BrockLi Soup

Way back in December, I was reading Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity? and trying to keep an open mind about it. Which was tough, because it was pretty awful.

Around Christmas, I finished writing up my notes and rebuttals, but never really got around to polishing it up and citing better references and what have you. After four months, I’ve decided that I probably never will, so I’m just posting what I wrote then:

PZ Meyers was kicked out of a screening of Ben Stein’s new “documentary,” Expelled.

I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn’t even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn’t going to cause any trouble.

But who DID get in? Richard Dawkins. Read the whole story and the follow up.

A while back, the Friendly Atheist posted 34 Unconvincing Arguments for God. I wanted to re-post the PDF here, and the author, August Berkshire, just gave me the go-ahead:

You won’t be surprised to learn that it’s a long one, and includes the English flag being flown in England, the Apple store in Manhattan, Burger King ice cream cones, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches served in jail, piggy banks, and the passport photo of a 5 year old girl: Link.

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.

-Susan B. Anthony (1896 address to the National-American Woman Suffrage Association)

Via Atheist Revolution

Wow, Ben Stein has lost it. He has a new documentary coming out about intelligent design and the way it’s cast aside among real scientists…and how that’s a bad thing. Watch the trailer:

If that’s not enough, there’s a blog, too.

From Atheist Revolution:

Whenever someone commits a horrible crime and then claims that some god told them to do it, believers and non-believers unite to reject the claim. Non-believers have an easy time rejecting the “god make me do it” defense because we reason that mythical beings cannot influence human behavior. We might accept the possibility that the criminal’s belief contributed to the action, or we might look for mental illness. The believer often has a different path to the same conclusion. For the believer, god did not command them to engage in the despicable act because god would never do such a terrible thing. Of course, one only has to read the Christian bible or listen to Pat Robertson to realize that this is simply not true.

Link

You may remember that I’ve been reading What’s So Great About Christianity with the intent of writing a rebuttal. Well, I finished it last week, and I’ll post it as soon as I find some time to write a post about it.

In the meantime, I’d like to direct you to The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007. I don’t agree with all of them, but they have the same opinion of Dinesh that I do:

29. Dinesh D’Souza

Charges: Wrote a book blaming 9/11 on — who else? — liberals, because if we didn’t live in a free society, then fundamentalists wouldn’t dislike us so. Even conservative nuts blasted D’Souza’s empathy for poor al Qaeda. Lately, he’s been engaging prominent atheists in debates, revealing himself to be a pseudointellectual ass, and then declaring victory. D’Souza’s master plan for attacking atheism is the ridiculous Pascal’s wager: Atheists could be wrong, and then they’d go to hell, but if the religious are wrong, then they suffer no ill effect — aside from living their lives in delusion, of course. And possibly going to someone else’s hell for believing the wrong religion. D’Souza seems to think that if he speaks more loudly and rapidly than his opponent, he is winning, but his arguments are weak and idiotic, and he never even attempts to truly debate the existence of any god, which is the ostensible point of these debates. Instead, he likes to compare body counts — Stalin and Mao killed more than the religious leaders of their time — rather than actually debate whether there is a God, or for that matter a Jesus. This, of course, is because there is no case to be made.

Exhibit A: “[Atheists] are God-haters… I don’t believe in unicorns, but then I haven’t written any books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion.” But what if everyone you met did believe in unicorns, and not only that, but worshiped a unicorn, held a book about unicorns to be the divine truth of the universe, invoked unicorns in political contexts, and speechified about how non-believers were indecent people waging a war on morality, which could only be predicated on the unquestioning belief in unicorns? Then, maybe, D’Souza would think about writing that book. But of course, that’s not really true, because if that was the world we lived in, then Dinesh D’Souza would believe in unicorns.

Sentence: Spanish inquisition.

And unrelated, but also amusing:

9. You

Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism — it’s nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears’ children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you’re going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques.” You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can’t spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don’t want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy’s doing well. You’re an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn’t get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.

Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn’t cover. You deserve it, chump.

