Monthly Archives: May 2021

Photo: Stephen Meyer, via Discovery Institute.

The New Atheism is dead, or so maverick writer Freddie deBoer argues in his recent provocative Substack essay. But that doesnt mean the New Atheists lost. On the contrary, he thinks they won by losing.

DeBoer explains:

Every day religion recedes a little bit more into the background as ordinary people, religious or not, abstract religious meaning in their lives to the point where its hard to know how you would begin to define why the distinction between believer and nonbeliever actually matters.

DeBoer argues that this receding has, ironically, been hastened by the replacement of New Atheists with voices who are more friendly towards traditional theists, like social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Unlike Dawkins or Hitchens, Haidt isnt out to take away anyones deeply held religious faith. In fact, hes happy to work together with Jews and Christians, because as he argues in books like The Righteous Mind, in his view religion is a beneficial evolutionary accretion grounded in literal falsehood, of course, but to a pragmatic end.

DeBoer himself is no Christian, or a religious believer of any kind. Far from it: Hes an avowed atheist Marxist! But that of course offends him on the Christians behalf, because he perceives it as a more grievous insult to sincere Christians than Christopher Hitchens could ever come up with. At least Hitchens respected Christians enough to challenge them to a fight, rather than letting them go with a pat on the head.

Stephen Meyer couldnt agree more with Freddie deBoer. In conversation with him, I raised this very sociological question, pointing out that some might argue he is beating an already dead horse by using writers like Dawkins as a foil in Return of the God Hypothesis. Meyer conceded that sociologically, Dawkins may indeed be pass. But the stakes are still just as high. The questions have never gone away, and churlish as he was, like his fellow New Atheists, Dawkins had a knack for asking them well. These guys have the requisite zeal to challenge those beliefs head-on, and therefore, they force the really important discussion about what does the evidence actually say pro or con for theism versus materialism? Meyer is one of those Christians deBoer is irritated for, whod rather go at it hammer and tongs with a Hitchens than engage with materialists who merely condescend to theistic belief, who pat you on the head and say, Well, thats nice for you.

Another name that came up in our conversation was Bret Weinstein, a biology professor who became famous for standing up to a woke mob at Evergreen State College and subsequently becoming a professor in exile. Meyer and I share an admiration for Weinstein, but we find his attempt to save religion lacking in the the same way deBoer finds Jon Haidts attempt lacking. Weinsteins personal coinage is that religion is literally false, but metaphorically true. For example, if an island tribe believes an ancient spirit is stirring the waters to cause a tsunami, they will escape to high ground and survive, which is the really important thing, whether or not the whole ancient spirit business was so much superstitious nonsense.

But was their belief true, though? Well. What is truth?

This is really just Stephen Jay Gould all over again. Gould famously proposed the idea of non-overlapping magisteria, or NOMA, where you can neatly partition your beliefs into the scientific on one side and the religious on the other, and never the twain shall meet. But our friend Freddie is unconvinced that its so easy as all that:

[T]he meaning and rules for life which people so often praise in religion in the abstract stem from the very supernatural elements which people are now so eager to do away with. Yes, religion provides psychic comfort in an unfriendly world, but it does so because it imposes sense on senselessness through the existence of one (or many) who literally determine what sense is. Yes, religion helps guide moral decisions, but it does so because it posits an entity from whom unerring moral precepts flow. Yes, religion helps rescue people from feelings of meaninglessness, but it does so because it tells people that they have a specific moral purpose that is defined by a creature of infinitely greater wisdom than ours. Yes, religion soothes the sick and elderly, but it does so because it tells them that they will soon be joined with a maker who will grant them some sort of eternal reward. You take away the supernatural element, as so many now seem eager to do, and youre kicking two legs out from under a three-legged stool.

Thank you! Just so! Indeed, its all very well to acknowledge, like Haidt does, the Pascalian God-shaped hole in our hearts. Its all very well to say that religion is part of human nature. But as deBoer puts it poignantly in a previous essay, you cant worship a God-shaped hole. If you go to Mass or synagogue looking for nothing more than a vague religious fix, while quietly congratulating yourself that youre not like those silly fundamentalists who dont know how Science works, that fix will only last so long. The journey will be an aimless and likely short one.

It doesnt look like deBoer has plans to climb aboard the God hypothesis train himself any time soon. But at the very least, he recognizes why people should care where that train is going, and why it matters that its not just making an aimless circle. We can certainly shake hands with deBoer on that point, even as we cordially invite him to reconsider the destination for his own journey.

See more here:

Where Steve Meyer Agrees with an Atheist Marxist - Discovery Institute

We heard that the annual National Day of Prayer has also spurred atheists to actionand theyre using the occasion to do good works in their community.

