The Unlikely Disciple

I saw this video of the author of The Unlikely Disciple giving a talk about his experiences at Liberty University. After watching it I think I am going to pick up his book and give it a read. He makes several points through his talk that I though were very good. One is that when groups of people from the same spectrum of belief get together, such as a group of moderate liberals or conservatives, they will end up moving towards their respective extremes. This is one of the causes of the drastic polarization we are seeing in our culture today. He also talked about how bringing in other people of differing belief that you disagree with can be a positive experience. That is actually why I started getting into religious discussions and debates online and I strongly agree with him. The video is embedded below. It may be cut off depending upon your browser settings so you may need to click the link.

St. Cloud Secular Student Alliance

The Secular Student Alliance is a student atheist group at St. Cloud University in Minnesota. They are a new chapter who is just getting started on their campus.

SSA’s goal is to work as an umbrella organization for students who are without religion. SSA works with atheists, agnostics, humanists and other non religious students.

“The official mission statement is to create a sense of community for every loosely related irreligious group,” Maddox said.
SSA is a non political group. Maddox said members included every aspect of the political spectrum including liberals and conservatives. SSA does take a political stance for separation of church and state, however.
SSA has been tabling in Atwood to promote their group. They have also sponsored a social event which included playing “Apples to Apples” with the Campus Crusade for Christ, ping pong and a movie night.
“The metaphor I would use is we’re trying to say hello to the campus,” Maddox said.
SSA has a committee that works with Campus Crusade for Christ.

What really struck me as interesting is the last bit about the group having a specific committee for working with Campus Crusade for Christ. I think that is a great idea to foster better communication and dialogue between the two groups. I wonder if our local Non-Theists Society has such a group. It would be neat if they did.

 Thanks to Friendly Atheist for original article.

Tis The Season

The holidays are here again. The stores are packed with shoppers, lights and decorations adore homes and buildings, I ritualistically listen to my Celtic Christmas CD, and atheists feel the need to let the ignorant masses know the “true” meaning of Christmas, wait, what?

It always surprises me the number of atheist posters, bloggers, organizations, and groups who feel an incessant urge to announce the true origins of Christmas to Christians. The exact reasons for wanting to do so seem to vary but there are three main ones I have seen.

First is an apparent hopefulness that some Christians will become “enlightened” and deconvert. This reason is nothing but wishful, and ideological, thinking that usually falls under the Assumption of Peculiarity. They think they have found some kind of damming evidence and are just dying to let others know about it thinking that we, Christians, will read it and go “Oh my, my entire faith must be a sham!”. The reality tends to be closer to “oh look, another atheist ‘exposing’ the origins of Christmas” followed by either a soft chuckle of amusement or sigh of annoyance.

Some claim they bring up the origins of Christmas as a response to the War on Christmas controversy. They are annoyed by people who clamor about the War on Christmas so they, in turn, bringing up the roots of Christmas as their way of retaliating. Basically it is two wrongs make a right. Not much explaining needed here.

Finally, a reason I have seen it brought up has to do with sayings such as “Jesus is the reason for the season”. They argue that Jesus cannot be the reason as the holiday had different origins.  So what? The meaning people had for a particular holiday centuries ago has no bearing upon what meaning people give to it today. This argument I find particularly hypocritical considering that many atheists celebrate Christmas as well despite not believing in either the God associated with it today, or the gods/pagan celebrations associated with it from long ago. If they can celebrate the holiday without adhering to its origins I see no reason other people can not as well.

Will The Real Fundamentalist Please Stand Up

This was posted on a forum I participate on. I think it sums up the current militant-atheist vs. religion debate quite well.

Evangelizing Religious Person: "You're damned for rejecting the WORD OF GOD"!!!!

Me: "You mean the Bible? I don't reject it, I just don't read it the same way you do. I read it to try and understand....".

ERP: "DAMNED!!!! DAMNED i SAY"!!!!!!

and then....

Evangelizing Anti-religious Person: "You're deluded for thinking the Bible is the infallable WORD OF GOD"!!!!

Me: "I don't think it's "the infallable word of God", I just read it to try and understand..."

EARP: "DELUDED!!!! DELUDED i SAY!!!!!!


