Category Archives: Atheism

Kawartha Media Group

Atheism, or agnosticism, ends in meaninglessness and despair Kawartha Media Group Atheism, or agnosticism, promise enlightenment and freedom, but followed to their logical conclusions, must end in meaninglessness and despair. To acknowledge the existence and, perhaps inconceivably, the wisdom of God may mean the end of our own ...

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Atheism, or agnosticism, ends in meaninglessness and despair - Kawartha Media Group

For more than a millennium, scholars have noticed a curious correlation: Atheists tend to be more intelligent than religious people.

Its unclear why this trend persists, but researchers of a new study have an idea: Religion is an instinct, they say, and people who can rise above instincts are more intelligent than those who rely on them.

Intelligence in rationally solving problems can be understood as involving overcoming instinct and being intellectually curious and thus open to non-instinctive possibilities, study lead author Edward Dutton, a research fellow at the Ulster Institute for Social Research in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. [Saint or Spiritual Slacker? Test Your Religious Knowledge]

In classical Greece and Rome, it was widely remarked that fools tended to be religious, while the wise were often skeptics, Dutton and his co-author, Dimitri Van der Linden, an assistant professor of psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, wrote in the study.

The ancients werent the only ones to notice this association. Scientists ran a meta-analysis of 63 studies and found that religious people tend to be less intelligent than nonreligious people. The association was stronger among college students and the general public than for those younger than college age, they found. The association was also stronger for religious beliefs, rather than religious behavior, according to the meta-analysis, published in 2013 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.

But why does this association exist? Dutton set out to find answer, thinking that perhaps it was because nonreligious people were more rational than their religious brethren, and thus better able to reason that there was no God, he wrote.

But more recently, I started to wonder if Id got it wrong, actually, Dutton told Live Science. I found evidence that intelligence is positively associated with certain kinds of bias.

For instance, a 2012 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyshowed that college students often get logical answers wrong but dont realize it. This so-called bias blind spot happens when people cannot detect bias, or flaws, within their own thinking. If anything, a larger bias blind spot was associated with higher cognitive ability, the researchers of the 2012 study wrote in the abstract.

One question, for example, asked the students: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The problem isnt intuitive (the answer is not 10 cents), but rather requires students to suppress or evaluatethe first solution that springs into their mind, the researchers wrote in the study. If they do this, they might find the right answer: The ball costs 5 cents, and the bat costs $1.05.

If intelligent people are less likely to perceive their own bias, that means theyre less rational in some respects, Dutton said. So why is intelligence associated with atheism? The answer, he and his colleague suggest, is that religion is an instinct, and it takes intelligence to overcome an instinct, Dutton said. [8 Ways Religion Impacts Your Life]

The religion-is-an-instinct theory is a modified version of an idea developed by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who was not involved in the new study.

Called the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, Kanazawas theory attempts to explain the differences in the behavior and attitudes between intelligent and less intelligent people, said Nathan Cofnas, who is pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom this fall. Cofnas, who specializes in the philosophy of science, was not involved with the new study.

The hypothesis is based on two assumptions, Cofnas told Live Science in an email.

First, that we are psychologically adapted to solve recurrent problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestorsin the African savanna, Cofnas said. Second, that general intelligence (what is measured by IQ tests) evolved to help us deal withnonrecurrentproblems for which we had no evolved psychological adaptations.

The assumptions imply that intelligent people should be better than unintelligent people at dealing with evolutionary novelty situations and entities that did not exist in the ancestral environment, Cofnas said.

Dutton and Van der Linden modified this theory, suggesting that evolutionary novelty is something that opposes evolved instincts.

The approach is an interesting one, but might have firmer standing if the researchers explained exactly what they mean by religious instinct, Cofnas said.

Dutton and Van der Linden propose that, if religion has an instinctual basis, intelligent people will be better able to overcome it and adopt atheism, Cofnas said. But without knowing the precise nature of the religious instinct, we cant rule out the possibility that atheism, or at least some forms of atheism, harness the same instinct(s).

