"the world’s religions offer a view of reality that is now so utterly impoverished"

[BurtWorm]

Says Sam "Mean Atheist" Harris. What do you think?


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/opinion/l05kristof.html


To the Editor:

Re “A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion,” by Nicholas D. Kristof (column, Dec. 3):

Contrary to Mr. Kristof’s opinion, it isn’t “intolerant” or “fundamentalist” to point out that there is no good reason to believe that one of our books was dictated by an omniscient deity.

Half of the American population believes that the universe is 6,000 years old. They are wrong about this. Declaring them so is not “irreligious intolerance.” It is intellectual honesty.

Given the astounding number of galaxies and potential worlds arrayed overhead, the complexities of life on earth and the advances in our ethical discourse over the last 2,000 years, the world’s religions offer a view of reality that is now so utterly impoverished as to scarcely constitute a view of reality at all.

This is a fact that can be argued for from a dozen sides, as Richard Dawkins and I have recently done in our books. Calling our efforts “mean” overlooks our genuine concern for the future of civilization.

And it’s not much of a counterargument either.

Sam Harris
New York, Dec. 3, 2006
The writer is the author of “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.”

[kiahzero]

1. Harris has a rather poor definition of "the world's religions."

He's clearly talking about Christianity, but uses fundamentalist Christianity to attack theism generally.

I don't know if that's mean, but it's certainly not "intellectual honesty."

[BurtWorm]

5. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, that he meant "the world's religions"

and instinctively, I agreed with him. I will take conventional Christianity as an example of a view of the world that I find impoverished, insofar as its worldview is one in which God has "personalities" and devises a bizarre plan to reward and punish the people he supposedly created the universe for based on whether they believe in him and his Son-personality or not.

And this is supposedly a view of the universe at its most profound?

[kiahzero]

13. I agree that there are problems with Christianity

There are good reasons why I'm not a Christian. :D

However, as I've mentioned in the past, Harris seems to see Abrahamic religions as the universe of theism.

[BurtWorm]

19. I'm having difficulty conceiving of a world religion that is not impoverished

compared to a view of reality where reality is central. What impoverishes most religions, as far as I can see, is their human-centrism.

[More Than A Feeling]

21. Wait, I'm confused. you criticize religions for their human-centrism...

but one of the alternative ethical systems is called HUMANism? :crazy: Perhaps you'd find the Raelians to be less impoverished, since they are centered around aliens? ;)

In all seriousness, though, I think I get what you are trying to say, that religions should have more respect for the earth and animals. And the aliens :P Ok, maybe still not so serious. It's kind of hard to imagine a religion in America with the same kind of connection to nature that the ancient pagan rites had. Modern day paganism would probably come the closest, but the altered perspective caused by the passage of time has to water it down I would think.

[BurtWorm]

22. Humanism is at least honest about what's it about.

Religions pretend to be about the cosmos, but they put humans at the center of it. There isn't one that I can think of that doesn't have as a central tenet that humans are the reason there is a universe and that the fates of the universe and of humans are joined. Maybe Taoism and some forms of Buddhism come close to being non-human-centric "religions," but they also walk over the line into being purely philosophical.

[More Than A Feeling]

23. I don't see how its pretending to be about the cosmos,

if most religions explicitly link the universe and humanity as you have said. And the claim is quite explicit, because, at least in Christianity, the idea is that they had a common creator. You can still criticize them for doing it, but I see no duplicity.

[BurtWorm]

24. Religion is really about human beings, not about the cosmos.

Religion exists because of human ignorance about the cosmos. In its day, before the legalization of science ;) , it purported to be the last word on the cosmos. Many people still believe it's the last word. But Harris's point, it seems to me, is that it just doesn't have the stuff to be the last word.

[More Than A Feeling]

25. I understand what you and Harris are saying now. Thanks! n/t

[ThomCat]

2. I agree. The second letter also makes a great point.

Nicholas D. Kristof is one of many commentators to find the tone of the newly resurgent atheism “obnoxious” or “mean.”

Ubiquitous as they are, such epithets are not borne out by an objective reading of the works he cites: Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation,” my own “God Delusion” and www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com (I had not been aware of this splendid Web site; thank you, Mr. Kristof).

I have scanned all three atheist sources carefully for polemic, and my honest judgment is that they are gentle by the standards of normal political commentary, say, or the standards of theater and arts critics.

Mr. Kristof has simply become acclimatized to the convention that you can criticize anything else but you mustn’t criticize religion. Ears calibrated to this norm will hear gentle criticism of religion as intemperate, and robust criticism as obnoxious. Without wishing to offend, I want “The God Delusion” to raise our consciousness of this weird double standard.

How did religion acquire its extraordinary immunity against normal levels of criticism?

Richard Dawkins
Oxford, England, Dec. 4, 2006

...............

Very true. Even the slightest effort to disagree with religion gets slammed. Look at all the people here who complain about how persecuted Christians are simply because we don't preface every discussion with disclaimers favoring them.

[charles22]

3. Nothing wrong with religion.

Just keep in church.

[Emillereid]

4. Sam Harris is right on!

The major religions - Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam are antiquated (competing) myths -- and in my view, have done much harm in humanity's efforts to build a cooperative, unified, peaceful world. They all are based on fanciful stories and have not one shred of evidence to their credit -- they rely on superstitious faith. If people who believe them kept to themselves, I could care less which imaginary friend they worship. But their world views have overall been destructive of building true harmony and progress.

Note I left Buddhism out - on the whole it doesn't seem as harmful -- perhaps because it doesn't seem to advocate that one worship any particular deity and appears to more about real spiritual growth.

Yes, that's right -- I don't for one minute equate religiosity with spirituality!

[cosmik debris]

6. He adds more heat than light

His assertion that half of all Americans believe the Earth is 6000 years old is just hyperbole. It has no basis in fact. Vilifying your opponents to win an argument is bad form, especially when the argument wins itself(no evidence ergo no god).

And his grossly generalized statement about what the "world's religions" believe is equally bogus. He uses the most extreme example as the norm.

[phantom power]

8. Here's a citation:

Only about 5 percent of the natural scientists we polled--some 4,000 such professionals--think that God created humans "pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." While rare among scientists, this is the view held by nearly half of all Americans--a striking figure, considering that fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals make up only a quarter to a third of the population.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_29_116/ai_57388155

[cosmik debris]

15. Your citation doesn't hold water

It is an article in a Christian Magazine written to support the Christian cause. It gives no details, it just spouts numbers. That is a meaningless citation.

[phantom power]

17. That may be. On the other hand...

I, at least, have provided one reference in support of his statement, whereas you have provided none in support of yours. Your allegation will hold more weight if you can provide some survey, or other data, that disagrees with theirs.

But you are correct that they give their number with no supporting data, and there's no way from that article to know what survey methods they used, if any.

[Emillereid]

9. Actually it appears that 'only' 45% believe the earth is only 10000 years old

according to the Washington post:
..."Polls taken last year showed that 45 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common ancestor with the ape. Only 26 percent believe in the central tenet of evolution, that all life descended from a single ancestor.

Another poll showed that 65 percent of Americans want creationism taught alongside evolution."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/24/AR2005092401262.html

Given the last number I would not doubt that other polls have shown 50% do.

Given these polls, I really do think that Americans are becoming too stupid to live with -- maybe it's the Sad American Diet to blame -- not enough nutrients to grow a proper brain.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. If that's true, and I have my doubts, I blame the generalized dumbing down

of America, the mentality that says that anything new or different or challenging is automatically "boring."

I struggled with that mentality all the time as a college professor. I once recommended that my students watch an excellent series called The Pacific Century on PBS, and I was told that PBS had nothing but that boring science and history stuff, and furthermore, that they all lived such stressful lives that they deserved to watch something that they didn't have to think about. :banghead:

[Emillereid]

12. According to Wikipedia, a gallup poll conducted in 2006 found that

46% of Americans believe god created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.


..."According to a 2006 Gallup poll,<21> about 46% of Americans believe in strict creationism, concurring with the statement that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years," and 36% believe that God guided the process of evolution. Only 13% believe that humans evolved over millions of years, without any supernatural intervention. Belief in creationism is inversely correlated to education; of those with post-graduate degrees, only 22% believe in strict creationism."...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism

Here's another citation that is even scarier:

Fresh Challenges in the Old Debate Over Evolution
By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 7, 2004; Page A14

"David Jackson's life straddles all the fault lines in the battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Jackson is a professor of science education at the University of Georgia's College of Education in Athens. He believes to his core that science has proved valid Charles Darwin's theory of how life on Earth developed from a common ancestry and why life has such diversity.

