Atheist Mythology: Bogus Social Sciences

Certain Atheist myths need putting to rest. These have been disproved so many times and they keep repeating the same tired old mistakes over and over, becasue they have the new data that badly misses the point, but the badly construed data is always refreshed with more badly understood back up. John Loftus, my friend from the DC site starts the ball rolling (on the CADRE Blog) when he made an argument about faith being discorded by the modern secular world.

Would you mind trying to explain the trend? As a rule people in these fields of learning tend to move toward doubt. Why is that? Take a stab at it. Why is it that Universities once started to propagate the gospel are now bastions of secularism and that in each generation new universities and book publishing companies are started to overcome the liberal tendencies of the generation that went before? Since there are no cold hard scientific facts about these ideas then trends over time are very important and could even be decisive if someone were to consider what they point to.

Here is Loftus is very confused. What seems like a clear trend to him is nothing of the sort. In backing this up with further comments he lets go the particular myths I want to address here:

(1) The Zuckerman "study" showing "we don't need God to have a good society (this is exactly what Loftus says in describing it).

(2) Christians alone do charitable giving

(3) Christians are probably not more healthy.

(4) Godlessness is rare in jails (for this this we should read "Christian's go to jail more often" because that the claim atheists most often make.

Each of these concerns were expressed by John in the CADRE comment section:

However, the facts are that to have a good society we don't need God, that charitable giving is not something that Christians alone do, that Christians are probably not more healthy, and that even where we'd expect it the most godlessness is rare in our jails.

He had more major points to make but I will deal with those in another way.

First lets examine his overall claim, from the quotation above. He says universities started to propagate the Gospel are Bastians of secularism. But they are also still Bastians of faith. He's not at a major university such as Harvard or Yale so he just doesn't know. J.D. Walters is at a major University (Princeton). I think we should ask him. He has a good sense of the level of acceptance at Princeton. Walters is a member of the CADRE and did a thing that started the free for all with Loftus. When I took Greek my professor (UT system) was from Yale. I made a similar kind of statement to the one Loftus made and this professor set me straight. There are Christians at all major universities. They do not have to hide, they do not keep their beliefs a secret. In some failed they may compartmentalize, not witnessing or doing apologetic, but they do not hide their faith as a secret. All the major universities are still tied in with Churches and religious organizations and all the major universities of the sort Loftus mentions have major theological schools or seminaries which are world class. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and other such schools (Drew, Emory) have leading seminaries and theology schools and produce top ranked theologians. These Universities have compartmentalized, this is probably due to the influences of science in the previous century, but they have not abandoned religious believers or cut them out of of the fold.

John states: "Since there are no cold hard scientific facts about these ideas then trends over time are very important and could even be decisive if someone were to consider what they point to." There are plenty of cold hard facts, and when atheists are presented with them they often run away, as John does this time in arguments I am about to give. In each of the four cases of side arguments above Lofuts is out gunned on the evidence. He does ont present any sort of refutation for the evidence I presented. He merely asserts that he's right. The only data he presents other than these four deal with divorce rate (he present some data although from a highly biased source) and and that was it.

One more thing needs to be said before we get to the knitty gritty. He argues that just because something works doesn't mean it's true. Then most of his arguments are about atheism working better: we don't God, not more healthy, lower divorce rate. If things working don't matter then why does he keep harping on these issues of effectiveness?

On the argument no (1) that we don't need God to have a better society, he is using the Zuckerman study. I did a four part serious on Zuckerman and showed that such a conclusion is totally misleading. I have three basic arguments:

(1) Social position of church not equate to unbelief

What Zuckerman really shows is a shift in the social position of church membership and it's role in daily life. 80% of the Swedes are still members, only the role in daily life has changed.


(2) This cannot be equated with a loss or religious belief among the masses

nor can it be taken as "doing without God." Neither Zuckerman nor Lofuts can offer one shred of data that directly shows that the Nordic sense of a reasonable society is really divorced from Christian values. Strong atheism is small and only about half the country are atheists and they are weak atheist. The population shows signs of seeking spiritual growth and belief in God and transcendent things.

(3) Historically the values that gave the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians their modern social democracies are based upon their Christian past.

The atheists don't study history. Atheists are poor students of history. They haven't even bothered to study the history of Sweden's social democracy.

In terms of the four myths, turn to the second myth:

(2) Christians alone do charitable giving.


I don't think anyone claims that. There are studies that Christians give more than atheists. There are also studies that show that atheists don't like Altruism or love. On the other hand, what does this have to do with God's existence? Is that not a contradiction for John to argue this way?

(3) Christians are probably not more healthy.

Huge body of work that says they are. One point that needs to be made here before we talk about studies. John made the statement in that comment box debate that my studies are "Christians." That is typical. I've seen many many atheists make this assertion. One guy accused me of using Pastors emailing their congregations

(a) Mental health greater for religious people:

(a 1) Recent Empirical Studies Prove Religious Believers have less depression, mental illness lower Divorce rate, ect.

J. Gartner, D.B. Allen, The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., National Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3090

Quote:

"The Reviews identified 10 areas of clinical status in which research has demonstrated benefits of religious commitment: (1) Depression, (2) Suicide, (3) Delinquency, (4) Mortality, (5) Alcohol use (6) Drug use, (7) Well-being, (8) Divorce and martital satisfaction, (9) Physical Health Status, and (10) Mental health outcome studies....The authors underscored the need for additional longitudinal studies featuring health outcomes. Although there were few, such studies tended to show mental health benefit. Similarly, in the case of teh few longevity or mortality outcome studies, the benefit was in favor of those who attended chruch...at least 70% of the time, increased religious commitment was associated with improved coping and protection from problems."

[The authors conducted a literature search of over 2000 publications to glean the current state of empirical study data in areas of Spirituality and health]

a2) Shrinks assume religious experience Normative.

Dr. Jorge W.F. Amaro, Ph.D., Head psychology dept. Sao Paulo

[ http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/amaro.html]

a) Unbeliever is the Sick Soul

"A non spiritualized person is a sick person, even if she doesn't show any symptom described by traditional medicine. The supernatural and the sacredness result from an elaboration on the function of omnipotence by the mind and can be found both in atheist and religious people. It is an existential function in humankind and the uses each one makes of it will be the measure for one's understanding."

ab. psychotheraputic discipline re-evalutes Frued's criticism of religion

Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."

[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Atenção e interpretação (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]

a4) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism

Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."
"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."

(b) Physical health greater for religious people

there is a vast body of data on this, one might find as many as a thousand studies. There are certainly over a hundred.

Religion is positive factor in physical health.

"Doctrors find Power of faith hard to ignore
By Usha Lee McFarling
Knight Ridder News Service
(Dec. 23, 1998)
Http://www.tennessean.com/health/stories/98/trends1223.htm

Quote:

"Some suspect that the benefits of faith and churchgoing largely boil down to having social support — a factor that, by itself, has been shown to improve health. But the health effects of religion can't wholly be explained by social support. If, for example, you compare people who aren't religious with people who gather regularly for more secular reasons, the religious group is healthier. In Israel, studies comparing religious with secular kibbutzim showed the religious communes were healthier."Is this all a social effect you could get from going to the bridge club? It doesn't seem that way," said Koenig, who directs Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health .Another popular explanation for the link between religion and health is sin avoidance."

"The religious might be healthier because they are less likely to smoke, drink and engage in risky sex and more likely to wear seat belts.But when studies control for those factors, say by comparing religious nonsmokers with nonreligious nonsmokers, the religious factors still stand out. Compare smokers who are religious with those who are not and the churchgoing smokers have blood pressure as low as nonsmokers. "If you're a smoker, make sure you get your butt in church," said Larson, who conducted the smoking study."

see also: he Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993 For data on a many studies which support this conclusion.

4) Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

(4) Godlessness is rare in jails (for this this we should read "Christian's go to jail more often" because that the claim athestis most often make.

