Category: Atheism and Religion

Richard Dawkins’ Empty Chair 1, William Lane Craig 0

Professional Christian apologist William Lane Craig has been harassing Richard Dawkins to debate him for years.  Dawkins, citing a strict “I will not debate with creationists” policy, has refused, much to WLC’s consternation.  Craig’s followers spend an inordinate amount of time leaving comments all over the Internet (and showing up at his public appearances) to accuse Dawkins of cowardice for not agreeing to the debate.

On the occasion of Craig’s planned visit to Oxford last month, the rhetoric was stepped up.  Craig promised to leave an empty chair at his appearance as a reminder of Dawkins’ absence (and possibly to provide a phantom opponent to declare victory against); Dawkins took the time to issue a rare reply to Craig in the form of an article published in The Guardian.

For some years now, Craig has been increasingly importunate in his efforts to cajole, harass or defame me into a debate with him. I have consistently refused, in the spirit, if not the letter, of a famous retort by the then president of the Royal Society: “That would look great on your CV, not so good on mine”.

He then goes on to describe Craig’s recent defenses of biblical slaughter and genocide, and asks,

Would you shake hands with a man who could write stuff like that? Would you share a platform with him? I wouldn’t, and I won’t. Even if I were not engaged to be in London on the day in question, I would be proud to leave that chair in Oxford eloquently empty.

Craig, not surprisingly, went ahead with his attempt to capitalize on Richard’s name and absence.  A few reports on the event have now been published, and it turns out the issue was raised there:

[Craig said] “I would say that God has the right to give and take life as he sees fit. Children die all the time! If you believe in the salvation, as I do, of children, who die, what that meant is that the death of these children meant their salvation. People look at this [genocide] and think life ends at the grave but in fact this was the salvation of these children, who were far better dead…than being raised in this Canaanite culture. “

One attendee, who wished not be named, called Craig’s argument “alarming”: “I’m a Christian who generally agrees with Craig’s ideas but what he said for the last question was simply disturbing. He completely contradicted himself, one minute saying that, effectively, no children were killed in the genocide, only to say later on that it was OK that children died, that it was God’s will, and that they were saved from a debauched culture.”

Sounds to me like the chair was the clear winner of this debate.

 

Vote against religious discrimination in the US military

Stories of discrimination against non-believers in the US military are rampant.  There are big ones that make national news like the “spiritual fitness” requirements, or the sponsorship of blatantly proselytizing on-base festivals, or the faith-based training for nuclear missile operators and the Air Force Academy’s attempt to pretend the subsequent orders to suspend specific religious elements of all training maybe didn’t apply to them; and there are the smaller, personal stories, like the one recently shared about the marine who was arrested for not attending church services.

There’s a new attempt to draw attention to these problems.  The White House has added a petition system to its web site; any petition that gets a significant number of signatures (either 5,000 or 25,000 – there’s a bit of confusion about the numbers right now) within 30 days will get an official response.  So if you’d like to help drag this issue into the political spotlight, head on over to the White House’s “We the People” page and add your name to this petition:

End the Military’s Discrimination against Non-Religious Service Members

If you’ve experienced discrimination in the military for not being a believer, or not being the right kind of believer, please go share your stories with the folks at Rock Beyond Belief.  The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is another good resource.  The kind of religious coercion that goes on in military environments is not just unconstitutional, it’s unconscionable.  People who have volunteered to put their lives on the line in defense of our national ideals never deserve to be told they’re not fit to do so because they have the wrong opinion about about the magic invisible man in the sky.

 

Pat Robertson opens his mouth again

Good old Pat is always good for a laugh – if you can avoid, for a moment, thinking about how many people take him seriously – but it seems to me that over the last year or so he’s ramped up the frequency of Newsworthy Stupidity.

Robertson, eager to move on from the divorce is just fine as long as your wife has Alzheimer’s brouhaha, decided to carry us into October by dusting off an old meme:  “Halloween is Satan’s night”.

“We don’t believe” in ghosts and spirits, but be afraid of them, be very afraid!  It turns out, you see, that Pat’s network has engaged in investigative journalism to discover that:

“[M]ost of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches,” Daniels wrote. “I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.”

