Actually, this is my 2nd, toned-down attempt to reply. Unfortunately, I didn't save the 1st attempt. (In that attempt I pointed out that Hitler was never on the Index.)
Below, the stuff in italics was put online by HP, the 2nd, apparently unsuccessful attempt to reply is in bold italics:
COMMENTER A: I'd just like to point out that the Catholics have never taught in the literalism of the creation story, and have never been against evolution!
COMMENTER B: Correct, except where it comes to what the soul, which Catholics are taught is created separately by god and that the Adam and Eve story is about this creation of the soul and the division this created between animal and human.
Second, is that Catholicism still teaches that man is god's pinnacle, ie the end game of evolution, which evolution clearly states is hogwash.
But, at least theistic evolution is better than creationism and ID.
ME: Hold on a minute, B -- A said Catholics were NEVER "against evolution." Are you going along with that? Has the Church actually been on the scientific cutting edge here -- since Darwin? since Lamarck? I think A is the victim of a Catholic PR campaign. I could be wrong, but I think Catholicism's official embrace of evolution actually goes all the way back to 2009, and still contains a few thoroughly unscientific if's and but's. But you covered some of that by pointing out "that Catholicism still teaches that man is god's pinnacle."
COMMENTER B: Actually it goes back to 1950 which is a surprisingly long time and an encyclical entitled Humani generis. And, let's not forget that Mendel was an Augustinian monk and Lamark was Jesuit educated.
While the RCC didn't exactly accept evolutionary theory until 1950, they never placed On the Origin of Species on their list of prohibited books list, so while there was no official acceptance, there was also no official denial. So, technically A is correct with the caveats I mentioned previously.
ME: The moderation doesn't seem to have liked my first attempt to reply to this, let me try again:
1950, not 2009, I stand corrected. But 1950 still isn't anywhere near the scientific cutting edge. It's more than 20 years after a large segment of the population was dismayed by the result of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee. And it seems that as late as 2009 the position taken in 1950 was still unclear enough to the average Catholic that another official Vatican statement on the matter was necessary. And as you point out, the Catholic characterization of man as the pinnacle of creation is unscientific and in complete disharmony with evolutionary theory. And finally, it is absurd to claim that the Church was never in opposition to an author merely because that author was never on the Index. There are many famous authors who never made it to the Index whom the Church in no way embraces: Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, to name just three.
Showing posts with label huffington post religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label huffington post religion. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Another Theologian Pining For The Good Old Days Before Atheists Became Uppity
John Carlson has taken the occasion of Albert Camus' 100th birthday to complain about horrible the New Atheists are.
As far as I can tell, there's no clear and widely-accepted definition of just who exactly is a New Atheist and who isn't. I'm sure some people consider me to be a New Atheist, although I don't consider myself one. If stridency is the only criterium then I may be one. Stridency is not necessarily a good thing, but I'd much rather my statements were strident and accurate than mild and vapid. In any case, I don't know of many things more likely to unite atheists, New and not, in opposition, than articles like this one. (Which is so typical of the contributions of the Huffington Post on the subject of atheism, so familiar, that I was quite surprised when I checked Carlson's author bio and found that this is his very first piece for the Huffington Post.) One of the things that's particularly annoying is the assertion that an atheist who is now dead would've been on the author's side and not on the side of these horrible atheists these days, and because Camus is dead he of course cannot contradict the author. Get a living atheist to say that he thinks you write great stuff, and then maybe I'll be impressed. Maybe. It would of course depend on which living atheist it was, among other things. There are some atheists, * cough cough, Huffington Post regular Chris Stedman, cough cough *, who have made careers around ostensibly representing atheists, when what they really do for a living is suck up to powerful religious leaders, and who are therefore very unpopular with the atheists they supposedly represent. Including this one.
And although Carlson may be right in his depiction of Camus as an avowed atheist who was particularly considerate and kind and gentle and conciliatory in his statements to believers, his suggestion that Camus was typical in this way of atheists of his time, and that stridency and open hostility to religion were invented by the New Atheists, is absurd. Even for a theologian. Hobbes and Spinoza and Hume and Gibbon and Marx and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Camus' good friend Sartre were all outrageous on the subject of religion, they all outraged their religious contemporaries. On purpose. We can debate the ways in which Camus' overt friendliness to religious believers may have been good or bad; but there is no denying that it made him unusual among the publicly-avowed atheists in Christendom in the past few centuries. Which is as long as we've been allowed to be publicly-avowed atheists. Which is just one of a bunch of perfectly good reasons for us to be pissed off in general and impatient with theologians in particular and occasionally impolite. In short, Carlson's "longing for the old atheism" is another case of nostalgia being a longing for something which never existed, as nostalgia is roughly 100% of the time.
Hope this isn't confusing to those of my readers who are used to me bashing New Atheists. Don't worry, I'll get back to them. But not today. A theologian pontificating in general terms about atheism makes me feel a temporary solidarity with almost all other atheists just about every single time. Except of course for a few jerks such as the aforementioned Chris Stedman.
As far as I can tell, there's no clear and widely-accepted definition of just who exactly is a New Atheist and who isn't. I'm sure some people consider me to be a New Atheist, although I don't consider myself one. If stridency is the only criterium then I may be one. Stridency is not necessarily a good thing, but I'd much rather my statements were strident and accurate than mild and vapid. In any case, I don't know of many things more likely to unite atheists, New and not, in opposition, than articles like this one. (Which is so typical of the contributions of the Huffington Post on the subject of atheism, so familiar, that I was quite surprised when I checked Carlson's author bio and found that this is his very first piece for the Huffington Post.) One of the things that's particularly annoying is the assertion that an atheist who is now dead would've been on the author's side and not on the side of these horrible atheists these days, and because Camus is dead he of course cannot contradict the author. Get a living atheist to say that he thinks you write great stuff, and then maybe I'll be impressed. Maybe. It would of course depend on which living atheist it was, among other things. There are some atheists, * cough cough, Huffington Post regular Chris Stedman, cough cough *, who have made careers around ostensibly representing atheists, when what they really do for a living is suck up to powerful religious leaders, and who are therefore very unpopular with the atheists they supposedly represent. Including this one.
And although Carlson may be right in his depiction of Camus as an avowed atheist who was particularly considerate and kind and gentle and conciliatory in his statements to believers, his suggestion that Camus was typical in this way of atheists of his time, and that stridency and open hostility to religion were invented by the New Atheists, is absurd. Even for a theologian. Hobbes and Spinoza and Hume and Gibbon and Marx and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Camus' good friend Sartre were all outrageous on the subject of religion, they all outraged their religious contemporaries. On purpose. We can debate the ways in which Camus' overt friendliness to religious believers may have been good or bad; but there is no denying that it made him unusual among the publicly-avowed atheists in Christendom in the past few centuries. Which is as long as we've been allowed to be publicly-avowed atheists. Which is just one of a bunch of perfectly good reasons for us to be pissed off in general and impatient with theologians in particular and occasionally impolite. In short, Carlson's "longing for the old atheism" is another case of nostalgia being a longing for something which never existed, as nostalgia is roughly 100% of the time.
Hope this isn't confusing to those of my readers who are used to me bashing New Atheists. Don't worry, I'll get back to them. But not today. A theologian pontificating in general terms about atheism makes me feel a temporary solidarity with almost all other atheists just about every single time. Except of course for a few jerks such as the aforementioned Chris Stedman.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Pub Theology
A ridiculous person named Bryan Berghoef has published a few ridiculous articles on that ridiculous presence (on which I spend a ridiculous amount of time), the Huffington Post, plugging his ridiculous career, pub theology. His latest ridiculous effort is entitled "Pub Theology Is a Waste of Time," and he's right, or, that is to say, he would be right except that he is speaking ironically. In this article he erects an amazing number of small flimsy straw men, a collection of objections to his calling of pub theology which I simply don't believe exists apart from his imagination and this article, in order to deftly knock each one down.
Except that he's not really so deft. Take the following example, with which I wouldn't even be bothering you if the Huffington Post moderation had not rejected several perfectly reasonable and mild attempts of mine (Over there, I didn't even use the word "ridiculous"! Not once!) to address it. As my regular readers well know, I WON'T be IGNORED:
"I've heard some criticism along these lines, and I've had some of these thoughts myself. Pub theology -- gathering with folks to talk about life over beer -- is nice. But isn't it time to start doing some things that really matter? Isn't it just dressing up a relic without really changing anything?"
Hæc locutus est Atriummontem! Leaving aside for the moment the imaginary nature of this criticism -- which Mountaincourt advances in order to distract from real critics. Like me. With the craven assistance of his tools, the Huffington Post moderation -- Corte de Montaña here clumsily attempts to disguise his ware, theology.
Mmwahaha! Nice try, Corte de la Montagna, not! Gathering to talk about life is not theology. Theology is the study of God. Life exists. God doesn't. By defending all sorts of things in this article, normal, everyday, healthy, non-ridiculous things, falsely defending them because no one has assailed them, you are attempting to smuggle theology, theological nonsense and doubletalk and confusion, in among all of these normal everyday inoffensive things. And you're fooling me about as much as those green night-vision filters on the camera lenses make me think there really are ghosts on "Ghost Adventures," and about as much as I've been swindled into thinking that the talking heads on "Ancient Aliens" are world-renowned scientists. And if I ever meet you in a pub, Cour de la Montagne, I'll say so to your ridiculous face, in which I might also just laugh, and your big strong moderators won't be there to muzzle me!
