My Deconversion from Magical Thinking

It's not enough that I espouse a belief system that defines both myself and my outlook on life and the world. I must also recognize that my belief system evolved over time, that it altered, grew, and changed, sometimes diametrically so...

My system of belief has always been — often to the dismay of my conservative kith and kin — a fluid and dynamic thing. I tolerated this dynamism with the intention of seeking truth and uncovering knowledge wherever I might find it, even if what I found cast serious doubt and asperity on my current state of beliefs. Instead of placing my beliefs ahead of truth and knowledge (whatever 'truth' may be, whatever 'knowledge' might unveil) I have always been willing to append or alter my belief system as warranted by the facts, but only after much deliberation and often painful soul-searching. For the sake of truth and knowledge, I have always viewed my beliefs as suspect. A nagging suspicion regarding the underlying motives of my beliefs has kept me honest, if only to myself. Being human, I am well aware that I am susceptible to intentions both selfish and hopeful.

Of course, this is the dilemma of seeking truth and knowledge. It is almost always easier to simply believe in something, in anything, no matter how fanciful or irrational than to do the hard and often lonely work that is required of truth seeking. Seeking truth and knowledge takes time and energy. It requires a commitment to research, study, and years of advanced education most people are unwilling to make. It demands dedication, and may require learning a foreign or dead language, taking classes in the sciences, critical thinking, practical reasoning, even philosophy or comparative religion. It may mean reading an additional 1,000 books over and above those already in your reading queue, learning proprietary jargon, tracking research leads down innumerable branches, roundabouts, dead ends, and unlikely paths.

Nietzsche said that if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.

There lies the rub. Beliefs oftentime give the appearance of pleasure and peace, because beliefs are almost always personal and subjective and don't push back. People typically believe in those things that make them happy, alleviate their fears, give them hope, and promise to fulfill their wishes and dreams. Life-after-death, living in eternal Paradise with all your loved ones, seventy-two virgins, inheriting a vibrant young 'spiritual' body, all arcane knowledge revealed, seeing wicked people get theirs', escaping eternal punishment — these are just some of the things that motivate people to believe. It's understandable. The promises are tempting, the endings neat and tidy.

Seeking truth and knowledge, on the other hand, typically produces the opposite effect by eventually uncovering the self-deception and denial underlying most untested belief systems. This can be devastating. It is not a pleasant thing to witness the whole house of cards come tumbling down or watch peace-of-mind slip further out over the horizon. No wonder most people are so adament about clinging to their beliefs, sometimes even willing to die for them. Who wants to admit denial, deception, and defeat? Who wants to pick themselves up, slap off the dust, and start over from scratch? Who wants to live in doubt, uncertainty, and the knowledge of impending demise? No, believing in the supernatural seems much more pleasant. It's often easier to believe in the magic of the Tooth Fairy than it is to simply extract the tooth.

What follows is a brief but honest assessment into the evolution of my beliefs and belief system as they were influenced, indoctrinated, enculturated, appended, altered, modified, and qualified over time and space. Oftentimes the discoveries I made along the way were painful and disconcerting, my choices hard, the outcome unpredictable. Other times I found myself basking in the warmth and glow of an understanding I could never have anticipated. In either case, the search for truth and knowledge was always my driving force, and while I sometimes found myself sidetracked in cul-de-sacs of falsity or complacency, the need for truth and knowledge eventually took precedence above all else, including my personal comfort, my religion, my beliefs, my desire how I 'wanted' the universe to be, even my peace of mind.

On this journey honesty is the key. The questions that must be asked again and again are actually quite simple, but very important:

- Am I being completely honest with myself in matters of my beliefs?
- If not, what am I pretending not to know?

The ways in which these questions are answered are doubly important and I've been repeating them for over thirty years. Who knows, in doing the same you might just discover something incredible along your own journey.

I was born several weeks premature at the height of the Baby Boom in the middle of the 'fifties and spent the first ten-weeks of my life in an incubator. Eventually I was brought home to a sleepy bedroom community just north of Seattle. Already in the simple act of birth was the groundwork being laid for what was to become my belief system. Almost immediately were the influential materials of my beliefs gathered together, and comprised of several key elements: geographical location, era, geo-political location, race, gender, personal health, parental health, parental income, parental intelligence and education, parental religious affiliation, parental ethics, familial roles, sibling birth order, and non-familial outside interaction and/or interference.

Because I was born prematurely my lungs were not fully developed and I was susceptible to various illnesses and disease. I acquired asthma, and for the first five years of my life suffered from the croup, acute bronchitis, pneumonia, and various respiratory allergies. On numerous occasions I remember being rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night to be placed in an oxygen tent. Because of my assorted illnesses I was not allowed to "get excited" or play outdoors, but was confined to the sofa where I could watch TV, listen to records, or read books. For lack of anything else to do, I became a voracious reader.

My parents were middle-class, or liked to believe they were — their aspirations buoyed them above the merest hand-to-mouth existence — both of them were children of the Great Depression and forever stigmatized by childhood apparitions of scarcity and need. Because we had food on the table, clothes on our backs, and a warm place to sleep, I was raised to think of myself as a prince of the realm. In actuality, because of my various illnesses and trips to the hospital and chest of medicines, my parents struggled each month to make ends meet. Because I never went without, I knew no better, and had no other life toward which to compare but my own.

My mother was raised in a large family of stolid Scandinavian Lutherans and my father quietly adopted her religious protocol. By the time I was three years old, I was already attending Lutheran Sunday School and being indoctrinated into the faith. Because grown-ups were teaching me about Adam and Eve, talking serpents, angels, Noah's Ark, the worldwide Flood, Moses and the Exodus, the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, who was I to question? I didn't know any better or know differently. As a young child, I was to taught to 'believe' before I knew how to reason, to ask skeptical questions, to be critical. Why would grown-ups want to lie to me or tell me things that didn't make sense? Because I was a young child I trusted them implicitly, with my life and continued well-being. And so, like millions of children around the world, I was taught to believe before I knew enough to ask why. I was expected to accept all the stories at face value and warned that although the stories I was taught were true there were other stories out there that were untrue and even evil. It made no difference where I was born to be given this message — whether Seattle, Russia, Iraq, China — because the message is always the same: our way of believing is correct and true although everybody else's is wrong. Every child is given a similar message. Only the stories they are told are different.

By the time I was five years old, I was completely indoctrinated into the Lutheran faith. I was a Christian. I attended Sunday School while the grown-ups attended church, and learned all the stories of the Bible (at least those stories they picked-and-choosed for me to hear). I believed all of it. I had no reason not to. Although it was Jesus I was taught about, it could just as easily have been Mohammed or Buddha or Krishna or Confucius. Only the geographical hapinstance of the place of my birth made the difference as to which God I was taught to worship, which holy book to read, which songs to sing. And so, ever an obedient child, I closed my eyes and lowered my head and rooted for the home team.

It is evident from the aforementioned influences that the location of my birth should have a profound influence on the construction of my belief system. For the most part a person born in Riyadh becomes a Muslim, a person born in Tel-Aviv a Jew, in Salt Lake City a Mormon, in Milan a Roman Catholic, and so it goes from country to country, city to city, household to household all around the world. Statistically most people embrace the faith of their parents who in turn have embraced their parents' faith, receding further back in a long generational queue. Believers traditionally believe the way they do simply because of where and how they were raised, and most conversion experiences are nothing more than an acceptance of childhood's god and the sacred book used to extol that god. Simply put, if I had been born in Iran would I be raised to be as sure, confident, and defensive of my religious traditions there as I was in Seattle? Indubitably so.

All over the world people in a sweeping variety of cultures have been taught what to believe but not how to believe nor have they been given the intellectual skills necessary to strategically question why they believe the very way they do. Have they embraced Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, etc, because, after rationally and deliberately weighing and testing all the evidence available to them, they've determined no other explanation makes sense, or simply because they were born into a Christian, Muslim, Mormon, etc, household? Most believers have not been taught the underlying mechanics of belief nor the thousand inherent assumptions built into the often-naïve belief process, only the blanket notion that “believing” a particular way is good and the questioning and/or testing of that belief somehow inherently evil.

Understanding the nature of human belief requires much more than religious posturing or doctrinal finger-pointing, an appeal to inconspicuous deities or ancient anonymously-written books, because at the heart of the matter lays an inherent sense of trust, a core set of beliefs imparted without our consent while we were small children, indoctrinated and inculcated at a time when we had no capacity to question, evaluate, test, or reject. Because we trusted our parents, our elders, other family members, the culture into which we were born, we had no reason to doubt the information instilled upon us and which continued to influence us (both consciously and unconsciously) as we grew older. As young adults we may have had the opportunity to evaluate these core beliefs as we tried on autonomy, even challenged some of them, but for the most part (and to the extent they've annealed and become an abstract condition of our reality) it is difficult for us to consider our beliefs dispassionately or objectively. We were taught how to believe before we learned how to evaluate, and so it is upon this foundation of core beliefs that our thought processes were progressively constructed, the knotty neural networks laid out. As adults when we, on those rarest of occasions, actually think about thinking or assume our thought process can approach some degree of objectivity, what we are unable to imagine (or less likely consider) is the extent by which our underlying belief system is influencing our ability to think plainly and clearly, ultimately subjectifying what we interpret to be straight-forward and matter-of-fact. Without putting our beliefs to the task, without digging backwards far enough or deeply enough, we will never approach the kind of objectivity necessary for critical thinking or to achieve any real sense of mindful honesty. We are in fact directly burdened by our childhood past, as much by a missing parent, spiteful divorce, death in the family, abuse or neglect, as by the unexamined patterns of thought sown there. And make no mistake about it — ten years, twenty years, thirty years after the fact — many of us cling to comforting beliefs and contorted arguments as an attempt to shield ourselves or neutralize sticky feelings still percolating along the painful edge of memory.

