Christianity as an Evolutionary Human Ant Colony

The Christian religion, from the perception of the conservative believer, must be kept perfect and flawless least any plague of imperfection affects both one’s God and one’s Bible.

The consequence here is that if either a flaw in God or the Bible is admitted, then the theological house of cards begins to fall just as when one domino stacked vertically in line with a thousands more is knock towards its neighbor likewise, secular logic begins to move the conservative theological mind away from the sanctuary of pat indoctrinated religious answers in turn forcing the believer to struggle with the reality of life just as he or she did before to their religious conversion.

In religion, objective truth is not the goal, but what matters is to insulate ones mind from the hard facts of the world and wrap one’s self in a theological blanket of love. When this happens, the believer becomes like an ant defending its colony and queen. Now when the ground shakes near the nest, or God forbid, the nest itself is touched; ants (like programmed and indoctrinated believers) swarm out to do battle often giving up their own life (martyrdom). Thus, at the vibration of any real or perceived threat, the colony advances forth in defense to attack and kill any threat to the safety and security of the nest (its sectarian religion / Bible) and (more importantly) the life brood of the nest itself: The queen or God.

Like a nest of Fire Ants (whose goal (like that of evangelical Christianity) is to evangelize the entire world with its nests) that have developed specialized warriors or soldiers ants whose huge jaws make them useless for little more that attacking and fighting for the colony, these Christian apologists / preachers soldier ants have development the same guard stance and move quickly to the defensive front lines to defend their doctrinal colony over and ahead of the smaller worker ants.

The sole function of the nest is again, to not so much to defend the colony (the Bible), but to defend until death what is in the center of the colony keeping it alive; that being its queen (God).

Since the queen is little good for anything but consuming food and producing eggs which hatch into more sterilized females and soldiers ants; the colony knows that (deep down in their genetic heats) without her, the entire nest is doomed and she must be protected and defended at all cost. Like the colony queen is to the worker and soldier ants, God is absolute truth who is perfect without any mixture of error and without the queen / God, the workers feel they have no more reason to live.

By comparison, the single church member (worker ant) is made to feel secure and protected in the colony along with their fellow indoctrinated, but mentally sterilized workers both bring unable to formulate any Christian doctrines themselves. However when disturbed, the specialized apologists and preachers will snap their huge doctrinal mandible jaws at any perceived threat knowing full well, that while their fellow smaller mentally sterilized workers out number them fifty to one, the workers job is not to fight (apologetics), but to support the colony (church) with food (tithes and offerings). Even thought the average doctrinally sterilized workers are equipped with small pincher months and small stingers, they quickly fall in battle due to the fact that their main function and make up is not colony defense, but colony support.

Thus, we have a similar symbiotic relationship where both the ant colony (the church) and the queen (God) must have the workers and soldier ants to care for and protect an enormous queen whose body has been rendered totally useless other than consuming food and laying eggs.

To facilitate this process, the queen in many colonies produces a sweet nectar that is consumed by the workers giving them strength to carry on until their wretched short lives past on and newly programmed mentally sterilized workers are added (evangelized) to take their place in a mindless colony with millions workers.

As I pass by the large Southern Baptist Church down the street from my house on Sunday mornings, I see is a huge nest of ants in which this large circular church is a functioning colony where the workers have brought their food (tithes and offerings) to the queen (God) while the preachers (seen as God’s vicar on earth) rewards the faithful but mindless workers with sweet sermonized nectar promises. They are assured that their huge queen (God, who is the prime mover in the creation of life) will always be there to love and protect them.

However in reality, their God-Queen is little more than an egg laying (evangelizing) figure head whose huge theological body is rendered useless being totally kept alive by the devotion to her (His) workers (the congregation as nest).

Should an independent, but objectively free thinking Secular Humanist happen to either shake the theological ground around this church nest - or God forbid - get inside the colony itself; the specialized soldier preachers and deacons will run to the defense of their God concept (knowing full well God’s huge bloated theological body is totally unable even to take care itself and must be constantly cleaned and feed simply to exist) snapping their huge mentally evolved apologetic jaws at the intruder.

But since these colony apologists can NOW no longer to attack and kill any free thinking secular invaders (Burning at the stake and torture), they try and force out the foreign / secular invader before many of the simple workers are mentally killed and even the center piece of the colony-church or God Himself is infected with secular ideas leading to theological weakness with the collapse and death of the religious nets being inevitable.

