Stephen Colbert’s take on the Mojave Desert cross crap: Includes some funny pokes at Justice Scalia’s ridiculous argument that the cross is not religious but simply represents all dead people.

I just read this article which was posted at American Atheists on October 7th.

Atheists Oppose Christian Science “Faith Healing” Provisions in Health Care Reform Bills

“Faith-healing provisions in health care reform bills”? I knew the anti-abortionists were in a tizzy about provisions for abortion coverage, however I had no idea there were provisions to allow reimbursements for magical “medicine”!

An Atheist public policy organization today called for elimination of
requirements in Senate legislation which would reimburse faith-based
“healers” for their services.

Reimburse for what? If their imaginary friend is doing their healing, shouldn’t their imaginary friend receive imaginary “reimbursement”?

“Any adult in the legislative or executive branch of the federal
government, or of any state government, who wants to use unproven,
unscientific ‘remedies’ should be free to do so,” said Buckner. “But
support for such irrational nonsense violates the separation of
religion and government and the canons of good sense. Including
faith-healing or other non-medical ‘treatment’ in health care
legislation must be rejected.”

Dave Silverman, Communications Director for American Atheists, said that
Christian Science and other faith-based healers already receive public
money, and that the policy is not based on good science.

“We need to spend that money on providing solid, fact-based medicine.
Reimbursing the faith-healing industry wastes precious resources, and
violates the separation of church and state.”

It’s a damn good thing there are people paying close attention to these sneaky superstitious folks.

Good response by Illini Pundit.com — Voodoo Healthanomics?

Giving any sort of legitimacy to quackery, religious or otherwise, seems inherently dangerous to me. Especially dangerous and indeed often fatal to children of folks who take this stuff too far. While this particular amendment doesn’t seem to change the fact that killing a child with faith based denial of care is still generally illegal, it could encourage more of it and even reward those who attempt it and propagate irrational fears, distrust, or dismissal of proven medical treatments to those who might otherwise not know better. Of course empowering the government to decide what treatments should be covered is bound to cause even more issues along these lines. Will insurance companies or government programs be forced to pay for scientology thetan tests too? How about subluxation tests/treatment in the quackier side of chiropractic care which has roughly the same scientific grounding… i.e. none. Will we end up with a public option for prayer circle coverage too?

This religious nuttery in government and elsewhere is out of control. No wonder this health care reform bill is taking so long to pass! Too much bullshit to weed out!

[LINK]

Yeah, that’s real news…

(Dawkins, a gentleman, as always)…

[LINK]

"Nothing is rarer among moralists and saints than integrity; perhaps they say the opposite, perhaps they even believe it. For when faith is more useful, effective, convincing than conscious hypocrisy, hypocrisy instinctively and forthwith becomes innocent. . ."- Nietzsche.

One of the more irritating of aspects of cutting the Gordian Knot of religious belief, is that atheists get bombarded with all sorts of sophistic noise. As if the divorce from the supernatural entails a complete atavism, and a materialistic viewpoint reduces one to become nothing more than a dribbling reduction of nerve-endings.

Case in point: this fellow regurgitates that hoariest of old chestnuts, the ‘borrowed morality’ which he loosely bases on this specific bit of rubbish  – and really, there’s all sorts of wrong on multiple levels. Let’s itemize:

A. Christianity doesn’t have exclusive ‘rights’ to morality. Morality developed independently of it thousands of years a priori. In fact, if we were to explore that simile, it would be that that particular belief system ‘borrowed’ copiously from various sources. One need only scan historical events to see that this brand of religion took an incredibly long time to develop anything vaguely resembling morals in the first place.

B. You can’t ‘borrow’ morals (which is why I use sarcastic quotes) – these set of rules are learned, primarily from the environment and interaction with other human beings. You can’t ‘return’ morals, they aren’t some kind of coin one can charge interest on in lieu of the ‘loan’. And in the case of definition number 2, which states 2.a = ‘to appropriate for one’s own use” and 2.b “Derive; adopt” – it’s what humans do. Either way, this is some sort of reification. You can’t store up a metaphysical abstract. Shoring up “moral capital” is the mistake of a philosophical amateur.

C. This is one of those weak efforts to defenestrate the opposition: “You can’t use our rules to criticize our system – they’re OUR rules, you can’t have ‘em!”

D. I call contextomy. In the link provided above, it quotes Nietzsche as saying:

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God has truth—it stands or falls with faith in God.

