No surprises here! I thought the quiz wasn't all that great, but the result was surprisingly on the money:

Utilitarianism Defined as the greatest good for the greatest number. In order to make a decision, you must weight the negative and positive aspects of your decision for each side, and then decide which one will cause the most good. This choice would be the most ethical according to Utilitarians. How you scored, compared to others taking this quiz: You Other Quiz Takers Judeo-Christian Utilitarianism Kantian Ethics Ethical Egoism Ancient Greek Ethics 'What ethical system do you fit in with?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Glenn Greenwald on Bush's Cult of Personality:

We need no oversight of the Federal Government's eavesdropping powers because we trust Bush to eavesdrop in secret for the Good. We need no judicial review of Bush's decrees regarding who is an "enemy combatant" and who can be detained indefinitely with no due process because we trust Bush to know who is bad and who deserves this. We need no restraints from Congress on Bush's ability to exercise war powers, even against American citizens on U.S. soil, because we trust Bush to exercise these powers for our own good.

[snip to the money shot]

And in that regard, people like Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt are not conservatives. They are authoritarian cultists. Their allegiance is not to any principles of government but to strong authority through a single leader.

My main man Dickie Dawkins profiled in the Washington Post : 

Understanding the pitiless ways of natural selection is precisely what can make humans moral, Dawkins said. It is human agency, human rationality and human law that can create a world more compassionate than nature, not a religious view that falsely sees the universe as fundamentally good and benevolent. That is why, Dawkins said, he donates to disaster relief efforts -- work that is "un-Darwinian" -- and why he is a stickler for human laws, even the unimportant ones: When riding his bicycle, he stops at red lights even when there are no traffic and police officers present.

 

"I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining how things are, but I am an even more passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to politics," said Dawkins, who comes close to describing himself as a pacifist. "Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society."

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First off, I offer my apologies for taking so long to respond!  My day job has required a lot of travel, so my free time has been severely limited.  Plus, you spent a long time on your response, and I wanted to respond in kind.


After reading your response, I want to re-read my own website to see why you've obtained such a one-dimensional view of me and my philosophy.  Could it be something I said or implied on my page, or are you painting me as a straw-man based on what is, frankly, a cultural stereotype?  It's a sad and unfortunate preconception of my rationalist brethren that we are cold, calculating logicians completely unwilling to listen to the music of life.  (Substitute "rationalist" for whatever term you pefer: secular humanist, naturalist, non-theist, bright, heathen, skeptic, infidel, atheist, deist, reality-based communitarian...)  Spock is the embodiment of this point of view, someone who may be valuable in his ability to think through a situation while desperately eliminating all emotional aspects of life.  I try not to be offended when I'm pigeonholed like this, since 1) too many rationalists get an immature kick out of being coldly contrary, and 2) the few examples of them in the media reinforce this stereotype.  (Look at the Bill Pullman character in the latest made-for-TV movie.)  You might be surprised to hear that I'm not a cold demagogue in a lab coat.  


I'll have you know that I, too have appreciated Leonard Cohen, and at one point toyed with becoming a professional musician.  My life is enriched by art, literature, film, and above all, music.  I even do yoga.  To me, these aren't mere diversionary entertainments, they are ways of enriching my life and broadening my perspective.  They, like science, logic, and reason, are tools used to discover truth.  

But I don't buy the notion of rational and non-rational tools for discovering truth as being separate-but-equal.  Winston Churchill once said about democracy (paraphrasing): "It's the worst political system in the world, except for all the others."  Similarly, Science/logic/reason are the worst tools for finding truth -- except for all the others.  The other tools may feel better to use, but they are flawed in fundamental ways.  

Science is particularly good at determining whether things exist, and whether things have truly happened.  Here's an example.  Because I'm on travel today, my wife and I are in different states.  Let's say that the weather's bad and I know she's out driving to visit her mother.  How do I know that she's alive and well?  I could use non-rational tools and search my intuitions: is there a hitch in my sense of well-being?  Or can call her cell phone and obtain a solid, scientific data point?  Is this method foolproof?  No.  She could be crushed by a boulder in the moment after she hangs up on me.  Are non-rational methods entirely useless?  No -- I could have a strong hunch that there might be boulder-laden landslides in the area in which she's driving.  But if I was given the choice of using one method over the other in this case, I'd pick science hands-down.   So if this is the best method for determining my wife's existence from afar, why not God?