No really,
I don't see any difference.

Live Intelligence Squared Debate

There is a live debate going on right now that will most likely be very interesting. You can view it at the following link.
http://www.intelligencesquared.com/live

"Atheism is the new fundamentalism"
In partnership with livestation.com, from 6.45pm (GMT) this evening, you will be able to watch online as Richard Dawkins, author of ‘The God Delusion’ and Professor A C Grayling, take on Richard Harries, the former bishop of Oxford, and Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, at this sold-out Wellington Squared event held at Wellington College, Berkshire. It will be chaired by the Headmaster of Wellington (and political historian) Anthony Seldon.

You can view the live comments from people watching the stream through twitter. The first speaker is from the Catholic Church which spawned the usual trite comments. Ill post my thoughts on the debate as it goes.

*facepalm* Hardly 20 minutes in and one of the atheist speakers, A C Grayling, has already brought up farries and pixies...

So far the two first speakers did not seem to address the topic of the debate.

Current speaker,  Moore, just got applause for a quip at Dawkins. Was not expecting that.

Moore is spending way too much time on Dawkins...
It is not like there is a lack of fundamentalist type thinking in other famous atheists.

Moore leaves the stage with both applause and boos.

Dawkins claims there is no equivalent of the Bible in atheism. While he may be technically correct, he underestimates the number of atheists who treat his book, The God Delusion, as holy scripture.

Dawkins just described religious people as inherently believing in "God of the gaps". Time for another facepalm.
And now he has pulled 911 into the debate as describing religious belief.

Well I tried to reopen the stream to see if it would reduce my CPU load as it was getting kind of high the page wont load again. It seems their server wont allow anyone to reconnect. Overall I thought the debate was fairly pointless. No one really addressed the actual topic. It largely gave me the impression of being a very verbose and erudite name calling contest.

Finding Darwin’s God (Part 3)

The book discussion I have been attending here at Purdue finished last week. You can view my previous two posts over this here and here. We finished Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God and had a final discussion over it. Here is a quick rundown. The beginning of the book Miller dedicates to discrediting various creationist arguments and gives a multitude of evidences and proofs for evolution. In fact, the entire first half of the book is dedicated to this. He then redirects his attention from attacks by religious believers, mainly creationists, to attacks originating from within the scientific community. He explains that scientists themselves are partly to blame for the reactions against science from the religious community. He again provides quite a long list of examples of well known scientists using evolution to try and exterminate religious belief.

I believe much of the problem lies with atheists in the scientific community who routinely enlist the material findings of evolutionary biology in support their own philosophical pronouncements.

He explains that these atheists are attempting to put forth at type of absolute materialism in place of religion. He continues this section by explaining that evolution does not necessitate disbelief in a creator God. He also gives examples of how the two are perfectly capable of living in harmony with each other. I also liked his explanations how how if evolution were truly false, and the creationists were correct, the resulting god would be a "charlatan" and a "magician".

One part that came up during our final discussion over the book is Miller’s use of quantum mechanics as a way to explain the method of which God could allow humans to be truly free of a predetermined existence. He only spends a brief amount of time on this subject but it comes off as a kind of God of the Gaps theory, albeit a much more supportable version. He uses the fact that science has shown that there is an absolute limit to our knowledge to support his point (Look up the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle if you are unfamiliar with this). His theory is in stark contrast to the general God of the Gaps theory which tries to use phenomena which science has yet to explain, but still may, to provide support. I think this is the weakest part of his book but it also happens to be the smallest, and in the end is not critical to his final argument.

Overall I thought it was a good book and worth reading. I would recommend it to both the religious and atheist alike.  Miller provides a good explanation of the current state of the Religion vs. Science controversy. And I think he, again, does a good job at explaining that the two fields are not inherently opposed to each other.

There is no religious reason, none at all, for drawing a line in the sand at the origin of life. The trend of science is to discover and to explain, and it would be foolish to pretend that religious faith must be predicated on the inability of science to cross such a line.

There will be another book discussion next semester. The actual book has yet to be decided upon as they are  taking suggestions. When one is decided I will post which book and what dates we will be meeting.

