Myers on Hitchens and on belief being "the lesser of two evils"

stevejazzx

Just finished Kevin Myers article in the Irish Independant. In a nutshell, he seems totally out of his depth. Apparently he went a' wandering 'round temple bar with the consdierable Mr. Hitchens recently and was accosted by silly Americans who the felt an impulsive urge to viilify the duo due mainly, one imagines, to Hitchins reputation stateside as a zealous atheist.
Whilst paying duty to Hitchins as 'the most brilliant journalist of his generation' the less than considerable Myers goes on to disagree with his fellow intellectual (if Myers attains that standard then it is by default) and composes a naive article centered on ideas that would have a hard time making it on this forum nevermind in a natioanl circular.
Myers asserts that the socialist atheistic dictators of the last century were the worst thing that has ever happened to the human race. He continues by pointing out that they commited thier crimes on behalf of atheism, only short of droppping in the famous half quote that religon is the opium of the masses.....
The painful thing about this article is that his conclusion is so patently signposted from the off that it leaves the learned reader with no doubt wahtsoever that Myers is a not a considerable force in deciphering the truths of this old debate.
He continues with
"since we are an irrational, violent spcies, is it so terrible that many of us are deluded into behaving more peacefully than we might otherwise, by an unwarranted belief in a vigilant God who will posthumously reward virtue and punish vice?
It the 'de facto' cnclusion of a teenager sparring his first rounds in a school debate without the heavy reality of the world having sunk into his fragile mind. Yet one would imagine that Myers would be embarrassed to fabricate such swiss cheese but apparently not.
Since the article includes no counter arguments I will add some:
Well since it is widely understood that Hitler was not an athiest that pretty much leaves Stalin (we'll leave the aisian dictators for now), not mentioned in Myers piece but strongly alluded to. Myers doesn't bother himself with interpretations here. There is no attempt to dismantle Marxism or any of Stalins other deluded belief systems. He merely asserts that it was all done in the name of Atheism.
He goes on "Believers have tended to create 'gentler' socieites than atheists"
Hmmmmmm Well! Ok, discounting:
the countless murders which have taken place iin the name of religon over the centuries and the current state of the middle east, also the rise of christian fundamnetalists and bible literalists in the states, the endemic of priest paedophilia, the gentle murder of science in the classroom the countless redefinitons of bible text, the brainwashing and grooming of young children, the vatican cover ups, the ban on contraception in a time of a worldide A.I.D.S epidemic and the continual insistence of major religon s to wipe each other of the map..
those small details aside, he has got a point. Idiot.
The idea that people should believe in God becasue it creates a safer more moral world is a banal one as it is religon that gives people the irrefutable argument (from thier perspective anyway) for committing the most violent crimes against humanity. Hitler and Stalin acted on behalf of their deluded grandiose ideals, thier maligned diagnosis of the world. Religous zealots have a higher order, one that is not only unquestionable but also sacrosanct. When distilled into early childhood it becomes the unmovable belief of the programmed killer. There is no greater weapon that the unshakable ignorance of millions of people determined to have their own 'great war'.
Apart from his bizare ramblings on dictators he also includes a bizare rambling on the foodchain and how it is irreconcilable with a loving god. Is that best you can do to fault the God of the bible? Isn't this the same guy who has got the blood of the masses on his omnipresent hands? Forget about rabbit stew Kev, what about genocide?
Religon has halted the enlightenment and seems hellbent on reversing any progress it has made becasue the world is too fearful to embrace the vast recesses of space and make the next step in our eventual evolution.
What angered me most about the article today was that Myers usually assertive tone was noticably missing, almost like he was clinging to an ideal that real intellectuals like Hitchens (he has is faults i know, namely Iraq) crushed a long time ago. Ironically Myers appears to be evolivng, albeit slowly, in that sub species of intellectual (pseudo or otherwise, you chose!), bred in the grainy pages of the worlds news. He promises to have more on the same discussion tomorrow. Perhaps the preverbial penny might have dropped by then or at very least evolved into a more usuable currency.

Zombrex

God (Allah) I'm so sick of the Stalin killed in the name of atheism argument

For a start there is no in the name of atheism Atheism isn't a cause.

Stalin killed in the name of Marxism, which is an ideology and a cause that taught that religion was damaging to the workers and the State. And Stalin was a particularly bad Marxist at that (I don't remember Marx calling for death camps)

FFS, how hard is that point to understand?

Atheists are constantly accused of misrepresenting theism, by people such as Myers, yet he seems to have no problem misrepresenting atheism (and history for that matter) when trying to show how bad atheism would be.

Zombrex

Having just read the article Myers seems to be focusing on the numbers of dead as some kind of meaningful measurement of the evil involved.

The claim then is that the worst regimes are the atheist regimes and the extension seemingly that theists regimes are stopped from being really really bad by supernatural belief, even if it is false belief.