Here at DC, the contributors see this totally symbiotic relationship where a post shakes the theological ground near some doctrinal nest sending forth apologetic soldier ants and preachers snapping their huge mentally indoctrinated jaws at any perceived threat to the cheers of the simple, but mindless worker ants (Joe the Christian).

We are constantly told by these soldier apologists that if their huge indoctrinated jaws will not stop us, then one day the queen (God) itself will craw forth from somewhere deep down inside the nest (Heaven) to do an end time / apocrylpyptic battle with us and totally crushing all its free thinking secular enemies.

But since we secular atheist see the reality of this symbiotic relationship, we know that simply by killing (deprogramming) hundreds of worker ants plus an occasional apologist / soldier ant, the queen (God) being unable to stop the battle and can only hope to lay more eggs (proselytize more converters) before the entire colony itself falls into an irreversible decline.

We also know this huge queen (God) is totally unable to even move or care for itself and must be theologically carried along by its own doctrinally sterilized anti-free thinking workers and the apologetic soldiers ants just to appear to be active.

As independent free thinking Secular Humanist, I have now shaken the theological ground and, though I may see some drive-by defenses by the mentally sterilized worker Christians, I fully except the soldier Ant-Christians apologist to come forth to do battle snapping their huge mentally indoctrinated jaws, again not so much for the defense of their own sectarian colony, but their universal queen or the God concept itself!

Cooking the Books To Avoid IDQ Principles

A straw man (aka misrepresentation) and a moving goal post (aka sliding window).
Over at Sophies LadderJeff has misunderstood my position.

I do not think the Bible should be used as a history book or a science book, and I know the Bible, in its current form, was not intended to be either. I know there is no warrant to take the bible as a science or history "treatise". I agree we delineate our concepts such as biology and (as he says) Philosophy (but I wouldn't have used philosophy because its not data driven) based on its intent and its purpose. Jeffs asks rhetorically

What is the proper IDQ criteria to be applied to poetry and mythology? Or better yet, what is the proper IDQ criteria to be applied to information dealing with the transcendent?

At this point he as compared the Bible to Poetry and Mythology and he used the term "Transcendent" in relation to Poetry and Mythology but I haven't seen him define what he thinks transcendent is. He seems to suggest that poetry and mythology are transcendent.

answers.com has the definition of "Transcendent" as follows.

1. Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme.
2. Lying beyond the ordinary range of perception: “fails to achieve a transcendent significance in suffering and squalor” (National Review).
3. Philosophy.
1. Transcending the Aristotelian categories.
2. In Kant's theory of knowledge, being beyond the limits of experience and hence unknowable.
4. Being above and independent of the material universe. Used of the Deity.


Cooking the Books: Shifting the relative value of the Bible to make a point
While I assume he's using transcendent with regard to the bible as option four, I can only guess at how he applies it to poetry and mythology. And I can only guess at what the relationship is between The Bible, Poetry and Mythology. I know The Bible has Hebrew Poetry in it, and I presume that it has mythology in it, but I don't understand how Jeff views it. Usually we don't presume Poetry or Mythology as having the same importance as the Bible and tradition holds that the originating source for the bible is not the mind of humans as is the case with poetry and mythology. If Jeff wants to say that Divine inspiration originates in the mind of humans and is of the same type as any other inspiration I will go along with that, but I doubt he's willing to agree to that.

One persons Relgion is another persons Mythology
IDQ is meant to assess information that is intended for use in decision making.
It is not meant to assess poetry and mythology, but it can, and it will produce metrics. But there is no reason to apply IDQ principles to poetry and mythology because they are not intended to be accurate with respect to the real world. The writer is at liberty to record whatever she pleases with no presumption or expectation of accuracy. However, in the case of Tom Clancy, the accuracy of the information in his books adds to the appeal. Poetry's purpose is not to create text to be used for decision making but to express whatever the writer has in her head. On the other hand, generally speaking, one persons mythology is or was another persons religion. An old worn out religion becomes a mythology. We have plenty of examples of it: Egyptian, Vedic, Sumerian, Greek, Roman, and all the millions of subcultures scattered around the world. African Bushmen had a religion, Australian Aboriginees had a religion, American indians had a Religion etc.

