Although Creationism is a real problem in parts of the country, here in New England most believers have long ago ceded that fight as lost and, if anything, use the obvious ridiculousness of the Creationist viewpoint as a weapon in their intraChristian factional struggles.  They congratulate themselves on their acceptance of scientific evidence where the origin of species is concerned, and claim that their religious beliefs are complementary to, and not in conflict with, science.  However, when you ask them what will happen to them when when they die, the answer is that their soul will go to heaven.

So, what is this soul?  The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “In Sacred Scripture the term ’soul’ often refers to human life or the entire human person.  But ’soul’ also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: ’soul’ signifies the spiritual principle in man.”, which tells us almost nothing.  There’s certainly nothing in this definition which implies that the soul is something which survives the death of the body, but other teachings of the Church affirm just that.  In Church teaching, and, more to the point, in the popular conception of believers, the soul survives the death of the body, and then goes on to observe, love, think, learn, etc.  It’s clear that the soul either is the mind or at least encompasses the mind.  And what is the mind?  Although the science of cognition is not at the advanced stage that the science of evolutionary biology is, it is crystal clear that the mind is an emergent property of the brain.  When the brain is affected by drugs or injury the mind is affected as well.  When the brain gets damaged the mind is damaged.  When specific parts of the brain get damaged specific and predictable abilities of the mind are damaged.  When the brain is severely damaged the mind is severely damaged.  When the brain is destroyed the mind is what?  According to the soul theory the mind is restored to perfect funtionality.  There is, however, absolutely no solid evidence for this and no proposed mechanism for the operation of the disembodied mimicking of this bodily function.  It is as clear a case of wishful thinking and intentional feigned ignorance of persuasive evidence as the Creationists’ belief in the divine creation of modern species.

I think that reluctance to accept death is a large factor in the survival of religion, even among those who are otherwise rational.  However, wishing something weren’t so doesn’t make it not so.  You’re going to die, your mind will stop thinking, and pretending you have a soul is not going to change that.  Most people, I think, actually realize that even if they won’t admit it to themselves.  To them I say, “I’m sorry, but there’s really not any fundamental difference between you and the Creationists.  Free your mind while is still exists.  You have a universe to gain.  You have nothing to lose but your cognitive dissonance.”

-

Dennis Paul Himes
Connecticut State Director, American Atheists
President, Connecticut Valley Atheists

Nisus ait, “Dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt,
Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?”
- P. Vergilius Maro

Edit: spelling correction

by Derek Schachter

If you, like me, had the (un)fortunate luck of being in front of a television screen between 3:00 P.M. and 5:30 P.M. EST this past Thursday, you were most likely watching the enticing cable news coverage of a helium balloon floating over rural Colorado. During those surreal two and a half hours, we all had our eyes glued to the screen, first with morbid curiosity, then slight panic and terror, followed by confusion and anger. I believe we are still immersed in this third stage, for we now know for a fact that not only was little Falcon Heene hiding in the attic the entire time, but, thanks to video footage, the entire Heene family witnessed the balloon’s accidental launch with no 6-year-old anywhere inside the craft. Questions as to whether Richard Heene, Falcon’s father, perpetuated a hoax still remain, and will hopefully get answered in the coming weeks [ed: the boy's mother has since confirmed the hoax].

But how could such an anomalous event reel us in and make us feel like collective dopes? If the Heene family pulled one over on us, it was by taking advantage of the lazy, unprofessional, and downright ignorant attitude the cable news networks have towards journalism. As atheists, we must lay doubt not only upon the religious, but the media soothsayers as well.

To say that I was watching cable news (CNN to be exact) at three in the afternoon is a bit of a fib; I actually received a CNN alert in my e-mail saying, “A 6-year-old climbed into a balloon-like experimental aircraft built by his parents and floated into the Colorado sky.” News alerts aren’t unmitigated truth, but after not receiving an official alert on Michael Jackson’s death until a half hour after every other news source confirmed it, I had good reason to trust the conservative, obstinate reporting by whoever decides to send out those alerts and take them as fact. Yes, I saw the alert, believed it, and immediately tuned into CNN to watch the “story” unfold.

What I witnessed were the voices of two disembodied anchors conjecturing and theorizing opposite a live feed of a floating helium balloon, one that had a 6-year-old boy inside. And how did we “know” there was a boy inside? Because the byline graphic on the screen told us that a “sibling” reported it. Not once did the anchors try to verify this mysterious sibling source. If that wasn’t bad enough, “neighbors” reported that they saw the boy on his roof getting into the balloon as it took off. From the released footage, we know that the balloon took off from the ground in an enclosed backyard. This was a false lead through and through, yet the network reported it as fact. We were also informed that the boy snuck inside a door on the balloon as it took off, yet there was never a question of where this door was on the balloon. It looked pretty self-contained and even I questioned the location of this door, eventually becoming skeptical of there being a boy at all.
That isn’t to say that CNN (and presumably other networks) did not do its job in asking questions, such as: “Why weren’t the boys at school?”, “Where were the parents?”, “How high is the balloon right now?”, “What is the air temperature up there?”, “Is he wearing his jacket?” All important questions, but also all questions of conjecture. These were all questions to frame the story as a whole, but not get to the bottom of what we were looking at. Maybe if one of the anchors were keen enough to wonder about the door, they would have wondered about the available oxygen at the high altitude in a balloon with no noticeable holes and filled with helium. That seemed like the most logical question to ask given the circumstances, instead of inquiring about the temperature and concern trolling regarding whether or not he was wearing his jacket.