Atheists keep doing this, and its' so totally hilarious becasue it'sn ot more than a misreading of the tabels they are quoting from. John uses two sources. His first source is an atheist website:

http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm

Look at what the table says:

The table says it's a list of inates per their religious affiliations. It lists Christian, hindu and so froth. Note, this is their religous affiliation not what they think about religion.

atheits cannot read statsitics. they ahve big reading comprehension problems and they get stuff like this wrong so often. The proof?

The number of atheists listed is 156, or 0.209 %. But right below that table it says:

Unkown/No answer, 18381. Or eighteen thousand, three hundred and eighty one. In other words they are completey ignoring the pile who say they have no religion (makes them atheists, duh) and those who don't answer and they are only looking at the ones who checked the box that tier religion is atheist! Their religion is atheist, get it? Not tha they all those who don't believe in God but those who are willing to say their religion is atheist.

total in prisions 96968. Nintiy six thousand, nine hundred and eight. Out of those Catholics are 359% and Protestants are 35%. So there are a lot more "Christians" supposedly than atheists, but certainly not as small as the impression given by the chart or the quotes.

Now we have to ask, what criteria is used to indicate Christian belief? do they give them a battery of tests? do they make them recite the creeds? Do they score them on the M scale? No, they let them check a box. Now if you were in jail, you are sentenced to ten years, but you could get parole in a couple of years, and you hear that being a Christian helps you get parole, wouldn't you pretend to be a Christian? Of if you were afraid wouldn't you turn to God? Yes, brave atheist you may think you would not but you would. So we have no reason to believe that these people were living a Christan life and following Christian belief prior to their arrest. That's jus silly.




Swift claims the total number of atheists is 0.209% but it's really more like 1 in 9. Even so I think the numbers are inflated. When I did my page on this for Doxa last year I recorded that stats as:

Catholic............... 29267.......39.164%
Protestant.............26162.......35.008%

this could be a latter version and it went up, but above you see the version Loftus linked to puts it 10% higher. The total number in prison for both sets of figures is identical: 96968. Check my page on Doxa linked above. That tells me the stats have been copied wrong. But I jsut saw it so I don't think I got it wrong.

The second source Loftus Uses is juas as deceptive. It's a page called skepticfiles

It featrues a large collection of quotations that bsically pull the same Trick. I also expossed a British site that used UK stats in the same way, that one had a huge "other" category that was as high as almost 50% (no religion in other words). So they are doing the same thing. Look at a couple of the quotes:

In Joliet, there were 2,888 Catholics, 1,020 Baptists, 617 Methodists and
0 non-religious.

Does it really seem rational that there is no even one atheist in Joliet, a major prision? But there may none who checked atheism as their religious perference. They may have checked "Ohter" or not responded.

Michigan had 82,000 Baptists and 83,000 Jews in their state population.
But in the prisons, there were 22 times as many Baptists as Jews, and 18 times
as many Methodists as Jews. In Sing-Sing, there were 1,553 total inmates with
855 of them Catholics (over half), 518 Protestants, 177 Jews and 8 non-
religious. There's a very interesting qualified statistic.

If this is still making the same mistake it means 22 times as many as those atheists who atheism as their religion rather than just checking "none" or "other."

Steiner first surveyed 27 states, and found 19,400 Christians, 5,000 with
no preference, and only 3 Agnostics (one each in Connecticut, New Hampshire,
and Illinois). A later, more complete survey found 60,605 Christians, 5,000
Jews, 131 Pagans, 4,000 no preference, and only 3 Agnostics.

This quote just point blank tells us they made the same mistake. What does it mean to say "500 with no preference?" That is not logical, 5000 Christians with no prefernce? It makes more sense taht 5000 checked the box that says "I have no religous preference" because most of them are not religous becuase they are atheist or agnsotic. Then only a tiny group that checked "atheist" as their religious prefernce. Atheism is their religion.

I know this is the case because it was clearly spelled out on the UK stats and I wrote to the UK prisons and asked them. This years ago on secular web.

think about it. doesn't something seem wrong here? 1 in 9 in the first "study" (the first miseread table of stats) is atheist. That's far more 0.209% more like at least 10%. But in all these other major priosons its' 22 times more Chrsitains, No atheists at all at a major prsions. Its' just obvious they are reading it wrong.




The atheists want us to think that these guys were Mother Teresa or John Wesley ardently praying all the time and living by golden rule and reading the Bible every night and one day they just had to run out and do soemthing bad because that's what Christianity does to you. No there is no such data. Its' stupid!

These myths are lies and we stop their spread. this is clearly the result of a hate group. they mock and ridicule the target with hateful lies exaggerating the truth about the hatred group just as the FBI says hate groups do.

Discussion with Humble Atheist: on the Nature of Religoius life

From comments left on Meatrock's blog announcing the introduction of atheist watch.



Humble Atheist

I think you have mistaken a plea to reason and freedom of thought with harassment and hatred. I am an atheist and in no way do I condone any acts of hatred.

Meta:
Is that why the atheists on carm literally called me "scum" because they are just using free thought?

I was an atheist. You can snow a former atheist who found God. you need to open your eyes and look how atheists really are. Go on message boards and pretend to be Christian and see how their "free thought" appears to you then.

Humble Atheist:

On the other hand I think that for any religious person to be offended or angry when someone questions their beliefs is excellent proof of the unstable understanding that person has of their own belief system!

Meta:
are you not capable of understanding that the issue was personal insults? you can't see the distinction between saying "I don't believe your views" and "you are less intelligent than I am because you hold those views?"

this is typical blindness and arrogance atheists display all the time.


Humble Atheist:

If you were so sure there was a god then you wouldn't be angry when people asked you to prove it,

Meta:

I"m not. I'm angry because they are so stupid and unfair when proof is presented they can't even admit there's tiny little tininy bit of evidence that just might maybe in some sense be rational under some circumstances.

those words just burn an atheist's through trying to choke them out.


Humble Atheist:

you would be quite willing to explain your reasoning and to show that person why you are the way you are.

Meta

"the way" I am? why do you phrase it that way. You are the freak, do you get that? less 3% of the human population.why don't you justify the way you are?


Humble Atheist:

The thing is, the argument of whether or not there is a god has gone on for a long time. The question should not be centered on the fact of whether or not there is a god, it should be on what are the results of a populace that believes or doesn't believe. The answer is that people that believe in god are not free. Most people who believe in god are told what to believe and worse yet rationalize all their actions, more dangerously their immoral actions through the word of god.

Meat: You are more of a misnomer. Arrogant atheist, that is total hog was. Your looking at no facts, just bigotry and lies, and steriotypes. I am free, I am far more free than you are. I am happy, I bet I'm happier than you. I am not nearly as hung as you. I bet you are in horror of personal feeings you are afaird to accept your experinces. you wont bother learn about existentialism becuase you are terribly afraid of "the subjective." I am a lot more free than you are.

You are also totally ignorant of the vast body of studies that show that people with true religious experinces are far more self actualized than those who don't have them.


Humble atheist

Atheists are given the ability to take control of their lives in as far as one is able and they live life unhindered by fear of the rightness of their actions and the end we all are aware will come to each of us. This gives atheists a lot to think about and also the realization that it is unfair and immoral to step in anyone else's way of pursuing happiness in this short lifetime. Atheists follow their conscience, theists follow a written code that they can always find loopholes in. And this provides an incentive for atheists to try and convince religious types to take control of their lives and to think for themselves!!

Meta: that is garbage. a vast body of empirical scietnific studies disprovs this bigotted steroitype that is based upon having no real understanding of rleigous experince. Obviously you are a victim of the hate group ideology. You are blind to your own motivatations.

Humble atheist:
I would hope that you will find the inner strength to do the same.

Meta: you don't know jack shit about inner strength. following Jesus is about inner strength you don't even have any.



Religion and Happiness

by Michael E. Nielsen, PhD

Many people expect religion to bring them happiness. Does this actually seem to be the case? Are religious people happier than nonreligious people? And if so, why might this be?