PZ Myers Comes to Purdue

The local Non-Theist Society had PZ Myers as a guest speaker today at CL 50. If you are not familiar with him he runs a very popular blog called Pharyngula and is a professor of biology. His talk was entitled A Few Things I’ve Learned from Creationists. Due to flight delays the talk started about 20 minutes late but no one seemed to mind. The basic structure of his talk was outlining several attributes he ascribes to Creationists, all of them highly negative, such as disingenuous. He would then go on to explain how creationists fit this description and how many of the ideas they try to push have been flat out proven wrong. While, on the surface this may look like a fairly arrogant way to prove a point, it actually was not that bad and fairly funny at many points. Initially I did not know what to expect as I am not familiar enough with his blog to know exactly what kind positions he holds. To my relief he did not do what I have seen many other atheists do, that is take all theists, mainly Christians, throw them all in a predefined box and proceed to rip it apart. His talk seemed to only focus on those Creationists who are attempting to make a mockery of science. He did not toss the rest of us in with them. I also enjoyed his sense of humor which was very light if a little blunt. Overall I thought it was a very interesting talk, his biology examples were really neat since I understand very little of that material being an engineer, and was well worth attending.

Atheism 3.0

Continuing with my previous post about the Rift Among Atheists is this opinion expressed by a poster on one of the religious discussion forums I participate on. From what I have been reading, both on that forum and in other places where the original npr article has come up, is that many atheists are dismissing these arguments on the basis that, they claim, the article is categorizing all atheists, as a single group, as splitting into two groups. That is to say, all atheists, or the majority, belong in either one group or the other. However, this was not how I interpreted the article, nor do I think it was meant to be interpreted as such. I took it to mean that with in atheism, you have two subgroups forming that are, or may end up, at odds with one another. There was another article on USA Today that was similar in nature that defines yet another group of atheists that the article dubs, for convenience, Atheism 3.0.

The old atheists said there was no God. The so-called "New Atheists" said there was no God, and they were vocally vicious about it. Now, the new "New Atheists" — call it Atheism 3.0 — say there's still no God, but maybe religion isn't all that bad.

One of the atheists they quote in the article is the author of the book I am currently reading, An Atheist Defends Religion (although I have currently put the book on hold while I work on Finding Darwin's God for a discussion group I am participating in). Again, many atheists dismissed this article as categorizing atheists as a whole. The following post, I think, is worth reading and helps sum up the situation fairly nicely.

The suggestion that modern American atheists are not united is, in my opinion, a serious misunderstanding of that community and its underlying philosophical principles. It's not atheism itself that unifies the atheist community. Rather, it is the epistemological principle underlying their atheism that is uniting them. That epistemological principle is science. Atheists don't seem to realize it yet, but they are fairly strongly united by their belief in science. It might even be said that American atheists are behaving as if science were a religion.

In spite of that, I don't believe we're seeing a schism in the atheist community. Atheists are united, in the sense that they have strong epistemological agreement, but they have little organization. A couple of sensationalist authors calling themselves "New" isn't much leadership. There are starting to be more real life meetings, and more and more writing about atheism, but there isn't any robust social infrastructure like there is in any other religious community. "Schism" implies that one order is leaving another order. But there isn't much order among American atheists. Instead of a schism, I'm sure that what we're seeing the start of is the emergence of a new order.

The idea of "Atheist 3.0" seems fairly correct, assuming that the so-called "New" atheists are 2.0. The "New" atheists are only different from the old atheists in that they are getting a lot of media coverage and expressing their atheism quite publicly. However, Atheist 3.0 can be described as a group of atheists who are searching for more order in the community, and are making the effort to create order. I know this because I am one of them.

I've been a strong atheist for well over a decade. About two years ago, bashing Christians online started to get boring. Especially when the smarter Christians started posting thoughtful arguments for their positions. Now, I don't support mythology or Christianity, but I've been able to put aside my hate and bias towards Christians and start looking at them objectively. What I discovered is that, regardless of all the atheist smears of Christians, they have a robust social infrastructure. That is the kind of order that American atheists need. After that, I started treating Christians as individuals, and it became obvious that there are a ton of good Christian people in America, people that, despite my philosophical disagreements with, I know I can trust.