The problem with that is the simple fact that in the 20th century there were simply a lot more people around and a lot easier ways to kill large amounts of people.

I would not dream to defend any of these acts carried out by atheists (or suspected atheists) the way Myers seems to be defending theists acts of immorality. I personally don't think that different regimes should be compared like this (was Hitler worse or better than Stalin?, that kinda thing).

His apparent conclusion that theism stops really really bad genocides and acts of brutality seems to be a deeply flawed and dangerous conclusion to draw.

Kevin Myers wrote:

CHRISTOPHER Hitchens is a curious man. By a long mile, the most brilliant journalist of his generation, he arouses curiously hostile views amongst complete strangers.

He is currently exhausting himself promoting his brilliant polemic, "God is not Great", a title which is unlikely to be translated into Arabic. I was with him in Dublin the other night as we walked through Temple Bar, when an American couple recoiled upon seeing him: "Wherever he's eating, we're not," spat the wife.

Why would anyone react so illiberally to one of the most influential intellectuals of our time? Because too easily and too often, human individuals are a lynch-mob in flat-pack, and they dont need to understand any instructions to assemble the kit into the real thing: the DIY that Does It Itself.

So the world will never consist of the imagined community Christopher talks of so wistfully in his book: a benign, atheistic "we" who "do not believe in heaven or hell", who respect "free enquiry, open mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake" and who "believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion." "We infidels," he declares, "do not need any machinery of enforcement."

But of course, this benign, enquiring community consists of Christopher Hitchenses, not of the kind of people who behaved so absurdly on sighting him. And it certainly does not come close to encompassing the Pol Pots, the Kaganoviches, the Maos, the Hitlers and the many other ardently secular believers in a godless universe, whose inspirational prophet was another zealous atheist, Grigoriy Zinoviev. It was he who in 1918 became the first man in the 20th century man to promulgate the doctrine of genocide as a machinery of enforcement: "To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must win over to our side 90 million out of the 100 millions of inhabitants of Russia under the Soviets. As for the rest of them, we have nothing to say to them: they must be annihilated."

This, clearly, is not an argument for the existence of a God, but merely an acceptance of the effortless evil of man, on a violent, abominable planet. Indeed, those who believe in a benign creator soon run into trouble when they are asked to explain an animal food-chain based on murder: at the most simple level, anyone who has seen a caterpillar writhe in utter agony as it is consumed from within by the offspring of an ichneumon fly, must doubt the decency of the divine author of such gratuitous torment; and this is before we contemplate such charming human conditions as rabies, multiple sclerosis, poliomyelitis and the bewitching tribe of tumours that kill so painfully, yet so inefficiently.

For torment is the global norm, a pyramid of suffering which is congruent with the entire animal kingdom. If we could hear the ultra-sound of the final screams of the millions of animal prey killed every day, merely that their tormenters might stave off the terrible death that will anyway one day consume them, we would probably be convinced that the god responsible for all this was a very evil creator indeed.

But here is the paradox. Rulers who believed in a Divine Creator have tended to create gentler societies than have atheists. The twentieth century was the first in which various avowedly godless states came into existence: and robbed of the inhibitions caused by a belief in the afterlife, the most astonishingly lawless regimes in world history emerged. The Aztec society which removed a heart each dawn from a teenage ribcage to lure the sun-god from his couch, the Dahomey chieftain who daily dispatched a child to the afterlife to enquire after the health of his ancestors. Why, these were positively vegan compared to the godless butchers of the 20th century, the fine fellows who variously supervised human affairs from the Rhineland to Vladivostok, and from the Kamchatka Peninsula to the South China Sea. Their victims can be measured, not in the modest hundreds but in the hundreds of millions. The world has never, ever seen anything like the evil triumphs of the totalitarian secular states of the 20th century. Which is not an argument in favour of the existence of god, merely one in favour of the belief in one: it is the social utility of a theistic faith which is appealing, not the fictions which lie at its heart.

Since we are an irrational, violent species, is it so very terrible that many of us are deluded into behaving more peacefully than we might otherwise, by an unwarranted belief in a vigilant god who will posthumously reward virtue and punish vice?

WE all know of the evils that the various churches have done, from the child-rape orgies by Catholic paedophile priests in our own lifetimes, with the perhaps even more reprehensible - cover-ups by the hierarchy, to church complicity in massacres from Croatia to Bohemia, in this century and almost every century beforehand. But such evils are as nothing compared to those performed by the ideological secularists who rejected god, and for whom the commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill, was simply a vapid, bourgeois piety. More tomorrow.

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

God (Allah) I'm so sick of the Stalin killed in the name of atheism argument

For a start there is no in the name of atheism Atheism isn't a cause.

