During The Rain Delay

A cleaned up comment

Note: I really, really wish the new atheists would get a few new hobby horses to bring up because this has been done to death.

Steven Sullivan, the question, which some new atheists, including Lawrence Krauss brought up and not me, was The Virgin Birth of Jesus. It wasn't any other one, it was that one. Remember that, I didn't choose the proposition for discussion the new atheists did.

In logic, when you are dealing with a proposition, you deal with THE PROPOSITION AS IT IS PROPOSED, that proposition chosen by these new atheists is the Christian belief in The Virgin Birth of Jesus.

That the new atheists, once they have proposed that topic, find that they have been unwise enough to choose a belief that was defined by the writers of two gospels and those who believe those two accounts, in a way that puts it beyond the reach of science, have only shown their own lack of insight and foresight. I'll deal with that below.

This inevitably leads them to find they are unhappy with their choice if they find their opponent is logical enough to be able to point that out to them and insist that they stick to their own, chosen proposition in the argument.

The continually manifested habit of trying to change the proposition mid-argument, which I've never not found to be the recourse of the new atheist who finds themselves unable to press their point using science, doesn't do anything but show that they want to twist the requirements of logic to suit their own ends, which is what they are continually accusing religious believers of doing.

Then the new atheist begins asserting that the person they are arguing with is a Christian who is probably some species of biblical fundamentalist who is, no doubt, a creationist-snake handler who deprives children of medical care, thus causing their early deaths. When you point out that you are not and fully accept evolution as deeply established and that you, yourself, don't happen to believe in The Virgin Birth but do happen to believe in the rules of both logic and the requirements necessary to practice science, they really lose it.

I will say that, this month, having to think through this and the other favorite proposition of new atheists, The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, I'm pretty impressed that the writers of the gospels and the early Christians, who are generally considered as superstitious idiots by new atheists , for some reason came to a far better understanding of the difference between believing in something and knowing something in a scientific sense, than many contemporary scientists and mathematicians. Some of whom are, actually, otherwise quite sensible.

Considering scientific methods hadn't been formally developed and would have almost certainly been unknown to those simple folk, their insight is rather more impressive than that held by many well known scientists today.

The Challenge To Subject The Virgin Birth of Jesus To The Methods of Science

In the discussion over Lawrence Krauss' op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, the new atheists, as they almost invariably do brought up The Virgin Birth of Jesus. Here's the challenge that Krauss issued, as he described it in his piece:

When I confronted my two Catholic colleagues on the panel with the apparent miracle of the virgin birth and asked how they could reconcile this with basic biology, I was ultimately told that perhaps this biblical claim merely meant to emphasize what an important event the birth was. Neither came to the explicit defense of what is undeniably one of the central tenets of Catholic theology.


Here's the claim as made by one "MadScientist:

– Krauss never suggests that science move out of its own realm; what he is saying is that claims such as the virgin birth do not conform to what we know of the world. The claim of a virgin birth is essentially hearsay. MadScientist

One of the often made boasts of scientists is that they are required by science to back up their claims with the evidence attained through sound methodology. Well, let's see them do it in this case. Here's the challenge I issued in response.

Then it’s up to any scientist claiming that they can address The Virgin Birth of Jesus, as described in the gospels attributed to Matthew and Luke and actually believed by those who believe it, and not in a modified version so science can be made ez, to show how they could do it. They have to do it with absolutely no physical evidence, through an unknown range of possible mechanisms, and without recourse to any other human birth since it is held by its believers to have happened in that way exactly once in the entire course of history.

If you accept this assignment, please have your methodology and proof in by next Tuesday. You can feel free to post it on the last comment of my blog which you can reach by clicking on my name.

If anyone can produce a method that takes in all of those aspects, I’ll gladly announce that I’ve been stumped. But only if it addresses what is actually believed by those who believe it. Which I don’t happen to for historical and literary reasons.

I'll keep you posted on the results. If there are any.

I should add that I fully believe in the allegorical truth of the story. But I'll save that for the Christmas season.

The Kind of Religious Hypocrisy That Is Entirely Fair Game

And why the New Atheists might really want to dump the rehabilitation of Herbert Spencer

Cynthia Davis, chair of the Missouri House Special Standing Committee on Children and Families is proof that the putrid ideas of Herbert Spencer and the Social Darwinists are not only alive, their true believers have political power.

Her recent legislative newsletter contains a detailed critique of a summer food program for children who receive subsidized meals during the school year. As full of double-talk as it does the a callous view of hungry children, Davis is a clear example of the reason Spencer shouldn’t be rehabilitated in an ill thought out defense of Charles Darwin.

In her own words, here are some low lights

- Is school the only place a child can get a nutritious meal? Parents have good reason to dispute the idea that their children will not receive a nutritious meal if they are not in a government institution. Who should be the one to pass judgment on what defines a nutritious meal?

- They are using a "crisis" to create an expansion of a government program. [Note: a fifth of Missouri children are believed to be in danger of hunger according to a federal report, apparently that’s not enough of a “crisis” for Cynthia Davis and the Republicans of Missouri who put her in this post.]

- This is not a discussion of how to handle the public orphanage. These are children who have parents already providing meals for their children. This program could have an unintended consequence of diminishing parental involvement. Why have meals at home with your loved ones if you can go to the government soup kitchen and get one for free? This could have the effect of breaking apart more families.

- Who's buying dinner? Who is getting paid to serve the meal? Churches and other non-profits can do this at no cost to the taxpayer if it is warranted. That is what they did when Louisiana had a hurricane. [I am assuming everyone capable of reading this realizes this is a whopper of a lie, considering what happened to those the government didn’t get help to after Katrina. Churches have never been able to make up for what only government can do. Churches have always been among the strongest supporters these kinds of government programs.]

- This is also an entitlement program with no cap on how much can be spent. In the early 1900's the average family paid about $20.00 per person per year for taxes. That left a great deal for our citizens to engage in acts of charity and helping poor neighbors who needed a meal.

- When churches offer a meal, they can serve the individual with a sense of love and caring for those less fortunate. Government cannot match that. Bigger governmental programs take away our connectedness to the human family, our brotherhood and our need for one another.

- While nobody is disputing the benefits of nutritious food, why the presumption that parents are not providing nutritious food for their children? Even if they are not, who created a new rule that says government must make up for any lack at home? The problem of childhood obesity has been cited as one of the most rapidly growing health problems in America. People who are struggling with lack of food usually do not have an obesity problem.

- Anyone under 18 can be eligible? Can't they get a job during the summer by the time they are 16? Hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals?
Tip: If you work for McDonald's, they will feed you for free during your break.

From the mind of Charles Dickens to chairing an important committee in a large American State. I’ll bet she watches A Christmas Carol with her children every year. Though on Easter she apparently lets them wander alone on dangerous highways in Missouri.

From what I’ve read about her preparing this post, you won’t be surprised to find out that Cynthia Davis constantly portrays herself as a “Christian” as she does what she does to the least among us. The phenomenon of “christians” who say and do the direct opposite of what Jesus, the older Jewish prophets and the earliest Christians did and taught, is an entirely legitimate target for the most severe criticism of religion. Criticizing Davis and those who put her in power on those grounds isn’t bigotry, it’s a moral duty. And some of those doing so are doing that on the basis of her religious hypocrisy.

Herbert Spencer was always popular with the callous rich. In the version of “christianity” as practiced by some, his teachings clearly are substituted for those they say are, literally, the word of God. This is odd, considering Spencer was agnostic, if not an atheist. Since Davis brought up the tax rates of the early 1900s, during that period, John D. Rockefeller famously delivered lesson on the necessity of pruning away the inferior blooms in order to produce the American Beauty Rose in line with Social Darwinism. Considering his own cultivated aroma of sanctity and his own religious pretensions, Rockefeller’s lesson was obviously and entirely removed from anything Jesus or his disciples are recorded to have said. About the best that can be said, was that he was speaking of businesses, on that occasion, at least.

Reading an attempt to resurrect Herbert Spenser and the other Social Darwinists by ill informed new atheists was ironic in so many ways, foremost among those was the fact that Spencer has always lived on in the ideas and programs of conservatives with political power, that ethical vampire never died. As ironic is that some of the most ardent movers of Social Darwinism in all too real life, are as ardent creationists, insisting on Genesis replacing science in biology classrooms. I’m sure they would be just as surprised as the new atheists to find their forgotten, if not quite missing, link.

Answer to a Comment on the Previous Thread

I read the blog post which was kind of silly. You will notice that the writer depends on the one writer in the journal who tried to “debunk” the existence of Social Darwinism while dismissing the several he says support its existence. He also depends too much on the origin of the term “Social Darwinism” instead of on the ideas that are generally understood to comprise it. Odd that so many scholars of the other relevant writers are hoodwinked by Richard Hofstadter even today.

I thought this was especially telling:

That certainly sounds rough, but as it turns out, Hofstadter failed to mention the first sentence of Spencer’s next paragraph, which reads, “Of course, in so far as the severity of this process is mitigated by the spontaneous sympathy of men for each other, it is proper that it should be mitigated.” As philosophy professor Roderick Long has remarked, “The upshot of the entire section, then, is that while the operation of natural selection is beneficial, its mitigation by human benevolence is even more beneficial.”

