Supporting Science, Reason and the Separation of Church and State Issue #11 May 17, 2011

The Folly of Faith

by Victor Stenger

Presented at the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference May 15, 2011, Irvine, CA.

"People of faith" are universally treated with great deference. The religious are assumed to be persons of the highest moral standards -- exemplars of goodness, kindness, and charity. But why should that be? How does faith qualify anyone for such high esteem? After all, faith is unquestioning belief in the absence of supportive evidence and even in light of contrary evidence. How can one expect such a frame of mind to result in any special insight? While a false belief may be comforting or even temporarily useful, it cannot be a guide to life or the foundation for a successful society. Are we not then irresponsible to build a society based on faith? And how foolish are we, the unfaithful, to defend the beliefs of people of faith?

Religion and science have long been at war with one another. Given the dominant role that religion plays in American society today, most scientists and many national scientific organizations have compromised their principles in order to stay on good terms with religious groups. They try to divide up the territory, leaving science to decide what "is" and religion to decide what "ought to be." However, nowadays, religious leaders and their political supporters are increasingly, and more stridently, trying to define the real world on their own terms. In the process, they are undermining scientific consensus on issues of great consequence to humans everywhere, such as overpopulation and planetary climate change. Scientists and those who believe in reason and empirical evidence have to stop sitting back and letting ideology rather than data control public policy.

Some authors claim that, historically, religion and science have contributed constructively to one another. However, over the millennia religion has been more of a hindrance than a help to the development of science. It was surely no accident that the scientific revolution of the eighteenth century happened only after the revolts against Church authority in the Renaissance and Reformation opened up new avenues of thought.

Religion is based on faith. By contrast, science is not based on faith but on objective observations of the world. This makes religion and science fundamentally incompatible. Science poses the question, "What are you going to believe: the dreams and fantasies of ancient mystics or your eyes, ears, telescopes, magnetic resonance imaging, hadron colliders, and above all, reason and rigorous questioning of all extraordinary claims?"

Let's take a look at the incompatibilities between religion and science. The battle between evolutionary biologists and creationists is well known. Less well known are the ways theists and spiritualists misuse and misrepresent physics and cosmology to claim scientific support for their belief in a supernatural creation. They falsely claim that cosmology supports a created universe. They falsely claim that the parameters of physics are fine-tuned for human life. They falsely claim that modern physics provides a means for God to act in the world without being detected. They falsely claim that quantum mechanics implies that humans can make their own reality -- just by thinking they can.

At the current stage of scientific development, we can confidently say that there is no need to introduce supernatural forces in understanding the universe.

Allow me to give some of the reasons why I believe that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. And then I will show why it matters.

Read the entire article here.

The 12 Worst (and Most Powerful) Christian Right Groups

The Religious Right in America is lavishly funded and politically well connected. These groups raise more than three-quarters of a billion dollars annually, mostly tax-exempt.

May 2, 2011  |  

The Religious Right in America is lavishly funded and politically well connected. While the men who lead the fundamentalist Christian political movement hold different opinions about theology, they share a deep and abiding hostility to the separation of church and state. They seek to inject religion into public schools, obtain taxpayer funding for religious schools and other ministries, roll back reproductive choice and deny civil rights to gay people. And they enjoy extraordinary influence in Washington, D.C., and in many state legislatures.

What follows is a survey of some of the nation’s leading Religious Right organizations. Collectively, these groups raise more than three-quarters of a billion dollars annually, the bulk of it tax-exempt. Budget figures are from public tax documents and are the most recent available, in most cases from 2009 and 2010.

The Pat Robertson Empire, Christian Broadcasting Network = Budget: $295,140,001 Location: Virginia Beach, Va.

Regent University, Budget: $60,093,298, Location: Virginia Beach, Va.

American Center for Law and Justice: Budget: $13,375,429, Location: Virginia Beach, Va.

Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism Budget: $43,872,322, Location: Atlanta, Ga.

TV preacher Pat Robertson has for many years overseen a sprawling Religious Right empire that includes a global television network, a university and an influential right-wing legal outfit. Robertson’s flagship operation, “The 700 Club,” is a daily television program that mixes news, faith healing, Christian lifestyle features and Religious Right politics. He calls church-state separation a “myth” and a “lie of the left.” Despite his extreme views, Robertson remains well connected with the GOP power structure in Washington, and congressional leaders and presidential candidates often appear on his show. House Speaker John Boehner, for example, gave an exclusive interview in February.

Religious Right attorney Jay Sekulow runs the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a legal group founded by Robertson in 1991. Sekulow’s Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, the ACLJ under a different name, serves a similar purpose. The combined annual budget for both entities exceeds $55 million.

Regent University was originally founded to offer graduate degrees in areas Robertson most wants to dominate: government, education, law, communications, psychology and ministry. It now offers undergraduate degrees as well (many of them online) and has a satellite campus in Alexandria, Va., a Washington, D.C., suburb.

The Falwell Empire, Liberty University, Budget: $395,898,255, Location: Lynchburg, Va.

Jerry Falwell Ministries, Budget: $4,208,989, Location: Lynchburg, Va.

Liberty Counsel, Budget: $1,371,795, Location: Orlando, Fla., and Lynchburg, Va.

http://www.alternet.org/story/150809/

From Chuck

LA Examiner

Easter Message from Ricky Gervais

Last Christmas I wrote a little essay entitled: “A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m an atheist.”

The Wall Street Journal ran it, and it caused quite a stir. I was even asked to answer some of the comments.

So for Easter I thought I’d do another one. Here it is.

A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m a good Christian.

The title of this one is a little misleading, or at least cryptic. I am of course not a good Christian in the sense that I believe that Jesus was half man, half God, but I do believe I am a good Christian compared to a lot of Christians.

It’s not that I don’t believe that the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t make this a better world if they were followed. It’s just that they are rarely followed.

Gandhi summed it up really. He said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
I have always felt this way, even when I believed in God, and in a weird way I feel I am still a pretty good “Christian” who doesn’t believe in God.

So many Christians think that because they believe in the right God, they are automatically good and have a one-way ticket to everlasting life. Dare I say it but I suspect this is their main reason for believing. I’ve heard so many “believers” say, “Well, since there is no way of being sure whether there is a God or not, it’s better to believe in God than not, because that way, if you’re wrong it doesn’t matter and if you’re right you get everlasting life.” Win:win.

This is of course Pascal’s Wager, which assumes that God if he exists would reward blind faith above logic and living a good life as an atheist.

To the Christians’ God by the way, it’s just as bad to believe in the wrong God as no God at all. The idea of other Gods is of course ridiculous to Christians. Supernatural poppycock. As if there was ever a Zeus; stupid, ancient, unenlightened superstition. And even if

there are other Gods (which of course there aren’t) then the Christians’ God is the best. Hardest, smartest… just better. He would laugh at Zeus and call him a Greek bender. (I doubt that God is racist and homophobic but the Bible isn’t clear. Some bits go on about love and equality and others say you shouldn’t trust certain types and that laying down with a man as you would with a woman is punishable by death and is a bit sick and evil.)

So remember. If you are gay you are “Bumming for Satan” basically. (That would make quite a good T-shirt.)

Jesus was a man. (And if you forget all that rubbish about being half God, and believe the non-supernatural acts accredited to him, he was a man whose wise words many other men would still follow.) His message was usually one of forgiveness and kindness.

These are wonderful virtues but I have seen them discarded by many so-called God-fearers when it suits them. They cherry pick from their “rulebook” basically. I have seen such cruelty and prejudice performed in the name of Christianity (and many other religions for that matter) that it makes me wonder if there has been a bit too much selective reading and reinterpretation of the doctrines.

God or not, if I could change one thing for a better world, it would be for all mankind to adhere to this little gem: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I assure you, no more stones would ever be thrown.

So maybe we should go back to basics to find out where it all got confused.

The Ten Commandments
The 10 Commandments are found in the Bible’s Old Testament; Exodus, Chapter 20. They were given directly by God to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai after He had delivered them from slavery in Egypt:

“And God spoke all these words, saying: ‘I am the LORD your God.’”

So let’s take the test. How many of these have you broken?

Read the rest of this article at http://atheists.org/blog/2011/04/15/easter-message-from-ricky-gervais

Joke-of-the-Week

Emails

Hey Bruce,

 

Congratulations on your news article.  Good publicity for your billboard and message.  It sounds like your "Church of Atheism" is growing.  I thought the article was a good presentation of your group's ideas / goals, up until the end of the article.  I do think that you're making a huge mistake by saying Atheists are "More Moral because we question things and do not base our decisions on blind faith or superstitions".  Really?  You're not going to gain tolerance of your ideals if you tell everyone that you're better than they are. To succeed, you need to keep your message positive, positive & positive.  If you're worried about being seen as Not Moral, (I think the word you're looking for is Immoral) then you need to show differently by your actions. Your statement, on it's face, does not show good morals and it really takes away from the billboard message.

 

I'm pretty much a Live & Let Live guy, but I do take offense when someone tells me that they're better than me because of their beliefs.  Look at Christianity vs. Judaism vs. Islam and history.  Don't confuse God and Good Morals.  You don't need one to have the other.

 

Good Luck,

Mike

Mike - thanks for taking notice.  What the article did not include was that I was talking about the CLASS of atheists - not individuals. 

It is true that as a class or section of a religious thought (or no thought) the behavior can be judged through prison studies - that's where the 'barometer of behavior' resides - those who do bad things are more likely to turn up in prison.  As the study I have included here,, atheists are 90 times less likely to be in prison than Christians.

  

Most Christians are really surprised by this, by I'm not.  Atheists have one thing going for them - they like to think, and when one thinks they try and find out what makes life tick.  It's a fairly easy conclusion that anyone who contemplates the purpose of life will acknowledge that it in their best interest to treat others with a more altruistic attitude - hence the dramatic decrease of bad behavior. The following are articles related to where atheists are in relation to other religious populations in America.

http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Percentage_of_atheists#_note-6
   


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