Reverse Poe exposed – a Baptist pastor no less!

Poe’s Law: Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won’t mistake for the real thing.

I knew about it before it appeared on Pharyngula, but someone has been posing as an atheist muttering some decidedly unatheist remarks. You know the ones, where we atheists supposedly have no morals and do whatever we want because we aren’t held to account. As Penn Jillett would say, “What a motherfucker.” 

No atheist would say such nonsense as the following -

What’s wrong with killing babies? I see no problem with it. I have enough mouths to feed. I don’t get the argument and I am an atheist. Since I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in anything characterized as good, bad / right, wrong. So, what’s the big deal? 

Or this - 

If a man wants to make a women his b****, so be it? So what if you don’t like it, what if I do?

If I want to do something, and my conscience is cool with it, then I can do it. If it’s feed a homeless person, so be it. If it’s kill my neighbor, so be it. I am not bound to any morals.

These comments have all the hallmarks of coming from someone who thought that’s what an atheist thinks. Indeed, it was such cartoonish remarks which initiated an excellent bit of detective work by Unreasonable Faith in finding out who the culprit was: Chris Fox, pastor of Kendall’s Baptist Church in North Carolina. Shame on him!

Nurse Petrie allowed to return to work after unethical prayer offer

The other day I wrote a blog on the nurse who was suspended without pay last December for asking an elderly patient (who apparently did not solicit the invitation) . Caroline Petrie is now free to go back to work as a bank nurse (a nurse who is called in as needed on an hourly basis). There was a great deal of public pressure brought to bear on the hospital for the suspension, mainly out of a misunderstanding about what was going on. Some bloggers feel that this is a Christian being thrown to the lions, a martyr in the making.

Baloney. This was never about Petrie, but rather it was about patient care and upholding ethical standards. Simply put, Petrie violated a code of conduct to which she is professionally obligated to follow. If she has a problem with not abiding by a pretty standard section of medical ethics, she’s free to choose another career path.

It’s a bit easier to see the problem when the context is changed a bit, particularly for those who share Petrie’s religion of choice. For instance, if she had been a practitioner of voodoo and offered to sacrifice a chicken to Baron Samedi, I’m sure a very different brouhaha would have resulted. As Richard Sloan points out in his book Blind Faith: The unholy alliance of religion and medicine, there are just some boundaries a health care worker should not cross (and presents a few scary real-world examples of such outrageously unethical behavior by health care workers – I highly recommend the book).

Professionals are available to deal with a patient’s spiritual needs and if – and only if! - the patient requests such services, she could refer the patient to one of them. This is the professional way to handle such things. But Petrie (and many people who have no knowledge of medical ethics) think that acting in such an unprofessional manner is okay. Being Christian is not an excuse to violate codes of ethics.

Nurse reprimanded for offering a prayer to patient in Britain

Many people might think this is okay -

Community nurse Caroline Petrie, 45, says she asked an elderly woman patient during a home visit if she wanted her to say a prayer for her.

I don’t. Nor would most health care professionals, religious or not. And unlike others who have blogged on this, I have the guts to leave my comments open.

A health care practitioner works in a hospital to provide one thing – health care. This can range from medical therapy to a good bedside manner. But offering religious services is outside any health care provider’s purview. Prayer is not a part any standard of care that I am aware of (and I have worked in a hospital setting). Such intercessory prayer has been extensively studied, with the largest (the STEP¹ and MANTRA^2,3 studies) showing almost no effect whatsoever. I say ‘almost’ because the STEP paradigm was of a clever design and was able tell show that people who knew they were being prayed for actually had worse outcome.

Einstein on Abrahamic Religion

Some time ago, Ray Comfort (one of the clowns from “The Way of the Master”) wrote an incredibly stupid blog (rather superfluous where Comfort or Cameron are concerned, I know) about Einstein. In it he had a picture of himself morph into a picture of the great genius. Apparently, humility is not a trait embraced by this silly man. If that isn’t disrespectful, I don’t know what is. Ray Comfort has nothing in common with Einstein, least of all intelligence.

Many of us are aware of Einstein’s famous quote making plain his view on god:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

~ Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman

The Pagan Christ

Last night CBC television aired a documentary on the Doc Zone entitled The Pagan Christ, based on Canadian Tom Harpur’s bestseller. Not exactly something I expect to see aired on US television any time soon. Too many Americans are far too insecure in their beliefs for allow dissenting opinion (I’ve always found that the insecurity of the belief holder increases as the square of the vehemence with which he/she protests). Harpur, a former Anglican minister and professor of Greek and New Testament at the University of Toronto, questions the existence of Jesus after realizing that there is simply no evidence for his existence. The description of the program contains the following passage:

So, what if it could be proven that Jesus never existed? What if there was evidence that every word of the New Testament – the cornerstone of Christianity – is based on myth and metaphor?

Indeed, so what if it could be proven that Jesus never existed? I suppose it might dispel the illusion that anything in the gospels actually happened, but one has to have total and complete blind faith already to believe the contradictory accounts anyway.

The Ten Commandments and Western Legal Systems

“It is a sad day in our country when the moral foundation of our law and the acknowledgment of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge.” ~ Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, Nov. 14, 2003¹

Hypothesis: The Ten Commandments are the basis for our modern western legal system.

2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
3 Do not have any other gods before me.
4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,
6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
8 Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
9 For six days you shall labour and do all your work.
10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
17 You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.

~ Exodus 20:2-17

Many Christians believe that our western legal system is an extension of the Ten Commandments. This sounds to me like rather like ‘Guilt by Association’, a form of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because modern laws have some overlap, or even completely overlap each other, does not at all establish cause (God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses) and effect (civil law).

A Designer Universe?

There are a number of scientists who I greatly admire not only for the work in their fields but because they also apply their intellect to humanity. Some, like Nikolai Vavilov and Robert Oppenheimer, were persecuted by their own governments for their anti-establishment views.

Vavilov, a prominent Russian evolutionary biologist, lost his life opposing Trofim Lysenko, whose Lamarckism-based agrarian policies killed millions of Soviet citizens from famine after disastrous crop failures. Vavilov saw the need for protecting the future of humanity by collecting seeds of all crop species of plant and protecting their gene lines. We owe him far more than we realize as the genetic lines of almost all of our current grain crops can be traced to the repository Vavilov set up with his foresight. For openly opposing Lysenko he was starved to death in an internment camp in Stalin’s Russia. 

Oppenheimer spoke out vehemently against proliferation of the very weapon he helped to create as head of the Manhattan Project. In thanks, the very politicians which brought us all to the brink of nuclear holocaust numerous times stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance in a very public kangaroo court during the big Red Hunt of the 50’s.

Nobel laureate Physicist Stephen Weinberg is another of those applying his intellect to what I call ‘the Big Questions’ of life, the universe and everything. The following is a cut-and-paste entry retrieved from Physlink.com. Enjoy!

The Source of My Disbelief – Religion is NOT a Moral Compass

One of the primary arguments for the value of Religion is its moral guidance. Benjamin Franklin once stated that

religion will be a powerful regulator of our actions, give us peace and tranquility within our minds, and render us benevolent, useful and beneficial to others…¹

He was right, but not at all for the reason he would have thought. Not only do I think that Religion is unnecessary as a moral guide, it actually enables good people to perform evil acts by suspending normal moral boundaries with the excuse that harming fellow humans is secondary to obeying God. My central thesis is that Religion is no guarantor of good behavior, let alone a source of morality, and any perceived association between the two is totally manufactured to serve the interests of those promoting their belief system.

The US is arguably the most religious nation in the developed world, yet it also leads or is no different from more secular countries in rates of nonviolent and non-lethal violent crime², homicide³, adolescent suicide⁴, teen pregnancy⁵ and teen STD transmission⁶. I do not argue that Religion is the root cause of the first three in this list, but I will argue in a later segue (Religion and Politics) that it is a significant factor (if not the single major factor) in the last two items. Yet many Believers would have us accept that the solution to such social problems is yet more religious belief when it is abundantly clear that it has far too much of a negative effect on society with vastly insufficient positive compensatory traits.

The Source of My Disbelief – Christianity is Nonsense

‘The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.’ ~ Abraham Lincoln

A lot of Christians think they are being singled out when religion is criticized. In North America, this is actually true. But it’s not because we atheists have some soft spot for any other religion. It’s certainly not because atheists and agnostics in this part of the world think Christianity is somehow less credible than other mythologies. It’s simply because Christianity is what we are familiar with. Not surprising, given the relevant demographics on this continent. I just know more about it to criticize the specific elements of the religion. If I knew more about Judaism and Islam I would be equally critical in the specifics of their tenets.

And from what I do know about other religions, I see the same withdrawal from reason as that demonstrated by practitioners of Christianity. I see no reason to accept that any religion is more valid than any other. I’m very equal-opportunity in that regard. All religions ask one thing: either accept or reject unsubstantiated and unverifiable dogma. Given such a choice the path is clear: I do not. In the absence of positive evidence to the contrary, logic demands that the null hypothesis (in this case, the non-existence of god(s)) be maintained.

The Source of My Disbelief – Fatally-flawed Philosophical Sophistry

In our species, this offshoot desire to answer the Burning Questions has resulted in what Daniel Dennett calls ‘premature curiosity satisfaction’. Like other premature events, it is actually undesirable. The more philosophically minded believers realized the need to create arguments to buttress their presupposition that God exists. This is not an admirable methodology. Certainly, in my vocation, such a procedure where the conclusion is the starting point rather than the end point is more than just frowned upon. It leads to rationalization, which becomes quite apparent in the many philosophical arguments.

I am a metaphysical naturalist. I used to consider myself a methodological naturalist, but I came to realize that admitting the possibility of something outside of a naturalist universe in the utter absence of any indication that such is the case is intellectually dishonest. So I have taken the plunge and gone all the way. This does not mean that if extraordinary evidence that there is some phenomena which can only be explained outside of naturalism that I would not change my position. But in the complete paucity of extraordinary evidence to the contrary, to consider anything outside of naturalism in order to explain phenomena is a complete waste of time.

As such, I am no fan of philosophical arguments unsupported by empirical evidence. Science has a habit of squashing them like grapes in a winery. Nicholas Everitt, when writing a book on arguments for the existence of God, gave up and just titled the book The Non-existence of God. As he describes, there are simply no good philosophical arguments for the existence of deities.