This video is a couple years old, but it makes a worthy point for those of us who sometimes get weary of hearing how foolish and vile we are when we are accused of these things by people who don’t even know us.
Foolish and vile atheists
- Post author:Erich Vieth
- Post published:February 22, 2009
- Post category:Bigotry / Religion
- Post comments:183 Comments
Erich Vieth
Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.
Thank you, Karl. I retract my earlier reaction.
Reading the whole letter, though, I fear you misinterpret Lyell. I don't read here so much an a priori desire to displace Biblical kant as an acknowledgment that the Bible gets in the way of modern interpretations of inconvenient fact. He knew that people would, for a long while, prefer the Biblical to the scientific view. You seem to be saying that he started off wanting to displace Christian interpretation, which is patently false. He was a reconciler for as long as he could reasonably be.
Why can't you accept that the geological record shows evidence of BOTH, long-term change and periodic catastrophism? And just what the hell is so damn hard about acknowledging that the Hebrew flood story was a description of a local event, not global?
Because you privilege Biblical sources over evidence and interpret evidence to fit that preference.
So be it.
But it is not correct nor proper to claim because you acknowledge (sometimes) your bias, that our bias is necessarily equivalent to yours and that we hold to our intepretation "only" because of our bias. All biases may start out equal, but some of us can actually think past them.
Oh, and this?—"I’m sorry, I’ll still go with the human eye witnesses who of course saw and experienced something that was catastrophic and colossal with major earth changes."
Good luck with that. See my earlier reference to Gilgamesh. "Eye witnesses" who lead from a profound bias are worse than in situ evidence almost everytime.
Besides, what eye witness? Noah? He didn't write the damn book. An eye witness did not write it down.
IT'S A STORY!
Dan,
Here is a link to an article giving a little more up to date info on the T-Rex soft tissue matter.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17…
The "slime mold" is not an issue as these people see it. The statistical analysis of the methodology of how the proteins have been identified is also starting to fall away as more samples are now replicating similar results.
Its not that they were looking for where the evidence was suppose to take them, but this is an issue that does not easily point to the deep time assumed for these fossils. They simply didn't let their confirmational bias from the model they are suppose to believe force them to reject what the evidence may actually be indicating.
Mark,
I realize Lyell was convinced that his assumption concerning deep time was so correct that he was fully justified in working from this naturalistic perspective.
In this regard, I don't think I misinterpret Lyell.
Like other naturalists with a uniformitarian perspective that opens the door to deep time and gradual change, this didn't necessarily need to trump the Biblical record concerning the size and duration of the Flood of Noah's day.
The only way in his mind to get people to consider that the earth may have been around for millions of years was to totally offer an alternative to the events described by Noah and passed along to Moses.
As far as I consider the matter, Noah passed along from a first hand account what was written concerning the global flood, this wasn't fiction pulled out of the air as so many of the "Biblical myth makers" claim.
Karl writes:—"As far as I consider the matter, Noah passed along from a first hand account what was written concerning the global flood, this wasn’t fiction pulled out of the air as so many of the “Biblical myth makers” claim."
Well and good, and the fact is we can go round and round with this without ever coming to a conclusion. However, you assert it was an eye-witness account. By all the definitions I know, an eye-witness account is exactly that. Unless the great Redactor sat down with Noah and wrote down what the old man said, this cannot be an Eye Witness account.
Which does NOT mean that the flood in question didn't happen at all, it only means that A flood happened, but given the parameters of what was described, it was not what actually happened, despite what may have been experienced.
And not necessarily fiction pulled out of thin air. That is an either or situation I do not hold with. I contend that SOMETHING happened in most of these instances. Just not 100% what is described.
Look: we have a national myth that George Washington threw a dollar coin across the Potomac. It's as wired into our national epic as the cherry tree incident. But when you look at the situation, you realize that he could not possibly have made that throw. There were no eye witnesses, it was a story handed down, like Davy Crockett fighting a grizzly bear with his bare hands. We know these events did not take place, at least not the way described, yet we cherish them.
I agree about the gradualists. A viable model that argued for something else did not present itself until Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium made the scene.
But the gradualists and uniformatarians, I think, were less concerned about Biblical refutations as they were people of their era who had a damn difficult time coming to grips with sudden, convulsive change. Hell, people are still like that. You don't have to worry over how a theory conflicts with the Bible to dislike the idea that something sudden and untoward can just Happen to alter everything overnight.
But. As I say, we can do this dance endlessly and I am growing weary of the steps.