Beneficial for whom and to what effect is the whole point when talking Social Darwinism. Private charity has never, in history been sufficient to aid the destitute. Spenser was dependent on Malthus, his ideas about economics and politics are a development of his appalling writings.

The geneticist, Richard Lewontin pointed out an interesting difference between biological and political uses of Darwin’s ideas last month:

The parallel between the arguments for natural selection and nineteenth-century economic and social theory, however, misses an extremely important divergence between Darwin and political economy. The theory of competitive socioeconomic success is a theory about the rise of individuals and individual enterprises as a consequence of their superior fitness. But even though the Industrial Revolution resulted eventually, at least in some countries, in a general rise in material well-being, the number of immensely successful entrepreneurs is evidently limited precisely because their success depends on the existence of a large mass of less successful workers. No population can consist largely of people like Henry Clay Frick.

The theory of evolution by natural selection, in contrast, is meant to explain the adaptation and biological success of an entire species as a consequence of the disappearance of the less fit. Provided that a species does not become so numerous as to destroy the resources on which it depends, there is no structural reason why every individual of that species cannot be highly fit. If we seek a true originality in the understanding of Darwin and Wallace, it is to be found in their ability to adapt a theory meant to explain the success of a few to produce a theory of the success of the many, even though the many may be competing for resources in short supply. Whether they were conscious of this divergence of the theory of evolution by natural selection from the reigning economic and social theory is a question.

I’m not so sure they did appreciate the difference, but I’m really more interested in what we understand and do now than the reputation of people who have been dead for a hundred twenty years.

It’s been a long, long time since I read Spencer but I’m just about certain that he was opposed to state financed and operated public education. If that idea was carried out and the public schools gave way to private schools it would have the interesting effect of entirely opening up science classes to creationism, without even the veil of ID to hide it. Given the pretense of the New Atheism that they are the only reliable and true defenders of the teaching of pure evolution, defending Spencer in order to “defend Darwin” would have a pretty odd result. But I’ve never thought the new atheists were all that practical. I think the best way to defend the teaching of evolution is to forget the reputation of Darwin and concentrate on the enormous mass or post-Darwin confirmation that evolution is as sound an idea as any in the history of science.

It also shows how much of social progress the new atheists might be willing to abandon in the cults ideological quest. They like to think of themselves as being daring liberals or even leftists, but they're not.

I’m Burned Out Just Listening To A Little Of What Teachers Are Up Against

A repost from my old blogging. The topic was the idea of “teaching the controversy” and a counter proposal by a university based genius to add more topics to high school biology courses. You'd be surprised what you can learn from asking people who actually teach in public schools instead of listening to people who either haven't been in one for years, or who never set foot in one.

Asking two high school teachers I know about one of those tertiary level issues I mentioned yesterday, I got a crash course in their reality. Most of the basic assumptions I brought to my questioning were wildly optimistic. Instead of the 185 days I assumed as their opportunity for teaching their subject it was actually 180 days. Instead of the three days I’d imagined given to standardized testing, it was actually a week, sometimes more. And, as one of them reminded me, a class period devoted to giving a unit test is also a “day” when they aren’t teaching new information. He said that he never gets to the end of the textbook he’s got, never mind adding new topics to be brought up. That’s why he couldn’t tell me how many actual teaching days to subtract for unit tests.

And, as both reminded me, their “day” is actually not a day but an “hour”. And that “hour” was 50 minutes long, at least a tenth of that just spent on getting kids settled and taking care of administrative junk. Then there are the non-teaching problems they’ve got while actually teaching their subject matter, ranging from confused or listless kids to even the best behaved kids cutting up, to kids with a history of psychopathic violence. I asked how they dealt with kids who didn’t have the background knowledge for their subject, they said it was a huge problem.

So, when you subtract the 15 minutes from those 180 hours and start subtracting “hours” given over to, not teaching but testing, and figuring in the time spent with remedial and behavior problems, it looks like a mighty hard job.

When you ask one, don’t even bring up what they think when university based geniuses start telling them what they need to add to their curriculum. Not unless you really want an earful.

A Comment

E. , I’d agree with most of your last comment and as your goal is to promote rationality, you certainly see that irrationality isn’t limited to a subset or religious believers.

One of the questions that keeps popping up is why the United States and not some other developed country has problems over the teaching of evolution. You’ve hit on one of the biggest, our system of local and state school boards. If one municipality or state get hijacked by creationist candidates, as has happened, or even a whole state, it can take a court challenge to prevent them from putting it into science classes. I’m skeptical of the ability of a small, unpopular minority to sustain their civil rights on the basis of court rulings. The Rehnquist and Roberts courts have shown any rights gained even by legislation can be effectively abridged by a malicious court. Public acceptance is the only certain way to protect civil rights. I doubt that anyone should expect that Dover is the last word on the evolution struggle, those who want to keep religion out of biology classes in public schools here had better not rest on that, very possibly, temporary decision. Clearly, the new atheists’ hijacking of that issue combined with the rest of their program won’t help in the effort to build broad public support for protecting the science in the schools. You don’t win elections by insulting the majority of voters.

Given how difficult it is to change the basic forms of our government in the United States, the local-state school board structure should be taken as permanent. Even more permanent should be the fact that our basic act of governance is the vote.

The first time I ever waded into this issue was in the months before the 2006 election when the media was trying to provoke the left by widely discussing that stupid poll that showed the public would elect a gay person as president before they would an atheist. Stupid, not just because the poll was bogus, but because most of the various minorities coming out ahead of atheists weren’t in any great danger of being elected. I wrote a piece saying that the coming election was what the left should concentrate on, not getting into the already polluted atheist-religion squabble. I also told atheists that insulting the majority of the voters wouldn’t do a thing to make them want to vote for an atheist. I figured it was about as rational a point as possible to make.

A number of atheists, notably Amanda Marcott took that point and distorted the entire meaning of what I wrote, which was my refresher course in blog ethics. Austin Cline doing the same thing was several months away. But that’s not really important. What is important is that now a sizable number of atheists have recognized that the new atheism is irrational and is already damaging to other atheists’ interests and potentially to science. I think their positions are superior to the new atheists’ they are more rational and honest. I think their positions.

I figure science isn’t my responsibility, the future of science rests in the hands of scientists and those who fund their work. I’d like nothing better than to not have this distraction out of politics altogether. My interest is in political progress, environmental protection, national healthcare, civil rights…. all of which I think are more important than the keeping biology classes pure of extraneous religious content. I’m enough of a practical heretic to think that most of those who take biology classes need some of the other topics covered by the one and only biology class they’ll ever take more than they do a pure and pristine view of their ancestry. A knowledge of evolution isn’t going to keep them from an unintended pregnancy or a life threatening venereal disease. The evolution ball that every always has their eye on is important but its not all that big.

I think the real problem is that the line of explicitly anti-religious intent stemming from those around and about Darwin, as seen most honestly in Thomas Huxley but also others, which took up evolution as a weapon against religion, meets head on with biblical fundamentalism. I don’t think that is useful for science or religious liberalism. In practical terms, in the United States, at least, the effort would clearly favor the biblical literalists. The use of evolution as a weapon against religion has failed the test of history, it’s failed the test of time. It has been damaging to the publics understanding of science and has been an effective tool of political organization among the far right. I don’t think most of the Republicans who kow-towed to the TV evangelists cared at all about evolution and they demonstrably had no intention of following the teachings of Jesus, certainly not in economic and social justice. They saw them as a large and easily used political force. And they have won elections with them. The loss of power by the far right has not been due to the religious right disappearing but due to economic and other factors. The religious right is always going to be a potential source of votes for them.

So, when we are talking about reason, those considerations are the crux of the problem. The program of Dawkins, Harris, et al are irrational and unrealistic. I think their motive has nothing to do with the promotion of reason or science, it’s because they can’t stand the existence of anything but their chosen mix of materialism-scientism. In that they are no different from their opposite. They don’t like pluralism on the issue of belief any more than the most rigid Souther Baptists. The irony with the Southern Baptists is that the Baptist tradition began as a quite liberal one in which individual conscience and reason were major positions it took. There are still Free-will Baptists, though they are quite invisible. The ironies of the new atheism is that they are some of the worst supporters of science and reason and logic, certainly their web presence is anything but a new enlightenment. When arguing with them, notably one “Science Avenger” it was clear they had no concept of the basic requirements of science and had a very damaged idea of logic.

I don’t think religion is the only thing that could usefully be checked at the political door.

P.S. It shouldn't be forgotten that voters will not leave their religion outside of the voting booth.

Deluded Thinking: Believing You Don't Believe

Davo said, “ I thought the new atheists (and most atheists) didn't like that there are people who believe things without evidence”. in response to this point, “At the bottom, new atheists just don't like that there are people who believe things they don't”


I'd guess some like to pretend that's what their ideology consists of. People like to pretend all kinds of things about their faiths. Some people like to pretend that the King James translation of the Bible is the final edit made by a committee guided by God, himself.

If that's the case then new atheists would have to be devoid of self reflection, which seems to be a common trait of the fundamentalist mindset.

Every single person who holds ideas holds some of them without evidence. Atheists who believe in memes, the Paleolithic tales of "behaviors' that render an "adaptive advantage" as evolutionary psychology creates out of thin air, and a host of other beliefs are things some of the most famous of the new atheists believe without any evidence.

