PZ Myers On False Equivalence of "Faith"

[stopbush]

"I so detest that line of argument, that attempt at setting up a false equivalence, reducing all words to equal lies. If the only way you can support your beliefs is by claiming that all ideas, from Scientology and Young Earth Creationism to Ohm's Law and the theory of evolution, are equally matters of faith, then your only line of defense is to endorse ignorance and the pretense that everything we know is stupid. It is contemptible.

"But sure, let's ask what they actually have faith in. Pin the bastards down, I say, and let's hammer out the details of their faith — don't let them retreat into woolly-headed platitudes like Karen Armstrong with vague claims that they revere transcendence, but find out what Christians really think.

"Sam Harris has done so, with a poll that asks atheists and believers what they really believe. The results are amusing.

"Over 65% of Christians believe angels really exist. Over 70% think the Bible is the most important book in the world. 75% think Jesus' execution atoned for our sins. Over 50% think the book of Genesis is a true account of our origins. 75% believe Jesus was literally born of a virgin. Over 70% literally believe in a Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

"In virtually every case, atheists are nearly unanimous in rejecting all of those ideas."

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/ask_em_what_they_really_think.php

[charlie]

1. I always figured

anyone making the "it's all faith" assertion was publicly renouncing his skeptic privileges. If no proposition is verifiable, then he'll have to cede that every tinfoil Bilderberger UFOnaut has a grasp on reality as solid as his. But that doesn't happen. I've seen plenty of the same faithers ridiculing people in the conspiracy dungeons.

[trotsky]

2. Those graphs should be shoved in the face...

of every Christian in R/T who INSISTS that "real" Christians don't believe in creationism, hell, biblical literalism, etc., etc. Total bullshit.

On edit: Just realized, I should specify, the graphs to which I refer are on Sam Harris' page showing the results of his survey.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. It was a self-selected internet survey

and so doesn't tell us much about a proper cross-section (heh) of Christians.

On May 5, 2008, we posted links to four online surveys on this website, seeking the opinions of atheists and committed Christians on a wide variety of topics. Over the next few weeks, we received 36,781 finished surveys (some respondents completed all four, some fewer).
...
Below, we present the data on those who responded with a 1 or a 5 to both of these statements. The primary purpose of this poll was not opinion research per se. Rather, we were designing stimuli for an experiment that we are now running on atheists and Christians using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The goal of this survey was to produce stimuli of two categories – factual and religious – which would behave appropriately once we put members of each group inside our MRI scanner. We needed factual statements that both atheists and Christians would accept with the same order of confidence and religious statements that would divide them more or less diametrically.


In addition to vetting our experimental stimuli, however, we took the opportunity to solicit the responses of atheists and Christians to psychological and social statements that were not strictly relevant to our ongoing neuroimaging work. Our (unanalyzed) results can be viewed on the pages below. For each statement the number of respondents averaged around 5000, 80-90% of whom were atheists. The numbers of Christian responses ranged from 254-787.

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/survey-what-do-atheists-and-christians-believe-and-how-strongly-do-they-bel/

FWIW, the links to: people's beliefs about themselves ("Psychological Beliefs"): http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/survey-results-psychological-beliefs/
"Personal Data and Attitudes Towards Science, Journalism, Politics, etc": http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/survey-results-personal-data-and-attitudes-towards-science-journalism-polit/

The results of the fMRI tests: http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/the-neural-correlates-of-religious-and-nonreligious-belief/

[trotsky]

5. Aw, bummer.

Interesting results nonetheless!

[Soylent Brice]

4. i'm going through those graphs right now, and it's really opbvious

that a lot of christians have some doubt about their own beliefs.

pretty telling.