I'm now at the point where I am looking at Christian communities as models for "atheist" communities. But of course, the idea of a strictly "atheist" community doesn't make much sense. The American Secular Humanist movement has already resolved this problem by adapting the Christian Humanist tradition to an atheist society. Secular Humanists are taking what is good from the Christian tradition, and adapting it to fit the modern, rational age. I know Secular Humanism has been around for the last few decades, but I predict that its numbers are going to start swelling as American atheists start looking for more than another online forum to bash Christians on.

By the way, this post might seem a bit random, but the fact is I just got banned from an atheist forum for expressing ideas like these. I was accused by several people of being a Christian in disguise, trying to troll their forums. So I definitely agree that there is starting to be a "bitter rift" dividing atheists.

Original Post

The Idea that Religion Rules Out Rationality

Over at Friendly Atheist Jesse Galef wrote a post where a variant of the question “Could you date someone religious” is posed. This variant is “Could you date someone who could date someone who is religious?”, keep in mind this is from an atheist point of view. At first I thought this was a weird question. For when I pose the same question to myself from a theist point of view “Could I date someone who could date someone who is atheist” I consider the question to have a “no duh!” response of “yes”. Then I read the posters response to their question,

I don’t think that I would immediately reject such a girl, but I don’t know if the relationship would last in my case. I consider certain traits central to my identity – my skepticism, my rationality, my willingness to accept what I think is true rather than what I wish were true. If a girl has no problem dating a religious person, how much could she value those traits in me?

When I read this I immediately got the impression that at least a little bit of bias and ignorance, if not a lot, was coming to the surface. I am referring to how the poster implies that if someone is willing to date a religious person, then they automatically do not value certain traits such as skepticism and rationality. This further implies that being religious means one is incapable of skepticism or rationality. This is simply, and utterly, false.

Being religious does not automatically make a person incapable of skepticism and rational thinking. In fact, many people arrive at their particular religious beliefs through the acts of first being skeptical about a belief, thinking critically about that belief, and finally coming to what they consider a rational decision about whether or not to believe it. In other words, they exercise these exact traits. I have noticed that the idea that the religious are incapable of exercising certain traits, such as skepticism and rationality, is a trend that is becoming more common among, mainly younger, atheists.Skepticism and rational thinking do not, by default, lead to atheism.

The second thing I noticed in the post is the comment “my willingness to accept what I think is true rather than what I wish were true”. I realize that atheists consider religious beliefs to be false or non-existent. However, this comment goes a little farther and describes religion as “wishful thinking”. There are ways to express your opinion respectfully about something you disagree with, and there are ways to express your opinion that comes out as ridicule, whether intentionally or not. Implying religion is wishful thinking is the latter. My post Criticism vs. Ridicule touches on this issue.

I am not implying that the poster was intentionally trying to imply these things or even that they were aware of it. I also realize that this issue is one that stretches across both atheists and theists. It is something that I think everyone needs to work on when talking about points of view that they disagree with. If you express an opinion about something you do not believe in, read it over a couple times. Try taking your opinion and pointing it back on yourself. For example, if it is directed towards atheism, try replacing “atheist” with “theist”. Then ask yourself the question if you still would consider it respectful. Generally doing so will help you avoid instances where your own bias may be playing too large a role in your thinking and help you express yourself in a more rational manner so that others may take what you say more seriously.

Western Religion Partially Responsible for Secularization?

As I referenced in my first post about An Atheist Defends Religion we have been going over Peter L. Berger's book The Sacred Canopy in my Introduction to the Study of Religion class. On Friday the professor went over a section in Chapter 5 about secularization. The basic idea is that Western Religion, particularly Protestantism, carried the "seeds of secularization within itself". I will try to do a quick summary of the idea while trying to decipher Berger's obsession for using overly complex language. He essentially states that, originally, the Catholic religious world was one where God could be seen in many aspects of life. It was one of complex imagery, saints, rich sacramental rites, and so on. When Protestantism came on the scene it got rid of nearly all of this. Reducing the religious life of the Protestant to the bare essentials, the believer and God.

