I’m looking forward to the Blackberry Storm coming out tomorrow. Yay.
The Daily Dose: (I’m a day behind on some of these, but, hey, it’s early — or, at least it was early at some point today)
On Godriddance, AIGBusted reviews the Problems with Presuppositionalism and the Transcendental argument
Presuppositionalism is a term describing the philosophy of a branch of Christians Apologists who either hold that 1) One must choose a worldview upfront, before looking at any evidence, and must use this worldview to interpret all other evidence, and/or 2) Christianity must be assumed in order to use logic, inductive reasoning, or have a consistent worldview.
Barry Leiba, at Staring At Empty Pages, criticizes a recent study linking sexual content on television to teen pregnancy: Carrie Bradshaw might get you pregnant
If you’ve read some of my other complaints about survey-based studies, you’ll know what my complaint about this one is: they have shown correlation, but not causality.
It’s entirely likely that teens who are inclined to be sexually active are also inclined to want to watch TV shows that talk about or depict sex. Inversely, teens who would prefer not to have sex are likely to be more put off by titillating TV.
The New Humanist Blog asks if Obama is a “real” Christian. Sad that they didn’t link to StOP’s “Thank God Obama Worships the “Right” God” article, but I guess since StOP is fairly obscure, I’ll forgive them. An excerpt from their post:
Apparently it all comes down to an interview the now president-elect gave in 2004 in which he described Jesus as “a bridge between God and man”, which some say suggests he doesn’t believe Christ was literally the son of God. According to some bloggers, this amounts to a denial of the Nicene Creed…
Vjack, at Atheist Revolution, proposes a secular community, making the following recommendations:
1. Even though a broad secular community (i.e., atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, etc.) may be our ultimate goal, we should start with building atheist community.
2. One of the more important initial steps should involve atheist identity, educating our fellow nonbelievers about the meaning of atheism and giving them something with which to identify.
3. Initial efforts to develop atheist community should emphasize common political concerns where support is likely to be nearly unanimous (e.g., preserving separation of church and state, opposing religious extremism, ending informal religious tests for political office, opposing anti-atheist bigotry, etc.).
4. When encountering resistance from our fellow nonbelievers, we should frame the issue as one of ensuring political representation.
My response:
1. Why? Would that create a greater segregation within the skeptic community, or is it a way to join together those with a solid and unwavering characteristic, which might be more effective than trying to add in agnostics, deists, etc.? If the latter, might work.
2. What’s the meaning of atheism? Do you think an organized community of so-called atheists could agree on a definition, and do you think that by doing so, it would dissuade potential members who have slightly different definitions? I’ve seen this happen a lot in atheist forums where different factions emerge, some claiming that atheism is merely a passive godless point of view, while others claim that atheism is an active position against theism.
3. That’s a good one.
4. That’s a start, certainly.
Note that Vjack does address some of my questions in his post, so go take a gander.
Tags: agnostic, AIGBusted, apologist, Atheism, atheist, bigotry, Bradshaw, Carrie, Christ, Christianity, church, Evolution, god, human, humanist, Interview, Jesus, Logic, Nicene, Obama, philosophy, political, pregnancy, president, secular, sex, skeptic, theist, transcendental, UK, war