The leaders in the New Atheist Movement like to equate religious belief with mental illness. While we can expect such rhetoric from activists, what is troubling is that the same people typically posture as advocates for science. This is troubling because science continues to show that religious belief is actually good for mental health. For example, consider this study that was announced just yesterday:

Research shows that religion and spirituality are linked to positive physical and mental health; however, most studies have focused on people with life threatening diseases. A new study from the University of Missouri-Columbia shows that religion helps many individuals with disabilities adjust to their impairments and gives new meaning to their lives.

According to the study, persons facing impending death may use religion to help them accept their condition, come to terms with unresolved life issues, and prepare for death. However, the study suggests that religion may be an equally, if not more important, coping mechanism for persons with chronic disabilities such as traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke and arthritis.

Scientific American has published in its October 2007 issue a lengthy review of past and present neurophysiological research - using everything from EEG to fMRI and everything in between - in the scientific quest to understand God's interactions with human beings. Or maybe just understand human beings' communion with God.

Searching for God in the Brain covers the spectrum of scientific interpretations of the findings too. From those who dismiss the evidence as anything but errant brain states to those who think it may be possible to use the knowledge to help people overcome depression, enjoy their lives more, even better their chances for defeating dread diseases that science already knows happens more often in people of faith than in people who have no spiritual leanings or ties.

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Political activist Richard Dawkins continues to get more extreme. According to this news article, he preached the following message to a standing ovation:

In his speech, Dawkins portrayed a black-and-white intellectual battle between atheism and religion. He denounced the "preposterous nonsense of religious customs" and compared religion to racism. He also gave no quarter to moderate or liberal believers, asserting that "so-called moderate Christianity is simply an evasion."

"If you've been taught to believe it by moderates, what's to stop you from taking the next step and blowing yourself up?" he said.

Dawkins also continued his attack on relgious parents.

But the real news here is that it looks (to me) as if Sam Harris is starting to get a little nervous by the intensity of the anti-religious hate engendered by this new movement.

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For a long time, creationists have been trying to portray evolution as a religion and have failed. But with a new book on the horizon, Thank God for Evolution!, written by Reverend Michael Dowd, America's evolutionary evangelist, the creationists may finally have a case.

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The critics complaining about appearing in the "Expelled" film on false pretenses shouldn't feel so glum. Turns out other documentaries have also sugar-coated the truth to its interviewees. Like the CNN documentary, "God's Warriors":

CNN's three part series God's Warriors was not journalism's or even that ubiquitous cable network's finest six hours. Cobbling together two hours of disjointed footage and commentary, CNN ostensibly exposed many of us - in Israel and the US - as radical Jewish warriors: No different or any less dangerous than those among the world's 1 billion Muslims who are radical in their way too. …

[The CNN producer] learned of our JCRC [Jewish Community Relations Council] through her mother, a non-Jewish resident of a Chicago suburb who admired our leading role in advocating an end to the Darfur genocide. It was precisely this type of activity, the noble pursuit of justice by grassroots people motivated by religious impulses and acting through religious institutions that the young producer claimed the network and its star correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, wanted to explore. After all, she told us, it is such a decent, important activity and so much more real, common and under-reported than the conventional stereotypes promoted by the mass media. She insisted that CNN's aim was not to focus - as others do ad nauseam - on the radical fringes among the Jews, Christians and Muslims.

HT: Verum Serum

Let's say that someone proposes God created the world 6000 years ago. "Aha!" Richard Dawkins might say, arguing this belief about God is a scientific hypothesis. So let's look to science. My goodness, science says the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. So there you have it "“ science has tested and disproved the existence of God.

Oh, but not so fast. All science did was test when the Earth came into existence. That is, while Dawkins might think that science has falsified the claim " God created the Earth 6000 years ago," all science has done is falsify the claim "God created the Earth 6000 years ago."

Let's say that science determined the Earth was 6000 years old. Would that mean science detected the existence of God? Would that mean science detected a divine act of Creation? No, the only thing that science detected was the age of the Earth.

