Well it is Friday already, the weeks are just zipping by which is not good for my deadlines and stress levels, but good laugh while waiting for the computer to run its programs is always useful and for today we have a couple of clips from the British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb – first up a classic take on the religious seeing messages/images in food, followed by a homeopathic A&E.
Hello and welcome to this latest edition of the Carnival of the Godless, for those new to carnivals this one is a fortnightly chance to submit your post on Godlessness (and all that entails) to a potentially wider audience, good for promoting your blog and engendering discussion.
We have had a very good turnout here for this edition and I will endeavour to bring it to you in a succinct fashion after all you are not here for me (at least not entirely) – although if you want to have a look around feel free to check out some of the post on basic physics, skepticism, atheism/religion or any of the myriad other topics I have discussed here.
Now on with the show…
To start with Paul Sunstone of Café Philos shares with us a parody:Helping Those With Mormon Interests.
Some of you may remember the smut for smut campaign were people could exchange their bible for porn, well Jennifurret of Blag Hag tells us of her campus groups better taste effort Fiction for Fiction. She then goes on to ask Is “New Atheism” White Supremacist? and discuss sexuality in nature with Natural Sexuality
First time submitter Bryan W/a ‘y’ from Science. Why not? deconstructs at time magazine article about faith healing in Spirituality is about as good for your health as sugar pills.
lukeprog writing at Common Sense Atheism presents a possible futuristic look back at the end of a religion The Last of the Christians.
At Right To Think yunshui compares cheeses and churches, In Cheeses’ Name, Amen before looking at some of the hypocrisy of the conquistadors in Is that a beam in your eye, Mr Cortes?.
Brent Fisher gives one of his earlier musings on now that he is not religious what is he, in Humanism, a possible model for moral humans
In a post at his bog Pleiotropy Bjørn Østman tells how he is both atheist and agnostic, which is something that I completely agree with as it is the truly skeptical point of view on religion.
Greta Christina serves us a helping of religion and the difference between possible and plausible with Why You Shouldn’t Jump Out of Windows , and follows by decrying the patronizing attitude that treats atheists, and especially queer atheists, as sad lost sheep in Why Do Queers Leave Religion?
Dr. Jim has a low down on some of his exchanges in the letters to the editor of his local paper Lethbridge’s ‘Militant’ Atheist in Chief ‘Heralded’ again..
Postman delivers this letter direct from the almighty, himselfDear Union of Amalgamated Cherubim & Seraphim Local 151… posted at “Gone Fishin’: Postcards From God”.
Living With Mormonsgive some insight in to what goes in inside What do Mormons believe? A look at Fast and Testimony Meetings.
Beth Terry at Fake Plastic Fish (Living Life with Less Plastic) tells us her thoughts on the purpose of life.
Metamagician and the Hellfire Club’s Russell Blackford speaks aboutJerry Coyne on science organisations and accommodationism, before going on to Harvard’s Islamic chaplain: “great wisdom” in death penalty for apostates and then why we should be worried about Hate speech and the ICCPR.
Lying for Jesus seems to be a common occurrence these days and The Atheist Blogger Adrian Hayter gives us Telegraph Caught Lying For Jesus about the misrepresentation of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS).
larryniven of Rust Belt Philosophy presents Walking the walk about following Ontological arguments to their natural conclusions.
Michael of a Nadder! has some Optimism About Deborah 13 a BBC documentary about an “uber-Christian family with no contact with the outside world”.
Andrew Bernardin discusses The Spirit World’s Interest in Sex at The evolving mind
The Invisible Pink Unicorn’s Ron Gold shares the story of How I Became An Atheist.
Gregory Lawrence of skin hunger brings up and knocks down some common stereotypes about the happiness of atheist in The thing that pisses them off.
vjack leading the Atheist Revolution brings up Bigotry and Religious Freedom.
PhillyChief tells of How rational people indulge in the irrational on his blog You Made Me Say It…
and in our final entry for this episode Mauzzie the Ponderer vents about those zealots.
Ok those here for the latest carnival of the godless, which is due on Sunday 3 May, I apologise for the delay (that should only effect those in timezones much ahead of UT). The carnival will be up in the next couple of hours – family sickness and deadlines at work have meant that I am behind schedule on this
Having recently finished reading Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, I thought that I would make a few remarks on some of what I found interesting. Now this is not going to be a review or in any way a comprehensive look at the book or its subject – well accept to say a lot of it especially the earlier chapters make a whole lot of sense. I do agree that the idea of faith itself (and hence most religious beliefs) do by there very nature promote the sorts of actions of terror we have seen unfortunately all too often.
Religion does not however have a monopoly on terrorism, it seems to arise any where that one group oppresses another, or struggles to have its voice heard (hence all the fuss about President Obama’s links to terrorist, stemming from the violent side of the anti-Vietnam war movement.) Though that is not to say that Harris’s thesis is incorrect, as any where religion is involved you do find the in-group/out-group behaviors emerging usually along with an easy rationale for hatred of, and justification of violence towards members of out-groups (To be fair to Harris he probably does mention this and I just don’t remember it). And I certainly can’t think of any in-group/out-group situation religion has made better.
One of the more stand out quotes from the book must actually go to Christopher Hitchens, and it is a quote of his that I hadn’t heard before (and will have to put on my notable quotes over on the side bar) but sums up a lot of my positions, not only on religion but about skepticism in general:
What Can Be Asserted Without Evidence Can Be Dismissed Without Evidence.
Much of the second half of the book is about morals and ethics. One of the main factors of this section was a counter to what I have seen as a large claim by theists against atheist, that with out a god to direct us, carrot (heaven) and stick (hell), we are left to create our own morals and therefore everything is relative. Unlike the genetic advantage of altruism approach favoured by Richard Dawkins, Harris has decided instead to just blow relativism out of the water.
Essentially he makes the argument that relativism, or the idea that all worldviews are equally valid, means then that a worldview that some positions are true and others false must be valid, of course the consequence of that is that all worldviews cannot be valid.
Ok I am paraphrasing a bit but the idea behind it is that relativism is self contradictory, and as I stated above if all possible worldviews are equally valid then the worldview that there is an object reality which can confirm or falsify any position must also be valid, since it is by definition a subset of all the possible worldviews. However an objective reality which can falsify a worldview means that all worldviews cannot be equally valid and therefore relativism contradicts itself and cannot be correct. This all means that indeed there must be some method we can use to confirm or falsify our worldviews, which essentially means that there is an objective reality and when it comes to morals/ethics there must exist definite rights and wrongs.
The book finishes with a discussion about the need for spirituality, and I have heard many comments about how Harris sees this in a sense that is too religious and that it is a bit of a “sacred cow” for him. Harris does approach spirituality from an “eastern mystic” viewpoint and I think that is what leads to the issues that some people have. My view on this is one that spirituality, and a sense of awe that seems to go with it, is something that as humans we seem to be programmed for, and there is no reason one cannot find that internally as Harris suggests although I have my doubts that anything that comes from introspection and meditation must automatically relate to the world around us.
I find that nature and the universe itself is a great source of the sense of wonder and awe that many people turn to religion to find and perhaps if some of Hubble’s (the Hubble space telescope) images were put into the mainstream media others may get a chance to see just how amazing the universe really is.
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