It’s not clear.
We usually save this stuff for Sundays, but with the uproar against Dawkins apparently growing apace: Further to Vince Torley’s The New Atheists: A House Divided, here’s a Guardian op-ed:
The atheist movement – a loosely-knit community of conference-goers, advocacy organizations, writers and activists – has been wracked by infighting the last few years over its persistent gender imbalance and the causes of it. Many female atheists have explained that they don’t get more involved because of the casual sexism endemic to the movement: parts of it see nothing problematic about hosting conferences with all-male speakers or having all-male leadership – and that’s before you get to the vitriolic and dangerous sexual harassment, online and off, that’s designed to intimidate women into silence.
Richard Dawkins has involved himself in some of these controversies, and rarely for the better – as with his infamous “Dear Muslima” letter in 2011, in which he essentially argued that, because women in Muslim countries suffer more from sexist mistreatment, women in the west shouldn’t speak up about sexual harassment or physical intimidation. There was also his sneer at women who advocate anti-sexual harassment policies.
But over the last few months, Dawkins showed signs of détente with his feminist critics – even progress. He signed a joint letter with the writer Ophelia Benson, denouncing and rejecting harassment; he even apologized for the “Dear Muslima” letter. On stage at a conference in Oxford in August, Dawkins claimed to be a feminist and said that everyone else should be, too.
Then another prominent male atheist, Sam Harris, crammed his foot in his mouth and said that atheist activism lacks an “estrogen vibe” and was “to some degree intrinsically male”. And, just like that, the brief Dawkins Spring was over. More.
Hey, wait a minute.
Most of what is said against Harris in this context seems false, provided of course, you think that truth or reality matters. No new atheist can think that, because the mind is merely what the brain does, right? But the rest of us can.
The four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse are falling victim to their own hordes, whose separate, individual truths compete for power in an arena where no true truth rules.
The whole point about the new atheist movement is that humans are merely evolved primates. So statements about “reality” are merely statements about our neurons.
How many times do we have to say this to get it across? If you sign on, that is what you are signing on to. It is not science or anti-science or non-science. It is simply a-science.
The pack has decided to savage Dawkins and Harris. The grant machine and the PR machine and the oppo research machine roll on, but evidence is irrelevant and in principle there is no one to care.
Note: Dawkins’ Twitter feed is here.
One thing new atheism won’t be good for is a civilization. Maybe that’s why women found other things to do?
Follow UD News at Twitter!
I think Atheists, New & Old, will need to do an end run around Natural Selection in light of their reproduction rates being lower than Theists.
Atheists need to start building robots. Woop Woop.
Ppolish: “I think Atheists, New & Old, will need to do an end run around Natural Selection in light of their reproduction rates being lower than Theists.”
This may be true, but the only thing lower than an atheist’s reproductive rate is the rate of theist children remaining theists. Unlike blue eyes and brown hair, theism is not heritable. Which is a good thing.
A_b, recent data from Pew doesn’t back up your claim:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org.....2014-0-10/
11% of Millennials are Atheist. Down from previous year actually. And data indicates Atheism declines as you get older/wiser:)
2014 reverses a trend in Millennials Religiosity. Pope Effect? Dawkins Effect? Or Millennials just getting smarter?
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org.....2014-0-01/
OT: Stephen Meyer interview:
Darwin on the rocks – Sept. 19, 2014
Q&A | DNA and Cambrian fossils, says Stephen Meyer, make macroevolutionary theory increasingly untenable
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/0....._the_rocks
@Acartia_bogart #2
You said:
I can’t decide whether to say that it seems you’re wrong or that it seems you’re right, but not in the way you think.
I’m too tired to hunt down the recent article that discussed it, but recent findings seem to show that a tendency toward some form of theism is inherent in children, even in those who have been raised by atheists and have never really been introduced to the concept of God. There was also another article I read recently about wanting to get to children early and stamp out their inherent teleological thinking about nature before it has a chance to take hold.
The evidence would seem to indicate that when it comes to theism in children, the question is not whether parents are going to impart an entirely foreign new concept of God to a child where they otherwise had a blank slate on the issue. Rather, the question seems to be whether parents are going to nurture the child’s natural theistic inclination or try their best to stamp it out.
This would also seem to put the lie to the oft-heard atheist rhetoric that everyone is born an atheist and the only reason people believe in God is because he is foisted on them. Not every atheist actively claims this, but I’ve heard my fair share. These same ones also sometimes use this claim to support the propriety of the presumption of atheism (the idea that atheism should be the default position, and so if a theist fails to provide sufficient evidence to convince a listener that God does exist, the listener should conclude that God does not exist rather than simply conclude that he may or may not).
Perhaps the most interesting part of your comment, though, is the part I left out:
Why, I wonder, is that a good thing?
HeKs at 6, I’ve always been leery of arguments that people are naturally theistic, because it seems more economical to say that they are naturally inclined to use reason to resolve somewhat abstract issues. There are arguments for God based on reason that have been apprehended by most people in all civilizations.
A story that struck me in this context: A Chinese communist doctor was charged with removing organs for transplant from freshly executed Falun Gong who had refused to renounce their faith.