Generally, novels and short stories are not intended as data for decision making, either, but IDQ can be applied and metrics can be derived, but its not clear why one would want to do that. However The Bible supposedly does represent real world states, some history of the Jewish people and the only record of Jesus. The question is what is the quality of that information?

Why Do Animals Suffer?

Link

Richard Carrier Reports on the Amherst Conference Concerning The Jesus Project

You can read his detailed report right here. I want to highlight some of his statements, make some comments on what he wrote, issue a caution to him, and make a suggestion or two. Get ready. Here we go again.

About Paul Kurtz's speech, Carrier said that

"...it was so full of historically naive or inaccurate statements that it seems to have embarrassed some of the scholars.” “I know it's impolitic to speak ill of the Grand Lord of Humanism (legend has it his wrath is reminiscent of Ruper Murdoch on a bad day), but I'm a suicidally honest man, and I honestly have to say there was no reason for this speech other than to please the Kurtz fans in the audience. Since that's where the money comes from, I suppose this was a practical tactic, though that's generally not how scholarly conferences are oriented.

I have to respect someone like Carrier who is a true freethinker and willing to offend Paul Kurtz, whom I have nothing but respect for at 80 plus years old and going strong. I've heard Paul speak too, and he does ramble. He seems disorganized as well. But he's probably done more for skepticism than any other living person. As far as I know he committed the funds for the conference in the first place. The organizers merely honored him by asking him to speak. He deserves that honor. [Last I read from Paul Kurtz he thinks Jesus existed. See his 1991 book, The Transcendental Temptation. He wrote: “[I]t seems to me that some such man lived, most likely in Palestine in the first half of the first century, that he was crucified or hanged, and that a sect of Christians developed proclaiming his divinity. We know very few authentic facts, however, about Jesus beyond this bare outline.” (p. 114)]

About Robert Price, Carrier said:

“...though most of the scholars I found were unhappy with Price, finding him a bit of a kook, I found him funny and erudite and generally right.”

*Ahem* Richard, that means most of the scholars there would think you are a kook too. [I'm not saying you or Bob are kooks. I'm only commenting on what you yourself said]. As I have said before, do not become marginalized as a scholar. Your scholarship is too good for that to happen to you. Make sure that your book contains convincing arguments. I have no reason yet to suspect it doesn't do this. I wish you the best and I will read your book. What typically happens is that someone writes on a topic of interest and when scholars call the author a kook he will write a response in order to save face. And if this isn't convincing he will devote his whole life to defending himself. If this happens to you let it drop. Move on to other more important topics. You have so much to say about so many things. Say them. Make your statement and move on to these other topics if that happens.

About Ronald Lindsay, Carrier reported:

“He...used Plato's dialogues as an example of the rapid fabrication of sayings and conversations of a historical person (it is generally acknowledged that these are not a verbatim record, and often not even true at all, of what Socrates said), proving two points in one: that rapid fabrication of unchallenged legends is not improbable but in fact routine, and that such fabrication does not entail the non-historicity of the speaker.”

I believe this is the honestly respectable position, and I applaud Lindsay for this.

About Frank Zindler, Carrier noted that

"...he is somewhat infamous for excessive skepticism.”

Yes he is. Frank sent me a copy of his opening statement. As a scientist he's asking us to do history just like we do science. He wrote:

"The crucially important difference for us to note today is that for all claims of existence, science presumes the negative. It will ignore all affirmative arguments if they are not supported by evidence and facts." "[T]he problem is that we have not even been trying to use the scientific method in the field of religion studies." And later reiterates his point by saying: "For the last time I shall remind you that we must always remember that in science it is not necessary to prove a negative. Science assumes the negative. If no one can provide convincing positive evidence that Jesus of Nazareth once lived, we must then resort to the tried-and-tested, successful methodology of science to account for the origins of Christianity....Any hypotheses that survive rigorous tests can then be elevated to the rank of theory. In time, one of the rival theories will predominate and gain the scientific consensus." [Emphasis is his]

My claim is that if we treat the historical past according to these rigorous scientific standards then there will not be much for historians to write about. He's demanding that the paucity of evidence found in the historical past should shoulder the burden of proof when it comes to the existence of an end times apocalyptic prophet like Jesus is depicted to be. Prophets like these were Legion in those days. My claim is also that how someone views the past is guided by control beliefs which must additionally be defended. There are several different philosophies of history that must be defended as one looks at the evidence of the past. The historian looks at the past with his particular outlook on life and it's probably impossible to do otherwise.