And therein lays the root of the problem. Down how many branches of the family tree must we trace to determine from how far back our core beliefs have been tapped like syrup, pressed from parent to progeny, over and again, through generations of children too young to ask why, before seeing it is our distant ancestors (wide-eyed and primitive by today's standards) from whom we've inherited our oldest beliefs, whether cherished, irrational, untested, or otherwise. From the shadows of our youth there lingers a vestige of antiquity and superstition reaching across the world, bewitching our perception of reality, encrypting it still with totems and taboos, gods and goddesses, devils, angels, miracles, magic. Like a taproot teasing drink from deep chthonic streams, we siphon belief from the aboriginal past, when the world was flat and the center of the universe and human beings the crowning centerpiece of creation.

After graduating from high school with honors I entered the University to pursue a degree in science (I was equally interested in biology and oceanography). Previously, while in high school, I had experienced a series of religious 'events' which I took to be a 'born again' experience and I gave my life to Jesus. During my first year in college further 'events' began to churn in me and I came to the realization that I needed to give myself completely to 'The Lord'. I dropped out in the spring and began a pilgrimage up and down the west coast that lasted '40 days and 40 nights' (how apropos). Returning home, I knew I had to enter a Bible College and pursue religious study with the intention of becoming an ordained minister.

While at the Bible College I began to access theological, philosophical, and historical source material to which I had previously no access, I studied Greek and Hebrew, and took a wide range of religious classes. This input of information prompted me to throw a volley of questions at my professors and instructors, most of which they were unable (sometimes unwilling) to answer. Undaunted, I started to read everything I could get my hands on, but always with the governing principle that "getting to the truth" (whatever that might be) was of greater importance than my belief system, the tenets of my faith, or proprietary church doctrines. If any of these turned out to be "true," wonderful — I could consider myself fortunate for having been born on a continent and in a country that happened to embrace the real "truth" as a matter of policy (in other words, I could just as easily have been born in an Islamic/Hindu/Buddhist country or into an Islamic/Hindu/Buddhist family embracing a different religious "truth"). If any of these did not turn out to be true, than I would have to put them aside and follow the "road to truth" wherever it might lead.

Undaunted, I started to read everything I could get my hands on (e.g., the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Old Testament pseudepigrapha, New Testament pseudonymous writings and apocrypha, the Nag Hammadi Codices, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Ugaritic Texts, the Amarna Letters, Philo of Alexandria, the Book of Enoch, Josephus, etc.), but always with the governing principle that "getting to the truth" (whatever 'truth' might be) was of greater importance than my belief system, the narrow tenets of my faith, or proprietary church doctrines. If any of these turned out to be "true," wonderful—I could consider myself fortunate for having been born on a continent and in a country that happened to embrace the real "truth" as a matter of policy (in other words, I could just as easily have been born in an Islamic/Hindu/Buddhist country or into an Islamic/Hindu/Buddhist family embracing a different religious "truth"). If any of these did not turn out to be true, than I would have to put them aside and follow the "road to truth" wherever it might lead, however hard the journey might be, and however long the journey might take. I soon realized that hiking the "road to truth" is considerably tougher and more demanding than sitting in the "padded pew of belief."


In the course of my studies, I discovered I was being taught a small and selective fraction of what is available in regards to the Bible, Christian history, doctrine, and religion in general, usually just enough to continue promoting the accepted status quo and "traditions" of Christianity. As I searched further and dug deeper, I realized there was a "hidden" corpus of information that never made it to light of day, was never discussed or taught, never debated, and for all intents-and-purposes treated as if it didn't even exist. I remember once asking a particularly intriguing question about the historical etymology of Yahweh Elohiym ("Lord God") and being told point blank by the professor that he would not discuss it during class because the other students didn't need to know. After class he informed me that "sometimes tradition is more important than the truth" and "it's tradition that gives us hope, not hard truth which can lead to confusion, discouragement, and doubt." He was dead serious. I knew right then that there were two sides to what we were being hand-fed: there was the "traditional" side that was being heaped on us in such measured abundance we hardly had time to question, and there was the "true" side which (a) either wasn't discussed for fear of disturbing the apple cart, or (b) wasn't discussed because it was never taught to those doing the discussing. I realized I had a choice to make. I could follow the "tradition," become a minister of the faith, and continue teaching the tradition as it was taught to me, or I could follow the "truth," venture into unknown territory, perhaps lose everything I ever loved and hoped from the tradition itself. I opted to follow the truth, and over the course of twenty-five years it has prompted me to purchase thousands of books, read ten-thousand articles, journey down a thousand sometimes troubling avenues of inquiry. Today, after diligent questioning, truth-seeking, and decades of study (I have degrees in Philosophy, History, and English and just recently earned my Masters in Humanities after a long hiatus), I consider myself an agnostic atheist and poststructual/postmodern/existential naturalist.

This means that, beyond the realm of religious (i.e., supernatural) language found in "sacred" books, I see no empirical or rational justification for believing any one "interpretation" of god over any other interpretation. Whether one "believes" in Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, or Buddha is not based on any demythologized or verifible evidence, but on the location of one's birthplace, an "assumption" of the veracity of one's local religion, and a strictly subjective, personal, and emotional choice that is legitimized only by pointing to words in a book.

It also means that in the absence of "supernatural" events actually occuring in the "real" world, I must assume that any events that do occur have "natural" (not "supernatural") explanations. This does not mean that I am forced to automatically reject supernatural events as a matter of course, only that unless events are proven supernatural beyond all natural explanations I must be honest with my knowledge of the world and assume a natural explanation. It would be dishonest of me to first assume a supernatural explanation over a natural explanation as there is no confirmed evidence of the supernatural operating in the physical world (and, no, simply being able to point to words in a two-thousand year-old book do not count as confirmed evidence). Unless I examine all possible natural explanations when confronted with a supernatural claim, I am susceptible to deception, trickery, fraud, ignorance, superstition, self-denial, wishful thinking, or error.

While it is true that so-called "supernatural" events are claimed in religious books and documents, these events reside only in the symbols of language, in the artifice of words, and nowhere in physical, measurable reality. Beyond the claims of books, ancient documents, infomercial "psychics," and Fox Television, is there any honest evidence to support belief in the supernatural? If not, why should I accept the claim of "supernatural" as a firstcase or primary explanation while rejecting offhand all "natural" explanations? In the absence of the "supertnatural" in our day-to-day world, doesn't it make more sense and isn't it more rational to consider "natural" explanations first and appeal to "supernatural" explanations last, and only after all "natural" explanations have been exhausted? Since assumptions are made in the belief process, when confronted with a dubious claim isn't it more rational and honest to tip the scales first in favor of a "natural" explanation rather than leap immediately toward the "supernatural" explanation?

As an example, if I find oil spots in my driveway is it more reasonable of me to first assume a "natural" explanation as to how they got there or first assume a "supernatural" explanation? If I assume a "natural" explanation first, this allows me to consider all the evidence and pursue different options to help solve their mystery; if I find that "natural" explanations fail I'm then allowed to consider alternative explanations, even supernatural ones, as part of my investigation. However, if I assume a "supernatural" explanation first, then I'm finished. I don't have to look further or pursue other answers. Because the "supernatural" explains everything upfront, it becomes unnecessary for me to consider "natural" explanations no matter how elementary or rational they might be. As such, when I discover oil spots in my driveway I can assume invisible fairies painted them overnight and be done with it. I'm not required to consider "natural" explanations because I've already assumed the "supernatural" upfront then based all forthcoming "oil spot" beliefs on this assumption. This is precisely what "believers" do with "sacred" books. They assume "supernatural" explanations at the offset, base their beliefs on these assumptions, then reject the need to consider "natural" explanations since the "supernatural" has already been accepted. In other words, they end up believing in the causality of "invisible fairies" while rejecting natural, more rational, more probable, and less complicated explanations. Whenever the "supernatural" is assumed as a first explanation, rationality and honest inquiry are severely impacted in that they are no longer promoted, obligatory, or engaged. If "invisible fairies" are a satisfactory explanation what need is there for other considerations?

Making "supernatural" presuppositions (assumptions) over "natural" presuppositions feels dishonest to me and somehow pathological, a kind of mental illness or intellectual laziness. If I were to always attribute occurrences around me to the interference of a ghost and not pursue less-spectacular but "natural" explanations, I would likely be suffering from schizophrenia or some other form of dementia. Yet "believers" accede to this very kind of assumptive thinking as part of their religious convictions. They attribute this world, their lives, their actions and ethics, even the eternal future of disembodied "souls" to a "supernaturalism" only found in, argued through, and defended by a self-referential collection of words. Why do "believers" give more credence to "supernatural" explanations compiled thousands of years ago, then to trust immediate experience and learn from the "natural" world around them? Is it out of laziness? Complacency? Ignorance? Fear of the unknown? Is it a defense mechanism, a way to deny death, or imagine retributive justice? Are they being honest with themselves? Have they questioned their underlying motives? In embracing "supernatural" explanations, are they acting responsibly or shirking responsibility? When is it ever "truthful" to first assume "supernatural" explanations over "natural" explanations when "natural" explanations are all we have ever known?

As far as I can tell, I live in a "natural" universe. I assume I'm living in a "natural" universe because I see no evidence of a "supernatural" universe, "supernatural" events, or "supernatural" violations of the laws of physics. True, I can "read" about a "supernatural" universe, "supernatural" events, and "supernatural" violations of the laws of physics as "reported" in "sacred" books, but "supernatural" words do not a "supernatural" reality make. If evidence of the "supernatural" only exists in words then this is no evidence at all. Anyone can say they saw something "supernatural" or write something "supernatural" or claim something "supernatural" but unless there is some evidence of the "supernatural" existing in the "natural" universe why should we give any credibility to "supernatural" words or speech-making? If we circumvent the "natural" world in favor of a "supernatural" world whose only "proof" is found in words that refer back to themselves, is this honest, rational, sane or healthy?