The Atheist Community of Polk County, Florida, for instance,11 is organizing a number of community service events and an awareness campaign to suggest that fellowship doesnt require faith.

Its all part of an annual effort to celebrate a national Secular Week of Action instead of observing the National Day of Prayer, which was set aside in U.S. federal law for people of faith to pray for the nation on the first Thursday in May.

In place of observing a day of thoughts and prayers, secular groups nationwide organize service projects. This years emphasis is on a compassionate response to hunger and homelessness, which were exacerbated due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nonprofit which covers the metro areas of Lakeland and Winter Haven, runs several ongoing programs to address social issues. They even partnered with a church in a unique food pantry coalition as a direct response to the COVID-19.

Joining the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lakeland, the project, called It Takes a Village, uses volunteers to deliver food pantry supplies directly to the homes of recipients who may be quarantined or unable to visit the pantry.

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These local atheists also run a chapter of Street Warriors to provide hot meals to people experiencing homelessness, and a Backpack Program that supplies weekend groceries for elementary students.

In addition to providing much-needed food to folks throughout the County, the Secular Week of Action includes a litter clean-up of the groups adopted roadway in Haines City on Sunday May 2 at 8:45am.

Their Street Warriors service project will also be meeting on Sunday (4:00 PM to 6:00 PM) in Winter Haven to pack up food, then hit the streets, to feed people experiencing homelessness.

RELATED: Theyve Collected 20 Million Pounds of Food From People Who are MovingAnd Delivered it to Food Banks

Under the slogans Good without God, Community without Church, and Fellowship without Faith, Polk County Atheists Co-founder Sarah Ray says that one of the most important thing her group provides is a sense of community.

We want to let other nonbelievers know that there is a secular community here they can turn to. And we want to challenge the misconceptions and stereotypes about atheists. We are good people, were your neighbors, co-workers, and friends.

They will also be providing a secular invocation at the Polk County Board of County Commissioners Meeting two days before the National Day of Prayer. Providing secular invocations gives us an opportunity to remind elected officials at all levels that nonbelievers exist in their constituency.

Join their weekly ongoing charitable events, with details found on Meetup.comor find an event this week in your area of the U.S. here.

SAY AMEN! And Share the Secular Good News on Social Media

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Atheists Respond to National Day of Prayer This Week With Action to Feed the Hungry and Clean Up Litter - Good News Network

A month ago, Bleeding Cool posted the following Heroes Reborn spoilers or potential spoilers. Heroes Reborn is a new Avengers-focussed event fromJason Aaron running through May and June. How on the ball were we? Well, the first issue is published on Wednesday, so feel free to mark out homework Nothing, I think, that will ruin the comic. But might give you a greater idea of the world that is being created in the first issue with Ed McGuinness.

1. So Where Are The Avengers Then? This is the tease for Heroes Return from Marvel Comics. "Welcome to a world where Tony Stark never built an Iron Man armor. Where Thor is a hard-drinking atheist who despises hammers. Where Wakanda is dismissed as a myth. And where Captain America was never found in the icebecause there were no Avengers to find him." We have a couple of others to add Jennifer Walters never became the She-Hulk, and works as a lawyer. And Carol Danvers is a pilot, well-regarded, but never promoted to Captain and not in receipt of the powers of Captain Mar-Vell. Pietro died, which is how Wanda has his powers as the Silver Witch. And the very existence of the Squadron Supreme stopped the Avengers from needing to be formed. We reckon this is all down to Mephisto but no sign of him yet.

2. What's With Blade, Then? Heroes Reborn #1 states "But why is the Daywalker Blade the one man alive who seems to remember that the entire world has somehow beenreborn?"I have theories for another day, but this is not a place for theories, but a place for spoilers. Because Blade is also the last of the vampires. It is not just a world without Avengers. But a world without vampires. And he is starting to think that this new world is a better one than the one with Avengers and vampires in it. We reckon this is all down to Mephisto Vs Lilith but no sign of them yet.

3. What's Up In Doctor Doom's Grill?Issue 2's solicitations promises that "America's solar-powered, super-sentinel of liberty looks to return his archenemy Victor Von Doom to the Negative Zone". But doesn't Doctor Doom have the might of an entire country behind him? Not any more. Doctor Doom was elected out of Latveria, after the Squadron Supreme forced the country to hold free and fair elections.

4. Who's Got The Venom Suit?We all saw a Venom character with a red Hydra logo. That is The Black Skull, and it is the Red Skull, joined together with a symbiote, in a similar fashion as to how Norman Osborn became the Red Goblin on Earth 616.

5. Stop Being So Negative. Remember that mention of Doom being banished to the Negative Zone? That's what happens to enemies of the state, and we saw in previews that image of Reed Richards and Ben Grimm working at that facility. Others banished to the Negative Zone include Avengers the Hulk, the Star Brand and Ghost Rider

6. Remains Of The Gods.The last of the Asgardians (if you don't count Thor and he doesn't, he's an atheist now) is All-Gog, the final All-Father of Asgard. There will be no more.

