Wednesday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Religion Vs Science Flowchart Edition

Atheists Know More About Religion Than You

A new Pew survey on religion in America finds that atheists and agnostics are more likely to be well-versed about different religions' beliefs and practices than people who profess a belief in those religions. For example, atheists and agnostics are more likely to know that during Communion (Catholicism's central rite), the wafer and wine are meant to transubstantiate into the literal flesh and blood of Christ -- they aren't merely symbolic, as 40% of Catholics believe. Atheists and agnostics are also more likely than Protestants to know that Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation (the majority of Protestants could not identify him).

BB

Clarity Is Not Shrillness

Richard Dawkins on being called shrill when he is merely being clear:

All The Evidence Of God

This is a complete list of the scientific evidence of evolution being a hoax, and of God’s existence.

h/t Grindlebone

I Am An Atheist Jew, Like My 13-Year-Old Son: Huh?

I went to a bar mitzvah today. I had to. I reacted viscerally. Let me explain.

Those of you who are regular readers are probably aware of my atheism. What you may not know is my Jewish history.

I was created by a "Jewish" father and a "Christian" mother. Apparently--I don't remember--we had a Christmas tree for the first couple years of my life. My dad (whose mother emigrated from Russia in 1910--she's the little girl in the picture) couldn't stand it, so it ended. From then on, again apparently, my family was Jewish. Mom did not convert, mainly because we were not religious. At all. Never went to temple. As a child my mother and her family were not religious either. Neither my dad, my brother nor I were bar mitzvahed. It was just a religious thing anyway, and who really believes a 13-year-old becomes a man by reading some Torah?

The Frustrated Family were just a bunch of cultural Jews, with a shiksa as our leader. Indeed, in my large extended family (those are 2 parents and their children in the picture--all of whose descendants have Seder together in L.A., where most of them live) my goyishe mother was considered the glue that holds the family together. That's how it was most of my life. Now that she has moved, she is merely a participant, like me.

I went to Jewish summer camps as a kid, was a counselor, and as a young adult I ran a few. That was my Jewish identity. The cultural Jew. The non-religious Jew. To some Jews, I would be considered a bad Jew; or worse, some might call me a self-hating Jew (I have been so accused). I love chopped liver and corned beef sandwiches. I felt connected to all my ancestors who were killed, sent away and harassed for millenniums. To be a Jew, in my mind, was to be part of a culture. We were a people, not a religion.

Summer camp was all about culture. We did the prayer before the meal, but we did it "Dixie" style, because praying is stoopid. Jews praying seemed to be marginally important compared to the things Jews in my life stood for: equality, fairness, intellectual curiosity, and social justice. The religious thing just never struck me.

The most important thing I got from being an "affiliated" Jew were friendships that last to this day. I was connected to a high-quality group of people. That is all good, and I want that for my son.

My son will be 13 in June. His mother (we are not together--haven't been since his birth) wanted him to go to Hebrew school. Her other 2 kids, now grown, did not. I think she deferred to her goyishe ex-husband and didn't think much about her, and subsequently her kids', Jewishness. It wasn't a big thing for her.

But with our son, possibly because her other son is lately feeling his Jewishness, she wanted it.

I was therefore confronted with a tough issue; I am an atheist. I become more atheist every day, it seems.

When she told me she wanted our son to go to Hebrew school, at the temple where I had run the camp, I decided not to make much of it. The kid wanted it, she wanted it, and I know my influence on our son is such that a little religious nonsense would not make him believe in fairies (or god). Besides, the cantor was an old rocker and we were friendly (we collaborated when I was camp director). I figured everything would be fine.

On the day we went to temple to talk with the rabbi about enrolling the kid in Jew school I had one question. After her schpiel, I asked if I could speak to the rabbi alone. I asked her, in private, if she tells the students the Torah/bible/old testament is the word of god, or just a bunch of stories. She convinced me she was not going to suck the empiricism out of the kid, so I said fine. So I told his mother, go for it! But I won't pay.

So the kid has been going for a couple years and this is his bar mitzvah year. He goes to the bima in August. Today was his good friend's bar mitzvah, and my first in a long, long time.

As I sat there, alone in the back, listening and watching, I felt horrible. I was tense. I nodded my head in disagreement, like Justice Alito. I watched the grown ups, with their talit, daven and close their eyes. I watchhed them gently leave their seat to go tell others to pick the prayer book up off the floor (there are no pews, just folding chairs). I watched the gay rabbi and the transgendered rabbinic assistant do their jew/rabbi thing, all the time saying things to myself like:

This is so obviously full of shit. Men hold the torah!

Why is the rabbi touching the kid's head? Is he channeling Jesus?

Don't put the prayer book on the ground, but let anyone go to the bima!? Even women and homos?!

I am not a homophobe. I am not sexist. I thought these things because if traditions can be jettisoned in the name of equality, why can't the whole kit and caboodle be jettisoned in the name of sanity?

I listened to the rabbi and the bar mitzvah boy talk about god. I know this kid. He has never mentioned god. Nor has my son, except to tell me his atheism is kept quiet at temple because there are some true believers there.

And here is where the visceral nature of everything comes into focus. My son, who by his own admission is an atheist, is being required to maintain a mountain of religious nonsense to please his mother (also not religious--but very "spiritual") and to not make himself uncomfortable in the presence of these true believers--folks who might label him a bad Jew. I cannot countenance that. But, what choice do I have?

Fortunately my kid is hip to all the crap. He knows the only reason to keep going is because of the friends he has made and will keep, and the work he has put in. It is not about religion for him. It is about fun and feeling the satisfaction of accomplishing something after putting in a lot of work. He makes me very proud.

