It would then follow that people who do believe in God are children (Jesus's view, as I recall) who ar incapable of managing their own affairs.

I don't know how many atheists you know, Orrin. Not many, I'm fairly sure, since there are not that many.

The notion that atheism is some sort of psychological disease is of a piece with the fervent Christian belief that all non-Christians are miserable.

By God, we'd better be, hadn't we, because if we're not -- if we have avoided all the inconvenience of being religious and haven't paid a price -- then maybe God's not in his heaven and all's not right with the world.

Harry, Harry, Harry . . . you think that's an insult to us theists?

Matthew 18:3 -- And He said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

Well, I thought this article might have sparked some intelligent debate, though one should never underestimate the allure of Freudian claptrap as a satisfying substitute for real analysis. Oh well, children will play.

Harry:

Yours appears to be a function of Bolshevism rather than Father hatred--though that opens a whole 'nother can of psychic worms.

I know a number--not large, but a number--of atheists (although areligionist agnostics would in most cases be a far better term).

All of them have outstanding relationships with their fathers.

Which makes that canard so laughable as to be beyond caricature.

Atheists I understand, but angry atheists are a mystery. The anger often seems to stem from a humanist concern about the freedoms, enjoyments and choices religion supposedly denies people in its dull, dark world, but that doesn't sit too well with the contemporaneous charge that religion is some kind of comforting cocoon that keeps us in childlike bliss and shields us from the existential abyss all brave intellectuals must face (preferably with lots of booze in a Left Bank cafe). Harry seems to be laying both charges here.

Religion can turn ugly when the "good news" is spurned, but how does an atheist get to the stage where he or she cares in the first place? We believers get shouted down when we suggest, in the friendliest possible way, that it is because they see themselves as their own gods and can't abide competition. Can anyone attempt a pyschological explanation for the intensity of, say, Dawkins' fulminations? I think Harry's are sui generis, so no probative value there.

Jeff:

Geez, for someone who touts the scientific method so adamantly you sure seem to induce a lot of universal truths from the lives of your inner circle.

Peter:

I'm not the one who said "... phsychological type so common and easily explicable" about people he has never met.

I, at least, have extensive evidence to go on.

"We believers get shouted down when we suggest, in the friendliest possible way, that it is because they see themselves as their own gods and can't abide competition. "

Peter, trying to find psycholgical explanations for athiesm are akin to finding psychological explanations for conservatism. This was recently done by a panel of Berkeley academics, as if conservatism were a mental disorder. You may very well feel that way about athiests, but don't act shocked that your opinion is not taken as a friendly gesture of concern for a sick friend.

Robert:

The problem was that their psychological profile was based on men of the Left, not Right. It's easy enough to come up with a conservative type--they tend to be white men, with little to worry about from a free American society with a minimalist state since they've already made it. White women become conservative once they marry and don't need the state to fall back on anymore. People of similar belief tend to come from similar circumstances.

Atheists, unsurprisingly, tend to have father issues.

OJ, on what experience are you basing this on? From my own personal experience, this is a load of doo-doo. If all you have to support your opinion is the Vitz book, then I suggest that you take your own advice and not rely on the word of axe-grinders.

Besides, having daddy issues is a charge that any half baked correspndence school lawyer could make stick on anyone. "Were you ever angry with your father? Did your father ever say anything mean to you? Your honor, I move that this case be thrown out, the witness obviously has daddy issues, my client cannot get a fair trial."

Robert:

Not the atheism, the anger. I would at least listen to psychological explanations of why a religious person developed a hatred of those who didn't share his beliefs. Can we not agree hatred of another for his beliefs may be a pathology?

That makes OJ pathological then--his views on what should be done with witches and non-believers, for instances, are far from friendly.

Evangelists of a certain stripe might be pathological, mightn't they?

Peter:

It is necessary to hate certain beliefs--they're evil. Do you not hate paedophilia?

Jeff:

Sure, they might. Religion is not an amulet. You are confusing the person with the creed. Why pick on the evangelicals? I just want to know whether you think Dawkins is pathological or there is another explanation. My view on what should be done to him is far from friendly too, but I thought I would give his fan club a chance to plead.

Robert:

Obviously once the belief system is established by those intellectuals who uniformly shared the psychological profile not all their followers will share it too--though many, for instance Jeff, will fit it perfectly. Others who simply wish to escape moral authority or whose political beliefs conflict with religion (as Harry) or who are just trying to fit in with what teachers and professors told them, etc. will all join in.

Orrin:

Sure, but not one who holds to it without acting on it or trying to convert others. I'm not sure I would call paedophilia a belief.

Peter:

It is:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/blog/archives/000501.html

"... though many, for instance Jeff, will fit it perfectly."

In this particular case, you have not the tiniest idea what you are talking about. That assertion brings a whole new meaning to the word "wrong." "Hubris" is also in for an upgrade, as well.

Peter:

I am not confusing a person with a creed. If you take the Bible literally, and some do, then I should be killed for committing a thought crime.

I have not read enough Dawkins to pass informed judgment. From what I have read, it appears many people are often reacting to what they thought he said, rather than what he actually said.

I'm certain there are exceptions, but none any more virulent than insisting it was OK to burn women at the stake because the way they worshipped God was different than the dictates of orthodoxy. As if orthodoxy could know.

Mike, I should have known better than to be subtle with True Believers.

Orrin's trope is ridiculous, and so is mine. The difference is, I meant mine sarcastically. I don't believe Christians are incapable of managing their affairs.

I doubt Orrin knows many atheists.