I make assumptions about living in a "natural universe" because I have grounded these assumptions on honest assessment, a weighing of evidence, and the probability or likelihood of occurrence based on prior occurrences transpiring over time. For example, while I might make the assumption the sky (if cloudless) will be blue tomorrow instead of green or purple, I do so based on past accessment, a weighing of evidence, and the probability of occurrence. This is a "natural" assumption based on "natural" evidence and as such it is an "honest" assumption. If, however, I were to assume the sky was going to be green tomorrow, highlighted with a thousand rainbows and a chorus of angels, only because I read this in a "sacred" book or heard it from a "prophet" or envisioned it in a "dream," am I making an "honest assumption?" Am I being honest with myself? Does prior evidence, probability, and the likelihood of occurrence suggest this assumption is reasonable and warranted regardless where I read it or heard it? Why should my assumption of a "supernatural" sky be considered more "truthful" or "moral" or "righteous" than any natural assumptions I might make simply because I read it in a book claimed to be supernatural? In light of what we know about the natural world, making a "supernatural" assumption should really induce the opposite impression — it should be considered dishonest, immoral, a type of mental illness.

According to my experience, in order for me to be true to myself and behave in a rational, honest, and moral manner, I must assume "natural" explanations first and "supernatural" explanations dead-last. Why do I presume to arrange explanations in this order? Because I know I'm living in a natural realm that can be examined, measured, and reckoned reliably. It's all around me. I witness it every waking moment. I can see it, touch it, taste it, hear it. Television, computers, automobiles, air travel, sky scrappers, bridges, luxury liners, vaccinations, medications, and surgical procedures all derived from the examination, measurement, and manipulation of such consistent "natural" elements. This does not mean I'm a bad or evil person because I live by "natural" assumptions or utilize man-made devices invented because "natural" scientific assumptions were made. Some "believers" who live by "supernatural" assumptions refuse to take medicines or seek surgery when something as simple as an ear infection or appendicitis can them, or worse yet, kill their children. On the other hand, most "believers" want it both ways — they profess belief in the "supernatural" (e.g., in miracles, faith healing, prophecies) and reject "natural" science as ungodly while making use of "natural" science's innovations (e.g., pain killers, antihistamines, antibiotics, heart surgery, cancer treatment, electricity, birth control). It's easy to malign science and keep the faith when you're popping pills, turning up the gas heat, cooking dinner in the microwave, watching HD television nd surfing the Internet. I sometimes wonder how many "supernaturalists" might be transformed if they were suddenly forced to rely on faith alone and reject the wonders of "natural" science, and "prove" themselves by driving out demons, healing the sick by the laying of hands, speaking in tongues, handling venomous snakes, and drinking poison (Mark 16:17-18).

Because "naturalists" and "supernaturalists" must both make assumptions in order to survive day-to-day decision-making, a few questions remain. Who is being the most honest with themselves, with their assumptions, and the evidence available? Who is looking at both sides of the coin, inside and outside the box, inside and outside the circle? Who is embracing assumptions based only on words in a book and who is testing an assortment of assumptions, observations, experimentation, research, analysis, and the probability of occurrence? Who is claiming truth from a single self-referential source and who is seeking truth from a multitude of sources? Who is proclaiming to know the One True Absolute Truth and who is admitting only to discover honest truth wherever that path might lead, and not be afraid to do the work, admit assumptions and presuppositions, do whatever it takes, admit prejudices and biases, make sacrifices, admit ignorance and weakness, take the time to read difficult books, admit lack of education, go back to school, admit fears and phobias, wishes and dreams, laziness and habit, then start the long and deliberate journey on a thousand avenues of inquiry?

Lee's Non-Atheistic Recommended Reading

As a contributor to DC, obviously, I am agnostic and, additionally, a former Bible study teacher and Born Again Evangelical Christian. I didn't get that way by reading content on sites like this. In fact, I didn't have any interest in anything atheists had to say until I stood alone with a lack of belief in a god that I acquired after a couple years of truth seeking. Not "God Truth", but "Practical Truth". The kind of truth you need to find before you purchase health products, or make decisions at work. When I applied that to my Christian beliefs, they didn't stand up very well...

At that point I wanted to see what 'the other side' had to say so I subscribed to the Infidel Guy and spent a year downloading and listening to debates and interviews. I also listened to a years worth of Robert Price's Bible Geek show. Then I listened to a Sam Harris Lecture promoting his book "The End of Faith" and got motivated to do something to help make the world a better place. A year ago I started a blog that was a last ditch effort to get God to participate in this relationship we were supposed to have and intervene. All I got was a madman posting a bunch of crap on it. Thats when I decided to Join DC and be part of a team and leave the moderation of loons up to someone else. My point in this increasingly blathering document is that applying the type of practical reasoning that people must necessarily use in every day life will in some cases weaken the perceived validity of the content of the Bible.

Along with the Atheistic books you see posted for sale on this blog, I recommend some books on the topic of reasoning and innoculation to persuasion. I am no teacher but I am a compulsive self-learner and I have read some text books that I want my children to read and I recommend to you. They are High School Senior level and above. I am sure there are better ones out there, and I have some of them unread on my shelf, but until I get to them, this is the best I can do. Maybe some of you out there are Educators and can suggest some others. In any case, reading these books will help you in other areas of your life such as dealing with the boss, coworkers, subordinates, your teens, tweens, kids, sales people and the news.

They fall into two categories; Reasoning and Persuasion. Some associated topics are Argumentation and Rhetoric, and while I am interested in both those topics, I won't recommend any of those books here because they fall outside the scope of this article. I include persuasion because people need to be aware of how people are 'hard-wired' to trust and believe things without much thought.

On the topic of Reasoning.
* Introduction to Reasoning by Stephen Toulmin, Richard Reike, Allan Janik
* How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilgovich
* How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn
* Logical Self-defense by Ralph H. & J. Anthony Blair Johnson
* Informal Logic by Douglas Walton.
* Practical Reasoning by Douglas Walton.
* Abductive Reasoning by Douglas Walton.

A word about Douglas Walton. He is a philosophy professor and researcher that is heavily involved in research for artificial intelligence and is helping to derive algorithms for use in computers to simulate human reasoning.

On the topic of Persuasion.
* Influence. Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini.
* Persuasion by Daniel J. O'Keefe.
* The Art of Deception by Nicholas Capaldi

What About Transitional Fossils and Biological Complexity?

Professor Paul Myers posted his powerpoint presentation explaining transitional fossils and biological complexity. Click down the left hand side to see the individual slides. [I wish I had a transcript of it.]

25 Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Christian

Ed Babinski found a website by former seminarian Craig Lee Duckett that has a lot of good stuff on it. This whole site is a work in progress. Be sure to see Duckett's online book, Descending Babel.

Here are 25 reasons why Duckett is no longer a Christian:

1) The world simply does not behave the way described in the Bible
2) The words used to define Christian Doctrine are representative of things whose existence cannot be 'proved' outside of language
3) The Fall of Adam & Eve (and resulting Doctrine of Original Sin) is incoherent and contrary when compared to scientific evidence and other doctrines
4) The concepts of Heaven and Hell are equally morally and ethically reprehensible
5) Historical Evidence shows much of the Old Testament was appropriated from earlier Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Canaanite, & Persian Myths
6) The Account of the Flood and Noah's Ark bears striking similarities to the Epic of Gilgamesh and other pre-dating Creation/Flood myths
7) Persian Zoroastrianism altered Jewish Doctrine during the Babylonian Captivity
8) The influence of the pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch on the mystical Good-Evil dichotomy of Christian Doctrine
9) The influence of Philo of Alexandria on the development of Christian Doctrine
10) The ancient gods and goddesses that were assimilated by the Hebrews to become Elohim EL & Yahweh YHWH
11) Myths of Dying-Resurrecting God-Men Born of Virgins that Pre-Date the Story of the God-Man Jesus
12) The Problem of Evil (Theodicy) and the Hiddenness of God
13) Natural (Empirical/Scientific) vs. Supernatural (Faith/Language-Based) Belief Systems
14) The Gospels are not 'eyewitness' accounts but anonymous third-person narratives
15) The 'Evolution' of the Christian Canon and Jesus' Godmanship
16) Saul/Paul of Tarsus and the 'Re-Creation' of the Christian Myth
17) Archaeology and Biblical claims
18) Biblical Criticism: Findings as to Who - What - When - Where - How - Why
19) The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes
20) The Nag Hammadi Library, Ugaritic Texts, and Armana Tablets
21) Canonical and Extracanonical books, the Gnostics, and Church Councils
22) Examined objectively, the Bible is rife with errors, contradictions, misstatements, and inconsistencies
23) Belief, Doubt, Disbelief and Critical Thinking
24) Science and the Scientific Method
25) Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Evolution

To see these things argued for by him read this. It contains some really good books for further reading!

Am I Afraid Of Hell?

Every so often someone asks me if I am afraid of going to hell when I die for debunking Christianity. Am I?

NO!

I am not afraid. I really am not. I do not believe there is a 3 in 1 God. I do not believe in an incarnation, nor an atonement, nor a resurrection, and I do not believe that an perfectly good God would cast me into hell. Period.

Someone may claim that less proof is demanded for a higher risk situation: "The greater the risk, the less proof is required." When a bomb threat is called in, the authorities don't need much evidence to justify evacuating the building. Here, the risk is Hell, isn't it?

The risk factor is based upon the Christian historical claims, is it not? And the Christian claim is a very large one and very hard to defend from historical evidence, as I argue. So, the amount of risk is mitigated by the meager evidence for the large claim.