As soon as it was over I left. I love the family. I love the bar mitzvah boy, who has spent many nights here with my son. They are best friends.

My strong reaction tells me how hard it will be at my own kid's bar mitzvah. I will have to go up on the bima with him. I will have to listen to him artfully interpret the Torah portion so as not to compromise his integrity and at the same time not offend anyone. He can do it. But why?

I am an old curmudgeon. He is young and full of life. I need to watch myself as we near the culmination of this Jewish silliness.

Christopher Hitchens' New Commandments

Monday Cartoon Fun: God Becomes Atheist Edition

Monday Cartoon Fun: We're Atheists Edition

Hendrik Hertzberg: Militant Atheist?

Hendrik Hertzberg gets emails. He responds to them, too. Here is a bit of a response to an email Rick got about his post about the CHRIST-mas tree:

...But to get back to today, i.e., Christmas. And the cross. What I am objecting to in the Jesus story is something I object to in certain other religious traditions: human sacrifice. Indeed, the human sacrifice of the crucifixion seems to me to be more objectionable, conceptually at least, than the human sacrifices practiced by, say, the Aztecs (or, for that matter, by tribal Hebrews like Abraham). The Aztecs were people trying to propitiate angry, nasty, bloodthirsty gods. (Abraham, by being willing to cut Isaac’s throat, was doing the same for testy old Yahweh.) But who sacrifices Jesus? Not the Romans—they were just enforcing the law as they saw it. Not the Jews—when they made sacrifices, post-Abraham, they offered up goats and lambs and the like. No, in the story of Jesus, the sacrificer seems to be God himself. He kills his “only begotten” son. And why? In order to propitiate himself, apparently. Somehow, by killing his own son, he causes himself to refrain from condemning or killing everybody else. Well, not everybody else—just those who show the proper appreciation and gratitude for his sacrifice.

But is it really a sacrifice? Doesn’t Jesus turn up rather quickly at the right hand of God? Isn’t he said to be part of God, in some special way that the rest of us are not? He (Jesus) goes through the experience of dying, as every human being must do, but he doesn’t end up dead. So how great is the sacrifice, really? And what is the connection between the sacrifice (the crown of thorns, death on the cross) and the benefit it purchases for believers (the crown of righteousness, eternal life)? If God wants to forgive us our sins, can’t he just forgive us our sins? Does he have to torture and murder his own son first—and then take it back by resurrecting the son and making him an object of worship for millions? For the sacrifice to be real, wouldn’t Jesus have to stay dead? The resurrection is a powerful story, but (if you analyze it logically) doesn’t it make the crucifixion a bit of a sham?..[emphasis mine]

"No Religious Test Shall Ever Be Required As A Qualification..."

Lawsuit threatened over atheist councilman in NC

RALEIGH, N.C. – Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn't believe in God. His political opponents say that's a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they've got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.

Bothwell's detractors are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in, even though the state's antiquated requirement that officeholders believe in God is unenforceable because it violates the U.S. Consititution.

"The question of whether or not God exists is not particularly interesting to me and it's certainly not relevant to public office," the recently elected 59-year-old said.

Bothwell ran this fall on a platform that also included limiting the height of downtown buildings and saving trees in the city's core, views that appealed to voters in the liberal-leaning community at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. When Bothwell was sworn into office on Monday, he used an alternative oath that doesn't require officials to swear on a Bible or reference "Almighty God."

That has riled conservative activists, who cite a little-noticed quirk in North Carolina's Constitution that disqualifies officeholders "who shall deny the being of Almighty God." The provision was included when the document was drafted in 1868 and wasn't revised when North Carolina amended its constitution in 1971. One foe, H.K. Edgerton, is threatening to file a lawsuit in state court against the city to challenge Bothwell's appointment.

Let's remember a couple of things. First, the United States Constitution Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

And now Article VI, section 6, of the Constitution of the United States:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Obviously, the North Carolina law is unconstitutional. And disgusting. And insulting. Where are the adults?

Hey Sully! I'm One Of "These Atheists" (You Condescending Brit!)

Andrew Sullivan, the self-proposed homophobic, gay, conservative, Catholic essayist, has decided to write on his blog (you know, the one that is saving The Atlantic?) that atheists are arrogant and sneering.

Jerry Coyne blogs from the atheist meeting that took place over the weekend:

Dan Dennett talked about interviews with active priests and ministers who are atheists, and also mounted a hilarious attack on theologians like Karen Armstrong, who mouth pious nonsense like, “God is the God behind God.” Dennett calls this kind of language a “deepity”: a statement that has two meanings, one of which is true but superficial, the other which sounds profound but is meaningless. His exemplar of a deepity is the statement “Love is just a word.” True, it’s a word like “cheeseburger,” but the supposed deeper sense is wrong: love is an emotion, a feeling, a condition, and not just a word in the dictionary. He gave several examples of other deepities from academic theologians; when you see these things laid out — ripped from their texts — in a Powerpoint slide, they make you realize how truly fatuous are the lucubrations of people like Armstrong, Eagleton, and Haught. Sarcasm will be the best weapon against this stuff.

They're really charming, aren't they? It is as if everything arrogant about the academy and everything sneering about cable news culture is combined into one big snarky smugfest. Maybe these atheists will indeed help push back the fundamentalist right. Maybe they will remind people that between these atheist bigots and these fundamentalist bigots, the appeal of the Christianity of the Gospels shines like the sun.