This past week, a bunch of the Beltway Atheists and I went George Washington Univeristy to see Dinesh D’Souza debate Michael Shermer on either the existence of god, or the goodness of religion, depending on who you asked. I probably wouldn’t have been as interested in going if I weren’t currently reading D’Souza’s book, because there’s no question which side of the debate I would start and end on. Plus, it was free, and that can’t hurt. I tried to take notes along the way, but I really only bothered to write down the parts that were particularly agreeable or reviling.

D’Souza began with a twenty-minute opening statement that mostly rehashed his book (I’m sure Shermer was doing the same thing, but I haven’t read his book, so I can’t say). First, let me say that following D’Souza’s arguments is only easy if you’re willing to suffer amnesia every time he finishes talking. His points frequently counter arguments he’s already made, and a lot of times, you have to wonder if he’s given them any thought at all, because he rarely backs any of it up.

He criticized atheists again for spending so much time fighting something they don’t believe in, and likened it to writing books like The Unicorn Delusion, or Unicorns Are Not Great. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that the people who believe in unicorns don’t generally have much effect on the lives of those that don’t, while the people who believe in god have tremendous effect on those of us who don’t. That would be like telling something with a nut allergy, “I don’t like mangos, but you don’t hear me complaining. Now quit whining and eat your peanut butter sandwich.” He argued that the universe had to have a beginning, and that it was prompted by god at the Big Bang (Shermer later pointed out that the Big Bang may well have been one in a series of bangs and compressions, and not necessarily the beginning of everything). He also said the universe must have a cause and a reason, which is god. I suppose he can’t imagine things without a reason, but some of us can, and maybe we’ll find a better cause one of these days.

D’Souza went on to argue that god must exist because of the balance of the universe. This argument will be familiar to many people; basically, a number of constants in the universe - gravity, nuclear attraction, and so on (I can’t remember any more, but it’s not important) - are perfectly tuned such that life can exist. If they were any different, we would not be here. In D’Souza’s mind, this is proof that a god must have tuned them. In some peoples’ minds, we just got lucky. D’Souza has been happy to attack one theory that says infinite universes exist, with every possible combination of these factors, and we’re in one of them. I’m not convinced that many people think this theory is anything more than a proposed possibility, but D’Souza seems to think all of us atheists believe it, and argues that it’s more ridiculous than a god. He accuses atheists of using “atheism of the gaps” - a new take on the “god of the gaps” explanation, wherein one might say, “We can’t explain it, so god did it.” D’Souza says scientists use the same thing with atheism - we can’t explain it, so we put forth seemingly ridiculous possibilities (such as infinite universes) to try to fill these gaps. He argued that Occam’s Razor dictates that the simplest answer is probably true, and the simplest answer is god. I have no idea how he came to determine that the simplest answer is an unimaginably intelligent and powerful beast in the sky, but I suppose that’s simpler than looking for a better answer. Certainly, infinite universes isn’t much simpler, but I don’t think many people actually thing that’s the way things work.

D’Souza finished up with a quick discussion of morality. He spent a few minutes refuting the number of deaths generally attributed to the Spanish Inquisition and Salem Witch Trials to show that they weren’t as bad as we’ve been making them out to be, and proclaims that those who killed in the name of atheism - such as Pol Pot and Castro - have done a lot more damage. I didn’t pay much attention in high school history classes and haven’t had a chance to do the requisite reading, so I really can’t speak to that.

After D’Souza, Shermer took the podium for his opening statement. I don’t have many notes from him, probably because I mostly agreed with him. Shermer is a much more laid-back debater than D’Souza - he said a few times, “It’s OK to not know the answers,” a stark contrast to D’Souza’s continued insistence that god is the answer to questions science hasn’t answered yet. He did go on to cite a few studies that looked at religiosity of doctors involved in charity work and things like that. The numbers between religious and non-religious participants were not striking - maybe 5% better for the non-religious - which D’Souza immediately attacked in his rebuttal. Unfortunately, Shermer did not make his point well in this case. He was arguing that religious people are NOT better people than atheists (”So stop claiming you are!”), but it was poorly worded, and D’Souza had no trouble dismissing it as statistically insignificant.

