The Atheist Experience — listen or watch, but don't miss it

Given the name* of this blog and the tenor of most of its posts, readers would not be surprised to learn that I listen to several atheistically themed podcasts. The atheist podcast that I look forward to most, however, and have done since I first encountered it a couple of years ago, is The Atheist Experience, a live call-in TV show from the Atheist Community of Austin. It's available via an audio podcast feed (on iTunes, for instance), and that's how I normally listen.

If a show is especially good one week, I'll make a point of watching the video version. This week's was one such, hosted by Jen Peeples and Tracie Harris. Even before substituted host Matt Dillahunty called in at the end, I had already decided it was worth a blogpost. The hosts of The Atheist Experience are the sharpest explicators and defenders of the atheist viewpoint I've come across. Their consistently high standards of debate, argument, explanation and critical thought make the show archive a treasured resource.

For your enjoyment and education I embed this week's show here — #693: Misconceptions About Atheists — and I particularly recommend the exchange with caller Mike starting around 21'40":
http://blip.tv/file/4674944


The ACA also sponsor audio-only podcast The Non Prophets (which will occasionally be referenced on the TV show), along with many local activities.

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*"Notes from an Evil Burnee" is a dead giveaway, considering the last two words are an anagram.

Equality is against Melanie Phillips' religion (and vice versa)

After a disorientating but mercifully brief instant of agreement with Melanie Phillips when she interrogated Anthony Seldon on last week's Moral Maze, I now find things are back to normal, as evidenced in her latest column at Mail Online today, in which she attempts to perpetuate the myth that religious views are being marginalised in Britain.

...schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and ­science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda.

Bombarded? In maths?

In maths, they will be taught ­statistics through census ­findings about the number of ­homosexuals in the population.

And about other things, I suspect. Even if this is true, it's hardly bombardment. Certainly not to the extent that in history lessons they may be bombarded with — horror of horrors — historical dates.

The bed and breakfast hoteliers Peter and Hazelmary Bull — who were recently sued for turning away two homosexuals who wished to share a bedroom — were but the latest religious believers to fall foul of the gay inquisition merely for upholding ­Christian values.

They were guilty of illegal discrimination against a couple who were in a legal civil partnership, on the basis that the couple weren't married. The judge ruled that for this purpose marriage and civil partnership are equivalent.

Catholic adoption agencies were forced to shut down after they refused to place ­children with same-sex couples.

Quite right too. If agencies refuse to treat people equally, they have no business providing a public service.

Marriage registrars were forced to step down for refusing to officiate at civil unions.

If they refuse to do the job they're paid for, they should do the decent thing and seek other employment.

It seems that just about everything in Britain is now run according to the gay agenda.

Yeah, just about everything. Gay trains, gay supermarkets, gay refuse collection. Does Melanie Phillips find herself using gay hyperbole, by any chance?

Of course, for people such as the Bulls, George Orwell’s famous observation that some are more equal than others is all too painfully true. Indeed, the obsession with equality has now reached ludicrous, as well as oppressive, proportions.

Well, we wouldn't want things to be too equal, now, would we?

Burnee links for Sunday

Book review: Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape
Russell Blackford reviews Sam Harris's new book.

Blackford reviews The Moral Landscape « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne's take on Russel Blackford's review, with a follow-up here:
Harris responds to Blackford « Why Evolution Is True

Tell me now how do I feel – Bad Science
Ben Goldacre is blue about Blue Monday. Again.

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2011
Richard Dawkins gives his answer to the question: "WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?" (Read the others too.)

The Q.E.D conference « BARsoc.org
The Ghost Investigations Today panel is one I hope to attend at QED. (The "Breakout Room" will be showing The God Who Wasn't There, but I could watch that another time on DVD.)

Ms Information - Communicating the Message in the Skeptiverse « She Thought
Some fascinating insight from Geologic HQ.
(Via George Hrab.)

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club: Unpalatable truths
Russell Blackford (him again!) is a glutton for punishment.

The British Humanist Association
Relative to recent discussions about secular morality, it's useful to remind ourselves of one particular organisation's objectives.

Open warfare round the dinner table: the mediasphere responds to Baroness Warsi | HumanistLife
Roundup of press reactions to Warsi's recent speech.

