It points out that un-believers are on the rise and that those with doubts about commonly-peddled-religious-bills-of-goods are not the tiny minority of the past:

Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

And finally, a shout-out to my friend JW who, although not a fully-on-board-believer, plays in a church band every week. This quote made me think of him:

Loretta Haskell, a church musician [and non-believer], said: “I did struggle at one point as to whether or not I should be making music in churches, given my position on things. But at the same time I like using my music to move people, to give them comfort. 

And yet through science, I have come to feel a sense of transcendence — through science I have come to know beauty (even comfort) in rocks, mud, and celestial bodies. By understanding the vast and wonderful complexity of not only ourselves but of an orchid or a dung beetle, by coming to terms with the kind of beings that we are, by taking into consideration the millions-of-years of struggle that has lead up to the actual and particular beings sitting here today — I have realized our profound and inescapable connectedness. Consider that under my skin lies the implicit history of my entire biological, social, and pre-conscious past. The mechanics of my mitochondria, the heredity of my ribosomes — they tick with the history of the earth, history is in my veins.

My DNA carries the footprints of squid — or pre-squid, pre-t-rex, pre-chimpanzee. The social hierarchies of dogs and horses, the predatory prowess of the big cats, the preening and pretentious displays of wealth as practiced in the mating ritual of the Bower Bird — all these impulses and pasts are (maybe only in trace amounts) under my skin and behind my every thought. Each of my emotions is the result of eons of fine-tuning, my altruism and my hatred are useful to “nature” and to me in some, perhaps mysterious, way. My survival, my success depends on the right combination of sympathy and pride, of self-consciousness and desire.

In the explanatory framework of science I have found a kind of “spiritual” comfort, because in the explanatory framework of science I have found real and fundamental oneness — and more, very good reasons for why I am the way that I am. My quirks and insecurities, my sensitivities and aggressiveness, my tenderness and my denial — it all makes such good sense when I consider where it is I came from and how it is I got here.

Would not any wandering “religious” seeker, deep in the desert of human loneliness and alienation, yearning for connection in a disconnected world, deep in the abyss of the consumerism of our materially-motivated society — would not that seeker be grateful to know and to understand from where that loneliness has come — that why, without a healthy social structure, without love and compassion in our lives, no amount of cash or new clothes will ever create real happiness. Would not the knowledge of who we are and a thoughtful understanding of our past be a glass of cool water to such a wandering seeker? To know why we yearn to transcend the boundaries of our bodies and to connect with the oneness of the living world? That knowledge is not to be found in holy books or religious hocus pocus, it comes from astronomy and physics, from biology and sociology, from anthropology and evolutionary psychology. We must get dirty with scientific facts, to dig into the complexity and history of our evolving consciousness, if we are ever to feel more whole, more complete than we presently do.

Contrary to religion, science has this on its side: predictive success. Unlike the declarations of preachers and gurus, of pastors and mystics — we have good reasons to believe the revelations of science. It has earned our trust, and when we have found science to be false or inaccurate, it has revised itself — it has accommodated itself to what is, not to what it has been told to be. And yet, for many folks, pondering our origins in rock and mud leaves them cold — gazing at celestial bodies arouses only emptiness.

Ok, that’s cool, I can see how something of the sort might cause a backlash and energize the faithful–makes sense to me. But then he says this:

Suffering is certainly a mystery for everyone, especially the suffering of innocent people, but without faith in God it becomes immensely more absurd.

Um… what?! Suffering only makes sense if there is a loving, caring God watching over us as we fulfill his master plan for the universe? You mean, if we are naturally evolved beings struggling to survive in a sometimes hostile world, each of us slightly different than the other, carrying our small genetic mutations forward into an ecosystem that cannot possibly support every living creature, having to both cooperate and to compete for our own and our offspring’s survival–that in such a case suffering does NOT make sense, our lives are somehow MORE absurd?

Father Cantalamessa, can’t you see that suffering only becomes understandable IF we are natural beings in a natural world? Otherwise you will be forced to invent a plethora of complicated excuses for your “loving” God to justify our suffering. You will have to posist that somehow we have angered or disobeyed him, you will have to imagine that in our suffering we deserve it, you will need to imagine that we are both free but also fulfilling His plan at the same time, you will need to invent elaborate contortions of logic to account for natural disasters and child-rapists and reality TV shows… Oh, Father Cantalmessa, what is going on in that head of yours? I must have missed-out on that mutation…

The “New Atheists” are frequently disparaged as shrill, abrasive, and counter-productive — but when I read them what I see are wrters:

• who are dumbfounded that >50% of Americans don’t “believe” in evolution,
• who watch awestruck when Catholic and Muslim leaders tell millions of people not to use condoms (knowing full well that thousands of them will die of AIDS),
• who see people riot in the streets because of cartoons in far-away newspapers,
• who listen attentively to the stories of abuse of women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
• who see the news of children dying from “faith” healing,
• who realize that the election of W. Bush was funded and executed by a motivated religious community,
• who do battle with people on education boards who would turn science into Bible-study,
• who see decades of needless conflict that fall along religious lines (as in the former Yugoslavia),
• who realize a person that (openly) does not “believe in god” cannot be elected to high-office in this country,
• who fear what notions of sin, hell, judgment, and rapture are doing to the minds of our youth,
• who see families in under-developed nations ripped apart by religious missionaries,
• who see people mumbling to unseen gods to help them win lotteries or football games, or mumble to unseen gods to save them from their own sins and to avoid damnation,
• who see people who have translated their god-beliefs into other areas of their lives such as astrology and numeracy or who live in fear of alien abductions,
• who see people missing life because they are sure they are heading to another one,
• who look at the history of the Church and realize when the Church was strong, when the Church had power—everybody but the Church suffered,
• who look out and see the worst cases of the suppression of freedom in our modern world comes from highly religious countries…

—when I read Dawkins or Harris or Hitchens, I see people who look at all this and have said enough!

