Month: July 2009

by Patrick Appel

Fancy fast food.

by Patrick Appel

A reader somewhat answers the last reader's point:

I think the unfortunate thing about the Dish's coverage on this issue is that you've failed to represent Dennett's (or other "grating" atheists') full arguments justifying their combative approach to religion. Personally, I'm a "grating" atheist because of two deep concerns about the influence of religion in general (i.e., religion as a concept). First, the vast majority of religious people inculcate (or to put it another way, brainwash) their intellectually defenseless children with their own beliefs, demanding that the little ones believe these often ridiculous things to be true with no logical or empirical evidence, which I am convinced undermines children's development of logic and critical thinking.

Secondly, and more concretely, religion is the most pernicious cudgel influencing policy.  Because religious beliefs (e.g., homosexuality is bad) are not held on account of logic or evidence (and perhaps also because of the way religion has influenced adherents' critical thinking skills), it is impossible for us to argue against them, yet their consequences affect us all.  Religion warps the policy sphere by determining how people vote and shaping the media dialogue, since a great number if not the majority of sincerely religious people seem openly unwilling to concede that their own supernatural beliefs should not be imposed upon the electorate in general.  The marriage equality debate is a perfect example of this, since all non-religious arguments (i.e., the ones not revolving around the word "sacred,") that I have heard against it are thoroughly specious.  We can also reference the nakedly religion-based support for the Bush administration displayed by huge numbers of the Republican base, and ongoing local school board revolutions intended to place ill-disguised creationist dogma into the public school science curriculum.  Meanwhile, pandering to the religious crowd in policy debate merely reinforces their own biases (and reasserts their entitlement to a national audience) and hence does not usually result in any constructive compromise.

Thus, it is not merely that we atheists disapprove of people being religious because we like to chide them for not yet discarding that "crutch"…  it's that we feel the violent political force of religion shaping our laws and leadership on a daily basis, while a new legion of young zealots is being indoctrinated with every generation.

This is an important point, but, in my opinion, whether religion is a net good or bad is much less obvious than this reader believes.

by Chris Bodenner

First it was Asians impersonating Christopher Walken; now it's white girls impersonating Bill Cosby. (The former is much, much funnier.) What's next, black guys impersonating Jerry Seinfeld?

by Conor Friedersdorf

Paula Marantz Cohen says that we should return to the bathing costumes of the 1910s:

It’s not about vanity; it’s about modesty. Not about looking fat but about being naked.

Even as a child, I understood this. As I ran under the sprinkler in

my electric orange two-piece, I knew that it was one thing for me, with my hairless legs and flat chest, to wear such a scanty, silly thing, and quite another for my neighbor with her gargantuan boobs, my piano teacher with her varicose veins, and my dentist with his protuberant beer belly to do the same. Even my own parents — relatively attractive, fit people — were an embarrassment. I could see that while some grownups looked really bad in bathing suits, all grownups looked unseemly. Here, I vaguely intuited, was another example of adult hypocrisy. Breasts and penises, subject to so much discretion under normal circumstances, were somehow allowed to be baldly delineated in the vicinity of sand and sun.

Oh please. If by "unseemly" the author means that adults in bathing suits are transgressing against accepted standards, she is obviously wrong, and if she means something more — that the human body is inherently shameful, and needs to be more thoroughly covered — her argument is scarcely better. Humanity's aesthetic preferences about weight and body type are variable as a matter of historical record. Social norms about nudity vary widely across time and culture. The fact that Americans embrace the two piece bikini, Europeans sunbathe topless without a fuss, and Saudi Arabia cloaks its women in the most modest garb imaginable refutes the notion that "modesty" is the marker of a healthy society.