Protestantism may be described in terms of an immense shrinkage in the scope of the sacred in reality, as compared with its Catholic adversary.

At the risk of some simplification, it can be said that Protestantism divested itself as much as possible from the three most ancient and most powerful concomitants of the sacred-mystery, miracle, and magic. (pg. 111)

He calls this process "disenchantment of the world". Through this process God was more and more removed from this Cosmos. It became more about a relationship between the believer and God. The outside world was no longer part of the process. He argues that this eventually helped in the secularization of the natural world.

In doing this, however, it narrowed man's relationship to the sacred to the one exceedingly narrow channel that it called God's word [not to be confused with the Bible].

It needed only the cutting of this one narrow channel of mediation, though, to open the floodgates of secularization.

 I think the point Berger makes here is, at least, partially valid and one that many people either ignore or do not know about. It implications for many of the fundamental Christians (who are mostly some variety of Protestant) that rail against the "secular world" are, in fact, partially responsible the spawning of the very world, and train of thought, they claim to be a curse upon the Earth. It also holds some implications for many of the new militant-atheists. Basically, they are in debt, in some form or another, to the same people they consider to be deluded and ignorant. This can be viewed as some kind of strange interconnected web. Two groups at each others throats who are ignorant of the fact that each is responsible for the other.

A Dissenting View About Blasphemy Day

I stumbled across this article about the recent Blasphemy Day and thought it was well worth sharing.





A Dissenting View About Blasphemy Day

The celebrating of "Blasphemy Day" by the Center for Inquiry by sponsoring a contest encouraging new forms of blasphemy, I believe is most unwise. It betrays the civic virtues of democracy. I support the premise that religion should be open to the critical examination of its claims, like all other institutions in society. I do have serious reservations about the forms that these criticisms take. For example, cartoons have been recently circulated ridiculing key figures in Christianity, such as a cartoon depicting a feminine Jesus painting his "nails" with red nail polish, or the drawing of the Pope with a long nose like Pinocchio.

When we defended the right of a Danish newspaper to publish cartoons deploring the violence of Muslim suicide bombers, we were supporting freedom of the press. The right to publish dissenting critiques of religion should be accepted as basic to freedom of expression. But for CFI itself to sponsor the lampooning of Christianity by encouraging anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, or any other anti-religious cartoons goes beyond the bounds of civilized discourse in pluralistic society. It is not dissimilar to the anti-semitic cartoons of the Nazi era. Yet there are some fundamentalist atheists who have resorted to such vulgar antics to gain press attention. In doing so they have dishonored the basic ethical principles of what the Center for Inquiry has resolutely stood for until now: the toleration of opposing viewpoints.
It is one thing to examine the claims of religion in a responsible way by calling attention to Biblical, Koranic or scientific criticisms, it is quite another to violate the key humanistic principle of tolerance. One may disagree with contending religious beliefs, but to denigrate them by rude caricatures borders on hate speech. What would humanists and skeptics say if religious believers insulted them in the same way? We would protest the lack of respect for alternative views in a democratic society. I apologize to my fellow citizens who have suffered these barbs of indignity.

 From Center For Inquiry

Final Letter Over FSM Demonstration

Another letter appeared in the Exponent yesterday about the FSM demonstration by the Non-Theists Society. Unfortunately the Exponent has a limit on the number of letters it will publish on any particular subject and this letter reached that limit. So there will be no more letters in the Exponent about this topic. It would be nice to have another forum of communication on campus for these kind of subjects.

Here is the final letter for those interested. Note, I do not necessarily agree with all of it's points.

