Stuck with another deadline today, so news posting will be light till tonight.
Meanwhile, remember Brian Leiter?
Apparently, U Chicago prof Brian Leiter is author of numerous screeds, of which this is an example in our field of interest: “pathological liars from the Discovery [sic] Institute, the public relations arm of the “Intelligent Design” scam; on the other, Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois, and John Derbyshire, a pontificator at the National Review (who at least knows enough to know that “Intelligent Design” is bogus), who are championing a different intellectual muddle:”
The whole planet is dumb except Leiter?
Well, he has finally got his colleagues’ attention. We have it on good authority that a well-known British philosophy department has started to complain about a guy with good degrees who sounds like a fishwife on market day.
First, a question: What is it about being an atheist and Darwin defender that tends to bring this out in people? C.S. Lewis noted the problem yay years ago (1951): “What inclines me now to think that you may be right in regarding it as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders. ”
Now, by way of explaining the above, a favour to ask: A friend has sent me a vid of Brian Leiter and another legal scholar, David Skeel, on Why Tolerate Religion? Could someone with more free time than I have just now watch it and offer some impressions?
The title is the name of Leiter’s book on the subject:
This provocative book addresses one of the most enduring puzzles in political philosophy and constitutional theory–why is religion singled out for preferential treatment in both law and public discourse? Why, for example, can a religious soup kitchen get an exemption from zoning laws in order to expand its facilities to better serve the needy, while a secular soup kitchen with the same goal cannot? Why is a Sikh boy permitted to wear his ceremonial dagger to school while any other boy could be expelled for packing a knife? Why are religious obligations that conflict with the law accorded special toleration while other obligations of conscience are not?
Well, we don’t need to tolerate religion; we could always go back to the Wars of Religion instead. It was that kind of thing, no doubt, t hat got religion to the top of the In tray.
Back at the News desk soon. – O’Leary for News
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Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose
I’m afraid, statically speaking, atheists are greatly outnumbered by theists. I fear that eventually atheists are going to force theists to ask the same question. Why tolerate atheism?
The irony here is that it is precisely those who are the most fanatical in their hatred of religion, who are the most religious ones of them all. And the more they try to deny the fact that they are religious just like everyone else, the more religious they become. They are trapped in a trap of their own making, snakes swallowing their own tails and all that silly stuff.
Hey I say if atheists want to wear colanders let them!
B.C. ‘Pastafarian’ loses driver’s licence over holy colander hat – October 6, 2014
Excerpt: A B.C. ‘Pastafarian’ who wears a colander on his head has been stripped of his driver’s licence, after he repeatedly refused to take off the holy headgear for his I.D. photo.
The nearly year-long conflict between Obi Canuel, 36, and the Insurance Corp. of B.C. came to a boil Friday, when ICBC refused to renew Canuel’s licence unless he went hatless for his I.D. photo. Canuel had been driving with a temporary paper licence for months after clashing publicly with the insurer in August.
Canuel, who is an ordained minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, says it’s his religious right to wear a colander for his photo, just as members of other faiths are allowed to wear turbans and other coverings for their photos. Canuel says his headgear is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and he should not be forced to take it off.,,,
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster charges US$30 for a Canadian to become an ordained minister of the religion.
The United States recognizes Pastafarianism as a religion. In January, a town councillor in a New York town was sworn in while wearing a colander on his head.
“It is a strange thing when the West Coast of Canada is somehow less liberal than the United States,” Canuel said.,,,
http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/b.....-1.2041844
Okie dokie,,,, I wonder if the tin foil hat people, who wore tin foil hats to keep their minds from being read, had similar problems? 🙂
Watched part of the video, as News asked, although it’s very difficult for me to follow with attention this kind of legalistic / philosophical talking more than a couple of minutes, specially after having eaten a substantial meal.
To me both speakers were fine, as far as I could tell. Interestingly, around minute 30 of the video, I think I heard prof Brian Leiter saying that the concept of liberty of conscious so embedded in western democracy was a product of the Protestant reformation.
At that point had to take a break, because my eyes closed and my forehead hit the tablet screen.
I’ll see if I can resume the listening later 🙂
Thanks much for listening, Dionisio at 4; I’ve been elsewhere occupied.
News, you’re very welcome!
As everyone who has ever dealt with militant atheists on the internet knows, Atheists have VERY little ‘tolerance’ for religion, especially Christianity.
Atheism’s track record for ‘tolerance’ of religion speaks for itself:
The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here’s what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:
Believe it or not, I’ve seen atheists stoop to the level of calling Hitler a Christian in their attempts to deflect attention away from the horror that the atheistic/Darwinian worldview has visited upon mankind. Yet NAZI ideology was thoroughly rooted in Darwinian thinking:
And Hitler himself certainly held deeply to the ‘survival of the fittest’ mantra in his worldview:
To try to deflect attention away from such a horrific history, Atheists like to point to the Spanish inquisition and witch hunts, etc.. etc.. to try to say that atheism is better than Christianity. Yet atheists purposely forget to ‘look in the mirror’ at the exponentially worse horror that was visited upon mankind in atheistic regimes. The comparison is not even close,,,
Moreover, as if that was not sobering enough for Atheists to think about, Theists live longer, and happier, lives than Atheists do:
Although to be fair, atheists are far from the only people in the world who persecute ‘soft target’ Christians:
Of related note, Christianity has had far more of a positive impact on the world than any other worldview has had:
Also of note: After years of brutal suppression by the communist regime, Christianity is now exploding in China,,
Verse and Music:
Bornagain77 at 3, yes the Pastafarians are a curious group. They seem to have got started to mock ID, but because they pretended to be a religion, they ended up getting persecuted as such in Russia.
And when a guy loses his licence in Canada for refusing to take a spaghetti strainer off his head for the photo – let’s just say that the joke is certainly no longer on ID.
I’m not sure I understand what happened to them. Just lost the plot I guess.
But alas News, in the overall sense, it is impossible for atheists to have any coherent ‘plot’ in the first place once they reject God,,,
Atheists even have to use Theistic premises in order to be able to ‘slap God in the face’.
Here is another good quote:
But life is infused with meaning:
What caused Jennifer Fulwiler to question her atheism to begin with? It was the birth of her first child. She says that when she looked at her child, the only way her atheist mind could explain the love that she had for him was to assume it was the result of nothing more than chemical reactions in her brain. However, in the video I linked above, she says:
Verse and Music: