Andthensome

Sam Harris

Some good ol' fashion Sam Harris for a Friday night:

Now, it just so happens that religion has more than its fair share of bad ideas. And it remains the only system of thought, where the process of maintaining bad ideas in perpetual immunity from criticism is considered a sacred act. This is the act of faith. And I remain convinced that religious faith is one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have ever devised. So we will, inevitably, continue to criticize religious thinking. But we should not define ourselves and name ourselves in opposition to such thinking.

Nice.

More Sam Harris

I thought this was a good Sam Harris quote:

Please consider how differently we treat scientific texts and discoveries, no matter how profound: Isaac Newton spent the period between the summer of 1665 and the spring of 1667 working in isolation and dodging an outbreak of plague that was laying waste to the pious men and women of England. When he emerged from his solitude, he had invented the differential and integral calculus, established the field of optics, and discovered the laws of motion and universal gravitation. Many scientists consider this to be the most awe-inspiring display of human intelligence in the history of human intelligence. Over three hundred years have passed, and one still has to be exceptionally well-educated to fully appreciate the depth and beauty of Newton's achievement. But no one doubts that Newton's work was the product of merely human effort, conceived and accomplished by a mortal-and a very unpleasant mortal at that. And yet, literally billions of our neighbors deem the contents of the Bible and the Qur'an to be so profound as to rule out the possibility of terrestrial authorship. Given the breadth and depth of human achievement, this seems an almost miraculous misappropriation of awe. It took two centuries of continuous ingenuity to substantially improve upon Newton's work. How difficult would it be to improve the Bible? It would be trivially easy, in fact. You and I could upgrade this "inerrant" text-scientifically, historically, ethically, and yes, spiritually-in this email exchange.

But then again, George Carlin already did.

Merry Christmas

This is quite funny especially if you like Dawkins (from McSweeny)..

From an early point in your infancy, you people have been done a great injustice. Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Father Christmas—the names may differ from country to country, but the idea always remains a constant. No doubt you've drawn pictures of him, watched films depicting him, sung songs about him. A benevolent jolly fellow whose sole purpose is to monitor your behavior year-round by inexplicable means only to separate children into two drastically oversimplified groups: naughty or nice. With the aid of elfin employees and flying reindeer, this Good Samaritan delivers gifts to all the nice children of the world in a single evening. You'll know him by his long white beard and belly that jiggles like a bowl full of jelly, they say. On the contrary, you'll know him as nonsense, because that's precisely what he is.

As a scientist, I seek the truth. Do you understand? The universe is a highly complex place, ever evolving and changing, billions of years in the making. Darwinian evolution enables us to comprehend who we are and where we've come from. It is only science that can provide us with these answers. Blind faith, grand design, the belief that things "just happen" without any rational explanation or evidence are all part of an alternative nonscience. Santa Claus, with his long white beard and sack full of goodies, is a rather precise example of this.

If you are the sort of person who is interested in the truth, perhaps you would consider asking yourself this question: how exactly does a single elderly man not only manufacture but also deliver in a single evening what would, by all forms of logic, account to be millions of toys? Certainly, if you press this issue to its core, more difficult questions will arise, but as I have been told we are short on time, we'll stick with the meat and bones, so to speak, of this one. Your parents and teachers will most likely say something to the effect of "Why, he has elves that help build toys year-round in his North Pole workshop." And in response to how a man delivers all these goods in a single evening? Unsurprisingly, the response to this has not changed since I was a lad: he does it with the aid of Christmas Magic. Indeed—Christmas Magic, that wonderful, majestical force. A single drop of it allows a man to fly around the world in a sleigh led by nine tiny reindeer. Fascinating, isn't it? Now, before I continue on, let me first make it clear that I am not claiming that the existence of Santa or wonderful industrious elves or Christmas Magic is impossible. I cannot prove that they do not exist any more than I can disprove the existence of fairies or leprechauns. What I can tell you is that statistic probability and science can provide us with a clear look at the truth, and if we are willing to be honest with ourselves as a result of this data, then we will quite quickly see that there simply is no scientific foundation for any of the aforementioned phenomena.

What there is evidence of is that it is none other than your parents who leave gifts marked "From Santa" beneath the tree, just as it is your parents who consume the milk and biscuits you so thoughtfully leave out on Christmas Eve prior to heading off to bed. If you refuse these methods and persist with the nonscience of Christmas Magic—that is, if you continue to claim that Santa's "powers" arose from some indefinable source—then you are wading in some very murky waters indeed. It is a rejection of all logic. Why not the Pink Unicorn Man or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? No rational scientist would accept any information without a source, without a foundation, and neither should you.