"Maybe these atheists will indeed help push back the fundamentalist right" or not. Certainly continuing to believe in fairy tales, and that the "Christianity of the Gospels shines like the sun," is not going to help (I think that quotation is a "deepity")!

For all Sully's brains, I don't understand how he continues to believe in his religious fantasy. Isn't his mighty intellect sublime enough?

Those Crazy Creationists And The Jokes They Make Of Themselves

Is Ken Ham Creepy? Yes!

The Long March of the Koalas

It has been brought to my attention that Ken Ham, the man behind the Creation Museum and Answers in Genesis, is originally from Australia and not the United States. So when I wrote last week of America as "the land of P.T. Barnum and Ken Ham" the general point about hucksterism here in the U.S. was correct, but technically ...

Wait, hold on -- Australia?

You can't be a young-earth creationist and be from Australia. I think if you're a young-earth creationist, you're not even allowed to believe in Australia. That continent is evolution's playground, it's showroom. Ken Ham couldn't have built his Creation Museum in Australia because they already have a thriving Evolution Museum there -- it takes up the entire island. The displays are fantastic.

Are we sure that Ham isn't from Austria? I mean, the biology and geology of Austria aren't particularly compatible with young-earth creationism either, but it's not like Australia with its crazy-quilt of unique and uniquely adapted species. I just can't think of a crazier place for a creationist to have come from.

Well, OK, maybe Madagascar. But still.

I just can't fathom how someone could have lived in Australia believing the world is only 6,000 years old. There are all sorts of things you can't do while believing that (like, for instance, going outside on a clear night), but living in Australia would seem near the top of that list. The indigenous Australians have stories, dances and paintings that are far older than 6,000 years. They've got jokes that are older than that. But even if Ham managed to spend his years in his native land without ever encountering or learning of its ancient cave paintings, he surely must have seen or at least been aware of all those wonderful native species that every kid here in America learns about when we study Australia in elementary school -- the kangaroos and koalas, bandicoots, echidnas and platypuses.

So how does Ham account for these wonderful creatures? His abbreviated timeline of the universe has Noah's ark landing on Mount Ararat along about 2300 BCE. Then what? Do the seven* koalas walk to Australia from there?

Seems rather a long walk. Followed, I suppose, by rather a long swim. All without encountering a single eucalyptus tree -- the basis for their exclusive diet -- until they arrived at their destination on the other side of the world.

If you ever encounter someone who, like Ken Ham, believes the earth is only 6,000 years old, don't bother asking them about the Long March of the Koalas, or about kangaroos or island biogeography more generally. Such questions will only prompt their fight-or-flight instinct to kick in and that doesn't lead anywhere constructive. (They can get quite nasty when cornered, baring their teeth, snarling and getting elected to school boards.)

You have to appreciate what such people think is at stake, namely, the Meaning of Life. More than that, actually, the very possibility that life has or can have meaning.

The real problem with Answers in Genesis can't be found in Genesis, or in their tortured reading of it. The real problem is that they've somehow become convinced that there exist two and only two possibilities. Either their particular, smallish reading of Genesis is "literally" true and the world was created in six, 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago by their particular, smallish notion of god, or else the universe and human existence within it are meaningless, a realm violence and death in which kindness, goodness, justice and beauty are nothing more than illusion. They believe that either the history of the universe is a brutally short 6,000 years, or else life in that universe is nasty, brutish and short and nothing but. They prefer the former, understandably. And any challenge to it -- by argument or by exposure to science or reality -- is thus interpreted as an affirmation of the latter view.

You'll never get anywhere talking to these folks unless you confront that fundamental error. Their hostility to science and their appalling theology are big problems -- unsustainably life-distorting problems -- but they both derive from this deeper mistake. If you can't get them to accept that their fundamental false dichotomy is, in fact, false -- that they are not forced to choose either impossible antiscience or cruel nihilism -- then they will never be able to consider any other possibilities.**

Those of us who aren't trapped in that frightening and disorienting false dichotomy, have the luxury of appreciating that while their earnest and urgent need to believe in the Long March of the Koalas may be tragic, it is also, undeniably, kind of funny. And so you may be tempted, at this point, to click over to the Answers in Genesis Web site and browse about through the alternate universe they've constructed there to read more about these brave marsupials and their heroic journey southward after the great flood. But trust me, the more time you spend on that site, the more the balance tips from funny to tragic until it ultimately just becomes depressing.

And anyway, when it comes to the extraordinary topic of island biodiversity, reality is far more interesting than delusion. So let me recommend, again, David Quammen's fascinating book, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. A much more interesting and productive use of your time than spending it reading the Answers in Genesis Web site. (Or, for that matter, this Web site -- but please do come back when you're finished with Quammen's book.)

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* That's right, seven. The story of Noah in the book of Genesis says that he took "seven of every kind of clean animal" and seven of every kind of bird onto the ark. The "two of every kind" limit was only for "unclean" animals. Even the AIG folks tend to overlook or ignore this strange detail in the story. First there's the problem of anachronism -- the distinction between "clean" and "unclean" animals hasn't been invented yet. Then there's the question of what happens to the poor odd-one-out among the clean animals and birds. Perhaps Noah and his family enjoyed fresh meat during their voyage. Or maybe the clean animals are just a bit more open-minded, sexually, than their unclean counterparts. Anyway, I'm counting koalas with the clean animals here because, A) they don't have cloven hoofs, and B) they're adorable.

