Quote of the Day: Lisa Randall on Science vs. Religion

Lisa Randall's new book Knocking on Heaven's Door touches on this subject quite a bit. Here are some quotes of hers you may be interested in.

"For a scientist, material mechanistic elements underlie the description of reality. The associated physical correlates are essential to any phenomenon in the world. Even if not sufficient to explain everything, they are required."

"The materialist viewpoint works well for science. But it inevitably leads to logical conflicts when religion invokes a God or some other external entity to explain how people or the world behave. The problem is that in order to subscribe both to science and to a God--or any external spirit--who controls the universe or human activity, one has to address the question of at what point does the deity intervene and how does he do it."

"Clearly people who want to believe that God can intervene to help them or alter the world at some point have to invoke nonscientific thinking. Even if science doesn't necessarily tell us why things happen, we do know how things move and interact. If God has no physical influence, things won't move. Even our thoughts, which ultimately rely on electrical signals moving in our brains, won't be affected...."

"If such external influences are intrinsic to religion, then logic and scientific thought dictate that there must be a mechanism by which this influence is transmitted. A religious or spiritual belief that involves an invisible undetectable force that nonetheless influences human actions and behavior or that of the world itself produces a situation in which a believer has no choice but to have faith and abandon logic--or simply not care."

"This incompatibility strikes me as a critical logical impasse in methods and understanding. Stephen Jay Gould's purportedly "nonoverlapping magisteria"--those of science, covering the empirical universe, and religion, extending into moral inquiry--do overlap and face this intractable paradox too."

"Empirically based logic-derived science and the revelatory nature of faith are entirely different methods for trying to arrive at truth. You can derive a contradiction only if your rules are logic. Logic tries to resolve paradoxes, whereas much of religious thought thrives on them. If you believe in revelatory truth, you've gone outside the rules of science so there is no contradiction to be had."

Introspection (Introduction)

Intro

My wife married a god fearing Christian and to her great relief an atheist emerged shortly thereafter.

I count myself among the lucky--that my prior faith--and so too my subsequent crisis of faith--played a minimal role in my relationship with the woman I love. In the end, I think it all really depends on how open minded both couples are--and how honest they are with one another (as well as themselves). If one of them turns out to be completely religious--and the other is not--there will undoubtedly be some friction. This friction can be smoothed over by the simple agreement not to talk about religion in the home--like the one my Japanese wife and I had when I was a raging, proselytizing, missionary for Jesus save em' all Christ.

Lesson 1: Family comes first. If you and your significant other share opposing worldviews, be it religious or political, don't talk about religion and/or politics in the home. It will save the both of you a lot of wasted breath and heartache arguing over trivialities.

Not talking about religion in the home is probably what saved my marriage. If I would have continued with my preaching--my every day religious rambling, regardless of how important it seemed to me at the time, I am almost positive my wife would have eventually worn thin--and in all likelihood probably would have distanced herself from me one way or another. Luckily, however, I came to see the light. By light, I mean the truth according to enlightenment values.

Lesson 2: Embrace change instead of fearing it.

It's time for a change of pace here at the Advocatus Atheist. So for the next several months I am going to focus exclusively on myself and my journey from believer to non-believer. It will be the most in-depth analysis of myself and what I believe that I have ever attempted. It will be--pure unadulterated Introspective reflection.

Hopefully you will enjoy reading about my journey from self-righteous Christian tub-thumper to radical atheist polemicist.

The reason I have decided to start this Introspection series is two fold. First of all, I feel it may be of use to others who may be experiencing the same sorts of doubts and who may have similar questions about their faith as I once did. Perhaps they can take something from my experiences. Secondly, I still abide by the rule--out of fidelity to my wife--not to bring the cruel mistress of religious dialog into the home. Therefore, all this and more is best suited for blogging.

Please join me--and remember--these are merely my opinions, experiences, and beliefs according to the revelations I have had along the path from theistic belief to lack thereof. Feel free to treat my Introspection series as one giant letter to the editor--take the best and leave the rest.

As it is a personal reflection of my own life--all I ask is that you be fair in your criticism--that is all. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Tristan Vick

Advocatus Atheist

(Click HERE to read Part 1.)

Quote of the Day: Jewel

"Dreaming is a good thing cause it brings new things to life; Pretending is an ending that perpetuates a lie... And growing up is not the absence of dreaming, It's being able to understand the difference between the ones you can hold; And the ones that you've been sold. Life is much better without all of [those] pretty lies." --Jewel

Criticizing Islam: Women are People Too!

In Saudi Arabia, there is an Islamic organization called the CPVPV which proclaims itself the executive arm of enforcing Sharia law. Sharia law, for those that don't know, is ridiculously absurd. That's all you need to know about it. I won't waste my breath even talking about it any further than to say--anyone who practices Sharia law is immoral and needs to learn how to respect their fellow human beings better.