Muslims claim that you will go to hell if you don't convert to Islam too, but you cannot be a Muslim and also a Christian. Both religions offer some evidence to believe. Christians think their faith has more evidence on its behalf than Islam. One billion Muslims think otherwise. According to both religions the other group is going to hell. So choose wisely. The risk is the same because a lot is at stake. Both are calling in a proverbial bomb threat. On the one hand, someone claims if you stay in a building you will die, whereas someone else claims that if you leave the building and go out into the street you will die.

What do you do at this point? You come to the best conclusion you can, and act upon it. This I have done.

I've previously dealt with this question here.

Besides, there are plenty of other alternatives after we die. When Dan Barker was a Blog member here he asked the Christian what if he was wrong?.

Paul Copan on Why God Would Send People to Hell

Since people are threatening us here with hell, I'm redating this post of mine:

As an evangelical Paul Copan takes a conservative position that the images depicting hell in the Bible are figurative ones, simply because these images picture contrary ones involving darkness, flames, and worms that never die in a place where the damned no longer have physical bodies. What do these images depict? According to Copan, hell is “the ultimate, everlasting separation from the source of life and hope: God.” Therefore, “the pain of hell should not be seen in terms of something physical but rather as pain within a person’s spirit.” “Hell at its root is the agony and utter hopelessness of separation from God.” [From Paul Copan's book “That’s Just Your Interpretation” (Baker Books, 2001), pp. 101-109.

Initially I must wonder if Copan has done any deep thinking about what it might mean to be separated from the "source of life" here. There are many evangelicals who conclude that this means the damned cease to exist…annihilationism. And while Copan is trying to soften the horrors of hell, if correct, such a view of hell is still a horrible fate for a loving God to inflict upon human beings.

Copan further argues that “hell is the logical outcome of living life away from God.” Those who find themselves in hell have committed “not simply a string of finite sins,” but “the infinite sin,” for unbelievers have resisted “the influence of God’s Spirit” and “refused to honor God as God” by “not lovingly responding to God’s kind initiative.”

However, I find this almost absurd that the Christian God blames us for living our lives as if he didn’t exist because there simply isn’t enough reason to believe in him over any of the other gods, or no god at all, especially when we usually adopt the religion we were born into! I furthermore find it absurd that God is so upset that we don’t acknowledge him in this life that he will punish us forever for it, as if it hurts him that much for us not to acknowledge him. If he is omniscient, then he knows why we do what we do and why we believe what we do, and I fail to see how such a God cannot empathize with how we live our lives. We all do the best we can do given our environment and brain matter.

According to Copan, “to force someone into heaven who would hate the presence of God…would be horrible,” and he agrees with D.A. Carson, that “heaven would surely be hell for those who don’t enjoy and desire the blessing of God’s presence.” [How Long, O Lord? (Baker, 1990, p. 103]. “Hell is getting what one wants (and deserves)—no God.” Copan also quotes with approval C.S. Lewis that “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” [The Problem of Pain, p. 127]. Copan further claims even though the damned are in anguish “they still choose to remain in it,” than to prefer “a God-centered existence in heaven.” And so “resistance to God continues in hell.”

If this is the best answer an evangelical can offer, and it probably is, then it is simply absurd. To claim that the damned prefer the anguish of hell over the bliss of heaven through repentance is simply absurd. Someone in hell would simply say, “Oops, I was wrong. Now I know there’s a God and I want to change (repent) and live forever with him.” Anyone in such anguish would repent of their “sins” if they could experience the purported joys of heaven. Every single person in hell would willingly desire to change if they could escape the torments of hell for the joys of heaven. Christians might claim such repentance wouldn’t be true repentance, but repentance (GK: metanoia) is “a change of mind.” People would gladly change their minds if they could know the truth with certainty.

The parable of “The Rich Man and Lazarus” (Luke 16:19-31) shows that the rich man in hell (Hades) was now a believer. But he was told he could not cross the chasm to “Abraham’s side,” even though it’s clear he wanted to do so—very clear—contrary to Copan. One of the points of this parable is that his eternal destiny was fixed when he died. Since his fate was already sealed all he could ask for was to warn his father’s house of the torment hell. This doesn’t sound like the doors of hell are locked from the inside to me at all. The doors of hell cannot be locked from the inside if it’s painful to be there. Besides, if they are truly “locked from the inside,” contrary to this parable, there is the very strong possibility that someone could repent in hell, and be admitted into heaven!

Zealots and the Fear of Hell

The very first chink in my Christian faith armor was when I denied a literal traditional hell. I believed in "conditional immortality" at one point. And it was then that I was allowed to pursue my questions, because I thought to myself that hell wouldn't be that bad if I'm annihilated. That's when I began to develop the freedom to question the Bible and to pursue my questions. Of course, in pursuing these questions I eventually came to deny the existence of hell and the Bible as the word of God itself. But for me that's when it started.

Today there is violence between Israel and Lebanon. And while no one can say this is purely a religious war, the elements of religion are plainly evident, especially when militant Islamics (like Hamas, and Hezbollah) want to destroy Israel as part of what they understand the Koran to say.

And then there are Christians who are so zealous for their faith that they consider anyone who questions their faith as a personal attack on them. They too are zealots for their faith.

But why? Why are these religious people so zealous for their faith? Why? Is anyone that zealous in defending their favorite Baseball team, or in defending the historicity the founding of ancient Rome, such that they will personally attack someone who denies it (well there might be a small select few regarding a baseball team, but Christians as a whole take our questions personally).

It's the fear of hell, I tell ya. And it's a horrible doctrine, especially when someone believes that babies go to hell and then still believes this after his wife miscarriages, which is a terrible painful parental experience all by itself that I sympathize with and wish on no one!

Fear of hell. That explains the zeal of the zealots in this world. It's a cradle to grave intimidation that causes otherwise intelligent and caring people to be stupid and fearful and zealous for their faith.

Tell me this, Christians, if it weren't for the fear of hell, how zealous would you be for your faith? How willing would you be to consider the questions we pose here at DC? How does the fear of hell itself affect how zealous you are to defend your faith?

Quote of the Day By a Christian, Proving There Is No Such Thing as Christianity, Only Christianities

I don’t believe that God has explicitly revealed anything to us as a human race, and it’s here that I part ways with the traditions of mainstream Christianity...So why do I hold this belief, despite my self-identification as a Christian? Well for one thing, if the Bible is God’s be-all end-all of revelatory knowledge, he seems to have done a poor job of unambiguously alerting us to this fact. Are all the individuals who were raised Muslim, or Mormon, or Hindu just supposed to have a Damascus Road experience, and subsequently bow down to the book that completely contradicts their own worldviews that they have been indoctrinated with? Were all the millions of individuals who have perished, and continue to perish, without accepting the “good news” of Christianity simply being rebellious sinners who resisted God’s clear revelation? Forgive me, but I find this to be ridiculous...

This leads us to another point, namely that the act of God supposedly choosing prophets to privately record his revelation seems extremely problematic. Understand that inspiration by God of prophets in order to expound revelation is a private and subjective experience, on the part of the prophet. So how can we, who are not in any way involved in this experience, ever objectively verify that God is behind the scenes pulling the strings, as it were? As outsiders we are in no epistemic position to affirm, or deny, that an individual is indeed a spokesman for the big man upstairs. The role of prophet, then, as a medium for revelation is not satisfactory—at least not if God wants this revelation to be clearly given to all mankind.

This isn’t even the worst part, however,

The Grape of Wrath

There are times when I wonder what life would be like without the gustatory pleasure of barbeque, but from the looks of it, I don’t think I will ever have to find out! I was at work, sitting in my car in the middle of a windless night. I was listening to the crickets as I consumed a delicious pork sandwich. The sweet and tangy barbeque sauce tantalizing my taste buds, my teeth pulling apart layer upon layer of deliciously stringy and fatty pig intestine, my mouth was in a state of what could have been called – from a very Gentile and hedonistic perspective – “heaven.” With endorphins of delight released like Venezuela Falls from my temporal lobes, I was savoring every moment of it. Then, in a flash, I was rudely interrupted by my own diaphragm.

Inhaling at precisely the wrong moment, my dinner sent me into a coughing, chest-pounding fight to dislodge the swine’s flesh that had just taken up residence in my windpipe. It wasn’t long before my airway was freed of its obstruction and life went on as normal. The only lasting effect from the scary event was getting yet another reminder that the universe in which I live is not my friend, but my enemy.

Every natural thing with which we humans have to do has a deadly side to it. Death is only one step away from any of us at any particular time—and it is time itself that allows for our growth, healing, and maturity, but on the same note, gives us arthritis and kills us. We learn to go through our anally cautious lives, reading warning labels, checking the expiration dates on packages of food, holding onto banisters as we traverse a flight of stairs, looking both ways before we cross a street, and signaling before we reservedly change lanes on the express way. When we head outside, we spray ourselves with OFF bug spray to avoid getting West Nile Virus from infected mosquitoes. And yes, a good portion of us live long enough to learn to chew our food extra slowly to keep from choking on it because of the dangerous way in which evolution has jimmy-rigged our tracheas!

No matter where we look, the entire world stands ready to kill us—and the aforementioned are not even a fraction of the list of deadly things on this planet of ours. We haven’t begun to consider the woes of spaceflight; the poisonous gases that are plenteous on lifeless worlds afar, like methane and ammonia, brutal temperature extremes, crushing gravity, and deadly radiation that would cause us to literally rot on our feet…they are all out there, standing ready – like a well-funded assassin with a shiny, new rifle – to send us back to the cold elements of our origins. It’s as though the entire world hates us. Life on our planet is like a “bubble boy” or girl, who is forced to live out his or her existence quarantined due to a defective immune system; only one little blue bubble called Earth is habitable for us—and even inside our small, accommodating bubble we are met with frightening hostilities.

