Alternative questions from Atheism in America by Melanie E. Brewster (Intro-1)

1.       What is the textbook definition of delusion? (2).

2.       Most historians trace the birth of the New Atheist movement to what date? (5).

3.       According to Victor Stenger, what is the difference between faith and science? (6).

4.       Who are the Four Horsemen of New Atheism? (Trivia questions – Who were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and who were the 1924 Four Horsemen of Notre Dame and what is their connection to Murfreesboro, TN. (6&10).

5.       What does Austin Dacey say unites thinking persons and free peoples across ethnic, national, and creedal lines, and in its unfolding through public conversation, our moral lives are measured out? (9)

6.       The feminist and atheist blogger Greta Christina presents a call to arms against what? (10).

7.       Why does deconversion continue “to be a slow and painstaking process for many people”? (13).

8.       What did Rebecca Vitsmun say to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and why did it go viral? (16).

 Alternative discussion questions.

1.       According to Brewster, “Reports of the demographic composition of atheist populations routinely show that atheists tend to have privileged identity statuses in society (i.e., well-educated white men of higher socioeconomic status.) What problems does that create for the atheist movement and what can be done to create a more balanced demographic composition?

2.       What are some of the challenges that an atheist experiences when she or he goes public?

3.       Alvin Burstein was raised in a Jewish environment, attended Orthodox Sabbath services, and performed his bar mitzvah and then realized it was “none of the above for me.” What role if any should schools play in helping students like Alvin identify their non-religious feelings or is this the parents’s responsibility? If it is left to a minister, then there is a natural biased to start. Can a minister counsel a child on being non-religious?

How can I change the mind of a deeply devoted believer?

I don’t believe that I should attempt to change the mind of a deeply devoted religious believer to atheism or an atheist to fundamentalist Christianity. I’m inclined to agree with Baggini’s suggestion to keep an open-minded committed to truth and rational inquiry.

However, does this mean that I can never engage in a discussion with someone who might hold a well-formed ideology? No. I think it behooves me to learn as much as I can about multiple views so if I encounter someone who wants to talk about their views, I can listen with understanding and pose some questions about issues that I have difficulty with to engage them in the discussion.

For me, probably one of the best model’s to follow in this approach is Abraham Lincoln.

Here are five tips from Ed Mannino ( http://edmannino.com/blog/abraham-lincoln-trial-lawyer/) about President Abraham Lincoln who was a noted trial lawyer before he became President.

Tips

1. Prepare and be diligent.

Lincoln once observed that “The leading rule for the lawyer…is diligence.” The first obligation of the trial lawyer is to meticulously gather, sort, and understand the facts of the case. He captured the importance of preparation memorably by stating “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

In Lincoln’s view, rhetoric will not save sloppy preparation. As Lincoln put it, “If anyone, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.”

2. Use logic and detachment.

Historian Julie Fenster has described Lincoln as having had a scientific mind. In his trial work, he favored the use of logic to advance the theme of his cases, rarely resorting to emotion or flowery rhetoric. Lincoln would often, in closing argument, carefully recite what he believed to be the opposition’s best case and then tear it down point by point. His law partner William Herndon described Lincoln’s trial approach as being the “patient but relentless unfolding of a case…reasoning through logic, analogy and comparison.”

3. Develop the key facts, and let your theme emerge from them.

Lincoln would select the facts he perceived as the critical facts, and utilize only them in his presentation. With those facts as the base, he would let his theme emerge from them, and tie his argument to them. Lincoln believed, as most top trial lawyers do, that “less is more.”

4. Ignore small points.

Lincoln would typically concede points made by his adversary when he saw them as unimportant in the overall context of his case theme. His focus was always on that point or points which his diligent preparation had identified as the heart of his case. In other words, don’t lengthen a trial by using a kitchen sink approach of dumping all the facts in front of the jury box. This only bores the jurors, obscures what is necessary to win your case, and unduly lengthens the trial.

5. Use simple language.

Adam Gopnik has aptly described Lincoln’s style in the Gettysburg Address as “summation by simplicity.” Lincoln employed the same approach in his trial work. He used simple language, particularly at the end of his closing argument, where single syllable words predominated. As he told one of his partners, it is necessary to “shoot down low, and the common people will understand you…If you shoot too high your bullets will go over the heads of the masses, and only hit those who need no hitting.” This also required a conversational style of talking with — rather than to — the jurors. Lincoln would take the jurors with him on a guided tour of the facts and logically set the base for them to draw the right conclusions. This, he rightly believed, would lead to a verdict for his client in most cases.