These writers see that god-worship is most likely an expression of our complex psychology and evolutionary past. They see that scripture and revelation are merely the “best” writings of tribal peoples. These atheist writers continue to affirm the mystery of our world, and they discuss the ways that we as a species have been successful at understanding our mysteries and dispelling our fears. They have shown that it is not by praying that the rains come–nor by our sin that earthquakes strike, and it is not by praying we cured ourselves of plagues nor through such techniques have we come to understand the rotations of our solar system. It is not by adherence to holy-writ that we have gained equal rights for women or released races from slavery—it has been the kinship of enlightened, scientific worldviews and liberal politics. 

Throughout history, the majority of the conservatively religious have been on the wrong side of these issues. While some enlightened religious leaders may have helped to push for the abolition of slavery in the United States, there were many more on-record as being for it. In our country the more devout, more pious, more religious South was the champion of human ownership, not its dispeller. 

These writers have looked out and asked, what is it that all of these problems have in common—what is it that the perpetrators of our modern ills seem to share? And it is not difficult to see they share holy books, and they share revelation. They share a view that plain right and plain wrong is writ large in their Bibles and Korans and that their God hath helped them to see the light—that Jesus has saved them or that Mohammed has guided them—and that, by god, they are going to spread the news!

These writers can plainly see that the more religiously devout a nation is the more of social ills it seems to suffer. They can see that enlightened societies with high incidences of disbelief—with large numbers of atheists and lightly-held-to-gods are better adjusted, less violent, and more socially integrated. They assume this is no accident.

These writers seek to dispel the mythology of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism; they seek out ways to release our minds from the subservience to gods. They see the next step in the long childhood of our species is to put away our lightly-veiled paternal transference onto supernatural beings. They seek to switch-on the light and bring people out from the shadows of their gods—they are for exposing the real questions of our universe and for sharing with everyone what it is very likely we really do know—that we were not created in the image of a deity, that we need not fear eternal torture, we need not get down on our knees and pray, we need not worship, we need not praise, we need not be shackled to ludicrous texts!

/CloseRant

Of course there is more to say. At the same time I think all of the above is true, I also think these writers paint with too-broad a brush, and in so doing they have made enemies of friends in the moderate/liberal religious community. There is much more to say. So much more to say…

And while I have certain gripes with religious moderates as well, it sure beats the every-present Evangelism of the Bush-years!

I can’t even get this video to embed. But it’s worth the click.

And here it is:

I’ll not be providing any powerful or penetrating analysis of the above facts. That’s your job!

This tale, it doesn’t correspond to Beethoven’s real situation by the way, is an example of the Argument from Beauty which tries to affirm the existence of god. The argument is that since beauty transcends an object’s material state, and beauty is a quality of god, then god must exist. And from this there is also an argument that all great art must come from, or be inspired by, religion. But this is of course an incorrect assumption. To see why lets first look at some examples of explicitly religious art and architecture:

Of course these are impressive examples but is it impossible to find something that at least rivals these works? Of course not.

None of these examples have anything to do with religion, yet most would agree they are quite esthetically satisfying.

There are two things one can say about this. The most likely reason artists, architects, musicians and others almost exclusivly created religious art in the past ages were that churches were the only one who could support the creation of such works. God is apparently not a requirement for appreciating the wounderful and spiritual (for lack of a better word). One can also notice the fallacy of defining god as direct responsibility for certain properties in the world. If god is the beauty in a painting, the gentle surface of a lake, and in so many other things, what god is there left to talk about?

Steven Weinberg sums it up perfectly in his Dreams of a Final Theory, “Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that ‘God is the ultimate’ or ‘God is out better nature’ or ‘God is the universe.’ Of course, like any other word, the word ‘God’ can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say ‘God is energy,’ then you can find God in a lump of coal.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, the Vatican Secretariat of State said that Bishop Williamson “must absolutely, unequivocally and publicly distance himself from his positions on the Shoah,” or Holocaust, or else he would not be allowed to serve as a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.

The guy has balls, that’s for sure — first he had himself  ordained without the Vatican’s permission, then he gets himself excommunicated by Pope John Paul II — all the while walking around saying things like this: 

There was not one Jew killed in the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies. The Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new State of Israel…. Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil, and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism.

But will he have the balls (or is it spinelessness?) to stand up and recant his years of anti-semitism? Oh, I’d love to see it — is that petty of me?

In any case, here’s a clip that shows just how smug and dismally uninformed (or is it “in denial”) the guy is:

For a far more thoughtful and complete account of the situation, I recommend going here.