Believers want us to see this world (and even more amazingly, the
universe in its entirety!), as a colony for soul-making and worship.
But our world is more like a bandana-wearing gang of street thugs from a crappy, 1980s karate flick, where big-haired fighters seek to attack their opponents without cause. The abounding death, the random showering of tragedy, the needless waste on a cosmic scale, these are the things that surround us—hardly an environment for soul-making and worship.

Atheist or not, we two-legged bovines carry on through the daily regime with fears of potential disasters in the back of our minds—and we don’t miss a beat! We don’t let our children out in the front yard alone to prevent their being abducted by some gaunt sicko in a Camel cigarettes baseball jersey, driving a yellow, ‘79 Trans Am. We are constantly aware of our little ones trying to stick something metal into electrical outlets, or what babycakes might yank off a hot stovetop and onto themselves, resulting in third degree burns. Police, fire, and emergency medical services will never want for business in our “Shit Happens” world.

Now as an atheist, I have long since accepted the reality of my
estrangement as a living organism from the forces of this dead, godless universe. I have accepted that the chaotic occurrences that make life possible will forever serve to bring about my demise. What I cannot accept is the plea of a believer when he tells me with a straight face that such a world as ours was created by a loving deity who has the sole interest and wellbeing of humanity at heart. It is one thing to believe in a god who allows disasters to prevail, and quite another to expect someone else to believe in that god for the same reasons you do. The older I become, I find myself less tolerant of hearing that I am without justification for disbelieving in the so-called “benevolent” god of the modern religions.

Now let me tell you a story. It’s a sad story about a proud, young American boy in the U.S. Army who died last year in service to our country. You might be thinking right now of a bold soldier – gun in hand, geared in green for war – who died on a battlefield in Iraq, drenched in blood, glittered with sand in open wounds. You might suppose I am writing this piece, mourning the loss of a friend who
perished before I had the chance to say goodbye. Not so, to both assumptions. I didn’t even know the man, but my brother who is a medic in the army knew him, and was right there with him at the time of his death. The fellow died in the mess hall, joking around and laughing with his friends. How did he die? He died a meaningless death; he choked on a grape!

My brother watched a brave, battle-worthy soldier’s face turn red, then blue, and then purple, as he gasped for breath. A table full of soldiers did everything in their power to save the man’s life, but it was to no avail. What a bullet from the enemy’s AK-47 couldn’t accomplish, a small piece of fruit managed to do. Flailing his arms, his bloodshot eyeballs popping out of his head, staring up at the ceiling, the man died a most horrific death.

Though I wasn’t there, I see the man lying on the floor in uniform, his body motionless, his mouth still open like an expired trout on the cracked bed of a dried-up pond. Then my mind drifts away from the unsettling scene, from the frantic faces of shock on those around him. I’m coming back, back to myself, back to my life, now looking at my dashboard; it’s just me again, sitting in my car, staring at what’s left of the pork I almost choked on only moments earlier. “Whoa! I could have choked!”, I thought to myself.

And now it’s back to work, shining the strobe, patrolling for trespassers, vandals, and thieves. But unfortunately, I now have this terrible recollection in my head to spend the rest of my shift rolling over.

Believers put aside the magnanimous issue of human suffering, choosing to trust their God to one day reveal to them the answers to the big “why” questions of life. If a believer can maintain their faith in the sight of the soul-raping atrocities of our cosmos, then good for them. But the fact remains that for people like myself, our atheist convictions are only strengthened by the Christian God’s decision to permit the death of a Christian man – of a soldier who was more noble and brave than I will ever be – and to allow a fat-ass, foul-mouthed blasphemer like myself to continue to breathe God’s air, to bask in his sunlight, to live another day to keep sharing wrist-slashing atheism with the world—on the web and by the pen in my forthcoming book, Project Bible Truth: a minister turns atheist and tells all.

(JH)

Religious Faith is Slowly Waning in America.

According to a recent Barna Poll Update, people who espouse "no faith" are on the rise with each succeeding generation in America.

One of the most fascinating insights from the research is the increasing size of the no-faith segment with each successive generation. The proportion of atheists and agnostics increases from 6% of Elders (ages 61+) and 9% of Boomers (ages 42-60), to 14% of Busters (23-41) and 19% of adult Mosaics (18-22).

Here's Another Conversion to Atheism.

Who Was Jesus?

What About Ecclesiastes?

Logismous Kathairountes, in commenting on my atheistic ethic series said

"You've read the book of Ecclesiastes, right? That book is a negative apologetic against the very thing you've just put forward. The author didn't accept your axiom that worldly goods (money, sex, good looks, power, etc.) lead to happiness, and so he set out to test them to see if they really did lead to happiness. In essense, he had the things that you say bring happiness, as much as anybody in the world at that time had them. He discovered that worldly goods don't lead to happiness.That book is the record of an experiment undertaken with the goal of testing the exact assumptions that you make here. I'll add that my own experience matches up with that of the author of Ecclesiastes."

Let me briefly comment:

In the first place, I noticed you didn't say Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, even though it's obvious that if we believe what this book says about the author it must be Solomon. Yet most all scholars claim Solomon did not write it--many conservative scholars do not think so either. I find this odd, since the whole argument is about the personal experiences of Solomon. If these were not his experiences, and if this book is what we'd call today a "sock-puppet" for Solomon, then by who's authority should I believe what the author writes?

In the second place, the phrase "under the sun" is used repeatedly in this book to refer to life without God. Life "under the sun" is "vanity," says the author. Notice here the superstitious and pre-scientific cosmology of the world according to this author. According to him, as well as with all of the Biblical writers, God resided above the firmament which was held in place by the mountains along the edges of the earth, in which were hung the sun, moon, and stars and from which water was released to send floods and to water the crops. No wonder they felt closer to God when praying, worshipping or seeking God's guidance on a mountaintop (cf., Baalam, Moses, Jesus, and so forth); that's where God lived. So why should I care what the author says when he is wrong about cosmology? Maybe he's just a superstitious person? Maybe I should take what he says with a grain of salt (or a whole saltshaker full of it)?

Lastly, the message itself is only partly true; only part of the story--a half truth. Yes, it is true that we will die and so there is no ultimate meaning to anything we do in this life. Our life is ultimately in vain. Nothing we do in this life will ultimately satisfy the longing for eternal significance, and in that sense we cannot find complete happiness without such an assurance. "All is vanity" in that respect. This I admit. That's the truth--the half truth.

But this fact has little to do with how I should live my life on earth. I should still seek to be happy, even if what I do in this life will not be remembered when human life and this whole universe dies a future heat death.

Christians talk as if they would commit murder, theft, rape and suicide if there wasn't a God. However, they should consider the evidence of the many former Christians who continue to lead happy productive lives even after rejecting the existence of God. Why do you suppose this is true? Think about it. We don't do these things because they're not rational and they don't bring us happiness. (As I am explaining).

My argument is that people who live as if there is an afterlife, along with a judgment before God who will send us to heaven or to hell, are living a delusionary life. I'd much rather live with my feet planted firmly on the ground, than live a delusion.

More later...

An Atheistic Ethic

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

Harris Hedges Debate

Truthdig and UCLA recently hosted an interesting debate between Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation) and Chris Hedges (American Fascists:The Christian Right and the War on America) about whether religion, in the hands of ordinary humans, is inevitably divisive and violent.

I'll confess that I was disappointed in Hedges. Like so many really good people when they are defending faith, he obfuscated. He gave words idiosyncratic meanings and did a bit of character assassination rather than responding directly to what Harris was saying. He even rolled out the old canard that Pol Pot and Stalin and Hitler were godless. (Oh, please!) In doing so, he demonstrated an utter failure to understand Harris's premise, which is that unquestioned dogmas are dangerous; that our beliefs need to be morally, rationally, and empirically accountable in spirituality as in all spheres of life.

But that in and of itself is informative. As a war correspondent and investigative journalist, Hedges has been undercover in fundamentalist and dominionist subcultures. He describes these subcultures with complexity and clarity. Yet even he, when faced with an outside challenge, displays our remarkable and almost universal human instinct to defend the religious impulse against all comers! He insists on seeing fundamentalism as a corruption of religion rather than simply one of its faces, one that comes to the front cyclically when cultural conditions are ripe.

As a psychologist, I find it fascinating that so many smart people refuse to admit in public (or perhaps to themselves) that we need to scrap our tribal traditions and rework our sacred texts if we are to serve peace, love, and life itself. Rather, they try to redefine Jehovah or Allah or Christianity or Islam, so that the evil flows not from these constructs but from something outside of them. They sing the praises of belief while denying its power.

In the end, such attempts to make our religious traditions benign while leaving them intact fail because they are psychologically flawed. They require a level of abstraction that doesn't interest the general public. They are the work of smart people, lovers of complexity and mystery, remaking God in their own image and refusing to acknowledge the mental life of most humans. Chris Hedges' remarks illustrate this beautifully. But he is not alone. Rather, he stands with the tolerant, modernist progressive majority, Christian and not, who are more easily aroused to defend religion (in the abstract) than to challenge it (as it exists in the real world).

An Atheistic Ethic: What do Human Beings Want?

This is part two in a series arguing for an atheistic ethic. As I said earlier, we need an ethic based upon some solid evidence about who we are as human beings and why we act the way we do. Let's begin by looking at what rational people want out of life. I think I know.

I think there is solid evidence that rational human beings want (or value) several important things. Let me offer a list of them: we want power, love, friendship, riches, health, freedom, significance, importance, self-esteem, affirmation, approval, knowledge, understanding, long life, safety, good looks, sex, and so forth. We want enough challenges to make us strong and enough pleasures to motivate us to continue wanting to live. These things are undeniable, in my opinion. They are obvious.

