All posts tagged Richard Dawkins

Secular Rally Doesn’t Exactly Welcome All Secularists

Even though I am not an atheist, I am a secularist, and I am pleased that a bunch of secularists are getting together on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on March 24.

But before I go on, let’s look at two meanings for the word “secularism“:

sec·u·lar·ism

1. secular  spirit or tendency, especially a system of political or social philosophy that rejects all forms of religious faith and worship.

2. the view that public education and other matters of civil policy should be conducted without the introduction of a religious element.

I am a secularist in the second sense, not the first, and that is why I was disappointed that the organizers of the celebration of secularism chose to focus on the first definition. They announced the event—called “The Reason Rally“—this way:

Across America, in every city, every town, and every school, secularism is on the rise. Whether people call themselves atheists, agnostics, secular Humanists, or any of the other terms used to describe their god-free lifestyle, secularism is coming out of the closet.

By this definition, one of the greatest religious skeptics in modern American history—Martin Gardner—would not be technically qualified to attend this gathering. Gardner was a philosophical theist, but highly critical of miracle-based religions.

In The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, in a chapter titled, “Why I Am Not an Atheist,” he wrote:

Let me speak personally. By the grace of God I managed the leap when I was in my teens. For me it was then bound up with an ugly Protestant fundamentalism. I outgrew this slowly, and eventually decided I could not even call myself a Christian without using language deceptively, but faith in God and immortality remained.

He added,

I am quite content to confess…that I have no basis whatever for my belief in God other than a passionate longing that God exist and that I and others will not cease to exist.

By this admission, Gardner, who died almost two years ago, would have to sit out The Reason Rally in March.  And that would be a damn shame.

by R. Duane Graham on February 17, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on February 17, 2012

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/secular-rally-doesnt-exactly-welcome-all-secularists/

Child Abuse?

I’m spending the week in California attending a union convention.  Hoping for a couple of hours of pure enjoyment, I went to Angel Stadium in Anaheim to watch the hapless Kansas City Royals lose yet another game.

At the entrance to the stadium, were several folks holding signs like this: 

While I don’t understand why the Angels allow these people to stand in front of their business and visually assault their customers, I do understand something about the people who are willing to spend their time in front of a big league ballpark and imply that without Jesus we are all going straight to hell.

Such people are poisoned with fundamentalism and frequently it is an intellectually fatal condition.

But my biggest problem with such folks is what they do to their children. 

As my friend and I walked toward the entrance, we saw a little girl, probably about ten years old:

“That’s child abuse,” my friend said. “It’s one thing for an adult to stand out here and do this, but to force your kid to do it is a form of abuse.”

Well, is it?

As Richard Dawkins wrote:

The threat of eternal hell is an extreme example of mental abuse, just as violent sodomy is an extreme example of physical abuse.

While the comparison between violent sodomy and teaching children that they or their friends or their loved ones may one day be tormented forever and ever is at first a little startling, there is merit in Dawkins’ position.

He quoted part of a letter he received from a Catholic woman who claimed she had been victimized by her priest and her Church in more ways than one:

Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as ‘yuchy’ while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest, but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares.

And in the case of the little girl in front of Angel Stadium, she, no doubt, has been taught that people who don’t believe “Jesus Saves” will spend eternity suffering in hell. 

And whether she was “forced” to stand there holding that sign, or whether she does so out of a genuine fear that if she doesn’t do something, a lot of people will suffer eternally, there is no other description I can think of that fits: mental abuse.

by R. Duane Graham on August 11, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on August 11, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/child-abuse/

The Pope’s Rope-A-Dope

Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, atheists who will travel, apparently are actively seeking (read: they have lawyers) the arrest of the Bishop of Rome for what they consider to be a cover-up of the fairly extensive sexual abuse scandal swirling around the Catholic Church.

The pope (#265 if you’re keeping count), hiding behind not only his vestments but his legally uncertain status as head of state, has been accused of some fairly serious crimes, though nothing legally as of yet.

How this will play out is anybody’s guess, but all will have to admit that having the Western world’s two most preeminent atheists take on the Vicar of Christ makes for great theater.

But there is at least one other thing I find interesting about the alleged scandal involving Benedict XVI, which is the fact that his popeness historically has made much of the so-called decline of our “Christian values,” due, he thinks, to our embrace of relativism and a rejection of objective truth.

Hmmm. I wonder if Stephen Kiesle, the American priest who was convicted in 1978 of pedophilia, was suffering from an embrace of relativism, and I wonder if Benedict XVI, in his pre-popeness as Cardinal Ratzinger, failed to defrock Father Kiesle because he, too, had a bout of relativism to contend with.

Here is Ratzinger’s response to the multiple and somewhat desperate attempts to remove the sex offender—but still Reverend—Kiesle “from all priestly burdens“:

This court, although it regards the arguments presented in favor of removal in this case to be of grave significance, nevertheless deems it necessary to consider the good of the Universal Church together with that of the petitioner, and it is also unable to make light of the detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner.

It is necessary for this Congregation to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time.

In the meantime your Excellency must not fail to provide the petitioner with as much paternal care as possible and in addition to explain to same the rationale of this court, which is accustomed to proceed keeping the common good especially before its eyes.

Let me take this occasion to convey sentiments of the highest regard always to you.

Your most Reverend Excellency
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Now, that, my friends, is a fine example of relativism.

by R. Duane Graham on April 12, 2010  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on April 12, 2010

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/the-popes-rope-a-dope/

Okie Biology, Texas Theology

I would be derelict in my blogging duties to not at least mention the silliness of Oklahoma state congressman Todd Thomsen last month.

Mr. Thomsen, who was first elected to the Oklahoma House in 2006 by a total of two votes, introduced legislation in the Oklahoma legislature opposing the “one-sided” teaching of evolution and the appearance at the University of Oklahoma of noted evolutionist, Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins’ real crime, of course, is that he doesn’t believe in God, which, apparently, is an offense worthy of legislative censure in Oklahoma, according to Mr. Thomsen. While he has every right to believe fantastic tales about our origins, Mr. Thomsen should exercise a little discipline over his unruly need to impose his beliefs on other, less gullible, Oklahomans, who may want to avoid the intellectual isolation of fundamentalist Christians.

Summing up this controversy in particular and the creationist movement in general, Dawkins said:

They’ve lost in the courts of law; they’ve long ago lost in the halls of science; and they continue to lose with every new piece of evidence in support of evolution. Taking offense is all they’ve got left. And the one thing you can be sure of is that they don’t actually know anything about what it is that they reject.

In another example of creationist dogma intersecting with state government, the Texas state board of education last month adopted what scientists are calling “flawed state science standards.” While apparently creationists on the board didn’t get everything they wanted, they did manage to amend the standards in such a way that they would “encourage” presentation of creationist claims that the complexity of the cell, the incompleteness of the fossil record, and uncertainties about the age of the universe are all reasons to doubt the theory of evolution.

A refreshing twist of electoral fate gives us this response from Obama’s official science advisor, John Holdren:

I think we need to be giving our kids a modern education in biology, and the underpinning of modern biology is evolution. And countervailing views that are not really science, if they are taught at all, should be taught in some other part of the curriculum.

Of course, Mr. Holdren only holds a PhD in plasma physics, a fact that probably disqualifies him from speaking authoritatively on biblical science, but I, at least, am encouraged that our new president will not be getting his science advice from James Dobson or Pat Robertson.

by R. Duane Graham on April 21, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by R. Duane Graham on April 21, 2009

https://duanegraham.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/okie-biology-texas-theology/