Stalin killed in the name of Marxism, which is an ideology and a cause that taught that religion was damaging to the workers and the State. And Stalin was a particularly bad Marxist at that (I don't remember Marx calling for death camps)

FFS, how hard is that point to understand?

I've not yet been able to get a socialist to accept that Stalin (or Mao, or Pol Pot) killed in the name of socialism, either. The general view seems to be that they killed in the name of themselves...

cordially,
Scofflaw

PDN

Wicknight wrote:

God (Allah) I'm so sick of the Stalin killed in the name of atheism argument

For a start there is no in the name of atheism Atheism isn't a cause.

Stalin killed in the name of Marxism, which is an ideology and a cause that taught that religion was damaging to the workers and the State. And Stalin was a particularly bad Marxist at that (I don't remember Marx calling for death camps)

FFS, how hard is that point to understand?

Atheists are constantly accused of misrepresenting theism, by people such as Myers, yet he seems to have no problem misrepresenting atheism (and history for that matter) when trying to show how bad atheism would be.

Stalin persecuted, and killed, Christians because they rejected the States's official line on atheism. Certainly not all of his victims were killed in the name of atheism, but some undoubtedly were. The fact that such atheism was in the name of Marxism does not alter that fact.

Of course this is not a reason to attack atheists today, but I do object to the rewriting of history.

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

I've not yet been able to get a socialist to accept that Stalin (or Mao, or Pol Pot) killed in the name of socialism, either. The general view seems to be that they killed in the name of themselves...

I suppose I should phrase it differently, since I go on about this in the Christian forum.

Stalin no doubt cared nothing for any ideology except himself.

But Stalin did not operate in a vacuum. At some point "true believers" must have carried out his orders and work, convincing themselves that the immorality was excused because of the ideology they followed.

The point though is that they ideology they followed wasn't atheism. No one thought "I must follow Uncle Stalin because of my belief in the idea of Atheism"

The followed Stalin to the gates of hell because of the ideology of Marxism, the idea of the working class and the State being one.

The same applies to Hitler. Even if Hitler and those directly under him were simply psychotic and believed in nothing but themselves, the tentacles of the Nazi party stretched out through the acts of those who truly believed in what the Nazi party was selling - nationalism, German power, faith in Hitler as leader etc etc.

These things were carried out by atheists, but not in the name of atheism. Not because atheism is some how better, but simply because there is no cause of atheism.

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

Stalin persecuted, and killed, Christians because they rejected the States's official line on atheism. Certainly not all of his victims were killed in the name of atheism, but some undoubtedly were.

They were not killed in the name of atheism. There is no "name of atheism", atheism isn't a cause.

Marxism taught that religion was dangerous. Atheism doesn't teach that because atheism doesn't teach anything

It is not a belief system, it is a description.

If you think atheism does teach something, if you think something can be done in the name of atheism, please tell us what that teaching/cause actually is?

PDN wrote:

Of course this is not a reason to attack atheists today, but I do object to the rewriting of history.

And I object to people misunderstanding what atheism is, or more specifically what it means to be an atheists.

Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

Stalin persecuted, and killed, Christians because they rejected the States's official line on atheism. Certainly not all of his victims were killed in the name of atheism, but some undoubtedly were. The fact that such atheism was in the name of Marxism does not alter that fact.

Of course this is not a reason to attack atheists today, but I do object to the rewriting of history.

Hmm. Unsurprisingly, I don't quite agree with you!

You are certainly correct in saying that Christians (and others, I think) were killed for refusing to give up their religion in the Soviet Union - and equally, I would agree that in many cases they were killed to promote atheism.

However, as Wicknight points out, that is because Marxism requires atheism. Atheism, on the other hand, does not require Marxism.

Marxism, therefore, promotes atheism as part of its own goals and ends, not for the sake of atheism.

Theism, when it persecutes unbelievers, does so in its own name, for its own ends. One may disagree that, say, the Inquisition, were properly Christian, or that their methods were appropriate, but they certainly thought they were promoting Christianity for the sake of promoting Christianity.

At most, one can claim that Stalin promoted atheism for the sake of promoting Marxism - which is not a comparable case.

cordially,
Scofflaw

stevejazzx

PDN wrote:

... but I do object to the rewriting of history.

Do you accept that atrocities were carreid out in the name of religon and were then redefined into the shabby doctrines of christianity? Or do object only to the historical redefintions concenrnng atheism.
Or what about the rewriting of ficticious histories like the old testaments teachings redefined in the new testamanet for example?

PDN

Scofflaw wrote:

Hmm. Unsurprisingly, I don't quite agree with you!

You are certainly correct in saying that Christians (and others, I think) were killed for refusing to give up their religion in the Soviet Union - and equally, I would agree that in many cases they were killed to promote atheism.