For instance, author Christopher Hitchens thought that communism was a religion; secular movements, such as veganism, appeal to many of the same impulses and possibly instincts that traditional religions do, Cofnas said. Religious and nonreligious movements both rely on faith, identifying with a community of believersand zealotry, he said.

I think its misleading to use the term religion as a slur for whatever you dont like, Cofnas said.

The researchers also examined the link between instinct and stress, emphasizing that people tend to operate on instinct during stressful times, for instance, turning to religion during a near-death experience.

The researchers argue that intelligence helps people rise above these instincts during times of stress. [11 Tips to Lower Stress]

If religion is indeed an evolved domain an instinct then it will become heightened at times of stress, when people are inclined to act instinctively, and there is clear evidence for this, Dutton said. It also means that intelligence allows us to be able to pause and reason through the situation and the possible consequences of our actions.

People who are able to rise above their instincts are likely better problem-solvers, Dutton noted.

Lets say someone had a go at you. Your instinct would be to punch them in the face, Dutton told Live Science. A more intelligent person will be able to stop themselves from doing that, reason it through and better solve the problem, according to what they want.

The study was published May 16 in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science.

Original article on Live Science.

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Why Are Atheists Generally Smarter Than Religious People? - HuffPost

After blaming generational poverty on broken people who dont believe in God, San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor loses her bid for re-election.

ABC reports:

Following a Saturday runoff election, the Alamo City has elected a new mayor into office. Ron Nirenberg garnered 54.59 percent of the votes with 54,010 votes, beating out incumbent Ivy Taylor who obtained 45.41 percent of the votes with 44,919 votes.

Earlier this year, while speaking at a mayoral forum, Mayor Taylor was asked about the deepest systemic cause of generational poverty.

Mayor Taylor replied:

To me, its broken people. People not being in a relationship with their Creator, and therefore, not being in good relationship with their families and their communities, and not being productive members of society. I think thats the ultimate answer

(Watch: San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor claims poverty is caused by broken people who dont believe in God )

In short, Mayor Taylor claims generational poverty is caused by broken people who dont believe in God, essentially making the ludicrous claim that atheism causes poverty.

The mayors remarks about poverty reflect an astonishing and willful ignorance. Perhaps more important, there is something deliberately cruel and profoundly vicious in Taylors attempt to claim the root cause of poverty is people who dont share her religious superstition, and that those individuals who do not share her religious superstition are somehow broken people.

After the election results came in, Taylor conceded the race, telling her supporters:

A majority of the votes have come in. It doesnt look like its going the way that we anticipated this evening. But you know what? I am so grateful to God I am at peace. I am so thankful to God for each and every person in this room, for your support, for your prayers, for being here.

Ron Nirenberg, Taylors opponent, and the new mayor of San Antonio, told his supporters:

Tonight, the voters got it right on a lot of things. Tonight, the voters rejected the politics of division and false choices. And they said yes to a bigger and brighter vision of inclusion, of diversity, of fairness, or respecting each and every person in San Antonio, no matter if you live on the North Side, the South Side, the East Side, the West Side or any place in between. Tonight, the voters said yes to a mayor for all of San Antonio.

Bottom line: Mayor Taylor is an intolerant conservative Christian with no respect for poor people or atheists. Her remarks indicate a callous and insensitive disregard for both. As such, she has no business serving as Mayor of San Antonio.

Atheist Hating San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor (Image via SanAntonio.gov)

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Atheist Hating San Antonio Mayor Loses Re-Election Bid - Patheos (blog)

Photo Credit: ep_jhu / Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

Religion was a major backdrop in the 2016 election. Donald Trump campaigned hard in white Christian America, promising voters that he would essentially turn back the clock to an America when religion and Christians overall were more influential in the country.

This strategy paid off, asthe Washington Postreported: Exit polls show white evangelical voters voted in high numbers for Donald Trump,80-16 percent. Thats the most they have voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 2004.

White evangelicals are the religious group that most identifies with the Republican Party, and 76 percent of them say they are or lean Republican, according to a 2014survey. As a group, white evangelicalsmake upone-fifth of all registered voters and about one-third of all voters who identify with or lean toward the GOP.