My goal in all of this is that, as children, you should be raised only on truth, reason, fact, and intellect. Together we should be working toward a point in the not-so-distant future where the words "Santa Claus" or "Kris Kringle" or "Father Christmas" create the same response as fingernails on a chalkboard. There is nothing wrong with disbelief in Santa. I can see that the topic makes many of you uncomfortable. However, this should not be viewed as a bad thing. You may weep now, but your tears are a positive, not a negative. You are now facing the truth, which comes in many forms and is not always comfortable. This is a fact that you will be exposed to again and again throughout your lives. If you wish to live a life that contains only comfortable information and not necessarily the truth, then yours will be a highly deluded existence. Your intellectual maturity depends on whether or not you are capable of accepting the truth at this early age. That is why there is no better place to begin than with the absurdity that is Santa Claus and Christmas Magic. Now then, with all that said, I wish to thank you for your time today, and I should like very much to open up the floor to any questions you may have.

JW

Dawkins on religion

Got to get the bitorrent for this series by Richard Dawkins (from The Proper Study of Mankind):

Here’s a review of a programme, The Root Of All Evil?: The God Delusion, written and presented by Richard Dawkins.

The trailers for Richard Dawkins’s new two-part programme for Channel 4 television, The Root Of All Evil? (not, apparently, a title that Dawkins would have chosen given free reign), broadcast in the UK on Monday 9th, gave a pretty clear idea of what to expect. It opened with Dawkins looking straight into the camera and saying, “Religion is an insult to human dignity”. For those of us inclined to agree, this suggested a promising programme. And for my money, I wasn’t disappointed.

Friday Blogging

The weekend is here and all is well.  KG sent me enough links this week to last me the weekend and then some.  The Root of All Evil?, a documentary on religion by Richard Dawkins (Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker), looks promising.  From PSOM:

Dawkins characterises faith as a form of non-thought. This will anger religiously sensitive viewers, who might call to mind scholarly Popes, Bishops and philosophers who have reflected deeply on the nature of faith and the religious life. But this is to miss the point. Faith is defined by the OED as “Confidence, reliance, belief, esp. without evidence or proof” and “Belief based on testimony or authority”. So it is to literally to take a claim as true, and assent belief in it, on the basis of no evidence – on mere assertion, in other words. But perhaps not by assertion from just anyone, but from an authority – a priest, a Pope or the Bible, perhaps. Where does thought, let alone critical thought, come into this, apart from in comprehending the message? There’s no evaluation of the claim on its merits – its source is more important in determining its acceptability than reasons, whether they be empirical or logical, for holding the belief. So faith necessarily subdues reflective thought, at least about whether the claims of religion should be accepted or not. As if this weren’t enough, religions also usually have proscriptions against questioning the authority of tradition, as the story of Doubting Thomas makes clear. Faith is touted as a virtue, and to have strong faith in the face of mountains of contrary evidence is the highest virtue of all.

Tangential to the religious theme, my daughter Emilie continues to make leaps and bounds in development.  It is really cool to watch.  She has at least 3 Japanese words down and one of them is ya-da (or I hate it, no etc.).  Sawako's friend half joked that her Japanese will soon surpass mine.  Regardless, a look on with awe at the changes she has made and think it to be a true miracle.  Life is grand..

Christian Values

There are some great people in this world.  Some of them are Christians.  There are some terrible people in this world.  Some of them are "Christians".  Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson are examples of the latter.

Ralph Reed is a businessman with high political ambitions.  He is also a total huckster:

Abramoff, Scanlon, and Reed (”an avowed foe of gambling”) secretly helped then Texas Attorney General Cornyn shut down the Tigua tribe’s Texas casino. They then exploited “the financial crisis they were helping to create for the tribe” by convincing the Tiguas to pay Abramoff $4.2 million (and $300,000 they doled out in political contributions to Abramoff allies) to get Congress to reopen the casino.

(snip)

“Former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed claimed in a 2001 e-mail to [Jack Abramoff] that he choreographed John Cornyn’s efforts as Texas attorney general to shut down an East Texas Indian tribe’s casino.” Reed, “an avowed foe of gambling,” was “paid $4.2 million by Abramoff and Scanlon for his work opposing several tribal casinos in southern states from 2001 to 2003, government sources said.” [Washington Post, 9/26/04; Associated Press, 11/12/05]

In case you missed the math, that is $4.2 to Reed for shutting down the casino by Abramoff and $4.2 to Abramoff from the Tigua tribe to get the casino back open. Nice.

Pat Robertson is just bat-shit insane.  The latest from him (or is it Him?):

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for "dividing God's land."

"God considers this land to be his," Robertson said on his TV program "The 700 Club." "You read the Bible and he says `This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, `No, this is mine.'"

You see, God, being omnipotent, likes to settle the score the old fashion way.  Sure he could just take it back (whatever the fuck that means), but that would be too easy.