** Other possibilities including, for example, everything that nearly everyone on the planet believes. Most people, after all, are neither young-earth creationists nor nihilists. You yourself, for instance, are neither a young-earth creationist nor a nihilist. (I know this because you've read this far in this post. A nihilist wouldn't have bothered to do so and a young-earth creationist wouldn't have been able to do so.) Ken Ham would explain to you that this is because you're not being intellectually honest enough to recognize that his false dichotomy is logically inescapable and he would be happy to lecture you further on how you can learn to follow his sterling example of intellectual honesty -- a lecture delivered, for Alfred Russell Wallace's sake, in an Australian accent.

h/t PZ

Guys I Used To Respect: Robert Wright

Robert Wright, once an intellectual force to be reckoned with within evolutionary psychology and elsewhere, has become a bible-thumping, atheist-bashing, god-fearing (is Bob getting old?) oxymoron. Take the following quote from his newest work, The Evolution of God:

The difference between the Bible’s pre-exilic view of Ishmael and its postexilic view as presented by P is so stark that the biblical narrative, read closely, borders on the incoherent.

Did you catch that? The bible, when read carefully, seems incoherent. Really?

Andrew Sullivan Wept...

Religious people like torture. Republicans have more religious people than Democrats. Yes, both ways.

h/t Sully

The 10 Commandments: Written While Escaping Tyranny

An Atheist's Response To Sully And His Religious Ilk

Flying Spaghetti Monsters, Ctd

A reader writes:

Your philosophy student reader's email did a wonderful job of finding three ways to say the same simple point: Christianity is more than an infatuation with God as Deity. I think most atheists understand and accept this and a moment's time exploring the writings of even the spittle-flecked atheist agitators shows that they understand that life still presents significant questions, both moral and existential, that religions claim to answer.

Your previous reader letter raised a similar point concerning the seeming lack of positive propositions from atheist thinkers, but the philosophy student goes a step further and insinuates that perhaps "real atheism" is close to impossible unless one can otherwise justify all of one's existential beliefs without God.

Both of these readers, I think, conflate atheism with too much else. Atheism is a simple proposition: Sufficient, convincing evidence for existence of the Supreme Being(s) is lacking and claims that rely on the existence of God for their validity are therefore false. Atheism is not the idea that morality does not and cannot exist, it is simply the idea that God does not exist. To use your previous reader's metaphor: Atheists claim we all actually live in the same country, but that our country is not God's country even though most people believe that's where they live.

And indeed, were atheists ever to "win" their argument, people would have to decide how to guide their conduct in the world without taking it for granted that certain things were deemed impermissible by the highest Authority in existence. These aren't easy questions to answer and, to my mind, the naked fact that God does or does not exist, does little to help us with their answers. There are reasons to follow certain moral principles that are founded on more than God's directives and lessons and stories that constitute so much of religious teachings bear this out. Atheist thought does, in fact, grapple with these issues as well... but it's somewhat difficult getting religious people to devote lots of time to atheist study.

Your two previous reader letters started by implying that atheists haven't yet earned a place in the discussion and finished by insinuating that it might be impossible for atheists to have anything to say once they get there. The problem is that they seem to expect to find people who identify themselves as "Atheist Philosophers" when in fact they should be looking for thinkers who happen not to believe in God. It may surprise them to learn, despite the Dawkins and Harrises of the world, that many atheists wake up in the morning without deciding how they can disprove God's existence today. Many people who don't believe in God have spent alot of time thinking about how to life a satisfying and proper life.

To put it another way: Just as religion is not an infatuation with God, atheism is not an infatuation with Nothing. The long and significant history of non-theistic philosophy and moral theory is full of the very positive arguments and metaphysical justifications your readers say they want. May I suggest a little Hume to start? Some Bentham or John Stuart Mill? Nietzsche (but always with a grain of salt). Ayn Rand - but only as a case study in how non-theistic theories can still be dogmatic.

I love this response; too many religious poeple think we atheists are rabid. We are not; we are simply not believers. Relax, Sully.

Happy Holidays: Here's Your List Of Famous Atheists

Rick Warren Vs. Sam Harris

Rick Warren, Obama's pick to give the invocation at the inauguration, is an evolution-denier. No surprise. Many on the left are willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt as to why he picked Warren. Some say it was bigger of Warren to accept the invitation than for Obama to offer it. Personally, I think the invitation should never have been given, nor accepted. Here is part of the reason why:

Do you believe Creation happened in the way Genesis describes it?
WARREN: If you're asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don't. I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man's nose? If you believe in God, you don't have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it's fine with me.

Now go read the talk Warren and Harris had last year and decide for yourself if the pastor deserves this most prominent spot at the podium at this inauguration....

God Debate: Sam Harris vs. Rick Warren

At the Summit: On a cloudy California day, the atheist Sam Harris sat down with the Christian pastor Rick Warren to hash out Life's Biggest Question—Is God real? A NEWSWEEK exclusive.


April 9, 2007 issue - Rick Warren is as big as a bear, with a booming voice and easygoing charm. Sam Harris is compact, reserved and, despite the polemical tone of his books, friendly and mild. Warren, one of the best-known pastors in the world, started Saddleback in 1980; now 25,000 people attend the church each Sunday. Harris is softer-spoken; paragraphs pour out of him, complex and fact-filled—as befits a Ph.D. student in neuroscience. At NEWSWEEK's invitation, they met in Warren's office recently and chatted, mostly amiably, for four hours. Jon Meacham moderated. Excerpts follow.

JON MEACHAM: Rick, since you're the home team, we'll start with Sam. Sam, is there a God in the sense that most Americans think of him?

SAM HARRIS: There's no evidence for such a God, and it's instructive to notice that we're all atheists with respect to Zeus and the thousands of other dead gods whom now nobody worships.