About half the students he teaches to become middle school science instructors -- and to teach evolution themselves -- believe that God created the Earth 6,000 years ago, he said. Scientist friends tell him not to teach those students because anyone with those beliefs "shouldn't teach." But he tells them it is his job to make sure that his students understand evolution, not believe it"....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40839-2004Dec6?language=printer

[cosmik debris]

16. So where does it say

"Half of the American population believes that the universe is 6,000 years old." That is the hyperbole. That is the statement in question.

[trotsky]

27. Compare the claims.

"46% believe the universe is less than 10,000 years old." - Gallup survey

"Half.. (believe) that the universe is 6,000 years old." - Harris

Hyperbole? Really?

hy·per·bo·le
Pronunciation: hI-'p&r-b&-(")lE
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek hyperbolE excess, hyperbole, hyperbola, from hyperballein to exceed, from hyper- + ballein to throw -- more at DEVIL
: extravagant exaggeration (as "mile-high ice-cream cones")

[kiahzero]

29. There's a difference between "man" and "universe."

This is the Gallup poll response:
God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so?

That does not imply that those same people believe that God created the universe within the last 10,000 years or so.

[trotsky]

30. Oh, so that's the "hyperbole"?

That does not imply that those same people believe that God created the universe within the last 10,000 years or so.

Are you saying that there are significant numbers of people who believe that the human race is only 6000 years old but the universe is billions of years old? After all, to classify as "hyperbole," Harris' claim would have to be a wild exaggeration from the truth.

[kiahzero]

32. I wouldn't say that it was hyperbole, no.

I was just pointing out that the Gallup poll was about evolution, not the creation of the universe.

[trotsky]

66. For the people who answered from a creationist perspective,

I'm pretty sure I can guarantee you they feel the same way about the timeframe of the creation of the universe.

[BurtWorm]

31. Is there anyone who believes God created human beings as is 10,000 years ago

who also believes the world was created millions of years before?

Granted the question is awkward, but, when it's pretty clearly asking if you believe in evolution or the Biblical story of creation.

[kiahzero]

33. I don't know, because I don't have poll numbers on that question

I'd wager that there are a significant number, but I have nothing other than a certain level of intelligence in humanity to support that assumption. As I said above, I was merely correcting an understanding of the poll question.

[BurtWorm]

36. My feeling is anyone who answered the question positively

either believes in young earth creationionism, essentially, or wasn't really paying attention to the question.

This issue--evolution vs. creation--is littered with examples of the poverty of religious imagination. It may be that a large portion of those answering the question in the affirmative meant something different from "God created man 10,000 years ago"--like, for example, just "God created humans at some point." But what does that *really* mean to them? Do they imagine God molding humans out of clay 500,000 years ago when homo sapiens first appears in the fossil record? Do they imagine that natural selection is God's way of molding humans over eons? I suspect anyone who believes either of those is as content, as I suspect pre-scientific humans of any age and culture have been content, to let the "God molded man" metaphor stand as an answer for any question they may have about human origins.

The bottom line for me: It doesn't matter how sophisticated a person may be about natural selection and evolution; if they cared so little about the specifics of the question (such as what it really means to agree that "God created humans 10,000 years ago") and only enough to register their belief in God's creation of human being, they're reflecting the likelihood, in my opinion, that their reality is impoverished indeed.

[cosmik debris]

35. Seems like a stretch to me.

In order to verify that "Half of the American population believes that the universe is 6,000 years old." you use evidence that 46% believe some entirely different age for mankind. It is clear that you have no direct evidence so you are trying to get by with circumstantial evidence.

You may object to my word - hyperbole, but your evidence is certainly a stretch. And the fact that you have to rely on circumstantial evidence indicates the weakness of your argument.

[Evoman]

37. Not really a HUGE stretch. Slight exaggeration, maybe. Hyperbole, no way.

46% = about half.

6000 years vs 10,000 years.....what the hells the difference.

Pollster: Do you believe the humans were created, wholly as they are now, 10,000 years ago?

Fundie: Yes, thats reasonable.

Pollster: Do you believe that the universe was created about 6000 years ago?

Same fundie: Are you fucking stupid? Of course not. It was 10,000 years ago.

[Emillereid]

28. Here's the relevant line from the poll:

."According to a 2006 Gallup poll," about 46% of Americans believe in strict creationism, concurring with the statement that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years,"

Several other polls concur -- see another post.

[BurtWorm]

20. Give me an example of a world religion that does not have an impoverished worldview.

Compared to science's world view, that is.