Jennifer McCreight: First of all you talk about persecution as if non-theists have gone through years of hardships. The only persecutions non-theists endure are the religious nutcases who state their radical views. As for your satire, which was a blatant attack on religions that does nothing to educate, all it shows is that your group feels that life is one big joke and that those who seek more in life and after life are crazy. So yes parading a flying spaghetti monster is discriminating towards religion not just Christianity. My feelings are far from hurt because of childish antics, but it is sad organized attacks are now being planned as campus activities.
Jennifer McCreight: “It’s impossible to communicate with someone whose beliefs are based on emotion.” But as far as I can tell you know neither about belief nor faith. You’re too concerned with how things work instead of looking at why they do; yes, science can show us how living organisms ADAPT over time. But when asked why or even how life started on this earth you have no guesses, no beliefs, and no “evidence” as to what started it all. I’ve listened to so-called rational arguments and none disprove a god.
Evidence by definition, does not mean the answer. Through my faith I may not be able to run tests in a laboratory to prove to anybody but myself. But that’s what faith is and if I am wrong so be it; Religion has made my life better and gives me a moral center. What has non-theism done lately besides give you a reason to dress up like pirates?
Also why Blasphemy Day? What was the need for segregating rights away from religious individuals? Absolutely none, just some whiny brats’ attempt to gain attention.
Michael Ebert
Senior in the College of Consumer and Family Sciences

An Atheist Defends Religion

While browsing the religion section at my local Borders I noticed a new book I have never seen before, An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off with Religion Than Without It. The title stood out at me as it appeared to be differing from the norm of current titles dealing with religion. That being either atheists ranting about how religion is the root of all evil and theists are all deluded degenerates, or theists, mainly Christians, screaming that atheists are going to burn in Hell. After reading the synopsis on the back it seemed this book may be a breath of fresh air in the ongoing God debate. The author does not attempt to either disprove, or prove, the existence of God, but attempts to show that religion can be, and has been, a positive influence on humanity in its ability to provide many benefits, such as moral, psychological, and emotional benefits to society, and that religion does this better than any other social institution. I will be doing a series of posts on this topic as I go through the book.

One of the first things that I noticed as I started reading is how the first couple chapters parallel a class I am currently taking, REL 200, Introduction to the Study of Religion. In class we have, so far, covered two books. The first is Mircea Eliade's The Sacred & The Profane (of which I will be doing a latter post on a particular section in the book about secular man). On just the second page of An Atheist Defends Religion the author quotes Eliade's book,

One of the most insightful observers of religion was the late Mircea Eliade, who understood the core of religion to be a relationship with the sacred:

Whatever the historical context in which he is placed, homo religious always believes that there is an absolute reality, the sacred, which transcends this world but manifests itself in this world, thereby sanctifying it and making it real. He further believes that life has a sacred origin and that human existence realizes all of its potential as it participates in the sacred.

Chapter one is basically a rough summary of Eliade. It attempts to quickly explain some key concepts and terms that readers need to be familiar with in order to better understand the study of religion. Some of these concepts are the explanations of the sacred and the profane, homo religiosus, sacred time, myth, and ritual. The author then ties these together with modern man and attempts to explain how the modern secular world has lost many of these meanings. He also talks about the inadequacy of science to replace religious myth and secular rituals.

Chapter two follows the basic ideas in the second book we have been studying in my class, The Sacred Canopy by Peter L. Berger. One warning about this book, while, as my professor says, it is one of the most important books in the study of religion, it is boring as hell (something my professor also agrees with). While Eliade's book is easy to read and comprehend, this one is neither. The main point in The Sacred Canopy is that religion, as a construct of humanity, serves as the best means to give society meaning and morals. Religion legitimates the world in which we live. In An Atheist Defends Religion the author follows this same reasoning through chapter two. He begins with a discussion on how religion is morality and community. He also asks if we can be good without God, which, the author says, we can but with one caveat, on page 39,

In our modern secular society, many moral values have already been institutionalized and on some level we can possess these values apart from the religion that developed them. These values will not disappear if we eliminate religion, but the infrastructure that has held those values aloft will substantially weaken. Of all the cultural templates we have, religion is the most robust and explicit about moral behavior.

He goes on to finish the chapter talking about how science is inadequate when used to derive a moral culture from.

Exponent Letter

Looks like my letter to the Exponent was published after all. I guess they have stopped calling people for verification. Here is the link.
http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=18127
There have been a series of letters on this topic in the paper over the past three days. Here are a few of them.
http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=18125
http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=18103
http://www.purdueexponent.org/?module=article&story_id=18101

Blasphemy Day Posters

The posters placed up during last weeks Blasphemy Day by the local Non-Theists student group have been placed online. Here are a few of them. The comment I left is in the center of the last poster shown bellow. You can view all the other posters, and there are quite a few, here.