Except that he's not really so deft. Take the following example, with which I wouldn't even be bothering you if the Huffington Post moderation had not rejected several perfectly reasonable and mild attempts of mine (Over there, I didn't even use the word "ridiculous"! Not once!) to address it. As my regular readers well know, I WON'T be IGNORED:
"I've heard some criticism along these lines, and I've had some of these thoughts myself. Pub theology -- gathering with folks to talk about life over beer -- is nice. But isn't it time to start doing some things that really matter? Isn't it just dressing up a relic without really changing anything?"
Hæc locutus est Atriummontem! Leaving aside for the moment the imaginary nature of this criticism -- which Mountaincourt advances in order to distract from real critics. Like me. With the craven assistance of his tools, the Huffington Post moderation -- Corte de Montaña here clumsily attempts to disguise his ware, theology.
Mmwahaha! Nice try, Corte de la Montagna, not! Gathering to talk about life is not theology. Theology is the study of God. Life exists. God doesn't. By defending all sorts of things in this article, normal, everyday, healthy, non-ridiculous things, falsely defending them because no one has assailed them, you are attempting to smuggle theology, theological nonsense and doubletalk and confusion, in among all of these normal everyday inoffensive things. And you're fooling me about as much as those green night-vision filters on the camera lenses make me think there really are ghosts on "Ghost Adventures," and about as much as I've been swindled into thinking that the talking heads on "Ancient Aliens" are world-renowned scientists. And if I ever meet you in a pub, Cour de la Montagne, I'll say so to your ridiculous face, in which I might also just laugh, and your big strong moderators won't be there to muzzle me!
Sunday, October 27, 2013
The Following Is All Pretty Simple And Basic
Good and bad are relative. Not just that one and the same action is good for one person and bad for another: not just that these rural families were put onto the electrical grid and the cost of those losing their homes forever because now those homes lie at the bottom of the lake made by the dam which is producing that energy. Not that this electrification was all good or all bad for any one particular person, either: a person displaced by the dam may find it to have been both good and bad for him because he misses his own home, but he thrives in the city to which he has been relocated in a way he doesn't think he ever could have done back home. (Not that he knows for sure.) One thing can be both good and bad for the same person.
To stick with rural families and water: the same unexpected rain which cancels the Sunday baseball game for which Bob had bought tickets and driven his family quite a long way into town, an outing they had been planning for months, and they won't be able to attend the Monday doubleheader with which the team is making up for the rain-out to some its fans, but the same unexpected rain from the same storm might save Bob's parched crops, and allow him to keep his farm and head off the foreclosure, from the sadness of which he had been trying to distract his family with the outing to the city and the Sunday ballgame.
The heedless bicyclist on the sidewalk might knock me down and break my arm. Very bad for me, but it might be that at that moment I had been a very heedless pedestrian, all up in my head, concerned with moral relativity instead of traffic, muttering to myself and gesticulating angrily at theologians who weren't present instead of watching where I was going, and so the heedless cyclist, who knocked me down because I wasn't paying enough attention to jump out of his way, might have been the only thing which prevented me from stepping off of the curb and into the path of a speeding bus which would've killed me. In which case it's very good that the bicyclist knocked me down and broke my arm. Regardless of whether the cyclist or I ever had any idea that the accident which happened had prevented a worse one.
In short, reality is much too complex for concepts such as sin to do it any justice. And that's very plain to see. But wait, saying that it's simple and plain to see may be an oversimplification. It's plain for me to see because I've read authors such a s Nietzsche. Nietzsche made the case for moral relativity in a very sound and convincing manner, and I've been pondering what he wrote for over a decade and a half. During that same decade and a half your attention on the subject of morality may have been held by smug Anglican morons like GK Chesterton and CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and Francis Spufford, whose minds are as soft and sluggish as their bodies. Because of your misfortune in reading material, it may really be as unreasonable for me to be annpyed with you and think you're a moron because you haven't got a clue about moral relativism as it is for you to smirk at me because I don't understand your inside jokes about Episcopalian clergy and church services and coffee klatsches and golf courses.
Except of course that it's not unreasonable of me inasmuch as I'm speaking of principles applicable to the entire human race and to much more than that, while your frame of reference is a lilly-white WASP-y version of a nerd-filled comic-book store. The socially-crippled comic book guys won't admit that they're afraid to cross the street and talk to those women who have worked over there in those stores for years now, much the same way that you deny that you're afraid even to think about the implications of the speculations of centuries' worth of the intellectual world getting on with it without you. I'm afraid to talk to women, too, but I cross the street and do it anyway. I act in spite of feeling exactly the same anxiety as the comic-book guys, just the same way that contemplating a random universe with no supernatural Beings caring for me terrifies me, but I contemplate it anyway, because a world based on Leviticus and Matthew and so forth makes just as little sense as a universe in which Superman and Spiderman and so forth are real.
To stick with rural families and water: the same unexpected rain which cancels the Sunday baseball game for which Bob had bought tickets and driven his family quite a long way into town, an outing they had been planning for months, and they won't be able to attend the Monday doubleheader with which the team is making up for the rain-out to some its fans, but the same unexpected rain from the same storm might save Bob's parched crops, and allow him to keep his farm and head off the foreclosure, from the sadness of which he had been trying to distract his family with the outing to the city and the Sunday ballgame.
The heedless bicyclist on the sidewalk might knock me down and break my arm. Very bad for me, but it might be that at that moment I had been a very heedless pedestrian, all up in my head, concerned with moral relativity instead of traffic, muttering to myself and gesticulating angrily at theologians who weren't present instead of watching where I was going, and so the heedless cyclist, who knocked me down because I wasn't paying enough attention to jump out of his way, might have been the only thing which prevented me from stepping off of the curb and into the path of a speeding bus which would've killed me. In which case it's very good that the bicyclist knocked me down and broke my arm. Regardless of whether the cyclist or I ever had any idea that the accident which happened had prevented a worse one.
In short, reality is much too complex for concepts such as sin to do it any justice. And that's very plain to see. But wait, saying that it's simple and plain to see may be an oversimplification. It's plain for me to see because I've read authors such a s Nietzsche. Nietzsche made the case for moral relativity in a very sound and convincing manner, and I've been pondering what he wrote for over a decade and a half. During that same decade and a half your attention on the subject of morality may have been held by smug Anglican morons like GK Chesterton and CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien and Francis Spufford, whose minds are as soft and sluggish as their bodies. Because of your misfortune in reading material, it may really be as unreasonable for me to be annpyed with you and think you're a moron because you haven't got a clue about moral relativism as it is for you to smirk at me because I don't understand your inside jokes about Episcopalian clergy and church services and coffee klatsches and golf courses.
Except of course that it's not unreasonable of me inasmuch as I'm speaking of principles applicable to the entire human race and to much more than that, while your frame of reference is a lilly-white WASP-y version of a nerd-filled comic-book store. The socially-crippled comic book guys won't admit that they're afraid to cross the street and talk to those women who have worked over there in those stores for years now, much the same way that you deny that you're afraid even to think about the implications of the speculations of centuries' worth of the intellectual world getting on with it without you. I'm afraid to talk to women, too, but I cross the street and do it anyway. I act in spite of feeling exactly the same anxiety as the comic-book guys, just the same way that contemplating a random universe with no supernatural Beings caring for me terrifies me, but I contemplate it anyway, because a world based on Leviticus and Matthew and so forth makes just as little sense as a universe in which Superman and Spiderman and so forth are real.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
They Put It Back
I've never seen anything like this: yesterday a comment of mine on Huffington Post was deleted for "violating Huffington Post's guidelines," and this morning it has re-appeared. In the meantime the replies to my comment, and the replies to those replies, remained on the website, which was also a bit strange. In a blog post yesterday I attempted to give the gist of my offending comment from memory. The comment which prompted one reader to call me "as bad as the fundies[...]a jerk, as ugly as a fundy[...]as repulsive as a fundy[...]You hurt, not help the liberal cause[...]You are an embarrassment to our side. My wish is for you and Pat Dobson to be stranded on a remote island together for the rest of your lives." and another to declare, "[...]how dare you tell me what to think and what to feel. If I wanted that, I'd go to a fundamentalist church." Now that my original comment is back, I can give it to you word-for-word in all of its gruesome, unbearable ruthlessness, or whatever it was which upset some people -- which I wrote in response to this article by David Michael McFarlane, whose gist is summed up very well in its title, "Christians, Can We Drop This 'Creationism' Thing Already?" Here comes my deleted and now resurrected comment. Clutch your pearls:
"How about if you just drop the whole "Christianity" thing, already? You religious moderates spend so much time and energy insisting how completely different you are from the fundies, but you still believe in God, a God who sent his Son to Earth to be a human sacrifice to save the world from Himself. As long as people believe all of that, some of them will still go the rest of the way and believe the parts you don't like anymore. It's not such a long distance from your beliefs to theirs. It's NOT."