There is no hint of doubt about "deep time" in the Wired article Karl has linked. The questions are of how useful the techniques used are for determining protein constituents from fossils, and how good is the current model of racemization in fossilized bone?
It looks good for the first, not so much for the second. The micro-crystalline nature of a fossil may well preserve mid-size molecules like polymerized peptide chains. That is, petrification may preserve embedded proteins orders of magnitude longer than their half-lives in other environments.
The Biblical flood story is based on even older legends. I've just refreshed my memory with Tim Callahan's Secret Origins of the Bible. Callahan says
"While it is obvious that the Biblical flood myth in general is based on Mesopotamian material going back to Sumerian tablets from between 2000 and 3000 BCE, what becomes apparent upon comparison of the two stories is that J is based on the flood myth in Atrahasis, while P is based on a worldview derived from Enuma elish."
The "two stories" refers to two different traditions that got (imperfectly) blended together by the redactors who created the book of Genesis. (Actually there are more than two different traditions in Genesis as a whole, but in talking about Noah's flood Callahan only mentions two of them, known as P and J).
Callahan:
"While the P and J creation stories have been kept separate, the final redactor blended the flood myths of the two traditions. This becomes fairly obvious from the number of conflicting doublets [two versions of the same event, common in the Old Testament] in the flood narrative. J has God instruct Noah to bring one pair of each kind of animal that is unclean and seven pairs of each that is clean, apparently for a sacrifice to be made after the flood (Gen. 7:3). Since according to the P tradition the designation of clean and unclean animals and sacrifices in general did not occur until the establishment of the Levitical code, God tells Noah in the P narrative to take two of each kind of animal, whether clean or unclean, onto the ark (Gen. 6:19-20). Again, in the J narrative the flood is caused by rain alone, and it rains for 40 days and 40 nights (Gen. 7:12,17)….In Gen. 7:11 (P version)…not only does it rain, but the oceans rise from water rushing in from below. Not only that, but the flood lasts 150 days rather than 40 (Gen. 7:24)…."
And etc. Sorry for quoting Callahan at such length, but I wanted to point out two things: First, what a complicated job Biblical scholars have, and, second, how much obvious contradiction Biblical literalists must overlook in order to claim that these stories are history.
There's no reason at all to assume that any of this is historical. (It's not surprising that cultures from lands which sometimes suffer floods tell stories about great floods). Noah's arc is surely every bit as mythical as the story that precedes it about the Nephilim ("There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them…." [Gen. 6:4]).
Stacy states –
"There’s no reason at all to assume that any of this is historical."
Stated like someone who choses to believe what the experts they trust tell them.
You beg the issue because you choose to believe a different history which makes the global flood impossible and anything written about it as totally misled and ignorant of modern science and "higher criticism" that looks for alternate re-interpretations that favors a bias upon today's ideas versus the realities of the past.
The torrential rain lasted 40 days and 40 nights, the flood waters didn't stop rising for many months due to the release of water from under the existing land surfaces, and then the liquid flood waters didn't fully recede for over a year. The frozen waters never fully melted off of land surfaces. This would of course sound like its confusing to anyone who wants the flood to be a local regional event, which it wasn't.
People can assume whatever they like thank you. Just as people can assume that the earth is as old as they think is necessary to accomplish a totally naturalistic agency for its establishment and evolution.
I can state the same thing concerning the assumed geological history of the earth which is only supported by confirmational bias of evidences interpreted by modern scientists based upon misleading ideology.
I would rather trust a record passed down from a direct first hand account that has been included as important information by an editor than I would someone who states they had a bias in favor of creating and establishing an alternative account.
You might want to state it this way
"There is no reason to believe that any of this can be proven to be historical."
This makes the matter partially one of faith in what materials were passed on to us directly from Noah, and how it was edited and combined by Moses.
But it can be acceptable as both historical and scientific as well for those with a differing confirmational bias from your own.
Stacy points out that: "There’s no reason at all to assume that any of this is historical. (It’s not surprising that cultures from lands which sometimes suffer floods tell stories about great floods)."
What drives me crazy is that biblical literalists can't imagine how you can say such a thing. How is it any different than the long-held belief that the world was flat? With no telescopes, satellites, air travel or distant communication methods, the only method of understanding nature was observation. And the human eye can only see so far, so all assessments, assumptions and descriptions were based on what appeared in front of them, only as far as the eye could see. The messages from God are a matter of faith, or not – no proof exists, so you believe it or you don't, and that's fine. But truly, to continually dismiss vast bodies of scientific knowledge in favor of storytelling speaks volumes of the extreme unwillingness to unclench a closed mind. So many Christians can balance evolution and the myths of their bible because they are able to understand the limitations of the times.
