New Atheism: newer approaches and some questions...

For the past year or so I have been watching recorded debates with regular frequency. Most of this started when Christopher Hitchens died in Dec of 2011; the internet had informed me that I should care and so I googled and youtubed my way to google-university to learn a bit.

I watched video after video of Hitchens and must admit was enraptured: what an eloquent, poised and provocative speaker (Honestly, I still think Hitchens is amazing). My journey continued and I learned about the New Atheists and watched countless debates featuring the "Four Horsemen" and during that time started to listen more and more critically to what I was hearing and, alas, to appreciate more and more the argument their opponents were making. NOTE: I said appreciate not stand behind.

Today I find myself concerned. My self education has led me to people like David Bentley Hart. Hart has a mixed background, but part of that mixed background involves both patristics and the history of western philosophy. Yesterday, I listened to a criticism of his on Dawkins' The God Delusion and I must say it made sense to me. Specifically, he attacked Dawkins' use of the Aquinas' 5 ways. I am by no means an expert in philosophy but kept it as a major up until my least year in college, so I'm not wholly uninformed on the subject, and even I can remember that Aquinas' 5 ways were meant as a layman's guide on how to think about/recognize god and not a proof of theism per se. Then Hart moved on to discussing the "Four Horsemen" in general and their version of the history of the church and bible and I'm left thinking: why put yourself in this position. Listening to Dawkins debate evolution vs creationism is entirely different.

Now, make no mistake, I still think religion is nonsense. I also would very much like much of modern religion to go the way of other faiths and hobble off toward Mythology where it can mutate until we think it's quaint like we do with greek mythology today. But I worry about over stating positions and without sufficient evidence.... Stated more directly: if you want to make a strong argument pick those pieces you feel the strongest about. This is particularly true when your argument is a book.  And I want to make sure I've stated this. I'm not claiming I could have done better than Dawkins or Hitchens or Harris or Dennett. Moreover, I'm very much of the opinion that this group of, um, Atheist Knights are  very good at provocation which incites debate and I think that's valuable for critical thinking. Why weaken your overall position (or at least the perception of it) by introducing additional pieces that are easily picked apart by someone who is an expert in that field.

And we don't need to go there!!!

Honestly, I don't really see why we need ever go farther than: where's the empirical evidence in direct support of god? However, assuming you want to make a play that goes after the bible why go any further than what the sectarian experts themselves recognize: the bible as constructed today is based on a mixture of fragments and complete books but these same texts differ from one another... Are most of these discrepancies trivial? Yes, but not all of them are and anyway it doesn't matter. The text we have to go on is either the inerrant word of god or it isn't.

Should the atheism movement refocus its effort on evidence and shy away from debates on ethics, a priori morality and whether god is the author of evil?

Pain-Capable Rape Victims bear full burden...

By now I'm sure most people have seen the news about the the house passage of the:   Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The driver behind this piece of legislation is the dubious claim that the fetus can already feel pain at 20 weeks. No one wants to hurt a baby, right?

I have several immediate thoughts on all of this and in no particular order:

• I think that everyone who supports a bill like this should be willing to adopt and care for adopted children.
• You want less abortions? How about better birth control. Let's encourage it and be realistic instead of pushing abstinence. Abstinence as a real option is as absurd as faith in creationism; it doesn't match the data we have.
• Many republicans have told me before that I shouldn't assume that the goal is an outright ban on abortions. I beg to differ. It's listed as an official goal of the party (at least in some states) and actions like this indicate to me that this is indeed the ultimate goal.
• The fact that the rape provision was added after the fact speaks volumes, imho. If the goal is to increase real reporting of rape (and of course that's not the goal) then this is a setup that makes the victim pay for that change entirely on their own.

It's that last one in this particular case that really irks me. This essentially coerces rape victims to come forward and handle all of the additional emotional baggage of that ordeal on their own and puts a time limit on it at 20 weeks.

I'm going to risk the slippery slope fallacy a bit and take this a bit farther. Republicans want to ban abortions outright.

The Official Republican Platform is quite informative. Republicans want to eliminate any state funding of abortion. Their platform also makes it indelibly clear that in their opinion abortions are not part of health care. This position is troubling given the lack of any kind of qualifying statements/exceoptions regarding the health of the mother. And as I stated above the health of the rape victim is clearly of accidental importance to the health of the fetus.

What is the official position of republicans on abortion to save the life of the mother or even to mitigate the risk of health issues in general? How about the risk of future pregnancies?

This bill still needs to make it through the senate ...

UGH!

Satan: Keeping government secular

This past week Rick Perry made  news when he intimated that Satan was behind the separation of Church and State. I won't quote all of it here as it's been blogged to death about and I've seen it in journals everywhere including national news papers here in Sweden....

