Check out this fantastic video/rant/musical piece on growing up Catholic, and sitting through the sermons:

I’m going to have to rent this guy’s DVD from netflix, at a minimum.

(From Friendly Atheist)

There’s a bit of a flap going on in some of your better-known online Atheist hangouts, over an article written by Steve Zara and put up on the Dawkins website. In short, he argues that there is absolutely no evidence that can prove the existence of God.

No, really.

Zara has the seed of an idea, believe it or not, but it’s buried beneath paragraphs of the most whiny, self-righteous tripe I’ve had the misfortune to read in a while. There are other serious flaws in his piece too; for example, all of his arguments against God use the Abrahamic conception as a starting point, except for a brief historical discussion of Greco-Roman mythology. You see this sometimes with the Atheist community, it has to be admitted; not just an unfamiliarity with other religious perspectives, but an unwillingness or inability to consider them. It’s an odd form of mental straightjacket, actually; when your average, Western Atheist like Zara states he doesn’t believe in ‘God’, he’s simply ruled out the Abrahamic God in his own mind, and considered the matter settled.

Which is not to say that there’s any evidence for the other religious perspectives either. It’s just that, when making an argument against the existence of something like God, you can’t simply address the singular, narrow religious perspective of a minority of humans alive today, discuss it, and consider the matter thoroughly covered somehow. You’re not addressing the topic, you’re addressing an instance, discussing only Lady Gaga when you mean to talk about music. It’s also not an argument that’s going to hold much water with the vast majority of the human audience, who don’t believe in that Abrahamic God, and never have.

Zara makes this same mistake, the assumption that his personal definition of a concept is absolute and, well, definitive, over and over again. For example, here’s his paragraph on the supernatural:

It’s worth a brief diversion into the idea of the supernatural. What exactly is it? The answer is that it is about fear. The world we see around us is full of pain and tragedy. It’s just not fair. So, for some, it seems only reasonable that there is a realm of justice, a place where wishes can come true; where we need not die permanently. The supernatural is not a place, or a state: it is a desire. This leads some to set up a false dichotomy between the natural and supernatural, between the heartless, unfeeling and cruel world of atoms and the void, and the place where morality is as real as words carved on stone and God loves things into existence.

I’m so glad that I now know, with absolute certainty and for all time, what the word ‘supernatural’ means, and that all about ‘fear’. Here I thought that a reasonable argument for supernatural might simply be ‘beyond the natural world’. We should fire the staff at the OED at once, and replace them with Steve Zara, for he has all the answers. *rolls eyes*

Zara’s piece concludes thusly:

The theists can’t win. They can’t talk about evidence when they base their beliefs on faith. They can’t describe us as flawed beings and yet claim that we can get to truth through revelation. (Incidentally, when the Pope decides to be infallible, how can he be sure of the infallibilty of that decision? But I digress).

Theists hide God beyond rules and logic in the supernatural, and then claim that we can get to God through the rules and logic of theology. We are supposed to use logic to demonstrate the illogical.

…

I propose a new strident atheism. No playing the games of theists. No concessions. No talk of evidence that can change minds, when their beliefs are deliberately placed beyond logic, beyond evidence. Let’s not get taken in by the fraud of religion. Let’s not play their shell-game.

Do you see the flaw here, and the core of a useful idea? Let’s hit the flaw first.

Zara (and Myers acting in agreement) makes a fatal mistake here: he extends the concept of there being no evidence of this particular conception of God’s existence that could conform to the rules we humans live and function by, as empiricists and material beings, to the idea that there can be no evidence at all for God’s existence.

That’s a big leap, and unsupportable.

Zara is right to point out that, if you posit a being that is beyond logic and understanding, you can’t reasonably use logic and understanding to arrive at knowledge of said being. He’s right to point out that you can’t use tools of the natural sciences to study the supernatural, something that is defined, at a minimum, as being beyond the rules and order of the natural world.

But it’s a fallacy to assume that, just because the tools of one world can’t be used to understand something, that such understanding is impossible.

The classic literary example is that of Flatland. For two-dimensional creatures, what can the third dimension really mean? At best, an abstract understanding. Could they truly even conceive of it, in their world? Could they actually imagine, picture such a place, in their minds? Can a human being actually form a mental picture of a five, ten, seventy-three-dimensional form, and truly grasp it? What would happen if you could take a peek into such a realm?

In the Twilight Zone episode “Little Girl Lost”, two human beings get to see into such a higher-dimensional space, and they can’t make any meaning of it. It’s not that their eyes don’t work, or that light doesn’t travel in such a space; they do, and it does. It’s that their minds, fashioned in our four dimensional world, cannot comprehend, are not accessible to, knowledge from a higher dimensional number. So they’re blind while seeing perfectly well.

Is that what would actually happen? I don’t know, and what’s more, you don’t either; that’s rather the point.

Zara’s right that logic can’t meaningfully consider illogical evidence. He’s wrong that such evidence is automatically invalid. If the Great Old Ones actually exist, in terrifying alien spaces beyond human understanding, where the rules of our physical universe not only don’t apply but cannot apply, then the fact that you can’t describe them using geometry and physics doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It just means that discussing C’thulhu in terms of gravity is absurd. On the other hand, to C’thulhu, gravity itself is absurd, and by the way, you’re very tasty.

*crunch*

So yes, you can’t have a meaningful argument using empirical tools on an anti-empirical subject like religion, and yes, it’s pointless to argue over such evidence with theologians. That doesn’t mean you can be justified in making a blanket statement like ‘there is no evidence that you can give to prove God exists’. You might not be able to make use of that evidence, understand it, even process it, any more than a Flatlander could use a pop-up book, but that doesn’t preclude the existence of either the pop-up book or evidence for God. You’re confusing ‘evidence’ with ‘evidence I am equipped and capable of understanding in the systems of knowledge that are accessible to me’.

