Posted on 05/01/2011 7:24:18 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
The squabble between Darwin lobbyists who openly hate religion and those who only quietly disdain it grows ever more personal, bitter and pathetic. On one side, evangelizing New or "Gnu" (ha ha) Atheists like Jerry Coyne and his acolytes at Why Evolution Is True. Dr. Coyne is a biologist who teaches and ostensibly researches at the University of Chicago but has a heck of a lot of free time on his hands for blogging and posting pictures of cute cats.
On the other side, so-called accommodationists like the crowd at the National Center for Science Education, who attack the New Atheists for the political offense of being rude to religious believers and supposedly messing up the alliance between religious and irreligious Darwinists.
I say "supposedly" because there's no evidence any substantial body of opinion is actually being changed on religion or evolution by anything the open haters or the quiet disdainers say. Everyone seems to seriously think they're either going to defeat religion, or merely "creationism," or both by blogging for an audience of fellow Darwinists.
Want to see what I mean? This is all pretty strictly a battle of stinkbugs in a bottle. Try to follow it without getting a headache.
Coyne recently drew excited applause from fellow biologist-atheist-blogger PZ Myers for Coyne's "open letter" (published on his blog) to the NCSE and its British equivalent, the British Centre for Science Education. In the letter, Coyne took umbrage at criticism of the New Atheists, mostly on blogs, emanating from the two accommodationist organizations. He vowed that,
We will continue to answer the misguided attacks [on the New Atheists] by people like Josh Rosenau, Roger Stanyard, and Nick Matzke so long as they keep mounting those attacks.Like the NCSE, the BCSE seeks to pump up Darwin in the public mind without scaring religious people. This guy called Stanyard at the BCSE complains of losing a night's sleep over the nastiness of the rhetoric on Coyne's blog. Coyne in turn complained that Stanyard complained that a blog commenter complained that Nick Matzke, formerly of the NCSE, is like "vermin." Coyne also hit out at blogger Jason Rosenhouse for an "epic"-length blog post complaining of New Atheist "incivility." In the blog, Rosenhouse, who teaches math at James Madison University, wrote an update about how he had revised an insulting comment about the NCSE's Josh Rosenau that he, Rosenhouse, made in a previous version of the post.
That last bit briefly confused me. In occasionally skimming the writings of Jason Rosenhouse and Josh Rosenau in the past, I realized now I had been assuming they were the same person. They are not!
It goes on and on. In the course of his own blog post, Professor Coyne disavowed name-calling and berated Stanyard (remember him? The British guy) for "glomming onto" the Matzke-vermin insult like "white on rice, or Kwok on a Leica." What's a Kwok? Not a what but a who -- John Kwok, presumably a pseudonym, one of the most tirelessly obsessive commenters on Darwinist blog sites. Besides lashing at intelligent design, he often writes of his interest in photographic gear such as a camera by Leica. I have the impression that Kwok irritates even fellow Darwinists.
There's no need to keep all the names straight in your head. I certainly can't. I'm only taking your time, recounting just a small part of one confused exchange, to illustrate the culture of these Darwinists who write so impassionedly about religion, whether for abolishing it or befriending it. Writes Coyne in reply to Stanyard,
I'd suggest, then, that you lay off telling us what to do until you've read about our goals. The fact is that we'll always be fighting creationism until religion goes away, and when it does the fight will be over, as it is in Scandinavia.A skeptic might suggest that turning America into Scandinavia, as far as religion goes, is an outsized goal, more like a delusion, for this group as they sit hunched over their computers shooting intemperate comments back and forth at each other all day. Or in poor Stanyard's case, all night.
There's a feverish, terrarium-like and oxygen-starved quality to this world of online Darwinists and atheists. It could only be sustained by the isolation of the Internet. They don't seem to realize that the public accepts Darwinism to the extent it does -- which is not much -- primarily because of what William James would call the sheer, simple "prestige" that the opinion grants. Arguments and evidence have little to do with it.
The prestige of Darwinism is not going to be affected by how the battle between Jerry Coyne and the NCSE turns out. New Atheist arguments are hobbled by the same isolation from what people think and feel. I have not yet read anything by any of these gentlemen or ladies, whether the open haters or the quiet disdainers, that conveys anything like a real comprehension of religious feeling or thought.
Even as they fight over the most effective way to relate to "religion," the open atheists and the accomodationists speak of an abstraction, a cartoon, that no actual religious person would recognize. No one is going to be persuaded if he doesn't already wish to be persuaded for other personal reasons. No faith is under threat from the likes of Jerry Coyne.
And Zoroastrianism had a great deal of influence on the apocalyptic Judaism of early Christians. Together with Platonism, it created an amalgam mystery religion that was palatable to pagan Greeks and Romans, but not to Persians or the Jews. It's kind of like Mormonism of sorts, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, the best of all three...
I have a friend whose mom was a "Christian Scientist" and she died of cancer while ignoring doctors because she was sure Jesus would heal her.
I don't know of anyone who prays to the Bible. But I do know Jesus put emphasis on writing when he used "It is written" and when after reading Isaiah in the synagogue he said, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears."
And I know of lots of people with cancer who followed the doctor's advice and died of the cancer despite the extreme measures used in an attempt to cure it.