So it is no surprise that Trump has quickly moved with anexecutive orderto relax restrictions on thepolitical activitiesof tax-exempt churches in an effort to strengthen the role of religion, in essence working to strengthen the political hand of churches in political campaigns.

Trump playing the conservative religious card is in stark contrast to the role nonbelievers play in American society. Atheists, those who disbelieve in the existence of god, comprise a growing sector of American society. Their numbers are often hidden in polls and generally undercounted because some fear reporting their identity and facing social stigmatization.

There have been various reports showing a marked increase in nonbelievers, including atheists, agnostics and others who do not identify with a religion or say that religion is not important to them. Between 2007 and 2014, the portion of Americans who do not believe in a god grew by over 10 percent, according to astudydone by thePew Research Center. The growing numbers of nonreligious people in the United States are propelled by generational change, asyoung people, who are more likely to be unaffiliated with a religion, reach adulthood and slowly replace their older and more religious counterparts.

A recentstudyby psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle at the University of Kentucky concluded that the number of atheists in the United States exceeds 20 percent with a roughly 0.8 probability. This estimate is more than double the conclusion of the study collected over the telephone by Pew Research Center, which found that approximately 10 percent of Americans dont believe in god and only 3 percent of Americans identify asatheists. This disparity toward what is essentially the same question suggests that people are hesitant to identify themselves as atheists.Furthermore, a study byPRRIin 2016 revealed that more than 30 percent of atheists hide their disbelief from friends and family for fear of disapproval, suggesting that many might find an admission over the telephone similarly difficult.

To obtain accurate results, Gervais and Najle constructed a very subtle test that would remove the stigma around atheism.Using a sample population of 2,000 Americans, they asked respondents to answer true or false to seemingly banal statements such as I am a vegetarian or I own a dog.The control group responded to nine statements while the test group responded to the same nine statements plus an additional oneI do not believe in God.

Participants only had to acknowledge the number of statements that applied to them. They never had to deny believing in god or identifying as an atheist, which omitted any social stigma from the test.

By comparing the responses of the two groups, Gervais and Najle came to their conclusionapproximately 26 percent of Americans are atheists. Assuming the number of vegetarians and dog owners is the same between the two groups, any increase in the test group compared to the control group indicates the number of atheists.

The two psychologists admit that their study is not free of error, but they have undoubtedly proven that previous polls conducted over the telephone or in person have yielded deceptively small numbers.

In fact, another study performed by the Pew Research Center found evidence supporting the existence of social stigma around being openly atheist. Pew found that only a third of Americans feelwarmly toward atheists. Daniel Cox of PRRI wrote in FiveThirtyEight that a third of Americans believe that atheists should be banned frombecoming president, and a similar percent thinks that they should be prohibited from teaching in public schools. With pressure to conform to the dominant religious beliefs, some American atheists choose to hide their beliefs.

In an interview withSlate, Renee Johnson, a single lesbian mother in Point, Texas, said that she would rather have a big L or lesbian written across [her] shirt than a big A or atheist, because people are going to handle it better. Johnson is just one of many who feel uncertain about revealing their nonbelief in a country where religion and spirituality seem like national imperatives.

As the discrepancy between the poll performed by Gervais and Najle compared with previous polls indicates, the role of religion in the daily lives of Americans is becoming increasingly complex. Many polls require respondents to select a single religious identification from a list, which does not allow people to choose multiple answers. By this method, someone cant be Jewish and an atheist or Catholic and atheist. Although its possible to follow a religion for cultural, heritage or spiritual reasonsseparate from a belief in godin previous polls, religion and atheism have been considered mutually exclusive. This method of polling fails to recognize the possibility that religion may be determined by heritage and cultural background, rather than belief; it also presumes one concept of god.

However, ideas of god or spiritual forces are entirely subjective, as indicated in a study byGallup, which found that 89 percent of Americans believe in god, but only about half believe in an anthropomorphic god. The various studies about religion, belief and god exemplify how the United States necessitates having a society that can accept a full range of religious belief and spiritual ambiguity.