And don't get me wrong. I value storytelling. I became fascinated, during my graduate work, by cultures defined by oral traditions. But even when that was the primary method of passing on traditions, rituals and history, evidence left no doubt that those stories changed over the generations. Not to mention the use of storytelling to explain what the science of the time could not. But of course we've been down that road of discussion here repeatedly.
I believe in God.
I accept the scientific method and the current proofs of evolution as the best description of how life likely developed on Earth, and may be likely to develop or to have developed on other planets in the universe.
I accept that some people do not believe in God.
I accept that some people believe the Bible to be the literal truth.
I accept that there will be disagreement among individuals which believe in God, and believe in the literal truth of the Bible and those individuals which do not believe in God.
I wish you all well. Shaddup!
Karl writes:—"I would rather trust a record passed down from a direct first hand account that has been included as important information by an editor than I would someone who states they had a bias in favor of creating and establishing an alternative account."
So would I, frankly, but this begs the question:
WHAT FIRST HAND ACCOUNT?
WHO?
WHEN?
WHERE?
I have a name for you, Karl. It is a name attached to some of the best "reinterpretation" of so-called first hand accounts I ever read. Convincing, evidence used to support the conclusions, utterly compelling.
ERICH VON DANIKEN
He is a modern exemplar of the same kind of interpretive reportage you credit biblical sources with. And yet…
He shares one thing with "J", the otherwise nameless composer of the early books of the Bible (see Harold Bloom on J)
It turns out to all be bullshit.
You credit confirmational bias with so much that it's amazing to me that you can sincerely believe anything.
And you keep missing the point. For you, despite protestations to the contrary, it's an all or nothing proposition. If we suddenly accept your version of the Flood, does that indicate that we have abandoned confirmational bias? Or simply accepted your confirmational biases?
So Tim, how do you really feel? ;->
The only thing I can determine from reading the actual texts is that the only things Moses may have tried to re-interpret concerning the flood (as did Josephus many years later) was an attempt to try to situate the Garden of Eden from the then known rivers of the world.
This attempt some how equated pre-flood locations to the the vicinity where the Ark came to rest as there must have been definite indications that specific locations from the pre-flood days were known to those who explored the world after the flood.
Beyond that it would have been nice to have had the contents of the library at Alexandria that was burned to destroy any proof that was still there of the claims of the historicity of the Biblical record.
@Karl "You beg the issue because you choose to believe a different history which makes the global flood impossible and anything written about it as totally misled and ignorant of modern science and “higher criticism” that looks for alternate re-interpretations that favors a bias upon today’s ideas versus the realities of the past."
Yes, I am relying on experts–and so are you, Karl. But the problems with taking the Bible literally should be apparent to any thinking person who reads the thing.
Most people don't really read the Bible. They read passages of the Bible that have been selected for them by pastors and priests. The pastors and priests, if they were seminary trained, are quite aware of the problems that bedevil scholars.
People (many of them sincere believers) have been noticing the problems–the doublets, the contradictions, the historical bloopers–for centuries. They've been applying the same sorts of critical and literary tools to the Bible that they'd apply to any other ancient document (the Bible is actually a collection of ancient documents; as Robert Wright says, it's a library, not a book.)
Every human culture on Earth has its legends. A "legend" is a story that is believed to be true. Some legends are in fact based on real events, but the historical details have been lost, sacrificed to the demands of storytelling.
You want to privilege one particular group of legends above all the others. When scholars examine other people's traditions, you have no problem with their methods. When they look at this particular collection of ancient Jewish tales, you claim these must be "a direct, first hand account".
How do you feel about the Enuma elish? People believed it for centuries too, you know.
"In point of fact, the origins of biblical criticism go back to the early Middle Ages. Jerome (340-420 CE), one of the most important architects of Christian doctrine…accepted the view that the Book of Daniel was written later than 200 BCE (although its authors wrote it as an eye-witness account of events that took place 300 years earlier). At about 500 CE Jewish scholars were having doubts about the Mosaic authorship of the Torah because certain expressions in it obviously came from periods well after the death of Moses…." Tim Callahan, Secret Origins of the Bible. He goes on, but you get the idea.
(How many of each animal did Noah take on the ark, Karl?)