Blasphemy Day

(This was originally part of my previous post but I thought it deserved its own separate post)
I attended the NTS's Blasphemy Day that was held yesterday. I was able to stop by around three while walking home after finishing some homework. They had several poster sheets taped to the pillars of CL50 with markers available for people to write whatever they wanted to. I spent some time reading the comments on the boards, some were funny such as the comment insulting the Bronze bus loop (although I personally loathed Silver loop when I lived on campus), some were random, "I like this pen", and many were about religion. Naturally, when you let people write whatever they wish at en event with religious, mainly atheistic, overtones, you are going to get some very blunt opinions. Many comments could be boiled down to the classic "F*** Religion!". While other comments were pro-religion such as "I am a Christian who does not believe in Hell" which was written in very bold letters across nearly an entire poster. I saw that the NTS had thought ahead and had placed a sign up stating the views expressed on the posters where not necessarily the views of the club. That was probably a good idea. I also left a comment, the tittle of my blog, "Knowledge Is Not Very Far". Overall I thought the event was really nice. You can find more info about it here. If the NTS's president puts up pictures of the posters Ill be sure to put them up here as well.

Criticism vs. Ridicule: Recent demonstration by local non-theist student group

Criticism vs. Ridicule: Recent Demonstration By Local Non-theist Student Group

This past Friday the local student group of atheists held a demonstration meant to “criticize” religion. I put criticize in quotes because I question whether their actions actually led to a valid criticism of religion or merely ended up only ridiculing it instead. Criticism and ridicule are not the same things. A page on TvTropes effectively explaines the difference with the usage of “trolling” in place of “ridicule”.

"Okay, I've read your script, and I have a few things to say about it. It needs work, but you've got something going here. I wasn't impressed by the car chases, but those aren't my thing. But I do know that cheesy one-liners aren't really done anymore, unless you're spoofing those kinds of movies, and this isn't a parody. I did like the romance scenes. You should probably expand that relationship. These kinds of movies don't do relationships well, and this would help your movie stand out." "Okay, I've read your script, and it's retarded. You should just use it for toilet paper. Nobody likes car chases anymore, and your crappy jokes make Arnold look like Shakespeare. You thought that **** was funny? Oh, the love scenes were good. I always knew you were gay." The above two paragraphs aren't quotes. They're to illustrate the difference between Trolling and Constructive Criticism (hopefully, you know which is which). While trolls want to put people down, constructive criticism is meant to help an artist improve his/her work. It's rarely shown in fiction, but it's important to it, since it's meant to help people improve their writing.

An article in the campus newspaper gave a description of their demonstration. You can find it here. In the article it explains that,

Members chose to dress as pirates to satirize religious teachings that certain followers are better than everyone else by sarcastically saying that pirates are the chosen people.

While this may be a valid criticism against some specific religions, it is not valid against religion as a whole as their demonstration was publicized as. Here they make the mistake of placing religion in a box of their own design to make religion fit certain restraints.

The article goes on to explain their main purpose by quoting their president,

Our main message is that everyone should be able to criticize religion just like every other idea, especially if it is silly or hateful.

The first part is something I completely agree with but am slightly puzzled at. The only people who try to claim religion is above criticism are generally fundamentalist extremists. Also, the only people who claim that society sees religion as above criticism are generally the militant atheists. Taking a trip to your local book store can show that religion is not considered to be above criticism. I went to my local Borders this Saturday and looked through the religious section. I saw many books meant to criticize religion such as The God Delusion, God Is Not Great, God: The Failed Hypothesis, Letter to a Christian Nation, The End of Faith and many more similar titles. If the book store has these titles on the shelves and not only available through online orders then there is, at least, a sizable demand for them.

The second part of their message is also puzzling. I can find nothing wrong with criticizing hateful messages within religion. I know they exist and they deserve to be corrected. However, criticizing something because you find it “silly” seems a bit much. Simply because you may find something to be silly does not automatically make it worthy of criticism or ridicule. The following is a rule posted by on a website I frequent that explains this very well.