While feelings toward atheism are certainly changing60 percent of Americans reportknowingan atheist, which is significantly more than 10 years agothe stigma surrounding people who do not believe in god is continuing to stifle freedom of belief in America. As with his other attempts to turn back the clock in America, President Trumps remark inhis inaugural address about joining all Americans together with thesamealmighty Creator, threatens the intricate and varying histories, beliefs and ways of being that are present in this country.

Anna Sanford is an editorial assistant at AlterNet's office in Berkeley, CA.

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Trump Evangelicals Face Growing Number of 'Hidden Atheists' - AlterNet

When white atheist Islamophobe poster child Bill Maher referred to himself as a house nger in an interview with Senator Ben Sasse, he was not only demeaning black bodies but doing a familiar minstrel danceappropriating a term with deep cultural and historical symbolism in black speech. Maher has prided himself on the kind of f-you outlaw irreverence and establishment-bashing that only a cis-het white male with the reward of a multi-million dollar HBO contract can enjoy without censure. Supposedly docile and less black, HNs have been characterized as complicit with white massa; a distortion that erases the painful history of black female domestic slaves who were often subject to rape and other forms of ritualized violence in the so-called plantation Big House.

Mahers racist vitriol is not new to atheists and humanists of color who have long pushed back against the unapologetic Islamophobia, Eurocentrism and misogyny of him and his fellow alpha males Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. His identity as an atheist is relevant to this latest flap because hes long been a golden boy of the white New Atheist clique; slobbered over for the dudebro swagger with which hes skewered right wing and liberal sacred cows. This kind of stagecraft pimping black experience has become a hallmark of the dudebro white atheists. In 2013, white atheist You-Tuber Dusty chastised black Christians on being House Negroes and Uncle Toms because of their religious indoctrination and was called out by black atheists like myself and Foxy Jazzabelle. Prior to that, American Atheists trotted out the black enslaved body in a 2012 street billboard campaign to boost its activist cred with a lily white donor base that didnt give a damn about segregated African American communities.

Some are starting to learn. I recently received an outlier email from a white donor to the Black Skeptics Los Angeles First in the Family scholarship fund who acknowledged that his primary mission should be to let humanists and non-believers of color lead without white intervention. This was the recurring theme during a May forum featuring black, feminist, trans and indigenous activists across the religious spectrum at the Humanist Institute in Minneapolis. Ashton Woods, Diane Burkholder, Andrea Jenkins, Desiree Kane and Sincere Kirabo spoke out powerfully on the right to self-determination of people of color in radical, progressive and intersectional movement organizing, and the necessity of getting white folk hell bent on being allies to sit down, shut up and retreat.

This issue of white incursions into intentional, as well as institutionally segregated, spaces of color is magnified by the seismic shift occurring in urban communities of color pushed to the brink by gentrification. As black and brown neighborhoods are increasingly under siege from white homebuyers, developers and speculators, communities of color are in even greater peril. Housing and rental affordability has plummeted, and the unemployment rate for African American youth has continued to skyrocket (with the unemployment rate for black male youth ages 16-24 hovering around 20% as of July 2016, in comparison to approximately 9% for young white males). The malign neglect of neoliberal democratic policies is symbolized by the Obama administrations piecemeal attention to black youth employment under the anemically funded My Brothers Keeper Initiative, which shut out African American girlsbased on the erroneous premise that their status was better than that of black boys. Since his election, Trumps Orwellian misinformation about 59% black unemployment has only fueled the familiar narrative of pathological inner cities overrun with lazy, shiftless violent black men.

Taken in this context, Mahers minstrel-esque appropriation of the term House N is even more infuriating as it implies insider-outsider status within a power structure based on white supremacy. Outsider or outlaw status has been a card frequently played by white atheists fronting as though their non-believer status makes them an oppressed class bereft of race and class privilege. Now, as they bemoan the Trump administrations latest assaults on secular rights and womens rights, more of themas Diane and Desiree noted to the Humanist Institutes mostly white audiencehave become freshly galvanized as freedom fighters and allies when the liberation struggle of people of color was never on the menu before. Mahers use of the black body to front is yet another reminder of why atheist identity politics will always be a sham.