There is no evidence for the ethical correctness of the separation of church and state, the political equality of all people, the right to liberty or life or the pursuit of happiness, there is no evidence that men deserve to have the same level of legal rights as women, that my own folk, gay people shouldn't be oppressed, there is no evidence that Plato's awful form of fascism isn't the optimal form of government. There is no evidence supporting the foundation of any moral position. Where's the evidence that it would be a good thing for the human species to continue for another generation?

Those things are all beliefs held on their foundational level without evidence. We all hold things as being the way we think they might be on the basis of our experience but unless you are going to conflate what we believe from our experience with evidence, those things can't be held on the basis of evidence. And if you do make that assumption, my experience says that you have no right to deny religious believers the right to believe in the deity of their choice and other associated beliefs. You don't even have the right to deny them the right to change those beliefs on the basis of further experience.

Whether or not you would deserve the dislike of people you insult on the basis of their beliefs won't matter because they won't care, they'll just do it without your approval. And they'll consult those feelings when they vote.

A Reason The New Atheism Needs To Be Discredited

And sent to the dustbin of history

New Atheists aren’t All Atheists, that’s important to start with. A lot of atheists are pretty civil and level headed people, some of them want to have nothing to do with the new atheists and reject the program of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and the lesser lights among those self-defined “brights”. I’m not talking about grown ups who are also atheists or agnostics. This is about a subset of atheists who are bigoted, obnoxious, jerks. A lot of those bigots have PhDs and hold university positions, you can read about them in the post below this one.

Having argued against their blather for several years, the incident that made me focus now was the blog reaction to the murder of Dr. Tiller several weeks ago. That night, all over the blogs I frequented, his murder was used as a pretext for the new atheists on the comment threads, to repeat the putrid slogans of their prejudice as they tried to vie for the one who could tell the most bigoted and disgusting lie against “faith heads”.

Pointing out that Dr. Tiller was murdered while ushering at his Reformed Lutheran Church didn’t get the foul mouthed jerks to shut up. Reason is far from one of the more obvious habits of the new atheists on the blogs.

On one blog conversation I was part of that night, after the point about Dr. Tiller’s religion was made, one of the new atheists repeated the Harrisite formula that “there were no atheists who flew planes into buildings on 9/11".

Well, there were no Reformed Lutherans flying planes into buildings that day. There were no members of the United Church of Christ, or any other Christians or Jews or Hindus or Buddhists, or women, or gay men....... There weren’t any of the other fifth of the human population who were Moslem flying those planes either. Many thousands of times more Moslems condemned the crimes committed in the name of their religion by the hijackers and their controllers. Even countries which are hardly allies of the United States, such as Iran, condemned what was done. But, as all bigots do, the new atheists try to make all members of a group they hate guilty of the worst things a tiny number of them does. This has been done just about any time that bigotry takes hold and feels free to express it’s pathological thinking.

Since they pretend that they are the masters of logic, the blog bigots were angry when it was pointed out that by the doctrine of the new atheism, Dr. Tiller was culpable for his own murder. As an active member of his church he would be held by the new atheist creed to have “created an atmosphere in which his killer was encouraged”. His family and friends were responsible, people who subdued the gunman were responsible and every religious believer, the most pro choice, the most pacifistic, must be held responsible for the murder of Dr. Tiller. That is the only logical conclusion to make.

The new atheism is a kind of bigotry. Like all bigotry it is is dishonest and obnoxious. Some of the more silly adherents of it believe they are the bulwark of the new order, that they will, eventually, become the majority and that religion will be well on its way to extinction. Right now, given the size of their legions and absurdity of their claims, they are more reminiscent of the Grand Duchy of Fenwick than another New World Order. As they grow more obnoxious and foul mouthed, they are a lot more likely to kill off the atheism fad than to grow it.

I don’t think it does any good to count on that happening, though. Other forms of bigotry haven’t disappeared even as they have become unfashionable. I think active discouragement of the new atheism is necessary. That discouragement could begin by telling them you don’t want to hear their bigotry. Tell them any time thy start that you don’t want to hear it, that they’re not welcome to vent their sick thoughts.

The bad things that specific people or specific groups or religious authorities do are fair for comment, but only those people responsible for them are to blame. Atheists who want to blame religious people who aren’t guilty of anything should ask themselves if they want to be responsible for crimes committed by atheists. In the case of officially atheist states, murders that could be laid at the feet of atheism run into the tens of millions. Because if they make that rule and allow themselves to tar all religious people, they’re going to find that same tar sticking to them and they'll have no right to whine about it.

Bigotry Always Gives Birth To Stupid People

It’s often wondered at, how otherwise intelligent people can be just plain dense. I remember having a discussion about the Noble Prize stud farm, a sperm bank that in which the Noble Prize physicist William Schockley left a deposit in the late 1970s or early 80s. At the time it was reported that several great thinkers, so honored, were reported to have participated in this most risible of eugenics projects, though they chose anonymity. Anyone who thinks eugenics died with the Nazis should be chastened to find that any number of Nobels had that much faith in the pseudo-science that late in the game, encouraged by others with scientific and quasi-scientific credentials.*

During that at times less than serious, discussion, the very serious fact that Schockley was infamous as a scientific racist was unavoidable. The man was a total nut case, believing that the inferiority of people with African ancestry was a fact of hard science. He was and is, hardly alone, scientific racism is hardly dead.

I remember hearing one of my science heroes on TV point out to him that Schockley and the rest of the geezers in the Nobel stable would likely be inferior breeding stock due to the accumulation of mutations and cell damage at their advanced ages. Like the rest of his project, apparently that was a variable the Nobel Physicist and the other men of science neglected to consider.

The truth is, bigotry is not based in sound information or reason, it’s based in gossip, phony evidence promulgated for ulterior motives, in the heat of envy and resentment.

When a person allows bigotry to take over a large part of their thinking, it makes the results just plain stupid. No matter what they might accomplish in their professional life where they are required by professional standards to delete their bigotry, when bigots take one step outside their narrow specialty, their intelligence and behavior, takes a dive to the bottom.

I think that the thing to notice here, is that they are smarter when they are forced by professional standards to cut it than when they are free to vent it.

So, I’m not impressed with the PhD’d bigots that abound these days. I don’t look at their degrees or what faculty they sit on or their publications. You have to look at what they say and what they use to back it up. When they spout stupidity, that’s what they’re spouting. When their ignorant fans repeat it, the quality of it doesn’t improve. As with old line racism, it can have a damaging effect on the entire country and take an enormous amount of effort to overturn. Anyone who is a student of the literature of sexism and Jim Crow will know there were many degreed, highly positioned experts cited in the screeds that comprise it. Many texts supporting the subjugation of women and the oppression of minorities are authored by those with impeccable credentials and letters after their names. A lot of what I’m seeing from the high and mighty in our intellectual culture, even now, even with the entire, bloody history of the 19th and 20th centuries to have learned from, looks mighty like that crap.

* They never attracted the rarest of the lot, the doubly Nobeled Linus Pauling, who was quoted as having declined participating because he preferred doing it the “old fashioned way”.

Letters To A Callow Atheist

Vacation's over, I'm back at work so I'll just be posting some material gleaned from various arguments. Here's one from last night, a response to "Dan S." about the shoddy scholarship of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. The issue is Dawkins' failure to cite and engage any of the rigorous thinking of serious theologians and other writers on religion in his alleged smack down of God and those deluded enough to believe in God.

But that's the point, isn't it? You can argue that TGD has a whole bunch of various deficiencies, but when it comes to the question of whether or not a God bearing some resemblance to the entity usually described by that name actually exists (which Dawkins does state quite clearly is the limit of the book), there don't seem to be any substantial modern authors for the pro side.

Now, Dan. You really do disappoint me. Is this ignorance or is this a debating strategy?

Just about anyone with a grasp of logic realizes that arguing the existence of the supernatural is bound to be as fruitless as the search for finding the absolute foundations of mathematics due to our inabilities, not to the certainty that those don’t exist. I think, since there was a popular work that mentioned Godel in the title where they couldn’t miss it as they didn’t really read the whole thing, the Sci-blog wannabees and their equivalent in the general blogosphere might have an inkling of his contributions to uncertainty. They, as Dawkins and, perhaps, you, would know that people who write on the topic of religion at the most serious level don’t generally write about “proofs” for the existence of God these days. And, now, I’ve put you in a polemical bind because you can’t refute that statement without undermining your assertion by finding the relatively rare cases when they have broached that topic. And if you found them with google and Wiki, why didn’t Dawkins?

Of course, since he was a “theist” they wouldn’t have been impressed with Godel’s logical brilliance. Theists can’t think

But his book wasn’t just on that topic, it covered a range of charges against religion which have, in the main, been the concern from such frivolous thinkers as James and Wittgenstein and Kant (I don’t recall, did he mention Kant, who would have been especially apropos of your canard? ) ,..... those in the western tradition, alone, would fill a page. But with a toss of the hand, you with “science” on “your” side can safely discount all those as not worth knowing about without knowing the first thing about them. Just like the most primitive of biblical fundamentalists, only they’ve got scripture as an excuse to ignore science.