However, as Wicknight points out, that is because Marxism requires atheism. Atheism, on the other hand, does not require Marxism.

Marxism, therefore, promotes atheism as part of its own goals and ends, not for the sake of atheism.

Theism, when it persecutes unbelievers, does so in its own name, for its own ends. One may disagree that, say, the Inquisition, were properly Christian, or that their methods were appropriate, but they certainly thought they were promoting Christianity for the sake of promoting Christianity.

At most, one can claim that Stalin promoted atheism for the sake of promoting Marxism - which is not a comparable case.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Your argument cuts both ways.

Constantine adopted Christianity as State religion of the Roman Empire because it served the purposes of his political ambitions. Kings, Emperors & Popes have, throughout history, used Christianity to achieve their own ends, just as Satlin used atheism.

Roman Catholicism required Christianity, but Christianity did not require Roman Catholicism.

The Inquisition required Christianity, but Christianity did not require the Inquisition.

Serbian nationalism required Orthodox Christianity, but Orthodox Christianity did not require Serbian nationalism.

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

Constantine adopted Christianity as State religion of the Roman Empire because it served the purposes of his political ambitions. Kings, Emperors & Popes have, throughout history, used Christianity to achieve their own ends, just as Satlin used atheism.

Stalin didn't use atheism, he used Marxism (how someone could use atheism is beyond me)

Marxism holds the benefit to the people will come from following it (just like a religion holds that benefit will come from being say a good Christian) over other ideologies. Religion was seen as damaging to that benefit that Marxism was attempting to provide. Therefore hatred and frustration was turned towards religion.

The reason people attacked religion was that they believed in this principle of Marxism. Atheism doesn't have principles or purpose.

PDN wrote:

Roman Catholicism required Christianity, but Christianity did not require Roman Catholicism.

Roman Catholicism requires belief in the teaching and principles of Roman Catholicism.

It was the promise of benefits that spurred people on to attack that which they feel threatens these benefits, just like in Russia.

In the middle ages this was done because people genuinely believed that God would remove these benefits from people or countries if they allowed too much sinful behavior to fester among them. You can say that is not what Christianity teaches, but ultimately that isn't the point. It is what they believed.

This belief was manipulated by people such as the Pope to achieve political ends, but the fundamental reason why the masses followed in this manipulation in the first place was out of a religious belief that the alternative was far worse.

Atheism, as we have said, is not a belief system. It doesn't teach anyone how to live, nor does it promise anyone anything. Nothing is achieved by doing anything in the "name of atheism", such a venture would be pointless. There is no "cause of atheism"

Tim Robbins

PDN wrote:

Your argument cuts both ways.

Constantine adopted Christianity as State religion of the Roman Empire because it served the purposes of his political ambitions. Kings, Emperors & Popes have, throughout history, used Christianity to achieve their own ends, just as Satlin used atheism.

Roman Catholicism required Christianity, but Christianity did not require Roman Catholicism.

The Inquisition required Christianity, but Christianity did not require the Inquisition.

Serbian nationalism required Orthodox Christianity, but Orthodox Christianity did not require Serbian nationalism.

Interesting point. The issue here is whether one is a liberal and accepting of those with a different belief or not.
This seems to be the common denominator not the actual belief or lack of belief system.
This is why I think it is very important to differentiate between atheism and militant atheism and in discourse it is more accurate to refer to Stalin as militant atheist and not an atheist.

PDN, I don't agree with your Roman Catholicism point there, I would have thought that was Christianity or a version of Christianity not something that needed it.

Finally, an interesting point made at the end of a book by Wallace Arthur, called creatures of accident:
http://www.creaturesofaccident.com/
where he says many people have been killed in for Christianity, Islam, Atheism but he doesn't no anyone killed for agnostism or for the advance of agnostism.
An interesting point.

milod

I think we're arguing around the point here trying to score points in a religion v. atheism contest. We need to bypass the semantic argument around the definition of religion and consider the concept of systems of belief - most importantly, totalitarian systems.

In this sense the point is that Marxism, or rather Stalin's version of it, could not bear competition from any other totalitarian belief system. So we constantly, throughout history, witness the emergence of dominant totalitarian belief systems, inevitably driven by single dominant characters, as oppsed to a widespread and considered acceptance of the benefits of the system. The atrocities we can recall were not performed in the name of a belief system, but moreso at the behest of a minority interpretation of the rules and supposed benefit to the belief system.

All such systems inevitably run their course before general realisation, resentment, and revolt. I hope that this is that case with religion as Hitchens argues, but I'm not holding my breath...

Tim Robbins

milod wrote:

I think we're arguing around the point here trying to score points in a religion v. atheism contest. We need to bypass the semantic argument around the definition of religion and consider the concept of systems of belief - most importantly, totalitarian systems.