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This Week in White Atheism - HuffPost

For more than a millennium, scholars have noticed a curious correlation: Atheists tend to be more intelligent than religious people.

It's unclear why this trend persists, but researchers of a new study have an idea: Religion is an instinct, they say, and people who can rise above instincts are more intelligent than those who rely on them.

"Intelligence in rationally solving problems can be understood as involving overcoming instinct and being intellectually curious and thus open to non-instinctive possibilities," study lead author Edward Dutton, a research fellow at the Ulster Institute for Social Research in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. [Saint or Spiritual Slacker? Test Your Religious Knowledge]

In classical Greece and Rome, it was widely remarked that "fools" tended to be religious, while the "wise" were often skeptics, Dutton and his co-author, Dimitri Van der Linden, an assistant professor of psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, wrote in the study.

The ancients weren't the only ones to notice this association. Scientists ran a meta-analysis of 63 studies and found that religious people tend to be less intelligent than nonreligious people. The association was stronger among college students and the general public than for those younger than college age, they found. The association was also stronger for religious beliefs, rather than religious behavior, according to the meta-analysis, published in 2013 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review.

But why does this association exist? Dutton set out to find answer, thinking that perhaps it was because nonreligious people were more rational than their religious brethren, and thus better able to reason that there was no God, he wrote.

But "more recently, I started to wonder if I'd got it wrong, actually," Dutton told Live Science. "I found evidence that intelligence is positively associated with certain kinds of bias."

For instance, a 2012 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyshowed that college students often get logical answers wrong but don't realize it. This so-called "bias blind spot" happens when people cannot detect bias, or flaws, within their own thinking. "If anything, a larger bias blind spot was associated with higher cognitive ability," the researchers of the 2012 study wrote in the abstract.

One question, for example, asked the students: "A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?" The problem isn't intuitive (the answer is not 10 cents), but rather requires students to suppress or evaluatethe first solution that springs into their mind, the researchers wrote in the study. If they do this, they might find the right answer: The ball costs 5 cents, and the bat costs $1.05.

If intelligent people are less likely to perceive their own bias, that means they're less rational in some respects, Dutton said. So why is intelligence associated with atheism? The answer, he and his colleague suggest, is that religion is an instinct, and it takes intelligence to overcome an instinct, Dutton said. [8 Ways Religion Impacts Your Life]

The religion-is-an-instinct theory is a modified version of an idea developed by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who was not involved in the new study.

Called the Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, Kanazawa's theory attempts to explain the differences in the behavior and attitudes between intelligent and less intelligent people, said Nathan Cofnas, who is pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom this fall. Cofnas, who specializes in the philosophy of science, was not involved with the new study.

The hypothesis is based on two assumptions, Cofnas told Live Science in an email.

"First, that we are psychologically adapted to solve recurrent problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestorsin the African savanna," Cofnas said. "Second, that 'general intelligence' (what is measured by IQ tests) evolved to help us deal withnonrecurrentproblems for which we had no evolved psychological adaptations."

The assumptions imply that "intelligent people should be better than unintelligent people at dealing with 'evolutionary novelty' situations and entities that did not exist in the ancestral environment," Cofnas said.

Dutton and Van der Linden modified this theory, suggesting that evolutionary novelty is something that opposes evolved instincts.

The approach is an interesting one, but might have firmer standing if the researchers explained exactly what they mean by "religious instinct," Cofnas said.

"Dutton and Van der Linden propose that, if religion has an instinctual basis, intelligent people will be better able to overcome it and adopt atheism," Cofnas said. "But without knowing the precise nature of the 'religious instinct,' we can't rule out the possibility that atheism, or at least some forms of atheism, harness the same instinct(s)."

For instance, author Christopher Hitchens thought that communism was a religion; secular movements, such as veganism, appeal to many of the same impulses and possibly 'instincts' that traditional religions do, Cofnas said. Religious and nonreligious movements both rely on faith, identifying with a community of believersand zealotry, he said.

