Truth and the Devil

I just found a wonderful article on the common phenomenon, in our culture and especially on the internet, of the Galileo Fallacy. That people who have unpopular ideas must be right because people who have been attacked due to their unpopular ideas in the past turned out to be right.

There’s a form of very bad thinking that I see a lot in some very smart, thoughtful people.

The thinking goes like this:

“Great thinkers throughout history have had unpopular ideas that everyone disagreed with.

“I have an unpopular idea that everyone disagrees with.

I thought it might be telling to keep an eye on the Expelled blog and see what’s going on there. Ben Stein has a new post which is rather cryptic [edit: the post has been inexplicably removed]. It basically is setting out to create a climate of victimization (which the film seems to be doing as well) starting out with a quote attributed to Jonny Cash.

It’s good to be hated by the right people.”

I’m not quite sure what to make of the following quote, though if it turns out to be some sort of parody, I’ll be pleasantly surprised (though I’m not holding my breath).

Richard Dawkins is back with part 2 of The Enemies of Reason

The Intelligent Design creationists have tried all sorts of tactics to get their religious ideology taught in America’s science classrooms. They’ve written books, changed curricula, been involved in lawsuits, everything except actually doing science. Now, as a new extension of their PR assault on the media, they’re making a movie: Expelled — No Intelligence Allowed. It looks to be bullshit propaganda at its finest. Their website has a blog authored by the co-writer and MC of this film, Ben Stein. Let’s see what he has to say about the film.

After doing his two-part television special, The Root of All Evil?, on the BBC, Richard Dawkins is back with a new series. This time, instead of focusing on the dangers of religion, he’s going after superstition and pseudo-science. In the first episode, he discusses astrology, spiritualist churches and water dowsing.

Sometimes, ‘finding the middle ground’ isn’t always the best, or right solution.

Bird Brains

Unfortunately, it seems that one of the biggest debates facing atheists online recently has been between those who dislike religion and wish to speak out against it, and those who think those who speak out against it are meanies who need to shut up. Anyway, I just read a recent post in this ‘battle’ from Mixing Memory as well as many of the comments posted there. I certainly think he’s wrong about most of his post, but the one issue that I think deserves further consideration is his classification of the ‘New Atheists’ as white, middle-class ex-Protestants. This implies that atheists are already in priviledged positions, and therefore any comparison with any other social movement is undeserved.

“Are you kidding me?” Watching white, middle-class, mostly ex-Protestant males (the dominant new atheist demographic) compare themselves to feminists, labor movements, gay and civil rights activists, or the members of any other persecuted group fighting for their social, political, and economic lives is just plain surreal. Or worse, as Trinifar notes, it’s just plain manipulative. It does, however, reinforce my armchair psychoanalysis of the new atheists: members of a privileged class who decided to create an identity simply to justify their own persecution complexes.

Update: It appears that the article I cited was not entirely accurate. The educational report from the UK mentioned these types of problems, but this was not seen as a trend.

PZ links to this audiofile that was originally posted on YouTube.
A kid comes out to his mother, and she doesn’t take it too well. At first she doesn’t understand how someone who has been confirmed can stop believing in God, and then threatens to take him to church every week and not give him any presents for Christmas.
Kind of odd that the kid would record this, but here it is nonetheless.

This week’s Newsweek has feature debating the existence of God. It begins with an article introducing some theistic and atheist concepts, which leads into a several page debate between Rick Warren and Sam Harris. Overall I perceive it as a fairly generous portrayal of the arguments against theism (I’ll let theists judge if it was a beneficial portrayal of theism). There were, however, some interesting parts to take note of.