(Revised: added a poll at the end just for fun) Since most people in the world (some of them Christians) don't believe in Adam and Eve based on the conclusions resulting from scientific disciplines such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology from now on I will disqualify it as a datum in any discussion I have on this site. That means that I will no longer accept the historicity of Adam and Eve as a premise supporting any conclusions, I will dismiss it out of hand and I encourage this viewpoint from others.
In my view, to entertain or even to discuss the historicity of Adam and Eve is irrelevant. They have already been shown to be infinitesimally unlikely by fields such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology. In my view it is a sensible position to commit to the view point that Adam and Eve are folklore until the introduction of new information warrants reconsideration. In my view to recognize the possibility of the existence of Adam and Eve as a premise in a discussion is to give it the appearance that it is a real consideration and worthy of discussion. I say that it is no more worthy of discussion than a flat earth or the existence of Leprechauns.
Logically, using the same criteria to support the existence of Adam and Eve, one could argue for the existence of Leprechauns. To concede that the existence of Adam and Eve is a possibility is to prevent the discussion from going forward toward a resolution because the insistence of the opponent to disregard the conclusion of the disciplines of Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology is counter to the most widely held viewpoint in the world and is irrational in the face of sound reasoning. If another Christian doesn't believe it why should I give it the benefit of doubt? Why should I allow it as a premise in any discussion?
Now an apologist may accuse me of appealing to authority and the bandwagon fallacy. However, those are labels for a fallacious reasoning scheme. To apply that label to my process of reasoning in this case necessitates showing that my presumption about the validity of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines is flawed and/or that the viewpoint of the majority is based on the underlying fallacy of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines. It necessitates discrediting the conclusions of those disciplines. That is an uphill battle if there ever was one. In both cases I am insulated from the charge of fallacy.
In my view, the persistence of groundless beliefs such as Adam and Eve is due to the tolerance of them in discussion by those that know they are groundless. We can still tolerate other viewpoints until those viewpoints begin to intrude or become harmful in the practical and pragmatic business of day to day life. Discussants need to make the same commitment to discourage and challenge the use of inaccurate information in their personal lives that they do in other areas of their lives.
April 17, 2008
April 16, 2008
Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) to Atheist Rob Sherman: "You have no right to be here!"
Ta, Ta, Ta. Such ignorance and hate! Link
Problem of Other Minds, God and Us.
I can sum it up in two words. Cat Herding.
Wikipedia describes "The Problem of Other Minds" as follows.
Given that I can only observe the behaviour of others, how can I know that others have minds?
Now how does this relate to Us and God? How do we know that God has a mind? How do I know that you have a mind? How do I know that I am not a brain in a vat? As interesting and as fun as all these questions are to think about I want to look at it more pragmatically.
That's cool.
I know what I mean, but do you?
What does that mean? It depends on context doesn't it? This is the problem of other minds. I don't know if you've understood what I mean. I would know if you've understood what I mean if I could put the thoughts in your head exactly the way they should be but I can't. I have to tell you.
So now I'm planning a project and I have to describe to these people what the specifications are going to be. I am going to try to use the principle of clarity and minimize as much uncertainty as I can. I use email but someone always misunderstands what I mean. They take their misunderstanding of what I mean and shoot off an email to some other people pretty soon, the project is off track. I draw a picture, scan it, and send it in the next email. This works better but there is always some information missing or some information that will get interpreted in a way that I didn't expect. It would be so much better if they could read my mind. It would be so much better if I could just download the electrochemical state in my head and pass it on to them to upload. But the problem is that they would still be missing information unless I passed onto them the whole configuration of my brain, because they don't have my memories or resultant heuristic algorithms that I have acquired over time.
The truth is, it is a 'miracle' if this project turns out as planned and on schedule and within budget because people can't read minds and, regardless of their best efforts, can only understand what they have a foundational knowledge about.
Since this is the case and is a source of my frustration, either I am the only one this happens to, or it is a symptom of human cognition.
Since this is the case, it is silly for me to expect that generating text is going to keep this project on track. It is silly for me to use terms and examples that my associates don't have a foundational knowledge of. It would be better if I could just impart this knowledge into them with no chance of mistake or misinterpretation.
The only way I could do that is to be God. But we know that Gods don't work that way. But I bet they would if they were real.
Wikipedia describes "The Problem of Other Minds" as follows.
Given that I can only observe the behaviour of others, how can I know that others have minds?
Now how does this relate to Us and God? How do we know that God has a mind? How do I know that you have a mind? How do I know that I am not a brain in a vat? As interesting and as fun as all these questions are to think about I want to look at it more pragmatically.
That's cool.
I know what I mean, but do you?
What does that mean? It depends on context doesn't it? This is the problem of other minds. I don't know if you've understood what I mean. I would know if you've understood what I mean if I could put the thoughts in your head exactly the way they should be but I can't. I have to tell you.
So now I'm planning a project and I have to describe to these people what the specifications are going to be. I am going to try to use the principle of clarity and minimize as much uncertainty as I can. I use email but someone always misunderstands what I mean. They take their misunderstanding of what I mean and shoot off an email to some other people pretty soon, the project is off track. I draw a picture, scan it, and send it in the next email. This works better but there is always some information missing or some information that will get interpreted in a way that I didn't expect. It would be so much better if they could read my mind. It would be so much better if I could just download the electrochemical state in my head and pass it on to them to upload. But the problem is that they would still be missing information unless I passed onto them the whole configuration of my brain, because they don't have my memories or resultant heuristic algorithms that I have acquired over time.
The truth is, it is a 'miracle' if this project turns out as planned and on schedule and within budget because people can't read minds and, regardless of their best efforts, can only understand what they have a foundational knowledge about.
Since this is the case and is a source of my frustration, either I am the only one this happens to, or it is a symptom of human cognition.
Since this is the case, it is silly for me to expect that generating text is going to keep this project on track. It is silly for me to use terms and examples that my associates don't have a foundational knowledge of. It would be better if I could just impart this knowledge into them with no chance of mistake or misinterpretation.
The only way I could do that is to be God. But we know that Gods don't work that way. But I bet they would if they were real.
April 14, 2008
An Atheist in the Pulpit!
Ed Babinski sent me this link: An Atheist in the Pulpit from Psychology Today magazine. In it Dan Barker is interviewed. This is a great article.
An Open Letter to Peter Kirby
Peter Kirby was an atheist then a Catholic and now he says he’s not quite one or the other.
Looks to me this choice of his is a forced one, as William James wrote about. It seems to be an agonizing one for him. Agnosticism isn't an option for him. Okay. But there are two other options for him. I want to offer them up here.
One option is Christian atheism, or secular Christianity. This theological view was the one that hit the cover of Time magazine in the ‘60’s. It stems from things Nietzsche said that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about during WWII in the face of Hitler, which in turn was developed into a theology by Gabriel Vahanian, Paul van Buren, William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer. You can Google these theologians to read more. Today Don Cupitt in his book Taking Leave of God is a modern defender of this view.
The second option is to protest the lack of evidence and the lack of a caring God by proclaiming yourself an atheist, even though you aren’t sure he doesn’t exist. Theologian John Roth has developed a “Theodicy of Protest” to deal with the problem of evil which can be seen in a chapter for the book edited by Stephen T. Davis, called Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (John Knox Press, 1981). Roth protests the evil in the world by attempting to shame God into doing what is right. Likewise, Kirby can protest the lack of evidence and the lack of a caring God by proclaiming himself an atheist. I do that. Why not?
Looks to me this choice of his is a forced one, as William James wrote about. It seems to be an agonizing one for him. Agnosticism isn't an option for him. Okay. But there are two other options for him. I want to offer them up here.
One option is Christian atheism, or secular Christianity. This theological view was the one that hit the cover of Time magazine in the ‘60’s. It stems from things Nietzsche said that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about during WWII in the face of Hitler, which in turn was developed into a theology by Gabriel Vahanian, Paul van Buren, William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer. You can Google these theologians to read more. Today Don Cupitt in his book Taking Leave of God is a modern defender of this view.
The second option is to protest the lack of evidence and the lack of a caring God by proclaiming yourself an atheist, even though you aren’t sure he doesn’t exist. Theologian John Roth has developed a “Theodicy of Protest” to deal with the problem of evil which can be seen in a chapter for the book edited by Stephen T. Davis, called Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (John Knox Press, 1981). Roth protests the evil in the world by attempting to shame God into doing what is right. Likewise, Kirby can protest the lack of evidence and the lack of a caring God by proclaiming himself an atheist. I do that. Why not?
April 12, 2008
Captain Kirk on Atheism
You know it’s a crazy world if a sci-fi hero like Captain Kirk can weigh in on real-life philosophical issues and be right. Well, it must be a crazy world then because we have at least one such example. Get your trekkie shoes on as we gaze into the vault of 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sybok are on the surface of a distant world called Nimbus III beyond “The Great Barrier,” where the ambitious Vulcan half-brother of Spock named Sybok has forcefully led them on a quest to find ultimate universal truth and meaning—a.k.a. the search for Eden and God. Moments after their arrival, they are met by a Father Time-ish being who, incidentally, couldn’t have looked more like Caucasian humanity’s version of God if all the artists in the world tried to get him to…but I digress.
This sagely-looking, incorporeal being of obviously great presence and power learns of the starship that brought them to his world. He informs them that he has been imprisoned in this distant world for an eternity, unable to reach the rest of the galaxy, and that the Enterprise would be his means of travel beyond it. But the red flag of skepticism had already been raised in the mind of Kirk, who boldly asked: “What does God need with a starship?”
Now, the situation becomes especially tense. McCoy says, “Jim, what are you doing?” Kirk says, “I'm asking a question.” The so-called “God” says, “Who is this creature?” Kirk asks, “Who am I? Don't you know? Aren't you God?” Comically, Sybok remarks, “He has his doubts.” “God” asks, “You doubt me?” Kirk says, “I seek proof.” McCoy says, “Jim! You don't ask the Almighty for his ID!” “God” tells Kirk, “Then here is the proof you seek.” At this point, Kirk is struck by a bolt of energy and knocked to the ground.
Despite the brutal nature of this “God” emerging in such a terrifying fashion, the planted seeds of doubt begin to grow into what would be considered by any god a tree of heresy. Kirk asks, “Why is God angry?” Even Sybok, the kooky believer of the bunch, is now compelled to ask, “Why? Why have you done this to my friend?” Coldly and bluntly, “God” says, “He doubts me.” But that evil, heretical Kirk had already spread the disease of disbelief. Spock reminds “God,” “You have not answered his question. What does God need with a starship?” So “God” hits Spock with lightning as well, and then it addresses McCoy: “Do you doubt me?” And at this point, even emotional, sentimental, non-reasoning McCoy is forced to go with his mind: “I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure.”