The network even had a “balloon expert” on the air who explicitly said that he did not believe, based on the craft’s trajectory and angle, that there was a payload the size of a six-year-old boy inside its base.

I had thoroughly given up believing at that point, but the networks soldiered on, even in the face of scientific analysis. Once the balloon landed and it was confirmed that Falcon had not been flying, I hoped that cable news would drop the story. Instead, the situation went from irresponsible to manic once rumors started to fly that the boy had actually been in a hanging basket that fell from the balloon. The networks reported that, see, he clearly wasn’t inside the balloon, but was suspended from it, and what had been carrying him must have fallen off. Now the hunt was on to see where he had fallen and at what height he would have fallen from. A photograph of the balloon with a black dot under it was shown, claiming to be a lucky snapshot of the boy falling from the balloon. Again, in a picture taken out of thousands that just happened to show an unidentifiable object underneath it, the networks gobbled it up without any follow through. Who took this picture? Where was this picture taken? Could the boy be found based on the location of the photographer? These questions were not asked.

As we all know now, Falcon revealed himself in his attic after hours of news coverage. People are angry at his father for unnecessarily worrying the public that maybe a little boy was trapped in or fell from that balloon. Thousands of taxpayer dollars were also spent on the search and recovery of a helium balloon with no boy inside. Everybody has a right to be upset, but they should also direct some of those negative feelings towards a news media that has lost much of the public’s trust. In the future, I will treat outlandish media claims as I would any claim regarding apparitions or religious figures appearing on tree stumps, with realistic skepticism.

Derek Schachter is a writer and editor, and member Connecticut Valley Atheists.  The views expressed in this posting are his own and do not necessarily represent those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.

by mr dan

If Ray Comfort wants to hand out 50,000 copies of Origin of Species, he’ll be the only one doing so.  Charles Darwin’s seminal work (originally published under the title On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life and later changed by the author) is somewhat less than standard reading material in American high schools and colleges.  Perhaps Comfort would know this if he had ever been to an American high school or college.

The Way of the Master Ministries, the organization Comfort founded with actor and ex-atheist Kirk Cameron, has announced that on November 19, 2009, 50,000 altered copies of Origin will be handed out on 50 college campuses. The duo are most famous for a video known as the Atheist’s Nightmare, popular on YouTube, asserting that the banana is so perfectly suited to human use that it proves God’s existence.  The truth is far more complicated, but rather than dwelling on Ray’s last failure of logic, let us turn our attention to the 50-page introduction that Comfort has added to his version of the book.

I couldn’t begin to examine all of the lies found in just the six minute video which heralds the project (it is not illegal to pray in public, open a Bible in a public school, or display the Ten Commandments in public—that covers the first 20 seconds).  Adolf Hitler has no “undeniable connection with the theory” of natural selection, as I’ve written before.  Natural selection has absolutely nothing to do with the Big Bang model for the universe’s formation.  And there is no “absence of species-to-species transitional forms actually found in the fossil record”—quite the opposite, in fact.  It’s clear that Comfort’s 50 pages are merely a propaganda tract wrapped in a Gospel message.  To disprove evolution, one needs to provide evidence that the theory does not hold up to scientific inquiry and that its details, in whole or part, are incorrect.  Whether I personally accept Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior is another matter entirely, and one ought to have no bearing on the other.

When I heard of this project, I began to ask around.  Of everyone I know, not a single person was ever assigned to read all or part of Origin of Species in high school or college (and only one had taken it upon himself to read it).  This is mainly because Darwin is not the definitive voice on the subject of evolution.  Origin is not the most thorough, or the most accurate volume ever written on evolution or natural selection—indeed, why would anyone expect the first book on a particular subject to be?  One would assume that your local electrician knows far more about electricity than Ben Franklin did.  “If I have seen a little further,” wrote Newton, “it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

The Way of the Master wants intelligent people to be frightened by this gesture.  They picture atheists cowering in fear of fifty pages (several of those illustrations—gasp!) of contrarian information. It has always been the view of the believer that those who don’t share their views must be paralyzed by a lack of confidence in their dissent.  This mischaracterization has always left them unprepared for serious debate.  If Comfort, Cameron or any of their many volunteers hand you this book, graciously accept it.  No harm can come of it.  There is no need to berate them, call for book burnings or any other absurdities.  Feel free, however, to engage them in conversation about the introduction’s content.  Ask them the pointed questions that they have never asked themselves.  Colleges are places of discussion, scholarly debate, and wisdom.  Let them know that they’ve underestimated these institutions and the open minds at work within.

mr dan is the vice president of Connecticut Valley Atheists.  The views expressed in this posting are his own and do not necessarily represent those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.