Category Atheism and Religion

Entries 27 Total Description

Belief in and worship of a supernatural power and the rejection of such beliefs.

Why the meaning of “anti-Semitism” has changed

May 29, ’08 7:48 PM

Here’s just another example of why the term “anti-Semitism” has increas­ingly come to mean “mild cri­ti­cism of Israeli gov­ern­ment policies,” rather than “hos­til­ity to or pre­ju­dice against Jews.”

Some­thing I’ve exper­i­enced myself.

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‘Why Women should not Appear on TV in Islam’

May 26, ’08 11:58 PM

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Religion doesn’t deserve a free ride

May 24, ’08 1:22 AM

A teen­ager in the UK faced pro­sec­u­tion recently for hold­ing a sign up in the street with words on it.

The words? “Sci­ento­logy is not a reli­gion, it is a dan­ger­ous cult.”

He’s wrong of course. It’s both. Other cults like Chris­tian­ity and Islam have just been around for longer, so they get to be called Religions.

The teen was arres­ted by a City of Lon­don police officer; the same police force that was found to have mem­bers accept­ing “gifts” from the Church of Sci­ento­logy.

He was arres­ted on 10 May at a demon­stra­tion out­side the headquar­ters of the Church of Sci­ento­logy in Lon­don, under sec­tion 5 of the Pub­lic Order Act, which states, “A per­son is guilty of an offence if he … dis­plays any writ­ing … which is … insult­ing, within the hear­ing or sight of a per­son likely to be caused har­ass­ment, alarm or dis­tress thereby.”

This seems like a stu­pid law but it also goes onto say that the accused has a defence if their “con­duct was reas­on­able.” I don’t know what this means exactly but it cer­tainly seems reas­on­able to cri­ti­cise reli­gion and accuse it of being dan­ger­ous. Why should reli­gion get a free ride?

Justice Latey of Lon­don appears to have agreed. In a 1984 rul­ing in Lon­don he said, “Sci­ento­logy is both immoral and socially obnox­ious … it is cor­rupt, sin­is­ter and dan­ger­ous. It is cor­rupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has as its real object­ive money and power for Mr. Hub­bard, his wife and those close to him at the top.”

You could say the same about most reli­gions so I can see why some people who aren’t mem­bers of a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion might want to pro­tect oth­ers from reli­gious cri­ti­cism. Once you accept cri­ti­cism of the Church of Sci­ento­logy, for being a child­ish super­sti­tion for instance, you open your own reli­gion up to the same criticism.

It would be inter­est­ing to know if the officer who made the arrest is reli­gious, or, for that mat­ter, if she has had any involve­ment or con­tact with the Church of Scientology.

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First study of religious faith at the level of the brain: research volunteers needed

May 5, ’08 10:05 AM

Sam Har­ris is under­tak­ing what is appar­ently a first: the study of reli­gious faith at the level of the brain.

If you’re inter­ested he’s put out a request for volun­teers — par­tic­u­larly Chris­ti­ans — to take part in a sur­vey to help refine their exper­i­mental stimuli:

We are pre­par­ing to run another fMRI study of belief and dis­be­lief, and we need volun­teers to help us refine our exper­i­mental stim­uli. This prom­ises to be the first study of reli­gious faith at the level of the brain. By respond­ing to the four sur­veys I have pos­ted online, you can make an enorm­ous con­tri­bu­tion to this work.

Please answer as many of the sur­veys as you can. If you only have time to answer one, please choose at ran­dom (oth­er­wise, we will have many more responses to the first than to the others).

Feel free to post this mes­sage to your blog or to for­ward the rel­ev­ant links to your friends. I espe­cially need Chris­ti­ans to respond, as one of the goals of these sur­veys is to design stim­uli that a major­ity of Chris­ti­ans will find doc­trin­ally sound.

I will, of course, pass along the res­ults of this work the moment I have some­thing to report.

Many thanks for your help.

All the best,
Sam
samharris.org

Note: Each sur­vey starts with the same first page of questions.

Belief Sur­vey A
Belief Sur­vey B
Belief Sur­vey C
Belief Sur­vey D

External links:

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Let this superior control nature

Nov 24, ’07 4:15 PM

There is but one way to demon­strate the exist­ence of a power inde­pend­ent of and super­ior to nature, and that is by break­ing, if only for one moment, the con­tinu­ity of cause and effect. Pluck from the end­less chain of exist­ence one little link; stop for one instant the grand pro­ces­sion and you have shown bey­ond all con­tra­dic­tion that nature has a mas­ter. Change the fact, just for one second, that mat­ter attracts mat­ter, and a god appears. The rudest sav­age has always known this fact, and for that reason always deman­ded the evid­ence of mir­acle. The founder of a reli­gion must be able to turn water into wine—cure with a word the blind and lame, and raise with a simple touch the dead to life. It was neces­sary for him to demon­strate to the sat­is­fac­tion of his bar­bar­ian dis­ciple, that he was super­ior to nature. In times of ignor­ance this was easy to do. The credu­lity of the sav­age was almost bound­less. To him the mar­velous was the beau­ti­ful, the mys­ter­i­ous was the sub­lime. Con­sequently, every reli­gion has for its found­a­tion a miracle—that is to say, a viol­a­tion of nature—that is to say, a false­hood. No one, in the world’s whole his­tory, ever attemp­ted to sub­stan­ti­ate a truth by a mir­acle. Truth scorns the assist­ance of mir­acle. Noth­ing but false­hood ever attested itself by signs and won­ders. No mir­acle ever was per­formed, and no sane man ever thought he had per­formed one, and until one is per­formed, there can be no evid­ence of the exist­ence of any power super­ior to, and inde­pend­ent of nature. The church wishes us to believe. Let the church, or one of its intel­lec­tual saints, per­form a mir­acle, and we will believe. We are told that nature has a super­ior. Let this super­ior, for one single instant, con­trol nature, and we will admit the truth of your assertions.

—Robert G. Inger­soll, The Gods, 1872

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Revoking Baptism and Confirmation

Apr 17, ’06 2:32 AM

I spent my early teen­age years attend­ing a cath­olic high school where debate about the more dubi­ous aspects of organ­ised reli­gion was rel­at­ively open, so I’ve gen­er­ally had an atti­tude of live and let live; as long as people don’t attempt to impose their fairy tales on me I won’t get on their backs about how silly they’re being.

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Israel “far worse” than apartheid South Africa

Oct 29, ’05 1:17 PM

The situ­ation for Arabs in Israel & Palestine is “far worse” than apartheid South Africa. These were the words used by Ron­nie Kas­rils, a great fig­ure in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.

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