Intuitions and other non-rational approaches may feel compelling, but they are full of pitfalls.  People are adept at bamboozling themselves, often adopting the philosophy, "If it feels good, think it."  Humans seek patterns even in pattern-free situations (hence the Man in the Moon, the Mother Theresa sticky bun and the Elvis Presley taco chip), and as a result are naturally compelled to believe things which are compelling but untrue .  As a result, it's better to be aware of these pitfalls than to succumb to them without reflection.  Being human, I know I am prone to these truth-seeking mistakes.  So when an issue is important, such as the existence of God, I do my best to see where I may be allowing wishful thinking to cloud my judgment.  This is partially the reason for my insistence in evidence for the existence of God.  (The primary reason is rhetorical: I had too many fundamentalists responding with absolute certainty there was a God, so I decided to call them on it.)   This isn't to say that I probe all important issues with scientific / rational / logical methods.  Rather, when I don't use those methods, I try to be sure to remind myself that my conclusions aren't airtight.  

This isn't as cold and calculating as it sounds.  If anything, it requires a very deep level of self-awareness.  Not only do I know what I think, I have a good sense of why I think it.  

Thus, I aim to achieve good sense of the degree of certainty I have in my beliefs.  I seek out what I know for certain to be true, what I am reasonably sure to be true, what I think is true, what I believe is true, and what I'd like to believe to be true, in declining order of certainty.  I know for certain the chair I'm sitting in exists, am reasonably sure my lunch won't poison me, believe that I'll make it home without accident, and would like to believe in a benevolent God and that I have an eternal soul.  The biggest mistake, in my mind, is to elevate any of those conclusions up a level of certainty.  

This is why I have a hard time with conclusions about God.  Given that God doesn't interact with us directly (in that he doesn't hang out in my cubicle or call me on the phone), nobody can know for certain He exists.  At best, given the level of evidence, one can be believe, so anyone who takes a stronger tone has made a serious error.  (If I'm charitable, I would say that at best someone could be reasonably sure.) 

Apologists for the existence of God try to set up a rigged game, one no one would play if it wasn't God they were talking about.  If a girlfriend said she wanted a relationship with me, but that by her own choice I would never see her directly, never hear from her directly, and the best evidence of her love for me would come indirectly, say from transcendent feelings coming through art or the appreciation of a sunrise, I would say, "thanks, but no thanks."  Why should a leap of faith be necessary when our very souls are supposedly in the balance?  


You say that "I perceive your world as being much smaller and narrower than mine...again, I marvel at that extraordinarily limited notion of 'truth' as being facts and evidence alone."  I suggest that the opposite is true.  After all, sure, a single fact or data point in a scientific description of something may seem prosaic and uninteresting at its face.  However, it bespeaks a lack of imagination to see the richness that these data present.  Without such supposedly arcane, uninteresting data, we wouldn't have any sense of, say, the vastness of space, or an appreciation of the long struggles our ancient ancestors suffered to have offspring and pass on their genes.  We wouldn't understand that within our DNA resides information about where we came from, how our ancestors migrated.  We wouldn't know that we are made of the very elements that existed in stars billions of years ago, and that their exploding deaths led to our existence.  Through science, humans have been capable of leaving our own planet, and looking back at it to ponder.  How is this limiting?  How is this prosaic?  Indeed, science has shown that the universe is much broader, more fascinating, expansive and complicated than any religion could have possibly imagined.  God didn't merely say "abracadabara" over the course of seven days and rested.  That is much more limiting and prosaic a point of view than the truth: the universe as we know it took many, many, patient years to reach its current state.  And it will continue for many long years after we are dead and gone.  This truth is as awesome as it is humbling.  

While scientists often seem antisocial and overly focused on minutiae, I submit that they are much more interested and appreciative of the universe than any artist, any shaman, any Pope.  Read Richard Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale," "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan, or just about anything by Stephen Jay Gould and you see the richness of their views of life.  I have hung out with artists and with scientists, and I would say that on balance the scientists possess more of a love for the world and a greater sense of awe, reverence, and wonder.  You may not see the poetry, the literature in their views, see nothing but alphabets instead of Dostoyevsky.  But I suggest that this is a limitation in your view of the universe, not mine. 

Thanks for your time,
Mike

Here's an email I received from a thoughtful theist.  Obviously I disagree.  So, I'll post my response in a followup:

(all emphasis is mine)

Dear Mike,

I am intrigued by your website, as I am intrigued by those of other atheists, and the arguments of my (sometimes militant) atheist friends.