Rick, what is the evidence of the existence of the God of Abraham?
RICK WARREN: I see the fingerprints of God everywhere. I see them in culture. I see them in law. I see them in literature. I see them in nature. I see them in my own life. Trying to understand where God came from is like an ant trying to understand the Internet. Even the most brilliant scientist would agree that we only know a fraction of a percent of the knowledge of the universe.

HARRIS: Any scientist must concede that we don't fully understand the universe. But neither the Bible nor the Qur'an represents our best understanding of the universe. That is exquisitely clear.

WARREN: To you.

HARRIS: There is so much about us that is not in the Bible. Every specific science from cosmology to psychology to economics has surpassed and superseded what the Bible tells us is true about our world.

Sam, does the Christian you address in your books have to believe that God wrote the Bible and that it is literally true?
HARRIS: Well, there's clearly a spectrum of confidence in the text. I mean, there's the "This is literally true, nothing even gets figuratively interpreted," and then there's the "This is just the best book we have, written by the smartest people who have ever lived, and it's still legitimate to organize our lives around it to the exclusion of other books." Anywhere on that spectrum I have a problem, because in my mind the Bible and the Qur'an are just books, written by human beings. There are sections of the Bible that I think are absolutely brilliant and poetically unrivaled, and there are sections of the Bible which are the sheerest barbarism, yet profess to prescribe a divinely mandated morality—where do I start? Books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy and Exodus and First and Second Kings and Second Samuel—half of the kings and prophets of Israel would be taken to The Hague and prosecuted for crimes against humanity if these events took place in our own time.

[To Warren] Is the Bible inerrant?
WARREN: I believe it's inerrant in what it claims to be. The Bible does not claim to be a scientific book in many areas.

Do you believe Creation happened in the way Genesis describes it?
WARREN: If you're asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don't. I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man's nose? If you believe in God, you don't have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it's fine with me.

HARRIS: I'm doing my Ph.D. in neuroscience; I'm very close to the literature on evolutionary biology. And the basic point is that evolution by natural selection is random genetic mutation over millions of years in the context of environmental pressure that selects for fitness.

WARREN: Who's doing the selecting?

HARRIS: The environment. You don't have to invoke an intelligent designer to explain the complexity we see.

WARREN: Sam makes all kinds of assertions based on his presuppositions. I'm willing to admit my presuppositions: there are clues to God. I talk to God every day. He talks to me.

HARRIS: What does that actually mean?

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He's an intern at this church, and so I said, "God, I need you to help me with this," as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, "I'm an immigration attorney; I'd be happy to take this case." Now, if that happened once in my life I'd say, "That is a coincidence." If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

There must have been times in your ministry when you've prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.
WARREN: Oh, absolutely.

So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.
WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I've had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I've never met an atheist who wasn't angry.

HARRIS: Let me be the first.

WARREN: I think your books are quite angry.

HARRIS: I would put it at impatient rather than angry. Let me respond to this notion of answered prayer, because this is a classic sampling error, to use a statistical phrase. We know that human beings have a terrible sense of probability. There are many things we believe that confirm our prejudices about the world, and we believe this only by noticing the confirmations, and not keeping track of the disconfirmations. You could prove to the satisfaction of every scientist that intercessory prayer works if you set up a simple experiment. Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. [Warren is laughing.] I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.

WARREN: That's a misstatement there.

HARRIS: Let's go back to the Bible. The reason you believe that Jesus is the son of God is because you believe that the Gospel is a valid account of the miracles of Jesus.

WARREN: It's one of the reasons.

HARRIS: Yeah. It's one of the reasons. Now, there are many testimonials about miracles, every bit as amazing as the miracles of Jesus, in other literature of the world's religions. Even contemporary miracles. There are millions of people who believe that Sathya Sai Baba, the south Indian guru, was born of a virgin, has raised the dead and materializes objects. I mean, you can watch some of his miracles on YouTube. Prepare to be underwhelmed. He's a stage magician. As a Christian, you can say Sathya Sai Baba's miracle stories are not interesting, let's not pay attention to them, but if you set them within the prescientific religious milieu of the first-century Roman Empire, suddenly miracle stories become especially compelling.

Sam, what are the secular sources of an acceptable moral code?
HARRIS: Well, I don't think that the religious books are the source. We go to the Bible and we are the judge of what is good. We see the golden rule as the great distillation of ethical impulses, but the golden rule is not unique to the Bible or to Jesus; you see it in many, many cultures—and you see some form of it among nonhuman primates. I'm not at all a moral relativist. I think it's quite common among religious people to believe that atheism entails moral relativism. I think there is an absolute right and wrong. I think honor killing, for example, is unambiguously wrong—you can use the word evil. A society that kills women and girls for sexual indiscretion, even the indiscretion of being raped, is a society that has killed compassion, that has failed to teach men to value women and has eradicated empathy. Empathy and compassion are our most basic moral impulses, and we can even teach the golden rule without lying to ourselves or our children about the origin of certain books or the virgin birth of certain people.