If one reads Carrier carefully we see that Gerd Lüdemann, Robert Eisenman, Dennis MacDonald, and Bruce Chilton all think there was a man behind the mythic traditions. I think it's important to add that G.A. Wells used to argue Jesus didn't exist, but has since changed his mind. It should also be noted that Bart D. Ehrman, one of skeptics best scholarly friends, thinks Jesus was an apocalyptic end times prophet, as I do.

Having said this it's an interesting question to me, but the money could be spent on better things. It seems as though skeptics have long ago concluded that religion is "bullshit" (ala Penn and Teller) and have now moved beyond that question to investigate other topics of interest to them. Most of them come from a scientific background, too. Since these other topics are interesting questions to them they focus on them. Having already debunked religion, including Christianity, they are looking for other things to debunk (why beat a dead horse, right?). The problem I see with such worthy interests is that there are still a great number of Christian believers in the world who will not seriously consider the possibility that Jesus did not exist. I would like to know if any Christian has walked away from his faith because of these arguments. I dare say that no one ever has (although this might change, I cannot say). It might be the equivalent of the Ontological Argument for the existence of God. No one has ever become a believer from that argument that we know of (Bertrand Russell flirted with belief because of it but eventually rejected it).

Given our recent poll on the question of who Jesus is/was, an overwhelming number of skeptics think Jesus was a mythical fictional character. Some of the skeptical voters have not been reading my arguments of late. They came here just to vote because of a request to chime in on our poll, which was posted on a very popular skeptical website. They came, they voted, and they left. Still it's good they did. It shows what most skeptics believe.

There are many topics that are of interest to me, while there are only a few that I'm concerned about. The question of The Jesus Project is of interest to me, but I'm not concerned about the results. I think Christianity fails whether Jesus existed or not. I base my arguments on Jesus's existence not unlike how St. Aquinas based his arguments for the existence of God on the eternality of the universe. He thought if he could show God existed based on the eternality of the universe, then how much more so can he show God exists if the universe did come into existence at some point in time. I can do that in reverse. Even if Jesus existed then Christianity still fails.

Where can the money be better spent? I need grant money to continue my work. There is a donate button in our sidebar that helps me stay alive in these hard economic times. I need your help. I need people who are willing to donate on a regular basis, a monthly commitment if you can. Unless more money comes in I’ll be forced to get a second job. Spinoza ground lenses during the day and researched at night. What if he had to have two jobs? I’m no Spinoza by a long shot, but what if Spinoza never had to grind lenses for a living and could research and write all day long? How much better would his arguments be?

Call me arrogant if you will, but I am one person who has the arguments that can be the undoing of Christianity. [BTW, Keith Parsons emailed me recently and said: "Humility is a Christian virtue. Be proud of your accomplishment!"] I’d like for CFI and Paul Kurtz to send me on a speaking tour, allow me to revise my book one more time (if I had time I could condense it and make it more accessible to the masses), fund me to debate some high profile Christians, make me a research scholar for the CFI institute. These requests have been made by me to them, with one important person who is advocating on my behalf, and maybe some or all of these requests will pan out in the near future. But my goal is not just to understand the world, as Marx said, but to change it.

Skeptics, yes, we need to move on to other issues and be on the cutting edge of them. Let's just never forget what our common goal is and how daunting the task is. We must major on the majors and minor on the minors and know the difference between which is which.

"Top Ten Myths About Belief in God" and "Some Common Criticisms of Atheism" by Matt McCormick

Professor McCormick wrote to tell me he's going to incorporate some of the material in my book for his class on Atheism. He also has a blog which looks like an extremely good one from which the following two essays were taken:

Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it is all going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

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Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism. You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith? Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like? Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing? (they aren’t). If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith? Faith is a bad thing? That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken. Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5. Atheism is bad for you. Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field. Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken. What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more. There are a number of obvious natural explanations. Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases. Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons? Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

6. Atheists and atheist political regimes have committed horrible crimes against humanity. Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, perhaps Hitler, and their atheistic tyrannies tortured and murdered millions.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.” It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions. “Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7. Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.” For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race. There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice. But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us. Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters. Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes. Real respect is found in disagreement. The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8. Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference. The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines. By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method. The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals: actively seek out disconfirming evidence. The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.

IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit

Jeff Carter over at the Blog Sophies Ladder takes issue with applying IDQ principles to the bible and sums up his own blog inserted below.