The author goes on:

I should note that swimming is not the only activity whose outfits I find unseemly. I feel the same way about football and ballet. Different as these two activities are, they share an X-rated taste in costume. When I go to the ballet do I really want to see the bulging codpieces of all those Nureyev wannabes? When I watch the Super Bowl, do I want to stare at so many well-muscled butts? It’s not that I’m a prude (well, maybe I am), it’s just that when I watch ballet and football, I don’t want to be schooled in the fine points of male anatomy. It’s distracting.

Whether it be Michelangelo's David, Kathy Ireland on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the tone of Serena Williams' muscles, Michael Phelps tensed on the starting block, or male and female ballet dancers showing off their elegant lines, the appropriate reaction is pleasure at the beauty of the human form — and I suspect the enlightened, civilized plateau we ought to aspire toward is seeing shades of the same beauty in the tanned 70-year-old naked woman on an Italian beach or the pot-bellied veteran fishing off a pier in August.

I'll never get there completely. Heaven forbid the DMV or the Manhattan bound F Train ever goes clothing optional. But athletes in tight costumes and naked folks on beaches? That's easy. Often it's even beautiful.

by Patrick Appel

Room For Debate questions whether marijuana legalization would cause more addiction. Norm Stamper:

by Chris Bodenner

A gallery.

(Hat tip: Nerdcore)

by Patrick Appel

A reader makes many good points:

There are so many intellectual and philosophical criticisms to level at the most irritating of atheists, it's hard to know where to start, but one fundamental point is that atheists commonly commingle two debates into one.  Atheists' main core argument, if they are pinned down to one, is about the lack of existence of God.  The problem is that discussions on this quickly devolve into analogies to Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy, or whatever.  The far more interesting argument, which these angry only rants seem to spend the least time and effort on, would be whether or not the practice of religion is worthwhile.  This particular class of atheists state rather reflexively that it is not, and get annoyed when asked to back that up.

This is unfortunate, because it belies not just an ignorance, but a willful one at that, of how most believers experience religion.  Atheists presume that believers accept God on faith and then practice religion according to the specifics of that faith in God.  I would rather contend that this is what a believer may do in childhood, but that for many adult believers (or perhaps I should say practitioners), the belief in God largely is supported by the belief that the practice of a particular religion is beneficial at some level.  It's not only a more relevant argument, but it's much more fertile for constructive discussion, and actually probably cuts far closer not only to why believers believe, but why unbelievers don't.

Finally, one of the most galling things to me about the modern internet atheists is that in my experience, while they talk a big game about Science and Rationality and Learning, they can be remarkably intellectually unsophisticated.  John Gray hit the nail on the head so hard he blew it apart, I think, when he outlined how the framework behind most of the "New Atheists" is really just a crude mix of vulgar 19th century-quality positivism with some reflexive materialism and shallow humanism thrown in.  They ignore a century of rigorous, lively philosophical debate and criticism on ontology and epistemology, preferring instead the staid certainty of Victorian science.  I don't mind having my beliefs criticized, but if you can't at least discuss anything pertaining to the topic since before the Nietzschian turn, go away.

Before I go too far, let me just state for the record that I've interacted with a huge number of thoughtful, sophisticated atheists, both online and offline, which has been incredibly rewarding for me.  However, these conversations generally don't mention Santa Claus.

by Patrick Appel

Kristol predictably tells Republicans to kill health care reform. Joe Klein has seen this play before:

The sun rises in the east. The sky is blue. Bill Kristol advises Republicans to vote against health care reform. The first time he tried this, in 1994, he established a reputation for tactical "brilliance," as he managed to intimidate Bob Dole–whose life was saved by government health care–into opposing the Clinton effort. The Republicans stonewalled and won. But that was then. The conservative tide was still flowing strong. It's ebbing now, although many Congressional Democrats haven't figured that out yet. And Kristol acknowledges the new landscape: he tries the hilarious dodge of suggesting that Republicans kill this year's effort and support reform next year.

Ezra Klein partially agrees with Kristol.

by Chris Bodenner

Brüno is hot for Mahmoud.