Alternative questions from Atheism J-B 5-7 Jan 30

1.       What is fundamental to the origin of atheism? (77).

2.       Despite its faults, what must be seen by any reasonable person as an important stage in the progression of Western society? (79).

3.        How can atheist distance themselves from the terrors of Stalin? (88).

4.       It is necessary for any defense of atheism to address the challenge posed by what? (92).

5.       What are three traditional arguments for God’s existence? (94-98).

6.       The mere fact that people use the same grounds – personal conviction – to justify belief in different, incompatible religions is enough to show what? (100).

7.       The existence of avoidable suffering in the world seems to mean one of three things. What are they? (102).

 Alternative discussion questions.

1.       What is wrong with an argument that universal belief in God is an argument for God’s existence?

2.       The believer often begins with a conviction that God exists that is even stronger than the logician’s belief in their first principles. This belief trumps all reason. The best we can do therefore is to show believers who may think that they have rational grounds for their beliefs that they are wrong. Do you agree or disagree, why or why not? 

Why do I get up in the mornings?

What do you think of the "nihilistic mantra"? 57 What's your answer to the question "why do you bother to get up in the mornings"?

Why do I get up in the mornings? This is really a complicated question if you consider it from the perspective of the lifetime of a human being. We go through different stages of our life and they can be subject to internal and external influences that affect the decision to get up. If we discount the physiological functions that require us to get out of bed unless we are prepared for the consequences, then we can focus on the activities for the day and the motivation for living. We also must assume that a person’s mind has not been impaired.

For me, I want to get up and learn about what is happening in the world, to learn something today that I didn’t know before, and to contribute in some small way to make things better. I look forward to the changing seasons and marvel at the life around me. Sometimes the simplest things can capture my attention and fascinate me. As I look out my window in the spring, I can see birds building their nests and contemplate on what gave them the knowledge to be able to weave those twigs and threads into a place where they can lay their eggs and raise their young. I am intrigued that they have been doing this for millions of years and will be doing it long after I am gone.

How many of us walked across the campus this day and never noticed the trees, some that have been standing there before we were born and have stood there in the heat and the cold? Some have shaded us on hot summer days or in the fall on game day. How many of us looked up into the sky to see the clouds? I want to experience life while I can and that is why I get up in the mornings.

Alternative questions and discussion question

Alternative questions from Atheism by Julian Baggini

1.       Once we have undertaken the basic commitment of someone who has human feeling, what are the resources that can help us think about the right thing to do? (55).

2.       Belief in a creator God does not automatically provide life with meaning, but it can satisfy some people’s desires in what two ways? (59).

3.        What is one reason why atheists can claim that life is more meaningful for them than it is for many religious people who see this world as a kind of preparation for the next? (65-6).

4.       What is arguably the secular orthodoxy of our day? (67). Trivia ? – what famous actor and in what movie was it said? Hint: See link in discussion question.

5.       The greatest proof that something is possible is to show what? (72).

 Alternative discussion question.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/35405-11-robin-williams-dead-poets-society-quotes-that-will-inspire-you-to-carpe-diem

1.       From the above link here are three quotes:

a.       "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

b.       "Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, 'Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.' Don't be resigned to that. Break out!"

c.       "Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone."

How do they relate to finding meaning and purpose in our lives?

Discussion question related to my religious upbringing.

Both my mother and father were very religious in studying the Bible and praying, but they never attended a formal church during my lifetime. As a young boy, I attended the local Methodist Sunday school, but stopped before I was ten. One of my classmates in elementary school was struck and killed while waiting for the bus by a young man who fell asleep while he was driving returning home after working the night shift. I didn’t understand why God would have allowed that to happen and my mother’s explanation didn’t help.

But growing up on the farm I had already had many doubts about passages in the Bible that didn’t reconcile with what I observed. I watched cows, cats, and dogs labor and give birth to calves, kittens, and puppies, so I knew early on that there was no way that any woman named Eve could have been born without a uterus and therefore bearing children was a normal mammalian process and not due to any sin.

We also had a variety of fruit trees and I ate the fruit and knew it didn’t carry any special knowledge of anything, and I couldn't conceive of why a tree with the supposed characteristic of possessing fruit with the knowledge of good and evil would have been planted in the garden anyway. Who would be eating it and what happened when the fruit ripened, did it fall to the ground and deteriorate like all the fruit from our trees and what if an animal ate it, like the deer did with some of the fruit from our trees, would they acquire knowledge of good and evil? As far as I was concerned, the fruit was just juicy and tasty.