Women are people too. Imagine my utter dismay when I read an article in USA Today stating that the CPVPV is now demanding that Muslim women cover, not only their heads, not only their entire bodies, but now their eyes too! Why? Because their eyes are, apparently, too attractive.

Attractive in this context means sexually stimulating--because simple beauty is not a crime. Arousing a man's carnal desires, however, is--in Islamic countries which practice Sharia.

What this tells us is that Muslim men who practice Sharia are without honor. They cannot muster enough courage or fortitude to control their own baser instincts, and so they cage their women in veils of darkness, and tell them that if they dare to come out--they will be punished, or worse, raped, caned, and potentially killed--because, according to the logic behind Sharia law, Muslim men are not civilized enough to know how to control themselves.

How could an entire religious culture find the very idea of feminine beauty offensive? Of course feminine beauty is tempting! It's basic biology. Men are attracted to women. Women are attracted to men. It doesn't mean we have to act like animals or beasts. Beasts, in the animal kingdom, frequently rape their females because it is the only way they can obtain a mate perchance to procreated. Civilized men show restraint, and thus separate themselves from the carnal instincts of their animal cousins. Monsters, on the other hand, make it a cruel habit to punish their women by treating the fairer sex less than equal. Tisk tisk. Whatever happened to a little self control, a little bit of dignity, and the simple sense of doing what's right? 

If Muslim men want to learn how to stop being sexist--here is how: Treat your women as equals. If you expect your women to cover themselves up--you shall do the same. It's that simple. If you desire to wear the clothes you want, then you must allow your women the same right. Until you can learn to respect women as equals--then your patriarchal chauvinism has no place in the civilized world.

If enforced, this Saudi law would make it legally binding for women to cover every inch of herself and make sure she is completely veiled, from head to toe, including her eyeballs! Not a single piece of her "flesh" would be allowed to be seen. She would be shrouded by the blackened stupidity of a religion which cannot respect her as a human being with basic human rights. Which is probably why the CPVPV has often been heavily criticized over its human rights violations--the CPVPV deliberately treats people less than human by adhering to a strict interpretation of Sharia law.


In 2002, the CPVPV refused to let female students out of burning schools in Mecca for "not wearing the proper head cover," which contributed to fifteen deaths.

What does it say about a culture where if a person were to murder fifteen school girls--they'd be considered the next Ted Bundy psycho serial killer--but if a religious backed organization does it in the name of the "religion of peace"--it becomes "morally" permissible. The very thought that people could twist evil such as allowing fifteen innocent girls to burn to death into a moral obligation--and then call it justice--is just grotesquely sickening in the worst possible way.

What it seems to show me is a fundamental flaw in the tenets of Islam, in the morally reprehensible teachings of Sharia, and the degenerate social norms of a country so barbaric that it places a higher value on the strict adherence to sexism and abuse of women than it does on the sacredness of human life.

Until Islam does away with Sharia law and starts treating women like precious gems which need to shine instead of covering them up from head to toe, hiding them away, and not even letting them come out of burning buildings when their very lives are at risk--until it does away with the stupidity of these disgusting and barbaric tenets, well, then it's just proving the point its detractors are making when they call it the most despicable and offensive (not to mention dangerous) belief system in the world.

I know many good, kindly Muslims, and I am sorry that some of them have to face such horrors, injustice, and persecution. It just doesn't seem right--most probably because it's not. Basic human rights are universal human rights because they belong to all humans--regardless of their religion or where they were born. Islam needs to recognize this--or else its inhumanity will be its downfall.

More G.W. Foote Quotes

George William Foote is probably one of the most eloquent, yet underrated, of atheist speakers or writers of the early part of the nineteenth century (1850-1915). While reading Foote, an Englishman by birth, I hear echoes of his contemporary and American counter part Robert G. Ingersoll. 

Indeed, both men wrote during the Golden Age of Freethought, so it is no wonder their lectures and written works share a tone and style highlighting the shared values and ideas of the freethought political movement.  Nothing was more sacred to those like Foote and Ingersole than the idea that opinions should be based on science and reason, and not restricted by authority, tradition, or religion. Indeed, it seems the American Freethought movement played a large role in helping Foote to develop his own worldview, and he published many essays against tyranny and the oppressive regimes of religious theocracy.

If you have some idle leisure time to read, I highly recommend the writings of G.W. Foote, especially his collected volumes aptly titles Arrows of Freethought and Flowers of Freethought.

Here are some of my favorite G.W. Foote quotes from today's reading:

"No man can do another's thinking for him. What is thought in the originator is only acquiescence in the man who takes it at secondhand."

"Let us make the best of this world and take our chance of any other. If there is a heaven, we dare say it will hold all honest men. If it will not, those who go elsewhere will at least be in good company."

"The whole truth of life may be summed up in a few words. Happiness is the only good, suffering the only evil, and selfishness the only sin."

