Month: April 2011

  • Lots of Satanism on the internet

    Thus need for lots of exorcists. Jobs for Catholic priests! And in the nick of time, too…

  • Independent talks to critics of Templeton prize

    Dawkins, Kroto, Coyne, and Grayling point out that in religion, faith is a virtue, while in science, faith is a vice.

  • Discipline

    Must stop must stop must stop. Must stop arguing with ridiculous guy on Facebook who calls Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan “racists” because he dislikes them. He’s lily white himself of course. Must stop must stop must stop.

    He’s a “humanist,” according to him. He’s yet another anti-gnu. He’s a chump. Must stop must stop must stop.

    I did a podcast interview earlier this afternoon with Johan Signert of the Swedish Humanists.

    I’m invited to the Let the Light Howthelightgetsin thingy at Hay on Wye. I just might do it.

  • Hitchens on Karzai and Jones

    The terrible thing about indiscriminate violence and religious hysteria is how much damage a little of it can do.

  • Pertussis closes Waldorf-based private school

    The local Health Care Director unambiguously stated that lack of vaccinations caused this outbreak and that the children affected were unvaccinated.

  • You get what you pay for

    Jerry Coyne’s take on the Templeton Prize is slightly different from Mark Vernon’s.

    Templeton plies its enormous wealth with a single aim: to give credibility to religion by blurring its well-demarcated border with science. The Templeton Prize, which once went to people like Mother Teresa and the Reverend Billy Graham, now goes to scientists who are either religious themselves or say nice things about religion.

    That’s why it really is a form of bribery. It’s open, transparent, accountable bribery, as opposed to back-room under the table bribery, but it is bribery: the prize rewards a predetermined ideological viewpoint, as opposed to research or inquiry or art. It rewards various versions of the claim that religion and science somehow work together as opposed to competing or clashing; it does not reward versions of the claim that they don’t and can’t.

    Templeton’s mission is a serious corruption of science. Like a homeopathic remedy, it dilutes the core of the scientific enterprise, which has achieved its successes by holding doubt as a virtue and faith as a vice.

    And by doing this it also balks and confuses the public understanding of science and of thinking in general. It obscures the fact that “faith” is not a useful tool for finding things out.

    …although science and religion are said to be “different ways of knowing”, religion isn’t really a way of knowing anything – it’s a way of believing what you’d like to be true. Faith has never vouchsafed us a single truth about the universe.

    And the “different ways of knowing” claim, again, is a snare and a delusion for people in general. It’s the wrong kind of “framing”…

  • A turning point in the god wars

    Mark Vernon is excited that Martin Rees won the Templeton Prize. He sees it as deliberate revenge for something Richard Dawkins said.

    Last year, Dawkins published an ugly outburst against the softly spoken astronomer, calling him a “compliant Quisling” because of his views on religion. And now, Rees has seemingly hit back. He has accepted the 2011 Templeton prize, awarded for making an exceptional contribution to investigating life’s spiritual dimension. It is worth an incongruous $1m.

    Funny kind of hitting back – it’s not as if Rees awarded himself the prize. It’s also not as if accepting the prize is a way to rebut what Dawkins said. As a matter of fact, it’s more like agreement than rebuttal. Here’s what Dawkins said:

    The US National Academy of Sciences has brought ignominy on itself by agreeing to host the announcement of the 2010 Templeton Prize. This is exactly the kind of thing Templeton is ceaselessly angling for – recognition among real scientists – and they use their money shamelessly to satisfy their doomed craving for scientific respectability. They tried it on with the Royal Society of London, and they seem to have found a compliant Quisling in the current President, Martin Rees, who, though not religious himself, is a fervent ‘believer in belief’.

    The claim is that Rees is a Quisling for helping Templeton by implicitly endorsing it. Accepting its prize is more of that, so it’s not much of a “hitting back.” You could say it’s a “yes I am and what about it?” but that’s different.

    Anyway, Vernon’s real point, of course, is the usual – Dawkins bad, boring, gnu, harsh; Rees good, exciting, un-gnu, mild; atheism bad, religion good, muddled chat about the two meeting in the middle best of all.

    The Royal Society lent its prestige to the Templeton Foundation by hosting events sponsored by the fund, which supports a variety of projects investigating the science of wellbeing and faith.