"To sum all this up, since I don’t use the Bible as a historical or scientific document – I don’t even use it as an instrument of salvation – but instead use it as a guide to help me hear more clearly the living voice of God within me, I find it highly accurate and reliable in terms of this function, which is to convey the spiritual. My advice is to stop trying to use it as history or science. It will only lead to your confusion."

I would like to point out that Jeff's criticism is only relevant to himself and people that share his viewpoint.

He has more criticisms in his article and I will address them in follow on articles, but in this Article I will focus on his dependence on the Holy Spirit. I have written an article called "Reasonable Doubt About The Holy Spirit" that demonstrates the uncertainty that the Holy Spirit actually helps interpret scripture or give understanding. I'm sure there have been and still are quite a few faithful that were wondering what the heck was going wrong while they were being tortured or burned alive by fellow Christians who believed they had the spirit indwelling. The most recent manisfestation of this that I know about is the persecution of Children as Witches in Africa. In the article mentioned above I go into more detail about Christian on Christian disagreements, torture and murder. In the "Recommended Reading" section at the end of this article is a list and short description of all my articles rebutting the concept of the Holy Spirit.

The purpose of the principles of Information and Data Quality (IDQ) are to improve decision making. Therefore the principles of IDQ can be applied to any information that is used to make decisions with. Therefore the Bible qualifies as a candidate for application of IDQ Principles. For example, legislature prohibiting Homosexual marriages, in vitro fertilization, birth control, stem cell research, segregation, womens rights to vote, slavery, laws prohibiting commerce on Sunday morning ("blue-laws"), witchcraft, not being a christian, heresey, etc. Those are just a few decisions off the top of my head that depend on the information in The Bible, but I'm sure I've missed some. One of the goals of Information and Data Quality Principles is to prevent multiple interpretations of data because multiple interpretations of the same data will lead to inefficient decision making within the organization which adversely effects progress towards the goal.

According to The World Almanac of 2005, and I'm going off memory, about 33% (over 2000 years) of the world are Christians. Thats an average gain of about 1% every 200 years. There are Christian denominations of Christian denominations because of disagreements on interpretation of scripture. Jeff belongs to a group represented by a percentage smaller that 33%. There are others that share his viewpoint absolutely, somewhat and not at all. In this day and age there is little to worry about but in bygone days, a Christian could be persecuted by other Christians over disagreements regarding Christianity. The founding of America was a result of the desire by The Puritans for religious freedom.

Christianity shares some of the same Characteristics of an Enterprise or Organization, (not necessarily a business), which suffers from inefficiency. I won't say poor performance because I want to avoid judgments and labels. Efficiency should be a metric that can be agreed upon since I think most people would agree that processes can usually be improved. Efficiency can be measured by assessing how well the goals of the organization are being met. The goal of an organization is usually issued in the form of a "mission statement" and policies, procedures and processes are derived to support the goal. The mission statement should define what the organization is, what the organization aspires to be, distinguish the organization from others, serve as guide to evaluate current activities, stated clearly so that it is understood by all, limited in scope but allow for creative growth

Christianity has a similar "mission statement" called the apostles creed. It was established to try to define what Christianity was and what it means to be a Christian. It seems that Christians were having a hard time meeting the goals of "The Great Commission" (Mark 16:14-18, Matt. 28:16-20, Luke 24:44-49, John 20:19-23, and Acts 1:4-8 ) without some more amplifying information. This fact demonstrates the existence of the IDQ flaw of "Incomplete Representation" in scripture. Below is the apostles creed that the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges as being considered as being derived in part by the apostles.

(1) I believe in God the Father Almighty;
(2) And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
(3) Who was born of (de) the Holy Ghost and of (ex) the Virgin Mary;
(3) Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
(4) Crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried;
(5) The third day He rose again from the dead,
(6) He ascended into Heaven,
(7) Sitteth at the right hand of the Father,
(8) Whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
(9) And in the Holy Ghost,
(10) The Holy Church,
(11) The forgiveness of sins;
(12) The resurrection of the body.

