Even the Faithful Have Given Up on Faith

Over at The Way of the Mister, Brian Dalton makes an important point:

I’ve often heard the argument that “I don’t have enough faith to believe in {evolution/the Big Bang/atheism}”, and maybe you have, too. Hell, it’s the title of a book by apologist heavyweights Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.

“I don’t have enough faith” is usually presented with a good dose of sneering at the fools who believe in such obvious fairy tales as evolution. But saying “I don’t have enough faith to believe in something so utterly ridiculous” implies that faith is something that you use to believe utterly ridiculous things, something you resort to when you don’t have evidence or reason.

I expect someone will say “Ah, but we’re talking about two different types of faith, here. One is a vulgar, colloquial form, closer to naïveté or even gullibility, than to the pure, sublime sort of faith that allows contact with God.” I don’t buy it, because it’s always presented as “I don’t have enough faith”, never “I don’t have the kind of faith that would allow me to believe in evolution”.

Consider, too, that religious institutions — high, low, and everything in between — love the idea of physical evidence for religious claims, especially things like miraculous cures of diseases, but also glossolalia (speaking in tongues), demonic possession, and other forms of supernatural intervention. No one ever seems to exalt those of Jesus’ disciples who, unlike Thomas, didn’t ask for evidence: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

People pay faith a lot of lip service, but that’s all it is. In every area where we can see the results, we’ve figured out that evidence and reason are far more reliable pathways to knowledge than faith is. If you were considering lending me money, and I suggested that you take it on faith that I’ll repay the loan, rather than running a credit check, you’d laugh me out of the room.

Faith has failed. It failed a long time ago. It’s just that people don’t want to admit it, because it allows them to believe in gods and miracles.

The Vatican Needs to Make Up Its Damn Mind

Washington Post story, two days ago:
Vatican fires gay priest on eve of synod

Washington Post story, today:
Pope urges prejudices be put aside at start of family synod

Homophobic Pope Distances Self From Homophobic Clerk

The Associated press reports that

The Vatican on Friday distanced Pope Francis from Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who went to jail for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, saying she was one of dozens of people the pope greeted in the U.S. and that their meeting “should not be considered a form of support of her position.”

The article goes on to quote a spokesman (I almost wrote spokesperson, but then remembered that this is the Vatican we’re talking about) that the pope meets with lots of people, and doesn’t necessarily agree with — or even know anything about — all of them.

So basically, Kim Davis is like a stereotypical teenage girl who’s over the moon because One Direction waved to her from on stage at a concert, and she imagines herself BFF with the band. Meanwhile, Harry Styles is all, “Who?”.

I do note that Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman (remember? I was talking about the pope a moment ago) is quoted as saying,

“The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” Lombardi said.

The emphasized weasel words allow the Vatican to play it both ways: they’ll be able to either agree or disagree with her in the future, depending what’s more convenient at the time, because hey, Davis’s position is complex.

And by the way, I’d like to welcome our conservative friends: for years, pope Francis has been quoted by the media as saying some reasonably liberal and forward-thinking things (“Who am I to judge [gay people]?”), and then his people come back a day or two later and explain that ha ha no, he didn’t actually mean it (“no, gays can’t marry or form relationships or have sex, but if they want to come to church and confess that they’re sinners, we welcome them.”). This time, he just did it with a conservative cause instead of a liberal one.

Happy Blasphemy Day

There are no gods, unless you redefine the word to be so trivial as to be meaningless. Jesus, if he ever existed, was just a guy; he died two thousand years ago and isn’t coming back. His dad isn’t watching you, nor are his angels.
Mohammed was a merchant who managed to appropriate and adapt some extant texts to conquer a huge tract of land and get himself a pile of gold and booty.
The Dalai Lama doesn’t reincarnate. Nor does anyone else. Nor is there such a thing as karma: you’re just selectively interpreting random occurrences, using a brain that sucks at statistics.
The Redskins, the Cowboys, the Eagles, etc. are just guys paid a ton of money to play games.
Rachel Maddow is smart, but she’s not the last word on anything. Richard Dawkins is good at explaining science, but boy howdy has he said some stupid things.

Happy International Blasphemy Day, y’all.

Update: Fixed typo. Thanks, alert reader Fez!