In this sense the point is that Marxism, or rather Stalin's version of it, could not bear competition from any other totalitarian belief system. So we constantly, throughout history, witness the emergence of dominant totalitarian belief systems, inevitably driven by single dominant characters, as oppsed to a widespread and considered acceptance of the benefits of the system. The atrocities we can recall were not performed in the name of a belief system, but moreso at the behest of a minority interpretation of the rules and supposed benefit to the belief system.

All such systems inevitably run their course before general realisation, resentment, and revolt. I hope that this is that case with religion as Hitchens argues, but I'm not holding my breath...

You'd like Isiah Berlin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin

and his concepts of negative liberty and positive liberty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin#.22Two_Concepts_of_Liberty.22

Zillah

For the love of all our imaginary Gods, use paragraphs!!

Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

Your argument cuts both ways.

Constantine adopted Christianity as State religion of the Roman Empire because it served the purposes of his political ambitions. Kings, Emperors & Popes have, throughout history, used Christianity to achieve their own ends, just as Satlin used atheism.

I'm well aware the argument works both ways. There are plenty of crimes that are laid at the feet of Christianity that are nothing of the kind - they are state crimes of various kinds, dressed up in religious clothing.

PDN wrote:

Roman Catholicism required Christianity, but Christianity did not require Roman Catholicism.

Actually, no. That one doesn't work, although I know why you say it. Your flavour of Christianity (taking that to be proper Christianity) arose about 16-1700 years after Christ, a vast gap bridged by the Catholic (and Orthodox) Church.

PDN wrote:

The Inquisition required Christianity, but Christianity did not require the Inquisition.

That one doesn't strictly work either, because the Inquisition was an institution, not an ideology. It would be better to say that "the repression of heresy required Christianity, but Christianity did not require the repression of heresy" - and in either case, many Christians have disagreed with you.

PDN wrote:

Serbian nationalism required Orthodox Christianity, but Orthodox Christianity did not require Serbian nationalism.

Sure. That's "religion-as-a-badge-of-identity" - which is true of many socialists who take atheism as a badge of identity.

Taking all this into account, I would say that we are still left with virtually no incidence of atheists killing for atheism, but quite a lot of Christians killing for Christianity.

cordially,
Scofflaw

2Scoops

More Myers madness attached. Alliteration aside, Myers' key argument in today's piece is that he doesn't understand evolution or biochemistry. His arguments remind me of J C, although to credit Myers he at least pays lip service to agnosticism.

By Kevin Myers
Thursday June 21 2007

CHRISTOPHER Hitchens, Part II. The admirable Ian O'Doherty - who reviewed Christopher's book, 'God is Not Great' on Saturday - in an earlier column fired a brief broadside at colleagues who, he alleged, supported 'intelligent design'.

That is the theory that the maker of the universe, using some early Mrs Beeton recipe, put the ingredients of the cake of creation into the primordial oven, and gave it a few million years at 'low'.

If he included me as such a believer, he was wrong. I don't believe in 'intelligent design': I merely say that, in the absence of proof to the contrary, I cannot rule it out. I certainly don't accept Darwinian theories of evolution, as currently posited, but nor do I exclude the possibility that they can be refined to explain life on earth.

Centrally, I cannot see how 'evolution' was accidentally able to create hundreds of proteins, any molecule of which consists of maybe 1,000 different amino-acids, in precisely the right sequence. Now, if I were to visit the Taj Mahal and declare it was caused by various minerals randomly falling into place, I would probably be considered a suitable candidate for sectioning - not dangerous, but to be given a glass of warm milk and a couple Digestives last thing.

But the accident theory is how evolutionists explain the emergence of proteins: and that is before we even infuse those protein molecules with life, without which they instantly decay. And then, of course, there is DNA, which enables proteins to reproduce themselves: now where, unassisted, did that come from?

A lot of people share my worries. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, and a die-hard atheist and evolutionist, provided a possible explanation. "Could life have first started much earlier on the planet of some distant star, perhaps eight to 10 billion years ago?" he wondered. "If so, a higher civilization, similar to ours, might have developed from it at about the time that the Earth was formed. Would they have had the urge and the technology to spread life through the wastes of space and seed these sterile planets, including our own?"

Hold on. Seeding? That sounds rather like intelligent design by another name, but from one of the pre-eminent Darwinians of the 20th century, the cosmological equivalent of laissez-faire communism. Which suggests that all is not as clear as it should be.

Little green men aside, the problems with intelligent design are many, and not the least appears in Christopher's argument: its believers, apparently "choose to make a fumbling fool of their pretended god, and make him out to be a tinkerer, an approximator and a blunderer, who took aeons of time to fashion a few serviceable figures and heaped up a junkyard of scrap and failure meanwhile."