"Persecution is the right arm of priestcraft. The black militia of theology are the sworn foes of Freethought. They represent it as the sin against the Holy Ghost, for which there is no forgiveness in this world or the next. When they speak of the Holy Ghost they mean themselves. Freethought is a crime against them. It strips off the mystery that invests their craft, and shows them as they really are, a horde of bandits who levy black mail on honest industry, and preach a despot in heaven in order to maintain their own tyranny on earth."

"Biology was opposed tooth and nail as the worst of all infidelity. It exposed Genesis and put Moses out of court. It destroyed all special creation, showed man's kinship with other forms of life, reduced Adam and Eve to myths, and exploded the doctrine of the Fall. Darwin was for years treated as Antichrist, and Huxley as the great beast. All that is being changed, thanks to the sceptical spirit. Darwin's corpse is buried in Westminster Abbey, but his ideas are undermining all the churches and crumbling them into dust."

"Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. It means caution, independence, honesty and veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile, unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation, and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the people, says Whitman, is always inviting the insolence of power."

 

Quote of the Day: Freethought

"Freethought is not only useful but laudable. It involves labor and trouble. Ours is not a gospel for those who love the soft pillow of faith. The Freethinker does not let his ship rot away in harbor; he spreads his canvas and sails the seas of thought. What though tempests beat and billows roar? He is undaunted, and leaves the avoidance of danger to the sluggard and the slave. He will not pay their price for ease and safety. Away he sails with Vigilance at the prow and Wisdom at the helm. He not only traverses the ocean highways, but skirts unmapped coasts and ventures on uncharted seas. He gathers spoils in every zone, and returns with a rich freight that compensates for all hazards. Some day or other, you say, he will be shipwrecked and lost. Perhaps. All things end somehow. But if he goes down he will die like a man and not like a coward, and have for his requiem the psalm of the tempest and the anthem of the waves." --G.W. Foote

Warning [Explicit] Stupidity Contained Within!

I stumbled across a Christian apologetics website devoted to sharing the love of Christ with "seekers, agnostics, fence-sitters, non-Christians and lapsed Christians."

Why not atheists, or for that matter general non-believers, I wonder? 


At any rate, there is a list of 100 questions which the apologists posit--hoping that it might, I quote, "nag at your atheism."

I read all of them, laughed at the majority of them, and I can honestly say after a thorough read through my unbelief is unshaken. 

[Pedant observation: On the website they call the non-believing position "disbelief," but this is categorically wrong.] 

Many of the questions seemed to be cut and pasted from other apologetic sources, as many seemed to be redundant, or were asking relatively the same question just dressed up in a different metaphor. Additionally, some of the questions seemed sophist, such as, "In an all-natural, all-material world, how did 'oughts' evolve from physical matter?"

Referring to my notes, I have scribbled, "Does the questioner even understand the question they are asking?"


Although it's not fair for me to judge, many of the questions rank pretty low on the intellectual meter of, well, anything that has thoughts. Sure, I could spend time trying to explain why that question is insufficient because it shows that the person asking it fails to understand the nature of the question--but that would be a waste of my time. As such, I tend to ignore these sorts of questions because they don't dignify a response. 


If it was asked by somebody who knew what they were talking about, they would have phrased it differently--such as, "If metaphysical naturalism is true, does deriving 'oughts' from meta-ethical considerations imply an underlying objective morality?"


Other questions didn't make any sense to me. Such as the following, "Do you believe that the Universe expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past and continues to expand to this day?"


I mean, why is this even a question? My personal answer is simply, "The evidence confirms it, so yes."

However, I would highly doubt that the person who asked this sort of question would be aware of the evidence which I am referring to. Maybe this just means that I take for granted that things like cosmic microwave background radiation and redshift are general knowledge, or it could simply mean the person asking the questions is scientifically ignorant.  


It may be general, regular, everyday ignorance though, as seemingly revealed in another question, which asks, "Is belief in God a byproduct of ignoring science? Why?"


I laughed out loud when I read this, as it doesn't seem to me that anyone in today's world, at least anyone with Internet access, can willfully "ignore" science. 


Just to posit that question and post it online they would be using the very fruits of science! To be unaware of the fact that they were, in point of fact, using a form of technology, i.e. technological scientific advancement, would mean they were either insane or mentally handicapped.

After I chortled for a bit, I switched out "ignoring science" for the more accurate term "scientific ignorance," which I presume is what they are getting at here. At least the apologetic line of reasoning eludes to it--in more ways than one--and I sorely want to give them the benefit of the doubt. They simply could have made a malapropism. After all, the person sounds sincere in their questioning--so it would be somewhat ironic if they did turn out to be insane or retarded.

Again, I think you'll find that my answer is concise. "Scientific ignorance, it seems to me, may play a bigger role in lending to a person's credulity than is often thought. This credulity, in turn, sponsors an unhealthy tendency to relinquish scientific reasoning and accept supernatural assumptions/explanations instead."