That sort of talk, apparently, is repulsive, a disastrous disgrace to liberalism, an attempt to control the thoughts and feelings of others, and who the Hell is Pat Dobson anyway? The only Pat Dobson I can find was a Major Laegue Baseball player decades ago, has been dead for a few years and didn't seem to be well-known for either his religious views or his views on religion. You know what? I bet the guy meant to say "Pat Robertson," and was in such a towering rage that he typo'd "Robertson" down to "Dobson."
I'm biased, of course, but I don't think my comment is extraordinarily atrocious or repulsive. I think what happened is that I hit a nail on a head, hit a few religious moderates square athwart a big subconscious blind spot. Having some denial deftly ripped away can be quite traumatic.
"How about if you just drop the whole "Christianity" thing, already? You religious moderates spend so much time and energy insisting how completely different you are from the fundies, but you still believe in God, a God who sent his Son to Earth to be a human sacrifice to save the world from Himself. As long as people believe all of that, some of them will still go the rest of the way and believe the parts you don't like anymore. It's not such a long distance from your beliefs to theirs. It's NOT."
That sort of talk, apparently, is repulsive, a disastrous disgrace to liberalism, an attempt to control the thoughts and feelings of others, and who the Hell is Pat Dobson anyway? The only Pat Dobson I can find was a Major Laegue Baseball player decades ago, has been dead for a few years and didn't seem to be well-known for either his religious views or his views on religion. You know what? I bet the guy meant to say "Pat Robertson," and was in such a towering rage that he typo'd "Robertson" down to "Dobson."
I'm biased, of course, but I don't think my comment is extraordinarily atrocious or repulsive. I think what happened is that I hit a nail on a head, hit a few religious moderates square athwart a big subconscious blind spot. Having some denial deftly ripped away can be quite traumatic.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Immoderate Huffington Post Moderation
As I have mentioned before, I suspect that some HP readers have attained Community Moderator status, with the power to remove comments by other readers, and are busily demonstrating that Community Moderators are a bad idea, because they have attained that status by spending all of their time on HP, and not by being possessed of moderation or good judgement. (Indeed, spending all day every day on HP is a much surer indication that someone is NOT particularly well-balanced or wise.) (Yes, I am aware that I'm venturing into throwing-stones-in-my-glass-house territory here. But it's really not all day every day in my case.)
A comment of mine appeared this morning, in response to this article by David Michael McFarlane, entitled "Christians, Can We Drop This 'Creationism' Thing Already?" In the removed comment I took McFarlane and other moderate Christians to task for the absurdity of his attack on fundamentalists for their creationism, while they still believe in God, and Jesus, and the Immaculate conception, and the Resurrection, and so forth. I know, not all moderate Christians believe in the Immaculate conception or the Resurrection, but those whose do are not assailed for these beliefs by their fellow moderates, while the fundies are constantly assailed for rejecting evolution. My contention in the removed comment was that the moderates believe much of the superstitious nonsense in the Bible and are attacking the literalists for believing other superstitious nonsense, and that the distance between them and the fundies is not so great at all. I also said that I reject their portrayal of themselves, of the religiously moderate, as the true enlightened sages of our time, and of atheists and fundies as closely resembling each other, raving fanatics on either side of the calm, wise, moderate middle. Why not just drop Christianity altogether? I asked them, and bringing it to such a fine point seems to have enraged a few people. I wonder whether they were thrown into a similar rage by Rev Lovejoy talking about a cult, and saying something to the effect that it was
"[...] a bunch of mumbo-jumbo designed to separate fools from their money. And now, let's sing the 'Doxology' twenty-three times while we pass the collection plate."
And now my comment has been disappeared for "violating Huffington Post's comments guidelines."
Perhaps I should just be grateful. It may be slightly less pointless for me to write here in my blog than to write comments on HP, even if I'm writing here about the little goldfish-bowl world of HP comments. The removal made me angry, and as the Clash sang, "anger can be power." It can energize you.
A comment of mine appeared this morning, in response to this article by David Michael McFarlane, entitled "Christians, Can We Drop This 'Creationism' Thing Already?" In the removed comment I took McFarlane and other moderate Christians to task for the absurdity of his attack on fundamentalists for their creationism, while they still believe in God, and Jesus, and the Immaculate conception, and the Resurrection, and so forth. I know, not all moderate Christians believe in the Immaculate conception or the Resurrection, but those whose do are not assailed for these beliefs by their fellow moderates, while the fundies are constantly assailed for rejecting evolution. My contention in the removed comment was that the moderates believe much of the superstitious nonsense in the Bible and are attacking the literalists for believing other superstitious nonsense, and that the distance between them and the fundies is not so great at all. I also said that I reject their portrayal of themselves, of the religiously moderate, as the true enlightened sages of our time, and of atheists and fundies as closely resembling each other, raving fanatics on either side of the calm, wise, moderate middle. Why not just drop Christianity altogether? I asked them, and bringing it to such a fine point seems to have enraged a few people. I wonder whether they were thrown into a similar rage by Rev Lovejoy talking about a cult, and saying something to the effect that it was
"[...] a bunch of mumbo-jumbo designed to separate fools from their money. And now, let's sing the 'Doxology' twenty-three times while we pass the collection plate."
And now my comment has been disappeared for "violating Huffington Post's comments guidelines."
Perhaps I should just be grateful. It may be slightly less pointless for me to write here in my blog than to write comments on HP, even if I'm writing here about the little goldfish-bowl world of HP comments. The removal made me angry, and as the Clash sang, "anger can be power." It can energize you.
James Tabor Continues To Make A Fool Of Himself
Another sensationalistic headline in Huffington Post Religion: Bathtub Unearthed In Jerusalem May Have Belonged To One Of Jesus' Enemies (PHOTOS). Another headshake-inducing interview with Professor James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, infamous for suggesting that the "James Ossuary" once held the bones of the brother of Jesus Christ and giving some undeserved appearance of credibility to that charlatan and non-archaeologist, the Naked Archaeologist.
You really ought to expect this sort of thing from HP. It is what it is and its standards are what they are: pretty low. More, quite a bit more is usually to be expected from a full professor and department head at a major university, even if it is only the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Charlotte.
(Did Tabor very simply agree to say a certain amount of nonsensical things in exchange for a suitcase full of cash from the Naked Archaeologist? It wouldn't surprise me, and in a way it would be much less sad than if he really has lost his grip on certain realities.)
If HP didn't put "Jesus" in the headline they wouldn't get all these clicks from people who don't know or care about archaeology or ancient history and just want to argue about religion. ("Jesus is a myth." "Stay tuned... rumor has it Pontius Pilates' toilet has been excavated in the neighboring house." "I thought Jesus didn't have any enemies. You know, because he loved everybody right?" 3 actual posts, 3 of the 1st ones, quoted in their entirety. Oh, ha ha ha. Hee hee heee. Ho. Ho. Ho.) Tabor, a professor of Religious Studies, ought to be a bit more disciplined with his statements, but his own words give him away: ""From what we get in the Gospel, the Sadducees, or the aristocratic priestly class, they were [...]" etc etc. He begins by assuming the accuracy of Bible passages, and then trying to make the archaeological evidence for them. It should be closer to the other way around. I'm not saying that the Bible should be disregarded altogether when investigating history. Of course not. People who declare, "The Bible is fiction," and then stand there like they think they've said something profound which is all that needs to be said on the subject of the Bible and history, are clowns, every bit as silly as anyone else.
We possess a few different written sources on the history of Western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries. Not very many, but more than one, from independent sources, and so we can compare them with each other. If the Nibelungenlied were the only one we had, it would be tremendously important for the study of that history. (It's not entirely without importance as it is.) Analogously, the Bible, because it is the only written source we now possess for many episodes of history, is of tremendous historical significance.
But of course we can't read any piece of writing uncritically, whether it's the Iliad or Genesis or the Gospels or Gregory of Tours or Beowulf or the Nibelungenlied or Edward Gibbon or even The Wrong Monkey. It may be that the Gospel portrait of the Sadducees is accurate. But Tabor well knows that the Gospels were written by enemies of the Sadducees, and that enemies in all times and places have had a tendency to be unfair to one another, and that in ancient writings, by and large, this tendency was quite strong, and that the authors of the Gospels were not an exception to this rule.
Or at least he ought to know all of this very well, and constantly keep it in mind when sifting through texts such as the Gospels and wondering what parts of them might be true or partly true.
And he ought to make all of this especially crystal-clear when talking in an interview to be used in a piece of news presented to a lay audience. When referring to Gospel accounts of the Sadducees, a warning to take possible bias into account ought to be the first thing out of an expert's mouth. Communicating things like that are a very important part of Tabor's job, and he hasn't been doing it. His standards should be much higher than those of some outlets like the Huffington Post, and lately, they haven't been. Great for sensationalism, terrible for the advancement of learning. In a typical piece about archaeology in the Huffington Post or USA Today, it can be pointed out that the sensationalistic headline doesn't actually reflect what the expert is quoted as saying. Tabor is supposed to be the expert here. The grown-up, the authority. He's anything but these days, but he worked his way up to his current position by behaving in quite a different manner, and tenure is a bitch.