Precisely. On the other hand, evolutionism does not explain how so many millions of members of so many phyla became reproductively discrete, while co-existing in close proximity with one another. And whereas we have fossil evidence of extinct species, where is the fossil evidence of the presumably millions of intermediary species between ancestors and finished products? How did they survive?

At its most simple, a proto-mosquito which cannot find a blood vessel will soon kick the bucket, childless. It couldn't go back to the drawing-board, like we can with an experimental aeroplane. The genes die with failure. That's that.

Moreover, 'evolution' is still a theory which depends on more than rational analysis.

Christopher quotes the scientist (who happened to be a friend of Crick) Leslie Oregl: "Evolution is smarter than you are." Which is no different, really, from saying: "God is smarter than you are." Either way, whatever explanations for existence we devise, be they creationist or evolutionist, they depend upon our inability to understand them fully, and so, in last resort, they come down to faith.

What do I believe in? I, a weak, wimpish agnostic, don't know. I will not, a priori, rule out God, because to do so is to repeat the sin of the theists, who a priori have ruled Him in. Nor can I accept one of Christopher's key declarations: Religion poisons everything. If he means this literally, then it is manifestly not true: it has not poisoned him, he who was raised with Christ's name, has it? Did it poison Shakespeare, Schiller or Bach, those great laureates of the human spirit? No, what poisons the world is life itself: for even single-celled creatures attack and kill one another.

And the most passive, Christian-like animals in this world are merely fulltime prey, whose ecological role is to suffer terrible death at the fangs and claws of professional predators: and what kind of God devised that horror?

NOW I have spent two columns upon Christopher Hitchens' book because within its covers you will find the insights and wit of a veritable Taj Mahal of a mind - one which was formed, moreover, by no accident. The nitpicking of today and yesterday aside, 'God is Not Great' is easily the most brilliant and fascinating contemplation upon the role of religion in human society in recent times, the 'Das Kapital' of a tolerant, if exasperated, atheism.

Christopher will have to forgive me that metaphor: his faith, after all, obliges him to.

Zombrex

Kevin Bastard Myers wrote:

Centrally, I cannot see how 'evolution' was accidentally able to create hundreds of proteins, any molecule of which consists of maybe 1,000 different amino-acids, in precisely the right sequence.

This is why Creationism is dangerous. It not only spreads nonsense about its own subjection (God making the universe) but it attempts to muddy the water with what average (in Myers case I use the term losely) person on the street believes evolutionary theory is actually saying.

There is no evolutionary model in the world that claims that complex proteins "accidentally" formed in precisely the right sequence. Such and idea would be ridiculous to an evolutionary biologists.

Yet for some reason (stand up Creationism!) this seems to be what people like Myers think evolution says, that complex structures such as a protein just spontaneously formed. If I was a more bothered person I would point out that the very name "evolution" should imply to these people that that isn't what is claimed happens. The whole point of evolution in the first place, and the reason evolution is called "evolution", is that complex structures don't just appear.

Further down the article Myers spreads more Creationists nonsense, such as claiming that transitional fossils shouldn't have been able to survive, the whole "How does a creature walk with half a leg" argument, which again is actually nonsense compared to what evolutionary theory actually says.

Scofflaw

Kevin Myers wrote:

Centrally, I cannot see how 'evolution' was accidentally able to create hundreds of proteins, any molecule of which consists of maybe 1,000 different amino-acids, in precisely the right sequence.

Ooh - do you think he knows there's only about 21 different amino acids? Or is he just being unclear?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Matamoros

I intrude into your forum. I have been reading up until now and am genuinely intrigued by the debate. I have one or two questions and I hope that you might think about answering them.

I just spent some time looking at clips of Mr. Hitchens on different debates and news-shows. I especially enjoyed his thrashing of Al Sharpton on Slate.

Does he propose for the people who profess faith that they will in time accept a life based on reason and rationality?

Mr. Hitchens is indeed learned and seems a model for the type of modern person free of irrationality. What are your own ideas and examples of how you've freed yourself from the clutches of irrational beliefs? My question being, are people of reason happier or more successful than people with religious beliefs?

Thanks for reading my post and thanks if you've shared your views.

pinksoir

Matamoros wrote:

I intrude into your forum. I have been reading up until now and am genuinely intrigued by the debate. I have one or two questions and I hope that you might think about answering them.

I just spent some time looking at clips of Mr. Hitchens on different debates and news-shows. I especially enjoyed his thrashing of Al Sharpton on Slate.

Does he propose for the people who profess faith that they will in time accept a life based on reason and rationality?

Mr. Hitchens is indeed learned and seems a model for the type of modern person free of irrationality. What are your own ideas and examples of how you've freed yourself from the clutches of irrational beliefs? My question being, are people of reason happier or more successful than people with religious beliefs?

Thanks for reading my post and thanks if you've shared your views.