Now this perceived “God” and the God of the Bible should do lunch sometime. They have lots in common, don’t they? In any other context, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart judging by their actions and attitudes. For instance, they both believe they are the final authority and should be obeyed without question. They both prefer human instrumentality to get their will done (even though they shouldn’t), they both use torture to enforce their demands, and they both hate the living hell out of skeptics! As with just about every god there ever was, doubt is the most damnable of all offenses. Make no mistake about it—asking the Alpha-and-Omega probing questions will get your ass struck down! This tendency describes the God of the Bible to a “T”.
But that’s not what I’m hitting at here. I’m honing in on the question asked by Kirk: “What does God need with a starship?” The question is priceless in that no matter what theistic concept is under investigation, it is the mere asking of the “need” question that leads to the unraveling of theism. Ask a lot of questions and you’ll be called an annoying kid, ask a few more questions and you’ll be called a UFOologist or a new-ager, but ask too many questions and you’ll end up an atheist! You have been warned! But again, I digress.
The gods have always hated questions as badly as they hate the questioners. To question God is to totally rob him of all power whatsoever because when you begin to question him, you naturally undercut his authority as you take on the role of one asking a subservient to give an account of himself to a superior. And when God’s authority is undercut, not only is his power rendered inert, his afflicting guilt can’t get to you either, nor can his tug at your pocketbook. So the logic of inquiry and God just don’t line up, much like Air Traffic Control scoping for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
Now God doesn’t “need” anything. He can’t need anything, being that he’s omnipotent as the fully self-sufficient prime mover and sustainer of the cosmos. And Christians will fully agree. God doesn’t need to have children sacrificed to him by having babies thrown to the hungry crocs of the Nile. God doesn’t need to have the still-beating heart ripped out of a young Aztec man’s chest and held up to the sun as a means to preserve or sustain the universe and “feed” God. God doesn’t need to be clothed or bathed or groomed. He doesn’t need a W-2 booklet for tax time, he doesn’t need Febreaze air freshener, he doesn’t need patio furniture, and he doesn’t need Limewire. He just doesn’t.
But Christians don’t go far enough. It’s not enough to look down on the pagan gods and goddesses of old and talk up how inferior they are for having typically carnal (and often conjugal) needs. They need to look down on their own God as well. Christians gloat in the supposed superiority of their own deity, but their gloating is as short-lived as an Oprah trim-down. The God of Christianity is, in fact, guilty of the very same absurdity of having unjustifiable needs as any pagan god ever was. To be forthrightly logical about it, if God exists, he can’t want anything at all – nothing – because to want is to have a lack of something, which is to have a need. And as we have already seen, a God cannot “have needs,” like I do at the moment (Ohhh Belindaaaaa? Where are you, hun? I’m a comin’ for ya!) Well, for yet a third time, I digress!
What application does this have for the Christian? It means that God doesn’t need a starship for the same reason that he doesn’t need a temple, a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a shrine. And God doesn’t need worshippers, and therefore, a universe to house them. It means that even if an omnimax deity like the God of the scriptures existed, that being would have no desire to create us or anything else at all. Nope, God doesn’t need solar systems or planetary bodies, and he doesn’t need fleshly flattery in the form of blubbering blood-bags to tell him he’s so, so, so, so, so, sooooo worthy. He would know that already and wouldn’t have a complex about it, causing him to fixate on himself so much with the neurotic narcissism of a throat-slashing serial killer.
And God wouldn’t need or want a son. The idea of a god having a son doesn’t even make sense on the face of it. That is, it makes about as much sense as a god who ejaculates to make a son (if you can imagine that?!) Nope, God wouldn’t have a son and he certainly wouldn’t have a virgin-born son, and he wouldn’t have his son brutally killed and then raised to life again for the purpose of setting up a death-glorifying, cannibalistic cult where beings who are infinitely less powerful than he sit around and eat the flesh of his dead/resurrected little boy, and then proceed to clamor on about how junior’s the greatest thing since sliced bread (well, actually before sliced bread!)
Now God may not need anything, but it is definitely an understandable mistake for Christians to think that he wants things. Talking about a God creating a people to be tokens of his glory or sending disciples on a mission to do “his will” is understandable. I mean, we collect keepsakes and send people to the store for us. We build houses and make plans, and so it should come as no surprise when the gods we create in our image “do things” just as we do. That’s why the gods get angry just like we do and command to have the heads of their enemies placed on sticks to face the sky until the evening so that their fierce anger will be turned away (Numbers 25:4).
But that’s another problem; a god can’t be angry anymore than a god can need or want a thing, because getting angry can only happen when a being is limited in power and unable to rectify a situation or is put in an edgy predicament of some sort. But you can’t put the great “I Am” in a predicament, and so to say that he can get angry (or become jealous, or regretful, or embarrassed, or amused) makes no clear sense. We’re dealing with the classic anthropomorphic problem here—you can’t take the emotions found in limited beings and expect them to fit beings who transcend all limits. This tells us that the gods were made in our image and not the other way around.
So no, God wouldn’t need a starship, but he also wouldn’t need us.
(JH)
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sybok are on the surface of a distant world called Nimbus III beyond “The Great Barrier,” where the ambitious Vulcan half-brother of Spock named Sybok has forcefully led them on a quest to find ultimate universal truth and meaning—a.k.a. the search for Eden and God. Moments after their arrival, they are met by a Father Time-ish being who, incidentally, couldn’t have looked more like Caucasian humanity’s version of God if all the artists in the world tried to get him to…but I digress.
This sagely-looking, incorporeal being of obviously great presence and power learns of the starship that brought them to his world. He informs them that he has been imprisoned in this distant world for an eternity, unable to reach the rest of the galaxy, and that the Enterprise would be his means of travel beyond it. But the red flag of skepticism had already been raised in the mind of Kirk, who boldly asked: “What does God need with a starship?”
Now, the situation becomes especially tense. McCoy says, “Jim, what are you doing?” Kirk says, “I'm asking a question.” The so-called “God” says, “Who is this creature?” Kirk asks, “Who am I? Don't you know? Aren't you God?” Comically, Sybok remarks, “He has his doubts.” “God” asks, “You doubt me?” Kirk says, “I seek proof.” McCoy says, “Jim! You don't ask the Almighty for his ID!” “God” tells Kirk, “Then here is the proof you seek.” At this point, Kirk is struck by a bolt of energy and knocked to the ground.
Despite the brutal nature of this “God” emerging in such a terrifying fashion, the planted seeds of doubt begin to grow into what would be considered by any god a tree of heresy. Kirk asks, “Why is God angry?” Even Sybok, the kooky believer of the bunch, is now compelled to ask, “Why? Why have you done this to my friend?” Coldly and bluntly, “God” says, “He doubts me.” But that evil, heretical Kirk had already spread the disease of disbelief. Spock reminds “God,” “You have not answered his question. What does God need with a starship?” So “God” hits Spock with lightning as well, and then it addresses McCoy: “Do you doubt me?” And at this point, even emotional, sentimental, non-reasoning McCoy is forced to go with his mind: “I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure.”
Now this perceived “God” and the God of the Bible should do lunch sometime. They have lots in common, don’t they? In any other context, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart judging by their actions and attitudes. For instance, they both believe they are the final authority and should be obeyed without question. They both prefer human instrumentality to get their will done (even though they shouldn’t), they both use torture to enforce their demands, and they both hate the living hell out of skeptics! As with just about every god there ever was, doubt is the most damnable of all offenses. Make no mistake about it—asking the Alpha-and-Omega probing questions will get your ass struck down! This tendency describes the God of the Bible to a “T”.
But that’s not what I’m hitting at here. I’m honing in on the question asked by Kirk: “What does God need with a starship?” The question is priceless in that no matter what theistic concept is under investigation, it is the mere asking of the “need” question that leads to the unraveling of theism. Ask a lot of questions and you’ll be called an annoying kid, ask a few more questions and you’ll be called a UFOologist or a new-ager, but ask too many questions and you’ll end up an atheist! You have been warned! But again, I digress.
The gods have always hated questions as badly as they hate the questioners. To question God is to totally rob him of all power whatsoever because when you begin to question him, you naturally undercut his authority as you take on the role of one asking a subservient to give an account of himself to a superior. And when God’s authority is undercut, not only is his power rendered inert, his afflicting guilt can’t get to you either, nor can his tug at your pocketbook. So the logic of inquiry and God just don’t line up, much like Air Traffic Control scoping for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
Now God doesn’t “need” anything. He can’t need anything, being that he’s omnipotent as the fully self-sufficient prime mover and sustainer of the cosmos. And Christians will fully agree. God doesn’t need to have children sacrificed to him by having babies thrown to the hungry crocs of the Nile. God doesn’t need to have the still-beating heart ripped out of a young Aztec man’s chest and held up to the sun as a means to preserve or sustain the universe and “feed” God. God doesn’t need to be clothed or bathed or groomed. He doesn’t need a W-2 booklet for tax time, he doesn’t need Febreaze air freshener, he doesn’t need patio furniture, and he doesn’t need Limewire. He just doesn’t.
But Christians don’t go far enough. It’s not enough to look down on the pagan gods and goddesses of old and talk up how inferior they are for having typically carnal (and often conjugal) needs. They need to look down on their own God as well. Christians gloat in the supposed superiority of their own deity, but their gloating is as short-lived as an Oprah trim-down. The God of Christianity is, in fact, guilty of the very same absurdity of having unjustifiable needs as any pagan god ever was. To be forthrightly logical about it, if God exists, he can’t want anything at all – nothing – because to want is to have a lack of something, which is to have a need. And as we have already seen, a God cannot “have needs,” like I do at the moment (Ohhh Belindaaaaa? Where are you, hun? I’m a comin’ for ya!) Well, for yet a third time, I digress!
What application does this have for the Christian? It means that God doesn’t need a starship for the same reason that he doesn’t need a temple, a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a shrine. And God doesn’t need worshippers, and therefore, a universe to house them. It means that even if an omnimax deity like the God of the scriptures existed, that being would have no desire to create us or anything else at all. Nope, God doesn’t need solar systems or planetary bodies, and he doesn’t need fleshly flattery in the form of blubbering blood-bags to tell him he’s so, so, so, so, so, sooooo worthy. He would know that already and wouldn’t have a complex about it, causing him to fixate on himself so much with the neurotic narcissism of a throat-slashing serial killer.
And God wouldn’t need or want a son. The idea of a god having a son doesn’t even make sense on the face of it. That is, it makes about as much sense as a god who ejaculates to make a son (if you can imagine that?!) Nope, God wouldn’t have a son and he certainly wouldn’t have a virgin-born son, and he wouldn’t have his son brutally killed and then raised to life again for the purpose of setting up a death-glorifying, cannibalistic cult where beings who are infinitely less powerful than he sit around and eat the flesh of his dead/resurrected little boy, and then proceed to clamor on about how junior’s the greatest thing since sliced bread (well, actually before sliced bread!)