Researchers have been intrigued by such questions. Most studies have simply asked people how happy they are, although studies also may use scales that try to measure happiness more subtly than that. In general, researchers who have a large sample of people in their study tend to limit their measurement of happiness to just one or two questions, and researchers who have fewer numbers of people use several items or scales to measure happiness.

What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness

Long-Term Positive Effects of Mystical Experience


Research Summary

From Council on Spiritual Practices Website

"States of Univtive Consciousness"

Also called Transcendent Experiences, Ego-Transcendence, Intense Religious Experience, Peak Experiences, Mystical Experiences, Cosmic Consciousness. Sources:

Wuthnow, Robert (1978). "Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests." Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 18 (3), 59-75.

Noble, Kathleen D. (1987). ``Psychological Health and the Experience of Transcendence.'' The Counseling Psychologist, 15 (4), 601-614.
Lukoff, David & Francis G. Lu (1988). ``Transpersonal psychology research review: Topic: Mystical experiences.'' Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 20 (2), 161-184.

Roger Walsh (1980). The consciousness disciplines and the behavioral sciences: Questions of comparison and assessment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 137(6), 663-673.

Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar (1983). ``Psychedelic Drugs in Psychiatry'' in Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, New York: Basic Books.

Furthermore, Greeley found no evidence to support the orthodox belief that frequent mystic experiences or psychic experiences stem from deprivation or psychopathology. His ''mystics'' were generally better educated, more successful economically, and less racist, and they were rated substantially happier on measures of psychological well-being. (Charles T. Tart, Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm, p. 19.)

Long-Term Effects

Wuthnow:

*Say their lives are more meaningful,
*think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life is
Meditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style

Noble:

*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic
*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient
*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,
*increased love and compassion

Short-Term Effects (usually people who did not previously know of these experiences)

*Experience temporarily disorienting, alarming, disruptive
*Likely changes in self and the world,
*space and time, emotional attitudes, cognitive styles, personalities, doubt sanity and reluctance to communicate, feel ordinary language is inadequate

*Some individuals report psychic capacities and visionary experience destabilizing relationships with family and friends Withdrawal, isolation, confusion, insecurity, self-doubt, depression, anxiety, panic, restlessness, grandiose religious delusions

Links to Maslow's Needs, Mental Health, and Peak Experiences When introducing entheogens to people, I find it's helpful to link them to other ideas people are familiar with. Here are three useful quotations. 1) Maslow - Beyond Self Actualization is Self Transcendence ``I should say that I consider Humanistic, Third Force Psychology to be transitional, a preparation for a still `higher' Fourth Psychology, transhuman, centered in the cosmos rather than in human needs and interest, going beyond humanness, identity, selfactualization and the like.''

Abraham Maslow (1968). Toward a Psychology of Being, Second edition, -- pages iii-iv.

Argyle, M., and Hills, P. (2000). Religious experiences and their relations with happiness and personality. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10, 157-172.

Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.



Pahnke, W. H. (1966). Drugs and mysticism. International Journal of Parapsychology, 8, 295-314.

300 empirical studies prove value of religion!

Religion is the most powerful Factor in well being.

Poloma and Pendelton The Faith Factor: An Annotated Bibliography of Systematic Reviews And Clinical Research on Spiritual Subjects Vol. II, David B. Larson M.D., Natiional Institute for Health Research Dec. 1993, p. 3290.

Quote:

"The authors found that religious satisfaction was the most powerful predicter of existential well being. The degree to which an individual felt close to God was the most important factor in terms of existential well-being. While frequency of prayer contributed to general life satisfaction and personal happiness. As a result of their study the authors concluded that it would be important to look at a combindation of religious items, including prayer, religionship with God, and other measures of religious experince to begin to adequately clearlify the associations of religious committment with general well-being."

psychotheraputic discipline re-evalutes Frued's criticism of religion

Quote:

Amaro--

"Nowadays there are many who do not agree with the notion that religious behavior a priori implies a neurotic state to be decoded and eliminated by analysis (exorcism). That reductionism based on the first works by Freud is currently under review. The psychotherapist should be limited to observing the uses their clients make of the representations of the image of God in their subjective world, that is, the uses of the function of omnipotence. Among the several authors that subscribe to this position are Odilon de Mello Franco (12), .... W. R. Bion (2), one of the most notable contemporary psychoanalysts, ..."

[sources sited by Amaro BION, W. R. Atenção e interpretação (Attention and interpretation). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1973.

MELLO FRANCO, O. de. Religious experience and psychoanalysis: from man-as-god to man-with-god. Int. J. of Psychoanalysis (1998) 79,]

c) This relationship is so strong it led to the creation of a whole discipline in psychology; transactionalism

Neilson on Maslow

Quote:

"One outgrowth of Maslow's work is what has become known as Transpersonal Psychology, in which the focus is on the spiritual well-being of individuals, and values are advocated steadfastly. Transpersonal psychologists seek to blend Eastern religion (Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) or Western (Christian, Jewish or Moslem) mysticism with a form of modern psychology. Frequently, the transpersonal psychologist rejects psychology's adoption of various scientific methods used in the natural sciences."
"The influence of the transpersonal movement remains small, but there is evidence that it is growing. I suspect that most psychologists would agree with Maslow that much of psychology -- including the psychology of religion -- needs an improved theoretical foundation."

Debate over Religion and Supersition

I've developed a running dialgoue with Bill Ellis over two blogs, here and the CADRE blog. This is a great excuse to get material for new blog pieces, so I'm putting this up here as a new article.


My original stament to which Bill responded:

One mistake atheists make a lot is to assume that religion is stack and ancient. They assume that the same primitive understanding and impulses that animated most religions in the ancient world are still at work today. This just demonstrates that our understanding keeps pace with our times. God is timeless and our experiences of God are timeless, but experince is mediated by culture, and so we keep up with our times and are people of our times.

The original statement Bill made:

More rationally-inclined people sometimes underestimate just how deep-seated superstition is in the rest of their species.

That was the basic argument to which I responded. In this context this says to me that the pervasive nature of religion can be dismissed by just attributing to religion the epithet "superstition" and then writing off the basic human religious instinct as a falw in man which baises him toward supersition. In other words, as I said before, atheists think people are religious because they primiative and superstious.

These comments led to the question "what does bill mean by supersition." Here is his defition:

There are lots of ways you can define superstition. I typically use it as a label for a general family of beliefs with sets of similar often overlapping properties but not ones which necessarily have all the same set of properties as every other thing labelled superstitious (think Wittgenstein and the meaning of games here). In most cases I'm using it in regard to beliefs which are unwarranted and non-naturalistic in character. That seems to cover most of what we call superstitious. Though there could also be outliers that fit well with the rest of the things we call superstition but which don't necessarily have these two characteristics, homeopathy for example---whose proponents might claim a real but unknown natural principle as the basis of its (supposed) effectiveness. That is, one might include unwarranted paranormal beliefs as superstitions as well as unwarranted non-naturalistic beliefs.

The two major predications for what makes something supersitious are:

(1) that it be unwarranted

(2) that it not be naturalistic (or that it be supernatuarl).

I took issue with both predications for several reasons, only a small protion of those have been discussed.

Here is the lattest round from the comment section:


Meta: on the term "superstition" as applied to religion:

It's meaningless because the meaning is tautology. You are just saying religion is stupid becasue its' religion. Superstition means religious.

Bill:

You aren't even bothering to address the actual definition I gave. By my definition superstitions include beliefs which have the two features of being non-naturalistic and unwarranted.

Meta: I have actually said things about that (the non natural) idea and also the unwarranted part every time. You know I've argued that religion is warranted. You know I've argued that "non natural is a meaningless term. So Obviously I did address it.

On non natural

(1) The term is meaningless because we don't have a other universe to compare this one to to establish what is "natural" and what is not. Since God is not "unnatural" we have to by the origins of these definitions and the way they evolved.

(2) I have argued that by your definition many scientific Therine are superstition.

(3) I have argued that the term "supernatural" is miused in modern times by both sides, thus it is meaningless to say non natural things are supersitious when the concept benig discussed is actuallyt he wrong concept vis Chrsitian doctrine.