It depends what you mean by happiness, and in what way you measure it. I would say that people are about the same, though I would contend that the more intelligent you are the less satisfied you are - the idea that ignorance is bliss - and of course intelligent people can be either religious or irreligious.

Scofflaw

pinksoir wrote:

It depends what you mean by happiness, and in what way you measure it. I would say that people are about the same, though I would contend that the more intelligent you are the less satisfied you are - the idea that ignorance is bliss - and of course intelligent people can be either religious or irreligious.

Up to a point I think that's true - usually the point is somewhere about 30-35.

Actually, it depends on just how many irrational beliefs you get rid of. The main one I'm pleased to be rid of is the idea that "bad things happen because you're a bad person" - except in relationships, of course, where it's usually true.

cordially,
Scofflaw

pinksoir

Do you mean that when you reach the age of about 30-35 you become more settled in different aspects of your life; intellectually, with family, etc.?

One of the hardest irrational beliefs I have tried to get rid of is sort of related to the "bad things, bad people" one. It's the idea that everything will work out alright, there's someone looking out for me. That sort of thing. It's pretty strange realising that you are out on your own in the world.

Another irrational belief is walking under ladders. I can't do it. Oddly enough it's a superstition arises much the same way as belief in a god does...

PDN

pinksoir wrote:

Another irrational belief is walking under ladders. I can't do it. Oddly enough it's a superstition arises much the same way as belief in a god does...

Since things can fall on you from ladders, I think it is very rational to avoid walking under them where possible.

pinksoir

touché!!

Matamoros

because it's one example of how you could use your rational thinking to overcome a well known superstition. Granted, things sometimes fall from ladders but so do planes out of the sky and cars can mount pavements and hit you or a mentally ill person can push you in front of a tube train (happened recently in London).
What stance does the rational person when walking towards a ladder on a busy street and if there is no convenient way around? Sorry if this is too off topic.

Bottle_of_Smoke

pinksoir wrote:

Do you mean that when you reach the age of about 30-35 you become more settled in different aspects of your life; intellectually, with family, etc.?

One of the hardest irrational beliefs I have tried to get rid of is sort of related to the "bad things, bad people" one. It's the idea that everything will work out alright, there's someone looking out for me. That sort of thing. It's pretty strange realising that you are out on your own in the world.

Another irrational belief is walking under ladders. I can't do it. Oddly enough it's a superstition arises much the same way as belief in a god does...

Hehehe, yesterday I was walking down a pavement with a ladder leading to a second storey window. First time in years I was confronted with a ladder scenario. There was a car parked near the base of the ladder so I would have had to have taken a detour.

Happy to say I decided "F*ck this, there's no one on the ladder, I'm walking under it"


Myers article, anyone got a link? think I did glance through it quickly the day it was out but its stupidity put me off concentrating on it.

stevejazzx

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote:

Myers article, anyone got a link? think I did glance through it quickly the day it was out but its stupidity put me off concentrating on it.

yeas...you should see this very interesting thread here post nos. 3 & 17:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055110005

Zillah

Bloody hell that was an annoying article.

Reminded me of one of my pet peeves. "Evolutionists". Ugh. I'm no more an "evolutionist" than I am a "relativist" (in relation to Einstein's theories). I am not a "gravityist" if I accept the ruling theories on gravity, or a "wave/particlist" if I accept our current quantum theories.


Evolution is not a special theory you religious wackos, its you that are special.

Tim Robbins

Matamoros wrote:

I intrude into your forum. I have been reading up until now and am genuinely intrigued by the debate. I have one or two questions and I hope that you might think about answering them.

I just spent some time looking at clips of Mr. Hitchens on different debates and news-shows. I especially enjoyed his thrashing of Al Sharpton on Slate.

Does he propose for the people who profess faith that they will in time accept a life based on reason and rationality?

Mr. Hitchens is indeed learned and seems a model for the type of modern person free of irrationality. What are your own ideas and examples of how you've freed yourself from the clutches of irrational beliefs? My question being, are people of reason happier or more successful than people with religious beliefs?

Thanks for reading my post and thanks if you've shared your views.

HI,
I have just finished reading his book "God is not Great". Possibly the worst book on atheism I have ever read. It is written for angry teenagers who are annoyed they had to go to Mass.
He makes one interesting point Facism deriving from Catholism but the rest is either antagonistic jibes and mud sligging against theists, and rehashing of old atheist arguments. I would give it 3 / 10.
"The God Delusion" is a far batter book which I woud give 8.5 / 10. Dawkins is a far better writer and although not an expert on theology and philosophy at least he has a strong scientific background. I believe Same Harris' 'End of Faith' is also excellant and I am going to read that next.

Better than all that reading would be to hang around some of the debates here as at least you get diversity of opinion and from time to time thought provoking and challenging posts from our theist friends.

