Letters to the Editor
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Salon Shame on You
This article is farcical, not even the interviewer understands science to a adequate degree to even offer honest questions. When he say evolution is random. Give me a break. Does he even understand that concept of NATURAL SELECTION, and how it is far from random. Then John Haught, who is already beating a dead horse. If he had read Dawkins or any of the new atheists and UNDERSTOOD them, he would quit misrepresenting their views and creating straw men to attack. No intellectual integrity with this guy! Let's just make up stuff so we can feel all warm and fuzzy with our BULLSHIT! Then what about the Salon editors that choose to run this brain dead review. Fucking get an education about the facts. This interview is a fucking joke and an insult to any educated person that knows anything about atheism.
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Haught's entire premise is founded on a lie.
"...atheism is similar to the secular humanism of the modern period, which said that faith is incompatible with science, that religion and belief in God are bad for morality, and that theology should be purged from culture and academic life."
Haught's entire premise is founded on a lie. The above statement doesn't apply to what all or even most atheists believe. Atheism is just simply the rejection of belief in a higher power or god. Nothing more, nothing less.
Furthermore, I don't need to know anything about theology to be an atheist. Plenty of religious people abhor atheism without really attempting to understand it. Why should atheists give religion any consideration whatsoever?
Overall, I think that most atheists don't want anyone to be forced to believe anything. To each, his or her own! Everyone should be able to make up their own mind.
The problem is really with the religious, who try to force their belief systems on everyone else. This occurs in every major religion around the world. Anyone who resists this unethical behavior is branded evil and immoral (and now "delusional" and ignorant).
When a minority of vocal atheists (e.g. Dawkins and other New Athiests) make the case for an intolerance of religion in public life, oh the complaints!
This entire piece is insulting to atheists. Nice work, Salon.com.
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I'm an atheist, and I certainly have hope. For instance, I hope I'll tell my wife and son that I love them tonight.
But isn't "love" some sort of imaginary thing you believe in to give your life meaning? There is no scientific proof of the existance of love. You're so-called "love" for your wife and child are a combination of hormones and societal conditioning. Any reasonable person would see that if you were hit by that truck they could replace you with another person who could provide similar income and household labor.
Think of all the violence that could be prevented if human beings could just get over this myth of "love". The VAST majority of murders committed are people who know each other and are acting out of jealousy or rage. "Love" may have been good enough for our primitive ancestors, but we as modern people should know better and be able to see it for what it is -- a destructive force that causes us to act irrationally.
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And the winnner IS......
I know how to settle this argument. Let's give God 30 days to prove His existance, otherwise He's out. It works when I buy stuff from WalMart!
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@ClearBlueSea
I'm only going to respond to one thing in your letter, its way off-topic but it is expressed VERY often from non-Christians. You said:
"I believe that Jesus walked the earth and was a compassionate and charismatic leader but not the son of god nor born of a virgin who also had to be born from a virgin (why is your religion, most religions, so afraid of sex?)."
Yes, some Christian groups are very afraid of sex, but let you know this, Catholicism is most definitely not. How do you think those big old Catholic families come about. But for actual PROOF, read "Love and Responsibility" by Pope John Paul II.
The whole book is about love and sex, and here is a quote from a review about it:
"And in 1960, he proved to be ahead of his time in arguing for the full consideration of women's sexual needs. In this work, he focused on the importance of mutual sexual satisfaction and castigated men for ignoring women's desires and failing to care about female orgasm during lovemaking. How many men were writing that in 1960?"
The Pope talking about the importance of the FEMALE ORGASM! Bet you didn't know that.
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The theist delusion
God created the universe.
Of all things within the universe, humans are special. Really special.
You can't prove otherwise.
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Maybe...
...I'm missing something. But I just don't see all the conflicts. Let the new atheists believe what they want. They are not threatening anyone. All the threats to life are coming from the right wing right Pro-lifers.
All threats to democracy and the rule of law are coming from Scalia and his so called Pro-lifers/family values bunch of weirdos and creeps. And this theologian is one of THEM. If he is not then he will have to establish his bona fides/stree creds before I will listen to his kind.
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One of the Founders said what needed to be said
"It does me no harm that my neighbor worships 20 gods, or no God."
- Thomas Jefferson
Now, if only the religious types would hold to this simple philosophy, atheists and agnostics wouldn't get all steamed up over the Jesus (and Allah) crowd always seeking to enshrine their personal beliefs into law with the corollary that EVERYONE must abide by those beliefs/laws AND must accept their belief as absolutely correct.
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Science of Boiling Water
Maybe this guy's definition of science is what *scientists* recognize as "physical science". A physicist might describe boiling water as the result of dumping heat from the stove to the teapot. A social scientist (they *do* exist) would have much to say about why this guy's wife would turn the stove on for him, while a psychologist, and they are indeed scientists, or a physiologist would be able to hypothesize as to why Haught Wants Tea in the first place.
So, sticking to physics as his definition of science, Haught could safely deny the work of neuroscientists and experimental psychologists, which clearly indicates that the mind is biological and understandable. His preconceived (by millenia) notions of supernatural origin of humanity, ensoulment of sufficiently evolved animals (us), and cosmic teleology blind him to the fact that science can, and does, and will, say much about nature and reality.