50 posts tagged “religion”

This is from The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science's AAI 2007 conference. Andy Thomson goes over the motivations of those who engage in Suicidal Terrorism. An eye opening and powerful lecture on an issue that has shaped politics and international relations for the past couple decades.

 

I am still avoiding discussing religion on this blog at least for the time being, but I did want to point interested parties to Sam Harris' latest talk at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival. Sam has been doing a lot of speaking since his books came out, and I think he has reached a new level of clarity. This is by far the best talk I've heard Sam give (and I've heard him speak on many occasions) and although it's a lot of the same old stuff he discusses, the clarity and eloquence of this talk in particular is well worth the watch.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on the discussion in the comments, but I won't be responding to any specific points.

The talk is available in mp3 audio as well as video in quicktime and windows media formats at the Aspen Ideas Festival website.

For quite awhile this blog has pretty much turned into a giant rant against religion. Specific reasons for this include my increased frustration with the topic, a torrent of brilliant books to fuel my frustration, and all around a generally enthusiastic response to what I was writing. People were actually reading and giving feedback, and the dialogue was incredible. The whole process was intoxicating.

From now on that is going to change drastically. It has to, because I cannot keep up the effort. Awhile back ago I made a policy of not getting into extended debates on the matter in my comments. The process was taking up hours out of my day, as I was never content on giving half-assed answers.

When I originally decided on the policy, I also chose to scale back the amount of religious topics that I would post about. I quickly scratched that idea, as there was far too much that I wanted to say.

However, that situation has changed. Religious topics won't be discussed here anymore. I think I've had ample opportunity to say what I wanted to say and to be frank, I'm not exactly the person who should be saying these things. I am, after all, a lowly web design student struggling through the last phases of college. I am not a theologian, nor a scientist, nor a philosopher. Nor am I a journalist or public critic.

I'm a web designer.

Let me repeat that, once more.

I am a web designer.

That is where my real passion rests.

This all is coinciding with the impeding launch of another blog which I will be writing exclusively on web design (I'll post a link when it is up for those who may be interested).

However, I won't be closing this blog down completely but contributions to this little blog will become increasingly sparse. Perhaps I'll write about personal topics and news, but these will likely be exclusive to friends and maybe on occasion neighbors.

I'll still be hanging around to read my neighbor's blogs, because I've come to really enjoy that. So expect to see me still drop in and post a comment or two.

I also want to thank all those who have participated in the dialogue that has occurred here. It's not much by any stretch of the mind, but it was still enlightening to me. And I'm a more well-rounded person for it. So thanks (you know who you are). 

This interview with Alister McGrath was originally intended for Richard Dawkins documentary The Root of All Evil? For those of you who are more interested in a more sophisticated faith this is an interview you would be interested in. The interview is in full and uncut.

I get the impression that McGrath is making unfair assumptions about the nature of God, while Dawkins tries to probe these assumptions he simply dodges the question with some fancy intellectual footwork. Which, indeed, mirrors my own frustrations with dealing with the more sophisticated versions of theology.

Plus, I liked McGrath a lot more before he got on talking about Jesus.

Penn & Teller's Bullshit examines the bible. Not the original, but a ten minute re-cut. It hits all the major points, though. Also includes tidbits from skeptic and publisher of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer.

I didn't think much of the man, but upon his death I decided not to discuss it here on the blog. I think I'll let Christopher Hitchens do my talking for me on this one.

In a Huffington Post review of Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great, Leora Tanenbaum takes Hitchens to task for ignoring the good things religion has done and unfairly characterizing religion on the actions of a few bad apples.

Fundamentalism, not religion per se, is the real culprit. Hitchens confuses the part for the whole: not all believers are fundamentalists. In fact, most of us aren't. Believe it or not, for all of his influence in creating the "religious right" as a formidable political force, even the late Jerry Falwell did not represent all evangelical Christians (those who consider themselves "born-again" and embrace a personal relationship with Jesus). Millions continued to find Tinky Winky of the children's program Teletubbies adorable despite Falwell's trashing of the character's gender-bending, and cringed when he blamed political liberals for September 11. Millions of evangelicals today defiantly align themselves with the political left, are appalled by religious attempts to control their votes, and want nothing to do with the Bush administration's hypocritical born-again political agendas.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. The point is not fundamentalism, to take Tanenbaum's phrase, "per se" but virulent adherance to a false dogma on the basis of faith while disregarding evidence to the contrary. "Fundamentalism" would not be an issue if the doctrines of Christianity were true, the problem stems from them being quite obviously not true, and as Christopher Hitchens points out, quite obviously man made.

A sort of fundamental belief that aspirin is going to aid one in getting rid of a headache is not a harmful belief, because it is in fact true that aspirin is going to help, or likely help, ones headache. A fundamental belief that hydrogen cyanide may produce similar results, is in fact harmful not because of the fundamental belief itself that hydrogen cyanide is able to alleviate headache but in the inherent qualities of hydrogen cyanide (main that it is poisonous) coupled with that belief (and then the tendency to act upon it).

She goes on to say that a better approach would be to "reform" these false religions into something more palpable (and she does seem to acknowledge them as indeed false or presumably reform would not be necessary):

We all know that religion often leads to oppression. But instead of ditching their faith, millions of believers are doing something much more challenging and worthwhile: working on reform. Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and tireless lecturer and writer, asked 3,000 Catholics assembled in Milwaukee last November celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the reform organization Call To Action: Why should Catholics speak up for reform? Her thunderous answer was that "What happens in the world and in the Church does not depend on God. It depends on us. It is not God's fault if things we have done already do not change. It is our fault!... We cannot blame God for what we do not do to save ourselves." Whether or not God is great is not the issue. Reforming our institutions, including but not limited to our religious ones, is the task before us.

Of course, the most radical, cleansing, and overall beneficial (in my humble opinion) reform of the church would be to reject faith in supernatural deities it and build social institutions based on empirical inquiry, scientific research, and the innate morality found within human beings granted to us both by our cultural history and by the development of alturistic characteristics and tendencies through millions of years of evolution. 

As Christopher Hitchens' notes, we have a much better tradition on which to build our society, one based on the ideas of the enlightenment and principles of liberty.  We should be looking back to insights of these great men, rather than religious icons, and with our own insight come to a greater society that is beneficial to all.

Here is the video of the Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens debate for anyone who wants to watch it.

The debate from the New York Public Library between Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton that I covered before has ignited some controversy. Sharpton (apparently) made biogoted remarks towards Mormonism. Personally, when I first listened to the debate and heard this statement, I found it to be in bad taste and a moot point but I'm not sure if this is biogotry or not (I'd love to hear your thoughts on if it is). At any rate, I think it's all very telling of the status of the religion debate in this country (that is that it's not very good). Hitchens appeared on Lou Dobbs' CNN program to discuss what happened at the debate.

What I find most outrageous about this whole thing is that there was so much more to discuss besides that one (fairly insignificant) remark. That this petty BS takes precedent over the actually issues makes me nearly sick.

I also must say that I'm becoming more and more impressed with Lou Dobbs, he seems like a thoughtful guy.