Rick, Christianity has conducted itself in an abjectly evil manner from time to time. How do you square that with the Christian Gospel of love?
WARREN: I don't feel duty-bound to defend stuff that's done in the name of God which I don't think God approved or advocated. Have things been done wrong in the name of Christianity? Yes. Sam makes the statement in his book that religion is bad for the world, but far more people have been killed through atheists than through all the religious wars put together. Thousands died in the Inquisition; millions died under Mao, and under Stalin and Pol Pot. There is a home for atheists in the world today—it's called North Korea. I don't know any atheists who want to go there. I'd much rather live under Tony Blair, or even George Bush. The bottom line is that atheists, who accuse Christians of being intolerant, are as intolerant—

HARRIS: How am I being intolerant? I'm not advocating that we lock people up for their religious beliefs. You can get locked up in Western Europe for denying the Holocaust. I think that's a terrible way of addressing the problem. This really is one of the great canards of religious discourse, the idea that the greatest crimes of the 20th century were perpetrated because of atheism. The core problem for me is divisive dogmatism. There are many kinds of dogmatism. There's nationalism, there's tribalism, there's racism, there's chauvinism. And there's religion. Religion is the only sphere of discourse where dogma is actually a good word, where it is considered ennobling to believe something strongly based on faith.

WARREN: You don't feel atheists are dogmatic?

HARRIS: No, I don't.

WARREN: I'm sorry, I disagree with you. You're quite dogmatic.

HARRIS: OK, well, I'm happy to have you point out my dogmas, but first let me deal with Stalin. The killing fields and the gulag were not the product of people being too reluctant to believe things on insufficient evidence. They were not the product of people requiring too much evidence and too much argument in favor of their beliefs. We have people flying planes in our buildings because they have theological grievances against the West. I'm noticing Christians doing terrible things explicitly for religious reasons—for instance, not fund-ing [embryonic] stem-cell research. The motive is always paramount for me. No society in human history has ever suffered because it has become too reasonable. WARREN: We're in exact agreement on that. I just happen to believe that Christianity saved reason. We would not have the Bill of Rights without Christianity.

HARRIS: That's certainly a disputable claim. The idea that somehow we are getting our morality out of the Judeo-Christian tradition is bad history and bad science.

WARREN: Where do you get your morality? If there is no God, if I am simply complicated ooze, then the truth is, your life doesn't matter, my life doesn't matter.

HARRIS: That is a total caricature of—

WARREN: No, let me finish. I let you caricature Christianity. If life is just random chance, then nothing really does matter and there is no morality—it's survival of the fittest. If survival of the fittest means me killing you to survive, so be it. For years, atheists have said there is no God, but they want to live like God exists. They want to live like their lives have meaning. HARRIS: Our morality, the meaning we find in life, is a lived experience that I believe has, to use a loaded term, a spiritual component. I believe it is possible to radically transform our experience of the world for the better, very much the way someone like Jesus, or someone like Buddha, witnessed. There is wisdom in our spiritual, contemplative literature, and I am quite interested in understanding it. I think that medita-tion and prayer affect us for the better. The question is, what is reasonable to believe on the basis of those transformations?

WARREN: You will not admit that it is your experience that makes you an atheist, not rationality.

HARRIS: What in your experience is making you someone who is not a Muslim? I presume that you are not losing sleep every night wondering whether to convert to Islam. And if you're not, it is because when the Muslims say, "We have a book that's the perfect word of the creator of the universe, it's the Qur'an, it was dictated to Muhammad in his cave by the archangel Gabriel," you see a variety of claims there that aren't backed up by sufficient evidence. If the evidence were sufficient, you would be compelled to be Muslim.

WARREN: That's exactly right.

HARRIS: So you and I both stand in a relationship of atheism to Islam.

WARREN: We both stand in a relationship of faith. You have faith that there is no God. In 1974, I spent the better part of a year living in Japan, and I studied all the world religions. All of the religions basically point toward truth. Buddha made this famous statement at the end of his life: "I'm still searching for the truth." Muhammad said, "I am a prophet of the truth." The Veda says, "Truth is elusive, it's like a butterfly, you've got to search for it." Then Jesus Christ comes along and says, "I am the truth." All of a sudden, that forces a decision.

HARRIS: Many, many other prophets and gurus have said that.

WARREN: Here's the difference. Jesus says, "I am the only way to God. I am the way to the Father." He is either lying or he's not.

Sam, is Rick intellectually dishonest?
HARRIS: I wouldn't put it in such an invidious way, but—

Let's say Rick's not here and we're just hanging out in his office.
HARRIS: It is intellectually dishonest, frankly, to say that you are sure that Jesus was born of a virgin.

WARREN: I say I accept that by faith. And I think it's intellectually dishonest for you to say you have proof that it didn't happen. Here's the difference between you and me. I am open to the possibility that I am wrong in certain areas, and you are not.

HARRIS: Oh, I am absolutely open to that.

WARREN: So you are open to the possibility that you might be wrong about Jesus?

HARRIS: And Zeus. Absolutely.

WARREN: And what are you doing to study that?

HARRIS: I consider it such a low-probability event that I—

WARREN: A low probability? When there are 96 percent believers in the world? So is everybody else an idiot?

HARRIS: It is quite possible for most people to be wrong—as are most Americans who think that evolution didn't occur.

WARREN: That's an arrogant statement.

HARRIS: It's an honest statement.

Rick, if you had been born in India or in Iran, would you have different religious beliefs?
WARREN: There's no doubt where you're born influences your initial beliefs. Regardless of where you were born, there are some things you can know about God, even without the Bible. For instance, I look at the world and I say, "God likes variety." I say, "God likes beauty." I say, "God likes order," and the more we understand ecology, the more we understand how sensitive that order is.

HARRIS: Then God also likes smallpox and tuberculosis.

WARREN: I would attribute a lot of the sins in the world to myself.

HARRIS: Are you responsible for smallpox?

WARREN: I am responsible to do something about it. No doubt about it. I am responsible to do something about the 500 million who get malaria every year and the 40 million who have AIDS, because I will be held accountable for my life. And when I say, "God, why don't you do something about this?" God says, "Well, why don't you? You were the answer to your own prayer."