    The wut? Wut science? But right: that’s the point: the RS gave the TF prestige by hosting events sponsored by the fund which pretends that science and “faith” can “enrich” each other.

    Dawkins and Rees differ markedly on the tone with which the debate between science and religion should be conducted. Dawkins devotes his talents and resources to challenging, questioning and mocking faith. Rees, on the other hand, though an atheist, values the legacy sustained by the church and other faith traditions.

    So, Dawkins is evil and Rees is good.

    But if [Rees] is modest about what can be achieved for religious belief by science, he insists that scientists should not stray into theological territory that they don’t understand.

    Does he insist that theologians should not stray into scientific territory that they don’t understand? Does Vernon? Does Templeton? No, of course not. From that direction it’s all about “enrichment”; it’s only scientists who are kicked off the grass.

    …with Rees’s acceptance, the substantial resources of the Templeton Foundation have, in effect, been welcomed at the heart of the British scientific establishment. That such a highly regarded figure has received its premier prize will make it that little bit harder for Dawkins to sustain respect amongst his peers for his crusade against religion.

    Or it will make it that little bit harder for his peers to ignore what the Templeton Foundation is doing. That’s at least as likely as Vernon’s dreamy prediction.

    When the cultural history of our times comes to be written, Templeton 2011 could be mentioned, at least in a footnote, as marking a turning point in the “God wars”. The power of voices like that of Dawkins and Sam Harris – who will be on the British stage next week – may actually have peaked, and now be on the wane.

    Could be. Yup. Maybe. It’s possible. You never know.

    Then again, maybe not.

  • Mark Vernon on Templeton and evil gnus

    Dawkins called Rees a quisling. Now Rees has “hit back” by winning the Templeton prize. This is a turning point in the God wars. Wut?

  • Jerry Coyne on Templeton and its implications

    When it gives the prize to someone like Dawkins, who doesn’t go to church and is not prepared to say nice things about religion, then…

  • Jerry Coyne on the Templeton travesty

    Templeton plies its enormous wealth with a single aim: to give credibility to religion by blurring its well-demarcated border with science.

  • Ian Sample interviews Martin Rees

    “I’ve got no religious beliefs at all. Of course some of the winners have, but I think not all of them.”

  • Martin Rees wins controversial Templeton Prize

    The astronomer royal has accepted the annual prize from the Templeton Foundation, which critics say makes a virtue of belief without evidence.

  • Strange boatfellows

    Anthony Grayling is not an enemy of new or gnu atheism, though I suspect some people would like to shoulder him into that category. He won’t be shouldered though. He’s very polite about it, but he won’t be shouldered.

    The little jokes and kindly bearing can make Grayling sound quite benignly jovial about religion at times, as he chuckles away about “men in dresses” and “believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden”, and throws out playfully mocking asides such as, “You can see we no longer really believe in God, because of all the CCTV cameras keeping watch on us.” But when I suggest that he sounds less enraged than amused by religion, he says quickly: “Well, it does make me angry, because it causes a great deal of harm and unhappiness.”

    He spotted the attempt at shouldering, you see, so he replied quickly.

    …we have to try to persuade society as a whole to recognise that religious groups are self-constituted interest groups; they exist to promote their point of view. Now, in a liberal democracy they have every right to do so. But they have no greater right than anybody else, any political party or Women’s Institute or trade union. But for historical reasons they have massively overinflated influence – faith-based schools, religious broadcasting, bishops in the House of Lords, the presence of religion at every public event. We’ve got to push it back to its right size.

    Not very anti-gnu, that. On the contrary.

    it wasn’t the atheists, according to Grayling, who provoked the confrontation. “The reason why it’s become a big issue is that religions have turned the volume up, because they’re on the back foot. The hold of religion is weakening, definitely, and diminishing in numbers. The reason why there’s such a furore about it is that the cornered animal, the loser, starts making a big noise.”Even if this is true, however, the atheist movement has been accused of shooting itself in the foot by adopting a tone so militant as to alienate potential supporters, and fortify the religious lobby. I ask Grayling if he thinks there is any truth in the charge, and he listens patiently and politely to the question, but then dismisses it with a shake of the head.