His boss doc looked at him afterward and whispered, “Do you realize, we are going to HELL?”
Remember, this was not a Christian context. Who told those men that what they had just done might have sealed an eternal fate? Not the Chinese communist party, you may be sure.
But I would argue, it is not an “instinct” or “rogue neuron” or “selfish gene” -it is a human being who is aware that he has crossed a line.
Remember Genesis?: Who told you you were naked?
Well, who told those guys they were the confederates of murderers? What told them is the vast gulf fixed between men and animals.
Yes, but the whole of creation (sic) speaks of a Creator and an intelligent one. Something that would be apparent virtually as soon as one was capable of reasoning.
And why not, given that the Word is the light that ‘enlightens every man who comes into the world’: the Holy Spirit, who infuses knowledge and by coordinating the strands of our intelligence, engenders understanding.
Maybe this was the article you had in mind, HeKS:
http://www.theguardian.com/com.....f-comments
They had better stamp out nature programs on television first. I had the TV on for a bit this am tuned to a nature show for kids. It was so chock full of teleology and essentialism. Aristotle lives! And is still being taught to our children.
Perhaps there is yet hope.
News at 7 [that sounds like an ad for the local news broadcast :)],
To say that they are naturally thesitic might be going a tad far, but perhaps not by very much. I was unaware of any of this until recently, but studies seem to suggest that young children have some natural concept of some Being like God that is not a mere extrapolation from their knowledge of other humans. Whatever we want to say about it from the perspective of trying to use precise language, it seems like there’s naturally something there, and whatever it is, it’s oriented more towards theism than atheism.
Here are two articles over at ENV that cover what I was referring to in my earlier comment:
More Studies Show Children Are Wired for Religious Belief: A Brief Literature Review
Story Time: Psychologists Show How to “Suppress” Children’s Intuition of Design in Nature
@Mung #9
It’s interesting, isn’t it? It seems that they certainly don’t want to give the impression that there’s any purpose or intent in nature, but it seems virtually impossible to even talk about nature in a sensible way without employing teleological language left, right and center
HeKs@6: “I’m too tired to hunt down the recent article that discussed it, but recent findings seem to show that a tendency toward some form of theism is inherent in children..”
I agree with you, to a point. The human inquisitiveness is certainly heritable. And to a young child, the obvious questions are: who am I? What am I? Why do I exist, etc. and without any context and knowledge to examine these effectively, the first thing that they would likely grasp on to would be the supernatural.
Babies are born THEISTS – Dr. Olivera Petrovich – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rQKmye5_BQ
Children are born believers in God, academic claims – Telegraph – November 2008
Excerpt: “The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children’s minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose,”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....laims.html
More Studies Show Children Are Wired for Religious Belief: A Brief Literature Review – Casey Luskin August 7, 2014
Excerpt: We see, then, multiple studies converging on a single conclusion: the innate predisposition of the human mind to believe that there is some kind of an intelligent creator God. Perhaps as we get older we may override this programming, but our fundamental constitution appears oriented to religious belief.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....88551.html
‘Believers’ gene’ will spread religion , says academic – January 2011
Excerpt: The World Values Survey, which covered 82 nations from 1981 to 2004, found that adults who attended religious services more than once a week had 2.5 children on average; while those who went once a month had two; and those who never attended had 1.67.
Prof Rowthorn wrote: “The more devout people are, the more children they are likely to have.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sci.....demic.html
Why do atheists have such a low retention rate? – July 2012
Excerpt: Only about 30 percent of those who grow up in an atheist household remain atheists as adults. This “retention rate” was the lowest among the 20 separate categories in the study.
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....tion-rate/
No wonder militant atheists have to be so persistent, and dogmatic, in ‘evangelizing’ their false nihilistic religion. Even their own children have a inherent tendency to not believe what they are saying.
Plus naturalism is epistemically self-defeating:
Why No One (Can) Believe Atheism/Naturalism to be True – video
Excerpt: “Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life.”
Richard Dawkins – quoted from “The God Delusion”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4QFsKevTXs
BA77, but how is this different than the inquisitiveness of children being willing to believe in the supernatural because they are inexperienced (gullible?).
WS,
Well, for one thing, saying that children are “willing to believe” implies that they are accepting a concept presented by an external source. But what these studies show is that the concept is naturally coming from within the child without needing to have the concept presented to do them, and that this is the case even when they’ve been raised in an atheist household. If these studies are correct, that would lend support to the idea that a belief in God is properly basic in the same way that belief in objective morality is properly basic, and that a belief in God is justified in the absence of some defeater.
Well AB, oops I mean william spearshake, I did, at the end of my previous post, happen to mention the fact that Naturalism is, as far as epistemology itself is concerned, self-defeating. Which is certainly not a minor critique against a worldview claiming to be ‘true’!
