-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
On a recent show of Soul to Soul, Oprah interviewed Diana Nyad, the long distance swimmer who, at age 64, swam from Havana to Key West. During the interview Oprah mentions that Nyad told the producers that she (Nyad) is “not a God person.” Nyad responds: “I’m an atheist.” Oprah responds incredulously: “But you’re in the awe.” Oprah just can’t believe that an atheist could feel awe. While atheists often use reason to understand reality, they have the same emotions exhibited by non-atheists. Atheists just don’t feel the need to affix the “God” label to their feelings.
Nyad saw no contradiction between her atheism and her ability to experience awe, or as she calls it: “weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity.” Oprah was having none of this when she said “I don’t call you an atheist then. I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, then that is what God is.”
Nyad, maybe sensing Oprah’s uneasiness, offered a concession to the faithful by saying that her “definition of God is humanity and the love of humanity.” That an atheist would make a theist uneasy indicates the theist’s lack of confidence in their worldview. The comfort of theists is not a primary concern for those who advocate reason.
Nyad also went on to explain she’s a “spiritual” person and believes in souls that live on after death. While atheism is not a set of beliefs, it is simply not believing in any god, most atheists don’t accept the other beliefs that accompany God belief. For all the reasons that belief in God unreasonable, belief in the soul is also unreasonable. Nyad’s beliefs freely crisscross the atheist-theist divide.
Oprah’s prejudice against atheists reinforces negative stereotypes. Her viewers will see Oprah’s prejudice as a trait to be imitated and the cancer will spread. For her viewers who already hold anti-atheists biases, those biases have been validated.
Many Christians have characterized Oprah’s beliefs as a form of pantheism, where the universe, or nature, is identical with divinity. While Oprah calls herself a Christian, pantheism is generally not accepted as part of Christian theology. Oprah’s promotion of Eckhart Tolle and his books has done nothing to ingratiate her with Christians.
Overt displays of bigotry against non-believers are tolerated if not encouraged by our society. Studies show that atheists are among the least liked people. This dislike keeps many atheists in the closet. The anonymity of the internet allows atheists to come out on-line while maintaining their disguise at other times. On the internet, people can learn counter-arguments to theological claims and use their own mind to decide which is more compelling.
H/T: Dave Niose, JT Eberhard, Jerry Coyne, Mano Singham, Hemant Mehta, David Edwards.
“It came to me that every time I lose a dog they take a piece of my heart with them. And every new dog who comes into my life, gifts me with a piece of their heart. If I live long enough, all the components of my heart will be dog, and I will become as generous and loving as they are.” ~Unknown
“You and the “writer” on the guardian link make the erroneous assumption that atheists must prove religion has no value,”
Actually, that’s not my position and I’m not sure it is that of the writer. The question is whether religion played a beneficial role in human evolution and, if so, is it still of any benefit? I’m not asking anyone to prove religion has no value, I’m wondering if it has any [continuing] value. in short —
Is religion to be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous preachers,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
When I was a human, two incarnations back, I gave up on God and religion in the fourth grade when my hamster died despite a long prayer vigil.
Religion is the thorazine of the people. The opiate of the people is apCray like the Oprah show or Harpo in drag.
When a dog is born he/she might be a reincarnation from a prior creature. A human that goes to the Pearly Gates and is deemed to have been good will sometimes be given a choice of his or her next life and they may choose to be a dog. Bad dogs might come back the next go round as humans but not vice versa. Dogs, when they are reincarnated, have a recollection of prior lives. Humans do not. So, a dog who was a human five or six times in prior incarnations will have more life skills to impart and to give guidance to his human companion. We are guide dogs and not just for blind guys. So when your dog growls at the mailman he might be telling you that a letter with bad news has arrived or that the mailman is a perp and to keep the kids away from him. When a guard dog alerts the cop that there is pot in the trunk of the car that the cop just pulled over, he is sizing up the whole situation and not just relying on smell. Of course this can become a hearsay problem in court but thus far the Supreme Court has not had that exact objection brought before it. If you are a young budding defense lawyer and you are up against a warrantless search situation and the cop starts to testify that he was given the Dog Alert by Fido then you must object on Hearsay of The Dog objections. Dogs don’t buy much of the religious apCray, exception the reincarnation aspects.
I think we should get down to the nitty gritty.
We need sham apCray like religions to keep people in line. You do not need religion at Coney Island to keep the kids in line to get on the ferris wheel. But you need it to keep their dads from lining up at the cathouse. You need religion to keep humans from killing each other without some guidance. So, for example. You have the Ten Commandments. The Sixth Commandment says Thou Shalt Not Kill. That works until the folks running the state or nation state wants to kill some person. So they invent the Sears Roebuck Bible and change the language around so that there is an exception for the People of The Great State of Texas– the so called Y’all Can exception.
If you did not have religion in this country it would be like Communist China during the Cultural Revolution. Or the Nazi Holocaust.
Besides religion, humankind needs guidance from other creatures not of their own ilk. That is where dogs come in. This is why, if you are inclined to religion, you should consider the Eighth Day Dog Adventists. On the 8th Day God Created Dog to give guidance and comfort to mankind in his daily life. Give us this day our humble dog.
Oro Lee – You and the “writer” on the guardian link make the erroneous assumption that atheists must prove religion has no value, the same erroneous assumption that atheists must prove there are no “gods”. The burden of proof lies with those who make the claim, not with those who refute it. The “argument” made by that person on the guardian is akin to a NASCAR fan saying, “Prove we don’t need NASCAR!”
Religion didn’t “evolve”, it was invented. Early ignorant humans didn’t have an answer to something that scared them (e.g. an earthquake, death, drought, whatever), so they invented one as a security blanket and called it “god” (by whatever name – the sun, moon, raven, et al). Children today still do that, or adults encourage such nonsense (e.g. tooth fairy, monster under the bed).
In time, some scumbags realized religion was a quick and easy way to achieve power, status, wealth and sexual favours in a society without doing any real work. It’s been that way ever since. Without the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty, doubt) religion couldn’t exist, it’s why religion opposes education.
Harpo would be older than 98.
Alex Parene couldn’t wipe Hitchen’s ass. No wait, he could have wiped his ass, but Hitch would have kicked Parene’s ass on any topic. A minor leaguer critiquing a Hall of Famer. At least Parene was shooting up..WAY UP. Lancelot Link and Mata Hari.
MabelMabel –
Does “atypical” mean “anti-typical” or “not being typical”?
Does “asymmetry” mean “against symmetry” or “not having symmetry”?
Does “anhydrous” mean “against having water” or “not having water”?
Does “agnostic” mean “against knowledge” or “not having knowledge”?
Does “atheism” mean “against belief in gods” or “not having belief in gods”?
Read a dictionary sometime. The prefix “a-” or “an-” means “without”. The prefix “anti-” means “against”. Just as “irreligious” means “not religious”, atheism means not having belief in fictitious cults. It is not “anti-anything”.
The only people who are anti-religious ARE religious people. They try to ban the competition either through laws or violence.
[music]
Oprah and Harpo sittin in a tree..
K I S S I N G.
First came love, then came marriage
Then came Harpo with a baby carriage.
Some are backwards..
Some are straight.
Harpo porkin Oprah at 98!
rafflaw,
When Hitch was wrong
He was disastrously wrong
BY ALEX PAREENE
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/when_hitch_was_wrong/
TC: Fair ’nuff. This seems to be Hitchens’ approach in his book, God is Not Great.
It would seem that the “cost” of religion is too great to justify any adaptive advantage; it must therefore either be a mistake or a by-product of genetic process.
This idea is out of favor among many evolutionary theorists, especially Robert Bellah whose recent book is Religion in Human Evolution. He is not wiling to acede that religion’s cost outweighs adaptive advantage in a group selection model of evolution
A quick read on this line of inquiry is the following article:
Can evolutionary theorists ever make sense of religion?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/19/evolutionary-theorists-religion
Oro Lee: Assuming, as I do, that religion served a valuable role in the evolution of mankind – and I accept the mere existence of religions as proving the assumption …
Do you accept the mere existence of murder and slavery and rape as proving the assumption that murder, slavery and rape all served a valuable role in the evolution of mankind?
Just because something existed does not make it “valuable.” I consider religion to be a nasty consequence of terrible logic from its very start; probably an unavoidable negative side-effect of the imperfect evolutionary beginnings of weak rationality mixed with heavy doses of emotion.
Just because religion persists does not mean it is valuable either, I think the same conditions hold: Poor reasoning skills overwhelmed by wishful thinking and emotions like the fear of harm, fear of uncertainty, fear of hardship, fear of sickness, fear of death, the grief of suffering the death of a loved person, all combined with a handful of ever-present predators that see a way to gain power and / or make a buck.
“But, hasn’t it already been determined?”
Only by living the results.
Oprah used to project this. At least the idea of her used to.
Tony C., As I read that article I thought it was clear that we do have free will. Otherwise, people would not act differently when they were convinced they didn’t have it.
We are in agreement. I put that article in because a lot of religious people believe that everything is predetermined by god/dess, the universe (if new age), karma, etc. I have noticed that this does in fact lead to extreme narcissism (Oprah is an egregious case in point) and attendant bad treatment of others.
I think Mabel’s example is excellent. One doctor wrote a book about two cancer patients, one of whom was going to die, another who would likely make it. In the same hospital room the one that was likely to make it had her parents telling her how god had listened to their prayers and she was such a good person that she would live. To think that way is daft but to say that in front of the other woman was incredibly cruel.
My neighbor’s daughter had brain cancer. When she was making it through radiation they told me that was because they were all such good people and god favored them. Of course I didn’t argue with them about this because obviously they were in terrible emotional pain. When she died I wondered if they ever thought about what they had said before. Did she die because they had turned out to be evil after all? Did god quit favoring them? I will never ask that question but I do wonder about it.
patsylvania, You continue to impress. I say, “To each their own,” my mom’s favorite. And I think itchin does like John Barleycorn.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
“The future has not yet been written.”
But, hasn’t it already been determined?
Jesus itchen, are you crocked?