Pew Forum Stats – Women Are More Religious Than Men

Hello All,

Sorry the blog has been a bit slower lately, I’ve been very busy enjoying life. 

However, I thought you’d be interested in this article/study, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which essentially states that women (in the US) are approximately 12% more religious than men, in a variety of religious/spiritual categories.

Check out the article here – http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=403

 

CCD,

Ben

Guest Post by Jeremy Pellani – “The Religious Paradox”

So, I’ve played around with this idea, “the religious paradox.” Its the problem of believing in something while believing in the goodness of others to choose for themselves what to believe. This is at the core of our ideals of democracy and equality. I have a hard time believing something without believing that others with opposing view points are wrong. What’s more, I know I’m likely wrong about a great many things. For me, my best guess appears true even though I’ve seen it change. It reminds me of a poem by Kurt Vonnegut from Cat‘s Cradle: 

Tiger got to hunt,

bird got to fly;

Man got to sit and wonder,

“Why, why, why?”

Tiger got to sleep,

bird got to land;

Man got to tell himself he understand.

 

I believe all of us find resting places for our thoughts. These may appear like finished truth to but they are, in fact, just a working hypothesis.

 

There is a natural tension between respecting others beliefs and being a strong advocate for one’s beliefs. Not all beliefs are proved by reason. Some are believed by the quality of a feeling, some believe because they were told by an authority they trust. You may think feelings not legitimate to discern truth; but think if reason can be driven by feelings as well. Is proved to me by looking at my own thoughts and feelings. My reason is driven by motive. Perhaps you can find proof of this in your own thoughts and feelings.

 

Faith adds a special dimension to this hence the “religious“ paradox.  Faith is a kind of commitment to a set of “truths”. Almost by definition, one with faith believes that they are right in their world view, possibly even absolutely right. I’ve had faith and talked to other people of other faiths. Often, I get the feeling that they are waiting for me to come around to their point of view. Its like, “I am right and you can be right to if you agree with me, otherwise you are wrong and need more time before you can realize the truth.” I cannot have these conversations any more. They seem worthless.

For the record I am not asking others to give up their beliefs; nor, would I like to give up mine. I am asking them to recognize that they only can know part of the truth and I know another part. When faith requires one to believe absolutely, to do this is a paradox.

 

Let me know what you think. I love the diversity of opinion on this blog.  Thanks Ben for letting me guest post,

                                                      Jeremy Pellani

Christmas Eve in Bryn Athyn, PA

I love coming back to my hometown. I love and respect SO many people here, and associate so much of who I am with the values and ideas I picked up while I was living here in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. I’ve been back in Bryn Athyn for a week or so, having travelled from San Diego, CA. It’s been interesting, to say the least, as every time I come home, I’m confronted by hundreds of realizations about my former faith and community that absolutely shake me to my core.

For example, I attended the 7:30pm Christmas Eve service at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral this week. It was quite an experience for me. First, I overheard some folks ignorantly gossiping about my ‘EvolveFish” car magnet, which is predictable in a small church town, but still disheartening. Shortly after I entered the main hall, a recitation was read, and I realized that along with probably a hundred other passages, I still knew all of Luke 2: 8-14 by heart. Then I started to analyze the words in the hymns, the commentary given by the minister… pretty soon my mind was racing.

Most depressing of all was the Christmas Story handout, which not only stated that every word in the story has a meaning, but that “Every detail of the story IS TRUE.” (my caps)

If that’s not dogmatic, I don’t know what is.

So, now the ‘rational’ religion (which the NC so boldly calls itself) is claiming that every detail, from the virgin birth, to the angels appearing over and over, to the 3 wise men/kings, to the census, to the slaughter of the innocents, etc… every detail. TRUE.

Kids. If you’re reading this, please ask for proof. Parents, if you’re reading this, demand it. In the likely absence of some form of historical or medical proof, accept nothing less than an admission of (at LEAST) partial ignorance on the topic, or an admission of subjective, personal faith on the topic that serves as a catalyst allowing the leaders of the church to be so dogmatic at such a crucial and public time. If you’d like to do some reading on the subject of doubting the Christmas story (or anything in the gospels), I’d suggest reading The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man by Robert M. Price.

Demand honesty, folks! The intellectual integrity of your educational system is most definitely at stake.

The evidence supporting this bold truth claim is SO inconclusive (to put it nicely), that it would do all Jesus-based religions well to simply admit that they don’t really know if Jesus was born of a virgin (like so many other supposed “Gods” were in that day). If it’s what you ‘believe on faith’, then SAY THAT, and say it OFTEN! Don’t allow your personal faith to corrupt your intellectual integrity as an educator, because it makes you less trustworthy, and gives the children you’re trying to convince good reason to doubt you as a source of the information you seem to think you represent. If you think you represent the truth, allow your truth to compete for it’s place at the top of the heap by admitting what you do/don’t/can/can’t KNOW.

Last thought. As I was sitting in the Cathedral and listening to the sermon, the prayers, the hymns and the readings, I looked around at all the children in the audience and I was struck by the most profound sense (subjective) that intellectual freedom and educational integrity are NOT priority #1 in the New Church. It wasn’t so much what was being said by the minister (mostly niceties), but by remembering the process of being a child and growing up watching the adults reciting, memorizing, singing and praying words of adoration to THE God, without so much as an utterance of doubt during the church service, or the use of the words ‘I don’t know’ during church. It’s embarrassing and it was quite depressing to think of all the mis-information going on in the lives of the hundreds of kids in my hometown that are being educated about the nature of the universe in a dogmatic way, on top of experiencing this very convincing form of education through ritual.

It may seem like a small thing, like I’m nit-picking maybe? I can see how you might think this. However, I’m still calling to all parents, educators & kids, and saying (in the words of Todd Snider) “brothers and sisters, I’m only one guy, but I can tell you right now without batting an eye”, that your process for passing the truth to the next generation is far more flawed that you like to imagine. I beg you to fix it, or the people who are unwilling to bend the truth will win the minds of your next generations. And deservedly so. I’ll consider it a huge step if you’ll just edit your handout more thoroughly next year.

Peace,

Ben

Obama Announces Science Team

CCD,

Ben

Happy Thanksgiving

This year, I am particularly thankful for all the participants on CCD, and their willingness to be honest in the discussions of some of their most personal thoughts and beliefs. Kudos to all of you for commenting, posting and debating! I think we need more debate in this world. We need more debate, more argument, more discussion, more questions, more doubt and more willingness to really engage eachother with honesty. I applaud you for joining in, and I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving Day, if you celebrated.

CCD,

Ben

An Interesting Look at Evolution Courtesy of Carl Sagan

CCD,

Ben

Sam Harris: Faith and Reason in the Modern World

As many of you know, Sam Harris is one of my favorite defenders of Reason. Sam is one of the many people that helped me define my current worldview, and I find his speeches to be incredibly lucid. He is honest, engaging, calm and absolutely clear about how we can have transcendent experiences, love, meaning and real humanity without necessitating a God.

The following videos exhibit some of the best speaking on the topic of Faith & Reason available ANYWHERE, and I highly recommend you take the time to watch all five (less than an hour).

If there are specific things Sam says that people find interesting/lacking/inspiring/harmful, please comment and begin some discussion/debate.

Enjoy!

Ben

Obama Promises to “Throw His Weight Around”…

…on the topic of the college football playoff system during his 60 Minutes interview tonight. He wants an 8 team playoff and I think he’ll make it happen. Hi-yo!!!

Ok, back to serious stuff.

Ben

Hitchens 1, Wolpe 0

Tonight I attended (thanks James Tracy at www.anatheist.net for getting me tickets!) a debate/discussion between Rabbi David Wolpe and Christopher Hitchens at the La Jolla Jewish Community Center. Wolpe is generally considered America’s most well known Rabbi, and Christopher Hitchens is, well, known as an inflammatory anti-theist and anti-religionist who usually has either a drink or a smoke in his hand. You can find videos of previous debates here and you can see Rabbi Wolpe debate Sam Harris here.

Even though Hitchens is a sharp and entertaining guy, I still think I prefer Sam Harris, Dan Dennett and Richard Dawkins to Hitch, in general. That said, and even though I suspect that Hitchens was drunk, he absolutely mopped the floor with Wolpe. It was fun to see them go back and forth, but if you want my opinion, Hitchens was landing haymaker after haymaker, while Wolpe retreated to many tired old atheism myths and claims about the origin of morality. I mean, I think discussions like the one they had are fascinating to me almost not matter what, but Wolpe didn’t put up much of a fight. In fact, he nearly conceded that God and religion are man-made SEVERAL times, and Hitchens had to encourage him to take back his words on more than one occasion.

But what really interested me was that Hitchens posed an interesting challenge to Wolpe and the crowd. He even offered a reward if someone could give an answer. “Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”

So I thought I’d pose that question to CCD. What do you think? Is there an answer to this question?

CCD,

Ben

The Opposite of Pascal’s Wager? If you could live forever, would you? – A Guest Post by Thor Odhner

Hi CCDers. I thought I’d write a quick and dirty guest post on a little thought experiment I find interesting. I hope you enjoy it.

With all of the recent technological advances in genetics, health, robotics, virology and other areas of science, we all may, within our lifetime, face an incredible choice: do we want to live forever? I remember reading a very interesting article not too long ago (I don’t recall the author or title) that suggested the ability to create robotic/organic hybrids to replace or complement our blood, organs, etc. which could prevent the breakdown and aging of our bodies and minds might not be too far off. It is possible that, generationally, we may be at just about the cutoff point where some of us will survive to have the option to take advantage of such technology, and some of us will not. The article called it “Surviving long enough to be immortal,” although realistically, it would probably just mean a very large increase in life expectancy (maybe multiplying it by a factor of 100 or so) and we would still be susceptible to sabotage, getting buried by a rock slide, etc.

So I invite you to ponder this possibility and offer what you think your reaction would be. If the technology suddenly came along that allowed you to live at peak physical and mental health for an average of, say, 5000 years, would you go for it? For believers, does this present a sort of reverse-Pascal’s wager? Even if you’re fairly sure about your God and your afterlife, don’t you want to stick around here for awhile longer just in case there’s nothing else? How strange would it be to see some of your friends, and some of their children, and some of their children, and some of their children, etc. choosing to die and go on to Heaven while the rest of us stay on here. What would happen to the movements of those who chose this path over time? Would these sentiments slowly go out of style as the memory of times when we only lived for 80 years or so faded, eventually to be seen as some kind of odd romantic, mythical tradition? Would most religions adapt and decide that God now wanted us to love longer, or else he wouldn’t have allowed for this? It’s especially interesting to think that the Survivors and the Departed might both continue for quite some time with no one here ever knowing whether the Departed were living happily in paradise, or just gone.

It’s also worth noting that we’re culturally and evolutionarily fine-tuned to expect to live within a certain range of years, and some might debate that they wouldn’t WANT to live that long. But would our frame of reference change? Would 100 years fly by and leave us wondering how anyone could have felt that they had led a complete life in so short a period of time? 500 years from now, how would you think about the people who were born 20 years before you and missed the boat?

So what would YOU do? How would you react to the news that this capability had become available? Do you expect we’ll get to that point? How soon do you expect it?

-Thor Odhner