"I think it's misleading to use the term 'religion' as a slur for whatever you don't like," Cofnas said.

The researchers also examined the link between instinct and stress, emphasizing that people tend to operate on instinct during stressful times, for instance, turning to religion during a near-death experience.

The researchers argue that intelligence helps people rise above these instincts during times of stress. [11 Tips to LowerStress]

"If religion is indeed an evolved domain an instinct then it will become heightened at times of stress, when people are inclined to act instinctively, and there is clear evidence for this," Dutton said. "It also means that intelligence allows us to be able to pause and reason through the situation and the possible consequences of our actions."

People who are able to rise above their instincts are likely better problem-solvers, Dutton noted.

"Let's say someone had a go at you. Your instinct would be to punch them in the face," Dutton told Live Science. "A more intelligent person will be able to stop themselves from doing that, reason it through and better solve the problem, according to what they want."

The study was published May 16 in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science.

Original article on Live Science.

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Why Are Atheists Generally Smarter Than Religious People? - Live Science

The Trouble with Atheism is an hour-long documentary on atheism, presented by Rod Liddle. It aired on Channel 4 in December 2006. The documentary focuses on criticizing atheism, as well as science, for its perceived similarities to religion, as well as arrogance and intolerance. The programme includes interviews with a number of prominent scientists, including atheists Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. It also includes an interview with Ellen Johnson, the president of American Atheists.

Liddle begins the documentary by surveying common criticisms of religion, and particularly antireligious arguments based on the prevalence of religious violence. He argues that the "very stupid human craving for certainty and justification", not religion, is to blame for this violence, and that atheism is becoming just as dogmatic as religion.

In order to support his thesis, Liddle presents numerous examples of actions and words by atheists which he argues are direct parallels of religious attitudes. He characterizes Atkins and Dawkins as "fundamentalist atheists" and "evangelists".

In response to atheistic appeals to science as a superior method for understanding the world than religion, Liddle argues that science itself is akin to religion: "the problem for atheists is that science may not be as far away from religion as you might imagine".

He describes Fermilab, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory focused on particle physics, as a "temple to science", and characterizes Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species as a "sacred text" for atheists.

Continued here:
The Trouble With Atheism - Top Documentary Films

Just because you do not follow a relgion doesn't mean you don't share common values with those who do, Ken Gallinger tells a reader. ( dreamstime )

How is one to conduct themselves at a funeral when one doesnt practice the religion? I am a 55-year-old atheist. I know many elderly people and, as a result, have attended more than the average number of funerals. In the past I went through the motions of standing and sitting when instructed but never sang or participated in any responses. I am at the point now where even that feels wrong; I am not being true to my atheistic beliefs. Is there a right way to handle this?

OK, so Im puzzled. What, exactly, are atheistic beliefs?

Please understand: I ask not as a critic, but as a fellow traveller. Many would describe my own faith as atheistic. I prefer the expression post-theistic but the distinction, as my dad used to say, is the difference between damn and swearing.

So I know first-hand what atheists dont believe. We dont believe that, somewhere in the faraway heavens, there is a being named God who spends his time meddling in human lives, punishing evildoers and getting those he likes off airplanes before they crash. We dont believe that the earth was handmade by a heavenly potter, or that a distant deity decides the winner of the World Series. We also, incidentally, dont believe in unicorns or the Loch Ness monster.

But what do atheists believe? Is there a creed that distinguishes legitimate atheism from, say, lapsed Catholicism, cultural Judaism or secular Islam? If so, Ive never found it.

I do, however, know a few atheists. We dont talk about religion much but, judging by their lives, my atheist friends seem to believe that love is better than hate, relationships are more important than possessions, building up is preferable to tearing down, peace is more noble than war. My atheist friends are, in general, driven by a conviction that the earth is sacred, life is precious, and beauty, joy and hope should be the goals of their lives.

Are those your beliefs? If not, well, youre correct; youll feel uncomfortable in most religious services. You probably should stay home.