Now God may not need anything, but it is definitely an understandable mistake for Christians to think that he wants things. Talking about a God creating a people to be tokens of his glory or sending disciples on a mission to do “his will” is understandable. I mean, we collect keepsakes and send people to the store for us. We build houses and make plans, and so it should come as no surprise when the gods we create in our image “do things” just as we do. That’s why the gods get angry just like we do and command to have the heads of their enemies placed on sticks to face the sky until the evening so that their fierce anger will be turned away (Numbers 25:4).
But that’s another problem; a god can’t be angry anymore than a god can need or want a thing, because getting angry can only happen when a being is limited in power and unable to rectify a situation or is put in an edgy predicament of some sort. But you can’t put the great “I Am” in a predicament, and so to say that he can get angry (or become jealous, or regretful, or embarrassed, or amused) makes no clear sense. We’re dealing with the classic anthropomorphic problem here—you can’t take the emotions found in limited beings and expect them to fit beings who transcend all limits. This tells us that the gods were made in our image and not the other way around.
So no, God wouldn’t need a starship, but he also wouldn’t need us.
(JH)
April 11, 2008
Ben Stein: Front Man for Creationism's Manufactroversy
The religious right has launched yet another wave of efforts this spring to get creationism into science classes. Their new strategy is to talk about academic freedom, "teaching the controversy" and allowing all ideas to be weighed on their merits. They allege that “big science” is keeping dissent out of the laboratory and out of the classroom. It’s all so Orwellian that it’s positively dizzying. Please help the public understand that their controversy is manufactured. After reading this article, please weigh in at MySpace and Manufactroversy.NewsLadder.net as well as in the comments here at Debunking Christianity.
Biblical creationism, repositioned as creation science and most recently intelligent design has lost the contest of ideas on all counts: the rules, the criteria and the judging. It doesn't follow the scientific method; it doesn't allow us to explain, predict, and control better; and the jury of relevant experts (aka biologists) keeps returning the same verdict.
Now the creationists have taken a new approach that they hope will help them achieve their goal of teaching religious beliefs in our schools as science. That approach can be summed up in one simple word: whining.
One week from today, the new movie, Expelled, attempts to turn creationist complaints into mainstream media. Featuring Ben Stein, one of the conservative right's biggest whiners, the film makes several plaintive appeals: There's a conspiracy among big government and big science, and it's not fair! All we ask is for our perspective to get equal time! (Read: we lost, so let's split the prize.) All we want is for teachers to "teach the controversy"! This is all about academic freedom. Americans like freedom, right?
The whiners actually have spent millions of dollars on the movie, and even more on the marketing of it. You have to give them credit: by bundling Creationism with freedom, they have created a sophisticated strategy. Of course, Americans like freedom! More importantly, both democracy and scientific progress depend on intellectual freedom -- the freedom to ask questions and, unencumbered by ideology, to follow the answers where they lead. After centuries of heresy trials and book burnings, for biblical creationists to position themselves as the champions of academic freedom is a brilliant Orwellian move.
University of Washington professor, Leah Ceccarelli has pointed out that their "teach the controversy" strategy depends on a very specific sleight of hand: blurring the difference between scientific controversy and manufactured controversy or Manufactroversy.
You can say you first heard it here, well, if you haven't heard it already on MySpace or Facebook: Manufactroversy -- a made up word for a made up controversy. There's even a new website, Manufactroversy.NewsLadder.net that aggregates articles and blog posts about this manufactroversy and some other pretty famous ones as well.
Scientific controversy exists only when the jury of relevant experts is out on whether a new finding meets the standard of evidence. The debate and evidence gathering still are in process. A manufactroversy is when someone motivated by profit or ideology fosters confusion in the public mind long after scientists have moved on to the next set of questions. Think tobacco and lung cancer. Think Exxon and global warming. Now think Ben Stein and evolution.
The fact is, there is no scientific controversy about evolution, just like there is no scientific controversy about whether tobacco causes lung cancer or whether human activity causes global warming. However, in all three examples, someone powerful and well established loses out when and if the scientific mountain of evidence becomes common knowledge and widely accepted.
The tobacco industry in the 1960's wasn't anxious to part with its profits just like the oil companies of the 1990's had no desire to walk away from theirs. So they manufactured controversies, paying scientists to publish papers they knew would distort the issue.
In the case of creationism, the a vast preponderance of evidence, conflicts with traditional mythos. What possible explanation but that the scientists are colluding, corrupt, and biased. But, of course, they're not. The proponents of intelligent design can't gain credibility among hard scientists because their evidence is pathetic. So what do they do? Follow in the footsteps of the tobacco and oil companies and spend millions in an effort to create public doubt. They plea for their side to be told, they imagine vast conspiracies and they cry out for fair play, but the reality is much simpler.
The mountain of evidence supporting mainstream biological science is overwhelming. The paltry evidence for "insurmountable gaps" and "irreducible complexity" is actually shrinking. Evolution should be taught as science and creationism, in its many guises, as religion, including the rich pre-scientific stories about origins from many cultures and traditions. So why not just ignore the whiners and hope they will go away? Because they won't until we force them to stop their marketing of religious beliefs as science. We're still fighting the tobacco industry to this day. Oil companies still fund global warming deniers.
Besides, how long has it been since the famous Scopes trial? How long have creationists been talking about "Darwinism" as if no one but Darwin had noticed the fossil record or the DNA code in the last 100 years? It does get tiresome, responding to their ever evolving anti-evolutionary rhetoric. But we need to expose the bizarre supernaturalist agenda behind all the sudden whining about academic freedom. And somebody needs to gently remind Stein and his creationist cronies that they haven't been expelled from school, they flunked.
Biblical creationism, repositioned as creation science and most recently intelligent design has lost the contest of ideas on all counts: the rules, the criteria and the judging. It doesn't follow the scientific method; it doesn't allow us to explain, predict, and control better; and the jury of relevant experts (aka biologists) keeps returning the same verdict.
Now the creationists have taken a new approach that they hope will help them achieve their goal of teaching religious beliefs in our schools as science. That approach can be summed up in one simple word: whining.
One week from today, the new movie, Expelled, attempts to turn creationist complaints into mainstream media. Featuring Ben Stein, one of the conservative right's biggest whiners, the film makes several plaintive appeals: There's a conspiracy among big government and big science, and it's not fair! All we ask is for our perspective to get equal time! (Read: we lost, so let's split the prize.) All we want is for teachers to "teach the controversy"! This is all about academic freedom. Americans like freedom, right?
The whiners actually have spent millions of dollars on the movie, and even more on the marketing of it. You have to give them credit: by bundling Creationism with freedom, they have created a sophisticated strategy. Of course, Americans like freedom! More importantly, both democracy and scientific progress depend on intellectual freedom -- the freedom to ask questions and, unencumbered by ideology, to follow the answers where they lead. After centuries of heresy trials and book burnings, for biblical creationists to position themselves as the champions of academic freedom is a brilliant Orwellian move.
University of Washington professor, Leah Ceccarelli has pointed out that their "teach the controversy" strategy depends on a very specific sleight of hand: blurring the difference between scientific controversy and manufactured controversy or Manufactroversy.
You can say you first heard it here, well, if you haven't heard it already on MySpace or Facebook: Manufactroversy -- a made up word for a made up controversy. There's even a new website, Manufactroversy.NewsLadder.net that aggregates articles and blog posts about this manufactroversy and some other pretty famous ones as well.
Scientific controversy exists only when the jury of relevant experts is out on whether a new finding meets the standard of evidence. The debate and evidence gathering still are in process. A manufactroversy is when someone motivated by profit or ideology fosters confusion in the public mind long after scientists have moved on to the next set of questions. Think tobacco and lung cancer. Think Exxon and global warming. Now think Ben Stein and evolution.
The fact is, there is no scientific controversy about evolution, just like there is no scientific controversy about whether tobacco causes lung cancer or whether human activity causes global warming. However, in all three examples, someone powerful and well established loses out when and if the scientific mountain of evidence becomes common knowledge and widely accepted.
The tobacco industry in the 1960's wasn't anxious to part with its profits just like the oil companies of the 1990's had no desire to walk away from theirs. So they manufactured controversies, paying scientists to publish papers they knew would distort the issue.
In the case of creationism, the a vast preponderance of evidence, conflicts with traditional mythos. What possible explanation but that the scientists are colluding, corrupt, and biased. But, of course, they're not. The proponents of intelligent design can't gain credibility among hard scientists because their evidence is pathetic. So what do they do? Follow in the footsteps of the tobacco and oil companies and spend millions in an effort to create public doubt. They plea for their side to be told, they imagine vast conspiracies and they cry out for fair play, but the reality is much simpler.
The mountain of evidence supporting mainstream biological science is overwhelming. The paltry evidence for "insurmountable gaps" and "irreducible complexity" is actually shrinking. Evolution should be taught as science and creationism, in its many guises, as religion, including the rich pre-scientific stories about origins from many cultures and traditions. So why not just ignore the whiners and hope they will go away? Because they won't until we force them to stop their marketing of religious beliefs as science. We're still fighting the tobacco industry to this day. Oil companies still fund global warming deniers.
Besides, how long has it been since the famous Scopes trial? How long have creationists been talking about "Darwinism" as if no one but Darwin had noticed the fossil record or the DNA code in the last 100 years? It does get tiresome, responding to their ever evolving anti-evolutionary rhetoric. But we need to expose the bizarre supernaturalist agenda behind all the sudden whining about academic freedom. And somebody needs to gently remind Stein and his creationist cronies that they haven't been expelled from school, they flunked.
Is YAWEH a Moral Monster?
In a major article my friend Paul Copan argues that the God of the Old Testament is not a moral monster. I haven't yet taken the time to read all of it, but I'm sure it's the best answer from an evangelical perspective. If it fails, and I think it does, then Christians should reject such a God. As you get the chance, tell me what you think.
April 10, 2008
The Devil Is In The Details
This is a kind of commentary and overview of my observations after participating here for a year.
Reasoning is a discipline. There are several heuristics you can use for reasoning that speed up the process, but the process depends on the quality of detail and evidence you introduce into the process. I solve problems for a living. My bread and butter depends on how well I provide solutions to other peoples problems. I became an atheist after I started using the tools that contribute to my success to my personal philosophy. My religion.
Stephen Toulmin, Richard D. Rieke and G. Thomas Goodnight all talk about spheres of influence or reasoning. The concept goes that there are schemes of reasoning that are more successful depending on the field they are applied in. For example you don't use the same reasoning schemes in critiquing art that you use to convict criminals or determine a drug is safe for use. However, there have been plenty of artists and writers that have discovered and investigated, in their own way, concepts that have been incorporated into science. The most notable ones are that Natural Philosophy has a relationship to Science, the exploration in literature of Human Behavior and Psychology has a relationship to modern day Cognitive Sciences. Artists discovered the Golden Ratio as a perspective that just "looked good" and it was later described in mathematical terms and has a relationship to Architecture.