HARRIS: I totally agree with Rick: it is our responsibility to help bridge these inequities, but I think you become even more motivated, potentially, to help people when you realize there is no good reason, certainly not a supernatural good reason, for the fact that I have so much and my neighbor has so little.

Do you think that religiously motivated good works are actually harmful?
HARRIS: The thing that bothers me about faith-based altruism is that it is contaminated with religious ideas that have nothing to do with the relief of human suffering. So you have a Christian minister in Africa who's doing really good work, helping those who are hungry, healing the sick. And yet, as part of his job description, he feels he needs to preach the divinity of Jesus in communities where literally millions of people have been killed because of interreligious conflict between Christians and Muslims. It seems to me that that added piece causes unnecessary suffering. I would much rather have someone over there who simply wanted to feed the hungry and heal the sick.

WARREN: You'd much rather have somebody—an atheist—feeding the hungry than a person who believes in God? All of the great movements forward in Western civilization were by believers. It was pastors who led the abolition of slavery. It was pastors who led the woman's right to vote. It was pastors who led the civil-rights movement. Not atheists.

HARRIS: You bring up slavery—I think it's quite ironic. Slavery, on balance, is supported by the Bible, not condemned by it. It's supported with exquisite precision in the Old Testament, as you know, and Paul in First Timothy and Ephesians and Colossians supports it, and Peter—

WARREN: No, he doesn't. He allows it. He doesn't support it.

HARRIS: OK, he allows it. I would argue that we got rid of slavery not because we read the Bible more closely. We got rid of slavery despite the profound inadequacies of the Bible. We got rid of slavery because we realized it was manifestly evil to treat human beings as farm equipment. As it is.

Rick, what is your role as a pastor in encouraging reformation of other faiths?
WARREN: All of the great questions of the 21st century will be religious questions. Will Islam modernize peacefully? What's going to happen to the influx of Muslims into secular Europe, which has lost its faith in Christianity and has nothing to counteract this loss in religious terms? What will replace Marxism in China? In all likelihood it's going to be Christianity. Will America return to its historic roots—will there be a Third Great Awakening, or will America go the way of Europe?

HARRIS: I think the answers, in spiritual and ethical terms, are going to be nondenominational. We are suffering the collision of denominations, specifically the collision with Islam. Whatever is true about us isn't Christian. And it isn't Muslim. Physics isn't Christian, though it was invented by Christians. Algebra isn't Muslim, even though it was invented by Muslims. Whenever we get at the truth, we transcend culture, we transcend our upbringing. The discourse of science is a good example of where we should hold out hope for transcending our tribalism.

WARREN: Why isn't atheism more appealing if it's supposedly the most intellectually honest?

HARRIS: Frankly, it has a terrible PR campaign.

WARREN: [Laughs] It's not a matter of PR.

HARRIS: It is right next to child molester as something you don't want to be. But that is a product, I would argue, of what religious people tell one another about atheism.

Sam, the one thing that I find really troubling in your arguments is that I am guilty, to quote "The End of Faith," of a "ludicrous obscenity" when I take my children to church. That is strong language, and it doesn't exactly encourage dialogue.
HARRIS: To some degree the stridence of my writing is an effort to get people's attention. But I can honestly defend the stridence because I think our situation is that urgent. I am terrified of what seems to me to be a bottleneck that civilization is passing through. On the one hand we have 21st-century disruptive technology proliferating, and on the other we have first-century superstition. A civilization is going to either pass through this bottleneck more or less intact or it won't. And perhaps that fear sounds grandiose, but civilizations end. On any number of occasions, some generation has witnessed the ruination of everything they and their ancestors had built. What especially terrifies me about religious thinking is the expectation on the part of many that civilization is bound to end based on prophecy and its ending is going to be glorious.

WARREN: I believe that history split into A.D. and B.C. because of the Resurrection. And the Resurrection is not only the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is the hope of the world: it says there's more to this life than just here and now. That doesn't mean that I do less, it means that this life is a test, it's a trust and it's a temporary assignment. If death is the end, shoot, I'm not going to waste another minute being altruistic.

HARRIS: How do you account for my altruism?

WARREN: You have common grace. Even in people who don't believe in God, there is a spark God has put in you that says, "There's got to be more to life than just make money and die." I think that that spark does not come from evolution.

Sam wrote that without death, the influence of faith-based religion would be unthinkable.
WARREN: Because we were made in God's image, we were made to last forever. That means I'm going to spend more time on that side of eternity than on this side. If I did not believe that there is a Judgment, if I believed Hitler would actually get away with everything he did, that would be a reason for great despair. The fact is, I do believe there will be a Judgment Day. God is not just a God of love. He is a God of justice. So death is a factor. On the other hand, even if there were no such thing as heaven, I would put my trust in Christ because I have found it a meaningful, satisfactory, significant way to live.

HARRIS: How is it fair for God to have designed a world which gives such ambiguous testimony to his existence? How is it fair to have created a system where belief is the crucial piece, rather than being a good person? How is it fair to have created a world in which by mere accident of birth, someone who grew up Muslim can be confounded by the wrong religion? I don't see how the future of humanity is in good care with those competing orthodoxies.

Rick, let's be blunt. Is Sam's soul in jeopardy, in your view, because he has rejected Jesus?
WARREN: The politically incorrect answer is yes.

HARRIS: Is that the honest answer?

WARREN: The truth is, religion is mutually exclusive. The person who says, "Oh, I just believe them all," is an idiot because the religions flat-out contradict each other. You cannot believe in reincarnation and heaven at the same time.