In addition to the points I mentioned above, D’Souza used his rebuttal time to attack a number of Shermer’s weaker points. And it’s true, they were weaker points, but D’Souza’s entire position in the debate (and indeed, his whole book) was made up of poorly-supported points. He makes a lot of big, loud arguments that sound pretty good and got the Republicans in the room cheering, but he doesn’t really offer anything to back it up; he just moves on to his next point quickly, and the atheists are left in stunned disbelief. For example, he argued that atheists would try to find a naturalistic explanation if planets arranged themselves to say, “Yahweh made this.” To hear him make this point, the planets have already arranged themselves as such, and we have all dismissed it as mere natural oddity. How can he say what we would believe it such a thing were to happen? Another argument he made (in his book, too) was that science has advanced significantly in many fields, but in some areas, it hasn’t progressed “since the time of the Babylonians.” Care to guess what area of science is that far behind? I couldn’t tell you, because he never bothered to specify.

One of the points Shermer made was that the Christian churches tend to go along with things until everyone agrees that they’re immoral, and then they act like they disapproved all along - the example he gave was slavery. D’Souza was quick to counter that the abolitionist movement in Europe was pretty much founded by a priest. I can’t remember how he worded this, but he made it sound like the Church fought to end slavery, and that atheism is trying to take credit for it. Shermer never claimed that atheists were the pillars of morality that finally ended the scourge of slavery; the point was that the Church was largely complacent with it, even if a member of the clergy did fight to end it. There are good and bad people on both sides - Shermer’s point was that the institution of the Church was not so moral as they claim to be.

In the end, D’Souza was the better debater, but only because he was a more rousing speaker. His arguments were largely unfounded and his rebuttals picked the low hanging fruit. Shermer isn’t a very good debater, at least partly because he’s so laid back, but it was pretty clear from the beginning that D’Souza was just going to rile the crowd with his invocations of the Jesus, and everyone left thinking pretty much the same thing they did when they went in.

Sam Harris recently posted Atheism’s Wrong Turn, an article by Damon Linker in The New Republic. I don’t want to address the entire thing, but at least part of the premise it’s built upon. As Linker puts it:

That’s because “the new atheism” is not particularly new. It belongs to an intellectual genealogy stretching back hundreds of years, to a moment when atheist thought split into two traditions: one primarily concerned with the dispassionate pursuit of truth, the other driven by a visceral contempt for the personal faith of others.

Today’s bellicose atheists are part of the second tradition.

He goes on to discuss the tactics of the Four Horsemen (Dawkins, Dennet, Harris, and Hitchens), and I’m not going to argue with his take on that. However, I want to point out something about us “new atheists.” I certainly don’t intend to speak for others, but this is my perception. I would say that most of us don’t have a “visceral contempt for the personal faith of others.” What bothers me is not other peoples’ personal faith; it’s the way their faith affects me that bothers me. Religion influences the laws in our country (and most others), terrorist attacks are largely motivated by religious faith, and how many conflicts and civil wars are the result of religious differences? My stance on religion is the same as my stance on drugs: do what you want, just leave the rest of us out of harm’s way. I don’t care if you do heroin, just don’t drive while you’re high and put everyone else in danger. You can believe that the Easter Bunny rose from the dead after three days and will come to Passover dinner if you set him a place, just so long as that belief doesn’t involve crotch-punching people who disagree with you. Fair enough?

The second thing I want to mention doesn’t really have anything to do with that, but it keeps coming up as I read stuff. Atheism is not a religion. We don’t all share the same set of beliefs, even if a lot of us agree with each other on most issues. Atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color, like not collecting stamps is a hobby. Stop describing us as if you can tell what we all believe based on the Horsemen’s books. Catholics believe that the Eucharist is the physical body of Christ. Muslims believe that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse. In general, we can talk about Catholics and Muslims with the assumption that they believe these things because they’re included in the dogma of those religions. Atheists don’t have a dogma. We have a couple of popular writers and philosophers that tend to speak for us, more or less, but that doesn’t mean we agree with everything they say. Anytime somebody starts an argument with “Well, atheists believe…” I cringe. Although we do all adhere to The Atheist’s Bible - particularly the last book - please stop making assumptions about us beyond that. Thanks much.