Religion is and always has been a philosophy about life. A way of thinking about life. This is what it has in common with art, music, law, medicine and science. Dealing with the questions of life. Since all these disciplines share this commonality, and since we know there is overlap, the principle of science can be used to investigate religion.
Christianity depends on the Bible. What is the bible? It is scripture. Where did this scripture come from? That is the question. It says it came from God. But applying the principles of Science, Law and Medicine to this question necessitates another form of validation, or another form of ID. Something to verify that it is what it says it is.
This is where looking at the details comes in. Looking at where these scriptures came from. Tracing the source. Doing this will take you from textual criticism, to sociology, to psychology, to biology, to paleontology, to archeology, to philosophy and not in that order.
Most of the arguments that Christian use here are some kind misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the world. They are referred to commonly as "straw man" arguments. Their philosophy is outdated, needs an upgrade, it doesn't represent an accurate picture of the world. They need new information. Decision making depends on new information. People should change their minds according to assessment of new information. It shouldn't be discouraged or looked at as being indecisive or wishy-washy, it should be demanded! It should be a virtue!
Solving peoples problems requires looking at the details and following the evidence. It requires suspending the tendency to follow authority, tradition and personal bias and instead use logic and inference. We should depend less on authority, consensus and tradition and more on principle, inference and strong criteria for evidence.
In my mind, to Debunk Christianity, or Break the Spell, requires people to follow George Santanaya's advice and don't forget the lessons of the past. Learn about the past, learn about where we came from, find out where those Virtues first appeared, find out where that "let your light shine" came from, find out which god was the first to die and go to hell and come back and have a son, how most of the kings in antiquity were sons of gods or gods incarnate or somehow related to gods.
People need to take the principles they use in the practical application of living their lives and apply it to their religion. When this is done, it brings to light how silly eternal punishment is compared to rehabilitation or just scrapping everything and starting over. How silly it is punish other people for the 'sins' of another group. How silly a human sacrifice is, or just a sacrifice to appease a god is. How silly it is to depend on premises that have no precedent and then create a philosophy of life around it. Just try to plan and execute a project using premises without precedent, and see how successful you are.
Here are some hints to Debunk Christianity. Apply your practical principles to your religion. And do your homework. Find your heritage.
Look up syncretism, sumeria, mesopotamia, ancient egypt, indus valley, harrapas, the axial age, greece, minoans, phoenicians, canaanites, hittites, fertile crescent, hellenism, Byzantium, trade between the indus valley, sumeria and mesopotamia, and follow the water, and pay attention to ancient peoples whos culture and religion idealize life as a journey. Key word "Journey" as in spiritual and economic and trade. Learn about World History between 40,000 bce and 500 ce. Learn about what was important to those people. Learn about their religions.
You will find, the Devil is in the Details, but so is your solution.
Reasoning is a discipline. There are several heuristics you can use for reasoning that speed up the process, but the process depends on the quality of detail and evidence you introduce into the process. I solve problems for a living. My bread and butter depends on how well I provide solutions to other peoples problems. I became an atheist after I started using the tools that contribute to my success to my personal philosophy. My religion.
Stephen Toulmin, Richard D. Rieke and G. Thomas Goodnight all talk about spheres of influence or reasoning. The concept goes that there are schemes of reasoning that are more successful depending on the field they are applied in. For example you don't use the same reasoning schemes in critiquing art that you use to convict criminals or determine a drug is safe for use. However, there have been plenty of artists and writers that have discovered and investigated, in their own way, concepts that have been incorporated into science. The most notable ones are that Natural Philosophy has a relationship to Science, the exploration in literature of Human Behavior and Psychology has a relationship to modern day Cognitive Sciences. Artists discovered the Golden Ratio as a perspective that just "looked good" and it was later described in mathematical terms and has a relationship to Architecture.
Religion is and always has been a philosophy about life. A way of thinking about life. This is what it has in common with art, music, law, medicine and science. Dealing with the questions of life. Since all these disciplines share this commonality, and since we know there is overlap, the principle of science can be used to investigate religion.
Christianity depends on the Bible. What is the bible? It is scripture. Where did this scripture come from? That is the question. It says it came from God. But applying the principles of Science, Law and Medicine to this question necessitates another form of validation, or another form of ID. Something to verify that it is what it says it is.
This is where looking at the details comes in. Looking at where these scriptures came from. Tracing the source. Doing this will take you from textual criticism, to sociology, to psychology, to biology, to paleontology, to archeology, to philosophy and not in that order.
Most of the arguments that Christian use here are some kind misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the world. They are referred to commonly as "straw man" arguments. Their philosophy is outdated, needs an upgrade, it doesn't represent an accurate picture of the world. They need new information. Decision making depends on new information. People should change their minds according to assessment of new information. It shouldn't be discouraged or looked at as being indecisive or wishy-washy, it should be demanded! It should be a virtue!
Solving peoples problems requires looking at the details and following the evidence. It requires suspending the tendency to follow authority, tradition and personal bias and instead use logic and inference. We should depend less on authority, consensus and tradition and more on principle, inference and strong criteria for evidence.
In my mind, to Debunk Christianity, or Break the Spell, requires people to follow George Santanaya's advice and don't forget the lessons of the past. Learn about the past, learn about where we came from, find out where those Virtues first appeared, find out where that "let your light shine" came from, find out which god was the first to die and go to hell and come back and have a son, how most of the kings in antiquity were sons of gods or gods incarnate or somehow related to gods.
People need to take the principles they use in the practical application of living their lives and apply it to their religion. When this is done, it brings to light how silly eternal punishment is compared to rehabilitation or just scrapping everything and starting over. How silly it is punish other people for the 'sins' of another group. How silly a human sacrifice is, or just a sacrifice to appease a god is. How silly it is to depend on premises that have no precedent and then create a philosophy of life around it. Just try to plan and execute a project using premises without precedent, and see how successful you are.
Here are some hints to Debunk Christianity. Apply your practical principles to your religion. And do your homework. Find your heritage.
Look up syncretism, sumeria, mesopotamia, ancient egypt, indus valley, harrapas, the axial age, greece, minoans, phoenicians, canaanites, hittites, fertile crescent, hellenism, Byzantium, trade between the indus valley, sumeria and mesopotamia, and follow the water, and pay attention to ancient peoples whos culture and religion idealize life as a journey. Key word "Journey" as in spiritual and economic and trade. Learn about World History between 40,000 bce and 500 ce. Learn about what was important to those people. Learn about their religions.
You will find, the Devil is in the Details, but so is your solution.
Expel the Lies (or, "Win Ben Stein's Career!") : Selections from recent reviews of the movie Expelled, starring Ben Stein
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with Ben Stein addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein's screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, 'the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus' but that 'the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein's lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university.'
Expelled trots out some of the people whom it claims have been persecuted. First among them is Robert Sternberg, former editor of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, who published an article on ID by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Sternberg tells Stein that he subsequently lost his editorship, his old position at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and his original office.
What most viewers of Expelled may not realize—because the film doesn't even hint at it—is that Sternberg's case is not quite what it sounds. Biologists criticized Sternberg's choice to publish the paper not only because it supported ID but also because Sternberg approved it by himself rather than sending it out for independent expert review. He didn't lose his editorship; he published the paper in what was already scheduled to be his last issue as editor. He didn't lose his job at the Smithsonian; his appointment there as an unpaid research associate had a limited term, and when it was over he was given a new one. His office move was scheduled before the paper ever appeared. [For more details see Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin by Michael Shermer.]
Stein's case for conspiracy centers on a journal article written by Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the intelligent design think tank Discovery Institute and professor at the theologically conservative Christian Palm Beach Atlantic University. Meyer's article, 'The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories,' was published in the June 2004 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, the voice of the Biological Society with a circulation of less than 300 people. In other words, from the get-go this was much ado about nothing.
Nevertheless, some members of the organization voiced their displeasure, so the society's governing council released a statement explaining, 'Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The council, which includes officers, elected councilors and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings.' So how did it get published? In the words of journal's managing editor at the time, Richard Sternberg, 'it was my prerogative to choose the editor who would work directly on the paper, and as I was best qualified among the editors, I chose myself.' And what qualified Sternberg to choose himself? Perhaps it was his position as a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, which promotes intelligent design, along with being on the editorial board of the Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group, a creationism journal committed to the literal interpretation of Genesis. Or perhaps it was the fact that he is a signatory of the Discovery Institute's '100 Scientists who Doubt Darwinism' statement.
Meyer's article is the first intelligent design paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it deals less with systematics (or taxonomy, Sternberg's specialty) than it does paleontology, for which many members of the society would have been better qualified than he to peer-review the paper. (In fact, at least three members were experts on the Cambrian invertebrates discussed in Meyer's paper).
Meyer claims that the 'Cambrian explosion' of complex hard-bodied life forms over 500 million years ago could not have come about through Darwinian gradualism. The fact that geologists call it an 'explosion' leads creationists to glom onto the word as a synonym for 'sudden creation.' After four billion years of an empty Earth, God reached down from the heavens and willed trilobites into existence ex nihilo. In reality, according to paleontologist Donald Prothero, in his 2007 magisterial book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia University Press): 'The major groups of invertebrate fossils do not all appear suddenly at the base of the Cambrian but are spaced out over strata spanning 80 million years—hardly an instantaneous 'explosion'! Some groups appear tens of millions of years earlier than others. And preceding the Cambrian explosion was a long slow buildup to the first appearance of typical Cambrian shelled invertebrates.' If an intelligent designer did create the Cambrian life forms, it took 80 million years of gradual evolution to do it.
Stein, however, is uninterested in paleontology, or any other science for that matter. His focus is on what happened to Sternberg, who is portrayed in the film as a martyr to the cause of free speech. 'As a result of publishing the Meyer article,' Stein intones in his inimitably droll voice, 'Dr. Sternberg found himself the object of a massive campaign that smeared his reputation and came close to destroying his career.' According to Sternberg, 'after the publication of the Meyer article the climate changed from being chilly to being outright hostile. Shunned, yes, and discredited.' As a result, Sternberg filed a claim against the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for being 'targeted for retaliation and harassment' for his religious beliefs. 'I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist,' he tells Stein. In August 2005 his claim was rejected. According to Jonathan Coddington, his supervisor at the NMNH, Sternberg was not discriminated against, was never dismissed, and in fact was not even a paid employee, but just an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term!