Happiness — if you can't define it, you can't legislate for it

The Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4 this week was about happiness. At least, that's what it purported to be about, but most of the discussion was concerned with attempts to agree on a definition of happiness. From the BBC website:

They call it Blue Monday - January 24th - the unhappiest day of the year. Christmas seems a long time ago, but the bills for it are dropping on the mat, we've failed at all our New Year's resolutions, the weather is awful and all we've got to look forward to is February. But do not despair, our government is coming to the rescue. Politicians are so worried about our state of mind it was their New Year's resolution to do something about it.

On January 5th was the first meeting of the "Measuring National Well-being Advisory Forum" and the Office of National Statistics has just started a consultation on making general well-being (GWB) a key national statistic, alongside the more traditional things like Gross Domestic Product. Setting aside the question can you measure happiness - the moral question is should you?

Money isn't the key to happiness and perhaps we should see ourselves as more than just units of economic production and consumption. But is it the job of the state to concern itself with our emotional life and build that in to policy making? A lot of what makes us happy as individuals may not be very good for us, our fellow man, or society as a whole. Will we start being fed a very particular one-size fits all view of happiness and "the good life"? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is all very well, but should happiness be an end in itself? Shouldn't we be asking what we as individuals can to do make other people's lives better, rather than asking what the state can do to make us happier?

Chaired by Michael Buerk with Melanie Phillips, Matthew Taylor, Claire Fox and Clifford Longley.

Witnesses:

• Professor Lord Richard Layard, Director, the Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
• Simon Blackburn, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge
• Anthony Seldon, Master, Wellington College
• Phillip Hodson, Psychotherapist and author who popularised 'phone-in' therapy in his role as Britain's first 'agony uncle'.

Streaming audio of this 45-minute radio programme is available on the iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/xhj84/

Unsurprisingly no consensus on the definition of happiness was reached. Simon Blackburn suggested that happiness equated with living a meaningful life, but that just takes the question one step back: can we agree on what is "meaningful"?

At the beginning of the programme Richard Layard's utilitarian analysis met with a degree of disdain, though I imagine he's used to such recoil from the merest hint of reductionism. But if you want to get to the crux of the matter then an honestly reductionist approach has a lot to commend it. At least it might yield tangible results, as apposed to an insistence that happiness can never be satisfactorily defined and that it's a waste of time trying.

Further on in the discussion I found myself in the unfamiliar position of agreeing with Melanie Phillips, albeit fleetingly, when she questioned Anthony Seldon's specific singling out of happiness-promoting characteristics as fit subjects for the secondary school curriculum. She lost my agreement an instant later when she suggested that instead he should just teach religion. A moment before, she had casually claimed that the things Seldon associated with happiness were all common to religion; careful examination of the facts, however, belies this claim. Seldon's justification for "teaching happiness" was presented on the basis of correlation with higher A-level results: pupils feel better about themselves — therefore they do better in exams. I don't think I need to set this out as a formal syllogism to show that its reasoning is flawed.

My own view of "happiness" is that it isn't something one should strive to achieve, because like the gold at the end of the rainbow it will be forever out of reach. Happiness is more a state of intentionality than it is a state of being. Like consciousness and free will, happiness is something we are aware of, which might at the same time be an illusory construct of our cognitive faculties. Even if we use Simon Blackburn's definition and link happiness to meaning, that can only lead to confusion about what things are meaningful. So I come back to intention: happiness isn't something we gain, it's something we do.

"Grill a bishop" and you'll get undercooked answers

A revealing segment on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme yesterday seemed to confirm (anecdotally at least) that young people are by no means apathetic about the god question. Bishop Graham Kings has taken it upon himself to answer secondary school pupils' questions about God. From the BBC website:

A Church of England bishop has called on Anglican clergy to take the Church's message to young people by trying to address the fundamental questions of life and death

Dr Graham Kings, the Bishop of Sherborne, in Dorset, says a lack of religious knowledge is one of the causes of religious doubt. Robert Pigott reports

The four-minute audio stream is here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9367000/9367602.stm

The questions and answers that the Today editors included in the segment are transcribed below:

Q: "Do you think God planned the creation of nuclear weapons? Because seeing as he's supposed to be loving, that doesn't seem like a very loving thing to do."

A: "Not everything that happens in the world is God's design, so I don't think rape and racism and apartheid and smashing people up is God's design. But he has given us free will, either to respond to him and to other people lovingly, or not."

