Arrogant Idiocy

Well there is a rant brewing, but sadly here in the Ivory Why Dont You Towers we are short on spare time so I can not do justice to a video posted by what seems to be the single most objectionable person I have ever had the misfortune to see. PZ Myers has posted on Pharyngula about it and pretty much says everything which needs to be said. Check it out for the full details.

In a nutshell, this snotty, arrogant kid called Kelly Tripplehorn (snope entry for background) has posted a video in which he claims his “corporation” will offer US$1000 to anyone who can solve the philosophical problem of Induction. Yeah, that is correct. $1000. Wow. Alfred Nobel, eat your heart out. Barely enough to buy a low end laptop to solve one of the major philosophical problems.

To crown things off, the nutcase Tripplehorn goes on about how “he” solves the problem by invoking God. What absolute madness. He demands a reasonable, self consistent, internally logical argument from Atheists but not his own reasoning.

I would like to go on record, having noted his only requirement is “without invoking God” to say the problem is solved, and the universe is logical and ordered because it is the will of Freya. She is neither the Abrahamic God Tripplehorn talks about, nor a generic “God” (as she is a Goddess…).

I await the US$1000. Hopefully I can use it to buy a new SatNav…

Gross Stupidity

It seems we have a strong contender for the Department of the Stupid’s annual award for gross stupidity. (Thanks to Nullifidian for the heads up on this)

It seems the esteemed John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, has some completely off the rails ideas about what makes a “believer.” This is excerpt of interest:

Twenty-seven years ago I was chaplain to a young offenders remand centre, Latchmere House. Every inmate was asked to declare his religious affiliation, and four young men were registered as having no religion. One Sunday, all the inmates were offered the chance to go to worship. The four young men with no religion declined the offer, while their fellow inmates on the A wing took up the offer. The prison officer, not wanting the four men to remain locked up in their cells, asked them to clean the toilets on the wing. The following Sunday, our four non-religious young men took up the offer to go to worship. The prison officer was puzzled why they had opted in this week. “Why are you going to chapel?” he asked. The four replied, “Sir, we didn’t like the ‘No Religion’ place of worship”. Crudely as they put it, those four young men were saying in their naivety that we are all essentially religious. The question is not whether we worship, but rather one of who or what do we worship.

Blimey. What in Toutatis’ name was going through his mind when he first made this “conclusion” let alone repeated it? I am almost lost for words at the crass idiocy it demonstrates.

“Crudely as they put it” the four young men were saying that we humans all essentially avoid punishments. If I was given the choice between sitting in a church for a few hours or scrubbing the toilets, I am pretty sure I would be happy to pretend that the invisible sky elf existed. I suspect any sane person would be.

For the truly “devout” (note comment about sane people in previous paragraph) this may seem strange, as people with faith in whatever incarnation of the flying spaghetti monster appeals to them are notoriously stubborn. They will suffer all manner of injustices because of their loose grip on reality, and I suspect if given the choice of sit in a Mosque or scrub toilets the Archbishop of York would take the loo every time. This does not make it a rational choice and here Atheists really do have an advantage.

It really is mind boggling that the Archbishop of York could honestly come to the conclusion that because these four convicts chose to sit through a sermon rather than scrub ****, it means we are all basically theists. It is also interesting to note that the implication of what Sentamu Ebor says is that the vast majority of prisoners are Christians… So much for religion being the source of morality…

Dawkins Delusions – Deluded Reviewers?

The current issue of New Scientist has a review of “The Dawkins Delusion” by Alister McGrath. Now we have looked at McGrath in the past (here and here, and this has also been looked at on Nullfidian’s blog) so there is no pressing need to revisit that aspect – suffice it to say McGrath is confused on several issues and wraps up what is basically one big ad hominem into a book. Sadly for the theists, criticising Dawkins personally does little to undermine the points he makes. Even atheists find him personally annoying but still agree with him.

While the review, by Brian Appleyard, is some what soft on McGrath, and actually says very little about the book itself it is reasonable enough. There are a few odd paragraphs such as:

To say that there is no evidence for God is merely, therefore, an interpretation, justified in one context but quite meaningless in another. Everywhere we look, there is evidence of something, but it is by no means clear that that something is, in fact, nothing. Rather, it seems something of a startling intelligibility.

This strikes me as an argument from personal incredulity if ever there was one. In a nutshell this is saying everywhere he looks he sees amazing things, because he finds it too incredible for this something to come from what he sees as nothing, there must be a creator. It begs the question who created the creator, unless of course there is the anticipated special pleading that unlike everything else in the universe, the creator did not need creating…

The bit in Mr Apleyard’s review which did amaze (and somewhat annoy me) came at the end:

Any view that religion is the source of all evil and atheism the origin of none is plainly absurd when confronted with the largely atheist bloodletting of the 20th century.

Blimey, what on Earth can this mean? While it is fairly obvious that calling religion the source of all evil is an exaggeration, it remains the case that “Religion” creates a set of circumstances where one side can demonise the others and act with “divine support.” To paraphrase the old saying “Religion is what allows good people to do bad things,” without religion they are just accepted as being bad people.

Now the crucial part is this supposed “largely atheist bloodletting” of the last century. Now, I am not a poor historian but I am at a loss as to what this may refer. The genocides which marked the end of the century were certainly not atheistic in origin, nor were the treatment of the Jews at the hands of the Catholic Nazis. The best I can come up with is the oblique usage of Stalin’s terrors and the killing fields of Cambodia – yet as far as I recall neither were carried out in the name of Atheism. Neither targeted “theists” per se. While both were carried out by overtly “Atheistic” governments this misses the major point Dawkins made in his book, and numerous famous atheists have made since.

People carry out atrocities in the name of their religion (Bosnia, Somalia, the Middle East etc). People de-humanise their opponents through religious rhetoric. When Atheists do things like this, they just do them out of being bad people.

One common theme amongst the theists, and religious apologetics, seems to be this misunderstanding about atheism. This is why God is defended by attacks on Dawkins (remember he is not the Atheist Pope), Creationism is promoted by strawmen attacks on Evolution, and theism is defended by creating an image that Atheism is just a different religion.

As I keep pointing out, I can not speak for others but when I fill forms in which ask for my religion, I invariably write “none” as I have no religion. If some one asks do I believe in God, then “no,” as I am an atheist…. 🙂