I’m Back, Baby!

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12XO38PONoI

For some time, now, I’ve been thinking of moving this blag off of my private server and onto someone else’s network.

The straw that finally broke out a pack of Camels was when, a few months ago, someone exploited a vulnerability in WordPress, and posted a couple of spam articles (without, it goes without saying, my knowledge or consent).

I eventually got around to moving things over to WordPress.com, as you can see. Don’t worry, all your favorite posts are still there, as are the comments you were hoping would be lost.

So sit down and update your RSS feeds. Please excuse the boxes and dust while I finish unpacking.

RIP Rachel at Cardholder Services

Well, that was fun:
<ring> <ring>
“Hi, this is Carmen at Cardholder Services, blah blah”
[press 1]
[wait]
“Cardholder Services.”
“Hi! What happened to Rachel?”
“She died.” <click>

Ken Ham Mad at Miley Cyrus for Not Being As Stuck Up as He Is

Ken Ham, best known these days for losing a debate to Bill Nye the Science Guy, has always held some… colorful opinions. The best that I can say for him, really, is that at least his organization distanced itself from Kent Hovind (see Arguments to Avoid at Answers in Genesis, and Maintaining Creationist Integrity at talkorigins’s Hovind page).

But now he’s gone off in a rather unintentionally-entertaining manner against Miley Cyrus, who posed nude at Paper. In particular, Ham didn’t like this part of the article:

Although she was raised Christian, Cyrus maintains a particular contempt for fundamentalist lawmakers who rally against this sort of progressive, potentially life-saving change. “Those people [shouldn’t] get to make our laws,” she says. Those people — the ones who believe that, say, Noah’s Ark was a real seafaring vessel. “That’s fucking insane,” she says. “We’ve outgrown that fairy tale, like we’ve outgrown fucking Santa and the tooth fairy.”

except that the two instances of the word “fucking”, even when reduced to “f–king” by Fox News, were enough to give him the vapors, and he had to bowdlerize them still further.

He also has the sads because Cyrus doesn’t share his superstition (emphasis added):

The same expletive was used a number of times in the interview. As you read what she reportedly said, it becomes very obvious that it’s not just the biblical accounts of the Ark and Flood in Genesis she is dismissing, but she is rejecting our Ark of salvation—Jesus Christ.

Of course what she means is that she wants to make her own “laws”! And she uses her “laws” and beliefs to judge Christians as her aggressive judgmental attitude toward Christians is so apparent, though in reality it is really about her attitude toward God and His Word.

Um… of course. Don’t we all want our values to be represented in the law? And of course we use our beliefs to judge those around us. As for making her own laws, isn’t that what democracy is about?

The article goes on to state,

Sexually, Cyrus said she is “down with” anything. She views her sexuality and even her gender identity as fluid. “I am literally open to every single thing that is consenting and doesn’t involve an animal and everyone is of age. Everything that’s legal, I’m down with. Yo, I’m down with any adult—anyone over the age of 18 who is down to love me,” she said. “I don’t relate to being boy or girl, and I don’t have to have my partner relate to boy or girl.”

Question for her: Why not involve an animal? On what basis does she decide that?

I’ve highlighted the word “consenting”, because Ham seems to have missed it. Animals can’t give consent. Neither can children. In the latter case, it’s more complicated, but our society has come up with 18 years as a not-entirely-arbitrary dividing line between children who can’t give consent, and adults who can.

He goes on to quote a bunch of Bible passages because he’s a Christian fundie, and that’s what they do. But I think this post says a lot mor about Ham than it does about Cyrus. In particular, that he thinks of morality in terms of obedience and disobedience; that he can’t think of a reason why he wouldn’t, say, fuck a sheep if he thought he could get away with it.

It also sounds as though he’s been drinking his own Kool-Aid, and actually believes that

in her heart she knows God exists (Romans 1) […] she has a conscience (as seared as it is because of her sinful rebellion) because the law is written on our hearts (Romans 2).

Someone who’s been telling himself he’s right so hard and for so long that he’s now convinced himself that everyone knows he’s right, and anyone who disagrees with him is only doing it to be contrarian. And that’s sad.

Won’t stop me from laughing at him, though. Just, maybe, not quite as hard as I would otherwise.