But if you do believe these things, you should feel comfortable in almost any religious gathering, funeral or otherwise, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, traditional Spirituality, or whatever. Yes, yes in all of those communities there are a few fundamentalists who will judge your atheism harshly, but setting them aside (which, trust me, is the right response), worship in the worlds main religions celebrates and lifts up exactly the same values that you espouse.

Sure, you may hear some God-language. Big deal; it wont hurt you. You may also hear a poem in which the hills are said to be singing. Or a hymn in which the stars are alive with joy. Someone may read a sacred text that celebrates the wonders of heaven. So what? Thats all poetry, and, viewed as such, its quite lovely.

So go with the flow. Let the music wash over you. Enjoy the poetry. Weep with the passion of a good eulogy. Honest, you wont catch religion just by being in a church; I was in one every day for 45 years and escaped unscathed better for the experience, in fact. And so will you.

Send your questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca

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How should an atheist behave at a religious funeral - Toronto Star

Recently, NASA granted amillion dollars to the Center of Theological Inquiry to study the theological, humanitarian, and social implications in the event that extraterrestrial life isever discovered. It was another reminder of related discussions, over the years, of whether religion could survive the discovery of life on other planets.

I think, though, that the concern is misdirected. The real question is whether atheism could survive.

There are at least two points to consider here. First, God is the Artist of Hidden Beauty. Second, getting mind-staggeringly lucky twice would strongly suggest that something is going on here.

The Artist of Hidden Beauty

In the early 1980s I spent many a fascinatinghour down on my hands and knees in the forest undergrowth, engaged in macrophotography of all sorts of wonderful, tiny things. It occurred to me, about 35 years ago as I was polishing my 65 Ford Custom that God wasnt like us when it came to making things look nice. Ford Motor Corp. only made the sheet metal look nice on the outside where people would see it, but nature was filled with beauty that no one would ever see.

At that moment, the question popped into my head, What about all those possible planets throughout the universe? Amazing plant and animal life on other planets would be exactly what I would expect to see from the One who creates beauty simply for the sake of beauty, even if no human will ever enjoy it. Consideration of alien beings with eternal souls does raise some deeper issues, however space here prevents me from an adequate discussion of this possibility. Suffice it to say that, from my own Christian perspective, plant and animal life on other planets would not be in the least surprising, God being the Artist that He is.

Mind-Staggeringly LuckyTwice?

A friend of mine worked for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and occasionally entertained me with stories of how they would identify and solve cases of lottery fraud. In each case, the tip-off would be something unusually improbable, such as an unusual number ofwins from the same store.

When it comes to the idea that life spontaneously self-assembled itself in the past, thousands of our brightest minds have worked on the problem for over half a century with no prospect of success in the foreseeable future. In fact, the more we learn, the more we realize how difficult the problem is.1 The challenge is three-fold. First, we have to figure out how intelligent scientists can create a simple life form from scratch in the lab. Second, having done it ourselves, we have to see if realistic natural processes can do the same thing. The third problem is vastly more difficult: figure out how the information to build life forms gets encoded in these self-replicating molecules without an intelligent programmer. We are still working on the first problem, with no hint of success on the horizon. That might be significant, right there.

A 2011 article in Scientific American, Pssst! Dont tell the creationists, but scientists dont have a clue how life began, summarized our lack of progress in the lab.2 Of course, there are plenty of scenarios, but creative story-telling should not be confused with doing science, or making scientific discoveries. With regard to thousands of papers published each year in the field of evolution, as Austin Hughes wrote, This vast outpouring of pseudo-Darwinian hype has been genuinely harmful to the credibility of evolutionary biology as a science.3

Evolutionary biologist Eugene Koonin, meanwhile, calculates the probability of a simple replication-translation system, just one key component, to beless than1 chance in 10^1,018 making it unlikely that life will ever spontaneously self-assemble anywhere in the universe.4 His proposed solution is a near-infinite number of universes, something we might call a multiverse of the gaps. My own work, using data from the Protein Family Database, produces results consistent with Koonins estimate.5 Indeed, we would need a vast number of universes all working on the problem to get lucky enough to see life spontaneously assemble itselfin just one of them.