The rest of the martyrdom stories in Expelled have similar, albeit less menacing explanations, detailed at www.expelledexposed.com, where physical anthropologist Eugenie Scott and her tireless crew at the National Center for Science Education have tracked down the specifics of each case. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, for example, did not get tenure at Iowa State University in Ames and is portrayed in the film as sacrificed on the alter of tenure denial because of his authorship of a pro–intelligent design book entitled The Privileged Planet (Regnery Publishing, 2004). As Scott told me, 'Tenure is based on the evaluation of academic performance at one's current institution for the previous seven years.' Although Gonzales was apparently a productive scientist before he moved to Iowa State, Scott says that 'while there, his publication record tanked, he brought in only a couple of grants—one of which was from the [John] Templeton Foundation to write The Privileged Planet—didn't have very many graduate students, and those he had never completed their degrees. Lots of people don't get tenure, for the same legitimate reasons that Gonzalez didn't get tenure.'
Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life. Tenure decisions for astronomers are based on the number and quality of scientific papers published, the prestige of the journal in which they are published, the number of grants funded (universities are ranked, in part, by the grant-productivity of their faculties), the number of graduate students who completed their program, the amount of telescope time allocated as well as the trends in each of these categories, indicating whether or not the candidate shows potential for continued productivity. In point of fact, according to Gregory Geoffroy, president of Iowa State, 'Over the past 10 years, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in the physics and astronomy department were not granted tenure.' Gonzales was one of them, and for good reasons, despite Stein's claim of his 'stellar academic record.'
The most deplorable dishonesty of Expelled, however, is that it says evolution was one influence on the Holocaust without acknowledging any of the other major ones for context. Rankings of races and ethnic groups into a hierarchy long preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution, and were usually tied to the Christian philosophical notion of a 'great chain of being.' The economic ruin of the Weimar Republic left many Germans itching to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and the Jews and other ethnic groups were convenient scapegoats. The roots of European anti-Semitism go back to the end of the Roman Empire. Organized attacks and local exterminations of the Jews were perpetrated during the Crusades and the Black Plague. The Russian empire committed many attacks on the Jews in the 19th and early 20th century, giving rise to the word 'pogrom.' Profound anti-Semitism even pollutes the works of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, who reviled them in On the Jews and Their Lies and wrote, 'We are at fault in not slaying them.' I don't think Protestantism is accountable for the Holocaust, either, but the focus on 'the Jews' as scapegoats, and the added idea that their 'bad non-Aryan blood' had to be eliminated by killing them, were not Darwin's ideas.
The weakness of the logic of Expelled is beside the point, however. No one who is familiar with the evidence for evolution is likely to leave the theater shaken. Some people with looser understandings of the science or the legal issues might buy into its arguments about 'fairness' and protecting religion against science. Expelled is nonetheless mostly a film for ID creationism's religious base. That audience has seen one setback after the next in recent years, with science rejecting ID as useless and the courts rebuffing it as for a constitutional violation in public education. For them, Expelled is a rallying point to revive their morale.
Expelled trots out some of the people whom it claims have been persecuted. First among them is Robert Sternberg, former editor of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, who published an article on ID by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Sternberg tells Stein that he subsequently lost his editorship, his old position at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and his original office.
What most viewers of Expelled may not realize—because the film doesn't even hint at it—is that Sternberg's case is not quite what it sounds. Biologists criticized Sternberg's choice to publish the paper not only because it supported ID but also because Sternberg approved it by himself rather than sending it out for independent expert review. He didn't lose his editorship; he published the paper in what was already scheduled to be his last issue as editor. He didn't lose his job at the Smithsonian; his appointment there as an unpaid research associate had a limited term, and when it was over he was given a new one. His office move was scheduled before the paper ever appeared. [For more details see Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin by Michael Shermer.]
Stein's case for conspiracy centers on a journal article written by Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the intelligent design think tank Discovery Institute and professor at the theologically conservative Christian Palm Beach Atlantic University. Meyer's article, 'The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories,' was published in the June 2004 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, the voice of the Biological Society with a circulation of less than 300 people. In other words, from the get-go this was much ado about nothing.
Nevertheless, some members of the organization voiced their displeasure, so the society's governing council released a statement explaining, 'Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The council, which includes officers, elected councilors and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings.' So how did it get published? In the words of journal's managing editor at the time, Richard Sternberg, 'it was my prerogative to choose the editor who would work directly on the paper, and as I was best qualified among the editors, I chose myself.' And what qualified Sternberg to choose himself? Perhaps it was his position as a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, which promotes intelligent design, along with being on the editorial board of the Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group, a creationism journal committed to the literal interpretation of Genesis. Or perhaps it was the fact that he is a signatory of the Discovery Institute's '100 Scientists who Doubt Darwinism' statement.
Meyer's article is the first intelligent design paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it deals less with systematics (or taxonomy, Sternberg's specialty) than it does paleontology, for which many members of the society would have been better qualified than he to peer-review the paper. (In fact, at least three members were experts on the Cambrian invertebrates discussed in Meyer's paper).
Meyer claims that the 'Cambrian explosion' of complex hard-bodied life forms over 500 million years ago could not have come about through Darwinian gradualism. The fact that geologists call it an 'explosion' leads creationists to glom onto the word as a synonym for 'sudden creation.' After four billion years of an empty Earth, God reached down from the heavens and willed trilobites into existence ex nihilo. In reality, according to paleontologist Donald Prothero, in his 2007 magisterial book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia University Press): 'The major groups of invertebrate fossils do not all appear suddenly at the base of the Cambrian but are spaced out over strata spanning 80 million years—hardly an instantaneous 'explosion'! Some groups appear tens of millions of years earlier than others. And preceding the Cambrian explosion was a long slow buildup to the first appearance of typical Cambrian shelled invertebrates.' If an intelligent designer did create the Cambrian life forms, it took 80 million years of gradual evolution to do it.
Stein, however, is uninterested in paleontology, or any other science for that matter. His focus is on what happened to Sternberg, who is portrayed in the film as a martyr to the cause of free speech. 'As a result of publishing the Meyer article,' Stein intones in his inimitably droll voice, 'Dr. Sternberg found himself the object of a massive campaign that smeared his reputation and came close to destroying his career.' According to Sternberg, 'after the publication of the Meyer article the climate changed from being chilly to being outright hostile. Shunned, yes, and discredited.' As a result, Sternberg filed a claim against the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for being 'targeted for retaliation and harassment' for his religious beliefs. 'I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist,' he tells Stein. In August 2005 his claim was rejected. According to Jonathan Coddington, his supervisor at the NMNH, Sternberg was not discriminated against, was never dismissed, and in fact was not even a paid employee, but just an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term!
The rest of the martyrdom stories in Expelled have similar, albeit less menacing explanations, detailed at www.expelledexposed.com, where physical anthropologist Eugenie Scott and her tireless crew at the National Center for Science Education have tracked down the specifics of each case. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, for example, did not get tenure at Iowa State University in Ames and is portrayed in the film as sacrificed on the alter of tenure denial because of his authorship of a pro–intelligent design book entitled The Privileged Planet (Regnery Publishing, 2004). As Scott told me, 'Tenure is based on the evaluation of academic performance at one's current institution for the previous seven years.' Although Gonzales was apparently a productive scientist before he moved to Iowa State, Scott says that 'while there, his publication record tanked, he brought in only a couple of grants—one of which was from the [John] Templeton Foundation to write The Privileged Planet—didn't have very many graduate students, and those he had never completed their degrees. Lots of people don't get tenure, for the same legitimate reasons that Gonzalez didn't get tenure.'
Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life. Tenure decisions for astronomers are based on the number and quality of scientific papers published, the prestige of the journal in which they are published, the number of grants funded (universities are ranked, in part, by the grant-productivity of their faculties), the number of graduate students who completed their program, the amount of telescope time allocated as well as the trends in each of these categories, indicating whether or not the candidate shows potential for continued productivity. In point of fact, according to Gregory Geoffroy, president of Iowa State, 'Over the past 10 years, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in the physics and astronomy department were not granted tenure.' Gonzales was one of them, and for good reasons, despite Stein's claim of his 'stellar academic record.'
The most deplorable dishonesty of Expelled, however, is that it says evolution was one influence on the Holocaust without acknowledging any of the other major ones for context. Rankings of races and ethnic groups into a hierarchy long preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution, and were usually tied to the Christian philosophical notion of a 'great chain of being.' The economic ruin of the Weimar Republic left many Germans itching to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and the Jews and other ethnic groups were convenient scapegoats. The roots of European anti-Semitism go back to the end of the Roman Empire. Organized attacks and local exterminations of the Jews were perpetrated during the Crusades and the Black Plague. The Russian empire committed many attacks on the Jews in the 19th and early 20th century, giving rise to the word 'pogrom.' Profound anti-Semitism even pollutes the works of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, who reviled them in On the Jews and Their Lies and wrote, 'We are at fault in not slaying them.' I don't think Protestantism is accountable for the Holocaust, either, but the focus on 'the Jews' as scapegoats, and the added idea that their 'bad non-Aryan blood' had to be eliminated by killing them, were not Darwin's ideas.
The weakness of the logic of Expelled is beside the point, however. No one who is familiar with the evidence for evolution is likely to leave the theater shaken. Some people with looser understandings of the science or the legal issues might buy into its arguments about 'fairness' and protecting religion against science. Expelled is nonetheless mostly a film for ID creationism's religious base. That audience has seen one setback after the next in recent years, with science rejecting ID as useless and the courts rebuffing it as for a constitutional violation in public education. For them, Expelled is a rallying point to revive their morale.
April 09, 2008
The Kalam Argument
The Kalam argument for the existence of God is based on a short argument:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
Let me focus on the second premise...
William Lane Craig is the leading defender of this argument. Let's take a look.
There is a distinction to be made between absolute and relative theories of time. Absolute theories entail that time exists independently of objects and the relationship between them in the physical universe. Relational theories entail that space/time is nothing but objects and the relationship between them in the physical universe. Einstein's Theories of Relativity support relational theories of time. As such, time is relative to the observer in a four dimensional framework (in addition to length, width, and height). Each physical object in space/time is an event in space/time. If no mass/energy existed, then time would not exist either. Therefore, time began with the Big Bang inside the physical universe. Craig must dispute this as a defender of absolute time, even though no scientist agrees with Craig on this point.
Craig begins his philosophical arguments by making the distinction between an actual infinite collection of things (which is numerically infinite) and a potential infinite collection of things (which is merely “indefinite,” having the potential of being numerically infinite). Using several thought experiments Craig argues that an actual infinite collection of things is impossible. In one of them Craig tries to show that an actual infinite cannot be formed by adding one number after another successively. This is impossible, he says. If someone began the task of counting in the distant past she could never count to infinity no matter how high she counted, for there would always be one number higher to count. But his argument says nothing against an immortal being counting to infinity if she has always been counting, since at no time in the past does she ever begin counting. It only shows, at best, that if someone began counting she couldn’t count to infinity, which is an uninteresting argument and off the mark if he intends to show by it that the physical universe couldn’t have always existed.