Bill

By that definition things that arent religious can be superstition (like palm reading, belief in vampires, etc). And religious beliefs can be nonsuperstitious---so long as the beliefs are warranted.

Meta: Yes that is true, but by that ("non natural") then God is superstition a priroi. Since that is begging the question, I am saying that the attirubution of non natuarl to superstiion is a false concept and wrong headed. In other words. I am disagreeing with your definition.


Bill:

If you wish to engage with the actual opinions I've expressed I'll be glad to carry on a discussion. If not I will waste no more time here.

Meta: by what stretch of the imagination do you feel that direct clash over the deiftion and correcting your misconceptions about super nature is not engagement?
I am sorry if you do not understand argumentation.


Meta:
what you seem to be saying is that I don't have the right to defend religion.

Bill

Please refrain from mischaracterizing my position when I explicitly and clearly said the opposite more than once. To quote what I said earlier:

Meta: Look when you called religions "superstition" you did not qualify it. that came after I challenged your inadequate definition.. You know it did. You know the original implication was that religion grows of a primitive superstitious mind. Surely you must be aware of the image that atheists have had since the enlightenment and you must know that saying what you did is going to leave that impression. You seem a lot more aware of what you are doing than to be in dark about that one.



Bill:

The debate might, then, be more profitably focused on whether religious beliefs are warranted rather than on semantics...""

Meta:
Only if atheists stop trying to create derogatory impressions and take religion on it's own terms for the purpose of discussion.

and:

Bill

"Only unwarranted supernaturalistic beliefs would fall into the category of superstition. Again, you are free to argue that some or all religious beliefs are, contrary to my opinion, NOT unwarranted and therefore not superstitious."

Meta: any unwarranted argument is by definition, well you know, unwarranted. That comes under the heading of not logically justified. So by going to the trouble to also label it superstition when it's already been dismissed as unwarranted is just hurling an epithet. But you seem not to get the real point here. Ideas can be unwarranted without being superstitious (as you yourself point out), The only real difference that makes the grade, then, in terms of superstition is the non natural clause. That means that unless God is part of nature (which is untenable for any but a pantheist) then god is a priori out of the question.

so the epithet "superstitious" is just a cheap trick to win without argument or proof. I've explained several times now why that is (because it's based upon the false premise of Super nature).


Bill

If you continue to blatantly mischaracterize my views I must conclude that you do not intend to carry out a civil discussion and are unworthy of my time.

Meta; Really! why don't you try following my arguments? By Mischaractorizing I assume you mean expossing the flaws in your reasoning!

Meta:
Yes, so stop using epithets and insult terms and put up your rhetorical dukes and show me how religion is unwarranted.

Bill

It is my opinion that religious beliefs are unwarranted. To prove this would require showing the inadequacy of every argument for religion in every subtle variant for each of them.

It would be absurd to expect someone to do that in a blog discussion----such an undertaking would require thousands of pages of text.

Meta: Yes it would be absurd to expect that. But that doesn't mean the alternative is that I have to justify my views just because you doubt them. The alternative is that we should understand the view you express for what it is. It is based upon inadequate assumptions, a wrong headed definition which I have criticized on the basis of both of its predictions, and it is the outgrowth of a ideological assumption that itself cannot be justified. Thus your use of the epithetic is jut a gate keeping tactic that says "my view is the lionized truth regime it doesn't have to justify it itself, all other views must be filtered through it." That is merely the claim of ideology. I think it's pretty justifiable to reject ideologies on face value merely because they are ideological.


Bill

The alternative is obvious, though. Present one good solid argument for your religious beliefs and my contention that christianity is superstition will stand disproven.

Meta: But that is made unnecessary by the fact that I have disproved your definition as a valid definition. I have shown that both of the clauses of predication upon which it stands are unfair and wrong headed. Thus the original problem is undone because it is simply a prori not the case that religion is invalid in some why just because it may involve non naturalistic ideas.

Who says your ideology gets to keep the gate? Why should we assume that reality is limited to Naturalism?

Now you are using the term "superstition" as a way of short handing the unwarranted nature of religious belief. I think the problem above could be resolved if you would stop trying to make a blanket denunciation of all religious beliefs and just go claim by claim. you don't have to disprove all reilgous beliefs in one go, just do the one's being advanced at the moment. Don't try to rule out the existence of God based upon your view of the universe (which unless you are not really human is clearly limited to a very obscure sample of all that is). Perhaps you are Dr. Who writing this post from the Tardis, but I doubt it. In your aviator is real, you do not look like Tom Baker, or any of his other incarnations.

I've challenged the concept of superstition itself and certainly your definition of it. I did so on both grounds that you hold out as it's predication.

(1) unwarranted and

(2) not natural.

Granted you do allow for a category of Unwarranted but not superstition. But that's even more problematic because as I say above, that means really all religious belief could fall into that category so the only real definitive term that makes your definition clear is the one about naturalism. But you can't use that because you can't prove that there are no aspects of reality beyond "the natural." So without being able to prove that you have basis for calling ideas that are not naturalistic "superstitious."

I also showed that that predication can be used to call big bang singularity "superstition." It's pretty clear that is not an adequate defition.

I also spoke of my own categories that should make up the defition (if we want to use the term at all). They are (1) obessive/compulive (2) fear (3) magical thinking.

There is also a point to be made about confusing magical thinking (which is part of superstition) with religious ideas of miracles and super nature (which are not superstition and not magical thinking).

On balance you have offered no real reason to use "superstition" as a category for establishing the unwarranted nature of an idea as this would be totally recursive (It' s unwarranted becasue it's superstitious, but they is it superstitious?? because it's unwarranted).

The whole problem stems from the fact that the term is nothing but an insulting epithet used by the philosophes to dismiss clerical theology. I have not failed to piont this out before ether. I'm sorry you have not respond to most of my arguments.


Btw if you want to discussion ideas about why is belief warranted just say so. I'll put one up on the CADRE soon.

When Atheists Call Religion "Supersition:" What We Can Learn form The Defitions

Robert Boyle



Many atheists make the claim that religion is superstition. One could find many exaples, but the one that I saw most recently and that ticked me off is this one from the CADRE blog:

Blogger David B. Ellis said...

More rationally-inclined people sometimes underestimate just how deep-seated superstition is in the rest of their species.

2/26/2009 02:01:00 PM

I can't wait to see the definition he offers. Ten to one it will be recursive, something like "superstition is believing God or gods." We see an example of that kind of circular reasoning in the definitions below.

Here are Web definitions:

an irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - Definition in context
Search Results

My belief in God arises neither form ignorance nor from fear. I was a very carefully informed atheist who had spent three summers researching to disprove the bible, and will put my education up against anyone's any time. The presence that I felt when God first revaled himself to me was not a presence of fear. I have felt "afraid" per se in relation to God; although I fequirelntly feel a sense of awe.

1.
superstition: Definition from Answers.com

superstition n. An irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome.
www.answers.com/topic/superstition - 126k - Cached - Similar pages -

A good epistemologist could argue that about any causal relationship

2.
superstition - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Definition of superstition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary with audio pronunciations, thesaurus, Word of the Day, and word games.
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superstition - 34k - Cached - Similar pages -

Main Entry:

su·per·sti·tion

Pronunciation:

\ˌsü-pər-ˈsti-shən\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English supersticion, from Anglo-French, from Latin superstition-, superstitio, from superstit-, superstes standing over (as witness or survivor), from super- + stare to stand — more at stand

Date:

13th century

1 a: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b: an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition2: a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary

As I've already demonstrated my belief in God is not based upon ignorance. To argue that belief in God is ignorance in and of itself the atheist must present that argument proves conclusively there is no God. My belief is not based upon the unknown since I claim to have intimate first hand knowledge (pheneomenoloigcally apprehended).

It might appear to the unwary that this definition says that belief in God is superstition. It does NOT say that! It says "abject" attitude of mind toward.... But iti s alsoa circular definition. This is usual for Webster's to be so lax. but look at it it says

what is the defintion of "superstition?" It is "...abject frame of mind resulting from...superstition."