That Richard Dawkins, with the resources he had at his disposal from his endowed chair at Oxford, resorted to citing the man who introduced him to his wife, a broadcast media scribbler who had exactly one great radio drama, a good TV remake of that , a mediocre series of books on the same and, posthumously, a movie I didn’t bother to see since it was on the same material, as his only real cultural achievement, is truly one of the most amazing displays of scholarly ineptitude in recent history. The part of the public which sucked it up as gospel are a confirmation of the disastrous state of learning in the allegedly educated classes of the English speaking world. I’d think it could tell us something about the decline into a new period of benighted bigotry you seem to be the vanguard of. It sure looks like that to me, based on my readings of the ScienceBlogs.

Note: I'd never thought of it before today, I wonder if a percentage of Bertrand Russell's anti-religious product might have been due to his resentment of Godel making his greatest achievement a bit anachronistic. I'll look into that idea in the future and report any evidence I come across.

But It’s Not Fair When YOU Do It!

First In A Continuing Series on The Double Standards The New Atheism Rests On

Going into the new atheist blogs is a waste of time if you expect to find a reasonable discussion on the topic of religion or much else. There isn’t much reason to be found among them and a lot less truth. Yesterday in the exchange laid out here, I came to realize that the recent foray I made was most usefully looked on as an anthropological field trip. I think you might see why.

It began when a fairly harmless comment which said something about an eminent physicist, who I won’t name because there were no direct quotes or citations given. He claimed that the physicist would tend to agree with Richard Dawkins that indoctrinating a child into religion was akin to child abuse. I asked about Quakers or parents who bring their children to Temple on the High Holy Days.... but that’s not the interesting part.

Here’s the exchange I had yesterday at The Intersection, with a commentator called “gillt”. Notice particularly that gillt isn’t happy with having materialists’ motives be the subject of even a polite question. Of course, attributing base, cowardly motives to religious believers is the bread and butter of the new atheism. I’ve edited my comments in a few places to clean up ambiguities and typos. Gillts are as they appeared. I should note that The Intersection is not a new atheist blog, though the owner is an atheist who is pretty fair and rational. The threads on the topic were dominated by new atheists.

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AM: Maybe there's a peculiar habit that scientists get from trying to find universal properties of nature, that they tend to abstract away from the more complex and messy every day reality. That scientists, who gain status and a good salary from studying the material world would want to hold they, actually, had their hands on the ultimate reality, would hardly be surprising. People tend to focus on what brings them respect and admiration. You can understand how people with that kind of personal investment might resent those who deny that theirs is the last word on the subject. I wonder if anyone has ever studied that attitude that is so common among those in the sciences on that basis. Not presupposing that their materialism is correct, but seeing it as an anthropological phenomenon in the way that a Shaman might come to regard himself and his profession. Though people don't tend to have a high level of self-knowlege when it comes to that kind of thing. Too much reality is dangerous for their self-image.

I've had some respect for (the physicist) L. K. , I'd like to know what he'd say to that speculation.

gillt: McCarthy says "that scientists, who gain status and a good salary from studying the material world would want to hold they, actually, had their hands on the ultimate reality, would hardly be surprising."

Armchair psychology aside, this category better describes physicists, particularly retired physicists turned theologians like Polkinghorne.

AM: Armchair psychology aside

That would be aside the uniform attributions made here about the far larger and more diverse percentage of the population who believe in a huge range of religions.

Not so comfortable being the subject of that kind of speculation, is it. At least I was attributing a common habit to them instead of a form of depraved ignorance.

I'm finding the exemptions that scientists seem to want to carve out for themselves increasingly interesting. I think scientists would make a far better subject for anthropology than a sculptor who has been dead for c. 35,000 years.

gillt: A layman's unpublished thoughts probably shouldn't bother too many of us. Then again, who isn't an authority on the internet? You will get back to me with those exemptions, but only the interesting ones, no?

AM: You're bothered by which part of what I said, exactly?

How about being exempt from having motives other than strict adherence to evidence and the logical necessities of it in asserting the truth of a chosen ideology.

Then you can go on to exemption from assuming other people have as much right to make up their own minds about what they choose to believe.

(Then in response to someone else who stepped in) I meant gillt, who apparently was perturbed that someone might question the motives of a materialist choosing their ideology because it elevated their social and existential position in the scheme of things. Materialists are not to be questioned about their motivations.

Apparently that's another double standard that the new atheism will not see violated.

(Then back to gillt) And I really am amused by that use of the term "layman". That would be as opposed to the high priesthood of science, one supposes.

gillt: “priesthood?" Sad soul, even McCarthy's language is god-soaked. Nevermind that, what concerns me more is his anti-atheist holy crusade moving from amusing to tiredly cynical. It appears McCarthy simply can't stand the existence of a new atheist anywhere, ever; can't stand them so much he seems to confuse the comments section for a game of space invaders. Take'r easy `ol boy

AM: Actually, it was sarcasm soaked.

I haven't said a word about why someone shouldn't be an atheist or that they should believe in religion, just that they shouldn't be bigots.

A Too Modest Proposal, It would Seem by Anthony McCarthy

I was going to wait until this developed further and do intend to write the analysis that I promised Curious Wavefunction, but have decided to post the exchange we’ve been having on the topic of Sam Harris’ idea of a nuclear first strike against Moslems. The paragraph by Sam Harris is quoted by Curious Waveform in comment #83. I will begin to analyze it next week.

Curious Wavefunctions and my comments are the only ones included here. If other people enter the discussion I might include them. This exchange is contained in the comments to a post at The Intersection: Ken Miller: "Why Jerry Coyne is Wrong"

Note: I will point out that the proposal, first made at comment #88, to kill the scientists , who would be capable of building the nuclear weapons, which Sam Harris is willing to murder tens of millions of innocent civilians in a day to prevent being deployed, would be a far smaller number of murders than what Harris and many of his new atheist admirers on the blogs contemplate.

And it would have the benefit of preventing their being built. We could threaten to wipe out any country which we suspected of having a weapons program with our nuclear stockpiles right now. We could tell them unless they handed over all of their relevant scientists, physicists, chemists, and engineers so we could test them for competence and liquidate them, we will kill everyone. I suspect that any country faced with obliteration would be willing to make that trade. Or at least the second one would.

My proposal is contingent on people finding Sam Harris’ proposal reasonable enough to take seriously. I believe mine is the more reasonable since it is preemptive and it is also far less drastic in the numbers of people killed. And, as Sam Harris’ doesn’t, it targets those most responsible for endangering us. The scientists and engineers producing the weapons in the first place. It is a serious proposal, it has to be considering that Sam Harris and many of his admirers are able to calmly contemplate nuclear first strikes that would, by his own admission kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a day.


# 75. Anthony McCarthy Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 1:16 pm

If Ayaan Hirsi Ali's stated intention is to promote womens' rights in the middle east hooking up with someone who advocates nuking them in the millions sort of might put a dent in her effort.

I'd imagine even atheists in the cities that would be incinerated might not be too keen on her now that she's joined up with Harris and Hitchens. But I've been skeptical of her from the start.

# 77. Curious Wavefunction Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

Anothony, have you read "Infidel"? You render Hirsi Ali a great disservice by primarily thinking of her in terms of an association with Sam Harris. Please, get over Sam Harris. Although I think part of his writing is spot on (again, not painting someone with a monochromatic brush is the mark of a reasonable response), there are bigger fish to fry. And did you bother to read his response and the relevant paragraph in his book? Care to debate the actual substance and details?

# 80. Anthony McCarthy Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 1:26 pm

You render Hirsi Ali a great disservice by primarily thinking of her in terms of an association with Sam Harris.

I'm pretty confident that her critics in the middle-east and other Islamic countries will certainly notice that she's on the board of his hilariously named "Reason Project". White guys sitting on North American and Europe might let Harris go on his "nuke em'" stuff, but when you're getting a target painted on you, it sort of focuses the concentration.

Harris wrote what he wrote. I'm hardly the only one who has noticed or commented on it. That horse left the barn a few years back.

# 81. Curious Wavefunction Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

Again, Ali's association with Harris is not the locus of her identity, it is not the bedrock of her existence. Ali is a brave woman who suffered genital mutilation and had her agent killed for her "heretical" views. Well, ok. But a reasoned respnonse needs us to examine all sides of a debate. Let's start with the relevant paragraph. Now what do you think is objectionable? Give me some details.
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# 83. Curious Wavefunction Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 1:39 pm

Sorry, I forgot to post the paragraph (from pg 128-129 of The End of Faith)

"It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime-as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day-but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world's population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher's stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side."

Now please let me know what abhorrent problems you see with these words. I will be happy to go over the paragraph line-by-line since it seems to alarm you so much.

# 85. Anthony McCarthy Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 2:31 pm

CW, I've read Harris. You think being two-faced is a virtue?

There are few things that could discredit Ayaan Hirsi Ali [more] than liking up with Harris and Hitchens. I assume she's able to make an adult decision and accept the consequences, good or bad. Though it's possible she's being used, though I'd think assuming that would be rather patronizing. Whatever, if she is sincere about her goals, it was about as bad a move as could be imagined.