Craig’s favorite thought experiment is about Hilbert’s Hotel. This hypothetical hotel has an infinite number of guests each in their own separate rooms. Absurdities set in at this point, Craig argues. For even though we already have an infinite number of guests in the hotel, we can always add more guests by simply moving them all down one room and then adding the newest guest to room number one. By doing this over and over we could add an infinite number of new guests without the actual number of guests increasing. Furthermore, an infinite number of guests could check out of the odd numbered rooms leaving an infinite number of guests in the even numbered rooms. Craig claims this is absurd. Therefore he concludes that an actual infinite collection of things is impossible, and by analogy, there cannot be an actual infinite series of events in time either.
Contrary to Craig, an actual infinite could exist if his God had decided to eternally create the universe, for then such an eternal universe would have an actual infinite series of events. Craig doesn’t believe this, but I don’t see how he can reasonably claim that his God could not have done so, just as Aquinas saw no problem with an eternal universe and supposed it for the sake of his arguments. Unless Craig can show that this is not possible for his God to have done, there can indeed be an actual infinite series (or collection) of events in time, and his argument fails.
Craig argues that the universe had a beginning since it leads to absurdities to suppose that it didn’t. For example, if in the distant past an immortal being finished counting an infinite number of events down from negative infinity to zero (…-3, -2, -1, 0), then we could never travel back in time to see her counting, for no matter how far back we go she would already be finished. That’s absurd, Craig claims. But Craig is begging the question here. If she finished her task then we should be able to travel back in the distant past to see her still counting events, based upon his argument that an actual infinite cannot be formed by adding one number after another successively, as we just explained. According to Craig’s own logic there could only be a finite number of events between when she finished her task and today. Furthermore, Craig cannot have it both ways. He cannot have an immortal being who has always been counting events and one who never counts any at all! Either we can go back in time to find her counting or she never was counting at all!
Craig’s basic problem is that he conflates counting an infinite number of events with counting all of them. An immortal being could finish her task (…-3, -2, -1, 0) and yet not count all events (1, 2, 3…). Besides this, what reason does Craig have for supposing that the immortal being necessarily finished counting all of the events before today? It could be that the immortal being is nowhere close to finishing her count. There’s nothing absurd about this. He cannot merely say she could be finished counting, he needs to say that she must be finished counting, and that’s something he cannot say.
--------------------
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1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
Let me focus on the second premise...
William Lane Craig is the leading defender of this argument. Let's take a look.
There is a distinction to be made between absolute and relative theories of time. Absolute theories entail that time exists independently of objects and the relationship between them in the physical universe. Relational theories entail that space/time is nothing but objects and the relationship between them in the physical universe. Einstein's Theories of Relativity support relational theories of time. As such, time is relative to the observer in a four dimensional framework (in addition to length, width, and height). Each physical object in space/time is an event in space/time. If no mass/energy existed, then time would not exist either. Therefore, time began with the Big Bang inside the physical universe. Craig must dispute this as a defender of absolute time, even though no scientist agrees with Craig on this point.
Craig begins his philosophical arguments by making the distinction between an actual infinite collection of things (which is numerically infinite) and a potential infinite collection of things (which is merely “indefinite,” having the potential of being numerically infinite). Using several thought experiments Craig argues that an actual infinite collection of things is impossible. In one of them Craig tries to show that an actual infinite cannot be formed by adding one number after another successively. This is impossible, he says. If someone began the task of counting in the distant past she could never count to infinity no matter how high she counted, for there would always be one number higher to count. But his argument says nothing against an immortal being counting to infinity if she has always been counting, since at no time in the past does she ever begin counting. It only shows, at best, that if someone began counting she couldn’t count to infinity, which is an uninteresting argument and off the mark if he intends to show by it that the physical universe couldn’t have always existed.
Craig’s favorite thought experiment is about Hilbert’s Hotel. This hypothetical hotel has an infinite number of guests each in their own separate rooms. Absurdities set in at this point, Craig argues. For even though we already have an infinite number of guests in the hotel, we can always add more guests by simply moving them all down one room and then adding the newest guest to room number one. By doing this over and over we could add an infinite number of new guests without the actual number of guests increasing. Furthermore, an infinite number of guests could check out of the odd numbered rooms leaving an infinite number of guests in the even numbered rooms. Craig claims this is absurd. Therefore he concludes that an actual infinite collection of things is impossible, and by analogy, there cannot be an actual infinite series of events in time either.
Contrary to Craig, an actual infinite could exist if his God had decided to eternally create the universe, for then such an eternal universe would have an actual infinite series of events. Craig doesn’t believe this, but I don’t see how he can reasonably claim that his God could not have done so, just as Aquinas saw no problem with an eternal universe and supposed it for the sake of his arguments. Unless Craig can show that this is not possible for his God to have done, there can indeed be an actual infinite series (or collection) of events in time, and his argument fails.
Craig argues that the universe had a beginning since it leads to absurdities to suppose that it didn’t. For example, if in the distant past an immortal being finished counting an infinite number of events down from negative infinity to zero (…-3, -2, -1, 0), then we could never travel back in time to see her counting, for no matter how far back we go she would already be finished. That’s absurd, Craig claims. But Craig is begging the question here. If she finished her task then we should be able to travel back in the distant past to see her still counting events, based upon his argument that an actual infinite cannot be formed by adding one number after another successively, as we just explained. According to Craig’s own logic there could only be a finite number of events between when she finished her task and today. Furthermore, Craig cannot have it both ways. He cannot have an immortal being who has always been counting events and one who never counts any at all! Either we can go back in time to find her counting or she never was counting at all!
Craig’s basic problem is that he conflates counting an infinite number of events with counting all of them. An immortal being could finish her task (…-3, -2, -1, 0) and yet not count all events (1, 2, 3…). Besides this, what reason does Craig have for supposing that the immortal being necessarily finished counting all of the events before today? It could be that the immortal being is nowhere close to finishing her count. There’s nothing absurd about this. He cannot merely say she could be finished counting, he needs to say that she must be finished counting, and that’s something he cannot say.
--------------------
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Hector Avalos on the Anti-Judaic Tendency in some NT authors
Let me single out for comment something Dr. Avalos said in response to the non-credentialed nasty wanna-be apologist JP Holding found here. Avalos said...
April 08, 2008
Dead for Nine Days
Florence Ophelia Russell died nine days ago. Friday, it was reported to the police in the Bahamas that her family had kept her body in the apartment as her family prayed for her to be resurrected.
This is what the little Neumann girl's parents tried to do as well as the ambulance took her dead body away. Yet over and over we keep being told that no Christian really believes this. And in less than 1 month we've had many many cases showing that actually, LOTS of Christians really believe this.
The job of convincing Christians to seek medical care should not need to be undertaken by atheists. It should be the job of Christians. The pope, the archbishop of Canterbury, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and any other self-styled leader of Christianity should be on TV begging parents to take their sick kids to the doctor. The fact that they don't, and even lobby for an exception to law mandating medical care for children shows what the mainstream Christian tradition really is: Pray for your kids until they are dead.
The opinion piece from Wisconsin sums up the case very well for me:
The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect concluded, “There are more children actually being abused in the name of God than in the name of Satan.” As Gerald Witt, mayor of Lake City, Florida, said about local faith-based deaths, “It may be necessary for some babies to die to maintain our religious freedoms. It may be the price we have to pay; everything has a price.”
But religious zealots need not pay the ultimate price of sacrificing their children on the altar of faith. It says so in the first book of their bible. “Abraham built an altar . . . and laid the wood . . . and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham . . . lay not thine hand upon the lad . . . for now I know that thou fearest God . . .” (Gen. 22:9-12).
Should parents decide to disregard both their god’s admonition against sacrificing children to prove a fanatical faith and society’s laws against homicide, they should be held accountable to a secular “higher power” in a court of law that does not accept the strength of a person’s religious belief as evidence of their guilt or innocence.
Again, for those of you apologists arguing that Christians aren't really like this, how does the Mayor of a Florida town say that in public and keep his job, much less avoid being attacked? He's come out in favor of the death of children, but because it's a Christian death, there is no outcry.
This is what the little Neumann girl's parents tried to do as well as the ambulance took her dead body away. Yet over and over we keep being told that no Christian really believes this. And in less than 1 month we've had many many cases showing that actually, LOTS of Christians really believe this.
The job of convincing Christians to seek medical care should not need to be undertaken by atheists. It should be the job of Christians. The pope, the archbishop of Canterbury, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and any other self-styled leader of Christianity should be on TV begging parents to take their sick kids to the doctor. The fact that they don't, and even lobby for an exception to law mandating medical care for children shows what the mainstream Christian tradition really is: Pray for your kids until they are dead.
The opinion piece from Wisconsin sums up the case very well for me:
The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect concluded, “There are more children actually being abused in the name of God than in the name of Satan.” As Gerald Witt, mayor of Lake City, Florida, said about local faith-based deaths, “It may be necessary for some babies to die to maintain our religious freedoms. It may be the price we have to pay; everything has a price.”
But religious zealots need not pay the ultimate price of sacrificing their children on the altar of faith. It says so in the first book of their bible. “Abraham built an altar . . . and laid the wood . . . and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham . . . lay not thine hand upon the lad . . . for now I know that thou fearest God . . .” (Gen. 22:9-12).
Should parents decide to disregard both their god’s admonition against sacrificing children to prove a fanatical faith and society’s laws against homicide, they should be held accountable to a secular “higher power” in a court of law that does not accept the strength of a person’s religious belief as evidence of their guilt or innocence.
Again, for those of you apologists arguing that Christians aren't really like this, how does the Mayor of a Florida town say that in public and keep his job, much less avoid being attacked? He's come out in favor of the death of children, but because it's a Christian death, there is no outcry.
Victor Reppert Against Calvinism
Christian philosopher Victor Reppert has made the same argument I have repeatedly made against Calvinism. He wrote:
I think it's foolish to say there is a difference at all.
God, by definition, is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. A being who predestines people for everlasting punishment doesn't meet the third requirement, and therefore isn't God.In the comments section below this post I wrote:
We agree about this Vic, very much so. The difference is that when I make this same argument Hayes and company ask me where my standard for objective morality comes from. Funny, the argument seems to stand on its own, for surely (without reading their comments) they cannot say that of you.So the question I have is this one. What difference does it make who makes a particular argument? Why does it matter whether I make it or Reppert does? It's the same one.
Which should they believe, that they have properly interpreted a historical conditioned book, or that the logic you present indicates that they have misinterpreted it?
Like you I'd go with logic every time, and they cannot say you don't have a standard for logic either. Yes, the divine decree is indeed "horrible" but those who accept that it is a divine decree are made to be horrible.
Oh, I'm sorry, I cannot make that same argument, can I? LOL
I think it's foolish to say there is a difference at all.