You really ought to expect this sort of thing from HP. It is what it is and its standards are what they are: pretty low. More, quite a bit more is usually to be expected from a full professor and department head at a major university, even if it is only the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Charlotte.
(Did Tabor very simply agree to say a certain amount of nonsensical things in exchange for a suitcase full of cash from the Naked Archaeologist? It wouldn't surprise me, and in a way it would be much less sad than if he really has lost his grip on certain realities.)
If HP didn't put "Jesus" in the headline they wouldn't get all these clicks from people who don't know or care about archaeology or ancient history and just want to argue about religion. ("Jesus is a myth." "Stay tuned... rumor has it Pontius Pilates' toilet has been excavated in the neighboring house." "I thought Jesus didn't have any enemies. You know, because he loved everybody right?" 3 actual posts, 3 of the 1st ones, quoted in their entirety. Oh, ha ha ha. Hee hee heee. Ho. Ho. Ho.) Tabor, a professor of Religious Studies, ought to be a bit more disciplined with his statements, but his own words give him away: ""From what we get in the Gospel, the Sadducees, or the aristocratic priestly class, they were [...]" etc etc. He begins by assuming the accuracy of Bible passages, and then trying to make the archaeological evidence for them. It should be closer to the other way around. I'm not saying that the Bible should be disregarded altogether when investigating history. Of course not. People who declare, "The Bible is fiction," and then stand there like they think they've said something profound which is all that needs to be said on the subject of the Bible and history, are clowns, every bit as silly as anyone else.
We possess a few different written sources on the history of Western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries. Not very many, but more than one, from independent sources, and so we can compare them with each other. If the Nibelungenlied were the only one we had, it would be tremendously important for the study of that history. (It's not entirely without importance as it is.) Analogously, the Bible, because it is the only written source we now possess for many episodes of history, is of tremendous historical significance.
But of course we can't read any piece of writing uncritically, whether it's the Iliad or Genesis or the Gospels or Gregory of Tours or Beowulf or the Nibelungenlied or Edward Gibbon or even The Wrong Monkey. It may be that the Gospel portrait of the Sadducees is accurate. But Tabor well knows that the Gospels were written by enemies of the Sadducees, and that enemies in all times and places have had a tendency to be unfair to one another, and that in ancient writings, by and large, this tendency was quite strong, and that the authors of the Gospels were not an exception to this rule.
Or at least he ought to know all of this very well, and constantly keep it in mind when sifting through texts such as the Gospels and wondering what parts of them might be true or partly true.
And he ought to make all of this especially crystal-clear when talking in an interview to be used in a piece of news presented to a lay audience. When referring to Gospel accounts of the Sadducees, a warning to take possible bias into account ought to be the first thing out of an expert's mouth. Communicating things like that are a very important part of Tabor's job, and he hasn't been doing it. His standards should be much higher than those of some outlets like the Huffington Post, and lately, they haven't been. Great for sensationalism, terrible for the advancement of learning. In a typical piece about archaeology in the Huffington Post or USA Today, it can be pointed out that the sensationalistic headline doesn't actually reflect what the expert is quoted as saying. Tabor is supposed to be the expert here. The grown-up, the authority. He's anything but these days, but he worked his way up to his current position by behaving in quite a different manner, and tenure is a bitch.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Just In Case Some Of You Haven't Noticed Yet: Theologians Don't Play Fair
Here are just a few of a countless number of instances:
I think maybe every single one of my comments on Nathan Schneider's non-mind-blowing essay 10 Proofs That Will Change How You Think About God on Huffington Post Religion may have been removed, because of "violations of our guidelines," ie because some holy roller has achieved Community Moderator status. A time-honored Christian approach to inconvenient criticism is to pretend it never existed.
From Aristotle's prime mover to the "endgueltigem Beweis Gottes" Schneider says Hegel was working on at the time of his death -- perhaps it's very good for Hegel's rep that he died when he did -- Schneider's 10-point stroll through thousands of years of Western philosophy resembles a walk through a minefield which the perambulator survives, in that not one of the many bombs of skepticism in Western philosophy was set off by the merest hint of a mention. If one's only source of info about Western philosophy has been Huffington Post Religion -- and I fear that it is some people's only source, and that many have only seen Western philosophy through similarly-filtered lenses -- then one definitely could get the impression that philosophy and theology are synonymous to a great extent.
In any case, the assumption that they are in harmony seems to be very widespread among both theists and atheists. The former love to trot out their favorite quotes from Augustine and Aquinas, they often assume that Spinoza and Einstein were on their side. The atheists generally dispute the subject of Einstein's religious view much too much -- his religious views are unclear, that's about all there is to say about it -- and the case of Spinoza not nearly enough. If they have looked at all at the actual words of Spinoza, they immediately notice all the theological-looking phrases, up to and including the 2nd word in the title of Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,
and often they discard Spinoza long before they have begun to suspect that what looked at first glance like theology could have been camouflage for atheist arguments in the 17th century when plain spoken atheism was not allowed. (The same may also have been true for Descartes, whom Spinoza regarded as the greatest of his immediate predecessors in philosophy, although to assume atheism in Descartes' case is a bit more of a stretch. But even a century after Spinoza, even the plainly-atheist Hume never actually said in so many plain words that he doubted the existence of God.) Just as I myself discarded Spinoza after my first contact with him, and only returned because Nietzsche praises him so often and so highly.
But of course the theists (especially those tedious 21st-century pantheists) cite Spinoza as if he had been perfectly free to say plainly and literally whatever it was that he really thought about the idea of God.
Among other absurdities which theists present with maddening smug stupidity as fact, such as that Biblical literalism was invented in 19th-century America, that fundies have much more in common with atheists than with them, the religious moderates, the truly enlightened, and that the "conflict thesis" has been thoroughly refuted and discredited among historians (How many people who have not read much more theology than is good for anyone have ever even heard of the "conflict thesis"?) is this version of the Western philosophy absent its religious skepticism. Democritus, Lucretius, Seneca (Seneca was an idiot but even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then), Boethius, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Even worse than behaving as if all of these people had never existed, the theists, the theologians often go one disgusting shameless step further and cherry-pick them for quotations to take out of context and make these thinkers seem quite different than the critics of religion (/spirituality, po-TAY-to/po-TAH-to) which they were, just as they cherry-pick Augustine and Aquinas to make them look tolerant and urbane and not like the bloodthirsty Bible-thumpers they were. If you want to learn about the integrity and reliability of a philosopher or theologian, read an entire book by someone they've quoted, and compare the impression you've gotten from that entire book with the impression you got from the citation.
I think maybe every single one of my comments on Nathan Schneider's non-mind-blowing essay 10 Proofs That Will Change How You Think About God on Huffington Post Religion may have been removed, because of "violations of our guidelines," ie because some holy roller has achieved Community Moderator status. A time-honored Christian approach to inconvenient criticism is to pretend it never existed.
From Aristotle's prime mover to the "endgueltigem Beweis Gottes" Schneider says Hegel was working on at the time of his death -- perhaps it's very good for Hegel's rep that he died when he did -- Schneider's 10-point stroll through thousands of years of Western philosophy resembles a walk through a minefield which the perambulator survives, in that not one of the many bombs of skepticism in Western philosophy was set off by the merest hint of a mention. If one's only source of info about Western philosophy has been Huffington Post Religion -- and I fear that it is some people's only source, and that many have only seen Western philosophy through similarly-filtered lenses -- then one definitely could get the impression that philosophy and theology are synonymous to a great extent.
In any case, the assumption that they are in harmony seems to be very widespread among both theists and atheists. The former love to trot out their favorite quotes from Augustine and Aquinas, they often assume that Spinoza and Einstein were on their side. The atheists generally dispute the subject of Einstein's religious view much too much -- his religious views are unclear, that's about all there is to say about it -- and the case of Spinoza not nearly enough. If they have looked at all at the actual words of Spinoza, they immediately notice all the theological-looking phrases, up to and including the 2nd word in the title of Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,
and often they discard Spinoza long before they have begun to suspect that what looked at first glance like theology could have been camouflage for atheist arguments in the 17th century when plain spoken atheism was not allowed. (The same may also have been true for Descartes, whom Spinoza regarded as the greatest of his immediate predecessors in philosophy, although to assume atheism in Descartes' case is a bit more of a stretch. But even a century after Spinoza, even the plainly-atheist Hume never actually said in so many plain words that he doubted the existence of God.) Just as I myself discarded Spinoza after my first contact with him, and only returned because Nietzsche praises him so often and so highly.
But of course the theists (especially those tedious 21st-century pantheists) cite Spinoza as if he had been perfectly free to say plainly and literally whatever it was that he really thought about the idea of God.