People whom I consider non-rational are, roughly speaking, people who do not want these things. To say the same thing another way is that a necessary condition for a rational person is that said person significantly values the above listed things. A person cannot be considered a rational person if said person has a flagrant disregard for wanting these things. Non-rational people have a deep seated Freudian “death wish” that is far below the universal human standard. While it’s probably true we all have some degree of a “death wish,” those people who refuse to care about themselves, or who refuse to continue living, or who do not care about the things mentioned above to a significant degree are simply not being rational people. Some criminals, for instance, may prefer being behind bars because they cannot live on the outside world for various reasons, or they have some inner need to punish themselves due to guilt or self-loathing. People who commit suicide, or who want to die, or do not care about themselves, or anyone else, are people whom I think are not being rational. They are hurting themselves, and that goes against our instinct to survive and to live life to the fullest. Any person who acts contrary to that survival instinct is not being rational in the sense that doing so goes against a fundamental built-in principle to live.

Now, why do we want the above listed things? Why do we want power, and love, and significance, for instance? May I suggest with Aristotle that the reason why we value all of these things is because we want to be happy. According to Aristotle happiness is the supreme good. We do not want happiness for any other reason. It is an end in and of itself. We do not want power or love or significance as ends in and of themselves. We want these things because having them makes rational people happy.

To someone who asks me why they should want to be happy, or to someone who asks what is the ultimate standard which tells me I should be happy, I simply say you cannot rationally want anything else. It’s impossible for rational people not to want to be happy.

So I stand squarely in the happiness ethical tradition stretching back beginning with Socrates/Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Mill, and up to the the modern day “Virtue Ethicists.”

Happiness for these thinkers means “holistic” happiness. It is not being a “pig satisfied.” It is not having mere hedonistic pleasure. The more of the above list of things a person has, the happier that person is going to be. Lacking in any one of them will reduce one’s happiness by some degree, or not having these things in sufficient kind and quantity will reduce a rational person’s happiness. Having riches, for instance, without any of the other things, will not bring a person enough happiness. The happiest person will have all of these things to the utmost degree.

If we want to be happy we must pursue them, and we must have some acceptable degree of them all.

An Atheistic Ethic

I am going to try to lay out a consistent atheistic moral philosophy in the coming days/weeks. In my opinion all ethical theories have some serious problems, some more than others. I’m going to present the one I think has the least amount of problems. I’m also going to try to answer as many objections as I can, and offer some reasonable test case scenario’s to show how this ethic can and does describe what we in fact do, and what we ought to do. The theory I will lay out will be shot at by people on both sides of the fence, both Christian and atheist. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to an atheistic ethic. Atheists disagree with each other on this issue, as we do about politics. So I do not expect atheists to agree with me, and so I invite helpful and constructive criticisms from everyone.

Since I have argued against the Christian ethic in several places, then I need to spell out my alternative, and I will. In the first place, I want an ethic that is based upon some solid evidence about who we are as human beings and why we act the way we do. Any kind of ethic that tells us to do that which we are incapable of doing, is too idealistic and guilt producing to be helpful to guide us as human beings. Such an ethic, in my opinion, demands that we behave non-humanly. I think the Christian personal ethic does just this, as one example. We are not divine beings. We’re human beings. The Christian ethic demands complete selflessness, although it doesn’t deny Christians ought to have self-respect as God’s redeemed creatures. Still, Christians are to “die daily” with Paul, take up their crosses and follow Jesus. Self-denial, self-sacrifice, and self-discipline seem to be the hallmarks of the personal Christian ethic in its most basic and fundamental sense. They are to have sacrificial agape love for everyone, although, Augustine argued that Christians are obligated to have this kind of love for the closest of kin first, then their community, then their culture and then finally to those outside their culture. That is, they have a primary duty to love the people closest to them, but they should love everyone. This means showing people mercy, and giving people the needed justice they deserve, depending upon the duty we have to each person as he is related to us. According to Christian teaching, the Holy Spirit, the divine paraclete, helps the believers to fulfill the demands of agape love.

There is more to the Christian view, of course, including the killing of heretics, and the beating of slaves. ;-) Still, it’s entirely unrealistic to expect people to have agape love toward people just as Jesus did (if we presume with them that Jesus is their idealistic model). It fosters guilt. It cannot be done, even with the Holy Spirit’s help (presuming there is such a being). Plus there is strong evidence down through the centuries that the Holy Spirit has not properly done his job well among professing Christians (the only kind of Christian we see). ;-)

Furthermore, the Christian ethic is based upon a motivation that must be judged from the Christian perspective to be a completely ill-founded and unethical. The threat is hell, however conceived. Think of it this way, if there is no hell and everyone will be rewarded equally in heaven when we die, then Christians would not need to try to live the Christian ethic, and I doubt many of them would care to do so at that point, especially when they want to do something they know is against “God’s will.” Christians might want to claim they obey because it’s “the right thing to do,” but just ask them one question on this. Ask them if they would rape, steal and kill if God told them to do so, lest they will be cast in hell forever. If they would obey God and rape, steal and kill, then their basic motivation is to obey because of the fear of hell. However, if they would not obey God by doing these things, then they do not obey God simply because obeying God is the right thing to do. [Q.E.D.]

Christians will claim God would never command them to do these things, but in fact the God of the Bible did do this. Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son. Would YOU obey God if he told YOU to do so? A female captive in war was forced to be an Israelite man’s wife (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). If a virgin who was pledged to be married was raped, she was to be stoned along with her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), while if a virgin who was not pledged to be married was raped, she was supposed to marry her attacker (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), not to mention the pleasure of “dashing of children against rocks,” and genocide itself. More to the point, the fear of hell is not a good Christian basis for being ethical. It would place the obedience to God on the same par with obeying a robber who has a gun pointed at your head.

In conclusion, I argue that I want an ethic that is based upon some solid evidence about who we are as human beings and why we act the way we do. The Christian ethic is practically impossible to obey, and the motivation for obeying must be judged to be based upon rational self-interest, which is basically the same ethic I will be arguing for later, without the barbaric divine commands.

This is part 1. To read the other parts see here.

Infidelis Maximus Blog

Here's an interesting Blog, and it has an interesting interview with Acharya S, a former member here at DC.

Three Chickens Over Easy with Toast

How many chickens did you have for breakfast?

At any opportunity, the righteous send letters to my local paper, lamenting the murder of children. They aren’t concerned with the high school students who are getting their limbs blown off in Iraq, or ten year olds who are being handed machine guns by warlords in Africa, or toddlers who are needlessly dying of dysentery in back rooms in Cambodia. They are talking, of course, of abortion.

At an outdoor rally at Westlake Mall in Seattle, Evangelical women took turns in front of a microphone, lamenting the babies they had murdered. They choked on tears, savored God’s forgiveness, and envisioned the day when they would come face-to-face in heaven with the people they had killed and could ask them forgiveness.

Across the street a thin line of men and women held signs. Familiar, forgettable ones said things like, “Keep Abortion Safe and Legal” or “Hands Off of My Body.” They seemed flat and superficial in the presence of the women’s painful personal stories. On another corner, a small cluster of signs expressed a different sentiment. “An Acorn is Not an Oak Tree,” read one. “A Blueprint is Not a House.” “An Egg is not a Chicken.”

The sign holders were telling the women, “You didn’t kill a person.” They were saying that a fetus is not a child, that personhood is something that emerges. It grows. It becomes. It is solidly present in the opinions of a twelve year old, delightfully emergent in the curiosity and defiance of a three year old, and sweetly latent in a newborn. But if we move back in time far enough, back to conception (the acorn stage), personhood exists merely as potential. Like the house that is conjured by a blueprint or a freshly poured foundation, it exists only in the imagination of someone who has seen the real thing – a full-fledged person or a finished home – and can picture what is possible if things move forward.

I was one of those sign holders. But as a former Evangelical fundamentalist, I should have known better.

Not that the signs were wrong. Personhood --the feeling, thinking, self-aware, intentional part of us that values life-- does come into being gradually, and it often leaves in bits. Religious traditions acknowledge this. Rituals of identity (the Catholic christening) or of covenant (the Jewish bris) often are postponed till after the neonatal days or weeks. Ancient legal codes like the one in the Bible placed monetary on persons and various forms of sub-persons; a fetus was not a person.

These traditions and laws reflected a reality that is visible today in our emotional response to grief and loss. Imagine hearing that your dear elderly aunt has dementia and will soon lose the ability to talk or even eat. Now imagine hearing the same thing about your dear niece, a college student. As people age, we somehow find their infirmity less troubling. Loss of mobility, cognition, or even life seems less grievous when it strikes the nursing home crowd.

Cross cultural research on bereavement suggests that people typically experience the greatest sense of loss when a youth dies just before the child-bearing years. Biologists propose that this is because we are wired to leave a genetic legacy, a little bit of ourselves carried forward in future generations. By adolescence, parents have invested years of their lives in nurturing their offspring. All of that investment, from laundry to love, comes to naught when a young person dies without children of his or her own.

Whatever our genes may value, we are intelligent, self-conscious beings, and we embrace an intelligent and self-conscious sense of personhood independent of our reproductive prospects. We intuitively value life less at both ends because this personhood—the unique sense of ourselves as ourselves-- is first coming into being and then fading.

The pre-natal period is a part of this continuum. Is an infant less valuable as a person two days before it is born than two day after? Not by much. It is true that a sudden death two days after birth is likely to cause even greater grief than a death two days before. But this has little to do with objective substance, the value of the neonate as a latent person. Only the most rabidly dualistic defender of abortion rights would argue otherwise, and I have yet to meet such a person. Conversely, only the most rabid conceptionist would argue that destroying a beaker full of six million fertilized eggs is a crime on scale with the Holocaust. (I have met such a person; in fact, I am related to one.)

