Herr Bahl's Heresies

42 is not The Answer

2009-11-25T19:47:00.000-08:00

But fortunately enough, this book is. Bob Wistermeyer is a psychologist at the University of Manitoba who has been giving out surveys to various groups of people for quite a long time. These surveys are geared to measure various personality traits in regard to their submissiveness to authority, their religiousness (not necessarily of the theist kind), and their desire for power over others.

His findings are fantastically insightful, to the degree that I would call them revelations into human social and political dynamics. I do not say this lightly, I cannot think of any other single book that has helped me understand why certain groups of people behave the way they behave.

Please, do not take my word for it. Prof. Wistermeyer has been kind enough to post the book online, free to read for anybody with an internet connection, just follow the link above.

Ray Comfort is a liar

2009-11-18T18:14:00.000-08:00

Normally I'm not one to rake somebody across the coals for disagreeing with me. Even creationists, flawed though their understanding of biology is, are often at least sincere in what they believe. For folks that are not familiar with religious indoctrination and who do not empathize with the difficulty of shedding a religious worldview, creationists often seem to characterize all that is stupid about religion. To my frustrated atheist brethren I can only counsel for more patience and empathy and to keep plugging away in the hopes that some day the person they are arguing with will grasp reason.

Ray Comfort, on the other hand, is not really a creationist, he just pretends to be.

What's that you say Herr Bahl? Are we talking about the same "banana is proof of God" Ray Comfort? The one that is running with his current PR stunt of distributing copies of Darwin's "Origin of the Species" with his own special creationist introduction?

Yes indeed I am. In fact, this latest stunt is what tipped me off to Ray's particular brand of dishonesty. You see, Ray didn't just write a new introduction to Origin, he also deleted four chapters from the book.

That's like comparing one of Picasso's abstract portraits to the Mona Lisa and claiming that Picasso more accurately draws faces after you photoshop off the Mona Lisa's mouth and nose.

What this means is that Ray doesn't even believe his own shtick. He realized that unaltered Origin, a 150 year old book written even before we knew the structure of DNA, has a more cogent argument for evolution than he could refute with his tired and rehashed standard creationist nonsense. Never mind modern evolutionary theory and our knowledge of mutation and genetic drift, Ray Comfort knows that he can't even refute arguments made a century and a half ago.

This lowers Ray from confused/crazy creationist to outright liar status. Do us a favor and next time you decide to go on an editing binge, distribute copies of the Bible.

Update:

Thank you for the information choobie. I don't make it to my local campus often so I didn't have a chance to actually verify the cited article claiming that four chapters were omitted. In retrospect I likely should have at least obtained third party verification.

That bit of sloppiness on my part aside, omitting just Chapter 7 is still a serious implication of intellectual dishonesty. As the anonymous respondant to choobie's comment stated, that he put the chapters back in does seem to point to a calculated effort to reduce the obviousness of his edits.

Honestly, given what I've read on Ray's site, I'm beginning to think that he's just an attention whore, seeking to ride the wave of anti-evolution by being outrageous.

How now heresy?

2009-11-16T20:01:00.001-08:00

Loosely, heresy is a rejection of established belief. It exists pretty much in any venue that belief can become entrenched, whether that be its common venue of religion or the halls of science.

The point being that humans like for their universe to be understood. Once we build our world view and refine it over the years we do not like to have that world torn down to be replaced by something poorly understood. We will, in fact, go to great lengths to postulate extraordinary means by which the sensible explanation should be considered outrageous. We do this simply so that we can remain comfortable with the fiction we have created.

This blog is about religion, and my heresy is simple in that context. I do not believe that there are gods. I believe all the dogma, all the sacred texts, all the creeds, prayers and rituals are all utterly and completely worthless.

Religion is an old and flawed way to view the world. While I do not have the explicit goal of tearing down the religious world view, I would be pleased if it did get torn down. We have better tools with which to seek understanding than praying to an imaginary friend and seeking divine inspiration. While I suspect that there will always be those who seek comfort in religion, I believe that the majority of people have the potential to be such good heretics.

Speaking out for atheism.

2009-11-15T01:02:00.000-08:00

If you've glanced over at the "on the bahl" profile, you'll see that I classify myself as another outspoken atheist. There are certainly a great many atheists more outspoken than I but, unlike religion, each atheists shares only a single common belief. I do not speak for other atheists and they do not speak for me.

So why am I outspoken? Why do I care enough to raise my solitary voice from the internet lurkerdom? If I don't believe in gods, why waste my time discussing religion?

In a nutshell, I believe that belief religion is often a form of abdication of responsibility. While I cannot force people to be responsible, I do hope to encourage them to be so. Note that I used the term "often", not always. There are a great many responsible religious people out there and they have my respect, even if I do believe them mistaken in their belief in deities.

As a race, humankind is not always the best behaved at being responsible. We often leap before we look, we don't tidy up, and we frequently fail to play nice with others. I do not believe that religion is responsible for all the bad that we do, but for much of the time those that do bad attempt to justify their acts with their religion.

Why I am an atheist

2009-11-12T06:29:00.000-08:00

Before discussing the reason for my being one of the godless, I think it is useful to clarify the definition of what an atheist is.

The current convention maintains that atheists are split into two camps based on how they state their godlessness. On one side you have "weak" or agnostic atheists and on the other hand you have "strong" or gnostic atheists.

Weak atheists state their stance as "I do not believe there is a god or gods." Note that the weak atheists do not state a claim on whether a god or gods exist, merely that they do not believe in such beings.

Strong atheists have the stance "No god or gods exist." This stance does make a statement regarding whether gods exist.

I, along with the majority of other atheists that I have conversed with, am a weak atheist. As far as I am concerned, there is no evidence that supports that godlike beings exist. Without evidence, my conclusion is that the claims of the various religions are false.

Now, some theists have leapt up to point out that weak atheism is a form of agnosticism. By some definitions of agnosticism this is certainly true, but in the same sense that both sea slugs and humans are a form of animal (they are, but sea slugs are invertebrate gastropods while humans are vertebrate mammals of the primate family). Agnosticism can be defined to cover anybody who is willing to admit any lack of certainty about the existence of gods, which covers the vast majority of both theists and atheists. As such, the term "agnostic" is not very useful, as it lacks precision.

Weak atheism is a statement of personal belief. While I may not be 100% certain that there are no gods, I am 100% certain that I don't believe that gods exist. If there is a god wants me to believe in it, it is always free to stop by and have a cup of coffee with me. My treat.

Welcome

2009-11-11T20:28:00.000-08:00

Greetings one and all. If you are here you are likely either an atheist or somebody who likes arguing with atheists. Either way, just as I attempt to extend every courtesy to my visitors, please keep a civil tongue. You are welcome to disagree with me on any point, however I insist that if you want to post here that you disagree politely.

Why do I insist that? Partly because my mother taught me to be polite, but also because I actually like to have a point to my discussions and I prefer not to waste my time finding out who can come up with the best put down.