Among other absurdities which theists present with maddening smug stupidity as fact, such as that Biblical literalism was invented in 19th-century America, that fundies have much more in common with atheists than with them, the religious moderates, the truly enlightened, and that the "conflict thesis" has been thoroughly refuted and discredited among historians (How many people who have not read much more theology than is good for anyone have ever even heard of the "conflict thesis"?) is this version of the Western philosophy absent its religious skepticism. Democritus, Lucretius, Seneca (Seneca was an idiot but even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then), Boethius, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. Even worse than behaving as if all of these people had never existed, the theists, the theologians often go one disgusting shameless step further and cherry-pick them for quotations to take out of context and make these thinkers seem quite different than the critics of religion (/spirituality, po-TAY-to/po-TAH-to) which they were, just as they cherry-pick Augustine and Aquinas to make them look tolerant and urbane and not like the bloodthirsty Bible-thumpers they were. If you want to learn about the integrity and reliability of a philosopher or theologian, read an entire book by someone they've quoted, and compare the impression you've gotten from that entire book with the impression you got from the citation.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Abraham And Isaac And Religion And Sanity
In HP Religion, James Goodman addresses the Biblical story in which Abraham is commanded by God to make a human sacrifice of his son Isaace, and almost goes through with it, and at the last minute God says, Okay, stop, I was just testing your obedience, we're cool. Goodman reacts with horror to this story -- but not with enough horror. He draws parallels between Abraham's painful situation and tough decisions which must be made in war. He mentions people who have wrestled with this Bible passage (chapter 22 of Genesis), including Kierkegaard
and, according to Goodman, Bob Dylan.
"The ritual sacrifice of a child should and would be universally condemned," Goodman states. (Not really going very far out on a limb there.) But he continues: "But[...]"
But nothing. Goodman's trying to have his cake and eat it too. For one thing, as we can see from many of the comments on Goodman's story, prattling on in a quite unbearable manner about how this horror story of Abraham being commanded to tie his son up, slit his throat and burn his body demonstrates God's perfect and infinite love, anything at all will be far from universally condemned, if it's seen as "God's will." For another thing, there is a difference between human sacrifice and war. Sometimes war is waged in an injust way which is indefensible; and sometimes it is a tragic choice which must be made to oppose injustice. For a third thing, Kierkegaard was sometimes brilliant and sometimes Christian, but never both at the same time. And for a forth thing, in "Highway 61 Revisited" Dylan doesn't portray the story of Abraham and Isaac as a deep and awesome mystery, he doesn't "wrestle" with it. He reacts to it with appropriately unambiguous horror and disgust. He portrays god as a cosmic bully and Abraham as a coward who almost instantly knuckles under to a bully in the most despicable way imaginable. In Dylan's song Abraham is just one more scoundrel in a row of jerks who are described about 1 every 15 seconds.
If Sir James Gearge Frazer
was correct, then nearly every single human civilization has passed through a stage of human sacrifice, and that stage was much more recent in the case of Frazer's beloved Romans than he or other Classicists had thought. He reacted with horror to his discovery that polished and urbane Classical Latin poets lived at the same time as priests and priestesses who made ritual sacrifices of people. I can only think of one way to see Genesis 22 in a positive light: as a story of a people leaving human sacrifice in the past, and in fact in a far more remote past than did, among many others, the Romans.
But of course it is interpreted in quite another way by many practicing Jews and Christians and Muslims. Nauseatingly, they twist the story until it looks (to them) like an illustration of pure perfect cosmic infinite Love. If a head of state demanded that one of his subjects kill his own son to prove his loyalty, no sane person would call it an act of love on the part of the ruler. It would be considered an act of extreme tyranny and grounds to overthrow the ruler. If I were married and my wife demanded that I kill our son to prove my love for her, as long as I could prove she made that demand, not only would I have absolutely no trouble getting a divorce, and custody, and a very strongly-enforced restraining order, but my ex-wife would very likely also spend some time in prison or a hospital for the criminally insane. Not to mention the utter contempt and horror, and criminal prosecution, which that hypothetical subject of a tyrant, or I in that hypothetical marriage, would deserve, if we showed the slightest sign of complying with that despicable request, which Abraham was willing to do. Believers are making ridiculous excuses for their imaginary friend who rules the universe, excuses which they would never make for a real human being. Oh the mental gymnastic believers go through to defend their god.
Imagine if people expended a fraction of that energy to protect other real living breathing human beings.
and, according to Goodman, Bob Dylan."The ritual sacrifice of a child should and would be universally condemned," Goodman states. (Not really going very far out on a limb there.) But he continues: "But[...]"
But nothing. Goodman's trying to have his cake and eat it too. For one thing, as we can see from many of the comments on Goodman's story, prattling on in a quite unbearable manner about how this horror story of Abraham being commanded to tie his son up, slit his throat and burn his body demonstrates God's perfect and infinite love, anything at all will be far from universally condemned, if it's seen as "God's will." For another thing, there is a difference between human sacrifice and war. Sometimes war is waged in an injust way which is indefensible; and sometimes it is a tragic choice which must be made to oppose injustice. For a third thing, Kierkegaard was sometimes brilliant and sometimes Christian, but never both at the same time. And for a forth thing, in "Highway 61 Revisited" Dylan doesn't portray the story of Abraham and Isaac as a deep and awesome mystery, he doesn't "wrestle" with it. He reacts to it with appropriately unambiguous horror and disgust. He portrays god as a cosmic bully and Abraham as a coward who almost instantly knuckles under to a bully in the most despicable way imaginable. In Dylan's song Abraham is just one more scoundrel in a row of jerks who are described about 1 every 15 seconds.
If Sir James Gearge Frazer
was correct, then nearly every single human civilization has passed through a stage of human sacrifice, and that stage was much more recent in the case of Frazer's beloved Romans than he or other Classicists had thought. He reacted with horror to his discovery that polished and urbane Classical Latin poets lived at the same time as priests and priestesses who made ritual sacrifices of people. I can only think of one way to see Genesis 22 in a positive light: as a story of a people leaving human sacrifice in the past, and in fact in a far more remote past than did, among many others, the Romans. But of course it is interpreted in quite another way by many practicing Jews and Christians and Muslims. Nauseatingly, they twist the story until it looks (to them) like an illustration of pure perfect cosmic infinite Love. If a head of state demanded that one of his subjects kill his own son to prove his loyalty, no sane person would call it an act of love on the part of the ruler. It would be considered an act of extreme tyranny and grounds to overthrow the ruler. If I were married and my wife demanded that I kill our son to prove my love for her, as long as I could prove she made that demand, not only would I have absolutely no trouble getting a divorce, and custody, and a very strongly-enforced restraining order, but my ex-wife would very likely also spend some time in prison or a hospital for the criminally insane. Not to mention the utter contempt and horror, and criminal prosecution, which that hypothetical subject of a tyrant, or I in that hypothetical marriage, would deserve, if we showed the slightest sign of complying with that despicable request, which Abraham was willing to do. Believers are making ridiculous excuses for their imaginary friend who rules the universe, excuses which they would never make for a real human being. Oh the mental gymnastic believers go through to defend their god.
Imagine if people expended a fraction of that energy to protect other real living breathing human beings.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
A Fresh Look At Science And Religion (Actually There's Nothing Fresh About It)
Huffington Post has reprinted something written by 14-year-old Nimai Agarwal for the "God" issue of the magazine KidSpirit:
Thinking about these topics has not only strengthened my faith in God, but has also helped me find connections between science and religion, whose seeming opposition [...]
I'm trying to visualize the editors of Huffington Post's Religion section at work. It can't be easy to be them:
"Yes, that "seeming" opposition is so Gosh-darn persistent and omnipresent. What or whom can we blame it on this time? Uhh... Umm... Okay, I got nothin. Oh, wait! I know! We'll publish an essay by a 14-year-old Hindu kid who's into science, and when the usual pains in our euphemisms come around with their usual snark we can accuse them of both picking on kids and being prejudiced against Hindus! 2 for 1! It's brilliant!"
It's really not. This horse has been dead for a long, long time. It's not going to get any fresher by posting something written by a 14-year-old who had been homeschooled until a year previously, for whom things like grade-school Astrophysics 101 and the scientific view of gravity are still new: " Gravity fascinates me very much -- the fact that planets are revolving around each other and that all objects in this world attract each other? Pretty mind-blowing stuff" and who hasn't yet lost his faith.
Ya gotta feel sorry for those editors sometimes. And for that kid too, caught between the rock of his religious home-school background and the hard place of editors for religious publications, obviously anxious to make him a poster boy, on the other. "Being born into a religious family has many advantages, but I've never been challenged to think about the existence of God. I have always taken it for granted." Oh, kid. Those weren't advantages.
Thinking about these topics has not only strengthened my faith in God, but has also helped me find connections between science and religion, whose seeming opposition [...]
I'm trying to visualize the editors of Huffington Post's Religion section at work. It can't be easy to be them:
"Yes, that "seeming" opposition is so Gosh-darn persistent and omnipresent. What or whom can we blame it on this time? Uhh... Umm... Okay, I got nothin. Oh, wait! I know! We'll publish an essay by a 14-year-old Hindu kid who's into science, and when the usual pains in our euphemisms come around with their usual snark we can accuse them of both picking on kids and being prejudiced against Hindus! 2 for 1! It's brilliant!"
