Jerry Coyne Betrays An Emotional Need For Purpose In The Universe, HIS PURPOSE, Even As He Denies There Is Purpose In The Universe

I was sent a link to the barely coherent - when not the sputtering nutcase - blogger, Jerry Coyne, another internet entity I don't much bother with anymore.  Since he is a hate-blogger, someone I don't link to.   The post he did about a rather stupid little movie about a 90-year-old woman who got converted to atheism from Judaism, though it doesn't sound like her Judaism was ever very deep to start with.  Nothing especially deep was said.  I watched the movie which is, I guess, supposed to be charming and heart warming but leads me to wonder if it isn't exploiting an old woman.   I have to wonder what Jerry Coyne and the rest of the religion bashers would say if the internet had converted her to Christianity or Islam on the basis of her mystification at the workings of Google's automatic search engine.  Oh, yeah, and stumbling across the late Christopher Hitchens.  I suppose it could have been worse if watching Hitchens had converted her to being a drooling fan of cluster bombs.   I do have to wonder why it's seen as some kind of great thing when someone who is Jewish stops being Jewish if they become an atheist instead of, say, a member of the United Church of Christ or a Catholic or another religious group with far more in common with Judaism than atheism has.

You can see for yourself.   This is what Coyne posted at his site.

Coyne was kind of pissed off with the project as presented by the New Yorker,

The documentary is by the Canadian filmmaker Sol Friedman, and the short New Yorker essay about the film is by Joshua Rothman, himself an atheist. Sadly, Rothman’s take on the movie undercuts its message, but what else do you expect from the faith-coddling New Yorker?:

. . . the title also contains, at least for me, a hint of sadness. Religious faith is a consolation; if you trade it in for bacon, have you made a good trade? I’m an atheist, and I think I would give up bacon in exchange for the conviction that the universe has a purpose. Razie, of course, hasn’t traded belief for bacon; she has traded it for the freedom to follow her own conscience, to do and think as she sees fit. These, the film seems to say, are the signs by which we communicate, to others and ourselves, our ideas about the fundamental questions of existence. Look how small they are!

Coyne wouldn't be Coyne if he wasn't pissed off, it's his perpetual emotional state.   You have to wonder why when one of the things that pisses him off like nothing else is the belief that the universe has purpose.

I wouldn’t give up bacon, or nonbelief, for some phony conviction; the fact is that there’s not a scintilla of evidence that the Universe has a purpose. “Purpose,” of course, implies a Planning Mind, and what Rothman expresses is what many believers would like athiests to feel: a profound sense of loss at not having a god.

Well, if there is no purpose then what is there to get pissed off about if people believe that there is a purpose?  I think Coyne overestimates the amount that religious people worry about what guys like him feel because it makes him feel more important than he is, certainly more important than he could possibly be if the universe has no purpose.  If that's the case, none of us, not to mention our beliefs or emotional states could possibly matter.

Of course, Coyne's entire shtick betrays a contradiction in the atheist dogma that the universe has no purpose, if it doesn't then it matters not a bit that anyone believes anything they do.  If the universe has no purpose, any purpose at all that atheists feel about anything is a delusion and his emotional volition connected with anything is an enraged childish insistence that everyone agree with him. Coyne's career as a blogger betrays his own emotional inability to carry through on his claim that the universe has no purpose.  If he really believed that, he wouldn't bother.

Note:  You can google Coyne's blog post if you want to, it shouldn't be hard to find.  There's nothing mysterious about it.