Heres the Point:

The probability of life spontaneously self-assembling anywhere in this universe is mind-staggeringly unlikely; essentially zero. If you are so unquestioningly nave as to believe we just got incredibly lucky, then bless your soul.

If we were to discover extraterrestrial life, however, then we would have had to get mind-staggeringly lucky two times! Like the forensic detectives at the lotteries commission, a thinking person would have to start operating on the well-founded suspicion that something is going on.

On the other hand, the existence of life and beauty elsewhere in the universe is not at all surprising under the hypothesis of a Creator who is the Artist of Hidden Beauty. Indeed, logic dictates the existence of a supernatural creator, as I have shown here,6 and our observations of the universe indicate it was specifically designed to support life.

Conclusion:

The discovery of extraterrestrial life would be the death knell for atheism, at least for the thinking atheist. On the other hand, such a discovery should not be in the least surprising, if there is a supernatural Creator who has designed the universe to support life, and has brought about life and beauty throughout the universe, even if no human ever gets to see it.

References:

(1) The RNA world hypothesis: The worst theory of the early evolution of life (except for all the others),Biology Direct, 2012.

(2) Pssst! Dont tell the creationists, but scientists dont have a clue how life began,Scientific American, 2011.

(3) The origin of adaptive phenotypes,PNAS, 2008.

(4)The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution, Eugene V. Koonin, 2011.

(5) Computing the Best Case Probability of Proteins from actual data, and the falsification of an Essential Prediction of Darwinian Theory, Kirk Durston, Contemplations.

(6) A simple but elegant argument for the existence of God, Kirk Durston,Contemplations.

Photo credit: Kirk Durston.

Cross-posted at Contemplations.

Read the original:
Could Atheism Survive the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life? - Discovery Institute

There were more questions than claps when the DMK in April end announced that the party will desilt water bodies on temple premises. With atheism being a core value of prominent DMK leaders, it came as a surprise when the party chose temples as its place of public service. Barbs came flying from rival political parties including the AIADMK and the BJP. Their target was DMKs working president M K Stalin, who has been criticising the Centre and the state government for neglecting the state. DMK is desilting temple tanks as God has made them to do that work. The party is seeking pava vimochanam (salvation for their sin), said BJP state president Tamilisai Soundararajan a few days ago.

DMK leaders, however, say the party has never propagated atheism and has believers in its fold. Even though many leaders and cadres of the party have followed in the footsteps of Dravidar Kazhagam founder Periyar, they say, their beliefs have never kept them from executing their duties. Many of us are followers of Periyar and thus dont believe in God. But that does not stop us from cleaning temple tanks. It is the governments responsibility to desilt the tanks and as it has failed to execute its duties, as the opposition it is our responsibility to carry out the work, says DMK spokesman and Rajya Sabha member T K S Elangovan.

The party has several believers, both cadres and leaders, who wear sacred ash and kumkum.

Elangovan clarifies that it is not the first time that the party has taken decisions related to temples. The DMK introduced ISO certificate for several temples when it was in power (2009). We also repaired the Tiruvarur temple car (Aazhi ther), the biggest in Tamil Nadu, says Elangovan.

Since April, all 89 MLAs and district secretaries of the party have been involved in desilting temple tanks. Nearly 100 water bodies have been desilted so far. Stalin led the way by inaugurating the desilting of a pond in Kolathur.

Activists have lauded the efforts of the party. DMKs initiative has not come as a surprise as the party did not propagate atheism neither in the past nor now. Several leaders were followers of Periyar but that did not prevent them from having a separate minister for Hindu Religious & Charitable Endowments department, says political analyst Badri Seshadri.

If someone has to oppose DMKs present initiative, it has to be the AIADMK government. But they are silent. Its good that the work is being done so that people living around the tank will be benefited when it rains, he adds.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

More:
When an atheist past didn't deter DMK from cleaning temple ponds - Times of India (blog)