How is a democracy dependent upon technology supposed to govern itself with scientifically illiterate politicians? How can its citizens decide which candidates for public office are competent to enact and enforce science-based policies? Join the call for a presidential debate on science and technology issues at Science Debate 2008.
From the Human Rights First | Elect to End Torture ’08 | Tell A Friend website:
Join thousands of other Americans for Human Rights and sign Human Rights First’s petition to the presidential candidates asking them to commit to ending policies that have led to torture and tarnished the United States:
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/elect08/go/taf.asp
Elect to End Torture 08 is a nonpartisan campaign to make sure that the next President puts an end to policies allowing torture and cruel treatment and adopts a strong national security policy that is consistent with the laws and values of our nation.
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/etn/elect08/go/taf.asp
This week’s guest on the Point of Inquiry podcast is the infamous intelligent design creationist Dr. Michael Behe. It’s instructive to hear him trying to defend his indefensible ideas. Credit where credit it due — he must have a set of brass ones to appear on a skeptical podcast after the debacle in Dover.
I’ve been vacillating on this question for some time, but I think I have to come down on the side of religion. Calling Humanism a religion makes it easier to defend on First Amendment grounds, but it also recognizes the continuity of human experience from prehistory to the present day. Every religion is humanistic in that it offers solutions to the problems of being human, however inhumane those solutions may be. Ancient religions were hampered in their efforts to understand the universe and humanity by the absence of a reliable method of gaining knowledge. Their major sin has been their rejection of philosophy and science in an attempt to retain their outmoded doctrines. Let’s acknowledge the humanistic basis of all religion and admit that Humanism is a continuation of the religious impulse to advance knowledge and morality.
I’ve decided to take this blog in a new direction. To that end, I’ve given it a provocative new title which I’ll back up with (hopefully) provocative new posts. I’ve kept all the old posts for historical interest, and I’ve also reposted them at the new Andy’s Freethought Blog at MySpace. I’ve blown off blogging recently, but I’m recommitting myself to blogging in the interests of spreading the message of Humanism. Happy Ides of March! I hope that isn’t a bad omen.
Even if every atheist could agree that the proper definition of atheism is the simple lack of belief in a god, there are other problems with adopting the name of atheist. Chief among these problems is the fact that the atheist is defining himself in terms of something he opposess rather than something he stands for. This may be the reason some atheists want to ascribe positive beliefs to their position. What is needed is a positive term to describe the positive beliefs we hold, a less cumbersome term than “philosophical naturalism.”
Enter the Brights. The Brights Movement is an attempt to introduce the term “bright” to describe all those who hold a naturalistic worldview, allowing them to “come out” and assume their fair place in society. This strategy is modeled on the success of the gay pride movement, and has been endorsed by two of today’s most prominent atheists, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins. I have registered as a Bright at their website because I agree with their aims, but I must admit to some trepidation regarding their strategy. Gays were able to co-opt the word “gay” because it already had homosexual connotations. The word “bright” had no prior connotations of philosophical naturalism. In addition, I had the same reaction as many other people the first time I heard about the Brights Movement: I thought they meant to imply that supernaturalists were dim. They have been quite clear that this was not their intention, and they have suggested the positive-sounding term “supers” for the supernaturalists, but a proper attempt at memetic engineering would have taken this reaction into account, perhaps through the use of focus group research. Still, I have to applaud the boldness of their vision, and hope they succeed in realizing it.
I have finished reading Julian Baggini’s Atheism: A Very Short Introduction. While I do not agree with everything Baggini says in his book, I can recommend it as a valuable resource which has helped to clarify several ideas I have been wondering about for years. I will try to share these ideas over the next several days in a series of short posts.
Atheism is the absence of belief
First, as I mentioned in the last post, is the debate within the atheist community over the proper definition of atheism. Baggini’s book has reinforced my belief that atheism is properly defined as the absence of theistic belief. He seems to be arguing that, as a matter of fact, most atheists derive their atheism from a naturalistic worldview, and he identifies these supporting beliefs with atheism proper. But this analysis ignores those (perhaps many fewer) atheists who base their atheism on other grounds, irrational as those grounds may be. The only common ground between all these atheists is their simple lack of belief in a god, just as the only common ground between all the members of the heterogenous set labeled “theists” is their belief in some sort of deity. No one pretends that accepting the name of theist commits one to the doctrine of karma or the Trinity. Why should accepting the name of atheist commit one to philosophical naturalism?
I see this debate as a sterile wrangling over what name non-believers should choose to describe themselves. There is a confusing array of different names — atheist, agnostic, Bright, freethinker, humanist, secularist, skeptic — that some want to collapse into the generic term “atheist.” But not only would this do violence to the sometimes subtle distinctions between the positions described by those names, it would put us in the position of defining ourselves in terms of a worldview to which we are opposed.
Tomorrow (hopefully): the Brights.
Point of Inquiry
The latest Point of Inquiry podcast features an interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Just as Ann Druyan did in her recent interview, Dr. Tyson defends the use of the word “spiritual” by non-theists; he also talks about science education, the popularization of science, and the effect of his research on his attitude toward religion.