HEROES REBORN #1 (OF 7)MARVEL COMICSMAR210497(W) Jason Aaron (A) Ed McGuinness (CA) Leinil Francis YuA WORLD WITHOUT AVENGERS!Welcome to a world where Tony Stark never built an Iron Man armor. Where Thor is a hard-drinking atheist who despises hammers. Where Wakanda is dismissed as a myth. And where Captain America was never found in the ice because there were no Avengers to find him. Instead this world has always been protected by Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Squadron Supreme of America. And now the Squadron faces an attack from some of their fiercest enemies, like Dr. Juggernaut, the Black Skull, the Silver Witch and Thanos with his Infinity Rings. But why is the Daywalker Blade the one man alive who seems to remember that the entire world has somehow beenreborn?Rated T+In Shops: May 05, 2021 SRP: $5.99

Excerpt from:

Rewind: Five Spoilery Teases For Marvel's Heroes Reborn, Out This Week - Bleeding Cool News

Within days of each other, the Salk Institute in California announced it had successfully implanted human stem cells into a monkey embryo, and Richard Dawkins, the renowned evolutionary biologist and professional atheist, characterized the Catholic belief in the Real Presence as ridiculous. He went as far as couching his dim opinion of the Real Presence in Shakespearean terms: That way madness lies.

The experiment on monkey embryos and human cells which seems more at home in a black and white B-grade science fiction movie of the 1950s and the pronouncement against the fulcrum of Catholic teaching are different forms of the same attack. I realize attack is a strong word, but if one does not understand he is under attack, he is not prepared to defend himself.

Defense of the Real Presence does not need my assistance. The graces I have received from my most recent consumption of it, though, tells me to resist the temptation to go at Richard Dawkins with similar dismissing and cutting words. But thinking I could argue or cajole Dawkins into a belief in it is beyond my pay grade.

I can still try to understand Dawkins by placing him within the context of Scripture (something I think he would also reject outright).

The Real Presence was codified at the Last Supper, but the teaching began earlier in the Gospels and the early returns from the polls were not promising. As usual, Jesus pulls no punches in the sixth chapter of John. His body is real food and his blood real drink. People began to talk.

Soon the murmurs turned into recordable speech. This is a hard saying, who can listen to it? (John 6:60). And then the people started to vote with their feet. They seemed just as sure of the impossibility of what Jesus taught as any degree-wielding modern scientist.

If you have ever seen a YouTube video of Dawkins as he debates people of faith or viewed some of his lectures where he indulges his atheist leanings, you know he does not suffer fools and his contempt for those who rely on bizarre rituals or tribal beliefs of the supernatural are all categorized in his personal fool phylum.

It would not take extrasensory abilities to predict what Dawkins makes of St. Peter and the other apostles who, although they did not fully understand the Real Presence when they first heard it, believed in Jesus enough to know to stay put.

Dawkins faith lies elsewhere, in places like the Salt Institute. It would be logical to assume Dawkins sees these men and women as the embodiment of scientific endeavor, traveling wherever science takes them, even if it is a place they should not go.

Richard Dawkins (Wikipedia)

But without God at the center of things, the Salk Institutes breakthrough of inserting human tissue into nonhuman tissue is a natural progression.

The end goal of the Salk Institute experiment is to create a source of human organs for transplant. It sounds as altruistic as it does cannibalistic. Ironically, this circles back to Dawkins and his opinion of the Real Presence. To Dawkins, the Real Presence represents a logical black hole; he insinuates smugly that a Church that forbids cannibalism but celebrates the Real Presence is schizophrenic at the very least.

The difference that Dawkins will not or cannot accept, and that I am not the man to convince him of, is that cannibalism requires dead flesh, and the Real Presence is the living God who avails himself to us in the most intimate and real way.

A successful Salk Institute experiment, on the other hand, is contemporary cannibalism, and the flesh it will be creating under pristine and antiseptic conditions will eventually fail, as all flesh is prone to do.

The Salk scientists call these hybrid creations chimeras. One of the meanings of chimera is a thing that is hoped for or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve.

Is the Real Presence easy to understand? I think we all have a lot more in common with both first-century doubters and modern-day evolutionary biologists than we may be willing to admit. And I have been taking it for granted, so thank you, Dawkins, for the challenge to make me look in the mirror (and open my Bible).

If Jesus meant what he said and said what he meant, then we know the Real Presence is no chimera, but rather supernatural evidence that with God, nothing is impossible.

Read more:

Chimeras, Richard Dawkins, and the madness of Catholicism - Angelus News