Which appears to be quite damning. However, if you read it in its entirety you find that Nietzsche is first quoting G. Eliot:

G. Eliot. — They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Eliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.

So with the inserted forward, it changes this entire paragraph’s meaning.

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth — it stands and falls with faith in God.

And with the following, the entire paragraph is obviously a criticism of England and the handling of materialism by the English philosophers, not a sweeping incrimination of atheist morality at all:

When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem.

A gentle reminder for those of you who haven’t been keeping up: Nietzsche was German. If you read the numbered sequences of SKIRMISHES OF AN UNTIMELY MAN in the link provided, you’ll find numbered criticisms of George Sand, Renan, etc.

E. This is a strawman caricature employing a broad generalization and simplistic reductionism. The strawman (which I’ve exposed as such) relies on reducing Nietzsche’s complex philosophical outlook to something quite simple, and then applying it across the entire spectrum of atheistic thought. We are not all moral relativists, there’s metaphysical materialism, atheistic existentialism, non-reductionist materialism, materialistic determinism – the isms go on almost interminably.

F. In the link that started it all, the other author resorts to the childish tactic of simulation what he might think Freddy’s attitude towards Richard Dawkins might be, by providing a non-quote.

So, in a nutshell: since this nonsense isn’t representative of good old Freddy at all, and Freddy wasn’t even representing atheists in toto, both of these philosophical puff pieces have no intellectual legs whatsoever.

So…the old Shakespeare quote “Neither a lender nor a borrower be”  applies here – atheism is still a simple matter of non-belief, and morals are a communal value, not a capitalist value to be collected on.

Till the next post, then.

Many of you have been around here long enough to remember when John W Loftus of Debunking Christianity started his blog. I was one of his first readers/commenters since before joining GifS. His blog and his popularity has grown tremendously in just a few years. If you don’t know who he is, here is a brief description from one of his bios on Amazon.com.

For about two decades John W. Loftus was a devout evangelical Christian, an ordained minister of the Church of Christ, and an ardent apologist for Christianity. With three degrees–in philosophy, theology, and philosophy of religion–he was adept at using rational argumentation to defend the faith. But over the years, as he ministered to various congregations and taught at Christian colleges, doubts about the credibility of key Christian tenets began to creep into his thinking. By the late 1990s he experienced a full-blown crisis of faith, brought on by emotional upheavals in his personal life as well as the gathering weight of the doubts he had long entertained.

He has written a number of books, including one which is the title of this post, which I have just added to my atheist bookshelf, “Why I Became An Atheist”.

Amazon states:

This frank critique of Christian belief from a former insider will interest freethinkers as well as anyone with doubts about the claims of religion.

Here is an interview with John W. Loftus on Infidel Guy a while back. If you have time, it’s worth listening to.

Some of our current Christian visitors should take a listen.

Jesus christ, what a guy…

[LINK]

And another child dies because of the parents’ superstitious beliefs. And no god comes to save him.

DA: Pa. couple prayed, denied care to dying tot

PHILADELPHIA – A fundamentalist couple who prayed over their sick toddler rather than get medical help before his pneumonia death have been ordered to stand trial on manslaughter charges.

Prosecutors believe 2-year-old Kent Schaible succumbed because his parents chose prayer over modern medicine.

*snip*

The Schaibles, who quit school after ninth grade, work as teachers at their church, First Century Gospel Church in northeast Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia judge who upheld involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and conspiracy charges Wednesday against the Schaibles called them “loving” but “misguided.”

Kent Schaible died Jan. 24, about 10 days after he fell ill. His symptoms included coughing, congestion, crankiness and a loss of appetite, and he was warm to the touch, the parents told police in their Jan. 26 statements.

“They took time off from work, they fed him, they nourished him, they comforted him,” Carmen said.

A day or two before he died, they thought he was improving, as he slept better and ate and drank some. But when his condition worsened, they called their pastor and then a funeral home.

Police later asked why they didn’t call a doctor.

Good question. I am sure the DA will ask that question.

Of course, the defending attorney is crying religious persecution.

“We’re talking about symptoms that mirrored the flu and the common cold,” said public defender Francis Carmen, who represents the mother. “The Commonwealth is dragging this (issue) into the courtroom, to persecute them for their minority religious beliefs.”

Someone needs to inform this Mr Carmen that the flu and common cold can be quite serious, especially in the very young and very old. This isn’t about persecuting them for their religious beliefs. They are being held accountable for the welfare and protection of their child, which they failed to do and is criminal neglect. That they never called a doctor even when the child grew seriously ill is proof enough.