It's really not. This horse has been dead for a long, long time. It's not going to get any fresher by posting something written by a 14-year-old who had been homeschooled until a year previously, for whom things like grade-school Astrophysics 101 and the scientific view of gravity are still new: " Gravity fascinates me very much -- the fact that planets are revolving around each other and that all objects in this world attract each other? Pretty mind-blowing stuff" and who hasn't yet lost his faith.
Ya gotta feel sorry for those editors sometimes. And for that kid too, caught between the rock of his religious home-school background and the hard place of editors for religious publications, obviously anxious to make him a poster boy, on the other. "Being born into a religious family has many advantages, but I've never been challenged to think about the existence of God. I have always taken it for granted." Oh, kid. Those weren't advantages.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Moderate THIS, Huffington Post!
Still in the wake of the latest Richard Dawkins-induced brouhaha, a friend of mine responded to someone's assertion that there probably wasn't a Muslim university in the world's top 200 universities. The person asserting this was perpetuating Dawkins' stubborn refusal to face the issue of who does things like hand out Nobel prizes and make lists of the world's best universities, and hey, let's not forget the problematic nature of the phrase "Muslim university." As I say, my friend responded to this assertion, and his comment was judged, by whoever the Hell moderates the comments at Huffington Post these days, to be beyond the pale. Too horrifying to appear on the website. My friend's comment was removed. Here it is, in its entirety. Brace yourselves:
"At least one Muslim country made the top 200."
Wow! I know, right? What a horrible, disgusting thing to say! Who can blame HP for deleting it?
The thing is, this wasn't a one-time glitch. Similar comments posted by this guy are removed so frequently that it doesn't even surprise me any more, just makes me angrier. So why don't I go complain to HP, you ask? I did, and my report that something was wrong got an error message several times in a row. And at least one comment of mine was deleted. (I don't know how many of my comments had been published in the meantime.)
Something is wrong. Another one of my friend's deleted comments reads as follows:
"There is no archaeological evidence of Jesus' existence. There is some historical evidence but it is biased evidence. Other than that there is the Josephus' mention of James. And there is the Pilate Stone with Pontius Pilate's name on it."
That's much, much milder, not to mention more accurate, than many atheist comments which are published every day on HP and which stay up. I copied-and-pasted that last comment into a comment of my own. Later, in a comment which included my entire comment which had included his earlier comment in its entirely, my friend informed me that my comment had also been deleted. They haven't gotten around to deleting that one yet. And the deletions of my friend's comments happen much, much too often to be a coincidence. It's so obviously not a coincidence that I have to wonder whether my comment or comments being deleted is a coincidence. Some childish person (or persons) has been given an HP moderator's buttons and is abusing them maliciously. And/or, those moderating functions have been hacked by trolls. My inability to report this to HP through normal channels would seem to suggest the latter. Whatever. I'm not going to be quiet about this. The thought of being banned from a forum as effed up as this doesn't bother me much. On the other hand the thought that some grown-up at HP might eventually hear me and look into this, the possibility that this might eventually be straightened out, the very thought is sweet.
"At least one Muslim country made the top 200."
Wow! I know, right? What a horrible, disgusting thing to say! Who can blame HP for deleting it?
The thing is, this wasn't a one-time glitch. Similar comments posted by this guy are removed so frequently that it doesn't even surprise me any more, just makes me angrier. So why don't I go complain to HP, you ask? I did, and my report that something was wrong got an error message several times in a row. And at least one comment of mine was deleted. (I don't know how many of my comments had been published in the meantime.)
Something is wrong. Another one of my friend's deleted comments reads as follows:
"There is no archaeological evidence of Jesus' existence. There is some historical evidence but it is biased evidence. Other than that there is the Josephus' mention of James. And there is the Pilate Stone with Pontius Pilate's name on it."
That's much, much milder, not to mention more accurate, than many atheist comments which are published every day on HP and which stay up. I copied-and-pasted that last comment into a comment of my own. Later, in a comment which included my entire comment which had included his earlier comment in its entirely, my friend informed me that my comment had also been deleted. They haven't gotten around to deleting that one yet. And the deletions of my friend's comments happen much, much too often to be a coincidence. It's so obviously not a coincidence that I have to wonder whether my comment or comments being deleted is a coincidence. Some childish person (or persons) has been given an HP moderator's buttons and is abusing them maliciously. And/or, those moderating functions have been hacked by trolls. My inability to report this to HP through normal channels would seem to suggest the latter. Whatever. I'm not going to be quiet about this. The thought of being banned from a forum as effed up as this doesn't bother me much. On the other hand the thought that some grown-up at HP might eventually hear me and look into this, the possibility that this might eventually be straightened out, the very thought is sweet.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Deleted From Huffington Post's Readers' Comments, Reconstructed From Memory
Frank Schaffer writes:
Where is God when a child is shot in Newtown or hung in Auschwitz or killed in an American drone air strike or for that matter dies of cancer? I don't know. There is no answer.
There's a very clear answer, Frank, believers just don't want to hear it: He's all in your heads. People made him up to try to explain things and to help them cope. God is obviously still a great coping mechanism for many people, but science has been explaining things better for a long time now, and coming up with all sorts of ways to solve problems, undreamt of in earlier eras when religion still represented the intellectual cutting edge (thousands of years farther back in the past in my opinion than in yours), problems which therefore don't have to be coped with by means of flights of fancy and escapes from reality. For example: we haven't completely eradicated cancer yet the way we've eradicated many other diseases, but we're getting closer, and in the meantime we're getting better and better at treating it, and we haven't eradicated those other diseases nor made that progress with cancer by praying or interpreting Scripture, we've done it with science. Science, with which religion is still constantly interfering. (Pushing the HP Religion party line that neither fundamentalism nor literalism nor a conflict between religion and science goes back further than the 19th century is a blatant interference with the study of history, as blind and counterproductive as insisting that the world is 6000 years old.)
By the way, HP mods? Deleting perfectly reasonable comments phrased in a civilized manner just because they express points of view at odds with your own does not make HP look modern and enlightened and progressive and tolerant. HP Religion constantly pushes an image of itself as modern, enlightened, progressive, tolerant believers -- plus a couple of token docile atheists -- and it's constantly deleting perfectly reasonable comments. I can see the comments posted by my friends which have been removed. Of course, if which comments are removed is not decided by the moderators' judgement at all but is just a matter of how many flags a comment receives, that would be even worse. That would mean, in effect, that what we have here are not moderated comments at all, but flame wars.
Where is God when a child is shot in Newtown or hung in Auschwitz or killed in an American drone air strike or for that matter dies of cancer? I don't know. There is no answer.
There's a very clear answer, Frank, believers just don't want to hear it: He's all in your heads. People made him up to try to explain things and to help them cope. God is obviously still a great coping mechanism for many people, but science has been explaining things better for a long time now, and coming up with all sorts of ways to solve problems, undreamt of in earlier eras when religion still represented the intellectual cutting edge (thousands of years farther back in the past in my opinion than in yours), problems which therefore don't have to be coped with by means of flights of fancy and escapes from reality. For example: we haven't completely eradicated cancer yet the way we've eradicated many other diseases, but we're getting closer, and in the meantime we're getting better and better at treating it, and we haven't eradicated those other diseases nor made that progress with cancer by praying or interpreting Scripture, we've done it with science. Science, with which religion is still constantly interfering. (Pushing the HP Religion party line that neither fundamentalism nor literalism nor a conflict between religion and science goes back further than the 19th century is a blatant interference with the study of history, as blind and counterproductive as insisting that the world is 6000 years old.)
By the way, HP mods? Deleting perfectly reasonable comments phrased in a civilized manner just because they express points of view at odds with your own does not make HP look modern and enlightened and progressive and tolerant. HP Religion constantly pushes an image of itself as modern, enlightened, progressive, tolerant believers -- plus a couple of token docile atheists -- and it's constantly deleting perfectly reasonable comments. I can see the comments posted by my friends which have been removed. Of course, if which comments are removed is not decided by the moderators' judgement at all but is just a matter of how many flags a comment receives, that would be even worse. That would mean, in effect, that what we have here are not moderated comments at all, but flame wars.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Worship God Or This Homeless Person Will Starve!
1. An article by a theologian lecturing atheists in HP? How refreshing! It's been literally days since I've seen such a thing!
2. In some countries, there are enough shelters and kitchens to house and feed all the homeless, courtesy of the government, as is universal health care, and it's been that way for decades. I'm just saying, some Amurrkins should look around more.
3. Not all atheists are New Atheists. I'd never heard of the capitalized variety before I started hanging around HP Religion, and by sometime last year I realized I'm not one. (I don't say "bronze age" or give anachronistic and inaccurate depictions of ancient and Medieval history often enough.)
4. Much as I would like to believe that religion is sharply declining, I think many people, both atheists and non-, are making much too much of certain polls alleging a sharp decline in religion, because these polls are not distinguishing between atheists, agnostics, and the allegedly "spiritual but not religious," who of course are religious, but currently somewhat disorganized.
