aldenswan.com

among other things:

At least now I unerstand why I feel compelled to watch Nicholas Cage movies.

For some strange reason, I subscribe to a few atheism blogs. Lately I’ve added Debunking Christianity to the list, although I’m not sure how long it will stay; I’ve been largely bored and unimpressed with level of writing and thinking there. But, just when I thought I’d never agree with John Loftus on anything, he surprises me by doing a thoughtful review of John Haught’s new book, God and the New Atheism.  Here’s an interesting excerpt from Loftus’ post, in which he agrees with some of Haught’s criticisms:

As a theologian and philosopher of science, Dr. Haught effectively dismantles what I consider to be a few naïve understandings of the new atheists regarding faith and the scientific method. It’s a common mistake that applied and theoretical scientists unaccustomed to understanding the philosophy of science make. Is faith a belief without evidence? No. Do scientists come to their conclusions based solely on the evidence? No.

I don’t want to be too harsh on the new atheists, since I truly appreciate the impact they have had in raising the level of awareness for skeptics, but Haught is correct here, if in fact that’s what they think. Anyone who has seriously looked into the philosophy of science and read Thomas Kuhn, Michael Polanyi, Ian Barbour, Frederick Suppe, Paul Feyerabend, and even Karl Popper knows that science is not completely objective, that facts are theory laden, and that certainty as a goal is impossible to achieve, which leaves room for faith. Popper, for instance, talked of science progressing by “conjectures and guesses.” Feyerabend even argued that there is no such thing as the scientific method! Scientists themselves are people with passions, prior commitments, and/or control beliefs. In fact, there are many beliefs we have for which we have no evidence, as Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued–such things as I’m not dreaming right now, that I’ve existed for longer than 24 hours, that I am not merely a brain in a mad scientist’s vat which is being caused to remember the events of today in the year 2030, or that we’re not all living in something depicted by the movie the Matrix.

Granted, he doesn’t agree with most of Haught’s thinking, and I’m the last person to try to imply that. However, I’m impressed with Loftus’ intellectual integrity here, something which does indeed distinguish him from the crowd.  At least in this post.

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us.“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

From Look Who’s Irrational Now, by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway (WSJ 9-19-08).  According to the survey, close to a fourth of professing atheists believe in a god or force, 10% pray weekly and 12% believe in Heaven.

And, even Bill Maher, whose anti-religion documentary is to be released soon, appears to be somewhat of a nut:

Mr. Maher told David Letterman — a quintuple bypass survivor — to stop taking the pills that his doctor had prescribed for him. He proudly stated that he didn’t accept Western medicine. On his HBO show in 2005, Mr. Maher said: “I don’t believe in vaccination. . . . Another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur [germ] theory.” He has told CNN’s Larry King that he won’t take aspirin because he believes it is lethal and that he doesn’t even believe the Salk vaccine eradicated polio.