I do find myself asking the same question over and over and over....why do you even ask for people to present an infallible argument or irrefutable evidence for Christianity?  In other words, why are you so wedded to logic and reason?  Leaving God out of it for a moment, do you not think that logic and reason are, ultimately, limiting?   Logic leads to 'truth" in in one, very specific, factual sense.  But there are other forms of truth. The world of art is a prime example of this: what logic is there to the elation and gut-wrenching response one can, at different times, feel when looking at a Van Gogh, the Sistine Chapel or the sculptures of Rodin?  Not to mention the ecstasy induced by listening to Mozart or Leonard Cohen or Royksoop or whoever else turns you on.  I'm sure it would be possible to trot out facts about  necessity of a biological attraction to bright colours or symmetry or the basis of all music in human mating calls or something else...but that really only goes so far for me. Getting hung up on logic and evidence is like being stuck on the 26 letters of the alphabet while other people have moved on to Dostoyevsky.
Our gut response to beauty and art is TRUE in a way that leaves logic a long way behind.

Christianity CANNOT be proven.  Some arguments can be formed on the basis of what evidence does exist, however, there is no evidence that can or will ever convince you of Christ's resurrection, the one event on which all of Christianity is pinned.  It cannot be proven. So what? Who, in two thousand years of history, has ever argued that it COULD be conclusively proven?* John Locke may be right in insinuating that Christians "use" evidence and reason – it's nice to have reiteration of things you already believe to be true – but no convert to Christianity ever based their conversion on evidence and reason. It's impossible.  In fact, as you must know perfectly well, one of the primary claims of Christianity (of Christ himself) has always been that, to be a 'believer', one needs to have the 'faith of a child'.  Paul takes this even further in 1 Corinthians 1:18:

"For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.  For it is written,
"I WILL DESTROY THE WISDOM OF THE WISE, AND THE CLEVERNESS OF THE CLEVER I WILL SET ASIDE."
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of  the world?
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God."
(I apologise for the length of this passage...I'm not trying to thump you over the head with Scripture, but the passage can't really be truncated any more than it is already.)

In any case, again, I'm not using this particular set of verses to try to force you into change your mind, and say "Oh, I see. You are absolutely right! Christianity appears to be complete
nonsense, therefore, according to this passage I should take it as truth!'   As I've stated already, I recognise that there is NO argument I could present that would alter your view.  I am simply using this passage to show that the notion of Christianity appearing to be foolishness is certainly not new to modern, 'enlightened' man in the last couple of centuries! The earliest Christians would have been mocked in precisely the same way that you (and so many others) mock us now.
Having said that, truth CAN be demonstrated in Christianity, although not in any way that a slave to logic can accept. Truth is shown in the transformation of lives that takes place when  people encounter the risen Christ.  Maybe you can bring to mind examples in your own coterie of family and friends where lives have been dramatically impacted by faith; maybe you can't .

Whatever.  Examples are everywhere...from Mother Theresa to the plain, self-sacrificing spinster nurse who wipes the old people's butts at the nursing home, to the alcoholic who
experiences full healing and regeneration. Knowledge of Christ transforms. Christianity is fundamentally a love relationship, a heady seduction, and Christ is the inexorable seducer.

Now, it would be pointless for me for me to conclude by saying, 'So, obviously, you just need to have faith.'  If you could, presumably you would!  I find that, as a person who does have faith, trying to explain or even articulate what that means is futile. It is, to use an appropriate simile, like trying to explain sight to a blind man. If you ain't got it, you aint' got it. ( If you do want to read someone who CAN articulate ideas about faith, read Kierkegaard.)

However, I would be happy just to know that I had caused you to pause and think about a few new things...though I doubt that I will do that either!  I perceive your world as being much smaller and narrower than mine...again, I marvel at that extraordinarily limited notion of "truth" as being facts and evidence alone.
Anyway, all the best.

Annie

* I would contend that it is only post-Reformation Protestants – American evangelicals in particular – who have increasingly become hung up on "proving" Christianity. Protestant Christianity has become obsessed with words and thought. In contrast, much in Catholic Christianity still retains the mystical, physical, sensual experience of God that is more "true" than any word-based argument (and, as it happens, I'm not a Catholic...not yet, anyway).