Q: "You say that God doesn't command everything, yet in the Bible it does, so surely somehow he did command that person to create nuclear weapons. Because in the Bible it says that God commands everything."

A: "It doesn't say that in the Bible."

Bishop Kings apparently blames young people's estrangement from the church partly on declining knowledge of the Bible. You may detect a recurring theme here. When asked how he knows there's life after death, the bishop replies, "I give the illustration of someone who's come back from the dead. Someone's come back and said, yes there is life after death, and that's Jesus of Nazareth himself. So I just have to be honest and say, well I believe in the afterlife because someone's come back and reported back."

Q: "You said a moment ago that homosexual relationships fall short of the glory of God." 

A: "I think we are designed for the glory of God. Paul says that in Romans 3, but he also says that just everybody falls short of the glory of God." 

Q: "If people are accepted exactly how they are, then surely God will accept them if they are homosexual. Why is it wrong, in that respect?" 

A: "God accepts them exactly as they are. What sometimes happens, and it doesn't always happen, is that sometimes they think, is this right, do I continue in a sexual relationship, or do I become celibate?"

Bishop Kings clearly bases everything on the Bible, but we didn't hear his answer to the obvious question, "How do you know the Bible is true?" (The answer is likely to have involved some circularity.) Note that Bishop Kings' answer to the question about homosexuality did not reference the Bible's unequivocal condemnation. This is probably because such a response would expose the Bible as a repository of repugnant immorality.

As if to emphasize the desperate disconnectedness of religion, Robert Pigott's report was immediately followed by Thought for the Day, in which Rhidian Brook gave us his take on Blue Monday (also available as a transcript). I would hope Mr Brook knows that Blue Monday is entirely made up by a PR company to sell holiday bookings, but I suppose if you subscribe to a belief for which the only "evidence" is fictitious scripture, it's difficult to tell these things apart.

Burnee links for Thursday

LessWrong - RationalWiki
Do you read Less Wrong? If so (apart from other things one might conclude from this fact), you should probably also read this. (Via Paul Wright.)

Angry UBC condo owners to protest hospice
I thought Canadians were sensible. Wait... these are Asian Canadians — does that make a difference?
(Via Pharyngula.)

Questions about Noah's Ark that may bug creationists | John Hollier | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
It's disturbing that we are even considering this stuff. Noah and the Flood is a story. It never happened. Should we perhaps be concerned about the illogicality of a talking wolf who impersonated a grandmother? Does the story of Little Red Riding Hood contain any vestige of actual history? No.
(Via BCSE)

A Special Case of Double Effect « Choice in Dying
In the above post Eric MacDonald provides a perfect example of what he wrote about in a previous one:

"We can do much better than religious morality, almost every time, and that for a simple reason. Without God, we really do have to think about what would be best."

Journalism Warning Labels « Tom Scott
If you read actual printed (that is, on paper) journalism, rather than online (which is, as you know, not real...), you might find these labels useful.

Vatican letter told Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report child abuse | World news | The Guardian
Well that about wraps it up for the Vatican. Pope Benny will resign and the Catholic Church will be disbanded. (There is a minuscule possibility, however, that the Holy See will ignore this revelation and carry on pretty much as before.) The incriminating letter is available as a PDF.

What is Faith? « Choice in Dying
Eric MacDonald's critique of Alister McGrath.

Evidence for God: 50 Arguments and a challenge

Previously on this blog (and elsewhere) I've stated that I've refuted to my own satisfaction all the arguments for the existence of God that I've encountered, and that I'm happy to examine others. Some others have (possibly) turned up. In an uncanny echo of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk, along comes Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science edited by William Dembski and Michael Licona.

Recommended by Todd Pitner on the Premier Community Forum, it was thrown down placed before us as a challenge an invitation to examine up-to-date arguments for the existence of God. Some of us accepted that challenge invitation (some of us have also taken an age to get around to it).

The 272-page paperback comprises an Introduction and four sections:
Section One: The Question of Philosophy
Section Two: The Question of Science
Section Three: The Question of Jesus
Section Four: The Question of the Bible
followed by Notes and Contributors

The 50 arguments average less than five pages each, so most likely I'll be sampling them at odd intervals. But I intend to blog about them in order, so watch this space.