Carnival of the Godless, #126!
Posted on September 20, 2009 at 12:04 pm by Dr. Jim
Ah, yes, its that time again for the top g0dless goodities! So, since I have a left over lolcat to celebrate it with, lets get down to it!
ITS CARNIVAL OF THE GODLESS TIME!
COTG #126 is online at An Apostate’s Chapel and this time the host has added a nice, intelligent reflection on each post so you know what you are getting into before you get into it.
I especially liked the instructions on how to become a witch in 12 easy links at Star Costumes.
Greta Christina is her usual self, more intelligent and observant than most, and she questions the fact that the atheist movement is predominantly run by white men and she outlines some things that might be done to address the situation in a second post.
Another post along these lines, is actually an excerpt from a book. The blurb line at the end of the post, This Far By Faith? Race Traitors, Gender Apostates & the Atheism Question”
Sikivu Hutchinson is the editor of blackfemlens.org and a presenter at the Atheist Alliance International Conference in October. This article is an excerpt from her book Scarlet Letters an essay collection on race/gender politics, atheism and secular belief.
She concludes her post with this:
What, then, are the lessons for promoting secular humanist, agnostic or atheist belief systems? First, that there must be more clearly defined alternatives to supernaturalism which speak to the cultural context of diverse populations of women and people of color. Second, that moral secular values should provide the basis for robust critique of the serious cultural and socioeconomic problems that have been allowed to thrive in communities of color under the regime of organized religion. Finally, in an intellectual universe where rock star white men with publishing contracts are the most prominent atheists and atheism is perceived in some quarters as a “white” thing, it is also critical that acceptance and embrace of non-supernatural belief systems be modeled in communities of color “on the ground.” Only then can secularism defang the seductions of the communal dimension of faith that defines our most segregated hour.
I did a quick search but can’t find publication info for the book that elsewhere was listed as “forthcoming”. While we are on the subject of books, here is one of Greta Christina’s.
The Primate Diaries has an interesting post called The Unseen and Unknowable Has No Place in Science
Yes, religion is incompatible with science. This doesn’t mean, of course, that religious people are incapable of doing science. Far from it. There are certain questions that don’t probe too deeply into the foundations of a person’s faith and they have no problem employing their reason to its fullest in those cases. But when reason starts to get uncomfortably close (as it has for Francis Collins, Deepak ChopraMichael Behe) well, that’s when the desperate appeal to fuzzy thinking becomes apparent. Because the assumption of God is so obvious to them (and I’m sure they feel it powerfully) the evidence suggesting that evolution follows natural mechanisms and has no need of a supernatural intelligence must therefore be wrong. They’ll bend over backwards trying to rationalize irrationality.
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/2006/janfeb/addis.php
There is a good bit more and so, happy godless reading!
Now, again, tradition rears its horrible sexist, objectifying head again, so lets go to the Carnival!
Its better than going to church… or is it?
Here is the carnival submission form, and here is the blog carnival index.
September 20, 2009 at 12:14 pm
why, oh why don’t people simply proofread their signs? why????
September 20, 2009 at 12:17 pm
No, “bridge” is correct.
September 20, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I’m so glad you’re posting again especially your traditional holiday photos at the end of the Carnival posts.
I do however have a slight problem with a quote from the Primate Diaries:
“Because the assumption of God is so obvious to them (and I’m sure they feel it powerfully)… They’ll bend over backwards trying to rationalize irrationality.”
Perhaps many do, the ones that fit into that category I encounter most often are the ones with very little or any formal science education. Real, practicing scientists I have studied do not suffer permanent lower back pain because of their beliefs. Yes, religious people can be good scientists, here is just a few of the more famous ones, all of whom were in religious orders, either Jesuits or Augustinian, I think:
Christopher Clavius, astronomer
Roger Boscovich, astronomer, mathematician, general genius
Georges Lemaître, astronomer, astrophysicist (discovered the Big Bang)
Gregor Mendel, botanist (discovered laws of heredity)
Please note that these people worked in the two fields most in conflict with organized ‘Big Church’ religion and with fundamentalist groups. If they tried to ‘rationalize irrationality’ they would have not been so famous now, their names would be given second-billing at best in science books. Their observations and conclusions would have been checked by independent observers in other countries, some of which were very anti-catholic and their publications and lectures would have been ignored or publically criticized by educated people in their own countries and else where.
Then there’s this statement “There are certain questions that don’t probe too deeply into the foundations of a person’s faith and they have no problem employing their reason to its fullest in those cases.”
There are hundreds of examples of real, important, long lasting scientific work done by devout people of all religions in geology, astronomy and physics. These sciences, along with biology, are now under attack by a variety of unreasoning, closed minded people. But in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, the discoveries were not ignored but fully researched and probed to the fullest allowed by the technology and theories in place at the time.
Somehow they managed to either separate the science from their faith or accept that the new discoveries were a part of the workings of whatever version of God he or she believed in. A person’s religious views generally does not demean any scientific endeavour that person engages in, no more so that the person’s race, gender, age or sexual orientation.
I am not a religious person, not even a slightly spiritual person, unless it involves good beer or single malt scotch. But I will not ridicule or demean someone’s contribution to the knowledge of how some portion of the universe works just because they believe that a supernatural being or beings was/were the cause of the universe.
In closing (Dr. Jim now breathes a sigh of relief), some words from the master scientist Albert Einstein:
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. “
“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”
And one of my all time favourite quotes: “What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.”
p.s.
Sorry about the long comment, but it was more fun than the marking I gotta get done.
September 23, 2009 at 5:53 pm
[...] Jim Linville has a post up by his big brother that is a comment from his recent Carnival of the Godless. His brother takes issue with some of the assertions from an entry from the Primate Diaries by Eric [...]