Encouraging Islamic Reform

In 2010, Ayaan Hirsi Ali participated in an Intelligence Squared US debate on whether Islam is a religion of peace. In it, she made the argument that while Islam is not currently peaceful, it can become peaceful if it reforms.

More recently, her latest book, Heretic, lists specific recommendations for an Islamic reformation. Things like accepting non-literal interpretations of the Quran.

So I was heartened when I listened to the Intelligence Squared US debate, and heard the the two pro-Islam debators argue that certain verses needed to be “contextualized”, or understood within the culture that Mohammed lived in. To my ears, this sounded an awful lot like “you’re taking it out of context” and “oh, but that’s the Old Testament!”

These are, of course, two of the rationales that Christians love to use to explain away those passages of the Bible that they don’t like. Those two will do the trick 90% of the time, even when “that’s not in my Bible!” won’t.

The problem is that these excuses are, well, excuses. Don’t get me wrong: they allow Christians to get along with other people in the 21st century. It’s bad enough that there are any people left who still believe in witchcraft; let’s not encourage them to believe that “Do not allow a sorceress to live.” is still accepted as mainstream.

Clearly, we want to encourage people to ignore, downplay, or reinterpet the less-savory parts of their holy books. The problem is, how to sell this without being too obvious that that’s what’s going on?

Christianity benefits from the fact that most Christians don’t bother to read the Bible. That means that they tend to be unaware of passages advocating slavery or genocide, unless their pastor chooses to mention them, which I think most pastors are loath to do. For those who do want to read the Bible, there are Bible study materials and ready-made apologetics to explain away the inconvenient passages.

I’m guessing that similar interpretations and apologetics exist for the Quran as well. But how widely are they used? And how can we encourage more people to gravitate toward the hip-and-groovy interpretations?

Did the Duggars Just Bring A Spotlight on the Quiverfull Movement?

The news story du cycle is the one about a teen Josh Duggar fondling young womens’ privates, including his sisters. But here are a few stories from the periphery of that story, that I ran across in the past couple of days:

The Washington Post is mainstream media. The Daily Beast wants, I think, to be mainstream. And while Right Wing Watch and Gawker should probably be classified as “citizen journalism” (i.e., blogs) or “watchdog organization”, I think they at least try to present news without being completely biased. More importantly, they’re outside of the atheosphere, the cluster of atheist blogs and sites where everyone knows who Hemant, PZ, and the FSM are.

So it may just be that some of the media spotlight may be directed not at Josh Duggar and his family, but at the culture in which the Duggars live: a far-right Christian society in which men are manly, are the sole breadwinners, and make all the decisions; and women are subservient, expected to be pregnant as much as possible to outbreed all the other religions, and be ready for sex whenever their man wants it.

I think the Quiverfull movement is dangerous, with cult-like aspects, and certainly anti-feminist. Maybe this story will help to bring some attention to that.

It’s Still Shamanism

Vatican Radio reports, Reliquary of St. Barbara visits Athens. The silver casket of Saint Barbara, martyred in the 3rd century, has been brought to Athens, where (emphasis added):

People of all ages and social backgrounds waited for hours in the sun for a chance to touch the reliquary, hoping for an answered prayer.  The casket contains the remains of Saint Barbara, who according to legend was martyred in Asia Minor in the 3rd century AD.

Last week the reliquary was taken to the Saint Savvas cancer hospital in Athens, where it was literally mobbed by people seeking a healing.  It’s due to be flown back to Venice at the end of this week, where it’s been housed since the Byzantine Empire sent it there about 1,000 years ago. […]

Worshippers questioned by reporters said that Christianity, and the saints, were their only hope after the failure of politicians and economists to right the world’s ills.

I honestly fail to see the difference between this and going to a shaman to use his healing fetish, other than the officials’ clothes having more gold thread and fewer feathers.

This particular juju happens to be Orthodox, but the Catholic church is also very big on relics, intercessory prayer, and healing miracles. As far as I know, the higher-ups in the church endorse such things officially, or at least don’t do anything to dissuade people from accepting such superstition.

Can anyone familiar with Orthodox or Catholic theology explain to me how sophisticated theology™ can coexist with such primitive superstition?