Well said Tim 🙂
And I'm with you in principle. Would that it were that simple though!
The problems arise when believers of Karl's brand seem to think that anyone who doesn't agree with them and their particular interpretation is as purposely &dogmatically biased away from the Bible as they are toward it – the false equivalency mentioned previously. Further problems arise when those same believers insist that children be taught science and/or history using the Bible as a textbook in opposition to centuries of contradictory evidence. Since Scopes and up to Dover and the recent Texas State Board of Education controversy, they've gone to great and frequently dishonest lengths to have religion inserted into classrooms, often simultaneously denigrating science as some kind of competing faith system (which it categorically is not), out to ensnare children's minds or some such paranoid foolishness.
When the science/religion debate is just a bunch of adults arguing over what understandably seems to be petty & semantic then sure, "shaddup" is a perfectly reasonable response! But this debate can and often does affect children, who rely upon us to teach them about the world using the best methods and information we have. I won't advocate hiding children from religion as I believe religion's a valuable and often inextricable cultural & historical guidebook. But religion – any religion, not just Christianity (I get the impression that many Christians take atheism and rationalism as a specific rejection of Christ, rather than an objection in general to ALL supernatural claims, which is a tad narcissistic) – can not and must not be taught in place of science or history, or even alongside as "separate but equally valid" theory. It has not earned that place. Millennia of belief in something by millions of people does not make it true. We owe it to our children to teach them in class what we know and what we can support & explain. People have complete freedom to teach their kids all about their religion at home and in church; I don't see why it has to go further than that, especially in state-run schools. But point this out to certain people and instantly you're painted as some kind of bigot or strident militant atheist out to burn Bibles in the town square at worst; at best you get hit with the "your belief in science is equally as irrational as my belief in my religion; therefore they're both equally valid explanations for the world" trope.
OK, I'm gonna shaddup now.
Hank's comment: "I get the impression that many Christians take atheism and rationalism as a specific rejection of Christ, rather than an objection in general to ALL supernatural claims, which is a tad narcissistic."
To that I say "Amen."
Hank as well as others see this as a matter of indoctrinating of the children as to what is acceptable as a specific type of knowledge and ideology, and rightly so.
He knows full well that the use of naturalistic and scientific claims to confirm a worldview is given protection in this day and age as being more free (Hank claims totally free)of religious connotations.
The schools and universities are indeed the battle ground between those who wish to pass along their views.
How would atheists respond if the public schools were suddenly disbanded or modified to the extent that all schools were required to declare in their governing documents the religious and anti-religious worldviews they taught from?
Similrly, how would atheists respond if the critical teaching of evolution and historical geology was ever given to the public schools?
Would they start their own schools and seek to support their worldview using their own and not tax payer money?
How would atheists respond if the public schools were suddenly disbanded or modified to the extent that all schools were required to declare in their governing documents the religious and anti-religious worldviews they taught from?
Why would declaring their "worldviews" be a problem? Right now, public schools are supposed to teach from a non-religious perspective. That is a good thing. Religious teaching can take place at church or home. Religion can be taught in parochial schools, or comparative religion/religion as a culture can be taught in public schools as long as no one set of beliefs is taught as "right" or "wrong."
Similrly, how would atheists respond if the critical teaching of evolution and historical geology was ever given to the public schools?
By critical teaching, do you mean teaching via critical thinking, or do you mean teaching that criticizes evolution and historical geology? If someone teaches that evolution is based on solid science but that questions remain – because of the limitations within the available science – again I ask, so what? That is not the same as teaching an alternative imaginary perspective.
Shit. I've responded to Karl. Back to letting others handle it, who manage it much better than I.
@Karl "Similarly, how would atheists respond if the critical teaching of evolution and historical geology was ever given to the public schools?"
Since those disciplines are rooted in critical thinking, it wouldn't be a problem, Karl.
Karl has no credible and coherent answer to those "naturalistic and scientific claims" that challenge his Biblical-literalist worldview, so now he's back to arguing that the intellectual ascendancy of the rational worldview is all due to propaganda.
He's following the creationists' playbook: When you can't win the argument, change the subject. Whining optional.
Mindy writes:—"Religion can be taught in parochial schools, or comparative religion/religion as a culture can be taught in public schools as long as no one set of beliefs is taught as “right” or “wrong.”"
Ah, but there is another rub. As far as I know, so far the response to this possibility is to keep mum about religion period. You can't teach it as culture in public schools because…well, because we as a society have the problem about mentioning things and seeing it as "support."