Defining the word wtih the word.



3.
superstition - definition of superstition

Definition of superstition - An irrational belief - ie, one held in spite of evidence to the contrary - usually involving supernatural forces and associated ...
urbanlegends.about.com/od/glossary/g/superstition.htm - 20k - Cached - Similar pages -

I have made 42 arguments for the existence of God and written several essays about why we don't need arguments. They are all quite good, none of them invole irrationality but demonstrate that belief is rationally warranted.

the clause "usually involving supernatural" is nothing more than propaganda and depends upon how one defines supernatural. I have proved on Doxa that Supernatural is empirical validiated, if we use the original and ture meaning of the term.

Defining supersition as "belief in the supernatural" then using the definition of superstition to prove that belief in supernatural is irrational because it's superstitious is merely circular reasoning.





4.
Definition of Superstition

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature ...
www.brainyquote.com/words/su/superstition226408.html - 14k - Cached - Similar pages -

The same kind of recursive and circular statement I just got through exposing. What makes it superstitious? Because it's religion. What makes religion superstition? Because it' superstition.


Why do we find so many circular definitions where the word is defined by the word, and religious belief is declared to be something that is derived itself from a criticism of the word used to define it. Religion is superstition, what is superstition?It's belief in religion. Why do we find this state of affairs even in a major dictionary like Webster's? In fact Noah Webster was a devoted Christian so he would not have defined belief in God as superstition per se. I think it's becasue the topic is tainted by the "superstitions" of the enlightenment.

The fault really lies with Newton and Boyle, Christians who were not trying to disprove Christianity but to demonstrate the veracity of their faith through science.They helped to create the attitude of the latter enlightenment that things of the supernatural were superstitious and anti-science. They did this in rebellion against the philosophy of scholasticism.(Willey, Basil. The Eighteenth Century Background: Studies On the Idea of Nature In the Thought of the Period. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941. But it was not because they had made any scientific advances that proved it. They did it purely out of propaganda because they wanted to identify science with their version of the faith. The first step was to identify Newton's physics with science as the only valid model for scientific thought. To do that they had to unseat competing models such as the Cartesian and the Leibnitzian models, or Plenism. They also had to replace the chemical model with the mechanical model. Boyle did all of that by creating his own protocols for scientific experiments and then propagandizing about how scientific he was. This a fascinating story which can be read in Leviathan and the Air Pump by Shappin and Shaffer.(Shapin, Steven and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan And The Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton University Press, 1985).

Having accomplished that task they then went on to publicize Newton's ideas from the pulpit. Historian Margarete Jacob demonstrates in her ground breaking work The Newtonians that had it not been for the band of rationalist English churchmen known as "The Latitudinarians" Newton's physics might have remained obscure and unknown for fifty years longer, and he may have never been defied to the extent tha the was by English society.Jacob, Margaret C. The Newtonians and the English Revolution: 1689-1720. Ithica New York: Cornell University Press, 1976). The French Philosophes rebelling against the monarchy and the church that supported it on the eve of the French revolution just cast the net bigger and encompass Christian belief of all kinds since that took in the widest possible camp that might be sympathetic to the monarchy.

The birth of modern atheism involved LaPLace and his attempts to draw the circle D'Holbach to its widest possible extent and include even the Philosphe's with their deistic principles outside the circle. The taint took hold and religion was lumped in with superstition, magic, belief in ghost and witches and so forth, at least in the minds of atheists, but not in the minds of the greatest thinkers of age. Although was lost in the taint was very crucial:

(1) A proper understanding of the Sueprnatural, which was pillaged and distorted in order to defame any version of it. The watered down silly version took hold in the public mind as the true nature of supernaturalism.

(2) Scholastic philosophy in so far as it hedged upon the true understanding of the superantural was lumped in with the false understanding of it.

(3) Personal experince or what they used to call "experimental truth" (which was actually phenomenological or experintial) was identified with unreason, with irrational emotionaism and thus with superstition.


The upshot of all of this is that "superstition" is nothing more than a buzz word which atheists use in a propagandist way (complete with circular reasoning and all). Atheists apply their own superstition (fear,ignorance, disconnected logic) in charging religion with being superstitious point blank. The charge is nothing more than a hold over of propaganda from a former age the particulars of which are no longer understood.

The Atheist Trun of Mind

Nothing can ever count as evidence for God or against atheism in the mind of the atheist. I established this last time I was posting here. The skeptical mind forces itself into a corner which eventually, through constant use in a skeptical mode, tricks the user into thinking he/she is making some big gain of insight but he/she is actually closing off the ability to take the necessary risks to step beyond that which is proven and extrapolate to a position of belief.

I am not saying all atheists always think this way. I'm just saying these tendencies that are brought by the skeptical habit of mind.

(1) the mentality to dobut as long as possible.

If any kind of doubt is possible, however slight the probability, the atheist must take it.



(2) Unless something is totally proven it cannot be given any kind of presumption no matter how rationally warranted or how strongly evidenced.


If God is not 100% proven God is 0% proven and though one may consider God 99% proven if it is not 100% then its nothing.


(3) The "no evidence" circle.

this is a form of question begging/circular reasoning that works like this


*there is no evidence for the existence of God because God is not absoltuely proven.

*Since there is no evidence there can be no evidence

*since there can be no evidence than anything presented as evidence must be wrong.



these are all just a large circle of reasoning based upon the false premise in no 1. There are probably corresponding problems that the faith habit of mind produces. But what this mens is that atheism is unverifiable/falsifiable. It's not an analytical position because it's not open proof or disproof.


This applies especially to atheist on message boards. I think atheist seek to gain preferences for their view. the dictum about extraordinary evidence proves this. why should religious experience be deemed "extraordinary?" when it includes 90% of the people in the world.? the assumption is that their assumptions should be the "default." That's why they are always trying to claim mass populations they are not intitleed to, like Buddhism or all new born babies.


The better paradigm would be:

(1) doubt as long as you have real doubts and be willing to assign prima facie to good arguments.

(2) rational warrant.

rational warrant is about all any world view can offer. belief in God is a world view. there is no reason to islaote it form other views or set the bar any higher for it than for any of them.


This is only to rich. I put this put on CARM atheist board. And this atheist is going to show me what's wrong with it. here are his responses:

Fixed:
*there is no evidence for the existence of God because we've for naturalistic explanations for almost everything we've ever studied.

*If the God hypothesis were correct, we'd have found evidence for it by now.

*Since there is no evidence yet, we can feel comfortable in assuming tentatively that there is no God. Taking this assumption will put us in a position where atheism may disproved by contradiction.

Is it possible to saything that would more clearly illustrate the points I just made?

The Atheist Assault on Higher Learning: O yea, Free Thinkers!

On the CADRE blog I got into it again with an Atheist from the DC crowd named "Russ."

I just can't keep my foot out of my mouth. Yet in his response which are totally ad hominem we not only see the Character assassination tactics I have referred to but also the true nature of that segment the atheist community which I refer to as "ideolgoical."


Of course I've met many atheists in school who were part of the history of ideas program where I did my doctoral work. Most of them would not fall into the category of which I speak. But the those on the net tend to be non academics (maybe working class or white collar business or probably most of them are computer people). Few of them really seem to have any background in anything like Arts and Humanities. They are all very opinionated about how evil useless and stupid arts and humanities are, but they will express a fondness for art because it's pretty. Yet they have nothing but total contempt for any sort of idea that emerges from the realms of human thought governed by arts and humanities as a discipline.

Let's face it, most atheists on the internet think that the only form of knowledge is science. I suspect his is becasue very few of them went beyond the sophomore level in college and most of them are products of trade schools, the kind that advertise "you don't have to waste years learning all that book stuff just get 'hand's on' professional computer learning." Despite this bias against any form of knowledge that doesn't cater to their reductionism, they still feel that they know all about the things they have never studied.