Unfortunately, Myers jumps on this bandwagon:

So yes, I agree. There is no valid god hypothesis, so there can be no god evidence, so let’s stop pretending the believers have a shot at persuading us.

Jerry Coyne took him to task, proposing a particular, outlandishly implausible example of an event that would make a reasonable person conclude there might be something to this God thing, and Myers tried to respond, but didn’t do a terribly great job.

Coyne crafted an argument where it would require a greater leap of faith to disbelieve the evidence of God than to do otherwise, and Myers’ response seems to be… awfully.. dogmatic.

Much of his counterargument boils down to the fact that Coyne’s example isn’t really like any of the religions around today, which misses the point entirely; the argument isn’t whether a particular God exists, but whether there could be, anywhere, any sort of evidence that would lead you to believe in ANY God.

Myers and Zara say, with absolute faith and conviction, that there is not. No matter what you, or anyone else, or anything else, or any possible experience or evidence says, they will not change their iron-clad beliefs. It’s not just that the evidence needed to convince them is inconceivable at the moment; they categorically and for all time deny that it could ever be.

That, my friends, is faith in a nutshell. Faith, taking a particular form, is also known as religion.

Congratulations, PZ: you just found religion. Enjoy.

It’s been a busy few weeks for religious zealots with a hate-on for Atheists, I have to say.

First up, Rabbi Lapin, a member of Glenn Beck’s little Black Robe Regiment group of creepy theocrat wannabes, had this to say on the September 3rd episode:

“I tell them directly, I do believe, that Atheists are parasites.”

(my transcription, so if I got a word wrong, try not to burn me at the stake or what not)

You see, we’re ‘benefitting’ from the ‘energy’ put out by religious folks without putting anything into the system. Honestly, it sounds like some nerdy explanation of The Force as much as anything else.

However, as the Young Turks and David Neiwart have documented, Lapin’s hardly new to Atheist bashing, and perhaps worse. About the religious vs. the non-religious in the US, Lapin said:

“I am absolutely convinced that God is far from finished with the story of the United States of America,” he said by way of summation. “First of all, [there's] the matter of the little battle that must be fought, just as it was in the 19th century.” There were, and are, “two incompatible moral visions for this country. We had to settle it then. We’re going to have to settle it now. I hope not with blood, not with guns, but we’re going to have to settle it nonetheless. The good news is that I think our side is finally ready to settle it. Roll up its sleeves, take off its jacket, and get a little bloody. Spill a little blood. We’ll settle it. And we’ll win. And then there’s no holding us back.”

(Just for a little left-wing solidarity I feel I should point out that Lapin hates teh Gay with equal fervor)

Over in Europe meanwhile, the Pope is making his grand UK appearance, full of pomp and speechifying, with enormous, nay, lavish amounts of security at taxpayer expense, naturally. Don’t worry though, he’s not there to humbly beg forgiveness for the innumerable sex scandals plaguing his institution, he’s there to bring the smack down on the Atheists:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”.

Of course the idea that Nazi Germany was Atheistic is utter nonsense, and the idea that Hitler was an Atheist rather dubious at best. He certainly claimed, over and over, to be a Christian, and had effusive praise for the power of religion, specifically claiming to be a Catholic, and that Christianity informed and guided his particular brand of insanity.

Considering the Catholic Church’s troubled relationship with fascism, ie, its often open support of Fascist dictatorships as a bulwark against Communism, I’m somewhat amused by the sheer unmitigated gall the current leader of that religion has to lay Hitler at *our* feet.

Ah well.

Needless to say this speech hasn’t gone over well with the UK’s large Atheist/Irreligious community, or, say, Richard Dawkins:

This statement by the pope, on his arrival in Edinburgh, is a despicable outrage. Even if Hitler had been an atheist, his political philosophy was not based upon atheism and had no connection with atheism. Hitler was arguably (and by his own account) a Roman Catholic. In any case he enjoyed the open support of many of the most senior catholic clergy in Germany and the less demonstrative support of Pope Pius XII. Even if Hitler had been an atheist (he certainly was not), the rank and file Germans who carried out the attempted extermination of the Jews were Christians, almost to a man: either Catholic or Lutheran, primed to their anti-Semitism by centuries of Catholic propaganda about ‘Christ-killers’ and by Martin Luther’s own seething hatred of the Jews. To mention Ratzinger’s membership of the Hitler Youth might be thought to be fighting dirty, but my feeling is that the gloves are off after this disgraceful paragraph by the pope.

I shy away from the Hitler Youth thing, if only because he’s currently, as we speak, the head of an international conspiracy to hide child molestors from the law.

Not that he’ll admit the scope of the rot within the organization supposedly under his control, of course.

There is perhaps a bright side though; attendance at the Pope’s events is far, far below expectations, and the Humanists in Scotland are ready for his visit with some hilarious billboards touting the country’s rapidly growing secularism.

Heh heh. Made me laugh, anyway.

Still, I see stories like this and I can’t help but wonder at the whole spectacle. Religious figures really can get away with saying whatever ignorant, hateful thing they want about atheists, can’t they? There’s really no consequence for doing so. It’s completely within the scope of acceptable political discourse.

(Inevitably necessary disclaimer: Yes, they have the free speech right to say these things, at least here in America, though Lapin’s edging pretty close to inciting violence. The point is that, come next week, Lapin will still give appearances and go on tv without being noted as a vile eliminationist, and the Pope will still be ranting about Atheists causing all the woes in the world, and that’s apparently perfectly acceptable. Imagine the outcry if you substituted ‘Islam’ for atheism, or ‘Jews’ for atheist, in this type of speech. Don’t you think the reaction would differ?)