Source The Catholic Encyclopedia

The apostles creed depends on quite a few things listed below, and some of those things have dependencies on the dependencies as noted below. I might have missed some dependencies but I listed enough to make my point. The Apostles Creed depends on the following:
1. Gods existence
2. that Gods representation in the Bible is accurate (depends on 1)
3. Jesus existence
4. That Jesus representation in the Bible is accurate (depends on 1, 2, 3)
5. The existence of the Holy Ghost (depends on 1, 2)
6. The accurate representation of the Holy Ghost in the Bible (depends on 5)
7. The existence of Mary
8. The accurate representation of Mary in the Bible (depends on 1, 2, 7)
9. That Jesus was Crucified
10. That Jesus was buried (depends on 3, 7, 8, 9)
11. That he rose from the dead (depends on 1, 2, 9, 10)
12. On the third day
13. The existence of Heaven (depends on 1, 2)
14. He ascended into heaven (depends on 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 13)
15. That it is possible to sit next to God (depends on 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13)
16. If he returns to Judge or not depends on the INTERPRETATION of Christians of the Hebrew Bible is more accurate that the Hebrew Interpretation of their own Bible.
17. depends on "The Church" actually being authorized by God (depends on the accuracy of 1-16)
18. The forgiveness of Sins (depends on 1 - 16 and Romans 5)
19. The resurrection of the Body (depends on 1-17)

So, unless I've misunderstood, when people in the group that Jeff belongs to say that

"To sum all this up, since I don’t use the Bible as a historical or scientific document – I don’t even use it as an instrument of salvation – but instead use it as a guide to help me hear more clearly the living voice of God within me, I find it highly accurate and reliable in terms of this function, which is to convey the spiritual. My advice is to stop trying to use it as history or science. It will only lead to your confusion."

It seems as though they don't give any importance to most of the apostles creed being true or accurate except the Holy Spirit. If they derive their meaning and understanding from the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not detectable or measurable, and the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of all "true Christians" then it is necessarily a self-centered understanding, indistinguishable from a personal bias, and demonstrably different from other "true Christians" which has enabled the justification for Christian on Christian violence.

Since the meaning given by the Holy Spirit is different among groups of Christians, then we have to wonder what the intent of the singular intelligence behind that is. The phenomena of different interpretations deriving from one source doesn't seem to be consistent with a singular intelligence but a collective. Collective intelligence within groups in an organization is consistent with different interpretations. Collective intelligence within groups in an organization is consistent with Human Behavior and does not require any other agent. Therefore there is no reason to posit any external agency except because it appears in the Bible. It is a manifestation of the IDQ Flaw of Ambiguous Representation.

That means that it matters if the representation of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is accurate. If, when applying IDQ metrics we determine that the quality of information about the topics in the Bible have a low accuracy rating relative to their potential, then since the information about the Holy Spirit is contained in that information, it will negatively impact the Believability rating of the information which decreases the likelihood that the information about the Holy Spirit is of Good Quality. For those mathematically minded, this may be a starting point to apply a meaningful Bayesian analysis to the probability of the likelihood that scripture represents real world events.

If the Quality of Information about the Holy Spirit is poor relevant to its potential, and there are disagreements among those who have the Holy Spirit indwelling and disagree about the nature and characteristics of the Holy Spirit, then one cannot say they have a good understanding of what the Holy Spirit is or does. They are agnostic with respect to the Holy Spirit.

In future articles the two metrics I will focus on in my application of IDQ Principles to the Bible are Accuracy and Believability. Once the Accuracy rating is derived, it can be used to derive the believability rating. Once I am finished rebutting Jeffs Article and then J.L. Hinmans over at Cadre Comments I will provide an article showing the calculation of the ratings.

Recommended Reading
Reasonable Doubt About the Holy Spirit
This article is an exploration of some stated and less disputed characteristics of the Holy Spirit. I purposely tried to avoid claims about the Holy Spirit that were disputed between denominations and Churches. I use these relatively undisputed claims as my core premises to construct the argument in favor of the Holy Spirit in order to express doubt about it.
The Role of Persuasion in The Question Of The Holy Spirit
This article takes one of the examples in the "Reasonable Doubts about the Holy Spirit" article and explores it further to show that there is no possible way for a person to come to an informed belief based on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the alleged interference of Satan or the stubbornness of Humans and that the beliefs that we form about ambiguous subjects are results of factors of persuasion in our environment.
Children Are Targets of Nigerian Witch Hunt
Introduces the problem of Children in Africa being harmed and killed because the congregation are being persuaded by Evangelical Church Leadership that the children are possessed.
The Holy Spirit and The Analogy of The Flame
This article compares the Holy Spirit to a flame and attempts to weaken the claims found in the bible about the Holy Spirit. The flame informs in a way that the Holy Spirit does not.
Feelings As A Result of The Indwelling of The Holy Spirit
Discusses flashes of intense emotion that I used to attribute to the Holy Spirit but now I realize is apparently a biological response to some hardwired morality/altruism/excitement that humans have built in.