# 86. Curious Wavefunction Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 2:39 pm

So what exactly is two-faced about this? Please indicate the exact words in the paragraph above. The scenario as is described seems to me a very realistically possible future scenario in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, as documented by several people, for instance by David Sanger in his recent "The Inheritance". And the criticism of Harris is by a single individual, Chris Hedges, who also claims that both Harris and Hitchens would willingly torture people. Maybe that's why Hitchens had himself waterboarded. Even though I strongly disagree with both Hitchens and Harris in parts (Hitchens for instance seems to have no understanding of Hinduism and thinks that the fiasco that was Osho Rajneesh is emblematic of everything that could be wrong with the religion), unlike some people I don't want to interrogate them with a single brushstroke.
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# 88. Anthony McCarthy Says:
June 12th, 2009 at 6:35 pm

Curious Waveform, I think I might do an analysis of that paragraph, it's toing to take a while because I'm going to look for evidence to support or refute what he says. It's going to take a little while, I will post it on my blog.

I forget, did he talk about nuking North Korea? I don't seem to recall him thinking that might be a good idea.

You do know that he's putting a lot of peoples' lives at stake for the sake of those 19 men, don't you. Maybe, since they're the source of the problem, we should kill all the physicists. There are a lot fewer the ten million nuclear physicists. Or maybe just all of those in states that aren't nuclear yet. Though, actually, it's those with intercontinental missiles and nuclear weapons now that are the problem Maybe we should kill them all too, just as a precaution. Then we can start on the rest of the scientists who develop munitions. And industrial chemicals, and potential biological weapons..

# 90. Curious Wavefunction Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 9:25 am

Let me just say that I look forward to your nuanced and insightful analysis of the paragraph. All this talk about killing physicists, North Koreans and random Muslims detracts from the very specific words that he used and detracts from his description of a realistic scenario now recognized by many analysts as a huge problem in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I look forward to reading your post. And would also suggest that instead of killing physicists we should kill chemical industry manufacturers, since without them there would no nuclear and chemical material to work with. But However I also propose that we don't descend into sarcasm; it draws your attention away from the matter at hand. Again, I very much look forward to your detailed and insightful analysis of those words. Please let me know if I can be of help.

# 91. Curious Wavefunction Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 9:30 am

Let's focus on the substance and actual details of what he said, and argue those.

# 94. Anthony McCarthy Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

Curious Wavefunction, if it's all right to commit, as Harris says, " an unthinkable crime-as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day" due to the danger of a relative handful of fanatical moslems getting their hands on a nuclear weapon, why not save tens of millions of innocent civilians and kill every scientist who has the technical knowledge of how to produce those nuclear weapons in the first place.

Or do you believe that their being physicists, chemists, etc. make their lives so much more valuable than those of the tens of millions of innocent civilians, that it excuses their part in producing those weapons which Harris, and clearly you, are so worried about?

If you don't clear that question up, I'll have to conclude the answer is yes. Please clear up this point by telling me why it's all right to do what Harris proposes but wrong to do what I've asked about.

# 96. Curious Wavefunction Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

Anthony McCarthy, now we are talking about substance, thank you. Sam Harris's paragraph clearly rests on an implicit assumption that is made clear in multiple place in the analysis; that the people who would get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry share a mental makeup similar to that of the 19 9/11 hijackers. First of all let me answer your other question upfront and say that the scientists you are mentioning are not out to deliberately kill and maim innocents, and not right now whereas our, Harris's and everyone's else's discussion concerns such fundamentalists and the dilemmas of the collateral damage that would be inflicted in fighting them. As a relatively trivial side-point, even killing all nuclear scientists is not going to deprive the general population of this knowledge, while undoubtedly depriving it of peaceful applications of atomic energy in producing electricity and radioisotopes for medical and agricultural applications. Also, we might as well say that we should kill politicians who are averse to signing test-ban treaties and who were responsible for the transfer of nuclear technology between countries, in terms of a contribution much more massive than that made by scientists. I think you will agree that such discussions don't get us very far. The fact is that the nuclear weapons are out there. We are concerned with people who are out to get them right now. We are not much concerned about what happened in the past. We want to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack right now. The real question is, how do we do this in the very near future? Harris is discussing such a scenario and trying to answer that question as well as raising other questions. So let's first get that other point out of the way. Now let's start analyzing Harris. He starts by saying:

"There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon"

Here he is talking about people just like the 9/11 hijackers who would get their hands on such weapons. I am sure you know that people in the State Department and the intelligence agencies spend their days and nights worrying about the same people, and they have been doing so for years before Sam Harris wrote his book. They worry about the Taliban who are 60 miles from Islamabad, and they worry about the ISI which is infested with fundamentalists. They would not worry so much if they thought that these people would be fazed by deterrence. Thus this worry and scenario is not specific to Sam Harris. If you want to read more, I will recommend "The Inheritance" by David Sanger in which he describes Pakistan's slipshod management of its nuclear arsenal.

Harris furthermore goes on to say:

"What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime-as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day-but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. "

Here Harris is referring to the now well-discussed fact documented by several government officials that Pakistan might have a spare nuclear arsenal that is mobile. In addition the Pakistani government refuses to disclose the location of its current arsenal and has contingency plans to move it around. Thus, if Islamic fundamentalists get their hands on these weapons, the scenario is likely to remain the same as both Harris and history itself note. The US has several precision weapons in its arsenal, but these would be of scant use if the location of the Pakistani arsenal is not known. Now consider that when the hunt for Osama bin Laden was on, more than one US official had considered the use of "small"tactical nuclear weapons in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. This was because of the great difficulty (still thought to be so) of scouting around in the maze of caves beneath the countryside where Bin Laden was hiding and attempting guerilla raids. Similar proposals had been put forward by the government during the Vietnam War. In fact they were considered seriously enough to ask JASON, the scientific advisory group, to author a report titled "Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia". And of course, both Truman and Eisenhower seriously flirted with the idea of using nukes in Korea. All of these excursions in Afghanistan, Vietnam and Korea would have involved thousands and perhaps of millions of casualties of the kind Harris is mentioning. We may find these proposals abhorrent, but the point is that they were considered not by members of any particular political party or by rabid extremists or atheists but by relatively dispassionate officials in high echelons of the government. Therefore such kind of thinking is not limited to Harris, and predates his book by several years in many different contexts. Just like Harris, these officials considered this at one time or the other as one of the few available options. Their thinking involved introspection and they were aware, just like Harris is, that it would have been an "unthinkable crime", but also like Harris says they were thinking of these options as last resorts. Also note Harris's words, "may" which were converted to "should", a huge difference in terms of language.

Ok, on to the next paragraph:
"How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world's population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher's stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely."

Now here, the real point Harris is making is to actually bear upon the incalculable harm that could be done, either by West or Middle East, simply by adhering to primitive concepts of faith. The focus here is on the great evils (indeed, Harris himself describes it as "perfectly insane" because it quite certainly is), even in terms of possibilities, that faith can engender in terms of action or retribution. As he says, we are told to realise the "horrible absurdity" that results from the consideration of such genocidal actions. And yet we are forced to consider them because we frequently deal with an enemy, exemplified by the 10 young men on 9/11, that by its actions imposes such a tortured analysis on us. So the goal here seems to point out the rather fantastic and unspeakable notions of utter horror that we are forced to consider, and all because of the fundamental problems with belief. Now you may disagree with this, but it is important to note that the essence of the argument in this paragraph is not the consideration of actual preemptive action but an analysis of the consequences of belief, and this is what this paragraph should be taken for, not as some explicit consideration involving the use of weapons of mass destruction. I think that's quite clear.

Finally, moving on to the last part:

We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side."

So here Harris is quite explicitly comparing the people who would contemplate use of such weaponry to the 9/11 hijackers; this quite clearly does not include all Muslim countries or all Muslims. The state department worries about the same people, for instance those who are part of the Taliban which is currently close to Islamabad. Harris also says that to prevent any unconscionable action on either their part or ours, it is the Muslim world itself that must take matters into its own hands and prevent such people from getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction. This is a point that has been made by dozens of other commentators who have nothing to do with the New Atheists; Ahmed Rashid, Fareed Zakaria and Tom Friedman for instance. The question that Harris raises is a dilemma. And not only is it a dilemma, it's a real-life dilemma that has enormous and immediate practical consequences. As I noted before, it has been faced in Asia and Afghanistan before by US presidents and they have also intensely grappled with the accompanying considerations of collateral damage and related issues. And it continues to be an active issue under scrutiny. To condense all of the above into a statement saying "Harris wants to kill millions of innocent Muslims by nuking them" ignores the details and nuance and is unbecoming of a rational and balanced debate.
# 97. Anthony McCarthy Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

I will address those questions when I have had time to study and analyze the paragraph, it's become rather famous and I don't want to go over too much ground that has already been covered.

But in the mean time, what about my proposal? I should let you know that I have decided to post this exchange at my blog along with a more formal version of my counter proposal. Forgive the lack of italics, I'm reluctant to use them after the incident I set off here the other day.

Here is the final note to the exchange:

< < I will point out that the proposal to kill the scientists who would be capible of building the nuclear weapons, which Sam Harris is willing to murder tens of millions of innocent civilians in a day to prevent being deployed, would be a far smaller number of murders than what Harris and many of his new atheist admirers on the blogs contemplate.

