Randal Rauser, associate professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary, wrote a brief but enlightening perspective at The Christian Post on the wholly inept efforts of pitting faith and reason in some kind of supposed conflict. The skeptic who insists that he exercises reason, not faith, “is like the child who insists ‘I breathe air, not oxygen’.” Read the full article here.

Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian, pg. 12)

The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good.

This philosophical problem is commonly referred to as The Euthyphro Dilemma, the origin of which is found in The Dialogues of Plato. In this particular work, Socrates and Euthyphro are having a discussion about the nature of holiness (Lt. pietas) and Socrates sets the matter before him thus: “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods” (Euthyphro, 10a)—an entanglement which Euthyphro was unable to find his way out of. In a contemporary setting the question is essentially identical, framed in the context of morality and often used as an attempted indictment against the coherence of Christian theism: “Is a thing moral because God commands it, or does God command it because it is moral?”

Read the rest of this entry

Bill Maher, 16 June 2009 (video)

“Sorry, folks, but this President is not fighting for real health care reform. It’s nibbling that leaves insurance companies still running the show. … This is not getting the job done. This is not what I voted for. And this is why I don’t want my President to be a TV star, because TV stars are too worried about being popular and too concerned with getting renewed. … Folks, Barack Obama needs to start putting it on the line in fights against the banks, the energy companies, and the health care industry… I’m glad Obama is President, but the Audacity of Hope part is over. Right now I’m hoping for a little more audacity.”

Fundy Atheists Say the Darndest Things:

Shane5 (24 Aug 2009) From the Comments section to a CBC news report about "Malaysian escapes caning for drinking beer" (pg. 8 of comments)

… the basis for respecting a person is one thing, but the basis (or lack thereof) for respecting a view held by a person is quite another. This difference is especially poignant if beliefs are supported by nothing other than dogma, are devoid of any firm rooting in evidence, or are shielded from the scrutiny of open discourse and skepticism.

I want the readers to pay attention to this belief expressed by Shane:

“[Beliefs are unworthy of respect when they] are supported by nothing other than dogma [and] are devoid of any firm rooting in evidence.”

His belief here is supported by nothing other than sheer dogma, being devoid of any firm rooting in evidence. Gentlemen, that is what critical thinkers refer to as self-stultifying nonsense, a proposition that defeats itself by failing to satisfy its own criteria. I guess what we can take away from this is that Shane cannot respect his own belief.

Someone might indicate that his statement referred to religious beliefs. That, however, would not provide any help for his statement because it would then be a fallacious case of Special Pleading (i.e., beliefs that are not supported by evidence are okay—unless they are religious, in which case they are not okay).

Shane5 (cont’d)

A cold virus is considered a separate matter from the infected individual. The computer virus is an object of study quite separate from the underlying PC platform on which it ‘runs’ … [In the case of human beings], religious beliefs fail to qualify as ideas deserving of respect by rational thinkers. Needless to say, religious people, being affected by the meme, tend to object strongly to this relegation of their core beliefs to something akin to a virus that fails to qualify for respect.

It is now clear that religion is a ‘meme’ or mind virus that is very effective at spreading through human populations—through childhood indoctrination, alpha-male worship, rejection of outside ideas, and in-group/out-group mechanisms, among others.

Religion is a nefarious ‘meme’ or mind virus, he confidently asserts, a belief for which there is not one shred of empirical evidence. It is pseudoscientific twaddle he has swallowed from Dawkins and his ilk, who have not “empirically proven the existence of discrete memes or their proposed mechanism, and memes (as distinct from ideas or cultural phenomena) do not form part of the consensus of mainstream social sciences.”

It is not a scientific discipline. It is an elaborate fiction, a myth told in scientific jargon that recalls to my mind a rather salient point made by Michael Shermer, who said that “you can actually just b.s. people with scientific language without bothering to use the scientific process.” This gets to the very heart of defining what pseudoscience is, he said, which is “the intentional misuse of scientific jargon in order to portray oneself as having some scientific perspective or taking a scientific approach.” It is this age of science we live in that has led people to realize “that to be taken seriously, they at least have to appear scientific.” (Taken from an interview with Michael Shermer published in The New Individualist on 25 Feb 2007 by The Atlas Society.)

Shane5 (cont’d)

These recent books put the phenomenon of religion into clear and objective perspective:

• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith
• Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell
• Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

Objective perspective?! Hahahahaha!! …<falls off chair>

Cyrus Vance, 14 June 1977

“If terrorism and violence in the name of dissent cannot be condoned, neither can violence that is officially sanctioned. Such action perverts the legal system that alone assures the survival of our traditions. The surest way to defeat terrorism is to promote justice in our societies—legal, economic, and social justice. Justice that is summary undermines the future it seeks to promote. It produces only more violence, more victims, and more terrorism. Respect for the rule of law will promote justice and remove the seeds of subversion. Abandoning such respect, governments descend into the netherworld of the terrorist and lose their strongest weapon—their moral authority.”

Fundy Atheists Say the Darndest Things:

Dotard (12 Aug 2009) AtheistForums.org

You will always place your God outside scrutiny. Your God is outside science, logic, observation, testability—you name it, your God "transcends" it.

1. Are not science, observation, and testability all members of the same category? Crowding a statement with superfluous nouns does not add anything to it except linguistic incontinence.

2. That God is outside scientific observation and testability—which is a better way for it to be phrased—is not an ad hoc move of convenience but (i) a logical consequence of God being the Creator of the universe and (ii) part of the monotheistic metanarrative for thousands of years. Whereas the subjects of scientific observation and testability are by definition phenomena in nature, God by definition as Creator exists logically prior to and outside of our space-time manifold.

3. God is never placed outside of (or said to transcend) logic. Although anecdotal evidence may prove that individual Christians utter such nonsense, one should be suspicious of philosophical illiteracy and hesitate to take them as representative of Christian scholarship on the issue, of which there is no shortage.

(On a related point, it is a revealing inconsistency for atheists to require qualified or expert opinions on other matters but conveniently abandon such standards when confronting Christian philosophy.)

Why, oh why, do they have to make Cylons so damn sexy? They are robots. Machines are not supposed to be so hot. It breaks some fundamental law of the universe. Or something. Or it should.

Alessandra Torresani… mmmm.

So I finally watched the extended version of the Caprica pilot which premiered exclusively on DVD back in April. (Because it is not hitting television until the start of next year, there was no real need to rush.) I was a huge fan of Ronald Moore’s reinvented Battlestar Galactica so I was glad to hear they were going to keep that franchise going. This, however, is something of a departure from what I was accustomed to (a dark, gritty, post-apocalyptic world).

I guess this is their attempt to garner the attention of female viewership, which a war-torn battle for survival set in space evidently did not appeal to. Stupid girls. (Except Alessandra, mmm.) Anyway, it seems they are hoping that Caprica will "engage a broader audience," with their having dialled down the action to dial up the character, more lights and less darks, the warmth of homeworld as opposed to the coldness of space, a sense of utopian optimism instead of violent conflict, etc. And it works, in my view. They seem to have struck a good balance. Battlestar Galactica garnered critical acclaim but was never a ratings success. Hopefully the balance struck with Caprica will capture both.

It’s being produced in Vancouver, British Columbia. Yeah… she’s that close.