Cognitive scientists study something they call “naïve psychology.” Naïve psychology is the values and beliefs that actually govern our perceptions of other people, not the ones that we say do. As the philosopher said, “Tell me what you do, and I’ll tell you what you believe.” At the level of naïve psychology, Evangelicals, just like the rest of us, believe that the value of a fetus grows over time and that it is different than the value of a child.

Consider: Those letter writers who carry on about our “child murder” problem, don’t spend much time lamenting the sixty percent of fertilized eggs that God or nature aborts. By contrast, we might expect them to be horrified if sixty percent of American children were falling dead sometime between their third and fourth birthdays. They would stand beside the rest of us in demanding better medical research and care. We also might expect them to do something other than squawk and work the political process if millions of three year olds were being killed with state sanction. I certainly would.

Consider: Evangelicals don’t pray over old tampons and panty liners the way they pray at the funerals of deceased children. But if they really believed that fertilized eggs were people, they would. A high percentage of pregnancies self-abort before a woman even realizes she is pregnant. Consequently, if women are having unprotected sex, that menstrual discharge frequently contains little spherical people.

Consider: Middle aged Evangelicals grieve their dead children more than they grieve their dead elders. The loss of a child is more likely to provoke a divorce or a crisis of faith than the loss of a bed-bound demented parent, however well loved.

The point I am making is this. At an emotional level, fundamentalists assign different values to different points along the life span, just like the rest of us.

So why do I say that it was a waste of time to carry the signs at that protest? Why not try to remind those tearful “murderers” of what they know subconsciously to be true? Because too much was at stake, both for them and for their Evangelical community. This isn’t about child development. It isn’t about biology. Here’s the bottom line: Unless fundamentalists want to risk their whole precarious Jenga-tower of beliefs, they cannot afford to consciously admit that personhood exists on a continuum.

Evangelical fundamentalism demands that most everything that matters be divided into tidy categories. It is a world of black and white, with no gray-tones.

There are the male roles and “complementary” female roles. An age of innocence and an age of accountability. One perfect sacred text and a bunch of dangerous fakes. God’s chosen people--the stars of His screenplay-- and millions of Hollywood extras. The saved and the damned. Heaven and hell.

In this dichotomous world, anyone who is not on the side of Yahweh is on the side of Satan. Committing adultery in your heart is as damning as committing it in a back alley at knifepoint. Someone who cheats the paper boy is slated for the same eternity as Hitler.

And sex . . . Well sex. Born-again believers are good marriage material; marrying an outsider makes a believer “unequally yoked.” Whether a sex act is beautiful or vile depends entirely on a marriage certificate. We’re all either straight or disgusting. And that first coital act magically establishes a woman’s virtue and value as an intimate partner.

In this world, all prayers of fundamentalists are answered; no others. Being “born again” trumps any other qualification for public office and being an atheist is an absolute disqualifier. The wisdom of insiders is wisdom indeed; the wisdom of outsiders is foolishness. (For some reason, this doesn’t apply to the office of cardiac surgeon or stock broker.) Money given to Christian ministries goes to God; money invested in secular mercies is a waste. In sum, the whole social, political, moral and financial structure of fundamentalism requires a dualistic world view.

Am I exaggerating? Perhaps. After all, I was nursed on dichotomies, and my own ability to think in shades of gray ought to be in question. In the real world, labels and categories tend to fall short. The tribe of Evangelicals is a fuzzy group, like most others, and a few who call themselves Evangelical are not fundamentalist at all. But if you push past the hazy liberal edge into the Evangelical heartland, you will find yourself surrounded by the kind of fundamentalism I am describing. Christian fundamentalists believe that the Bible is the literally perfect and complete revelation of God to humankind. This belief is the cracked granite from which the whole Evangelical movement flows.

One of the root problems with fundamentalism in any religion is that it abhors shades of gray. That is why fundamentalists, whether Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or Muslim cannot accept a developmental sequence in which a blastocyst is a hollow ball of cells, and a twelve year old is a person, and we can’t quite pinpoint when exactly the change happened because it was happening for twelve years straight.

This is also why unending arguments over abortion are only a small sign of a much bigger problem. The really big problem is that the fundamentalist mindset distorts a believer’s perspectives on everything from international relations to science education. Living in a world of dichotomies means that there are good countries and axes of evil. It means that the answers to important questions are static, and that any evolving body of knowledge (aka science) is suspect, especially when it has moral or social implications.

Ultimately, this mindset threatens not only our pluralistic society but also our economy. To the extent that we Americans have earned our prosperity, we’ve earned it largely because our culture values free inquiry. We follow our curiosity where it leads; and then we poke, prod and ask hard questions; and then we innovate based on whatever we discover through this messy process. The unfettered pursuit of “why” and “how” and “what if” has caused our country to flourish. But it is fundamentally at odds with fundamentalism. The heart of America and the heart of Evangelical fundamentalism are at best unequally yoked and at worst hopelessly incompatible.

Around the world, groups that cling to received “truths,” whether religious or secular, tend to be economically delayed. Can we alone close the doors of our minds and somehow avoid this fate? Those who care about the future of American innovation should worry about the growing hunger of fundamentalists in this country for theocracy. As a bumper sticker points out, “One nation under God” is the motto of Iran.

Our stagnant battle over fetal personhood may portend a more ominous stagnation. Together we face global challenges of our own making: climate change, resource depletion, and mutually destructive military capacity. We are up against questions about the future of living, breathing, self-conscious, opinionated twelve-year-olds. Unless we can find a way to challenge the growing appeal of fundamentalism, questions about emerging personhood may become obsolete.

Recommendations From Opposite Sides of the Spectrum

I have been on three theological/philosophical reading quests in my life. The first one was when I decided to become a Christian apologist under Dr. James D. Strauss while in Seminary. That began in 1979 and lasted through my studies under Dr. William Lane Craig, at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, until I left Marquette University for the full time ministry at the end of 1988. I probably read nearly one book per week and many weeks I read up to three books, plus many journal articles. I was a bookworm.

The second quest for knowledge came around 1992 and probably lasted through 1997. It began as the result of a serious challenge to my faith starting with the quest to see if I could reconcile the creation accounts in Genesis with the findings of science as to the age of the universe, and what that entailed for the rest of what I believed about the Bible. This second quest was not as intense as the first one because I was no longer a student and had other things to do. During this quest I lost my Christian faith. At that point I didn't see anything that would change my mind, nor any reason to bother to read more on the topic. I would've described myself as a Deistic existentialist in my beliefs, and that was where I had ended my religious quest, or so I thought. Then I practically stopped this kind of reading when compared to the amount of reading I had done before. Sure, I read a book every two or three months, after that, but nothing by comparison to my previous years. This break from my theological and philosophical reading basically lasted until about 2003.

When Mel Gibson's movie “The Passion of the Christ" came out, I wrote a letter to the local newspaper asking some hard questions about why Jesus had to suffer and die, and that was what started me writing about what I believed. By that time my doubt had solidified to the point where I didn't think much about it, that is, until Gibson's movie shocked me out of complacency. It caused me to desire to explain to the local people where I lived why I no longer believed. After all, they knew me as a Senior Minister at one of the biggest churches in town, and I had served as the President of the Ministerial Association. I initially compiled several essays, some from class handouts, and put them in a spiral bound notebook to be sold at the local bookstore. When I couldn't keep up with the small demand for this, I self-published a book with these essays in it. At that point I was done with such things, or so I thought. That's as far as I thought ahead. "Place them in a book and get on with life," I thought to myself.

Then I started doing searches on the internet. I hadn't been on the web before, except for exchanging a few emails with people. I noticed Ed Babinski's website and we traded books. He encouraged me. He noticed something I had not bothered with before. He saw that my former professor was Dr. Craig, and made me believe that maybe I was special because of this [Actually it does not, and it should not matter to either side. My arguments either stand up to scrutiny or they don’t]. So I began arguing on the internet, and I began reading again, which is my third quest for theological/philosophical knowledge. I revised my book, re-named it, revised it again, and again. And with each time I revised it I included some stuff I had just learned from my reading. And during this process I became an atheist.

Ed also encouraged me to start a blog, so in January of 2006 I did, this one, and I've been arguing here since. But I never anticipated doing what I’m doing when I started out. As far as I was concerned my first edition of my self-published book was the final period in my religious quest. I was moving on. But here I am today, blogging. I guess I'm still doing so because I think what I'm doing is important, even though there are days when I no longer want to bother.

But then I get an email from Daniel C. Dennett today saying he's recommending my book to inquirers, and telling me it’s "good stuff." I had already heard from Norman Geisler, that he is recommending my book to his Seminary students. That's quite a range of people recommending my book--from opposite sides of the spectrum. How is that possible? This comes in an era when atheist books are selling well. Geisler thinks it will confirm his student’s faith. Dennett probably thinks otherwise. I never intended any of this. I was supposed to get on with my life, and I still want to. Really, I do. Why bother with the time I’m spending here? But here I am. What a roller coaster ride it is. Where will it end? Will it ever end? I don’t know. I just do what interests me, and this interests me to no end, especially when I get emails like the following one:

Dear Mr. Loftus,

My name is Greg and I just purchased and read (and re-read) your book, Why I Rejected Christianity. Thanks for the great book! I have read numerous publications on this topic, but I don't believe I've ever seen as many great reasons to reject religion in one place. The chapter on unanswered prayer had me nearly cheering in my chair. Brilliant stuff!

Your arguments are numerous and rock-solid. Thank you again, Sir, for the wonderful reading. I would be honored to meet you some day. Please continue your great writing and thank you for your willingness to think logically in a superstitious world.

Respectfully,
Greg

Will God Provide?

The attempt to justify the lack of planning by saying "God will provide," is a less than rational way of planning for the future. Agreed?

Are Abstract Objects A Problem For Non-Theists?

