I found this at a site defending the Atheist evangelical campaign for campus conversion of students, The Secular Student Alliance:

"A World Without Secularism
We all know what a world without secularism would look like: lunatic fundamentalist presidential candidates; religiously-based law promoting torture and executions; pain and suffering tolerated because “it’s God’s will.” It’s a sucky place, no doubt. And politicians and citizens in the U.S. are hell-bent on taking us there. But how can we change it? We need to build a new culture from the ground up, educate our communities, provide a secular voice in local and national government. That’s a tall order – where do we even start?

With students.

If there is any remaining question regarding the irrationality of these people, this type of thing should squelch it. In fact, this particular program is getting some high marks from other Atheists. The type of inflammatory rhetoric used by Lyz Liddel seems to ring true in the heads of those with "no beliefs", who live in total peace and still fear the 89% of the population which is Theist. They are tortured in their own minds, and that is the only torture they will ever know until they manage to bring back secularism a la' the big dog Atheo-secularists who "rebuilt their cultures from the ground up" in the 20th century bloodbaths and pogroms that they are imagining in their "Imagine No Religion" trances.

Atheism is dangerous; it starts with no basis, adds the self-adulation to that, and then it seeks to convert others toward conquering the world in the name of that worldview. And I know that Atheism is a worldview: Liz Liddell said it is.

Deja Vu

Back in 2007, Alan Roebuck at the Conservative Intellectual posted a letter which he had written to the Center For Inquiry.

The Center For Inquiry is an organization based around Scientism and Philosophical Materialism (Naturalism), founded by Paul Kurtz (1). The center wishes to accomplish these objectives:

Fostering a secular society requires attention to many specific goals, but three goals in particular represent the focus of our activities:

1. an end to the influence that religion and pseudoscience have on public policy

2. an end to the privileged position that religion and pseudoscience continue to enjoy in many societies

3. an end to the stigma attached to being a nonbeliever, whether the nonbeliever describes her/himself as an atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker or skeptic.

Interestingly, the pursuit of truth and valid reasoning does not appear in their list. And the 3rd objective is not obtainable if the first two are forced onto the rest of us. There are rational reasons that the "atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker or skeptic" cannot be trusted; the agression against religions expressed in objectives 1 and 2 are examples. These folks are totally self-unaware in their statements of desired conquest vs their supposed "humanism", where they wish to enforce "empathy".


Roebuck put together a great many of the things which I have been saying here, although I said them well after Roebuck wrote the letter. His letter challenges the Naturalism and Scientism stance of the center, and uses clear logic in doing so. In fact he points to the non-coherent stance of making claims about evidence while having no evidence to support the claims.

To top off the article there is a comment thread in which a Naturalistic defender takes issue with the article, and other commenters try to discuss it with him. His retreat comes at 3:46 pm on 12/22/2007, where he demands evidence for supernatural things. And beyond that he goes completely relativistic: everything is mutable, even his own prior definitions of morality.

But this one issue trumps the rest. Says the Materialist:

"Society is the source of morality. What other possible source is there?"

The first extension of this would be that if society deems Atheists, etc to be outcasts, then it must be morally right to consider them outcasts. I had previously thought that it was merely logical; now I understand that it is also moral. It works for societies who say that human sacrifice is moral, slavery is moral, eliminating certain ethnic groups is moral, so many moral things to consider, if one is an Atheist!

The deja vu in reading all this was palpable.

(1) The center evolved in 2009, when Kurtz was kicked out of his own group. According to Kurtz, it ultimately became focused on "angry Atheism".

A Review of a Book About Nothing

Edward Feser takes a look at this book by Lawrence Krauss.

The New Atheists are famous for book titles that promise something which they don't (can't) deliver, such as "Why Evolution is True" by Coyne; "How the Mind Works" by Pinker; "Consciousness Explained" by Dennett; "God, The Failed Hypothesis; How Science Shows That God Cannot Exist", by Stenger; "God Is Not Great: How Religion poisons Everything", Hithchens; and of course "The God Delusion" by Dawkins.

Universe from Nothing:
Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing
by Lawrence M. Krauss
Free Press, 204 pages

Pew Poll: Slightly Over Half of Scientists Are Not Atheist

Acoording to the PEW Poll, 51% of scientists are not Atheist.

Correction:
Changed title and text to reflect Atheism beliefs of scientists according to this poll.

A Worldwide Decrease in Atheism, (revisited)

This is a study, found here, which I referenced before back in '08, and which will be added to the "Atheism Studies" category for easier access.

Famous Atheists and Defective Fathers, a Study

In 1999, Psychologist Paul C. Vitz published his post mortem study on the lives of 32 famous Atheists and 21 famous Theists. His study was intended to determine statistically if any common psychological denominator existed which could differentiate a potential Atheist from a potential Theist. He found that with only the exceptions of Marx and Diderot, the common factor between Atheists was defective fathering: the father was dead, missing, abusive, or weak. Amongst Theists, fathering was strong and supportive.

This study has been criticized based on the lack of in depth personal interviews done with these (dead) individuals. Yet the statistics are compelling. At least as compelling as IQ statistics, if not more.

Rejection of Christianity and Lower Self Esteem, a Study

I have decided to start cataloguing the studies I come across regarding Atheism. Atheists get quite excited to learn that a study attributes 2 extra IQ points to Atheists; but there are other studies on Atheism too, including the following, which relates non-belief with lowered self esteem.

The results of this study are as follows:

RESULTS
Both measures achieved satisfactory Cronbach alpha coefficients (Rejection of Christianity Scale, .88; Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, .80). After controlling for sex differences by means of partial correlations, the data demonstrated a small, but significant, correlation (r= -0.14, p <.05) between self-esteem (M = 15.3, SD = 4.9) and rejection of Christianity (M = 62.7, SD = 13.2) indicating that as teenagers’ endorsement of negative statements concerning Christianity increases, their scores of negative self-esteem also tend to increase.



DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The present study has explored the relationship between rejection of Christianity and self-esteem among adolescents in Wales. After controlling for sex differences a small but significant negative correlation is found between high-self esteem and rejection of Christianity, as hypothesised. This finding strengthens the conclusions drawn from studies like that of Jones and Francis (1996), which demonstrated a positive correlation between high self-esteem and a positive attitude toward Christianity by demonstrating that the association is not a function of the valency of the measure of religiosity. Evidence of this nature appears to be suggesting that the Christian tradition is supportive of the development of self-esteem among young people rather than detrimental to it.