I’m curious whether Pat approves of dressing up in scary costumes and playing spooky noises in dimly lit areas so long as it’s done with the express purpose of traumatizing children into Christianity?

Is it too much to hope he’s planning to retire soon, and these are just his efforts to squeeze out a little bit extra of the crazy in the hopes of going out at the top of his game?

(10/5 edit – forgot a link!)

Psst! A secret message to my fellow conspirators

Just wanted to discreetly pass along a suggestion to my fellow Militant Atheist, War-on-Christmas types. Let’s keep this just between us… it won’t work if the public gets wind of it.

A bunch of the Christians seem to think their Second Coming thing is happening on May 21 of this year. Even among those who don’t accept this as an exact date, many expect it to be in the not-too-distant future.

So here’s my idea:

On May 21, without having told anyone what you’re planning, get up early, gather the clothes you’d normally wear for the day, and pile them on your doorstep. Then hide in your basement all day. Fresh clothing optional.

On May 22, enjoy the turmoil as they try to explain why millions of atheists were raptured away…

Is it doomsday again already?

End of the World predictions come and go, and the doomsayers just keep revising their predictions… check out the history of the Seventh Day Adventists for a fun example. So it occurred to me after seeing pictures of this sign show up on a number of sites:

… that technology might provide a more elegant, efficient means of re-predicting The End:

The new science of Geopornography

A Muslim cleric announced the other day that the recent spat of earthquakes are happening not because of shifting tectonic plates, but, rather, because women around the world have apparently not been dressing with sufficient modesty.

To test this theory, Blag Hag has called for a grand scientific experiment: April 26th has been declared Boobquake Day! Women everywhere are being called on to wear revealing tops to see if there is in fact a geological impact. Sure, it could cause earthquakes, but most likely those will happen in places where not many people have accepted into their hearts. And yes, sure, there might be a higher incidence of fender-benders on that day, but that seems a small price to pay for opening up a whole new realm of science.

Besides, think of the massive victory this would be for women’s rights everywhere! Abused and oppressed women the world over could simply say, “leave me alone or I’ll walk outside in a thong and destroy you all!”

I asked Jesus about Boobquake Day and he seemed to approve:

No ‘Abused member’ jokes, I promise

It couldn’t have happened to nicer organization that systematically places its members in positions of authority over the vulnerable and enables and covers up abuses by those same members. This time it happened to an organization that probably owns several of the buildings I walk past on the daily slog from where I park to where I work: The Wilmington diocese has filed for bankruptcy.

The boinking of altar boys by priests, it turns out, can get pricey. I guess the Church knew this all along, and kept it quiet as a cost saving measure.

My favorite bit from the story:

“The Diocese also expects that at least six victims will die during this delay and it will save millions of dollars per survivor as this occurs. Their deaths will prevent the success of their claims since they will not be alive to testify in court.”

Yay! Dead people save us money!

The path to salvation is littered with the ashes of burnt Bibles

… so long as they’re only wrong versions of the Bible.

The “War on Christmas” rhetoric starts heating up every year right around the time the department stores start making room on their shelves for holiday-themed items (i.e. as soon as the “Back to School” sales are over), but the WoC is really only a seasonal manifestation of the all-year background whine that I’ve dubbed Christian Persecution Syndrome. “Christianity is under attack!” they say, because the public schools won’t force my children to read the Bible. “I’m offended!” they cry at the sight of a sign that says merely that you’re not alone if you don’t believe in God.

When I hear Christians bemoaning how downtrodden they’ve allegedly become, I often try to point out to them that, historically, the most successful and sometimes brutal persecutions of Christians have most often been at the hands of other Christians. I mention that their imagined modern anti-Christmas crusaders have nothing on puritanical Christian Oliver Cromwell’s ban on Christmas, and when they pull out the “this is a Christian nation” card I tend to respond that’s no, it isn’t, and one of the main reasons it isn’t is because when it came time to ratify the Constitution, the Methodists looked across the tables at the Baptists looking at the Unitarians looking at… etc, with each one thinking, “if that guy’s version of my beliefs become the official state religion, I’m totally screwed!”