Philosophers have some pretty good arguments for the existence of abstract objects -- immaterial, timeless, spaceless, acausal entities that aren't concrete, such as propositions, properties, possible worlds, numbers, sets, and the like. When I was a Christian and an aspiring apologist, I was prodded to think (by apologist philosophers like J.P. Moreland and Alvin Plantinga) that abstract objects posed a nasty problem for non-theistic views of the world, such as naturalism (the view that the natural world is all there is). I also thought that such immaterial entities could best be explained in terms of God. For Christian philosophers have traditionally taken them to be (roughly) thoughts in the mind of God. Actually, there are a variety of views about the way in which abstract objects are taken to depend on God, but all such views can be classified as versions of what is known as 'theistic activism' -- the view that abstract objects depend on God in one way or another. In light of these sorts of considerations, Christians often use the existence of abstract objects to support theism and critique naturalism. The line of reasoning can be put in any number of ways, but here's a common one (although I seldom hear its proponents make the logic of the argument explicit):

"If you deny the existence of God, then the most plausible alternative view for you to take is the view that the physical world is all there is. For if you thought that non-physical things existed as well, then you'd have to say that they arose from the physical. But nothing but physical entities can arise from the physical; therefore, you'd have to posit something immaterial, and very much like a god, to explain such things. Unfortunately, it's just not true that the physical world is all there is. For there are good reasons to think that abstract objects exist, such as numbers, propositions, possible worlds, moral values, etc. The existence of such things are crying out for explanation, and yet your naturalistic view of reality can't explain them. On the other hand, theism can handle them quite naturally. For God, you see, is an immaterial object, and so his nature bears the required sort of affinity with abstract objects to be able to cause, or in any case explain, their existence. Now a plausible and natural way to account for the relation between God and abstract objects is that of thoughts to a thinker; that is, as divine concepts -- they are the architecture of God's mind, as it were. For concepts, like other sorts of abstract objects, are immaterial. Furthermore, many abstract objects, such as propositions, are inherently representational, as are thoughts and concepts. Therefore, since theism can explain abstract objects quite naturaliiy, and naturalism cannot, abstract objects confirm theism and disconfirm naturalism."

Unfortunately, this argument is pretty terrible. For it turns out that (i) theistic activism is prima facie incoherent, and (ii) the argument relies on the dubious assumption that non-theists should adopt an extremely crude form of materialism. Let's discuss (i) and (ii) in turn.

Regarding (i): theistic activism is incoherent:
If you read the recent philosophical literature on theistic activism, you quickly realize that abstract objects actually pose a very nasty problem for Christian theism. To see this, consider a fairly recent and more-or-less standard critique of theistic activism by philosopher Matt Davidson (his paper is entitled, appropriately enough, "A Demonstration Against Theistic Activism". The paper is online -- you can google it). Here's my gisty summary of his argument:

God can't be the cause of abstract objects, for
*being omnipotent* is both an abstract object and one
of God's essential properties. If so, then it must
exist and be instantiated before God can do anything
at all. But God can't create and instantiate his own
essential properties, for that would require him to be
causally prior to himself, and that's wacko (and you
can just forget about the Thomistic solution of
collapsing the essence/existence distinction for God).
But if at least some abstract objects aren't due to
God's causal activity, then theistic activism is
unmotivated.

Furthermore, most philosophers who accept the existence of abstract objects also think that they exist of metaphysical necessity -- that is, they cannot fail to exist. Or to put it another way, they exist in all possible worlds. Why do they think this? For a number of reasons. Here a two. First, since abstract objects seems to be timeless, spaceless, and acausal, then it would seem that they are immune to the conditions of concrete existence that render the latter contingent (e.g, if they're timeless, then they neither come to be nor pass away; if they're acausal, then they seem immune from things causing them to come to be and pass away, etc.) Second, at least some properties of many sorts of abstract objects seem to hold of logical necessity. So, for example, suppose you are a philosopher who is a realist about numbers -- you think that numbers exist and are abstract objects. Then since it's not just true, but necessarily true that 1+1=2, it's true in all possible worlds that 1+1=2. If so, then it's natural to think that numbers and mathematical propositions exist in all possible worlds (otherwise, there might be a possible world in which '1+1=2' is false). But if so -- and here's the punchline -- abstract objects don't need an explanation for their existence in terms of something beyond themselves. For they can't fail to exist; if the reason why abstract objects exist is because it's metaphysically impossible for them to fail to exist, then one can hardly ask for a better reason for their existence than that (if not, then God is in trouble!).

So it turns out that if you look closely at the doctrine of theistic activism, it turns out to be prima facie incoherent: (a) God's causal activity is necessarily dependent on the prior existence of at least some abstract objects (e.g., the property of being omnipotent), and (b) abstract objects exist of metaphysical necessity, in which case they need no explanation anyway -- Indeed, they can't have an explanation (as we've just seen with an attempt to explain them in terms of God). But if that's right, then theism, no less than crude forms of materialism, can't explain the existence of abstract objects.

Of course, a theist can avoid the problem by just getting rid of the idea that abstract objects depend on God for their existence. After all, as we've just seen, the reasons philosophers have for thinking that they exist at all are equally reasons for thinking that they're necessary beings -- they exist of absolute necessity. If so, then they don't need an explanation in terms of something beyond themselves. So the theist can just say that abstract objects are necessary beings. And if they hold to a traditional doctrine about God at least as ancient as Anselm -- viz., that God is a necessary being -- then they can say that although God is just one of the infinitely many necessary beings, he's nonetheless unique and special in the sense that he's the only one among the infinitely many necessary beings that's a concrete, substantial being. However, they may not like this, since it diminishes the doctrine of God as absolutely sovereign and the creator and sustainer of everything else that exists; for on this revised account, God is neither the creator nor the sustainer of abstract objects.

On the other hand, if they hold (as, e.g., Christian philososopher Richard Swinburne holds) that God isn't a metaphysically necessary being, but rather a factually necessary being -- i.e., that there are possible worlds in which God does not exist, but given that he does exist, he's eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, the creator and sustainer of all else that exists (except for abstract objects) -- then God's greatness seems to be a bit diminished by the fact that abstract objects have a greater kind of existence than God, viz., metaphysically necessary existence.

In either case, though, theists do not have a piece of evidence for theism and against naturalism with the existence of abstract objects. For abstract objects (a) are necessarily existent entities, and thus need no explanation (indeed, this is so even if one accepts the Principle of Sufficient Reason), and (b) theism cannot -- logically cannot -- explain abstract objects in terms of the causal activity of God. What about non-theists, though? Don't abstract objects render their view of reality hopelessly implausible? This brings me to my last point.

Regarding (ii): the argument relies on the dubious assumption that non-theists should adopt an extremely crude form of materialism:

Contrary to what the argument asserts, abstract objects do not pose a problem for non-theists in the least. This is for at least two reasons. First, as we've already seen, if abstract objects exist, then there's excellent reason to think they're necessarily existent entities -- i.e., it's impossible for them to fail to exist. If so, then there's no need to postulate an explanation of their existence. But second, non-theists aren't commited to a crude form of materialism. They need not be commited to the view that the material world is all there is. Rather, they can happily grant the existence of abstract objects. Let me explain this by returning to the argument for a god from the existence of abstract objects.

Recall that a key premise of the argument was that if theism is false, then one must account for everything in terms of physical objects. And the argument for that premise was that only the physical could arise from the physical. But now we can see what's wrong with this inference (at least one of the things). For the non-theist need not explain the existence of non-physical, asbtract objects in terms of the physical if the latter never "arose" at all, but rather are timeless, spaceless, acausal, eternal, necessarily existent entities. A non-theist can hold that all contingent reality is physical, or arose from the physical, all the while serenely granting the existence of abstract, immaterial entities that exist of metaphysical necessity. For again, (i) if abstract objects exist of necessity, then they need no explanation, and (ii) God cannot explain the existence of abstract objects. Thus, the existence of abstract objects pose no problem at all for the non-theist.

To conclude: to the theist who asks me how I explain the existence of abstract objects, I say, "you're falsely assuming that abstract objects need an explanation, as well as that non-theists can only plausibly accept a crude form of materialism. But neither assumption is correct. As to the first assumption, abstract objects can't fail to exist if they exist at all, in which case they're in no need of explanation in terms of something beyond themselves. As to the second, and relatedly, non-theists aren't commited to crude materialism, especially if abstract objects exist of necessity, and thus need no explanation -- much less of an explanation in terms of the material world. But to turn the tables, how can you account for abstract objects? For if you take properties to be abstract objects, then you can't plausibly take them to be explained in terms of the causal activity of God. For God's ability to cause anything is posterior to the existence of at least some properties -- most saliently, in this case, the property of being omnipotent. And if some abstract objects don't depend on the causal activity of God, then what principled grounds can be offered for saying that any must so depend on him? (And if that's right, then what happens to the docrines of absolute creation and sovereignty?) So the argument seems to turn itself on you; abstract objects aren't puzzling in the least for non-theists; they are, however, for theists."

------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Short Bibliography on Theistic Activism
(It should be noted that every philosopher below is a Christian theist)

Bergmann, Michael and Jeffrey Brower. “A Theistic Argument Against Platonism (And In Support of Truhmakers and Divine Simplicity)”. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 2 (2006), 357-386. Available on line here.

Davidson, Matt. “God And Other Necessary Beings” (entry at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available here. See also the bibliography at the end of the article for further readings)

-“A Demonstration Against Theistic Activism”. Religious Studies 35 (1999), pp. 277-290. Available online here.

Morris, Thomas V. and Christopher Menzel. “Absolute Creation”. American Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1985), pp. 353-362.

Plantinga, Alvin. Does God Have A Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980).

-“How To Be An Anti-Realist” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 1982, pp. 47-70.

-“Two Dozen (Or So) Theistic Arguments” Available online here.