[kiahzero]

34. Could you define impoverished?

The only one I think is close to what you might mean is "deprived of strength, vitality, creativeness, etc," but given the common complaint that theists are "childish" or "deluded," I fail to see how theism can be lacking in creativity. ;)

[BurtWorm]

38. Off the top of my head, I'd say the religious world view is poor in detail

which is something the scientific worldview is filthy rich in. It's like the difference between looking through a glass darkly, you might say, and peering through an electron microscope.

[kiahzero]

39. Fair enough

Your point seems fair with regards to religions that reject empiricism, but as best I can tell, that only really includes some versions of Christianity and Islam. Granted, those two account for somewhere up to 45% of the world's religions (depending on how many adherents of those religions reject empiricism), but that's not even "most," let alone "all."

Perhaps I'm being overly defensive, but I don't think my world view is overly impoverished. I'm quite proud of it, actually.

[BurtWorm]

40. What about Hinduism? Animism? Theistic Buddhism?

Any religion that posits a God or system of gods you can never really get a handle on seems to me to be smudging the lens with vaseline.

PS: Forgot to include Judaism, of course.

[kiahzero]

41. Why? (n/t)

[BurtWorm]

43. I have to leave for a bit.

I will have to get back to you on this when I have more time to formulate an answer. The short answer is, theistic ideation tends to be fuzzy, especially when you get more serious about it and don't want to make your God too small--i.e., small enough to fit inside an individual human brain or collection of sentences.

PS: In my experience, the more serious a person is about their relationship with the divine, the fuzzier their language about the divine becomes. You might say this is because their worldview is too "rich" for language. I will think about that and try to get back to you on it.

[Finder]

42. What religion do you belong to? n/t

[kiahzero]

44. "Belong to" is probably not the right turn of phrase.

I don't really "belong to" any religion.

[Finder]

65. Then there is no criticism aimed at you. n/t

[xchrom]

7. even christians critisize other christians for

the things found here.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. He's wrong about "half the American population believing that the

universe is 6,000 years old."

He is making a far-fetched extrapolation along the following track:

1. Half the American population believes that God (however defined) had some part in creating the Universe -->

2. Therefore they are slack-jawed, ignorant fundamentalists-->

3. As fundamentalists, they therefore believe the most extreme version of fundamentalism, which touts the notion of a 6,000-year-old universe (which, by the way, is not even a Biblical notion but comes from a footnote to the King James Bible written by an Irish bishop in the 17th century)

The most generous statistics I have seen place 1/3 of Americans in the evangelical/fundamentalist camp, and not all of those are Biblical literalists by any means.

I grew up in an era when Minnesota was much like Lake Wobegon--almost everyone was either Lutheran or Catholic, with a few adherents of other Protestant religions.

The local high school taught evolution without controversy (except from the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose rants against evolution prompted much rolling of the eyes among other students).

I attended a Lutheran college, and when I took Studies in Genesis as an elective in the series of required religion courses, the professor was prepared for the possibility of some fundamentalists being in the class (not all students were Lutheran), but all of us, and I do mean all of us, basically said, "We're fine with evolution. We're interested in the archeological aspects and the parallels with other Middle Eastern traditions."

If the American public has regressed on this matter, it's more because educational standards took a nosedive in the 1970s.

If you really believe that 60% of Americans think the universe is 6,000 years old, I challenge you to go to your local shopping mall or business district and ask 100 random strangers how old they think the universe is.

If Sam Harris wants to criticize religion, let him at least get his facts right.

[kiahzero]

14. Are you surprised by his reasoning?

This is the same guy that argues that everyone should be atheist because a small group of theists are bad, and it's harder to attack them if there are good theists too.

[jgraz]

45. That has never been his argument, which you are well aware of

Point out where he says that, as opposed to offering examples of "bad theists" to support his true thesis: that religion itself, especially the salvationist sects, is an engine of fanaticism, irrationality and violence.

[kiahzero]

47. Here

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1531851,00.html

[jgraz]

48. That's a great article, and an example of my point

He uses the "bad guys" as examples, but never makes the argument that they are the source of his objections to religion. His opposition is rooted in the philosophy of religion itself, as outlined in the supposed holy texts.

It's a subtle distinction, but it's one that makes his argument much more powerful: that violence and intolerance among religious people are caused, at least in part, by the religious teachings they follow.