5. Schwartz claims that most of the world's religions are based on the "fight for the oppressed and the impoverished." Actually, they're based on theistic beliefs. That fight has always been optional. Articles like yours are manipulative appeals of the send-money-or-this-puppy-will-die variety: "Worship God or this homeless person will starve!" If the priorities of the billions of the world's Christians and Muslims were as Schwartz claims they are, human homelessness would've been thoroughly eradicated long, long ago.
2. In some countries, there are enough shelters and kitchens to house and feed all the homeless, courtesy of the government, as is universal health care, and it's been that way for decades. I'm just saying, some Amurrkins should look around more.
3. Not all atheists are New Atheists. I'd never heard of the capitalized variety before I started hanging around HP Religion, and by sometime last year I realized I'm not one. (I don't say "bronze age" or give anachronistic and inaccurate depictions of ancient and Medieval history often enough.)
4. Much as I would like to believe that religion is sharply declining, I think many people, both atheists and non-, are making much too much of certain polls alleging a sharp decline in religion, because these polls are not distinguishing between atheists, agnostics, and the allegedly "spiritual but not religious," who of course are religious, but currently somewhat disorganized.
5. Schwartz claims that most of the world's religions are based on the "fight for the oppressed and the impoverished." Actually, they're based on theistic beliefs. That fight has always been optional. Articles like yours are manipulative appeals of the send-money-or-this-puppy-will-die variety: "Worship God or this homeless person will starve!" If the priorities of the billions of the world's Christians and Muslims were as Schwartz claims they are, human homelessness would've been thoroughly eradicated long, long ago.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Does The Huffington Post WANT Stupid Readers' Comments From Atheists?
Why would anyone want stupid comments all over their website? Well, it could be that they want to reinforce a stereotype of a certain group -- in this case, the stereotype of atheists making disparaging remarks about the history of religion without knowing that religion well.
The question in the title of this post occurred to me today when I saw that a comment on HP from a friend of mine had been deleted. He's pretty brainy, and regularly points out historical inaccuracies in other readers' comments. As do I. A couple of regular obnoxious know-it-alls we are, if you don't enjoy learning things. And clearly, stupid people don't. (That's why they're stupid.) Sometimes, when my friend or I point out that Constantine actually didn't revise the Bible, or that the development, written or oral, of the Old Testament has not as yet been traced back in time earlier than the Iron Age into the Bronze Age, or that many of the earliest Popes wrote in Greek instead of Latin, or that the status of dhimmi was offered to Zoroastrians as well as to Christians and Jews in Islamic states in earlier eras, or what have you, the person we're addressing, or a third party, will actually thank us, or even ask if we have reading tips for further information on the subject at hand. (Of course we do. How d'you think we got so friggin' smart?) Often, however, the person we're addressing (or a third party) reacts with hostility to our attempt to help. If they are atheists, they often (mistakenly) assume that I and my friends are believers. A couple of hardcore cases don't believe us if we happen to correct them and say that we're atheists. That's right -- they think we're Christians posing as atheists in order to trick them. (Or maybe it's just one, whom I encountered on more than one separate occasion, and whose handle I had not lovingly memorized the first time. I hope it's only one. That this would be a pattern would be quite discouraging.)
Yesterday I corrected one of the popular ahistorical memes concerning the history of religion in another reader's comment. That reader responded by asking me whether I was planning to sacrifice an animal or my first-born child. I said I was commenting in the interest of historical accuracy, with no religious belief and ergo no attempt to proselytize. The other reader only became more hostile and more bizarrely imaginative about me and my intentions, and after a brief to-and-fro I gave up.
Then today I learned of the above-mentioned deleted comment by my learned friend: he had not given up when I had, but replied to the last reply to me by the reader who got very angry at me and my fancy-pants book larnin'. I was very surprised that my friend's comment was deleted, both because it contained information which was, you know -- accurate; and because it was not one bit harsher in tone than the other person's comments, none of which were deleted.
Then I saw this HP article: Too Simple to Be Wrong: Atheism's Bronze-Age Goat Herder Conceit. And that's when I started to wonder whether some individuals who decide what sort of readers' comments on articles in HP Religion will appear on the website, and which won't, have a preference -- maybe subconscious. Maybe not. Maybe the one in certain individuals and the other in others -- for those comments by atheists which reek more of jackassery, all the better to portray atheists as jackasses. I was very disappointed, as soon as I saw the article's headline and read its first paragraph, a quote from Sam Harris, that the time when comments on this particular article were being accepted for consideration had passed, because I wanted to point out that I had repeatedly pointed out in my comments that I realized that the Bible had not been written in the Bronze Age, and that I had never been the slightest bit impressed by Sam Harris, indeed that I cringe when I think that Harris is a leader of the current atheist movement. Then I read the rest of the article and saw that its author also did not seem to realize that the Bible was not a Bronze-Age artifact, but more disappointing that that was the presentation of certain simpleminded attitudes bundled together as "Atheism's Bronze-Age Goat Herder Conceit" and not attributed specifically to certain simpledminded atheist individuals. Those of you who have seen Philadelphia,
please recite along with me:
This is the essence of discrimination: formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics.
That's right, Dawg: that's what the Federal Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 says. I don't ignore the individual merits of religious believers based on their membership in the group of believers. I don't assume that certain characteristics belong to the group of believers. I don't appreciate it when someone formulates an opinion about me based on assumptions they make about a whole group of people. Of course I don't. Nobody appreciates that sort of thing, and nobody should have to put up with it.
And hopefully it goes without saying that I hope that this suspicion that hit me today like a chill down my spine, about HP wanting certain sorts of dumb comments from me because I'm an atheist, so that they can say Hey look how dumb those atheists are, is dead wrong.
PS, May 30: This morning, in a Huffington Post reader's comment, I called another reader "a retard." I'm not at all proud of having said that, and to my great surprise, HP published it. Yet another HP reader commented on this Wrong Monkey blog post by insisting that I'm thinking way too hard about all this, and that the HP moderation is simply "arbitrary and capricious," a phrase which apparently is often used by lawyers.
The question in the title of this post occurred to me today when I saw that a comment on HP from a friend of mine had been deleted. He's pretty brainy, and regularly points out historical inaccuracies in other readers' comments. As do I. A couple of regular obnoxious know-it-alls we are, if you don't enjoy learning things. And clearly, stupid people don't. (That's why they're stupid.) Sometimes, when my friend or I point out that Constantine actually didn't revise the Bible, or that the development, written or oral, of the Old Testament has not as yet been traced back in time earlier than the Iron Age into the Bronze Age, or that many of the earliest Popes wrote in Greek instead of Latin, or that the status of dhimmi was offered to Zoroastrians as well as to Christians and Jews in Islamic states in earlier eras, or what have you, the person we're addressing, or a third party, will actually thank us, or even ask if we have reading tips for further information on the subject at hand. (Of course we do. How d'you think we got so friggin' smart?) Often, however, the person we're addressing (or a third party) reacts with hostility to our attempt to help. If they are atheists, they often (mistakenly) assume that I and my friends are believers. A couple of hardcore cases don't believe us if we happen to correct them and say that we're atheists. That's right -- they think we're Christians posing as atheists in order to trick them. (Or maybe it's just one, whom I encountered on more than one separate occasion, and whose handle I had not lovingly memorized the first time. I hope it's only one. That this would be a pattern would be quite discouraging.)
Yesterday I corrected one of the popular ahistorical memes concerning the history of religion in another reader's comment. That reader responded by asking me whether I was planning to sacrifice an animal or my first-born child. I said I was commenting in the interest of historical accuracy, with no religious belief and ergo no attempt to proselytize. The other reader only became more hostile and more bizarrely imaginative about me and my intentions, and after a brief to-and-fro I gave up.
Then today I learned of the above-mentioned deleted comment by my learned friend: he had not given up when I had, but replied to the last reply to me by the reader who got very angry at me and my fancy-pants book larnin'. I was very surprised that my friend's comment was deleted, both because it contained information which was, you know -- accurate; and because it was not one bit harsher in tone than the other person's comments, none of which were deleted.
Then I saw this HP article: Too Simple to Be Wrong: Atheism's Bronze-Age Goat Herder Conceit. And that's when I started to wonder whether some individuals who decide what sort of readers' comments on articles in HP Religion will appear on the website, and which won't, have a preference -- maybe subconscious. Maybe not. Maybe the one in certain individuals and the other in others -- for those comments by atheists which reek more of jackassery, all the better to portray atheists as jackasses. I was very disappointed, as soon as I saw the article's headline and read its first paragraph, a quote from Sam Harris, that the time when comments on this particular article were being accepted for consideration had passed, because I wanted to point out that I had repeatedly pointed out in my comments that I realized that the Bible had not been written in the Bronze Age, and that I had never been the slightest bit impressed by Sam Harris, indeed that I cringe when I think that Harris is a leader of the current atheist movement. Then I read the rest of the article and saw that its author also did not seem to realize that the Bible was not a Bronze-Age artifact, but more disappointing that that was the presentation of certain simpleminded attitudes bundled together as "Atheism's Bronze-Age Goat Herder Conceit" and not attributed specifically to certain simpledminded atheist individuals. Those of you who have seen Philadelphia,
please recite along with me:This is the essence of discrimination: formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics.
