Phil Zuckerman Tries to Argue That Atheists Are Morally Superior. And Fails.

Phil Zuckerman is a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.  According to his Wikipedia page, Zuckerman’s academic work seems largely focused on defending and promoting secularism and atheism.  So it looks to me that he is more of an academic atheist apologist/activist than a true scholar.  And my impression is supported by a recent article he published entitled, Staunch atheists show higher morals than the proudly pious, from the pandemic to climate change: When it comes to the most pressing moral issues of the day, hard-core secularists exhibit much more empathy.

Zuckerman argues, “When it comes to the most pressing moral issues of the day, hard-core secularists exhibit much more empathy, compassion, and care for the well-being of others than the most ardently God-worshipping.”

While this is clearly something we might expect an atheist apologist to believe and promote, Zuckerman never demonstrates this to be the case.  He “shows” it only in the sense that his conformation bias allows him to carefully craft a narrative to discover what he has previously concluded.  Let me dissect his article to expose his sloppy, apologist thinking.

Deadly Incompetence

Given that the Biden administration has resurrected and empowered the Taliban and ISIS, it comes as no surprise that deadly suicide bombings are back in the news. It’s all such a shame because none of this needed to happen. It happened because of the stupidity, myopia, and incompetence of President Biden.

Hemant Mehta Tries to Refute Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Let me repost a recent comment from Dhay:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is another who has condemned “The Biden administration’s cool, calculated and yet incompetent abandonment of the Afghan people…”, in her UnHerd article entitled, “Biden’s most heartless betrayal” and subtitled, “America cares more about pronouns than the fate of Afghan women”.

Ali drew attention to the plight of nineteen million Afghani women who will now be oppressed by Sharia law.

The Biden administration’s cool, calculated and yet incompetent abandonment of the Afghan people stems from two core problems.

https://unherd.com/2021/08/bidens-most-heartless-betrayal/

The first is – I’m paraphrasing – the failure to consider the effect on wider foreign policy and on the US’s standing and influence in the world. But in this long and ascerbic article she’s also criticising Woke liberals, Woke liberals in general:

The second problem informing Biden’s approach concerns the moral decay of Western civilisation. When a fish decays, the head rots first. The same can be said for the West. We’ve become so focused on microaggressions in America that we have lost sight of the macroaggressions happening to women around the world.

In my latest book, Prey, I argue that the modern-day feminist movement in the West does not take seriously the concerns of women in working-class communities, many of whom have immigrant backgrounds, and who face a steady rise of sexual harassment and assault on the streets of their own neighbourhoods.

In today’s perverse American culture, however, more attention is devoted to the use of preferred gender pronouns than to the plight of women whose most basic rights — to education, personal autonomy, the right to be present in a public space — are either removed or under serious threat.

Yep, Ali is saying that Woke liberals are treating macroaggressions against women – that’s real harm against women around the world including women in the West and women in America – as less important than microaggressions – causes of annoyance – against people who want you to use their preferred pronouns.

That’s my introduction over, now to the point.

What Biden Has Unleashed Into the World

The scene at Kabul airport several hours ago per source from an NGO who is trying to get people out. Main problem is that it's impossible to pass the gates and get to the planes even if you are on an evacuees list pic.twitter.com/b3bZn5B34Z

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) August 21, 2021

New video out of Kabul Airport. #Afghanistan

pic.twitter.com/sDBMeugCEo

— FJ (@Natsecjeff) August 21, 2021

Source sends me another disturbing video of violence and chaos outside the Kabul airport
The video was today, approx 1200-1300 Kabul time, and immediately outside airport at the north gate, per source of video. pic.twitter.com/Nres2uEcyq

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) August 21, 2021

Biden Does Not Know How Many Americans are in Afghanistan

More Horrific Incompetence:

The White House on Friday was still unable to say how many Americans remained stranded in Afghanistan, while appearing to describe the situation on the ground in Kabul as more dire than senior administration officials have acknowledged in recent days.

Here’s an idea. Before you start pulling out of Afghanistan, you a) determine how many Americans are there and b) put in place a plan to get them out. Appararently, Biden and his administration were too stupid to figure out something so obvious. They never made it to a).

“As of a few weeks ago, we had already begun reaching out to all American citizens who were in Afghanistan via email, via text, via messaging app to hear from them and to understand their plans and work with them to get them out, if they want to get out,” Bedingfield said. “And so that is a massive logistical operation that’s underway.”

Wow. They just threw this together “a few weeks ago?” They knew about the coming withdrawl over six months ago. Why wasn’t such a network set up back then? Idiots.

Not Afraid of Covid

While atheists such as PZ Myers continue to wet themselves because of Covid, I see no reason to curl up into their fetal position.  I’m just not afraid that I am going to die from covid.  And for good reason – the numbers back me up.

Check out this information about the delta variant infections in the densely populated LA county:

While L.A. County numbers for the Delta variant have not been reported for August, as of August 21 Delta had risen to 98% of all tests genomically sequenced in California. 

Fully-vaccinated people represented only 5% of L.A.’s hospitalized Covid patients in April. By July, that number had risen to 13%. Overall, however, the percentages of vaccinated people who test positive, are hospitalized or die from Covid remain low — all less than 1%. Of the nearly 5.15 million fully-vaccinated county residents as of Tuesday, 27,331 have tested positive. That’s a rate of 0.53%. Only 742 were hospitalized, for a rate of 0.014%. Only 68 have died, which makes for a rate of 0.0013%.