[kiahzero]

49. He's setting up a strawman

Check out the entire subthread where the article was linked: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=96489&mesg_id=96576

Basically, he seems to be assuming that the way he wants to read the Bible is the most correct, and that anyone who strays from this reading is doing so for reasons other than religion. It's an incredibly poor argument.

[jgraz]

51. I actually agree with him on that point

I've made it myself several times. I also strongly disagree with your faulty logic that I or any other atheist is implying that a fundamentalist reading of the bible is "superior" to any other interpretation. My key argument has always been that there is nothing in the doctrine to say that ANYONE's reading of the bible is "more correct" than anyone else's. Fundamentalists have an equal claim to the one and only true interpretation of this text.

This leads me to the conclusion that it's highly dangerous to expose the stupid or the violent to this particular book, especially if you tell them that it's the word of -- or inspired by -- some supreme being.

[Danger Mouse]

54. Look at...

Fred Phelps and his ilk. Exposure to the bible caused them to transform into venomous vipers and vicious harpies that spew poison and inflict pain on others because their 'religion' decrees it.

[kiahzero]

55. Harris is arguing that the fundamentalist reading is more correct.

He argues that religious moderates are only moderate because they fail to live up to their religion:
But by failing to live by the letter of the texts — while tolerating the irrationality of those who do — religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. As moderates, we cannot say that religious fundamentalists are dangerous idiots, because they are merely practising their freedom of belief. We can’t even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivalled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. It is time we recognised that religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.

As I said in the other thread, that is flat out wrong.

My key argument has always been that there is nothing in the doctrine to say that ANYONE's reading of the bible is "more correct" than anyone else's. Fundamentalists have an equal claim to the one and only true interpretation of this text.

Which is fine so long as public policy requires public justifications. The problem is people using religious justifications for public policy in a country with an Establishment Clause.

This leads me to the conclusion that it's highly dangerous to expose the stupid or the violent to this particular book, especially if you tell them that it's the word of -- or inspired by -- some supreme being.

How is that different than saying, "People shouldn't be Christian / Islamic because some people use Christianity / Islam to do bad things?"

[jgraz]

58. I have a slightly different take on what he's saying

I've seen him make that argument several times in person, and my impression is somewhat different. He's trying to illustrate that all religion is bunk, and that moderating your beliefs do not make them any less bunk. It's not correct to say he's suggesting that fundamentalism is superior -- he's using the religion against itself to show that all belief in the bible is equally worthless.

Now you may still not accept my impression of this, so I'll just speak for myself: if your interpretation actually IS what Harris is trying to say, then I disagree with him. I like his argument simply because I feel it's an elegant way of using the religious doctrine to remove the veil of reasonableness from the moderate viewpoint.

This leads me to the conclusion that it's highly dangerous to expose the stupid or the violent to this particular book, especially if you tell them that it's the word of -- or inspired by -- some supreme being.

How is that different than saying, "People shouldn't be Christian / Islamic because some people use Christianity / Islam to do bad things?"

It's not that different at all. I would simply add the following: One of the many reasons that people shouldn't be Christian / Islamic because some people use Christianity / Islam to do bad things. Specifically, people with limited critical thinking skills or a penchant for brutality can be easily led to fanaticism simply by reading the text.

[kiahzero]

60. Again we come to the problem of perspective

If you were merely arguing that religion has no place in public policy, for those reasons and others, I'd agree with you in a heartbeat. But because you are arguing (or at least seem to be arguing) that I should reject my personal experience with the divine because other people of a completely different religion can sometimes do bad things under the guise of following their religion.

[jgraz]

61. I don't know what your personal experience of the divine is

but if it's anything like mine, I wouldn't ask you to ever give it up. But personal experience with something that transcends our little monkey brain's understanding is a much different thing than religious doctrine. Personal sprituality requires no doctrine, and doctrine requires no personal spirituality. People who say different are the ones that I have a problem with.

[kiahzero]

62. Oh, certainly

I don't use the Sacred Chao as my avatar lightly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism

[jgraz]

63. Nor do I use the Sacred Calvin lightly :)

[trotsky]

26. That "reasoning" has nothing to do with it.

He rounded the numbers, but as you can see from above cites, 46% of Americans believe that the universe was created in its present form less than 10,000 years ago. Harris was obviously not making a precise claim, but even so, I don't think you need to start bashing him for this "reasoning" when it had nothing to do with what he said.