Dawkins doesn't seem to understand basic points in theology and science "“ God is not some part of Nature that can be measured and in science, measurement is not something we can discard. At best, the theist or atheist can argue that science can detect the effects of God's interventions in Nature. But detecting an effect is not detecting the cause. And if the cause is in some sense outside of Nature, science can never get to it. Science would be stalled at the effect. And if all you have is the effect, science, by its very nature, will choose the causes it can reach to explain that effect.

According to the PewResearchCenter :

Interestingly, many of those who reject natural selection recognize that scientists themselves fully accept Darwin's theory. In the same 2006 Pew poll, nearly two-thirds of adults (62%) say that they believe that scientists agree on the validity of evolution. Moreover, Americans, including religious Americans, hold science and scientists in very high regard. A 2006 survey conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University found that most people (87%) think that scientific developments make society better. Among those who describe themselves as being very religious, the same number "“ 87% "“ share that opinion.

So as we can see, the data clearly show that religious people are pro-science.

So what is at work here? How can Americans say that they respect science and even know what scientists believe and yet still disagree with the scientific community on some fundamental questions? The answer is that much of the general public simply chooses not to believe the scientific theories and discoveries that seem to contradict long-held religious or other important beliefs.

When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll. Indeed, in a May 2007 Gallup poll, only 14% of those who say they do not believe in evolution cite lack of evidence as the main reason underpinning their views; more people cite their belief in Jesus (19%), God (16%) or religion generally (16%) as their reason for rejecting Darwin's theory.

This reliance on religious faith may help explain why so many people do not see science as a direct threat to religion. Only 28% of respondents in the same Time poll say that scientific advancements threaten their religious beliefs. These poll results also show that more than four-fifths of respondents (81%) say that "recent discoveries and advances" in science have not significantly impacted their religious views. In fact, 14% say that these discoveries have actually made them more religious. Only 4% say that science has made them less religious.

Fascinating. This explains why people like Dawkins and Myers are such good allies for the Creationists. When Dawkins bashes religion with one hand and proposes/explains Darwinian evolution with the other hand, because of his position, he effectively frames the situation where working people perceive they must make a choice between their religious faith and evolution. And people clearly choose their faith in overwhelming numbers.

Many people, on both sides of the aisle, view this all as a "culture war." If we get beyond the slogan and ponder this description from an objective perspective, we would recognize two things. First, there is no true "war." That is just a metaphor to describe a conflict of values and priorities in a diverse, democratic society. Second, what you do have are different cultures. It is this second point that is most significant given that the social sciences have provided us a wealth of information about cultural differences. Most significant is that different cultures come with different modes of cognition and different perceptions. This is why it is often folly for one culture to accuse another of "lying."

A Telic Thoughts member introduced some quotes of Sean Carroll echoing a familiar theme that pits science against religion. It's an old knee-jerk tactic about which even some atheists have had second thoughts. As Michael Shermer notes in his article Rational Atheism Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. That incidentally also accounts for some negative reactions toward intelligent design. As long as criticism of mainstream evolution and abiogenesis was "anti" in nature there was an instinctive feel that it was eventually doomed. ID puts forth positve inferences and for that reason alone has a different impact.

Carroll is quoted as stating:

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Here's something from Time that could stir a little discussion. From Matters of Morality:

People disagree passionately about science and morality because they care about them, and when their disagreements involve public policy, the forum for resolving them will be politics. Neither religion nor science can expect a free pass in the court of public opinion or in the voting booth.

Today's lesson in history comes courtesy of Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything:

"One of Lenin's great achievements, in my opinion, is to create a secular Russia. The power of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition, is probably never going to recover from what he did to it."

Interview with PBS, 2005

Indeed. Some of Lenin's "great achievements" were the executions of 8.000 people who resisted his theft of church relics. To quote the great man himself: "[W]e can (and therefore must) pursue the acquisition of [church] valuables with the most ferocious and merciless energy, stopping at nothing in suppressing all resistance."

You know, before the New Atheists start comparing themselves to civil rights movements, they ought to confront the authoritarian tendencies displayed by some of its prominent spokesmen.