I’m starting to think I may have bought the wrong book. I mean, I don’t think there were any elections for it or anything, but is Dinesh D’Souza the spokesman for Christians? I just started chapter seven of What’s So Great About Christianity? It begins on page 67, which should give you some sense of the depth with which D’Souza explores his arguments.

By the time I got through the first chapter, I had made several notes in the margins and on an index card. My plan was to collect my notes and counter-arguments, cite other authors’ arguments where appropriate, and compile it into a sort of supplemental to give to my parents at Christmas - a “this is what I believe and why” package.

It became clear, around chapter three, that I was going to have a ton of writing to do if I wanted to adequately address his flimsy and largely unfounded arguments. I haven’t been taking as many notes since, because really, what’s the point? Here’s your reading supplemental: read The God Delusion first, and What’s So Great About Christianity? will seem absolutely absurd in comparison.

I may post my comments after each of the eight parts of the book, if there’s anything worth mentioning. Like I said in my original post about it, I’m trying to keep an open mind and give the other side their say, but it’s really hard to take any of I seriously. Nonetheless, I soldier on, reading inane crap so you don’t have to. I’ll keep you posted.

This afternoon, I did a little shopping with some birthday gift cards I had lying around. I feel it bears mentioning first that one of these gift cards was for Old Navy, where I bought a couple pairs of jeans TWO SIZES smaller than the rest of the jeans I own - the first time my pant size has gone DOWN in about six years. So, you know, yay me.

Anyway, the other gift card was for Barnes & Noble. I considered a few books critical of religion: Everything You Know About God Is Wrong, Jim and Casper Go to Church, and The Year of Living Biblically, but I’ve been doing a lot of that kind of reading lately: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, The God Delusion, and currently, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. I like to be able to take both sides of an argument and play devil’s advocate, and it’s always good to know what the enemy is up to, so I decided to get What’s So Great About Christianity. I feel dirty for supporting Dinesh D’Souza with another book sale, but at least it wasn’t my money. Chances are slim that I’ll agree with anything he has to say, but I’m willing to consider his opinions, at least. Let it never be said that I’m close-minded.

I’ll write up a review in a few weeks when I finish it.

What an ass-hat.

I’ll definitely have more to say about this later, but the new Friendly Christian blog (a response to the Friendly Atheist) asked yesterday: Does The Word “Christian” Make Your Stomach Turn? I haven’t read all the comments, but there are some good responses (and of course, some idiots) in the dozen or so that I have.

Comments are closed there, but I’ll be posting my thoughts here sometime soon.

For the second time this week, I’m wreaking havoc on my subscriptions in Google Reader, because ya know what? I don’t need this much news, nor the guilt I feel for never reading it. Even so, I feel just a little guilty every time I removed a blog, even though I don’t know any of the authors and rarely even read their posts.

I’m down to around 130 feeds now. I know that sounds ridiculous, until I tell you that I cut about 60 earlier this week, and 20 more since I started writing this post. A lot of the remaining 130 don’t update regularly - probably 20 are friends that don’t blog much, and another 30 are other low-post feeds. I can’t believe that six months ago, I managed to keep up on so many of them. No wonder I didn’t go out much.

And as long as we’re talking productivity, I FINALLY started reading Getting Things Done this week. I’ve been reading it on the Metro, so I’m only about 50 pages in, but already I’m feeling a lot more relaxed - knowing that I’m at least taking some initiative to sort out this mess has reduced my stress level a fair bit. Cleaning out my feed reader is step one - I know very little about the GTD system at this point, but I think that getting rid of all that unnecessary distraction will help.

And as long as we’re talking books, I also started The God Delusion last week, and I’m liking it a lot more than I thought I would. Richard Dawkins has always seems kind of dry, and…well, BRITISH, so I was worried it would be boring, but he keeps a pretty good pace. It’s another book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time and finally got around to starting.

And as long as we’re talking about God, I feel I should mention that we decided on Friday that “God” shall henceforth be known as “göd” (pronounced sort of like “gurd,” for those of you that don’t speak German). Just so you all know.