{"id":2820,"date":"2015-09-08T18:27:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T01:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=2820"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:52:00","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:52:00","slug":"links-and-comments-religion-and-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2015\/09\/08\/links-and-comments-religion-and-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Links and Comments: Religion and Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest essay by Jeffrey Tayler at Salon<\/i>, Bill O\u2019Reilly\u2019s nonsense \u201cnihilism\u201d: Now the Fox News host is even lying about God<\/a>, addresses common misperceptions not just about the abstruse philosophical concept of nihilism, but about the general perception that atheists have no moral compass and so are given “anything goes”. Dangerous nonsense, as Tayler explains. It’s the religious extremists who are most willing to kill (and violate the Constitution, I would add, but that’s another post).<\/p>\n

\nThe gist of [O’Reilly’s] wrongheaded \u201cTalking Points\u201d memo is that atheists \u2014 or, in his twisted verbiage, nihilists \u2014 are self-centered, dangerous and even potentially murderous, because, for them, \u201canything goes.\u201d This is a blundering, volitional misrepresentation of reality. It goes without saying that the terrorists of, for instance, Al Qaida and Boko Haram very much do not believe that \u201canything goes,\u201d are among the most devout believers around, and, of course, are most willing to kill. As far as the United States goes, it is high religiosity itself that correlates with bad crime rates, deadbeat tax payers, poverty, rampant teen pregnancy, low education, a dearth of life opportunities, early death<\/a>, and so on. Faith is, in short, part and parcel of a congeries of nasty ills every society should strive to extirpate.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And<\/p>\n

\nThe central tenets of the three Abrahamic faiths, which amount to statements about the nature of the world we live in, our place in it and how we are to treat one another, stem from no evidence whatsoever. Toss aside the magic books, the hocus-pocus prayer, the supernatural visions and the unverifiable instances of \u201csalvation,\u201d and you are left with a void. The words of the late Christopher Hitchens come to mind: \u201cThat which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.\u201d Rational individuals are not in the least obligated to take seriously, much less respect, (faith-based) propositions advanced without proof. And we may dismiss with especial vigor the solipsistic, quasi-deluded New-Age \u201cMy religion is true for me\u201d dodge \u2014 which even O\u2019Reilly has used, and in one of his (deeply self-embarrassing) interviews with Richard Dawkins<\/a>, no less.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And concluding<\/p>\n

\nMorality has arisen as evolutionarily propitious: that is, wherever there are humans, there are prohibitions against murder, rape, theft and so on. We would not have survived our plodding progression from African savannah to everywhere else, including the moon, without such prohibitions, which exist in all societies, Christian or not, and including those far older than our own. (Think India and China.) Now that we have developed enough to see through the sham religious norms we inherited from preceding generations, we can create our own \u2014 and we are doing so<\/a>.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\\\\\\<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there’s recently more alarm about scientific studies that aren\u2019t replicated. Here’s a NYT op-ed essay, Psychology Is Not in Crisis<\/a>, that provides a patient explanation of how science works.<\/p>\n

\nMuch of science still assumes that phenomena can be explained with universal laws and therefore context should not matter. But this is not how the world works. Even a simple statement like \u201cthe sky is blue\u201d is true only at particular times of day, depending on the mix of molecules in the air as they reflect and scatter light, and on the viewer\u2019s experience of color.<\/p>\n

Psychologists are usually well attuned to the importance of context. In our experiments, we take great pains to avoid any irregularities or distractions that might affect the results. But when it comes to replication, psychologists and their critics often seem to forget the powerful and subtle effects of context. They ask simply, \u201cDid the experiment work or not?\u201d rather than considering a failure to replicate as a valuable scientific clue.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest essay by Jeffrey Tayler at Salon, Bill O\u2019Reilly\u2019s nonsense \u201cnihilism\u201d: Now the Fox News host is even lying about God, addresses common misperceptions not just about the abstruse philosophical concept of nihilism, but about the general perception that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2820"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2824,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2820\/revisions\/2824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}