That's right, Dawg: that's what the Federal Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1973 says. I don't ignore the individual merits of religious believers based on their membership in the group of believers. I don't assume that certain characteristics belong to the group of believers. I don't appreciate it when someone formulates an opinion about me based on assumptions they make about a whole group of people. Of course I don't. Nobody appreciates that sort of thing, and nobody should have to put up with it.
And hopefully it goes without saying that I hope that this suspicion that hit me today like a chill down my spine, about HP wanting certain sorts of dumb comments from me because I'm an atheist, so that they can say Hey look how dumb those atheists are, is dead wrong.
PS, May 30: This morning, in a Huffington Post reader's comment, I called another reader "a retard." I'm not at all proud of having said that, and to my great surprise, HP published it. Yet another HP reader commented on this Wrong Monkey blog post by insisting that I'm thinking way too hard about all this, and that the HP moderation is simply "arbitrary and capricious," a phrase which apparently is often used by lawyers.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Trust Me, There Are Trees in Forests
The Huffington Post is at it again, attacking "the idea that there is a conflict between religion and science." Alan Lurie, in his usual passive-aggressive way, admits the idea that such a conflict exists "is often presented by well-intended, educated individuals;" nevertheless, "the idea that religion has historically been opposed to science is simply an erroneous and unsupported construct that was created in the late 19th century, primarily as an anti-Catholic polemic. And it is an idea that all (yes, all) knowledgeable historians categorically reject."
I'll just bet that Lurie has a foolproof method for determining just exactly who is and who is not a "knowledgeable historian."
It's so absurd. Lurie is in effect categorically denying that there are any trees in forests, and claiming that all competent specialists in such matters agree with him. I think it's time to take a survey of tenured professors in History departments at leading universities and ask what they think of this. I think many of them might be quite surprised that people publishing in such a prominent outlet of the Huffington Post are asserting that "the idea" of a conflict between science and religion is "an erroneous and unsupported construct." As opposed to a fact of life known to just about everyone who's half-educated or better. How to go about proving that there are trees in forests? One obvious response to Lurie didn't occur to me for a while: the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. For many people -- for instance, me -- the very existence of the Index is a refutation of Lurie's thesis, as if a refutation were necessary. Forbidding people to read certain texts is the opposite of the freedom of thought which is an essential part of the conditions necessary in order for science to thrive. (But who even needs to be told such things? Well, Lurie needs to have such things pointed out to him, apparently, as do many of his colleague at Huffington Post Religion. Many, or most, or actually all of them. Can you imagine such a state of affairs?) In case some people actually need a little more, let me just provide the names of some people who have been on the Index: Maimonides. Johannes Scotus Eriugena. Copernicus. Bruno. Kepler. Francis Bacon. Galileo. Descartes. Hume. Kant. Erasmus Darwin. Comte.
Of course, I'm not actually addressing Lurie or his colleagues. I've pretty much given up on them on this point. In order to have arrived at such a position, they have had to be thoroughly immune to reason or plain fact concerning this point. I don't know how to debate such belief. All I can do is denounce it to third parties who might have been in danger of taking these guys seriously. Lurie writes:
"Over most of its existence, in fact, the Catholic Church was the center of open scientific investigation, supporting mathematicians, physicists, botanists and astronomers."
That's one way of putting it. Another way, of course, would be: between late antiquity and the Reformation, all Western European institutions of learning were controlled by the Catholic Church, and anyone who wanted to be a mathematician, physicist, botanist or astronomer had to do it on the Church's terms. Not that Protestants and Protestant institutions of learning have been consistently more pro-science: they've been sometimes more pro-science, sometimes less than Catholics, and they've always presented much less of a unity in this regard, as in others, than the Catholics. And of course the assertion that stating that religion and science are in conflict reflects anti-Catholic bigotry is another red herring: there are anti-Catholic bigots, and they may chime in against the picture of the Catholic Church in harmony with science, but that doesn't mean you have to be a bigot in order to point out that the picture is inaccurate.
And speaking of inaccurate pictues: Lurie writes: "the popular image of Galileo brought to trial in chains to face a sadistic Inquisition, where he uttered his defiant statement 'but it moves,' before being thrown into the papal dungeon, is a dramatic 19th century fabrication" This is not the first time I've read this business about chains and a dungeon in an article in Huffington Post Religion. Only problem is, I don't know who's asserting that Galileo was put in chains and thrown into a dungeon. I thought most everybody knew that Galileo was politely threatened with torture (which Lurie doesn't mention), recanted some of his scientific theories (which Lurie doesn't mention), spent the rest of his life under house arrest, during which time he wrote his magnum opus, which reversed the recantations (which Lurie doesn't mention) and was smuggled into Holland after his death, where, unlike in Italy at the time, it could be published (which Lurie doesn't mention).
This article is a perfect example of why you need to know your sources, know how reliable they are, and not simply trust someone because they're published in the Huffington Post, or TIME magazine -- or anywhere at all -- or because they're on PBS talking to Bill Moyers, and why ideally you'll familiarize yourself with the primary documants in the original languages, as well as knowing something about the people who edited those documents -- if you don't bypass the editions and go straight to the manuscripts.
Or, of course, if that's too much bother, you could simply trust me, hehe.
I'll just bet that Lurie has a foolproof method for determining just exactly who is and who is not a "knowledgeable historian."
It's so absurd. Lurie is in effect categorically denying that there are any trees in forests, and claiming that all competent specialists in such matters agree with him. I think it's time to take a survey of tenured professors in History departments at leading universities and ask what they think of this. I think many of them might be quite surprised that people publishing in such a prominent outlet of the Huffington Post are asserting that "the idea" of a conflict between science and religion is "an erroneous and unsupported construct." As opposed to a fact of life known to just about everyone who's half-educated or better. How to go about proving that there are trees in forests? One obvious response to Lurie didn't occur to me for a while: the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. For many people -- for instance, me -- the very existence of the Index is a refutation of Lurie's thesis, as if a refutation were necessary. Forbidding people to read certain texts is the opposite of the freedom of thought which is an essential part of the conditions necessary in order for science to thrive. (But who even needs to be told such things? Well, Lurie needs to have such things pointed out to him, apparently, as do many of his colleague at Huffington Post Religion. Many, or most, or actually all of them. Can you imagine such a state of affairs?) In case some people actually need a little more, let me just provide the names of some people who have been on the Index: Maimonides. Johannes Scotus Eriugena. Copernicus. Bruno. Kepler. Francis Bacon. Galileo. Descartes. Hume. Kant. Erasmus Darwin. Comte.
Of course, I'm not actually addressing Lurie or his colleagues. I've pretty much given up on them on this point. In order to have arrived at such a position, they have had to be thoroughly immune to reason or plain fact concerning this point. I don't know how to debate such belief. All I can do is denounce it to third parties who might have been in danger of taking these guys seriously. Lurie writes:
"Over most of its existence, in fact, the Catholic Church was the center of open scientific investigation, supporting mathematicians, physicists, botanists and astronomers."
That's one way of putting it. Another way, of course, would be: between late antiquity and the Reformation, all Western European institutions of learning were controlled by the Catholic Church, and anyone who wanted to be a mathematician, physicist, botanist or astronomer had to do it on the Church's terms. Not that Protestants and Protestant institutions of learning have been consistently more pro-science: they've been sometimes more pro-science, sometimes less than Catholics, and they've always presented much less of a unity in this regard, as in others, than the Catholics. And of course the assertion that stating that religion and science are in conflict reflects anti-Catholic bigotry is another red herring: there are anti-Catholic bigots, and they may chime in against the picture of the Catholic Church in harmony with science, but that doesn't mean you have to be a bigot in order to point out that the picture is inaccurate.
And speaking of inaccurate pictues: Lurie writes: "the popular image of Galileo brought to trial in chains to face a sadistic Inquisition, where he uttered his defiant statement 'but it moves,' before being thrown into the papal dungeon, is a dramatic 19th century fabrication" This is not the first time I've read this business about chains and a dungeon in an article in Huffington Post Religion. Only problem is, I don't know who's asserting that Galileo was put in chains and thrown into a dungeon. I thought most everybody knew that Galileo was politely threatened with torture (which Lurie doesn't mention), recanted some of his scientific theories (which Lurie doesn't mention), spent the rest of his life under house arrest, during which time he wrote his magnum opus, which reversed the recantations (which Lurie doesn't mention) and was smuggled into Holland after his death, where, unlike in Italy at the time, it could be published (which Lurie doesn't mention).
This article is a perfect example of why you need to know your sources, know how reliable they are, and not simply trust someone because they're published in the Huffington Post, or TIME magazine -- or anywhere at all -- or because they're on PBS talking to Bill Moyers, and why ideally you'll familiarize yourself with the primary documants in the original languages, as well as knowing something about the people who edited those documents -- if you don't bypass the editions and go straight to the manuscripts.
Or, of course, if that's too much bother, you could simply trust me, hehe.
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