on GodBeGone.

It made me aware that I have no real understanding of what the word “prayer” means. The biblical quotation on GodBeGone suggests that it’s basically supposed to be thinking or meditating, but with reference to an invisible friend.

Well, OK, I actually relate to that, in a historical way. I can remember being four years old and speaking to my invisible friend in the airing cupboard. I don’t think I expected much of an answer, let alone thought I’d get any requests answered.

I don’t believe that meditating on the wonders of the universe counts as prayer, if you don’t direct it at an invisible friend. Otherwise, “prayer” would describe any transcendent response – e.g. to a walk in the wilderness – and would have no specific meaning at all.

Morning prayers in school involved mouthing ritual phrases and sneakily peeking around, while pretending to look down at the floor. It genuinely never occurred to the child-me that this was supposed to have a spiritual dimension. I assume the purpose was to let the teachers settle in to a day’s work and/or to teach us the patience of the queue. (That lesson didn’t take either.)

And the holding your hands in front of you in an arrow shape? (I can’t remember having to do that at school. Maybe we didn’t have to.) Why? Is it a prayer targetting device? Prayers might not reach the man in the sky if we just let them fall.

Prayer through the television and over the Internet? If prayer is targetted meditation or group membership affirmation, how are these supposed to work?

My most recent acquaintance with prayer was at an aunts’ funeral. The occasion was very moving, with beautiful, funny and affectionate speeches from her sons and grandchildren. Despite the setting – a lovely country church – the “religious” component was limited to one prayer, made by the vicar.

I watched and listened. I didn’t even understand – until my brother bizarrely congratulated me for refusing to bow my head – that I wasn’t doing the right thing. Bizarre, because I certainly wouldn’t have thought a funeral was a suitable occasion to proclaim non-belief. I would have willingly bowed my head and made the pointy hand gesture if I’d thought anyone would care. It wouldn’t have been prayer, though, or would it?

Like most non-believers, I tend to see prayer as special pleading in pursuit of a goal. Flatter the omnipotent one and he won’t smite you. If you are really obsequious, he’ll even give you thinks you want or solve your problems. Even unselfish prayers for world peace or someone else’s recovery from illness seem to depend on an idea that there’s a creature who COULD do whatever you want but is refusing until you ask nicely and say “please.” There must be more to it than that, though.

This is a serious question. I would really appreciate any sincere and non-lunatic ex-religious or currently-religious responses. Especially, about the public prayer stuff. What exactly is prayer? What does it feel like when you’ve done it successfully? Why do you do it? Are there lots of different definitions with different meaning?

Anthropology and the sociology of religion provide answers at the social level – strengthening group cohesion; magical rituals, spreading values, etc. These characterise behaviours, though, rather than what prayer means to an individual.

Newsbiscuit (Newscookie to Americans)

Newsbiscuit has a couple of posts to interest atheists:

I’m on a roll

That was such fun that I have to look at more GoogleAds appearing on the blogs of members of Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll

No God blog has

the atheist’s riddle. so simple, any child can understand so complex, no atheist can solve

from cosmicfingerprints.com. I’m not sure what this is offering except 5 days of spam e-mails, You don’t even get to find out what the riddle is until day 4. (If it’s like any other riddle I’ve ever read, the answer is always “the moon” or “a man”.)

No God blog also has adlinks to an organisation that wants a referendum on the EU Constitution, the familiar “end-times” site and atheist.net. (Look, don’t spoil this now by having relevant links, please….)

And Jesus2020.com. It has a few lines at the bottom of the index page, a prayer you are supposed to say and a big gold YES button you are supposed to click if you said the prayer. Bugrit, I’ll click anyway. Momentarily disappointed that choirs of angels haven’t appeared, I find it’s just a mailing list.

No explanation of the 2020 bit. I guess they were looking for a domain name and everything up to jesus2019 was already taken by Spanish-speaking men.

Just about to leave Nogodblog, when I see its links are going to eat up this whole post, all by itself. It’s got another tier of GoogleAds. More pantheism, Christianity in the UK, Catholic religion after Vatican II. Plus ChristianityToday.com/marriage/

My Son is Gay? One woman’s struggle with her son’s homosexuality and God’s answer.

(After he turns down her offer of a Christian un-gaying solution, she decides to hate the sin and love the sinner.)
Plus, from anointed-one.net

Atheism against the law? Scientific proof that atheism requires a belief in miracles.

Do these Christian sites really have to demonstrate that “form follows function” so slavishly, by having such unattractive blogs? This is yet another site with an eye-burning colour combination. This combo might be OK in a different context. Such as, if it didn’t involve text. Turquoise on black with primary red links isn’t normally associated with readability.

After listing teh universal laws that atheism is supposed to break, the site concludes:

Atheism requires not only a tremendous amount of faith but also a belief in miracles. And not only miracles but natural miracles, an oxymoron. Both naturalism and supernaturalism require faith and which one you place your faith in is one of the two most important choices you will ever make.

Imagining for one moment that this stuff is actually meaningful, I still can’t see any logical connection between the arguments that (a) science doesn’t provide answers to everything and (b) therefore there is an all-powerful “god”.

Click link to “find out how life began.” Guess what, a magic man did it.