2Scoops

This letter regarding Myers' columns appeared in today's Independent, which I hasten to add I did not buy:). Anyway, not only is he an advocate of evolution being an elaborate hoax but he also takes exception to natural selection - a fully supported phenomenon that even our very own J C accepts!

Are some people just attracted to the idea of having a 'secret' knowledge that makes them feel more clever and shrewd than the gullible masses? I can't think of any other explanation. He doesn't appear motivated by religion, though I may be wrong, and clearly hasn't bothered to familiarize himself with what natural selection is. It's sad. I didn't include his name to spare his blushes but it's available in print and the online edition of the paper - clearly he is not paranoid about his future job prospects or being hunted down by angry atheists:rolleyes:

Irish Independent Letter Writer wrote:

Evolution is one big hoax
Thursday June 28 2007

Ciaran Farrell objects to Kevin Myers' refusal to use the term "natural selection". Maybe this is because no such phenomenon exists. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever of the existence of such a phenomenon. The Theory of Evolution is pure drivel. It is the greatest hoax that has ever been foisted on a gullible planet, since the story of The Emperor's New Clothes.

Charles Darwin was a sincere scientific researcher, in an era that knew nothing of the amazing internal complexity of organic life forms that has since been uncovered.

The Theory of Evolution is not based on any science. It is in fact a religion, and one of the largest and most fanatical religions in the world. The crudely manufactured "evidence" that is offered by evolutionists is facile and primitive and consists entirely of wishful thinking.

Every form of organic life, without exception, develops from a tiny speck that proliferates according to fixed rigid steps, of astonishing complexity, to create a single living entity of trillions of cells.

The idea that this originated from some mad messy mutation of crazy matter is the height of insanity.

Not a single trace of the remains of any of this vast multitude of failed mutations has ever been found.

Evolutionists have the same rights as the rest of us to preach their religion, but let's call a spade a spade. The only explanation for their fanaticism is their outrage at other people believing in a man in the sky.

Diarmuid

I sent off a letter which got on the web page but I don't buy the print version so don't know if it made it there. It seems there were two letter disagreeing with Myers and then that fine letter above disputing the other two letters.

karen3212

I have seen a few debates of Christopher Hitchens, and I thought he was extremely dumb. Anyway, the clincher was that once again, he said Northern Ireland was about religion, I know, it's a modern Christain war that people like to use as a modern example of Christain violence. F***ing lazy.

Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that the only really dangerous ideology(ideas) are the ones that people are willing to kill and die for. Whatever they may be, whilst all for the good of the people of course.

I also think that the US at present is using their wonderful theory of democracy to justify to their people the worthwhileness of killing millions around the world, and freedom is the ideology. I mean most people there now, even though they know they were lied to about the war, still think it's ok to keep killing for the good of the locals.

So the only dangerous idea is one that people think it's ok to kill and die for.

stevejazzx

karen3212 wrote:

I have seen a few debates of Christopher Hitchens, and I thought he was extremely dumb.

Hmmmm..he's been called a lot of hings but dumb? Have you heard his debate with Stephen Fry on religous fundamentalism. Even Fry seems surprised at his almost encylopaedic knoledge of history, plolitics and religon.

karen wrote:

Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that the only really dangerous ideology(ideas) are the ones that people are willing to kill and die for.

At the risk of sounding patronising, would you care to expand?
We should only be bothered by ideologies where people are prepared to kill? What about ideologies where education and sense are corrupted?
Isn't it the case that ideologies can start off realitively harmless and then become dangerous?

karen3212

stevejazzx wrote:

Hmmmm..he's been called a lot of hings but dumb? Have you heard his debate with Stephen Fry on religous fundamentalism. Even Fry seems surprised at his almost encylopaedic knoledge of history, plolitics and religon.



At the risk of sounding patronising, would you care to expand?
We should only be bothered by ideologies where people are prepared to kill? What about ideologies where education and sense are corrupted?
Isn't it the case that ideologies can start off realitively harmless and then become dangerous?

I mean that no idea, no matter how wonderful it sounds, is worth killing or dieing for. If everyone agrees, instead of sending brave people off to war, idiots can be arrested and tried via a criminal system. That is all. And yes, I thought he had read a lot, but well in my humble opinion, he is dumb.

edit,

I mean that we all start from the premise that no idea, is worth killing or dieing for. Therefore if that idea spreads peacefully, well nobody willing to die or kill for anything.

MoominPapa

good read from the village by Jamie Hyland particularly the way he parallels religion and post modernism, although he's wrong to say Dawkins hasn't confronted pm, Devils Chaplin has quite a few essays where he rips it to shreds. Always nice to have Myers/Waters self appointed status as Irelands intellectual titans questioned, particularly waters boning up on John Grays Straw Dogs before a radio debate with Ivana Bacik:rolleyes: