Faith No More: Professor Peter Boghossian on Why You Should Kick Your Faith to the Curb

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DR. PETER BOGHOSSIAN is a full-time faculty member in Portland State University’s philosophy department who is well known around campus for directly challenging his student’s faith-based beliefs. He’s also had his fair share of criticism for such recent public lectures as “Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions: Just Say No!” and “Faith as a Cognitive Sickness,” which drew hundreds of attendees.

MERCURY: You often speak out against faith, calling it a delusion and a cognitive sickness. How come?

PETER BOGHOSSIAN: Because enough is enough. A lot of people are sick and tired of being held hostage to the delusions of others, and I’m one of those people. I think that people are hungry for a frank, honest discussion about things—particularly about faith. To profess things you don’t know for certain, and then claim the reason for your justification is faith? That doesn’t contribute to the conversation. That’s the end of the conversation. . . .

. . . That is outside the bounds of reason. The only thing you can say is “go to the children’s table.” Those are the sorts of things that come up when we as a society don’t value critical rationality. . . .

. . . A colleague told me one of my talks offended him. I said, “Your offense means nothing to me.” Nor should it. If you want to provide reasons and evidence then you can sit at the adult table and we can talk about that. But just “I’m offended” carries no legitimacy. . . I think maybe part of the solution to making these cultural changes is to treat faith-based claims like racist claims. To stigmatize those claims. “That’s not cool, we don’t let that into the discussion.” It’s not about a right to believe—believe whatever you want. It’s about the truth or falsity of a belief and about a process that will lead you to the truth or not. Clutch your Bible? Sit at the children’s table.

. . . Not pretending to know things that you don’t know is a virtue.

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Austin Cline: Third Reich Christianity: Nazi Germany as Implementation of a Christian Agenda

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Hitler and the Nazis are often cited as an example of the horrible crimes which atheists have committed in the 20th century. They are only assumed to be atheists, though, because people can’t imagineChristians doing such things; in reality, Hitler explicitly appealed to Christianity on a regular basis and this was part of why he was popular. Not every Christian supported the Nazis, of course, but he was most popular with conservative Christians seeking a restoration of traditional values. . . . .

Christians may not like acknowledging that Nazi actions might have anything to do with Christianity, but Germany saw itself as a fundamentally Christian nation and millions of Christians in Germany enthusiastically endorsed Hitler and the Nazi Party in part because they saw both as embodiments of both German and Christian ideals. Conservative Christians who wanted a return to traditional values either voted for the Nazis or one of the other right-wing nationalist parties which eventually supported and merged with the Nazis.

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Al Stefanelli: Tyranny – A Seemingly Lost Concept on the Majority

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I’ve written and re-written this post four times already this morning. With each edit came the revelation that it had morphed into another version of a rant against those who are under the notion that we are a Christian nation because of majority rule. Well, I’ve written about that many times and with each word that appears before me on my word processor, it becomes inevitable that I find myself writing about it yet again. Regardless of how many times I hit the “back space” 0r “delete” key, my mind stubbornly returns to the concept of tyranny.

Through the cobwebs and scattered papers that litter the floor of my mind and amongst the remnant memories of thousands of books that I have read which sit on the dusty shelves of my recollective, there emerges the single, unadulterated and clear thought [WOW!] of why the religious right continues to hawk their snake oil salve that consists of the single mandate that we should all acquiesce to their dictates and doctrines.

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Conservatives’ Twisted, Racist Logic in the Trayvon Martin Case

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. . . Zimmerman’s defenders marshal “data” and “statistics” proving that black men commit a “disproportionate” amount of crime in American society. . . .

In reality, matters are much more complicated. A surrender to a basic and fallacy laden argument that black people, and black young people in particular are uniquely and especially prone to violence, oversimplifies the nature of crime in America. As the old saying goes, “numbers lie and liars figure.” Or alternatively, the lazy recitation of statistics is a dumb person’s idea of how a smart person sounds. . . .

As compared to white neighborhoods, black and brown communities are also subject to more severe surveillance and aggressive police tactics. Moreover, the disproportionate number of minorities in the criminal justice system can be largely explained by the War on Drugs. In total, if white communities were subject to the same type of aggressive police tactics as black and brown communities, the number of white people in prison would skyrocket.

The data is very telling here. While people of color are the prime targets of such policies as “stop and frisk” and racial profiling, it is in fact white people who are far more likely to be both drug users and to be in possession of narcotics at a given moment. This reality signals to a larger social phenomenon: black individuals who commit crimes are representative of their whole communities, crime is racialized, and there is no qualifier of individual intent. All black people are deemed suspicious and guilty because of the deeds of the very few.

In contrast, white people who commit crimes are unique individuals: the criminals who destroyed the global economy, a group of white men, were not taken as representative of the entire white community. There is a long list of crimes such as domestic terrorism, serial murder, child rape, sedition, treason, and financial fraud that are almost exclusively the province of white people. But again, whites as a group are excluded from suspicion or indictment as a “criminal class.”

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PZ Myers: Irrational Humans

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I really have a hard time wrapping my mind around the strategies of anti-choice activists. I’ve encountered a few, and I’ve browsed some of their websites, and am so unimpressed with their tactics . . . but they seem to work effectively with some people. . . .

The argument is never about whether some state is alive or not. Your appendix and tonsils are great masses of living cells, but if the organ becomes inflamed, doctors will cut them out and throw them away. Every time you poop, about a third of that mass that you excrete and flush away consists of living bacterial cells, yet no one hesitates and feels regret at the tragic loss of life when their hand is on the handle.

The argument is about whether that living thing is a person requiring extensive legal and moral protection, and it’s entirely clear that “life” is not a sufficient criterion, or people would be lobbying for the protection of turds and tonsils. We are not absolutists about protecting all life; we can’t be.

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AFGE: Applauds House Effort to Lift Civilian Workforce Cap

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. . . Under the Defense Department’s co-called “Efficiency Initiative,” the number of civilian employees has been capped at 2010 levels, yet there has been no comparable cap on the contractor workforce. This has encouraged managers to use contractors instead of civilian employees, even though privatization is more costly and also violates the law.

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Howard University Trayvon Martin “Am I Suspicious?” Campaign Video

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A video depicting Howard University men standing against racial profiling and the killing of
Trayvon Martin in February 2012. More information on the efforts of the Howard Community to raise awareness can be found at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/HUJusticeForTrayvonMartin/