That said, God provides doctors with wisdom and training for a reason. And that reason is not to hang a pretty diploma on the wall.
Not really - those are salient points that your uncredable witness theory falls to pieces on.
I think there's something to Sufi Islam too (I have to keep reminding me of that because I tend to be very hard on Islam). While I'm not completely read up on Sufism I get a strong sense that the Holy Spirit may be working with those folks. I used to work with a Sufi guy from Pakistan and I swear the guy just oozed peace and hope. When I told him I was an Orthodox Christian his eyes lit up and he gave me a big warm loving smile and pretty much treated me like a brother or kindred spirit after that, so I looked into his a faith a bit.
It seems the Sufis are all about the LOVE of God. They are almost the polar opposites of the Wahabbi Islam folks. Now I understand the Sufi temples are under constantly under threat of direct attack from Wahabbi suicide bombers in Pakistan.
I guess the Sufi faith could be considered similar to that of the Apostolic Church in its preaching of an unconditionally loving God, and Wahabbis and Sola Scriptura Prots have the same evil fire and brimstone 'God'.
I left nothing out that proves he was a nihilist, as you know.
Here he is, in your face again, in all his nihilistic glory:
"...on the matter of "nihilism" and whether or not Nietzsche was a "nihilist", you don't know what you're talking about. All I had to do to make a short and sweet Google search just now using these key words:
Google search words result:
Nietzsche's +new+ form+ of+ "active nihilism"+ he+ calls +a +"sign of strength"
<>
NOTE: You'll notice that he says _his_ 'active' nihilism is designed to "level the field for constructing something new". This form of nihilism is characterized by Nietzsche as "a sign of strength," a willful destruction of the old values to wipe the slate clean and lay down one's own beliefs and interpretations. By the constructing of new meaning, this active nihilism could be related to what Nietzsche elsewhere calls a 'free spirit' or the Übermensch from Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Antichrist, the model of the strong individual who posits his own values and lives his life as if it were a work of art.
But that wasn't the sort of science Nietzsche was talking about, was it.___For Nietzsche___ this shows that man is the product of evolution ("Darwinistic" evolution /"evolutionism", as opposed to true evolution), that earth has no special place among the stars, that history is not progressive, and that the Christian notion of God can no longer serve as a basis for a morality.
You responded: "Not really....those are salient points that your uncredable witness theory falls to pieces on."
:)
Scripture says the fear (reverence/respect) of God is the BEGINNING of knowledge. So my faith is NOT based upon fear nor blackmail like you seem to think it is. Rather, it is a recognition of the Creator as he has revealed himself to mankind. It is accepting the truth that he is all powerful, all holy, all merciful, all just and all love. We were not left to figure out the meaning of our existence all on our own. It is also a recognition that the life I have today, right now in the nasty here and now - rather than the sweet by and by of eternity - is wonderful. I have peace that passes all understanding. I have an amazing husband that I thank God for every day. I have family and friends that love me and whom I love as well. I have all I need and want for nothing. How could you describe it as "wasted"? Wasted on what, exactly? Like Jesus said, he who keeps his life loses it and whoever loses his life for my sake, keeps it. Perhaps one day you will be able to understand the wisdom and meaning of that. He came to give us life, abundant life, right now and for all eternity.
You're really gonna REALLY like THIS
bttt
I went through a period of studying all of the other religions, didn’t bother with Islam, Jainism or Hindu, they just didn’t interest me.
Mostly I identified with Taoism (the westernized version anyway). Then I devolved back to Physics and found ‘God’ in the wavefunction collapse.
Now I have come back around again and am looking at ‘Religion’ (and most everything else I thought I knew something about) with my eyes wide open. I am once again like a child, seeing the world for the first time, but without the naive innocence of a child.
Everyday is a delightful new experience. Yesterday I figured out the Archers Paradox and properly tuned my wife’s bow for her. At first she was angry, but after a couple of shots she got a smile on her face and told me to run along.
Life is good.
Follow your bliss :)
To the idea that an imaginary god is evil, my point was that evil doesn't exist because God is evil but that he created beings with free will and they chose evil. God did not create evil itself, he created the possibility for there to be evil. This is evidence, to me, that these beings could also choose good. Regardless, the fantasy story itself made no sense, so there was little point in carrying on.
Whatever you do, please don't tell her I told that story. ;o)
I couldn't agree more about the reference to Mormonism. Toss in the Standard Catholic Heresy and you have Mormonism in a nutshell.
Note to the Anti Mormon Born Againers Cabal bigots. If I was going to attack Mormonism that is how I would go about it, through Zoroastrianism.
Saying that God must be good is nothing more than wishful thinking. You can HOPE that God is good, but if he's all evil and he has just created an illusion of goodness to trick you, you won't know until you're dead and sliding down razor blades for eternity with nothing to eat but adorable kittens with the music of Sammy Hagar blaring over the loud speakers 24/7.
You. Know. NOTHING. All you have is faith and hope. That's all any of us has. To claim otherwise is to be deluded and worthy of ridicule.
I have yet to understand why some believe that God supposedly heals cancer but won't give a paraplegic new limbs, no matter how much they pray.
That was the EXACT verse that came to my mind too!
Ahhh... the good old AMBACB. They hit me up for 20 bucks at the supermarket the other day. I got a neat Sarah Palin button for my donation :)
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