Here is what is peculiar. Many conservative Christians, mostly Protestant but also a number of Catholics, have come to believe and proudly proclaim that the creator of the universe favors free wheeling, deregulated, union busting, minimal taxes especially for wealthy investors, plutocrat-boosting capitalism as the ideal earthly scheme for his human creations. And many of these Christian capitalists are ardent followers of Ayn Rand, who was one of – and many of whose followers are — the most hard-line anti-Christian atheist/s you can get. Meanwhile many Christians who support the capitalist policies associated with social Darwinistic strenuously denounce Darwin’s evolutionary science because it supposedly leads to, well, social Darwinism!

Meanwhile atheists, secularists and evolutionist are denounced as inventing the egalitarian evils of anti-socially Darwinistic socialism and communism. It’s such a weird stew of incongruities that it sets one’s head spinning. Social researchers like myself ask, how did these internal conflict come about? And why are not liberals and progressives doing the logical thing and taking full advantage of the inconsistencies of right wing libertarianism by loudly exposing the contradictions?

This.

Earlier this year, Andrew Zak Williams asked public figures why they believe in God. Now it’s the turn of the atheists – from A C Grayling to P Z Myers – to explain why they don’t.

Click through to the article to read concise explanations for why various notables do not believe. It’s a good read.

Eviscerating.

This is very compelling, but I have a strong counterargument.

Essentially, if people start collecting behind the banner of reason and evidence, it will become inefficient and silently deafening to *not* have a term associated with this approach to finding truth.

Bundles of people who share similar ideas, and who join together to discuss them, seldom do this for long without assigning a name to said approach. Right now that’s called atheism because the main thing being opposed is false belief, and the main place to find that is within religion.

So what Harris is proposing here is that we do something that can’t be done — at least right now. People facing everyone believing in Alchemy will collect together and will become known as anti-alchemy. It’s the same for religion/atheism, and it’s the same for any group that promotes “reason and evidence”.

There will be a name given, and it too will develop the downsides that Harris correctly ascribes to the term “atheism”.

This doesn’t mean this argument hasn’t made sense to me — I may still abandon the label — I’m just saying the argument isn’t as clear and clean as he’s making it out to be.

This is a great way to spend 54 minutes.

For sectarianism to flourish religion is not necessary – indeed religious piety may provide a way of countering it. The IRA did not deliberately murder Ulster Protestants because they objected to Luther’s idea that salvation comes through faith, and the UFF didn’t slaughter innocent Catholics because of their disgust for the doctrine of transubstantiation, nor did Serbs kill Bosnian Muslims because they passionately believed in Christ’s divinity and rejected the notion he was merely a prophet.

For sectarianism to flourish all you need to do is import a large number of people with what sociologist Enest Gellner called “counter-entropic” traits – differences of identity that stop people intermarrying. Race is one such trait, but religion is a far stronger one, with British Muslims (and Sikhs and Hindus for that matter) all more than 90 per cent likely to marry within their own religious and ethnic groups.

It’s sad to watch the world run into this wall at full speed.

Like.

The last half of this clip is an excellent and concise encapsulation of why it’s important to oppose religion.

Bipolar, or manic-depressive, disorder is a condition that afflicts millions. Characterized by cycles of elation followed by bouts of profound depression and despair, the disorder can wreak havoc on both the sufferer and his or her loved ones, particularly if it goes undetected and untreated for an extended period. Though the condition is estimated to affect, in one form or another, 5 percent of the world’s population, Monday marks the first time it has been diagnosed in a major deity.

Evidence of God’s manic-depression can be found throughout the Universe, from the white-hot explosiveness of quasars to the cold, lifeless vacuum of space. However, theologians note, humanity’s exposure to God’s affliction comes primarily through His confusing propensity to alternately reward and punish His creations with little rhyme or reason.

“Last week, I lost my dear husband Walter to the flood,” said housewife and devout churchgoer Elaine Froman of Davenport, IA. “I asked myself, ‘Why? Why would God do something like this, especially when He had just helped Walter overcome a long battle with colon cancer, and we were so happy that we finally had a chance to start our lives anew?’”

Man they have good writers over there…