Sam, let's be blunt as well. Has Rick, in your view, wasted much of his life on behalf of a Gospel that you think is a first-century superstition?
HARRIS: I wouldn't put it in those stark terms, because I don't have a rigid view how someone should spend their life so as not to waste it.

WARREN: What's your politically incorrect answer?

HARRIS: I think you could use your time and attention better than organizing your life around a belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and the best book we're ever going to have on every relevant subject.

How would the ideal world work, in the Sam Harris view?
HARRIS: Right now, we have to change the rules to talk about God and spiritual experience and ethics. And I'm denying that that is so. You can have your spirituality. You can go into a cave and practice meditation and transform yourself, and then we can talk about why that happened and how it could be replicated. We may even want, for perfectly rational reasons, to say we want a Sabbath in this country, a genuine Sabbath. Let's realize that there's a power in contemplating the mystery of the universe, and in reminding yourself how much you love the people closest to you, and how much more you could love the people you haven't met yet. There is nothing you have to believe on insufficient evidence in order to talk about that possibility.

WARREN: Sam, do you believe human beings have a spirit?

HARRIS: There are many reasons not to believe in a naive conception of a soul that kind of floats off the brain at death and goes somewhere else. But I do not know.

WARREN: Can you have spirituality without a spirit?

HARRIS: You can feel yourself to be one with the universe.

WARREN: OK, then why can't you just take the next step? Because right now you're talking in extremely nonrational terms.

HARRIS: There's nothing irrational about it. You can close your eyes in meditation and lose the sense of your physical body, totally. Many people draw from that the metaphysical conclusion that "I'm just spirit, and I can transcend the body." That's not the only conclusion you have to draw from that experience, and I don't think it's the best conclusion.

WARREN: You're more spiritual than you think. You just don't want a boss. You don't want a God who tells you what to do.

HARRIS: I don't want to pretend to be certain about anything I'm not certain about.

Rick, last thoughts?
WARREN: I believe in both faith and reason. The more we learn about God, the more we understand how magnificent this universe is. There is no contradiction to it. When I look at history, I would disagree with Sam: Christianity has done far more good than bad. Altruism comes out of knowing there is more than this life, that there is a sovereign God, that I am not God. We're both betting. He's betting his life that he's right. I'm betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he's right, I've lost nothing. If I'm right, he's lost everything. I'm not willing to make that gamble.

Why didn't Sam get any last thoughts? Oh, because it was John Meacham moderating!

Maybe Obama will find a way to un-invite Warren. Remember hope?

Atone!

It's Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. I think we all have something to atone for, no?

Peace.

Atheists Are Winning!

Here is a snippet of Papal fear:

"There are those that, having decided that 'God is dead,' declare themselves 'god,' believing themselves to be the only creator of their own fate, the absolute owner of the world," the Nazi German-born pope said.

Um, declaring god is dead pretty much eliminates the possibility that we, ourselves, are god, unless we too are dead. Asshole! Read it here,

Update: Fixed the title to make it plural. Why didn't anybody say anything!

Modern culture is destroying faith, pope warns
Agence France-Presse
Published: Sunday October 5, 2008

ROME (AFP) Pope Benedict XVI attacked the Godless character of modern culture as he celebrated mass Sunday in a Roman basilica to mark the opening of a synod of Catholic bishops.

In a sombre homily in which he suggested that Christianity in Europe could become extinct like some Christian communities in history, the pope told more than 250 bishops from around the world that societies which rebelled against God in the past had faced His "punishment".

"If we look at history we are forced to notice the frequent coldness and rebellion of incoherent Christians. Because of this, God, while never shirking in his promise of salvation, often had to turn towards punishment," he said.

Benedict warned that "nations once rich in faith and vocations are losing their own identity under the harmful and destructive influence of a certain modern culture.

"There are those that, having decided that 'God is dead,' declare themselves 'god,' believing themselves to be the only creator of their own fate, the absolute owner of the world," the German-born pope said.

"When men proclaim themselves absolute owners of themselves and the only masters of creation, are they really going to be able to construct a society where freedom, justice and peace reign?

"Is it not more likely -- as demonstrated by news headlines every day -- that the arbitrary rule of power, selfish interests, injustice and exploitation, and violence in all its forms, will extend their grip?"

The pontiff was celebrating mass in the Basilica of St Paul outside the Walls in central Rome, which houses the tomb of the Apostle Paul.

Benedict however tempered his speech by saying "if in certain regions, faith weakens to the point of fading away, there will always be other people ready to receive it," adding "evil and death never have the final word."

The synod, a three-week gathering of more than 250 bishops from around the world, will discuss Christian fundamentalism and the relationship between religion and science as well as Judaism.

The second such gathering to be presided over by Benedict since his election in 2005 will have the theme "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church."

For the first time, the event will include a speech on October 18 by Bartholomew I, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, and Protestant and Anglican prelates are to attend as observers.

Israeli Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen will also become the first Jewish representative to address a Roman Catholic synod when he talks about themes of the Bible on Monday.

The synod is a consultative body created in 1965 to facilitate contacts among bishops, who represent 1.1 billion Catholics around the world, and to help the pope set policies for running the Church.

Of the 253 archbishops, bishops and cardinals summoned to the synod, 51 are from Africa, 62 from the Americas, 41 from Asia, 90 from Europe and nine from the Pacific.

Another 41 experts including six women and 37 observers are to take part in the gathering in which three former Italian presidents and Oscar-winning actor Roberto Benigni have also agreed to read from the Bible.