Posts Tagged religion-bashing
“Prima Facie Weirdness?”
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Misc. Philosophical Musings, PEL's Notes on June 20, 2011
During the episode I made a comment about the seeming weirdness of Christianity that I feel it would be helpful for my thinking to try to elaborate.
I’ve said in several posts here that I think that the new atheist movement is primarily political: it’s not about advancing new arguments to philosophers, but about shifting the tide of opinion so that, for instance, an atheist could have some shot at winning an election in this country.
In the heat of conversation on the episode, I articulated something like this by saying that all I want is for Christianity to be acknowledged as, on the face of it, really weird. I’m wondering now whether I actually believe that and whether it makes any sense as a goal.
Judging Religion vs. Judging “Twilight”
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Web Detritus on October 20, 2010
Some of our ongoing atheism discussion here brought to mind an analogy that I think is best illustrated by a comic from Lore Sjoberg’s Bad Gods.
Punch line aside, the point should be clear. To argue effectively against religion, you have to be familiar with religion, and to argue it on a point-by-point basis means you have to ingest it point-by-point. However, disdain for religion usually equates to nausea about the whole thing, which means you certainly don’t want to ingest it point-by-point, therefore the theist wins by fiat.
On second thought, even the punch line is relevant here, because those atheists who do take time to sift through the sermons and the tedium to charitably recount the best theistic arguments are then urged to just chill out and let everyone have their own views, which (if you don’t buy some sort of strong Kantian argument for agnosticism) is at least as antithetical to the spirit of philosophy as theistic or atheistic dogmatism and intolerance.
-Mark Linsenmayer
Who’s Qualified to Speak about Religion?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Misc. Philosophical Musings, Things to Watch on October 13, 2010
The most recent comment to yesterday’s post on atheism was a quote (thanks, Jonathan!) from Jose Ortega y Gasset used on this blog to argue that scientists shouldn’t be weighing in on matters of religion and ethics which are, after all, not their specialty.
The point is well taken, reflecting Socrates’s general criticism that every expert in one area thinks he’s an expert in everything. However, Ortega y Gasset’s critique is equally applicable to anyone who has not engaged in the requisite level of philosophical reflection, including any religious believers who have not studied epistemology and clergy who have not thought a lot about meta-ethics.
How much is “a lot” or “requisite?” I don’t know. Dawkins’s book is, unsurprisingly, at its strongest when talking about natural selection; his comments about ethics and other matters are certainly researched (much like Freud’s comments on anthropology and other subjects that make up his speculative work), but Dawkins is obviously not deeply familiar with the vast canon of philosophy in these areas.
Read the rest of this entry »
Baggini interviews “new atheist” AC Grayling
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Misc. Philosophical Musings, Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts on July 23, 2010
We’ve gotten into a little discussion of the new atheist movement, an area well covered by other podcasts (meaning we likely won’t devote substantial time to it on our podcast, though we’ll certainly discuss religious philosophy).
To get clear on one of its key arguments, that it’s religious moderates that create a climate where extremism can exist, I’ll point to a short interview with A.C. Grayling on the excellent Julian Baggini podcast: http://julianbaggini.blogspot.com/2009/07/july-podcast.html. Read the rest of this entry »
"I’ve never before heard my work discussed like that, and rarely as intelligently ... I listened to the whole podcast, and felt exalted afterward." -- Arthur Danto
The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don't have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we're talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion. Discuss episodes and provide feedback here or via our Facebook group. You can also e-mail comments to mark@marklint.com or wesalwan@gmail.com.
Subscribe, rate, and read reviews on iTunes. 
Five Stars after 100+ iTunes Ratings.
"Intelligent and funny -- a rare combo. The best philosophy podcast on iTunes. In fact, one of the best podcasts on iTunes." More Reviews.
If you buy anything from Amazon, get there through a PEL link to donate 6% of your purchase to us.
Recent Comments