He went as far as to invoke the "Iron Curtain" in his remarks, which, actually, is worthy of its own review, but that's not what I want to bring up right now, rather this interesting bit:

We have a biblical responsibility to be involved in the public arena proclaiming God’s truth.

This concerns me for a variety of reasons.

1. He's not just "in the public arena"... He's a governor. He's one of the faces of Government... A figure of authority and one claiming that he has a biblical responsibility to be doing this.
2. Is it even true? I was once a young christian and I remember learning about evangelism, but that seemed to be about the preaching of the gospel with the aim of proselytizing. Given his position in government I rather read this as him saying that he thinks we should be involving christianity more in government... Now, the statement alone doesn't do that, but the rest of what he said absolutely does.
3. Assuming it is true, how are was a nation supposed to come to terms with a country afraid of sharia but itself driving toward what I can only read as dominionism. How am I as an atheist, or other people who are jews, muslims :), hindu or hell even pagans supposed to feel religious freedom in this type of environment... Feels an awful lot like a move toward an Muslim construct known as the Dhimmi (ok, that one was a stretch... but i invite you to challenge me on it).
4. Assuming for a second that we all like this notion... What gives Rick Perry the religious authority to be the one doing this proclamation? Do religious leaders support Rick Perry as the message bearer for what is, I assume, a qualified religious strategy around messaging? 
5. And what about catholics vs protesetants and so on? How the hell is this supposed to work?

Can anyone comment on any of this? Do any of my christian friends feel like this is their "biblical responsibility?" 

Furthermore, I'm absolutely convinced that this type of language in politics is new... Or at least new since when I was growing up? Am I wrong? I just simply don't remember religion being invoked in these terms and so often in the 80's... At least not by so many popular politicians.

Innocence of Americans

Finally! I was so pleased to hear that our official response to the recent attacks and deaths of Americans has been an unequivocal denial of any possible justification. In our society a movie of any kind no matter how insulting or disgusting is ever justification for the murder of anyone: not even the film maker.

It seems to me that this has to be the answer; our society doesn't encourage films of this nature but we're free to make them. And we do. 

A friend of mine pointed me to the following quote by Zawahiri:

How would Americans feel if films insulting the pope or Abraham Lincoln were produced?

He found it ironic that this quip comes just months after Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was released, but this isn't the only film in this genre. Our media is filled with critiques of religion, religious figures and historical legends. In the marketplace of ideas that dominates the west we criticize absolutely everything and publish our critique for the whole world to see. In fact, I used to have a huge poster of The life of Brian in my bedroom. The poster showed Brian and several other "criminals" tied up on crosses: a scene from the movie. At one point we had a couple of exchange students from Japan stay with us for a couple of days. At the time we didn't have a lot of extra room and so my wife and I slept downstairs in our living room and gave up our bedroom. I'll never forget that morning when they came rushing down the stairs in their Sunday best and wondered why we weren't ready to go to church. I explained to them that we were atheists and they assured me I was wrong. They had seen my poster! And we tried to explain this movie to them, and they just didn't understand why I'd have a poster of a movie that was clearly making fun of another religion. What was the point? Why did I think it was funny?

What about Egypt or Lybia?

Given quotes like the one above it's clear that they haven't payed any attention to western media. Egypt itself is a multicultural society boasting christianity (primarily coptic), baha'i and even juddhism and all in addition to islam. My assumption is that movies are not often created there which denigrate faiths and so when something like this comes out of America and hits the interwebz there's an uproar. Now, I realize that Islam is particularly sensitive to images of Muhammed or Allah, but I'm quite certain that with tad bit of investigation they could find all kinds of prurient, depraved imagery depicting Jesus.

And if not?

Let's make a movie? I'd like to put together something really despicable and reach out to media all over the world. Let's show the world just how far we can take this, and when it's all said and done maybe we'll learn something about the innocence inherent in ignorant films.

In America, our origins matter less than our destination, and that is what democracy is all about.

The title of this blogpost is a quote from Ronald Reagan. Now, I'm not actually a Reagan fan, but I like this quote, because it inspired me to revisit several things that have been on my mind lately: what our founding fathers believed and whether it matters.

It seems to me, and I must admit that I cannot corroborate this at all: it's just my opinion, that with increasing frequency we the people are questioning the political direction of the US and referencing what our founding fathers had designed. I quote Reagan, obviously, because I identify myself as a liberal and find this quote ironic given the tendency on the right to make these bizarre "appeals to tradition," but it's not just the right... We're all doing it.

Now, I should say right away that I'm keenly aware of the context of this quote. This is from a speech he made at the Republican National Convention in 1992. I won't insert in it's entirety, but to put this in at least a slightly broader context I'll post a bit more of it here:

Whether we come from poverty or wealth; whether we are Afro-American or Irish-American, Christian or Jewish, from big cities or small towns, we are all equal in the eyes of God. But as Americans, that is not enough. We must be equal in the eyes of each other. We can no longer judge each other on the basis of what we are, but must, instead, start finding out who we are. In America, our origins matter less than our destinations and that is what democracy is all about.

Now, he's clearly talking more about personal backgrounds with regards to creed or ethnicity, and from the context it's obvious he wasn't talking about the ideas of the founding fathers versus the implementation in a modern day society. Still, I think given the broader context it doesn't miss the mark by much, and so I want to ask...

What difference does it make whether the founding fathers would concur with our current political direction?

Now, in keeping with the full title (and I would argue that this is in closer context with the larger section I quoted above) I should probably reword the question like so:

It is less important whether the founding fathers would agree with our current political direction and more important that we ensure its positive impact for all and that is what democracy is all about.

I'm quite happy with that statement, but I suspect a whole lot of my peers wouldn't be. And why is that? What is this predilection toward reverence of past figures in history. It feels an awful lot like religion to me, and indeed religion is one of the themes I very often see used in reference to the founding fathers. There is so much information on this subject that I think you can pick your sources and land in either camp, but what's indelibly obvious is that there were dissenting opinions on the matter even at the time of the founding of our great nation: just look at how Thomas Paine was largely received by his peers by the time of his death.

But does it matter?

I am an atheist and simply cannot identify even with the deism of Thomas Jefferson. John Adams didn't even believe in the trinity but openly criticized Paine and comes off, I think, like a christianity apologist:

The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard [scoundrel, rogue] Paine say what he will.

I'm struggling to imagine a president of the United States in today's world claiming to be a christian, but renouncing the trinity (although I think I've read that he didn't speak of it openly, still)...

And i've really only scratched the surface. If we leave religion and move on to other issues such as women's suffrage and slavery then I think we end up in a very uncomfortable world if we aren't to stray from the worldview of the founding fathers.

So, why can't we agree to pick those pieces of contextual worth from our founding fathers and move on. We have to apply these pieces in the modern world: a post-industrialized world with antibiotics, numerous religions, tv, internet porn and even atheists like myself.

Upcoming child and wedding

So one of my best Friends is getting married. I'm thrilled for him. Moreover, the bride-to-be is pregnant. All of this info I gleaned off the internet, because for some reason I haven't been able to get in touch with him for quite some time.

I should say that this isn't that hard to believe actually. I live in Stockholm, Sweden and he lives in Austin, TX. Moreover, until recently he's been living a single, bachelor existence and I've been married for almost 13 years and have two children. Still, I was hoping to get in touch with him so that I could get all of the juicy details.... But I've got nothing but dead silence.

Well, thanks to facebook I've now learned that he's marrying someone that I have my own history with (before I even met my wife). I'm a little worried that this is why he's been so silent. I mean that was a whole life time ago. In fact I'm thrilled for both of them, yet I have this icky-feeling that although our interactions over the last decade have been quite sparse that this recent event may mean that he's less inclined than before to reach out...

I'm going to use the power of social computing one last time now to make a gesture. We'll see how it goes.

Illness and Anxiety

I have a general phobia for doctors. I am pretty sure I've always been a little uncomfortable around doctors, but it got worse after my son was born. He was born 7 weeks early and so was in the hospital for 3 weeks before we could take him home. During that time he and all the babies around him would have periodic periods of bradycardia (where the heart stops beating or doesn't beat often enough) and apnia (where breathing stops or gets too slow). When this happen we, or the nurses, would just rub his feet and then everything would return to normal.

All in all it was a trying experience what with all the beeping and equipment and fuss, but he came out of it fine and is now almost 4 years old. I am thinking about this again as I reach an age where more and more people I know are in hospitals. My Aunt was admitted into the hospital a couple of weeks ago and is, I gather, not 100% conscious. This came as a shock and when I thought about the hospital I felt uncomfortable. Now tonight I've learned that my wife's step-father has been admitted with double-sided pneumonia. His condition is severe and has apparently begun to pass out now and then.

What I want to know is why is it when I hear about other people's health problems I immediately start worrying about my own? I have high blood pressure, but I take medication and check it often. I run a couple of times a week, am hardly ever sick and generally have more energy than most people I know... Still, when I hear about other people's ailments it makes me worry. The whole thing seems so self-indulgent and egotistical as well. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if I were just worried *for* these other individuals instead of pointing the worry back at myself? Oh and it's not like I'm worried I have pneumonia or something...

I really hope both of them make full recoveries. I always felt I had a special connection with my Aunt, especially during my High School years, and I just cannot imagine my Mother-in-law without her husband around.