I remember once being utterly and totally baffled by something Pat Robertson said, which is that drug use is glamorized by Hollywood—and then he named a specific film: Trainspotting.
I listened and according to Mr. Robertson, Trainspotting constituted "glamorizing" drug use. I could not comprehend how anyone with half a brain could see that film as glamorizing anything.
Then it hit me: It talks about it.
There would seem to be a mindset that sees the very mention of a subject as somehow positive support, so that even a film as brutally straightforward about drug abuse as Trainspotting (probably because there's no "preacher" in it constantly pointing out that This Is Bad) is apprehendable as glamorizing its subject.
Further: Back in the 1840s, Herman Melville wrote a short novel called "Benito Cereno"—it was a fictionalized (barely) account of a real event, the violent take-over of a Spanish slave ship by its cargo of slaves. A Yankee whaler comes upon the ship drifting (because the slaves had no clue how to run it) and overpowers the slaves and restores the ship to its Spanish crew.
Melville just told the story. He did not take a moral position. He was roundly castigated by both sides of the slavery issue as Supporting one side or the other. He supported neither side, just basically told what happened.
That's not acceptable. It allows people to make up their own mind, which we seem allergic to.
So we come to this subject. Religion is not taught in public schools because no matter how "objective" one is, either side of the debate will see it as either endorsement or condemnation.
This is, yes, the reaction of immature minds with axes to grind. But there you have it.
We should teach religion in public school—as a subject, not a creed. How would you do that without pissing someone off? More trouble than it's worth, so we keep it all out.
Mark: Great points. I agree entirely. Many people don't want others to even mention topics. They certainly don't want you to give them a fair shake. That's why so many conservatives think that sex education courses are "advocating" for homosexuality when, in actuality, they are simply recognizing the fact that many people are gay without condemning gay sex.
OH NO.
I've spoken with my teenager about drinking. And sex – oral sex, gay sex, young sex. And smoking pot. Other drugs. And shoplifting. And going to freakin' jail.
Obviously, she now thinks I condone these things, and will try them all, with what she construes as my blessing.
How on earth do I reverse my terrible error in judgment without mentioning all those things AGAIN???!
Mindy—electroshock therapy.
I think you all missed the intent of the questions.
What would it do for all manner of schools if they were all required to state their worldview (their philosophy of education if you like)and then each was required to compete for students?
This would be much unlike the current tax payer supported public schools that teach from a set of values that are claimed to be "secular" but which in many cases are just plain hostile to only one religion, Christianity.
Mark believes that its hard to teach about religions in schools. Not so, its only hard to teach about the one with the most vocal opposition – get real.
Nearly all of the minorities including atheists gladly join together against Christianity. Why isn't there just as much of an outcry from the Christians or even other minority religions when anyother religion is taught about/discussed or compared to each other.
The only religion the Christians can even come close to raising any opposition to claims to not be a religion, so who's fooling who?
Christianity can hold its own against anyother religion. It can't make any reasonable sense though to the person who is not only anti-christ but also anti-religious sentiment entirely, at least in their own minds.
From how I see it, its only the predominant faith of a culture that is constantly forced into silenced in a society that claims to be secular.
Maybe one day we'll have a group known as the anti-atheists. That might make for an uninteresting discussion.
Mark says "electroshock therapy."
For her, or for me?
Yeah, obviously the stops have all been pulled out on the whining.
"From how I see it, its only the predominant faith of a culture that is constantly forced into silenced in a society that claims to be secular."
Translation:
Waaaaahhhhh . . . make the big meanies quit pickin' on us!
From where I sit, it is not necessarily the predominant faith but the PUSHIEST faith that forces the rest of us to constantly ask it to shut up and stay out of everyone else's business, because it can't seem to help itself from wanting to spill all over everyone, whether they want it or not.
Karl writes:—"Mark believes that its hard to teach about religions in schools. Not so, its only hard to teach about the one with the most vocal opposition – get real."
I am very real. Try teaching about any currently practiced religion in a public school. None of them get an airing. (And you don't get to claim secularism for all the reasons we've been over before.) You won't find Islam taught, Judaism (reform or otherwise), Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Ba'hai…sorry, Karl, you're wrong on that one. The separation clause keeps 'em ALL out. I think they can do paganism and Zoroastrianism because no one actually practices them anymore (modern pagans do not worship Jupiter; it's a very different thing than what the Romans did).
You like to act like Christianity is the only religion picked on. Your choice, but it's not true.