And it would have the benefit of preventing their being built. We could threaten to wipe out any country which we suspected of having a weapons program with our nuclear stockpiles right now. We could tell them unless they handed over all of their relevant scientists, physicists, chemists, and engineers so we could test them for competence and liquidate them, we will kill everyone. I suspect that any country faced with obliteration would be willing to make that trade. Or at least the second one would.

My proposal is contingent on people finding Sam Harris' proposal reasonable enough to take seriously. I believe mine is the more reasonable since it is preemptive and it is also far less drastic in the numbers of people killed. And, as Sam Harris' doesn't, it targets those most responsible for endangering us. The scientists and engineers producing the weapons in the first place. >>

http://anthonymic.blogspot.com/

I will note that I am quite as serious about this as Harris and those who agree with him are. I have to be, considering what they deem to be perfectly acceptable.
# 98. Anthony McCarthy Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

Oh, I should note, I'm at a remote computer right now and can't post to my blog from here. I'll add these two comments when I go home tonight.
# 99. Curious Wavefunction Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 3:43 pm

We certainly can propose that the Taliban hand their scientific experts over to us. I doubt whether the proposal would work. No harm in trying though.

# 100. Anthony McCarthy Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 4:45 pm

Does the Taliban have a nuclear program?

Since Iran and North Korea are the two countries most in the news for having active or potential or actual nuclear programs, and North Korea is suspected of selling nuclear technology, I think they are actually more likely to be a problem of the kind Harris foresees as necessitating nuclear conflagration. And they have the virtue of having relatively locatable nuclear installations and governmental centers to target.

I am trying to remember if Harris used North Korea, which had been in the news as the major concern for developing nuclear weapons in the near future as he began his career in anti-religious invective.. Though, as I told you I have to wait to borrow from the library. If you have Harris at hand, you could tell me if he proposed targeting North Korea. I believe the catastrophic "Axis of Evil" speech might have predated the paragraph in question. I really would like to know if he included North Korea in his proposed first strike targets.

(To be continued.)
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This is the exchange to date. I will post the rest of it, if it continues and will post an analysis of the paragraph Curious Wavefunction quotes in comment #83

Science Without Physical Evidence, Dawkins Brings Us Back To The Middle Ages.

Note: This is post is an edited version of an August 02, 2007 piece from my old blog. Back then, I’d have less direct experience of the new atheists and held back a few points. I have decided in the face of this controversy at Jason Rosenhouses blog to include some points about Dawkins’ other, proposed, evidence free “science” as well. I will point out, if anyone is as to any doubt about the intellectual bankruptcy of the new atheism, that Dawkins was the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University and a Senior Editor of Free Inquiry when he wrote the bizarre article which first appeared there.

It was considered sound enough to be reposted at secularhumanism.org. Humanism clearly isn’t what it once was, either. Dawkins in a display of typical arrogance began his article “A cowardly flabbiness of the intellect afflicts otherwise rational people.... “ before attacking Stephen J. Gould. Irony is never far off when Richard Dawkins is speaking.

"Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question." Richard Dawkins

The first thing to notice about this odd passage is "Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide....". Why "whether"? Its an absolute fact that there is no physical evidence available. None. No medical records, not even skeletal fragments. No physical remains of the woman or son or a possible human father in question are available nor is their possibly surviving lineage known. It's unlikely in the extreme that those will ever be identified. Why try to obscure the fact that there is none of the evidence necessary to examine the question with science when it is indisputable that there isn't any? So, Dawkins proposes examining the question scientifically without any physical evidence. He proposes determining the paternity of a child without anything to go on, whatsoever.*

Perhaps somewhat more understandable, since it's Dawkins, he says that you can deal with the assertion of something that is claimed to have happened miraculously, outside the usual order of things and exactly once in the entire history of the world in the remote past, with science.

Dawkins, who has been one of the major figures in evolutionary psychology, which is based in making up creation myths and inventing allegedly beneficial adaptations, inventing scenarios amounting to fictional sociological and cultural anthropological field observations in the process, might be predisposed to figure you can do without that troublesome, and aggravatingly unavailable, physical evidence. So he’s never been one to be troubled by the kind of “science” you get when you fill in for those. He’s also the inventor of the bizarre idea of memes, which has been almost universally rejected by scientists and other people who think.

With the claims made by those who believe in the Virgin Birth, even argument by analogy can't address it. When an event is claimed to be unique, there is no possibility of making a comparison with another or even every other event proposed to be similar. Any scientific comparison with any other event would be irrelevant to the claims of a miracle unless you had physical evidence of it**

The total lack of evidence and the claim of uniqueness renders it clearly and most certainly NOT a question science can deal with. And this from the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Certainly among the first things to understand about science are when there isn't enough evidence to practice it and when there is. Not that that hasn’t stopped him in the past, however.

Much as it must frustrate those who would like to deal with some religious questions with science, much cannot be. They might not like that fact but that is just too bad. When the physical evidence necessary to study those is lost to history or non-existent, that is simply impossible. Pretending that you can proceed without the evidence it is dishonest and, beyond doubt, unscientific. You can believe or not believe the claims but using the prestige of the name science to back up your assertions can be done honestly only under specific conditions. It also carries a serious responsibility.

No one has to believe in the Virgin Birth, this short piece isn't about that. This is about how one of the most famous and arrogant personalities of science can get away with saying something so stunningly absurd. With his status in contemporary culture, it's just amazing that a person holding a position like Dawkins' conveniently ignores something so basic to science.

If biologists are content with having Dawkins being the face of their science, they are exchanging short term glamor for long term problems. It is growing clearer that in the political climate in democracies that science can't support the dead weight of extraneous ideologies unnecessary for it. I will make a prediction that you can check out later, if Dawkins truly becomes the face of evolution it will continue to face fierce opposition by many of those he insults gratuitously. Its research funding will not be secure. In the face of his arrogant condescension, a large percentage of the public will not understand the science or want to.

* While it might be fun to point out, going into the need to give God a paternity test only heightens the apparent absurdity of Dawkins claim that this is "a strictly scientific question. Science not only can't deal with these kinds of things, it makes a mockery of science to try it.

**. Your only hope to determine the accuracy of a claim of a miracle is to look at whatever evidence of the specific event is available and see if the claimed result happened. Modern claims of, for example, miraculous cures of physical diseases, could, very possibly, be investigated by science but only by examination of the physical evidence. Without that, science can't be used to investigate the claim.

The New Atheism As A New Dark Age by Anthony McCarthy

Are the ScienceBlogs supposed to be a place where people can go to find out more about science and reason? Is it unreasonable to ask a ScienceBlogger with a PhD in Mathematics, who teaches mathematics at a university, to clear up a disagreement about his subject on the thread of his blog?

The question is whether or not mathematical probability could deal with the proposal that Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, conceived by miraculous means and born to the Virgin Mary. What are the odds of The Virgin Mary conceiving a child by the Holy Spirit and giving birth to the only begotten Son of God, an event held by those who believe it to have happened exactly once in all of history.

I thought probability couldn’t honestly come up with the odds of that happening, apparently some of the new atheist faithful at the blog of Jason Rosenhouse PhD thought it could. I had pointed out exactly why science couldn’t deal with the question on the thread.*

Having had enough of trying to reason it out with the new atheists on his blog, I asked Jason Rosenhouse to settle the question by either telling us how it could be done or to say that it wasn’t possible to apply probability mathematics to that claim. If he thinks it can, would he sign his name to an attempt?

In the process of participating in the thread discussion this request was made in, it became clear to me that the new atheist program is a manifest failure. All over the blogs, the knowledge of the most basic requirements of science and logic demonstrated by the new atheists who post comments there, proves that they are generally quite ignorant of those. In many cases they are abysmally ignorant and as ready to spout their clueless blather as the most ignorant religious fundamentalists. If they can spout it on ScienceBlogs, without having their many errors corrected by others reading it, what does that tell you about the general culture there?

Many of the fundamentalists at least have the excuse that they’re not trying to pass themselves off as practitioners of science.

Is the level of science knowledge demonstrated by the new atheists of the blogs really what the new atheists are aiming for? Because it looks more like the dark ages to me, complete with sectarian bigotry and irrational hatred and fear by those who know better, correcting the most absurd error.

I thought that some other people might be interested in this question. Pass it on, if you think it’s interesting.

* 81 They are at odds because the scientific process by which one arrives at an understanding of the formation of, say, the blood clotting system is fundamentally *incompatible* with the theological process one uses to arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was the product of a Virgin birth.

I'm glad you used th Virgin birth, which I don't happen to believe in [see below], because it's such a good example of why you can't subject it to science.

1. There is no physical evidence to examine 2. It is held to have happened miraculously 3. It is held to have happened once in history

No evidence means no evidence that could identify a human father.

It happened miraculously, which means there is no way to explain how it couldn't have happened.

It is held to have happened once in history. As a unique event you could not debunk it by pointing to another or even every other human birth in history.

There is absolutely no reason you should believe it, as I said I don't, but any statement that you can subject the actual assertion to science only shows that you lack any real understanding of science.

[Note: I should point out I don’t believe in the literal truth of the story. I fully believe in the allegorical truth of it.]

Angel's Advocate?

Not really, as I said in this ongoing back and forth, I don’t believe in the literal truth of the traditional Christian belief in the Virgin Birth of Jesus. I do think it has allegorical truth but that’s got nothing to do with whether or not it literally happened and it is most definitely not a question that could be dealt with by science.

I am advocating honesty by people who set themselves up as the champions of reason and science. It all started when I pointed out that Jason Rosenhouse had made a big mistake in his post about what Jerry Coyne has said about whether or not science refutes religious beliefs. Of course Coyne has, and, as I’ve come to see, he’s tried to give himself cover for it as he asserts it.
This started when “Divalent” brought up the Virgin Birth. Something I wrote on when Richard Dawkins made some remark about it being a question that could be settled with science. Here’s the record as copied from Jason Rosenhouses’ blog. Not the end where I have challenged him to come clean and settle the mathematical issue raised by one of the new atheists about subjecting the claim to probability.


80

"How do they come to be "at odds" if there is no point of refutation by science, ..."

They are at odds because the scientific process by which one arrives at an understanding of the formation of, say, the blood clotting system is fundamentally *incompatible* with the theological process one uses to arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was the product of a Virgin birth.

If someone uses both processes, they must compartmentalize. Using one process in the other's arena would produce a different outcome: an incorrect understanding of the origin of the blood clotting mechanism (and age of the earth, structure of the universe, etc), and (at best) agnosticism regarding such questions as Jesus's virgin birth and the supremacy of the God Zeus.

Posted by: Divalent | June 7, 2009 4:26 PM
81

They are at odds because the scientific process by which one arrives at an understanding of the formation of, say, the blood clotting system is fundamentally *incompatible* with the theological process one uses to arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was the product of a Virgin birth.

I'm glad you used th Virgin birth, which I don't happen to believe in, because it's such a good example of why you can't subject it to science.

1. There is no physical evidence to examine
2. It is held to have happened miraculously
3. It is held to have happened once in history

No evidence means no evidence that could identify a human father.
It happened miraculously, which means there is no way to explain how it couldn't have happened.
It is held to have happened once in history. As a unique event you could not debunk it by pointing to another or even every other human birth in history.

There is absolutely no reason you should believe it, as I said I don't, but any statement that you can subject the actual assertion to science only shows that you lack any real understanding of science.

And, as is evident as this futile salvage operation goes on, no understanding of honesty.

Coyne's meaning couldn't have been plainer, as the rest of his relevant writing on the subject shows.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 7, 2009 5:27 PM
82

No evidence means no evidence that could identify a human father. It happened miraculously, which means there is no way to explain how it couldn't have happened. It is held to have happened once in history. As a unique event you could not debunk it

By that standard, science has nothing to say about my belief that all government officials have been secretly and undetectably replaced by clones who are controlled by undetectable mind rays from undetectable aliens in undetectable spaceships.

Does your definition of science really involve an inability to reject delusions?

Posted by: Tulse | June 7, 2009 10:13 PM
83

"It is held to have happened once in history. "


by whom? by you? this is the worst of your ill-informed mishmashed ideas. The whole christ-redeemer story is copied from many many earlier myths.

and the point is that when people make claims that cannot be measured or disproved, Science can still say "that we have, say, five ways of measuring displacement in time and space, and three ways of measuring heredity and parental relationships... and some experience in telling lies and derived stories from truth...

and all of this sounds like crap...."


"There is absolutely no reason you should believe it, as I said I don't, but any statement that you can subject the actual assertion to science only shows that you lack any real understanding of science. "

and you lack any understanding at all. real or imagined...

Posted by: Kevin (nyc) | June 7, 2009 11:26 PM
84

"Coyne's meaning couldn't have been plainer, as the rest of his relevant writing on the subject shows. "

I see. So, when Coyne goes to great lengths in one passage to explain precisely what he means by a phrase, the correct way to interpret the meaning of the phrase is to go to other passages that are relevant (in your opinion) and glean the answer you want from them, with you magic meaning finder!

You study literature, don't you? Reconstructionalism, or possible post-modernisn?

Posted by: Seth Manapio | June 8, 2009 12:30 AM
85

Tulse,

"By that standard, science has nothing to say about my belief that all government officials have been secretly and undetectably replaced by clones who are controlled by undetectable mind rays from undetectable aliens in undetectable spaceships."

You forgot to say one of the magic words, "supernatural" or "miracle". Those are the words that exempt any claim from scientific scrutiny. Insert the word "supernatural" somewhere in that claim and you'll be right.

Presumably, if a scientist gets an experimental result that appears to falsify the hypothesis he was hoping to establish, he can just say, "I'll assume that was a supernatural event (or miracle), so it doesn't conflict with my hypothesis. My hypothesis remains unfalsified." Great way to do science!

Posted by: Richard Wein | June 8, 2009 3:18 AM
86

"It is held to have happened once in history. "by whom? by you?

By the people who believe that "Jeusus Christ is the only begotten Son of the Father", in other words people who believe in the Virgin Birth. Of whom I am NOT one as I said twice in that comment. I'm beginning to think the new atheism is a product of faulty reading and science education in the English speaking world.

Tulse, if you really believe that you might be able to find out by examining the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE if you could get some. I'd like to ask any REAL SCIENTISTS who might read this if this basic misunderstanding of the absolute basis of science by the new atheism isn't in some way troubling to you. Because it's pretty disturbing to witness it even up into those who have held endowed chairs for the "public understanding of science".

Seth Manapio, you do realize that if Coyne has said different, and conflicting things in this one review, he's guilty of one or more of a range of breeches of scholarship, inconsistency, incoherence, duplicity, ..... And I'll ask any scholars who might be reading this to look at the blogs to see that this problem is rampant among the new atheists there and is not seen as a problem when the stars of new atheism are revealed to have done it. As this thread shows.

Doesn't it trouble any of you that the new atheism is so shallow, so dishonest and so bigoted?

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 3:51 AM
87

Anthony McCarthy

Virgin Birth has only happened once? Really? Christianity is the only religion that has a claim on virgin birth?

Posted by: ken adler | June 8, 2009 4:00 AM
88

Richard Wein, what would happen if a scientist published a paper that said or contained reasoning to the effect: I'll assume that was a supernatural event (or miracle), so it doesn't conflict with my hypothesis. My hypothesis remains unfalsified."

Of course, you were being factitious, but there isn't anything to keep someone from publishing a paper that does that now. Of course it would be a paper with one author, of very few, because no one would join on to a paper that said that, or if they found their name had been put on they'd threaten legal action to have it removed and a retraction published. And it would be a vanity publication because no reputable reviewed journal would accept it. And I'm certain that any real scientist who happened to read it would make it a laughing stock in the field it purported to cover.

It's remarkable that Gregor Mendel, or any of a host of other well known scientists who believed in the Virgin Birth or miracles in general seems to not have used the miraculous in a science paper in the modern era.

And, of course the reason they haven't done that is because they realize, as all real scientists do that science is about the normal, typical, non-miraculous phenomena of the material universe without recourse to explanations of supernatural intervention. If they didn't realize that, they wouldn't be scientists. And that works in the other direction too.

If the peer review and other normal mechanisms of the scientific community can't be relied on to maintain the integrity of science when religion is widely believed in it would have not only ceased to exist long ago, it never would have begun in the first place.

I guess I'm guilty of faith in the normal mechanisms of science which are in the hands of scientists and the editors of their journals. It seems to have worked relatively well.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 4:04 AM
89

Virgin Birth has only happened once? Really? Christianity is the only religion that has a claim on virgin birth?

Ken adler, the topic, which was introduced by Divalent and which I responded to was specifically "that Jesus was the product of a Virgin birth." in comment 80. That was the only claim of a virgin birth, which was under discussion here. That is the one which is held by its believers to have happened only once in history, by its believers.

And there's another common error of new atheists, they don't realize that in order to discuss a proposition, you have to discuss what it is that is proposed. If you don't you can't test that proposition for its coherence and certainly not find out if it could be refuted by science.

You can, however, look at something like the claim "that Jesus was the product of a Virgin birth" as a proposition of history or theology and then you could compare it to other stories of virgin births because the standards of evidence in those methods of investigation would be able to take that into consideration. That part of the belief that it had happened only once, might be mistaken or the entire thing could be the result of the adoption of another culture's myth to make a cultural point or to make a moral point. Which is what I happen to believe is the reason for the story of the Virgin Birth of Jesus based on having read Crossan. But, that ain't science.

Serious history is another discipline that is dismissed as unimportant by the new atheism.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 4:16 AM
90

"Serious history is another discipline that is dismissed as unimportant by the new atheism."

That's quite a brush stroke you have there.

Isn't evolution and geology a search for the true history of the earth? Since the "new atheists" are largely scientists, how can your statement possible be true?

But your basically saying that just because someone says something totally crazy is true and there is no way to disprove it, I still have to take their position under consideration? Excuse me while I look for a flying teapot.

Posted by: ken adler | June 8, 2009 5:45 AM
91

That's quite a brush stroke you have there.

I haven't seen anyone in the new atheism bothered by the absurdly ahistorical writings of Dawkins, Harris and other new atheist bright lights. I'd talk about broad brushes there but it's more like spray cans and bigoted graffiti with them. You show me an influential new atheist critique of the pathetic handling of history by its favorite authors and I'll reconsider.

Oh the blogs, among their acolytes, history, as accuracy, is considered beneath those who have "science" on their side.

Isn't evolution and geology a search for the true history of the earth?