Here is an example of one of them, Ross, who in the comment section demonstrates his utter contempt for any sort of liberal arts ideas:

First he quotes me to show what he's going to attack:

Hinman,

You said,

Of cousre if you are willing to only examine the surface, like a good little reductionist, then of course you are going to create the illusion that there's no God.

You never have to see what you do not wish to see.

I suppose he thought I was saying that he's not bright because he mistakes the term "shallow" for an appraisal of his intellectual abilities. Nothing was further from my mind. I admit I should have used more careful wording not to convey that impression. I just wasn't careful enough. What I really had in mind was that as materialist most atheists believe on in the surface of reality. A rose is a rose is a rose it has has no larger significance, no symbolic value relating to any higher metaphysical meaning. Everything is on the surface. There are elements we don't see but not because they are in other other dimensions or made out of spirit, but just because they are too tiny. In my mind this is surface level because its cutting off a connection with anything beyond, behind or above the material level.

Of course he's been angered because thinks I've said he's not deep as a thinker, which I did not mean to say. I apologize for creating that impression, but I think we can learn a lot from the nature of his response.

His first statement demonstrates true contempt for any form of thinking now sanctified by the ideology Dawkinista reductionism:

There is no reason to go beyond the surface in theology or philosophy of religion. Christianity has had lots of time, most of two millenia, to show even superficially that it offers hope to believers. It doesn't. You can shroud all your pretentions in obscurantist schlock, but in the end, whether you argue at the deepest levels your near-PhD can take you or stick to the shallows where the failures and defects of Christianity are well-lit, you will, just like every other failure of a theologian before you, arrive at nothing of use to practicing believers. You might have an article accepted for publication, but - and you know this to be true - it will, in all likelihood, never even be referenced unless you do it yourself.

Only someone who has never studied these subjects would try to say this. He's saying he doesn't have to study Philosophy because he knows it's stupid. We have seen this voiced in other ways around the net. The major one is the fallacious "Courtier's Reply" which is nothing more than a broad indictment that "your source of knowledge is not sanctioned by my ideology." As I put it on my blog:

Again their reasoning is quite circular since the reasons they would give for reducing religion to superstition don't' apply to modern sophisticated theology, but the fact that it can be labeled "theology" and they don't even know what that means, they stipulate that it must be stupid. So even though their reasons don't apply they just demand that they must do so any way.

Again they are merely stipulating truth and insisting they are right without any just reasons. It's idiotic to try and criticize a whole field you know nothing about. To make up for appalling ignorance they imply a third rate gimmick that is actually made up of two informal fallacies: ipsie dixit and circular reasoning. (Ibid: see link above)

This reminds me of an argument I had with an atheist once who asserted that all Christian theology is a about a big man in the sky, and ti's stupid to believe in a big man in the sky. I answered that Paul Tillich's theology explicitly denyies that God is a big man or even a being at all. Process theology certainly denys that as well (based upon Whitehead it defines God as a "community of occasions"--don't ask). This guy asserted that I was lying. I told him well I sutdied theology andyou apparenlty have not. He then said that's just the "Couriter's Reply" as though I had committed some kind of fallacy of logic. I repeated, "you are factally in error i gave two examples of schools of thoguht in theology that expclitly contradict what you calaim all Christian theology is about. He merely retorted that it didn't count because theology is stupid so whatever the answer is it must be wrong. So he expclictly just refussed to to accept a documented fatual correction to his error on the grounds that he can basically say anything he wants and doesn't have to know what he's talking about because he's armed with the catch phrase "Courtier's Reply."


Then he gets into ad hominem attacks:

Your degree is largely useless to you and the rest of mankind. Your degree offers you no tools for adding to or augmenting the vast store of accumulated human knowledge.

It's pretty obvious that any Ph.D. is useless in his eyes unless the upshot of having it is to back his ideology. Dawkin's Ph.D. is good because science is the only valid from of knowledge. But if you study the history of science, that's invalid becuase it doesn't give you the sacred gatekeeping knowledge of the white lab coat guy. Of course if he knew Dawkins was reallly a Mesuieum keeper and that his chair was not earned but purchased it might some difference, but I doubt it.


He continues the Ad Hom:

So, you, the near-PhD, hang out on an obscure blog hoping beyond hope that someone will engage you in a way that will at least let you think your pursuing the near-PhD was not a complete waste of time. If it was anything beyond a waste of your time and money, you could solve or at least address some real problem facing humanity. You would not be left wrestling with issues that matter to none but the few helping you waste yet more time working through those fantasy issues over a few beers.

I am so very worred that it might have been a waste of time to learn things. Does not tell us his attitude, and the attitude of a segement of atheists, toward learning? Why would I have to worry that learning "might be" a waste? Why wouldn't I know up front if I thought learning was a value? Why would learning be a waste? Does this not tell us that his value is not leanring and knoweldge, his value sysetm places very low capital upon actually knowing, but rewards some sort of socail use, perhaps making money, but more probably confirming the ideology that he is brain washed upon. Knowledge is only of value in direct proportion to it's confirmation of the ideology, it's ability to assure him that God looks less and less likely, thus to freem him from the fear of hell. Actually knowing for the sake of possessing knolwedge is clearly not part of his value system. Neither is understanding the things he critcizies. In my view there is no greater intellectual sin than to criticize that of which of you have no knowledge. For the idieolgoue the ultimate criticism is that an idea is not sanctified byt he ideology.

Sadly, your near-PhD does not even provide you with the intellectual wherewithal to respond to my comments in context. It's obvious, J. L., that you did not even attempt to ascertain the context. You quote-mined for fragments that you could attack, then dove right in.

This said by the guy who failed even once provide any focuss upon the issues. This is the guy who focusses totally upon the ad hom and whose one great point of attack is that I studied a feild that his ideology does not jstifying as valid knowledge.

If you had a valuable degree in a useful discipline, you would have been able to discern that I was not in any way trying to disprove the existence of your Christian god. You should have been able to see that the data I noted simply clarified the point that while Christians make their self-serving claims, the veracity of those claims is simply not born out by the data.

Of course I said nothing to imply that proving the existence of God had anything to do wit the issue. He took it that way because, well for obvious reasons. Of course here he's trying to have it both ways by first asserting that it' snot about proving the existence of God then he tries to imply that somehow the data speaks agains the exitence of God. Of coruse ther eis no data against the existence of God, this is nothing more than the height of ignorance.

What is at issue bottom line in this venting of hatred? why do they have to drag their proloterian sense of supirior intellect into it every singel time as though understanding the truth of the universe is the ultimate proof of one'd intellectual worth. As though somehow one's metaphysics is determined by one's IQ? I think this has to do their sense of powerlessness. They hate Ph.D.'s and learning and education and liberal arts becuase they identify it with elites, with an education they are not able to obtain. I've noticed many times that the real venting of hatred agsint Christians by atheists is often linked to this sense of powerlessness. It caters tot he sense of being a total minoirty of being looked down upon for views that castigate the vast majority of humanity.

I'm sure that all suited up in your near-PhD, you've got a million proofs for a million gods. I'm sure that any day now, Christians will no longer use the word, "faith" because your proofs will give them reason to use the word "know." I'm sure that for all of your new and improved near-PhD efforts, all Christians will have lives so distinctly superior to that of any non-Christian, that all people will immediately convert to the one true religion headmastered by the one true god.

Doesn't this tell us more about his value system? I mean when I was in the working world in my youth I often found that people on jobs just refused to believe me.It seemed the basci procedure was to doubt what any worker told them. I asked an older worker why this would be the case an he said "they lie, so they expect you to lie. They steal so they expect you to steal." I see the same psychology going on here. The only thing "knolwedge" means to the ideolgoically motivated atheist is a standardized justification for belief system. Its' not a matter of learning, not a matter of expanding horizons, not a matter of straching yourself and seeking truth it's must a matter of justifying the ideology so you don't have to feel inferior anymore. This is his motive for learning, thus he expects it to be my motive for learning.