    “Well, firstly, I think the charges of militancy and fundamentalism of course come from our opponents, the theists. My rejoinder is to say when the boot was on their foot they burned us at the stake. All we’re doing is speaking very frankly and bluntly and they don’t like it,” he laughs. “So we speak frankly and bluntly, and the respect agenda is now gone, they can no longer float behind the diaphanous veil – ‘Ooh, I have faith so you mustn’t offend me’. So they don’t like the blunt talking. But we’re not burning them at the stake. They’ve got to remember that when it was the other way around it was a much more serious matter.

    “And besides, really,” he adds with a withering little laugh, “how can you be a militant atheist? How can you be militant non-stamp collector? This is really what it comes down to. You just don’t collect stamps. So how can you be a fundamentalist non-stamp collector? It’s like sleeping furiously. It’s just wrong.”

    Now the odd thing is that yesterday on Facebook (one does find out some interesting things via Facebook, there’s no denying it) the Institute for Science and Human Values flagged up a cruise next October with guest speaker…Anthony Grayling. The ISHV is very very very hostile to “militant” atheists. Several of its founding members spend a remarkable amount of time saying how hostile they are to “militant” atheists. I’m wondering if that’s going to turn out to be a rather tense cruise.

  • Lauryn Oates on where the blame belongs

    Jones should have simply been ignored, or perhaps satirized, for the fundamentalist bigot that he is.

  • Terry Glavin on the massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif

    About three years ago, Shia Khomeinists and Sunni Wahhabists teamed up in their efforts at subversion in Mazar.

  • Literary criticism

    Just for completeness, or pedantry.

    You are simply hosting the Gnu atheist admirathon. No wonder B&W has been disowned by more rational voices.

    Which more rational voices? Wally Smith? Chris Mooney? Tom Johnson? Josh R? Steph the Pixie?

    Do you really think it’s the Feast of Reason?

    Of course not. Did I ever say I did? No.

    There is nothing any longer on B&W worth reading that isn’t cut from the same cloth.

    Really? Not Leo Igwe? Not Allen Esterson? Not Phil Molé? Not Franco Henwood?

    Sorry; I just don’t buy it. Even if you hate the blog part of B&W, there is plenty that’s worth reading.

    It’s a hornet’s nest to any disagreement.

    Mirror. Look in it.

    Your readers aren’t the least bit interested in civil discourse: when challenged they revert to the same tropes, and when that fails, invoke the myth that atheists have been persecuted historically. It is pure crap, it is untrue, and it really deserves to be outed.

    I think the reality is that many of the people who read B&W aren’t very interested in lectures on civil discourse from you at present, because you have been throwing around insults as if you had to use up your stock before midnight. And if you think atheists are not stigmatized, you’re not even listening to yourself, let alone the rest of the commentariat.

     And why so brave–did they talk to you to talk back to Hoffmann and show some spine? Just asking?

    No. Just answering.

    No, Ophelia: B^W is just a sounding board for like-minded hard atheist opinion.

    See above.

    There are no butterflies there anymore just gasbags like the seminally under-qualified Eric McDonald and clowns like PZ Myers, who could benefit from a reading comprehension course with an emphasis on analogies. As I recall, Myers was lambasted as such at last year’s CFI 30th, so why don’t we say we are dealing with an atheist fringe that threatens always squandering its capital on its worst instincts?

    This is civil discourse is it?

  • Bishops agree

    The headline on this article originally read

    Bishops agree sex abuse rules

    Just what we’ve always said!

  • Have you ever studied any world history?

    Salman Rushdie thinks it’s funny, Russell Banks thinks it’s funny; I think it’s funny too. (So that means I’m as cool as Salman Rushdie and Russell Banks, right? Sure.)

    Anyway. I thought this particular bit would speak to us today.

    And he asks, “Kelly, have you ever studied any world history?,” and I’m, like, “Excuse me, but I happen to be wearing an imported Italian cashmere sweater.”
    I’m totally stealing that.

  • Paul Rudnick: “I was Gandhi’s boyfriend”

    And I say, “If someone punched me, I would throw my drink at them. I mean, maybe you should try that with the British.”

  • UK bus ad campaign to tackle “Islamophobia”

    The Ahmadiyya Muslim Association is behind the campaign. Yes really.