Debating deity: D'Sousza v. Hitchens.

I recently sat in on bits of a debate between the lunatic Right-wing Dinesh D’Sousa and Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great. D’Sousa, you may remember, was the Christianist who wanted an alliance with “moderate” Muslims to install a moralistic government that would bash gays, cover up women, ban porn and generally impose the fundamentalist version of Sharia law on the country.

D’Sousa’s argument was that such moralistic campaigns by the state would end the fanatical Islamist movement. He seems to think that the whole terrorist campaign is the result of Muslims being offended by homosexuals and Western “immorality”.

Prior commitments kept me relatively busy during the debate but I could hear bits and pieces. So I will report on what I heard and about something interesting that happened afterwards.

It was my unfortunate experience to mainly hear the D’Sousa arguments. All I can say is that he is a smarmy debater who falsifies facts and uses bad logic to try to make his case for a deity.

D’Sousa finds it necessary to defend religion because some religious folks are engaged in nefarious, vicious actions, from flying planes into buildings to bombing abortion clinics or shooting staff who work there. These folk act based on the religious beliefs they hold. It is my contention that all actions come out of positive beliefs not out of negative beliefs.

As I noted once before atheism is a negation of a belief not a positive statement of belief. The atheist says he has no reason to believe in a god, he denies a belief but the atheist qua atheist asserts no belief. Individual atheists do, of course, assert positive beliefs but they do not do so as atheists but in entirely different intellectual categories. For instance, the atheist may be a conservative, socialist, libertarian, fascist, etc. It would be his positive beliefs that inspire action not his negative ones. As I put it previously “you can not get positive principles out o a negative concept. Not believing in a god doesn’t tell you how to live, what to value, what sort of society to yearn for, etc. By itself it gives no directions, values or beliefs. How could it? It is the lack of a belief”

The Islamists or Christianists who act in evil ways do so precisely because of their faith. A positive belief (in the sense of one that is asserted as factual and no in the sense of being beneficial) causes the individual to take positive action (in the sense of acting as opposing to not acting). The lack of a belief inspires no particular action. When an atheist acts in a particular way it is because of other positive beliefs he may hold not because he is an atheist.

This is important because D’Sousa was making the point that since religious folk are burdened by the vile actions of other religious folks then atheism must be blamed for the actions of all atheists. He entirely neglects the fact that the religious act because they are religious while the atheist can not act merely because he is an atheist. It is not atheism that causes the atheism to act but other beliefs he may hold.

D’Sousa wanted to blame atheists for the atrocities of Pol Pot and other Marxist dictators. Ostensibly atheistic these regimes didn’t kill because they were atheistic but killed because they were Communistic and were creating the utopia for which they yearned. It was their positive beliefs that lead to positive action not their non-beliefs.

D’Sousa seems incapable of understanding the difference. Or perhaps he does and is simply dishonest. In his case I suspect the later is often the case.

Two remarks I heard him make were so clearly false that I can not fathom any reason for making them except dishonesty. It was, again, related to the example of dictatorial regimes.

One was that D’Sousa kept referring to the Nazi regime of Hitler as atheistic. That is just absurd. One German attending the debate told me he was baffled by the remark as Germany, under Hitler, was highly religious. Hitler himself was a member of the Catholic Church and never renounced his faith, nor did his church ever find him worthy of excommunication. Hitler died a Catholic in good standing.

The second dishonest remark was D’Sousa’s claim that Cambodia, under Pol Pot, was the quintessential example of a “secular” society. He seemed to be saying that these evil regimes were the best examples of secular government.

Again the German attendee was confused. He remarked to me that he couldn’t think of a single German that he knew who actually attended church. He always thought of today’s Germany as an example of secularism. And he is correct. This is also true o virtually every successful, Western nation around. The United States is pretty much alone when it comes to religiosity among the Western, modern nations.

And, I should point out, that among the Western nations the religious US is pretty much alone in its tendency to execute people with a regularity that is frightening -- with the most religious backwater states, such as Texas, taking pride in how many people they can kill in any one year. The US is again pretty much alone in an aggressive, interventionist foreign policy that is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. To the degree that other Western nations have been involved it has been under duress from the United States and in a very limited capacity.

The reality is that most the West today is secular and relatively peaceful. D’Sousa must know this. I sincerely doubt he is that ignorant and thus conclude his comments about secular societies being dictatorial is based on dishonesty and not ignorance.

After the debate Christopher Hitchens remarked to me that he was surprised that “so many libertarians” had sided with the religious side of the debate in a post-debate poll that was done.

Actually Mr. Hitchens was in error. He assumed the audience to be predominantly libertarian. In reality it was predominantly conservative with libertarians making up no more than 20% of the audience.

I was not present for the poll so I asked him what the breakdown was. He said it looked to be about a 50/50 split. He was disappointed at that but I was pleased. Yes, if the audience was predominantly libertarian I’d be unhappy -- libertarians tends to be more intelligent and less likely to be theistists. But when I realized that a predominantly conservative audience had split 50/50 on the god question I took that as an encouraging sign.

This audience, for the most part, should have been D’Sousa’s core group of supporters. That he could only muster half the audience in support of his position is just another sign that the United States is finally joining the West in the post-Christian era.

Photo: From a different debate. D'Sousa is on the far left and Hitchens on the right.

Fastest growing religious belief isn't.

The New York Times has an interesting report on Spanish-speaking immigrants and religion. Apparently the level of religiousity drops significantly when these people move to the United States.

One reason is outlined by one immigrant from Guatemala who said he went to church every Sunday prior to immigrating but now his family no longer does so. “We pray to God when we feel the need to but when we come here to America we don’t feel the need.”

The report, from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Hispanic Center found that 8 percento Spanish-speaking residents of the US say that they have “no religion” which is close to the 11% of Americans in general who say the same. (Among young people in America the percentage of non-religious is now 20%.)

One difference for the immigrants is that two-thirds of the now non-religious say they were previously religious.

But a larger survey of Spanish-speaking Americans found that there has been a dramatic decrease in religiosity in recent years. In 1990 it was found that 6 percent said they were non-religious but the new survey by the American Religion Indentification Survey puts the number at 13 percent. This survey shows non-religious Americans as being 15% of the population.

And while the totally non-religious are a relatively small percentage a much larger percentage have dropped religion in its traditional form, that is they don’t attend church or affiliate with a religious body though they still think of themselves as Christians. These people are secular in everything but name.

One Catholic priest admitted: “My fear is the strength of secularization, the influence of Americanized pop culture. Is the spiritual tradition of the church, Catholic and Protestant, strong enough to withstand the secularizing cultural influences?”

The American Religion Identification Survey found that the fastest growing religious indentification “in absolute as well as in percentage terms has been among those adults who do not subscribe to any religious identification; their number has more than doubled from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001; their proportion has grown from just eight perent of the total in 1990 to over fourteen percent in 2001. It might be even higher since there was also a dramatic increase in the number of people who refused to answer the question, from 2 percent in 1990 to 5 percent in 2001.

One interesting statistic, which we have found repeated in numerous other studies, shows that the more fundamentalist an individual the more likely they are to have a failed marriage. While 9% of people without religion are divorced or separated the figures are higher for fundamentalists: 12% for Baptists, 14% for Pentecostals, 10% for Assemblies of God and 11% for Seventh Day Adventists.

Another interesting statistic is the coversion rates in different groups. That is how many people were new adherent to a religion and how many left the same religion.. Catholics lost twice as many people as they converted. Baptist lost 200,000 more than they “saved”. The non-religious had 1.1 million become religious but had 6.6 million who were previously religious give up the belief. Methodists lost 1.1 million more than they gained, while Lutherans and Presbyterians each lost 100,000. Even the incessant recruitment campaigns of the Mormons didn’t do them much good. where they gained 447,000 they lost 446,000, which is hardly any growth at all.

Even in Utah the Mormons are losing the race. Few are converting in and migration to Utah is quickly changing the religious make up of the state. The 2004 count showed that 62% of the population is still Mormon but every county saw a decrease and it is expected to fall below 50% by 2030.

In fact there are vast discrepencies between the numbers the Mormoms claims to have as member and the numbers of people who claim to be Mormon. In Mexico the Mormons claim to have 850,000 members yet only 205,000 Mexicans claim to be Mormon. In Brazil the church claims to have 743,000 members but only 200,000 claim to belong. The Mormons say 91,000 New Zealanders are members of the church but only 40,000 Kiwis say they belong. Membership is the UK is supposedly 177,000 but 62,000 define themselves as Mormon, in Germany the number of self-identified Mormons is only one-third the number the church claims. In fact it is pretty common for the church to claim members which are 300% to 400% higher than what people themselves say.

Mom, Guess what? I'm an atheist.

If there is one thing many parents dred it is having children who think for themselves. Here is a short video that was filmed when one boy decides to tell his mother that he is an atheist. The response, to say the least, is not particular nice. Polls show that most Americans feel that atheists are worse than terrorists. So much for rational thinking in America. But the video does give me an idea. For some kids this might be a good strategy. They go home and announced they are an atheist. After a few minutes of parental venting they can then say: "Ah, not really. I'm just gay." At this point the Christian parents will shout: "Oh, thank God."

Letter to Jehovah

Dear Jehovah:

I assume I should be sending this to Jehovah since I was raised in the West. And you are the only true, one god though if I would Muslim and living in Iraq I guess I’d have to write Allah. It does get a bit confusion but I will take it that religious dominance is something like a post office. With god it is best to use the one closest to you.

So I’ll start out with a couple of assumptions which i actually don’t have. One is that you exist and two is that you are Jehovah. For the sake of this letter we’ll just make you God.

Now I’m surrounded by people who believe in you and your absolute, infallible, clear word -- which is called the Bible here. But you knew that already. And they all say that you have revealed yourself to them in one way or another except that they seem to have crossed their wires and come up with different stories. Now for those of us on the outside of this circus that makes it rather bizarre and difficult.

So the main purpose of this letter was to ask why you didn’t make things a little bit clearer. I mean you do know that people have died over these things and others have been willing to kill over them. So it’s not like this are trivial issues. Lives are at stake and I’m assured you would have known this. Which of course raises the question as to why didn’t you make it clearer? You could have saved a few lives had you done so.

Let’s start with this book of yours. Catholics have one version and Protestants have another version. It’s not just that they translated it differently. They have different books. And for the first couple of hundred years no one was really sure what was supposed to be in the book and what wasn’t.

Now after that mess you left you then hand these various manuscripts over to people to copy by hand. Some no doubt were very scrupulous but people are only people. And along the way words were changed, things were added or possibly deleted. We know because we have different copies with these different words in them.

Wouldn’t it have made a bit more sense to drop that bombshell on us when there was the ability to copy what you sent word for word. Instead of scribes in darkened monasteries with quill and ink don’t you think a Bible being sent to Kinko’s would have made more sense?

Ditto for this guy they say was your son or you in disguise or you in a different form, etc. I’m told he was one of the above because he performed miracles, was crucified and rose from the dead. But then all the evidence for that you stuck in the book which has already created so many problems. Bad move God, really bad move.

You could have been a little bit more patient. It’s not like you were running out of time or getting too old to work. And since a thousand years are like a day to you all you had to do was wait a couple of days, Biblically speaking. Now you send down this fellow with your message.

We have CNN and the internet. Then these miracles could have meant something. Have him show up at the Pulitzer Prize dinner and turn the water into wine. That would get the attention of those journalists -- they like wine you know. And he could have done the walking on water bit almost anywhere and received some coverage and documentation. That last part is important.

Now I’m told you had to have him tortured and killed for some reason or other. It was part of your plan. No problem. These days the White House would have been happy to do both. They’d grab him off the streets and whip him off someplace where he can be tortured and die for our sins. Now you arrange a Congressional investigation (you would need to give Congress a backbone first) and then have your son walk into the meeting and announced he rose from the dead and was returning to you and so on. CNN would have covered that. CSPAN would run it live.

I assure you that even a skeptic like me would be impressed. We would have documented proof for the things in which the church is supposed to believe. Instead you give us contradictory accounts in unreliable manuscripts translated by people who, all things considered, simply weren’t that bright.

Now that the story of your son is obvious and the book you sent is far more accurate lets talk about some problems you left behind for your church to solve. Again I only bring them up since people died over these things.

Here are a few suggestions to improve your book.

First, add in a clause that says slavery was, is, and always will be wrong. For a lot of history your people never figured that out. In fact they argued you said the opposite.

Next, how about a general clause that says something like: “If any believe not in me, or believe not the things I have taught. Leave them the fuck alone. Do not stone, torture, burn, execute, behead, imprison or harm them in any way. If you do I shall send you to the lake of fire. You understand? And I really, really, really mean it! I’ll deal with it myself.”

And you could have cleared up a few controversies. Do you know you have had some of your people knocking one another’s heads in over baptism? Sure, you did, you supposedly know everything.

So here is what would have helped. First make it clear that baptism is for a specific group. Say it quite clearly as your followers aren’t that bright. Tell them if it is adults or new-borns who should be baptized. And make it clear whether it is sprinkling, pouring or dunking. Now your followers all say you have already made it clear. But just between you and me they don’t agree on this so obviously something got lost in the translation. (See my first point to you on this one.)

Next, would you mind not playing tricks on us? Your followers, well some of them, tell me that the world is only 7,000 years old. Some say 10,000 but what’s three thousand years between friends? But all that stuff that makes it look millions of years old is a tad bit confusing. I’m sure it is amusing to you to look down and watch people fighting over this at school board meetings. But enough with the joking.

Our country is pretty torn apart about a lot of things and right now and we really don’t need another thing to fight over. And this includes that evolution, creation, intelligent design controversy as well. Would it really have been a bad thing if you had the fossil records match what you say you did?

And finally do you think you could be a bit more active? If that isn’t asking too much. I understand you used to wander around all over the place showing yourself in burning bushes and the like. But it’s been thousands of years. That parting of the Red Sea was nice but you could have put in appearance when that tsunami hit a few years back. As that massive wave is heading for shore what if your hand just held he waters so that they rose hundreds in feet into the air and then subsided. Bet you would have had a lot of converts that day.

And finally you know your followers pretty well. Could you work on them a bit more? Give them a sense of humor and make them nicer. Some of them are really nasty people who inflict a lot of pain in your name. Can you have them cool it?

All I’m saying is you could made a bit of effort here. It really would have helped in lots of way. The way it’s been going it’s almost like you aren’t even there.

Yours.

PS: Can you give me a clue as to where to mail this damn thing? Also how much postage is needed? Also, if you get this could you let me know? We really need to talk about this guy in the neighborhood who is really screwing everything up for everyone. His name is George Bush and he says you and he are buddies. You might consider getting a better class of friends.