No, they are physical sciences studying physical phenomena that don't have an historical record of the kind that the academic study of the history of human culture. Which is what I was clearly talking about as anyone who took history seriously would know.

Conflation is another habit of the new atheism, no doubt a custom that was borrowed from the social sciences in which that is the usual manner of doing things.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 6:01 AM
92

Sorry, I cut that sentence off in editing.

No, they are physical sciences studying physical phenomena that don't have an historical record of the kind that the academic study of the history of human culture is based in.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 6:04 AM
93

Jason wrote: Notice that [Coyne] says only that science suggests the impossibility of human asexual reproduction or life after death, not the absolute impossibility of those things.

I think this wording confuses a bit some things you expressed more clearly in your original post:

- Some of the things believed by most religious adherents in the U.S. today conflict with scientific/naturalistic explanations, i.e., they are miraculous in nature (and are central tenets of their faiths precisely because of that miraculous nature).

- One can accommodate at one and the same time both a "scientific" way of thinking that demands factual and logical support for one's conclusions, and on the other hand a "religious" or "faith-based" way of thinking that believes in the possibility, indeed the past occurrence of, supernatural events. Those who think of themselves as religious but allow for the factual and logical truth of evolution fall into this category.

- Such accommodation, though possible, ain't easy.

Posted by: Jud | June 8, 2009 7:22 AM
94

Jud, I did read the post, and I've read Coyne. If I was a new atheist I'd talk about moving goal posts at this point.

Thinking about the comments left here since last night.
The only thing this discussion is proving is that the new atheism is anti-scientific and illogical.

If want to debunk the belief that " Jesus was the only begotten Son of God The Father, Born of the Virgin Mary" you have to deal with what is believed, which includes that it was a miraculous event that happened once in the entire history of, at least, the world.

I've gone into why science couldn't do refute that, specific belief, without having any physical evidence.

Now you want to talk about other stories of virgin births in history to try to wriggle out of the unscientific claim that you can debunk the traditional Christian belief in the Virgin Birth of Jesus.

OK. What part of the Virgin Birth of Jesus could be debunked scientifically. There is one part that could be debunked but I don't think the new atheists would care for how that could be done.

You would have to find one or more verifiable, natural, virgin human births to refute the claim that A virgin birth happened once in history. Which would mean that the one Christians believe in was not the only virgin birth.

But that still leaves the birth of Jesus untouched because there is no way to prove that Jesus was not "the only begotten Son of God the Father" conceived miraculously by a virgin. His birth could still be the only one that fulfills all of the points in the traditional description. Science could only refute part of it by finding another miraculous, unnatural, virgin birth, which science can't do.
Well, there could be a way to test a modern claim like that, but not without a court order and a lot of tabloid style research.

You can't scientifically refute what a belief by changing the proposition you attempt to debunk or you're not debunking the proposition. That's a fundamental requirement of logic and science depends on logic. You have to discuss the proposition as it is claimed. And, unless you can show how it could be done without altering the proposed miracle in this case, I'm afraid, you're not going to be able to touch that with science, not without violating the requirements of science.
The only possible way to do it with science would be to have actual, physical specimens from Jesus and his mother and, perhaps, the real human father or a very close relative of his.

It's scandalous that the new atheists on a ScienceBlog aren't bothered by such an obvious and clear cut call by their own for the violation of the requirements of science and logic. It's scandalous that scientists wouldn't point out that they want to. ,

These are called "ScienceBlogs" for some reason, aren't they?

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 7:46 AM
95

Tulse, if you really believe that you might be able to find out by examining the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE if you could get some.

No, Anthony, you clearly don't understand -- the aliens running this conspiracy are so powerful (indeed, from our puny perspective they might be called "omnipotent") that they have wiped out all physical evidence. Don't you get it, man? Don't you see?! Our world is being manipulated by omnipotent beings and YOU CAN'T TELL!!!

I'd like to ask any REAL SCIENTISTS who might read this if this basic misunderstanding of the absolute basis of science by the new atheism isn't in some way troubling to you.

While you're at it, ask some REAL SCIENTISTS to explain the notion of probabilistic nature of truth claims, and how science has moved away from the notion of certainty.

But that still leaves the birth of Jesus untouched because there is no way to prove that Jesus was not "the only begotten Son of God the Father" conceived miraculously by a virgin.

And there's no way to prove that Jesus was not King of the Leprechauns, or Mr. Bojangles, or the shooter on the grassy knoll. Should we take all of those claims equally seriously?

Posted by: Tulse | June 8, 2009 8:04 AM
96

Tulse, you, like some of the biggest names in the new atheism, are in serious need of studying a basic, college levelm text book on probability. Do yourself a favor and do that.

As I implied the first time I talked to you, the rest of this is too silly to respond to. Though I'm not unhappy to have a specimen of typical blog thread new atheist reasoning for people might want to contrast with what I said.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 8:48 AM
97

bah! you have no arguments you just go on and on with your insults.

We've heard the same virgin birth stories in all sorts of mythologies. Yet science has no evidence of parthenogenesis in mammals... unlike gila monsters for instance.

and you say science can't provide an opinion on this issue.

Well I think you are wrong. Science tells us about things that happen and why. In this case there is a birth and science can tell us exactly ONE method for this to happen (with a few variants).

Seems like a sound scientific basis for rejecting a non-sperm origin for this described person.


Posted by: Kevin (NYC) | June 8, 2009 1:06 PM
98

bah! you have no arguments you just go on and on with your insults.

And they said that irony died. But they never heard new atheists whine when someone held them to their own standards.

We've heard the same virgin birth stories in all sorts of mythologies. Yet science has no evidence of parthenogenesis in mammals... unlike gila monsters for instance.

Talk about your moving goal posts. And not getting the most basic fact of logic, that you've got to deal with the proposition as it is.

Why not go to the hymenoptera too while you're at it sci-boy.

Science tells us about things that happen and why.

Yeah, I can see that in your brilliant refutation above.

If there are any real scientists in the audience, here you go. This is where the new atheism is going to bring science. Right back to Aristotle and the scholastics. And those are the clued in ones.

I should confess. I came back here to copy this exchange to post on the new blog I've started to document this pure brilliance. I didn't expect this bonus.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 1:20 PM
99

Anthony wrote: Jud, I did read the post, and I've read Coyne. If I was a new atheist I'd talk about moving goal posts at this point.

Anthony, if you got the impression somewhere in my comment to Jason that I was referring to anything you wrote, that would be incorrect. I was simply telling Jason that I thought the portion of one of his comments from which I quoted was better explained in his original post. Nothing to do with you, I'm afraid.

Posted by: Jud | June 8, 2009 1:38 PM
100

"Talk about your moving goal posts"

ha ha ha guess you don't know what the word means and have to resort to insults!

how the weather under that bridge?

Posted by: kevin (NYC) | June 8, 2009 2:27 PM
101

Jud, I'm sorry about that. If you look at the time stamps it was at the end of an insomniac night.

Kevin, maybe I'm just taking Richard Dawkins briliant advice, now that he and Coyne are even going after their fellow atheists like E. Scott.

http://richarddawkins.net/article,3767,Truckling-to-the-Faithful-A-Spoonful-of-Jesus-Helps-Darwin-Go-Down,Jerry-Coyne#368197

I'm wondering, for the true faithful-faithless. Jason Rosenhouse, tell us how to apply probability mathematics to the odds of there being an only begotten Son of God the Father miraculously conceived and born of a Virgin. Now that the assertion by your fans has been made, I want to know what the math would look like. Remember, it's a miraculous birth that happened once in the history of the world.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 2:43 PM
102

Jason Rosenhouse, I really was serious about asking about applying probability to the question of the Virgin Birth of Jesus as it is believed in. I think it's a rather important question to settle as some of the new atheists seem to think it can be done.

Can probability be applied to this assertion and how would it be done? Or are they mistaken?

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 8, 2009 6:07 PM
103

"Remember, it's a miraculous birth that happened once in the history of the world"

you're wierd. why do you keep saying that? People say it happened many times. go list the gods that had virgin births..

I'll start

"Athena leaped from Zeus's head, fully grown and armed - with a shout!"

or

"According to Graves, Hesiod (c. 700 BC) relates that Athena was a parthenogenous daughter of Metis, wisdom or knowledge, a Titan who ruled the fourth day and the planet Mercury."

oh there's that word again!!

Posted by: Kevin (nyc) | June 8, 2009 9:32 PM
104

Jason Rosenhouse, I really think as a mathematician you owe it to your readers to clear this point up. Can the Virgin Birth, as it is laid out in traditional Christian belief be the subject of mathematical probability. Would you be willing to put your name on an attempt to do so. Either you should say how it could be done or you owe it to your readers to say it's not possible.

You wouldn't want them to linger in logical error would you? Or isn't that the goal of the new atheists? To dispel error?

More generally, are you proud of the non-science converts to the new atheism as they express themselves on the blogs? Is their understanding of science and logic the one which is the goal of the new atheists? I will be posting this on my blog. It's not a challenge yet but it could be.

Posted by: Anthony McCArthy | June 9, 2009 4:52 AM
105

Kevin (nyc) I've already addressed that point in one of the recent comments, where you can review it if you didn't understand it. I don't have time for you guys to waste with bringing up points already covered.

Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | June 9, 2009 4:54 AM