April 07, 2008
Carrier to Possibility Write a Book on the Historicity of Jesus
I received an email by someone informing me of the fact that my friend Richard Carrier, in his words:
"...is seeking donations in order to write a book on the historicity of Jesus. His goal is to receive $20,000 from donors. If many people donate small chunks, the goal can be reached. Perhaps if you wrote a short blog entry on Debunking Christianity, the message will reach more potentially interested people. Richard Carrier is a great writer, and a book from him on the historicity of Jesus would be awesome. More information can be found on Carrier's blog."See for yourselves and consider if you can help.
April 06, 2008
A Review of Why I Rejected Christianity
I have said that if you want to debate me then get my book and review it, and I will engage you. A young man named Nick decided to do that. So he's been reviewing it chapter by chapter and I've been making some comments about it from time to time. But today he decided to review my chapter on the atonement and I am speechless. I don't know where to begin with such ignorance. See what you think:
Our review of Loftus’s book continues with a look at the atonement. Why did it happen? The theory he chooses to address and I will defend as it’s the one I hold is the penal substitution view. It is the view that Christ took our place on the cross and he received our punishment and we in turn receive his righteousness. There is a brief history of various atonement theories before this (With some left out), but that is not relevant to the point at hand.
He starts out with asking about why this is? If the claim of Christianity is true, then Loftus does admit that he goes to Hell because of his sins. However, what has anyone ever done to deserve that? He states “All through my entire life I have never met, nor even heard of one person, who deserved such a punishment. Never.
I guess that settles it. Judge Loftus has spoken.
I beg to differ of course. First off, let me state my view of Hell. My view is not a fiery torture chamber. It is a place of darkness and isolation. In effect, it is eternal quarantine. God lets people go there and he leaves them alone. The worst suffering will be internal. People in Hell will know for all eternity that they have blown it.
Now who deserves eternal separation from God? I see someone every morning when I get up and look in the mirror who does. And I think this is shocking to some because we’ve lost what sin is.
To begin with, it’s not breaking an abstract rule. It’s violating the person of God. Consider God as the most awesome, holy, good, loving, powerful, intelligent being that there is. As Anselm would say, you can’t conceive of anyone greater than he is.
Sin is telling that one that he is not what he says he is. In fact, every sin is ultimately the sin of Satan. Every sin is choosing your own good over the good of God. In effect, it is you telling yourself that you will be God instead of him. It is divine treason and it cuts one off from the source of goodness and life. God simply cannot allow that sin in his presence.
Now Loftus says that in our modern society we are humane in our punishments. Perhaps we are, and perhaps that is the problem. C.S. Lewis wrote on how we seek to cure criminals rather than punish them long ago.http://www.angelfire.com/pro/lewiscs/humanitarian.html
The question is, is it just?
Loftus mentions the death penalty. I support it. I know I probably lost some readers for that, but I do. I believe man is in the image of God and to murder a man is an attack on that image of God. I believe the murderer is to pay the price by having his own life be forfeit. Of course, this is when it’s shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that the accused did commit the crime. I have this strange belief that crime should be punished.
Loftus goes on to ask if it’s fair that he suffer eternally for one little white lie.
I’d like to meet the person whose only sin is one little white lie.
Loftus’s sins are at the beginning of his book. I have no need to go into them. My stance has been that they really don’t matter as long as one doesn’t live in them. I think they need to be confessed and repented of and the blame squarely accepted, but after that, I do believe in divine forgiveness. I know my sins and they’re not just little white lies either. We have all lived in constant rebellion against the Almighty and what we get is what we deserve.
Loftus says that we see in Scripture that God is willing to forgive if people will confess.
Yes. Absolutely. Getting out of Hell is quite simple. Just trust Christ. God does desire mercy and not sacrifice, but God is also just. He gives mercy to those who want it.
Loftus also wants to know since he became like us, why he can’t see sin from our perspective.
Let’s not consider that we shouldn’t want God to see it from our perspective. I don’t want him to. I want him to see it from his perspective. Why? It’s the true one. How do I want to view something like myself even? Do I want to see me as I see me or do I want to see me as God sees me? It would obviously be the latter because that would be the true view.
Now we may intend God no wrong in sinning, but it does not matter. We have sinned and it cannot be ignored. Even Levitical Law had a sacrifice for unintentional sins. Death was still the price. (And frankly, I know I’ve committed sins in the past knowing they were sins and I seriously doubt anyone reading my blog is in a different position.)
For the third one, did Jesus pay an infinite price? First off, Jesus did pay the price. Hebrews tells us that. The Son went and offered up his blood in the holiest sanctuary of all and God was pleased. What was the one who offered the sacrifice allowed to do with what was offered to him? Whatever he wanted. God restored the sacrifice he was given of the Son and glorified him.
How does this work? I can only imagine that on some level, there is an eternal reality in God of what happened on the cross. The Son is spoken of as the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. Do I understand this entirely? Of course not. I doubt anyone does. It doesn’t mean though that I throw out the whole thing as nonsensical. (Makes you wonder if since there’s no understood theory of naturalistic evolution out there why that isn’t thrown out as well.)
The next point is that supposedly, forgiveness doesn’t require punishment.
On a human court, that’s true, however, there are still consequences. If someone hits my car for instance, I can forgive them and tell them not to worry, but that car will still be damaged and someone will still have to fix it. On a divine level, we are violating justice itself and the price for being cut off from life is death. Someone has to die. God can’t put his holiness on a secondary level. He must treat himself as the greatest good of all.
So what happens at the cross? His justice is satisfied and his mercy is offered to all.
The fifth objection is really along the same lines.
He then asks if we die outside of the faith, what reason does God have to punish us?
Ooooooh. Let me guess. We’re sinners? Sounds like a good reason to me.
And yes, God does understand us perfectly and he does know about the moral law on our hearts. If there were any circumstances that put the sin in a lesser degree, God would know them better than we would. In the end, there is no one biblically who will be able to say “It was not fair.” Creation shows us that God exists plainly and the moral law on our hearts tells us that some things are right and some are wrong.
Loftus also asks where sin abides in us. This is one of those things that just makes me wonder what kind of theology was being taught. Sin is an action. Actions do not abide in us. They affect our character though and our souls. The same happens with good actions. It is those of us that do not choose to live to be what we were meant to be who get eternity apart from God.
Another theory is commented on later, but it is not the atonement theory I hold, thus I will stick to what has been said thus far. I do not find anything here that really gives me pause. I look and see “Did Jesus die on the cross? Did he rise from the dead?” Then even if I don’t understand it all, I understand that it does work, for God has told us so himself.
Why I Rejected Christianity Review: Why Did Jesus Suffer?
Our review of Loftus’s book continues with a look at the atonement. Why did it happen? The theory he chooses to address and I will defend as it’s the one I hold is the penal substitution view. It is the view that Christ took our place on the cross and he received our punishment and we in turn receive his righteousness. There is a brief history of various atonement theories before this (With some left out), but that is not relevant to the point at hand.
He starts out with asking about why this is? If the claim of Christianity is true, then Loftus does admit that he goes to Hell because of his sins. However, what has anyone ever done to deserve that? He states “All through my entire life I have never met, nor even heard of one person, who deserved such a punishment. Never.
I guess that settles it. Judge Loftus has spoken.
I beg to differ of course. First off, let me state my view of Hell. My view is not a fiery torture chamber. It is a place of darkness and isolation. In effect, it is eternal quarantine. God lets people go there and he leaves them alone. The worst suffering will be internal. People in Hell will know for all eternity that they have blown it.
Now who deserves eternal separation from God? I see someone every morning when I get up and look in the mirror who does. And I think this is shocking to some because we’ve lost what sin is.
To begin with, it’s not breaking an abstract rule. It’s violating the person of God. Consider God as the most awesome, holy, good, loving, powerful, intelligent being that there is. As Anselm would say, you can’t conceive of anyone greater than he is.
Sin is telling that one that he is not what he says he is. In fact, every sin is ultimately the sin of Satan. Every sin is choosing your own good over the good of God. In effect, it is you telling yourself that you will be God instead of him. It is divine treason and it cuts one off from the source of goodness and life. God simply cannot allow that sin in his presence.
Now Loftus says that in our modern society we are humane in our punishments. Perhaps we are, and perhaps that is the problem. C.S. Lewis wrote on how we seek to cure criminals rather than punish them long ago.http://www.angelfire.com/pro/lewiscs/humanitarian.html
The question is, is it just?
Loftus mentions the death penalty. I support it. I know I probably lost some readers for that, but I do. I believe man is in the image of God and to murder a man is an attack on that image of God. I believe the murderer is to pay the price by having his own life be forfeit. Of course, this is when it’s shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that the accused did commit the crime. I have this strange belief that crime should be punished.
Loftus goes on to ask if it’s fair that he suffer eternally for one little white lie.
I’d like to meet the person whose only sin is one little white lie.
Loftus’s sins are at the beginning of his book. I have no need to go into them. My stance has been that they really don’t matter as long as one doesn’t live in them. I think they need to be confessed and repented of and the blame squarely accepted, but after that, I do believe in divine forgiveness. I know my sins and they’re not just little white lies either. We have all lived in constant rebellion against the Almighty and what we get is what we deserve.
Loftus says that we see in Scripture that God is willing to forgive if people will confess.
Yes. Absolutely. Getting out of Hell is quite simple. Just trust Christ. God does desire mercy and not sacrifice, but God is also just. He gives mercy to those who want it.
Loftus also wants to know since he became like us, why he can’t see sin from our perspective.
Let’s not consider that we shouldn’t want God to see it from our perspective. I don’t want him to. I want him to see it from his perspective. Why? It’s the true one. How do I want to view something like myself even? Do I want to see me as I see me or do I want to see me as God sees me? It would obviously be the latter because that would be the true view.
Now we may intend God no wrong in sinning, but it does not matter. We have sinned and it cannot be ignored. Even Levitical Law had a sacrifice for unintentional sins. Death was still the price. (And frankly, I know I’ve committed sins in the past knowing they were sins and I seriously doubt anyone reading my blog is in a different position.)
For the third one, did Jesus pay an infinite price? First off, Jesus did pay the price. Hebrews tells us that. The Son went and offered up his blood in the holiest sanctuary of all and God was pleased. What was the one who offered the sacrifice allowed to do with what was offered to him? Whatever he wanted. God restored the sacrifice he was given of the Son and glorified him.
How does this work? I can only imagine that on some level, there is an eternal reality in God of what happened on the cross. The Son is spoken of as the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. Do I understand this entirely? Of course not. I doubt anyone does. It doesn’t mean though that I throw out the whole thing as nonsensical. (Makes you wonder if since there’s no understood theory of naturalistic evolution out there why that isn’t thrown out as well.)
The next point is that supposedly, forgiveness doesn’t require punishment.
On a human court, that’s true, however, there are still consequences. If someone hits my car for instance, I can forgive them and tell them not to worry, but that car will still be damaged and someone will still have to fix it. On a divine level, we are violating justice itself and the price for being cut off from life is death. Someone has to die. God can’t put his holiness on a secondary level. He must treat himself as the greatest good of all.
