What's New Archive ● 2019 ● July
What's New on the Secular Web?
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July 31, 2019
Added Filthy Lucre: The Church and Wealth (2019) by Michael Moore to the Christian Worldview page under Christianity and Psychology of Religion page under Theism in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
The New Testament laments that "money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith." Meanwhile, the Vatican discovers "hundreds of millions of euros 'tucked away'" off the books in various departments of the Holy See, to say nothing of the officially recorded cost of the construction and maintenance of various lavish Catholic buildings. While there is no lack of "prosperity gospel" apologists who twist and turn in their efforts to explain the blaring discrepancy between the New Testament's condemnation of wealth and the mammon accumulated by the Church, as Pope Francis himself noted, "It is a scandal to say one thing and do another."
Added Religion as a Total Institution (2019) by Michael Moore to the Psychology of Religion page under Theism in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
In what sociologists call a total institution, daily life is strictly regulated according to the norms, rules, and schedules set forth by a single authority, whose subordinates enforce these directives. Erving Goffman's original typology of total institutions included (among other things) convents, nursing homes, boarding schools, prisons, and concentration camps, but subsequent scholars have expanded it to include elementary schools, the home, the media, tourism, universities, and other organizations. In this essay Michael Moore argues that religion should also take its rightful place alongside these institutions since it, too, exerts control over its subjects by "putting to death" one's self along the same seven dimensions that characterize other total institutions.
New in the Kiosk: My Friend Peter and Possibilianism (2019) by Gil Gaudia
I share with my friend Peter the idea that organized religion and contemporary beliefs about God are not credible, but I think he still possesses some of the elements of a "seeker." He recently expressed excitement after learning about neuroscientist David Eagleman's "possibilianism." After listening to one of Eagleman's talks, it seemed to me that he made an argument from ignorance when he concluded that "our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism." What does "ignorance of the cosmos" have to do with atheism? I think he does not understand what atheists actually think. Simply stated, we think that there is no evidence to support the supernatural in general or God in particular. It seems that Dr. Eagleman has created a straw man, but unfortunately many people, including my dear friends, are impressed with his presentation. Nothing about the astronomical information he cites refutes the idea that there is no evidence for God or the supernatural. Indeed, if anything, that information reinforces that science and reason offer the only possible hope that we will ever understand the cosmos.