Peterson's Rule I remember going with a Muslim friend of mine to visit a chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. And this is a very educated man, obviously, holder of a doctorate, I think European educated, as I recall, and we got to talking about what I was doing there, that I was studying Islam, and so on, and he asked me, "Are you a Muslim?" and I said "No." And he asked me the question that I always dread, "Why not?" which can get you into a very awkward position. Well, I tried to answer it positively and said, "I'm a Christian, I believe in the divinity of Christ and, therefore, I can't be a Muslim."     He said, "How can you possibly believe in that? Everybody knows that God doesn't have a son. God can't have a son. 'He nether begets nor is he begotten'," he quoted from the Koran. And then he said, "And let me tell you something else. Is this what you believe? Do you believe that God had a son and that to buy himself off because he wanted to destroy and damn everybody, he had to send his son down and make sure he was tortured to death so that he wouldn't have to damn all of humanity?"     I said, "Well, that's not quite the way we typically put it but that's a relatively fair statement of the idea."     He said, "Well that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Everybody knows that's not true. It's absolutely inconceivable."     Well, what struck me about that was that religions often look silly to people outside. He said no intelligent person could possibly believe in a doctrine like that. Well, besides the fact that it was somewhat personally insulting, I thought, "But intelligent people have demonstrably believed in that doctrine, whether you think it's right or wrong." I mean, St. Augustine wasn't stupid. Thomas Aquinas wasn't stupid. Calvin wasn't stupid. Kierkergaard wasn't stupid. There are a lot of bright people who have accepted a doctrine much like this.

Dr. Peterson makes an excellent point. Outsiders view particular religions as just plain silly, one that no person in their right mind would believe. But, in fact, there are many people--good intelligent people--who believe in that particular religion. I'm sure you have had times where you have asked yourself, "how can they really believe that? I just can't believe it."

So, what is Peterson's Rule?

So the principle that came to me on this was that if you are looking at a religious tradition that has a large number of adherents...then there must be something in it that appeals to different people. Mormonism, for example, has clearly lasted long enough and has clearly appealed to a wide enough cross section of people that you don't have to concede that it's true to say there must be something there that appeals to people; bright people, practical people, highly educated people, uneducated people; all sorts of people in all sorts of cultures have found something appealing in this movement. The same is true of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity in general.

The article continues with explaining that the group carried signs with depictions of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and read verses from the Gospel of the FSM. Referencing the Gospel of the FSM the article states,

The book challenges religious teachings and contradictions the Non-theists find absurd.

Peterson's Rule applies here as well. Simply because one may find something to be absurd or silly does not, by itself, make it worthy of ridicule or criticism. Something extra is required to push it into the realm worthy of criticism. This is also the point where I think they went from attempting to criticize religion to ridiculing it. Most theists are not going to take criticism of their belief system seriously by involving the FSM. Many also consider it, in most uses, to be a thinly veiled attempt to mock religion. The Law of Charity explains this very well.

The Law of Charity When presenting any material that is negative about another's beliefs. Be sure to present it in the most positive light. That way you can critique from a position of strength without being cast as polemic. If you can explain the beliefs of another person to their satisfaction, then you are in a position to critique those beliefs.

Casting someone’s belief system as comparable to belief in a cartoon character consisting of two meat balls, spaghetti, and two eyes, and then proceeding to criticize the persons beliefs from that comparison will almost never result in positive results. Generally, the person whose beliefs are being criticized will merely ignore the criticisms as too childish or too simplistic and possibly, in more extreme situations, become severely offended and be put off from listening to anything more the criticizer may have to say.

Continuing with how I believe they did not offer criticism, but ridicule. This is a picture from this same event last year (It appears to be a yearly occurrence). In the picture you see a central figure reading from what is most likely the Gospel of the FSM surrounded by people mocking religious adherents bowed in prayer. I assume this is most likely one of those things the president was referring to when she said “silly”. Again, Peterson’s rule applies here. Simply because one may find religious ritual, or prayer, "silly" does not make it worthy of criticism.

Not to be misunderstood I am not attacking this group or their right to protest. Nor was I actually offended by their demonstrations. Their actions appear, to me, to possibly have good intentions but have become stuck in the current fad of the FSM among college students.