As a little boy playing with one of our male Beagles, I was rubbing his tummy and noticed that he had nipples and I asked my mom why, since he was a boy dog. I remember her asking me why I had them. That question remains with me today, because there is no reason for man to have non-functioning nipples unless woman was created first and they then became non-functional in a man just as they are on a male Beagle.

At night, I would gaze up into the stars, there was no light pollution, and when I learned how far some of those stars, like our sun were from Earth, I realized that if I were on them, I wouldn’t even be able to see Earth so I began to think that in the great universe we were a pretty insignificant part.

About this time, I began to question all the time and effort throughout history spent on trying to determine how we got here and all the people killed because they believed or didn’t believe a certain way. I wondered how much better the world would have been if all that time had been channeled into trying to make life as good as we could for ourselves and others, but as I got older, I also realized that other people have different views and reasons for believing as they do and I doubt that that will change much in the next ten thousand years. In a billion years more or less the Earth may cease to exist and what remains of any of us will long be gone with our only consolation that the elements which comprise us will probably still exist in some part of the vast universe.

Write a description of "God"...

Posted for Don Enss-

Alternative questions from Atheism by Julian Baggini

1. What is Baggini’s main aim in this book? (2&7). 
2. Baggini believes that what “form” of naturalism lies at the core of atheism? (4). 
3. According to Baggini, what best explains the existence of evil in the world? (29). 
4. According to Baggini, if any one thing distinguishes us as individual persons, it is what? (18-19). 

Alternative discussion questions.

• Write a description of “God” and how if at all, it has evolved since you were a child. Please do not include your name on the description. Give them to Dr. Oliver, he will shuffle them, and redistribute for review. Please let him know if you receive your own paper back. Read and pass to your right. After you have read the second one, return them to Dr. Oliver. Then let’s have an open discussion on whether the perspective in the description was different than yours and whether it gave you something to think about. Avoid critiquing the perspective for now. 
• In the very beginning of human history, what do you think was the focus of early homo sapiens?

A&P funnies

Introductions

We begin with an invitation: tell us who you are, and why you're here. We'll introduce ourselves in class and online (hit "comments" below). I'll start.

I'm the prof for this course, PHIL 3310, Atheism & Philosophy. I hold degrees from the University of Missouri and Vanderbilt, and I'm here because the question of god continues to perplex and divide people. I'd like for this course to address that perplexity and lessen that division, by exploring the implications of a godless universe. I believe we can, with the right intentions and a willingness to hear one another out, surmount our differences.

I also teach courses on Bioethics, Environmental Ethics, and Happiness, among others.

Enough about me.

Who are you? Why are you here? (Bear in mind, as you reply, that this is an open site. There's nothing preventing the world from reading what we post here, except of course the world's own distraction.)

God: A Human History

Getting a jumpstart on the semester, thanks to an inquiry from new A&P classmate Don about Reza Aslan's God: A Human History. Saw Aslan on CSPAN's BookTV recently, where he made a more favorable impression than that reported by the Times reviewer who rejects Aslan's pantheism.

The idea of the book is fairly simple: Human spirituality can be explained in one cohesive, linear story about our universal desire to see ourselves in God. Aslan is skeptical of religion, which he sees as “little more than a ‘language’ made up of symbols and metaphors.” He’s more interested in “the ineffable experience of faith,” which for him is “too expansive to be defined by any one religious tradition.” While he claims he’s not interested in proving or disproving the existence of God, by the end, his metaphysical commitments become clear. He believes God is universal, present in everyone and everywhere, and no more capable of making moral demands on humanity than any person. “The only way I can truly know God is by relying on the only thing I can truly know: myself,” Aslan writes. It doesn’t matter whether people believe in God or not, he implies. “We are, every one of us, God.”

My response to that, to quote Monty Python: "I'm not."

But in Aslan's defense: there's really nothing "fairly simple" about pantheism, unless you want to call Albert Einstein and the author of Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata fairly simple... in which case, to quote MP again, "I'll have to ask you to step outside."

Aslan is an intriguing figure, that rare public intellectual who has repudiated the worst excesses of his native tradition without, as it were, relinquishing its residual value. And, he's highly quotable. For instance,

“...most people in the ancient world, did not make a sharp distinction between myth and reality. The two were intimately tied together in their spiritual experience. That is to say, they were less interested in what actually happened, than in what it meant. It would have been perfectly normal, indeed expected, for a writer in the ancient world, to tell tales of gods and heroes, whose fundamental facts would have been recognized as false, but whose underlying message would have been seen as true.”
― Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Aslan on CSPAN inDepth