[Odin2005]

18. Harris is absolutely right.

I don't get how stating that bullshit is bullshit is "being mean." I have no tolerance for bullshit.

[jgraz]

46. Exactly -- we're getting mired in useless details

We seem to spend a lot of time arguing definitions, shades of meaning and other rat-holes. The fact is that Harris and Dawkins both make powerful cases for why religions do more harm than good in society. Whether or not they're "mean" or even completely "intellectually honest" does nothing to refute the basic premise of their arguments.

[Danger Mouse]

50. Right,

because if we got rid of all religion, the world would be a perfect place with no wars or greed or violence.
:sarcasm:

[jgraz]

52. Who said that? Who even implied that?

That would be equivalent to me accusing you of saying that the world would be perfect if everyone just found religion. It's a completely reasonable hypothesis to propose that religion is the source of some pretty horrible shit in this world, and I've yet to see anyone offer evidence to refute that.

Of course that doesn't mean that all violence would disappear if there were no religion, but you already knew that.

[Danger Mouse]

53. No no...

I agree with that. I think it's a proven fact that a great deal of the violence in this world has religion as its root. I don't think the world would be perfect if everyone found religion, nor do I think it would be perfect if noone was religious.
I was overstating.
I think a world without religion would be very interesting. It would be interesting to see what reasons people would find to kill each other.
If they would even need a reason.

[jgraz]

56. Complete agreement on this

Sadly...

For example, do any of us actually think that any of the monsters running our government have any true religious belief whatsoever? Yet they're able to use religion to twist the stupid, the violent and the paranoid to do their bidding.

That's the part that I think would be improved if all religion just went *poof*: the killers and the thugs who often end up running things would deprived of a powerful tool for controlling and lying to the masses.

[kiahzero]

57. That view only makes sense to an atheist, though

That's the part that I think would be improved if all religion just went *poof*: the killers and the thugs who often end up running things would deprived of a powerful tool for controlling and lying to the masses.

From a theist's perspective, you're asking them to reject the truth because then bad people will be denied a rhetorical tool.

[jgraz]

59. Good point

From a theist's perspective, you're asking them to reject the truth because then bad people will be denied a rhetorical tool.

Yes, the antitheist's perspective is that I'm asking them to reject a bunch of useless nonesense AND deprive bad people of a rhetorical tool. The practical, positive outcome is, to the atheist, one indication of the correctness of this viewpoint.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

67. Baloney Detection Kit

Yep, whip out your handy dandy Carl Sagan-authored "Baloney Detection Kit".

I think the test is in "The Demon Haunted World".

[Danger Mouse]

64. This is true...

however, they'd just find a new one.
Fear is the original and best method of control. It doesn't necessarily require religion to function very well, and it triggers instinctual responses.
Fear will never go out of style.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

68. except for Hindu Religion and the antiquity of the universe

If you've seen the TV series "Cosmos", Carl Sagan makes the point that the Hindu religion is the ONLY religion that deals with millions of years of cosmic creation, and says that the universe is many millions or billions of years old. Yugas, or ages, are some huge amount of time.

Quoting from Wikipedia:
The traditional timescale of the yugas is as follows:

Satya Yuga or Krita Yuga - 1,728,000 years
Treta Yuga - 1,296,000 years
Dvapara Yuga - 864,000 years
Kali Yuga - 432,000 years
Upon conclusion of seventy-one circuits of this cycle, there is a period equally long during which the world is inundated; then the cycle begins again.

Allegedly we are in a Kali Yuga, when all hell breaks loose, but I have no idea how many circuits we've been through. The Hindus certainly haven't been obsessed with the Earth and humans being the center of the solar system, and barbecuing individuals who thought the earth went around the sun, like Giordano Bruno, or throwing them in jail, like Galileo, or imprisoning Kepler's mother, all of which the Catholic church did.


"The Church says the Earth is flat. But I have seen the Shadow on the Moon, and it is Round. And I have more Faith in a Shadow on the Moon than in the Church." -- Ferdinand Magellan


Anyone who has seen the amazing pictures that our space probes and the Hubble and Chandra telescopes have taken should realize that Christianity does indeed have an impoverished view of the universe.
The reality of the universe is amazing and fascinating. The pictures have our finest astrophysicists scratching their heads at the weirdness of what they are finding out. I don't know how long it will take them to come up with theories that match up with what they are seeing now. But it's wonderful that the public is seeing these gorgeous pictures.