Millions of people are starving, J.L., and your imaginary god will not do anything about. You will, no doubt, tell me that Christians will do what they can and give the credit to their god, and attribute to god's will all the deaths. If all the time wasted getting near-PhD's and playing big fish on little blog were turned to useful human endeavors, perhaps fewer people would die. But, then if we actually took care of each other, there would be nothing for gods to do, and we know that theology near-PhD's working the religion industry would never stand for that.

I think this really proves my point about power. He equates the lack of social power with his atheism, and the presence of elitism and social oppression with the belief his ideology has singled out as the target of ridicule and the scapegoat for personal failings and the villain which explains the powerlessness they feel in society. Of course since history is not valid knowledge they are totally ignorant of the Christian left which goes back all the way to the Time Chrsit and finds Christians leading peasant revolts, contributing to socialist, liberation, and freedom movements from Johachin of Flora in the middle ages, to the Peasants of south Germany to the underground rail road to the abolition movement and w omen's suffrage to the civil rights movement to Obama, who is a total contradiction to everything this guy connects up with Christianity as a social ill. Not only are the Christian activist groups a total disproof of his statement (and a much more significant contributor to liberation if he only read some history and knew where to look for them) but theology as well. He's totally missed the 60, 70s, 80s and even 990s where liberation theology guided all of Latin America into revolution, and all of Western Europe into socialism and all of Asia into Min Jung theology and has created liberation and hope for people around the world. All of this escapes his notice because to know anything about it he would have to know something about the forces of knowledge that his ideology writes off as unjustified.

How can it be that a movement that bill itself as "free thought" is really based upon an ideology that excluded 90% of human knowledge as invalid and only sanctions the learning of a tiny sliver of what goes on in the academy? its' because they are not free. Knowledge is power. Instead of learning this they have told themselves and been told "only science is knowledge." Knowledge is power but the only true knowledge is science and the only true science is that which justifies a naturalistic view point. That is neither free nor knowledge. It is ideology. The atheist community is hard at work distributing an anti-intellectual gospel wrapped up in the phony garb of intellectuals. Gee if I studied history I might come with knowledge of another movement that told powerless people they could be powerful if hey eliminated a certain group that caused all their problems and stood in their way. But of cousre that's on the menu of valid knowledge so we can't learn about it.

It should be pretty obvious at this point why the ideology seeks to destroy all forms of knowledge save that which contributes to it's own propaganda. If one were to really learn history and the liberal arts one would see through the ideology.

The Mission and Nature of Atheist watch

Here is a comment by Bill Walker about the nature of this blog. I thought it would be important to answer it up front so all can see.

Bill says:

I thought that Atheist watch was a group that sought dialog with Atheists. I am getting the impression from Mr. Hinman that he absolutely HATES Atheists. He's interested in spewing his hatred of us. Atheists are simply people who have no god belief. Period.We're a highly diverse group in any/all other matters. It's OK if others worship a god or gods.We don't care. I stopped believing way over 60 years ago, but I have friends & relatives who still believe. No big deal.

I'm glad you raised this issue, as it gives me a chance to clear up some misconceptions. First let me state that

(1) I do not hate atheists

(2) I do welcome dialogue

(3) I have not declined dialogue on this blog, as one might notice.

How can you say that I do not welcome dialogue when the last post was a long huge running dialogue with an atheist? The only comments I've rejected are those that contain personal attacks. I do get hate mail and hate comments sent to the blog that are aimed at destroying my self esteem. Having said that, the purpose of the blog has never been and is not stated to be dialogue. It's not a group, it's me. I am it. I am Atheist Watch, no one else is in on it with me. Let me tell you the history.

I first discovered the internet in 1998 when I was caring for my parents. They both had Alzheimer's and my father had a big heart attack. Rather than put them in a nursing home (60% abuse rate in Texas nursing homes) I took care of them at home. This took a total round the clock effort and I was not free to go out every much. It was like being in prison. The Net was a godsend. After my parents died I continued my apologetic because I had built up over three years an elaborte set of pojects (including my website Doxa, my first board on Inside the Web (long gong now). I made a lot of friends I had a thriving cybre social life. I saw reason to get off. One thing I really enjoyed was the fact that I had made a big splash. The atheists were sort of shocked by my arguments, they couldn't answer them. They didn't really share the same knowledge base that I had as a doctoral candidate in the history of ideas. It did flatter my ego. Some atheists came gunning and would actually "I've heard that you really have something and you can answer all the argumetns I'm here to take you down." It was almost like high noon, the gun fight. I was Marshall Dillon.

My academic career began to slip away during those three years I cared for my parents. But I managed to hang on and got though my language requirement while I was caring for my parents. Then I worked as a TA after they died, but only for a short time. Then I settled down to write my dissertation. My academic career was very important to me. It's the only thing I ever wanted to be (professor) and I began wanting that as a sophomore in high school. But after my parents died (two years apart) I was burned out. I had been so stressed from giving them constant care that even though I was working as a TA I could not write my dissertation. It took a couple of years to get back to a point where I could work on it. But by that time I has began losing the house in foreclosure because the mortgage company lied an cheated and stole the house. I fought them for a year, but I was unable to think about anything else. My brother was arrested during that time. This arrest largely involved Police not understanding people with mental problems. I was caring for my brother just as I done m parents. He helped with the parents too. But ultimately it was on me.

During all of this time I made great strides on the apologetic thing. As my graduate school career went down the tubes I retrenched more and more into my apologetic thing. I had published an academic journal. I was refereed and indexed and part of the academic world. A couple of major people in the field liked what I was doing and backed up. I had to give that up because I did not do that and change my parents bed pans, and change mother's diapers, follower her down the road to keep her from getting killed when she was in the wondering phase of Alzheimer's and so on. I lost everything I ever cared about and then what I wound up with was this internet apologetics thing. It is not a career, I wont be remembered for it. It wont ever be noticed by the academic world. Its' a really poor substitute yet it's all I had. So it was very important to me. It was too important. I agree I was rapidly moving from doing it for the right reason (wanting people to know God) to doing it for the wrong reason--to replace my academic career).

The problem with dialogueing with atheists has always been that there is something atheists do that they do not know they do. I beileve that the primary reason atheists go on message boards and blog and argue with Christians is to feel superior. they like the rush they get from feeling smarter than a whole group of people (the majority of people). Maybe I"m wrong about that, but what I'm not wrong about is that all Christians on the net always feel insulted and harassed by atheists. this problem has always been there. Atheists refuse to see it, they don't understand what they do. Every atheist has at some point presented a snotty attitude to religious people. Some do it not very much, some do it all the time. None of them ever seem to care. Most Christians believe as part of our faith that we are suppossed to respond in love, to just let it roll off your back, answer good for evil, and so on. So most of the time Christians just accept this attitude as par for the course. It's something all Christians talk about and always have. In private emails and in email groups and on private boards where atheists can't come we are always talking about the snotty attitude. The average sort of thing is like this "there's no proof for your sky pixie." The impression is constantly created that we are stupid, we just live by superstition, the atheist world view is based upon reason and logic and ours is based upon stupidity and superstition. Christians had learned that if you go on a message board you will be treated like this. We all accepted it as the price to pay for trying to tell people the Gospel.

Along about 2004 it got about ten times worse. This was when the first rash of books for the "new atheism" came out. People started using the phrase "new atheist." The attitude of the new atheists had first began to really hit the message boards. Atheists who had already been somewhat snotty suddenly became totally unapproachable for dialogue. A wave of vicious hatred was unleashed. Atheists would not accept and did not understand that they exhibited the old snotty attitude, they were totally in the dark about the way they came across (and I don't think many of them really cared anyway). This situation made me angry because it seemed by compensation for losing my career was being taken away. I came to realize that it is impossible to have a dialogue with someone who thinks this about you. you cannot have a rational discussion with unlevel playing field. People who treat you like you are a piece of shit will not listen to your view point fairly in a dialogue. If you think that people who vote for Bush (for example) are really dumb and that to vote for Bush is a sing that they are not bright and all there views are based upon ignorance, then you are not going to listen to what they say in a dialogue. Now I did not support Bush. If truth be told I though he was pretty stupid, I didn't think all his supporters were (I'm using that as an example, nothing more).