Well, now the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, NC has given me a new, more recent example of the Holy turning on themselves. They’ve scheduled a Halloween Book Burning to rid the world of a variety of satanic works:

Church leaders deem Good News for Modern Man, the Evidence Bible, the New International Version Bible, the Green Bible and the Message Bible, as well as at least seven other versions of the Bible as “Satan’s Bibles,” according to the website. Attendees will also set fire to “Satan’s popular books” such as the work of “heretics” including the Pope, Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and Rick Warren.

“I believe the King James version is God’s preserved, inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God,” Pastor Marc Grizzard told a local news station of his 14-member parish.

One would assume Mr. Grizzard also plans a denial-of-service attack against the machines that house the Conservapedia Bible Project.

Erasing Commie Pinko Homo Jesus

Conservapedia is a popular fan-fiction site where aspiring writers painstakingly construct an alternate-history parallel universe based loosely around the storyline concocted within the series of fantasy works collectively referred to as “The Bible”. But as with many fantasy realms – especially those where numerous authors have created content, such as in the realms of Star Wars/Trek fandom – there are bound to be continuity errors and questions over what material should be considered parts of the “official canon”.

Well, the creative folks over an Conservapedia have decided on a rather unique way to resolve such disputes: they’re going to re-write the original fantasy novels to better support the later fiction they inspired!

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:

* lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
* lack of precision in modern language
* translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.

Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error is liberal bias. Large reductions in this error can be attained simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English.[1]

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[2]

Personally I’m not a fan of the original work, but as an aficionado of fantasy literature and an aspiring writer myself, I’m intrigued enough by this project to consider making some contributions, or at least a few suggestions:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

Well, of course a good fantasy realm has to be internally consistent to be believable, but it seems to me that if you’re going to address the underlying philosophical message of a piece of writing, your time would be better spent trying to massage away the plot holes that undermine that message. In this case, I’d consider starting with the “thou shalt not kill unless the voice in your head tells you to, in which case slaughter is totally justified” conundrum.

2 Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

This step needs to be taken a bit further: add more masculinity. What follows are some rough drafts of a few possible ways to handle this transition:

And the Lord commandeth Moses to draw forth his Glock 9mm semi-automatic, and Moses did; and he sayeth unto the Pharaoh, ‘Let my people go, bee-yotch!’ And the girly Pharaoh did run away whining to his mommy like a crybaby liberal, and the Not Really Christians But Close Enough for This Part of the Story did flee into the desert in their Hummers and American-built pickup trucks.

Parting the red sea by belching after a Coors Lite binge is another possible avenue to explore.

And Jesus said, ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, unless Caesar is a democrat or a negro; for those are lying socialist dictators.’ And Jesus did flex his manly biceps, and Mary Magdalene did drop to her knees where she belonged and render unto herself the bulge under his robe, which would have been a sin were Jesus not a family-values Republican.

Wow, this is even more fun than I thought it would be!

3 Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]

Don’t dumb it down, dumb it UP! The Stupid in the Bible is one of the most interesting things about it. Never be afraid to add more Stupid!

4 Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.

5 Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”;[5] using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census

Search and replace becomes your best friend here!

satan

egypt

meek

6 Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.

For consistency, also accept the logic of Limbo and explain its recent disappearance. Also Narnia and the alien base on Mars where abductees are anal-probed.

7 Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Thou shalt not steal unless thou canst afford to hire flunkies to do it for thee. The peddling of worthless investments to uninformed consumers shall also raise thee in stature in the eyes of God.

8 Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story

References to feeding the poor and healing the sick contribute to the socialist agenda, so those must also go.

Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels

It goes without saying that examples of open-mindedness which leads to conclusions other than our pre-conceived ones will be correctly excluded.

10 Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

Clearly excessive use of “words” can be dangerous when mixed with the wrong sort of open-mindedness (see above), leading potentially to the sins of Curiosity, Investigation, or even the deadly sin of Questioning. Wherever possible, extensive wordiness should be replaced by buzzwords and simplistic catch-phrases which invite repetition rather than discussion.

How long would this project take? There are about 8000 verses in the New Testament. At a careful rate of translating about four verses an hour, it would take one person 2000 hours, or about one year working full time on the project.

Well then get to work, I can’t wait to read the results! This won’t outsell the original, but it’s sure to be a big hit!