So what happens at the cross? His justice is satisfied and his mercy is offered to all.
The fifth objection is really along the same lines.
He then asks if we die outside of the faith, what reason does God have to punish us?
Ooooooh. Let me guess. We’re sinners? Sounds like a good reason to me.
And yes, God does understand us perfectly and he does know about the moral law on our hearts. If there were any circumstances that put the sin in a lesser degree, God would know them better than we would. In the end, there is no one biblically who will be able to say “It was not fair.” Creation shows us that God exists plainly and the moral law on our hearts tells us that some things are right and some are wrong.
Loftus also asks where sin abides in us. This is one of those things that just makes me wonder what kind of theology was being taught. Sin is an action. Actions do not abide in us. They affect our character though and our souls. The same happens with good actions. It is those of us that do not choose to live to be what we were meant to be who get eternity apart from God.
Another theory is commented on later, but it is not the atonement theory I hold, thus I will stick to what has been said thus far. I do not find anything here that really gives me pause. I look and see “Did Jesus die on the cross? Did he rise from the dead?” Then even if I don’t understand it all, I understand that it does work, for God has told us so himself.
April 04, 2008
I'll be Interviewed on Premier Christian Radio Saturday.
Justin Brierly will interview me on Premier Christian Radio at 2.30 PM Saturday, London time. His co-host is Dr. Peter May, whose writings can be found here. From what I can tell this is an influential British Christian talk show, billed as an "award-winning programme," and Justin is a decent bloke. If you can't hear it when it airs it'll be archived here.
Funny...
Funny how those who boast the loudest, “I’m a patriot. I fight for freedom, God, and country” tend to support ideals that only lead to widespread oppression and fascism.
Funny how those God-believers who boast the loudest of their morality, saying “I have a foundation for my morality” are just as prone as anyone else towards immorality or moral lapses.
Funny how those who boast confidently about how Christianity has the greatest “evidences” in support of it seem to walk on egg shells, fearing day-to-day how some new scientific find may come along and crack the foundation of their faith.
Funny how those who boast greatly about “God’s great healing power” will just as surely depend upon Advil or some other pain reliever to rid themselves of the pain of an ailment.
Funny how those who boast so loudly about the “fine-tuning” of the universe have so little to say about all the ways our planet can kill us and how so much of our universe is lifeless and hostile to even the possibility of life.
Funny how those who testify most fervently about the sublime happiness that service to God brings depend on the usual 30 milligrams of Prozac a day and the latest best-selling Christian book to ease their minds of life’s many sorrows.
Funny how those who most loudly proclaim peace and religious liberty will be the most zealous to take life in the already heavily blood-soaked name of the cross.
Funny how those who publicly proclaim the truth of Christianity and tell us that we should “give to the Lord” and “sacrifice” for the kingdom’s sake are among the richest men alive.
Funny how those who tell us we should focus living lives “more abundantly” on earth are themselves focused on leaving this world for one to come.
Funny how those who tell us that the body is “the temple of the Lord” and how “God don’t make no junk!” are constantly seeking better, heavenly bodies in the resurrection.
Funny how those who talk the most about selflessness and “doing good for God” are always interested in their own destinies and putting another star in their heavenly crowns.
Funny how those who boast that “God is love” and that God “brings peace that passes all understanding” and tell us that “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear” are always seeking to scare the populace into obedience by the merciless threat of unquenchable hellfire.
Funny indeed!
(JH)
Funny how those God-believers who boast the loudest of their morality, saying “I have a foundation for my morality” are just as prone as anyone else towards immorality or moral lapses.
Funny how those who boast confidently about how Christianity has the greatest “evidences” in support of it seem to walk on egg shells, fearing day-to-day how some new scientific find may come along and crack the foundation of their faith.
Funny how those who boast greatly about “God’s great healing power” will just as surely depend upon Advil or some other pain reliever to rid themselves of the pain of an ailment.
Funny how those who boast so loudly about the “fine-tuning” of the universe have so little to say about all the ways our planet can kill us and how so much of our universe is lifeless and hostile to even the possibility of life.
Funny how those who testify most fervently about the sublime happiness that service to God brings depend on the usual 30 milligrams of Prozac a day and the latest best-selling Christian book to ease their minds of life’s many sorrows.
Funny how those who most loudly proclaim peace and religious liberty will be the most zealous to take life in the already heavily blood-soaked name of the cross.
Funny how those who publicly proclaim the truth of Christianity and tell us that we should “give to the Lord” and “sacrifice” for the kingdom’s sake are among the richest men alive.
Funny how those who tell us we should focus living lives “more abundantly” on earth are themselves focused on leaving this world for one to come.
Funny how those who tell us that the body is “the temple of the Lord” and how “God don’t make no junk!” are constantly seeking better, heavenly bodies in the resurrection.
Funny how those who talk the most about selflessness and “doing good for God” are always interested in their own destinies and putting another star in their heavenly crowns.
Funny how those who boast that “God is love” and that God “brings peace that passes all understanding” and tell us that “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear” are always seeking to scare the populace into obedience by the merciless threat of unquenchable hellfire.
Funny indeed!
(JH)
April 03, 2008
Poll Results on Comparing Radical Islam with Radical Christianity.
The poll was generated from this discussion. The question was this one: Is Radical Islam More Dangerous Than Radical Christianity? The results are below. What do you make of them, if anything?
Yes! 163 (45%)
No! 24 (6%)
Equally Dangerous! 174 (48%)
Yes! 163 (45%)
No! 24 (6%)
Equally Dangerous! 174 (48%)
You Can Be a Millionaire Defrauding Believers
Lindani Mangena, a twenty-four year old smooth talking believer, took about three million pounds from people after he told them he was a modern-day Moses. He promised them cash returns of %3000. To people who believe the earth is six-thousand years old and that a snake and a donkey can talk, this makes lots of sense.
When I was growing up my father once attacked a real estate investor named Donald Davenport in print for his post office scam, warning potential investors that it was likely to be fraudulent. He was sued for defamation and libel and the case was dropped a few weeks before Dr. Davenport declared bankruptcy.
But gullible in one thing, gullible in all. The lessons learned by those involved with Dr. Davenport obviously didn't fully attach themselves to the memory cells system of the SDA immune system. Once again we see gullible people who accept things on faith, coming to grips with the fact that faith doesn't work.
So while the believers were singing "Onward Christian Soldiers", Mr. Mangena was living like a rock star.
Money flooded in so swiftly that Mangena installed a cash-counting machine at the offices, while one witness saw "piles" of notes in his luxury apartment. Stephen Winberg, prosecuting, said £1m disappeared "supporting a wildly extravagant lifestyle ... to which the defendants had not, to put it mildly, been accustomed".
Just because someone tells you they are from God, does not mean they are from God. In most cases, it means they are trying to rip you off.
Some investors, believing God had blessed him, remortgaged, only to lose their homes and life savings. Others struggled to stave off repossession. Many had to forgo holidays, and large numbers were plunged into depression. One victim even gave up his job to join the company.
So to tally up the things faith can accomplish: It can bankrupt you. It can lead you to let your children die from treatable illness. On the plus side, you have something to do once or twice a week.
When I was growing up my father once attacked a real estate investor named Donald Davenport in print for his post office scam, warning potential investors that it was likely to be fraudulent. He was sued for defamation and libel and the case was dropped a few weeks before Dr. Davenport declared bankruptcy.
But gullible in one thing, gullible in all. The lessons learned by those involved with Dr. Davenport obviously didn't fully attach themselves to the memory cells system of the SDA immune system. Once again we see gullible people who accept things on faith, coming to grips with the fact that faith doesn't work.
So while the believers were singing "Onward Christian Soldiers", Mr. Mangena was living like a rock star.
Money flooded in so swiftly that Mangena installed a cash-counting machine at the offices, while one witness saw "piles" of notes in his luxury apartment. Stephen Winberg, prosecuting, said £1m disappeared "supporting a wildly extravagant lifestyle ... to which the defendants had not, to put it mildly, been accustomed".
Just because someone tells you they are from God, does not mean they are from God. In most cases, it means they are trying to rip you off.
Some investors, believing God had blessed him, remortgaged, only to lose their homes and life savings. Others struggled to stave off repossession. Many had to forgo holidays, and large numbers were plunged into depression. One victim even gave up his job to join the company.
So to tally up the things faith can accomplish: It can bankrupt you. It can lead you to let your children die from treatable illness. On the plus side, you have something to do once or twice a week.
April 02, 2008
Biblically Ignorant Tour Guides For Jesus
Sorry the linked video below is no longer available and I can't find it anywhere.
Wow! This is completely ignorant! It's but one more example of indoctrination masquerading as an education. Can you imagine claiming that ancient superstitious people knew more than modern scientists do in any other area?
Wow! This is completely ignorant! It's but one more example of indoctrination masquerading as an education. Can you imagine claiming that ancient superstitious people knew more than modern scientists do in any other area?
George Carlin: Religion is Bullshit
I've hesitated using this because I know it's offensive to Christians, but hey, this is what I think.
April 01, 2008
Followers of Christ
By now the story is familiar to everyone. A couple with deep Christian belief prayed over their daughter rather than seeking medical care for a condition that would be cured with simple techniques known for decades to modern medicine. Their daughter died.
Except that this is yet another case.
This is NOT an April Fool's post. Although I wish it were.
In this case the girl was 15 months old. Little Ava had bronchial pneumonia and sepsis. Her parents prayed over her, wickedly, rather than seeking care. The state of Oregon is taking the proper action, charging them with manslaughter. The state had to pass a law regarding this group back in the 90s.
The couple's son died in August 2001. A police investigation into the death was closed after family members said the child had been stillborn and was three months premature.
Yes. You read that right. They have let two children die in their home. And their church let them pray over a deathly ill little girl, after this had happened within the decade. This one little faith group has its own cemetery. There are nine (9) graves in it full of children who died of unspecified causes since the 90s.
Please, someone, tell me how prayer for the sick is good and righteous. Please, I can't understand how that can be when I keep seeing all these dead kids.
Except that this is yet another case.
This is NOT an April Fool's post. Although I wish it were.
In this case the girl was 15 months old. Little Ava had bronchial pneumonia and sepsis. Her parents prayed over her, wickedly, rather than seeking care. The state of Oregon is taking the proper action, charging them with manslaughter. The state had to pass a law regarding this group back in the 90s.
The couple's son died in August 2001. A police investigation into the death was closed after family members said the child had been stillborn and was three months premature.
Yes. You read that right. They have let two children die in their home. And their church let them pray over a deathly ill little girl, after this had happened within the decade. This one little faith group has its own cemetery. There are nine (9) graves in it full of children who died of unspecified causes since the 90s.
Please, someone, tell me how prayer for the sick is good and righteous. Please, I can't understand how that can be when I keep seeing all these dead kids.
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