As this situation developed, I lost the house, we had to move to a bad apparent complex with lots of drugs and violence around. I couldn't find another job, I had to quite my studies right at the door step of getting the Ph.D. At that point a snow ball effect began to occur with the way atheists related to me and the way I related to them. The problem is I'm not content to be a door mate. I fight back. Atheists became extremely insulting, I insulted back. Well that may not be Christ-like, but it was definitely provoke. When the situation go to a certain point the atheists on secular web began a systemic campaign of character assassination. They spread the word, when I make arguments they can't answer they would turn to my personality. They began to circulate the ideas I'm arrogant vicious and insulting. Of course it never dawned on them that this might have been in response to the way they were treating me. Then they hit upon the one tangible short coming they could find: my spelling. They were too immature and ignorant to understand anything about dyslexia. They were not about to start researching it. They would just say "look how bad your spelling is" as though that answers all my arguments. Then they realized they could connect the two. They decided I must be lying about graduate career because after all, how could a guy with a Ph.D. spell as badly as I do? None of them knew anything graduate school. It never occurred to them that I put much more effort into papgers for school than I did for a board no the net! I would post about probably 20 posts a night on a slow night. I had a message board that I abandoned last year, went from summer 2000 to a year ago and has 25,000 posts by me. That is just a small fraction of the posting I did. I did maybe 14 short papers (1-2 pages) and about eight long papers a semester as a student. So of course I would put much more effort. I git my mother to proof papers when she was alive and in her right mind. I got others to proof them latter.

They spread the word, they would come on my blog and say "you lied, you never went to graduate school." "Now you know you never were a doctoral student, they wouldn't let you have a Ph.D you are too stupid." I earned a Ph.D. I did everything required and did it well. I had a 4.0 for five years. The only thing I didn't do was oral exam defense and turning in the dissertation. I even did my qualifying exams an the professors said "this is the best qualifying exams I have ever seen that this university." but the idiots on the internet don't know anything about Graduate school. It never dawned on them that when I spoke of the graduate experinces I reflected real experinces that I would not have known had not been a graduate student. they didn't know the material so it never dawned upon them I was highly conversant on the issues of the topics I spoke of. they have crummy vocabularies so it never dawned upon them that I have a 50$ per word vocabulary when I want to write that way (and I used to do that a lot). None of that meant anything,I can't spell, and spelling = intelligence in their stupid ass little minds so therefore I can't be smart. That dug in my heart like a knife. Here this was the compensation for losing the career I spent a life time developing and yet I was being cheated out of it by people who could not know what I went through, didn't care, had no concept of what I was talking about, with whom I could not communicate.



The Character assigns spread all over the net. When they got too hard to deal with at CARM which had become my main haven. Then the big atheist massacre on CARM came and the bright one's left. The one's remaining were totally hostile. The systemic character assassination spread throughout the net. I would try to find new boards and people on boards I had never heard of would say "O you are that Metacrock guy, we don't want you here because you lying about being a student and your real insulting and real stupid." The one thing I had left to hand on to that came out of the disintegration of my life (parents died, house stolen, career lost) was posting on the net and now it seemed I was universally thought of as a pariah by all atheists. If they would never take my arguments seriously there would no ponit in even trying to post. I had found my blog so I retreated largely into my own boards and my own blog and just began to react and lash out against them.

Then I began looking at the Atheist community as a whole. I moved beyond the little personal bickering matches in which I was bogged down and I began to ask myself "what is going on with these guys, what can I compare them too?" It seemed that a large segment of the message board atheists were just a bunch of thugs. they had no desire to talk and they just lashed out with a bunch of petty concerns designed to do nothing more than frustrate real argument. I had a long list of a whole bunch of boards and looked at them and showed that all Christians on there were treated like lepers, like scum. They were ridiculed, regaled, treated liked like pariahs. Atheists seemed to have an aversion to actually arguing they would just go for the personality of the apologist first thing. I explored these boards and even posted on them and found myself attacked this way just for trying to lay down serouis arguments: sec web, infidel guy, Atheist. org, and a several others that don't even exist and several I can't remember. In the beginning there were a couple of boards like this: the Wasteland, the Godless zone. Most of us just knew to stay away from them. After 2004 I could not find a single atheist message board that was not like that.

I used to put down a challenge to atheists to pretend to be Christians and go on those boards. Make serious but polite arguments and really try to defend the bible and see how you are treated. I've never heard form anyone who claims to have done it. Once I actually got the atheists on carm to go on atheist net and say " we are atheists we want you to argue seriously with Metacrock" and some did this, there were still a few that liked me then on CARM. They even cursed at those atheists and called them names, just for asking them to talk with me seriously. Slowly it began o dawn on me that there was a segment of the atheist community that was simply a hate group. I never thought it was the whole of all atheists. I never said it was.

The original Atheist Watch has as it's mission statement and slogan "keeping tabs on hate group atheism." Atheists took this to mean "all atheists are a hate group." I specifically denied that I meant it of all atheists. But no one ever acknowledged that I made this distinction. I said it over and over again in the beginning and yet they would say "you think all atheists are a hate group." I specifically said "No I don't think that." Next time they would go "you think all atheists are a hate group." I was aware of friend atheists who would help me and be nice to me. But they were the minority, the small minority. I began comparing this segment of atheists to the FBI hate group profile and find that up to stage four (there are about seven stages) they fit perfectly. God back and see the first post on this blog and you will find that comparison.

In spite of all of this I still see the Hate movement aspect as confined to a small subset of the whole. I was an atheist. I know what it's like to be one. I once faced down a whole class of first year philosophy students who were just a bunch of redneck hicks in a Texas university trying to fulfill a requirement. They wanted to beat me up because I was an atheist. But I didn't back down. Yet, the atheists today remind me more of the rednecks who wanted to beat me up then they do of the atheists I knew in college. I get hate email all the time. They don't just "you are stupid" they really try to smash my whole concept of who I am as a person. They curse my life, they say my whole reason for existing is gone and I should kill myself. Some have accused me of lying about my parents they were never sick I didn't care of hem ect et. Some have alluded to my penis size, which of course they do not know. They are nothing but scum. I know this is not all atheists. I know all are not like this, but there's no question that there is a segment who are like this.

I concerned me that I saw the hate segment growing. I still see it growing but i think it has slowed down a bit. I still see now real understanding among atheists about how the come across to religious people or any consciousness of what they do that sets religious people off and makes them feel insulted. For a while I focused on trash. I focused on the most hateful things I could find among atheists. Then I began to realize focusing on hate made me more hateful. Now I am not concerned with unearthing the hate incidents on the net. I also found that there is a paranoid right wing among the fundies who think they are begin persecuted when they are merely being disagreed with. I think it's more important to create understanding between the two groups than to make the atheists aware of how bad some of their ranks can be.

Atheist watch was down for a few months becasue I purged the old examples a dredged up of hate speech among atheists. The new mission is rational criticisms and an understanding of why atheists think as they do. Maybe I've focused more upon the arguments agianst atheism than I have on understanding why they think as they do, but I do feel that the New Atheist Watch is a lot more fair minded and balanced and civilized than the first go. Maybe there is still room for improvement. But I think atheists have to be honest with themselves and become critical of their own movement. I don't yet see any real desire expressed among their ranks to understate this change. In the long run I think development of these qualities will serve your cause better than continuing to deny that there are any hate elements among atheism at all.


They have made my personality the target of their vile attacks so long that I began to act like this is all about me. It's not about me. It not about my personality. I am arrogant. I think a right to be to an extent. I really did have a find education and I did have a bright future I will never see now. I can be very insulting and I have been insulting to people, but it was never just because I'm mean slob. It was always a response to perceived abuse. Yet there comes a time when you have to just stop responding to the crap and shut up. Otherwise it just goes on and one. So I am not going to defend myself any further. I think the only real cure is understanding. But atheists must begin to look at themselves critically.