Only 68 out of 5,150,000 died.  Sure, I could die.  Just as I could die in a car accident.  It would suck if it happens, but it makes no sense to let Fear of Such Death control my life.  Imagine not driving a car because I could die from it. What’s more, just how many of those 68 died because of Covid and how many died that also happened to be infected with Covid?  Don’t know, but this is most interesting:

Horrific Incompetence Continues

From the Washington Post:

“National security officials in the Biden administration told a bipartisan group of Senate staffers on Tuesday that about 10,000 to 15,000 U.S. citizens remain in Afghanistan, according to two Senate aides.

During a time of crisis in a foreign country, U.S. citizens are instructed to notify the local U.S. Embassy of their presence so diplomats can work to assist them. That creates a database for the United States to estimate the number of Americans in need of help. In media briefings, the State Department has declined to divulge its estimates of Americans in Afghanistan.

According to the aides, the administration officials — from the State and Defense departments, as well as the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff — also told the assembled Senate staffers that there is no plan to evacuate Americans who are outside Kabul, as they do not have a way of getting through the Taliban checkpoints outside the Afghan capital.”

Horrific Incompetence

One can only marvel at the idiocy and horrific incompetence of the Biden administration as it continues to screw up its exit from Afghanistan. I was going to say it looks like amateurs are in charge, but then realized amateurs would likely do a better job than the clowns in the White House.

Oh yeah, and didn’t people like Hemant Mehta insist that good Christians were supposed to vote for such an reckless idiot?

Goldilocks and Evidence for Christian Theism

Let me provide what I consider to be a significant piece of evidence for the truth of Christian theism.

It all begins with the Goldilocks Principle.  Wikipedia describes it as follows:

The Goldilocks principle is named by analogy to the children’s story, The Three Bears, in which a little girl named Goldilocks tastes three different bowls of porridge, and she finds that she prefers porridge which is neither too hot nor too cold, but has just the right temperature.[1] Since the children’s story is well known across cultures, the concept of “just the right amount” is easily understood and is easily applied to a wide range of disciplines, including developmental psychology, biology,[2] economics and engineering.

What fascinates me is how well the Goldilocks principle describes life.  Many are probably familiar with the use of the principle to detect other planets that could possibly support life:

In astrobiology, the Goldilocks zone refers to the habitable zone around a star. The Rare Earth Hypothesis uses the Goldilocks principle in the argument that a planet must neither be too far away from, nor too close to a star and galactic center to support life, while either extreme would result in a planet incapable of supporting life.   Such a planet is colloquially called a “Goldilocks Planet”.

Yet what is often overlooked is that Life itself is built around the principle.  In physiology, the central concept is something known as homeostasis.  The dictionary defines it as follows:

the tendency of a system, especially the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function.

The ability or tendency of an organism or a cell to maintain internal equilibrium by adjusting its physiological processes.

Wikipedia defines it as:

Homeostasis is the property of a system within an organism in which a variable, such as the concentration of a substance in solution, is actively regulated to remain very nearly constant.[1] Examples of homeostasis include the regulation of body temperature, the pH of extracellular fluid, or the concentrations of sodium, potassium and calcium ions, as well as that of glucose in the blood plasma, despite changes in the environment, diet, or level of activity. Each of these variables is controlled by a separate regulator or homeostatic mechanism, which, together, maintain life.

Now note this – homeostasis, which is near the very essence of life, is basically the Goldilocks Principle.  Think of it this way – you don’t want your blood pressure to be too high.  But you also don’t want it to be too low.  The body is built to correct for each extreme.  The same would true for just about every aspect of your body.  Blood sugar?  Not too high and not too low.  Heart rate?  Not too high and not too low.  White blood cell count?  Not too high and not too low.  On and on it goes.  And it even extends into the very workings of your cells.  For example, there are rather clever mechanisms within your cells to ensure that the intracellular iron levels are not too high (which would generate toxic free radicals) but not too low (which would disable important metabolic enzymes).

In fact, a violation of the Goldilocks principle is typically linked to disease.  Eat too much and experience obesity.  Eat too little and experience malnutrition.  Put too much stress on a joint and watch it tear.  Put too little stress on a joint and watch it atrophy.  And when something goes wrong in the body?  It’s typically because the Goldilocks  principle has been disabled somewhere.  Too much thyroid hormone?  It could be Graves Disease.  Too little thyroid hormone?  Could be a goiter.

What I am pointing out here is not controversial; it is well known that homeostasis is a defining feature of life.  All I am adding is that homeostasis is essentially the same as the Goldilocks principle.

What does Christian theism have to do with any of this?

Two Approaches to Covid

Atheist PZ Myers is in a state of panic:

The university is not requiring vaccinations. The reason? “The state of Minnesota’s law concerning requiring vaccination has a broad exemption clause that includes people willing to provide a notarized statement that they have conscientiously held beliefs against vaccination.” Right. All you have to do is say you don’t believe in vaccinations in front of a notary, and you’re exempt. It’s not as if we could say that’s fine, no jab, no classes…oh, wait, we could.

They also say, “As the situation evolves, a mandate may be considered.” OK then, the situation has evolved, consider it. Consider it right fucking now.

PZ is so afraid that he sends off angry letters to those in charge:

I’ve got concerns. I’ve been told I must teach an in-person class in the fall; I’ve asked the university administration if I can at least require masks in my classes, and have only heard silence.

I’ve written to both the president of the University of Minnesota warning them that they’re failing to meet their responsibilities, and to the chancellor of my campus to let them know that they’re compromising the safety of students and staff. There has been no response.

I’m just saying, if you send your child to the university, and they come down with a serious, debilitating illness (or worse), and you’ve got a lawyer looking for witnesses who told the university administrators in advance that their policies were inadequate and dangerous, well, you’ve got my name. But let’s all hope it doesn’t come to that.

It’s interesting that a fully vaccinated biologist would be in such a state of panic, but then again, atheists are usually very afraid of death.

I prefer the more rational and enlightened approach of Andrew Sullivan: