Norm, like many others, is hung up about religion. He posts quite often on religious subjects and has a running conflict with religious people. It's a common hobby and we've heard a lot of it lately due to ID, Islam and American evangelicals in the news and in government.

You know those lines from Tom Lehrer's 'Folk Song Army'?

Though he [Franco] may have won all the battles, We had all the good songs.

I think of them more or less whenever I see the religious having a go at those of us who aren't. We seem, at least, to have the better arguments.

hmmm, I find both of Norm's assertions questionable.

Never could stand folk music since it was so transparently phony - city brats and trustafarians pretending to be jest folks. Besides, it wasn't good music for the most part. It wasn't music at all by some definitions. The exception of sorts is Dylan, but he wasn't a folkie. He was an artist and musician who sang some folk songs of sorts when he was young and needed a gig. He even made fun of folk singers, not that this is indicative of much since he made fun of many things. It warmed my heart when he broke out of that straight jacket. I was as pleased as the folkies were outraged since it confirmed my insights about his early work, and justified my biases. Can't stand folk music.

I like real folk music, and especially like classical and jazz arrangements of traditional folk songs. And I really get off when classical and jazz musicians get together to jam on folk songs. Fusion fusion. (Try Appalachian Journey with Yo-Yo Ma/Edgar Meyer/Mark O'Conner and Allison Krause on a couple of tunes).

I also don't find anti-religious arguments to be good. The article that Norm criticizes in this case isn't well argued, but neither is Norm's rebuttal. Religion just isn't something you can distinguish yourself arguing either for or against. Like folk songs, secular arguments against religion don't ring true, don't say what the arguers seem to think they say. They resemble nothing so much as arguments between two religions, two sets of believers with different beliefs.

Don Boudreaux makes more useful comments about religion and believers in his post Are Humans Genetically Disposed to Pray to the State?, which discusses Paul Bloom's Atlantic article (fee).

Bloom’s purpose is to explain the nearly universal human belief in supernatural beings. He and other researchers find, from studying infants, that humans are genetically equipped to distinguish physical phenomena from psychological phenomena:

Understanding of the physical world and understanding of the social world can be seen as akin to two distinct computers in a baby's brain, running separate programs and performing separate tasks. The understandings develop at different rates: the social one emerges somewhat later than the physical one. They evolved at different points in our prehistory; our physical understanding is shared by many species, whereas our social understanding is a relatively recent adaptation, and in some regards might be uniquely human…..

Babies have two systems that work in a cold-bloodedly rational way to help them anticipate and understand—and, when they get older, to manipulate—physical and social entities. In other words, both these systems are biological adaptations that give human beings a badly needed head start in dealing with objects and people. But these systems go awry in two important ways that are the foundations of religion. First, we perceive the world of objects as essentially separate from the world of minds, making it possible for us to envision soulless bodies and bodiless souls. This helps explain why we believe in gods and an afterlife. Second, as we will see, our system of social understanding overshoots, inferring goals and desires where none exist. This makes us animists and creationists.

It’s the very last sentence that prompts this blog post.

If – as I find compelling – “our system of social understanding overshoots, inferring goals and desires where none exist,” then not only are we genetically predisposed to infer the existence of a supernatural designer of our physical world (or a supernatural bully, depending), but we’re also genetically predisposed to infer imaginary goals and desires operating in the social world. That is, we’re too likely to anthropomorphize institutions such as “the market” or “the nation” or “the people.”

I find this much more satisfying. Arguing against religion, the conventional sorts or the secular sorts, is an empty exercise. Seeking to understand how humans think and how that leads them to hold seemingly irrational views is useful. When Tom Lehrer says "We had all the good songs" he punks himself. Not only were the songs mediocre at best, he infers "imaginary goals and desires operating in the social world" because his brain malfunctioned in entirely predictable ways. It happens to best of us as well as the worst. There's no helping it, but we can take ourselves a bit less seriously and stop short of endorsing our mental aberrations and building philosophies on them that we then defend to the death.

Also try Appalachian Waltz by Meyer and company, and for something a bit more hard core try Uncommon Ritual where he teams with Bela Fleck and Mike Marshall.