Probably the best predictor of atheism is whether your parents were. People who grow up seeing their parents get along fine without the aggravation of Belief are unlikely to go looking for trouble.

That would't explain me, because my parents were conventional if rather undemonstrative Catholics, but it would explain my children.

Militant atheism has always seemed rather a contradiction in terms to me, and the real sui generis atheist Peter is looking for is not me but O'Hair.

Being a militant atheist is such a forlorn job in this country that I can name all of them on my thumbs -- O'Hair and Ingersoll.

She didn't have a successor, did she?

Peter, agreed, the hatred is a pathology on both sides. I would think that the psychological profile for such a pathology would be very similar regardless of whether it is directed at believers or unbelievers.

Hatred is not a pathology, it's universal and necessary. Hating someone for what they are (black, white, male, female, etc.), rather than who they are (Christian, Jew, Communist, Republican, heterosexual, homosexual, pedophile), is dangerous.

Hating somebody for what they think, as opposed to what they do, is evil. Full stop.

And, what is worse, it is often self-defeating. Having the ability to, say, exile all Jews may be within a societies ability to do. It is far less certain that just because the ability exists, therefore the right does also.

But what is dead certain is that, having done so, Spain blew its foot off at the hip.

That kind of hatred is pathological, profoundly damaging victim, and victimizer alike. Which also rather brings its necessity into significant question.

Jeff:

Like many secularists you prefer peace above all other values, even if it renders a despicable society. That's very much the European attitude and why their societies are dying.

Americans value other things above peace and have a healthy hatred of our enemies.

Jeff:

Here is what Dawkins said. "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."

So I guess some evolutionists do believe in absolute truth after all. Over to you.

Orrin:

Hate people for unacted-on beliefs? You don't have to love them, but active hate?

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0302/articles/soloveichik.html

Yes, hate. If Hitl;er had never killed a Jew it would still be healthy to hate him.

Peter:

I can't possibly defend that statement, other than to say that it neither invalidates science in general, nor evolution in particular.

OJ:

Actually, I prefer to avoid pointless, self inflicted wounds. Expelling Jews, who represented precisely no threat to their societies, along with the insistence on complete orthodoxy, rendered Spain and Portugal moribund. So, in addition to being an outstanding example of religiously inspired evil, it was just plain stupid. If you are going to treat people as enemies, it probably pays to make sure they really are.

"Like many secularists you prefer peace above all other values..." How much time do you have in combat, tough guy?

Jeff:

So it is okay to kill people you disagree with after all, eh? But only when you do it.

OJ, it is ok to kill people when they pose a real threat to you and will not be dissuaded from harming you by anything short of killing them. Just having a different religion is not sufficient grounds for declaring someone a threat. You are not justified in killing people based on imagined threats. Otherwise, we should release the UNA-Bomber.

OJ:

How about staying on point. You make an assertion, you back it up. Changing the subject by putting words in my mouth doesn't count.

Robert:

Worse than that. He favors killing people for worshipping the wrong God, because the 10 Commandments say that is a very bad thing. Unfortunately, it seems rather beyond human ken to know precisely who the right God is, and which worship is correct.

But burn 'em anyway.

Jeff:

That is the point. We all believe in killing people for their ideas. You just believe in less so have fewer ideas worth defending.

Robert:

The people you want to kill are no threat to our society--no mastter how bad the Nazis, ?Communists, Islamicists, etc., are. The real threats are domestic and they're the folks who don't share the morality that the Republic is founded on and requires in order to endure. Eveybody wants to kill somebody, we just need to choose more carefully.

So, you are saying that we are safe within our fortress, as long as we scrub our society of all ideological impurities?

Some impurity is a good thing, so long as it's kept in its place. We've always been very good at that. The important thing is to treat it as impurity, not as equally valid.

Robert:

That is exactly what he is saying. How he squares that with the morality the Republic was founded on, without a hint of irony, is beyond me.

OJ:
No, I don't believe in killing people for their ideas. Actions, now that is a different matter.

As the various Inquisitions have shown, peresecuting or killing people for their ideas is sheer folly, injuring the victimizer as well as the victim. Never mind being evil, pure and simple.

BTW--I'm waiting for you to justify "Like many secularists you prefer peace above all other values ..."

Or an apology.

Historical accuracy counts.

Jeff:

I'm sorry, it was a cheap trick to get you to admit that you've fought and killed for religious ideals too. I shouldn't do things like that but you're an easy mark.

OJ, your magnaminity is boundless. I had you envisioned as the Howard Hughes of Ideology, but the fact that you can live with some impurities just shows how badly I had misjudged you.

Robert:

some

I took an oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States, a document noteworthy for its lack of reference to any religion.

Among the ideals I aimed to defend was the right for your freely hold your religious beliefs. Mine too.

Yes, an oath.

Point is OJ--you stated I, as a secularist, value peace above everything else.

In this, you are dead wrong.

I took the oath on my honor, BTW.

Jeff:

Yes, I concede that you kill for your faith. I'm not sure why you're so horrified that others do.

This is what you said: "Like many secularists you prefer peace above all other values."

In this, you are dead wrong.

In addressing your hair splitting, we didn't fight Desert Storm because Saddam committed a mere thought crime, did we? No one said "That darn Saddam is worshipping the wrong God--let the bombs fly!"

That is the sort of territory Usama bin Laden inhabits.

President Bush compared him to Hitler and all that other good demonization stuff, which was an easy sell because he was an Arab. We attacked him because we have different ideas. You killed for our faith. Bravo! There's no shame in it. Be ashamed of the 40 million plus innocent babies you've helped kill. They died because of their status, not even because of their ideas.