Atheism « Tikkunista!

6. Religious News

Jun-03-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: A sightly scattered selection of interesting pieces on religion. Two articles point out the extent to which the “New Atheists” support the interests of the powerful, a fascinating NYT study shows linkages between economic success and religion (Max Weber would be proud), and a Big Picture feature on Buddha’s birthday, which you might have missed in the past month.

* Same Old New Atheism: On Sam Harris The Nation

The New Atheists did not bother with such nuance. Hitchens and Harris, in particular, wasted no time enlisting in Bush’s crusade, which made their critique of religion selective. It may have targeted Christianity and occasionally Judaism, but hatred and fear of Islam was its animating force. Despite their disdain for public piety, the New Atheists provided little in their critique to disturb the architects and proselytizers of American empire: indeed, Hitchens and Harris asserted a fervent rationale for it. Since 9/11, both men have made careers of posing as heroic outsiders while serving the interests of the powerful.

…Harris claims he is committed to the reasonable weighing of evidence against the demands of blind faith. This is an admirable stance, but it conceals an absolutist cast of mind. He tells us that because “the well-being of conscious [and implicitly human] creatures” is the only reliable indicator of moral good, and science the only reliable means for enhancing well-being, only science can be a source of moral value. Experiments in neuroimaging, Harris argues, reveal that the brain makes no distinction between judgments of value and judgments of fact; from this finding he extracts the non sequitur that fact and value are the same. We may not know all the moral truths that research will unearth, but we will soon know many more of them. Neuroscience, he insists, is on the verge of revealing the keys to human well-being: in brains we trust.

* Support Christian missions in Africa? No, but . . . Richard Dawkins

Given that Islam is such an unmitigated evil, and looking at the map supplied by this Christian site, should we be supporting Christian missions in Africa? My answer is still no, but I thought it was worth raising the question. Given that atheism hasn’t any chance in Africa for the foreseeable future, could our enemy’s enemy be our friend?

* Is Your Religion Your Financial Destiny? New York Times (see full chart here)

The economic differences among the country’s various religions are strikingly large, much larger than the differences among states and even larger than those among racial groups.

The most affluent major religions — including secularism — is Reform Judaism. Sixty-seven percent of Reform Jewish households made more than $75,000 a year at the time the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life collected the data, compared with only 31 percent of the population as a whole. Hindus were second, at 65 percent, and Conservative Jews were third, at 57 percent. On the other end are Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Baptists…..

* How to Be a New Atheist Be Scofield Tikkun Daily Blog

The first and most important thing to do when writing about the religulous is to conflate all religion with the belief in a supernatural god. By identifying all religion with an abusive and cruel “celestial dictator” it will ensure the maximum ability to attack and ridicule your target. It also provides the advantage of avoiding the complexity of various religious people who use the words God, sacred or divine but do not mean an omnipotent personal being or anything outside or above the laws of the universe. To help make your case you can borrow this line from popular anti-religious atheist blogger Greta Christina, “The thing that uniquely defines religion is belief in supernatural entities. Without that belief, it’s not religion.” Or this one from Christopher Hitchens (author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything), “To be religious is to be a theist.” Following this definition it’s crucial that you primarily focus on the Abrahamic faiths and ignore things like the Buddhist Churches of America (the oldest Buddhist group in the U.S.) Sure they meet on Sunday mornings, sing hymns, sit in pews, use sacred texts, send their children to Sunday school and listen to a reverend or minister. But they don’t believe in a supernatural god so they don’t really count and you can safely ignore them. It’s better to take the Buddhists off the “religion can be harmful radar” because a lot of liberal Westerners see Buddhists as pure, esoteric, spiritual and enlightened, so it’s best not to confuse these good people by including Buddhists among the religulous.

* Vesak Day 2011 The Big Picture Boston Globe

7. Your Brain is not the Boss!

Sep-17-2010 | Comments (1)

Bird’s-Eye: This is very depressing, as one reason for putting out Tikkunista! is the hope that information helps people to make better decisions. But there’s evidence that it doesn’t, in a powerful and fascinating piece from the Boston Globe. Some people teach that you just have to believe you’ll be rich and you will be, and they sell many, many books. The New Yorker looks (long piece, but.) at The Secret, and its history and opponents, most notable Barbara Ehrenreich. But at least there are some fun tricks you can play with your brain, and we offer those as consolation.

* How Facts Backfire The Boston Globe

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation….

Most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas, and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence. In reality, we often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information. And then we vote.

* Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret,” and “The Power” The New Yorker

Eight months after the film came out, Byrne published a book, also called “The Secret,” which eventually sold more than nineteen million copies worldwide. It urges readers to rid themselves of illness through “harmonious thoughts,” to attract love by loving themselves, and to express gratitude for what they want before they get it. There are also scientific claims meant to demystify the law of attraction, although they invariably have the opposite effect. (“Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency. As you think, those thoughts are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency.”)

…Some of those new ideas weren’t so new. In 1836, half a century before “The Picture of Dorian Gray” appeared, Ralph Waldo Emerson published “Nature,” which included his famous call to arms: “There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.” Emerson’s treatise was a work of philosophy but also, avowedly, of self-help. “Build, therefore, your own world,” he urged. “As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.” A generation of thinkers and seekers took up Emerson’s challenge, and by the end of the nineteenth century a loosely defined movement had emerged, taking its name from Emerson: New Thought.

…In “Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America” (Picador; $15), Barbara Ehrenreich subjects the new New Thought of Rhonda Byrne and others to scrutiny. She argues that “positive thinking has made itself useful as an apology for the crueler aspects of the market economy,” and she blames overly optimistic thinking for much of what alarms her about this country: the recent housing bubble, the protracted wars, the failure to take climate change seriously, and even Americans’ mediocre performance on a barrage of international happiness tests. She worries that our single-minded obsession with happiness is, contrary to the law of attraction, making us sad

* 10 Amazing Tricks to Play with your Brain

At first this might sound like a bad practical joke. Begin by tuning a radio to a station playing static. Then lie down on a couch and tape a pair of halved ping pong balls over your eyes. Within minutes you should begin to experience a bizarre set of sensory distortions….It turns out that the mind is addicted to sensation so that when there’s little to sense (that’s the purpose of ping pong balls and static) your brain ends up inventing its own.

6. Religious Atheists

Mar-12-2010 | Comments (0)

Context: Isn’t that an oxymoron? No, as Christopher Hitchens (no oxy, he) has learned. (He’s recanting now.) It’s a short step from A is for Atheist to B is for Buddhist, and the range extends down to at least the U’s, as 19% of Unitarians are atheist/ agnostic. (We are unsure if there are Zoroastrian atheists) But being an atheist is no reason not to be religious, as you’ll see.

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