Evolutionists Are Now Saying Their Thinking is Flawed (But Evolution is Still a Fact) – Cornelius Hunter – May 2012
Excerpt: But the point here is that these “researchers” are making an assertion (human reasoning evolved and is flawed) which undermines their very argument. If human reasoning evolved and is flawed, then how can we know that evolution is a fact, much less any particular details of said evolutionary process that they think they understand via their “research”?
http://darwins-god.blogspot.co.....their.html
“Refuting Naturalism by Citing our own Consciousness” Dr. Alvin Plantinga – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r34AIo-xBh8
Quote: “In evolutionary games we put truth (true perception) on the stage and it dies. And in genetic algorithms it (true perception) never gets on the stage”
Donald Hoffman PhD. – Consciousness and The Interface Theory of Perception – 7:19 to 9:20 minute mark – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dqDP34a-epI#t=439
Verse and Music
Matthew 18:4
Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Third Day – “Children Of God” – Official Music Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6jO7xhU_Pw
HeKs, I agree that the concepts are coming from within the child. My only point is that children are more willing to accept magic, the supernatural, whatever. Is this inherent? Or is it because they lack the knowledge and experience to make an informed decision. Frankly, I admit that I don’t know.
BA77, yup, I am B_A. I am not hiding it but, apparently, if you are critical of Barry at all, you get banned. But I have a question for you. Even though we seldom agree, I do respect your opinion. Did I do anything that warranted being banned?
I did not follow the thread so I can’t say since the comments are now deleted.,,,
If it is any comfort, I was banned for a time a few years ago when I let my anger at the unreasonableness of atheists get the better of me and said some things that were not kind, to put it mildly.
BA77, I just can’t picture you getting mad to the point of saying things that are unkind. Blunt and pointed? Yes. But that is not the same as unkind.
I may have said things that Barry took personally, but if that is the case, I don’t know why he doesn’t leave it up for everyone to judge.
By the age of 10 or so most kids can distinguish the difference between Magic (Santa) and Divine (Jesus). Although there are adults who still can’t make the distinction.
Ppolish, but kids catch on to Santa early because they perceive their parents’ belief. But believing in Jesus is orders of magnitude different. Although no more real.
Willaim, most kids learn about Santa from peers, not parents. Heck, sometimes the play along and let their parents think they still believe:)
And as pre-teens become teens, they realize they are so much smarter than their parents. But still make the distinction between magic & Divine.
Although William, I do agree with the “orders of magnitude” difference. When my kid admitted to me her disbelief in Santa I dealt with it ok.
But if she admitted to me a disbelief in God I would be crushed. I can see how an Atheist kid in a Theist family could be stressed.
Meant to say “learn the truth” about Santa from peers.
AB, you hold that believing in Jesus is similar to believing in Santa. Whereas I hold that believing in evolution is far worse of a delusion than believing in Santa. ,,,
To make my point crystal clear, if I told you that the entire internet was just an accident of time, chance, and necessity, you would consider me stark raving mad. But Darwinists insist that our brains, each of which is far more complex than the entire internet, arose in such a fashion, even though they have not one shred of observational evidence that it can happen by time, chance, and necessity.
AB, I simply can’t see how anyone, after understanding the sheer depth and breadth of the complexity being dealt with, can continue to believe such unfathomed complexity accidentally arose by time, chance, and neccessity.,,, Especially without any observational evidence that it is remotely plausible. (M. Behe, First Rule, 2010)
Thus I certainly think believing in evolution is far worse than believing in Santa.
But to separate Jesus from Santa.,, Jesus made some VERY extraordinary claims about himself. ,,, Whereas other religious leaders always encouraged following a certain teaching of theirs, Jesus declared that his person was more important that his teaching.,, In other words, instead of Jesus declaring A truth for people follow, as other religious leaders did, Jesus declared that he personally is THE truth.
C.S. Lewis put the situation with Jesus, compared to the leaders of other religions, this way:
Well, can we make a ‘scientific’ case that Jesus is ‘The Truth’? I believe we can.
Special Relativity, General Relativity, Heaven and Hell
excerpt: ,,, it is interesting to point out a subtle nuance on the Shroud of Turin. Namely that Gravity was overcome in the resurrection event of Christ:
Moreover, as would be expected if General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics/Special Relativity (QED) were truly unified in the resurrection of Christ from death, the image on the shroud is found to be formed by a quantum process. The image was not formed by a ‘classical’ process::
Personally, considering the extreme difficulty that many brilliant minds have had in trying to reconcile Quantum Mechanics and special relativity(QED), with Gravity,
,,I consider the preceding ‘quantum’ nuance on the Shroud of Turin to be a subtle, but powerful, evidence substantiating Christ’s primary claim as to being our Savior from sin, death, and hell:
That eternity would be confirmed by both physics and direct ‘observational’ evidence, and that there are two different ‘qualities of eternity’ to be concerned about, (a very destructive eternity in general relativity and a very orderly eternity in special relativity), should make any normal person shake in their boots.,,,
Moreover, if Jesus were truly a fairy tale as you hold AB, the evidence I’ve touched upon, substantiating Christ’s claim as to being ‘THE TRUTH”, should not even be on the radar scope of reason, but there it sits. ,, Personally, I find the evidence more than enough to substantiate Jesus’s claims.
Music and verse