Some Guides of Tools and Ancient Versions for the Study of the Biblical Text

I often encounter comments here at DC based more on the texts and notes of either the Schofield Reference Bible or the Thompson Chain Reference Bible than from tools which would require an objective study of the Biblical text.

In particular, I find that one of the main deficiencies of conservative Biblical colleges and universities are their tight limitations to only the canonized Christian text as based usually on a Protestant perspective. To put this in a mathematical sense; the conservative mind set to the Biblical text and its theology is directly inversely proportional to the tools used in and the ability of the person studying the text.

The following references are very useful exegetical guides to tools for those doing studies on the Biblical text and its associated languages and versions as related to both its setting in the ancient Near East and Hellenistic worlds.

An older guide which includes tools on the Hebrew text and its versions, Intertestamental Literature and the New Testament is:

An Introductory Bibliography for the Study of Scripture
by Joseph Fitzmyer (Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 3 ed. 1990). Although dated, its guide to basic established texts and Biblical tools is still valuable.

For an up dated guide in book and CD form on the entire Biblical text as a whole, I would recommend:

Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study
By Frederick W. Danker (Augsburg Fortress Publishers; 4 ed., 2003)

Its Amazon description reads:
Danker’s indispensable volume, available since 1993 in a revised and expanded edition, has served for 40 years as the reliable guide for students and scholars to the foundational texts of biblical study: concordances, primary Hebrew and Greek texts, grammars and lexicons, Bible dictionaries and versions, commentaries, and a host of contextual tools for studying the world of the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now the volume will also include a CD-ROM, powered by the Libronix Digital Library System, making this work more convenient to use, easily searchable, and ready for notetaking, highlighting, bookmarking, and use with a word processor. The CD-ROM will also include some updated bibliography and Weblinks to related material.

For those on a tight budget who could use a free on line reference to tools and versions to the Hebrew text, I strongly recommend:

GUIDE TO BIBLICAL RESEARCH
William H.C. Propp (Revised by Jeffrey H. Tigay, 1997; updated November, 2005)
William Propp is a noted scholar of the Hebrew Bible and edited the two major volumes on Exdous in The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries, plus the guide has been up dated and revised by Jeffrey Tigay (A.M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures; University of Pennsylvania).

While this free online guide has its texts referenced to the library at the University of Pennsylvania, this guide is excellent because of the short and very useful comments by its two seasoned Biblical scholars.

I've Been Commenting on the "God is Imaginary" Forum

If you want to know what I've been up to recently I've spent some time over at God is Imaginary. I stopped commenting on page nine. The thread degenerated with some ad hominems (as sometimes happens), but it picked up a bit after that. Enjoy.

Raising Moral Kids without Gods: The Wisdom Commons

As parents, we want our children to be happy. We want them to achieve great things. But we also want them to be good people. We want to be as proud of their kindness, generosity and integrity as we are of their achievements. How do we help them get there?

Moral development

Each religion teaches that it is the source of morality. Christians perceive themselves as "a light on the hill" without which the world would fall into moral anarchy. As a freethinker, I have had people ask -- how can you raise good children without religion?

In one sense, this question is almost silly. Research shows us that healthy human children come into the world primed to become moral members of society, just like they come into the world primed to acquire language. Moral emotions, such as empathy, shame and guilt, begin to show their presence during the toddler years regardless of a child's cultural or religious context. A toddler may pat an injured peer, or offer a grubby toy to an adult who is distressed. A preschooler may hide in the closet to cover a transgression. As a child learns to think, moral emotions are joined by moral reasoning. By age 5 or 6, they can argue long and loud about fairness.

And yet, kids don’t learn to be decent human beings without adult input any more than they learn to communicate without adult input. For a child to grow into an honest adult, for example, we have to model honesty, expect it and explicitly teach it. Traditionally, religious institutions are the place where we talk explicitly about moral concerns and ideas. Despite frequent hypocrisy, churches legitimate the idea that there is such a thing as moral community, and that it matters. So for parents who are not church goers, the question of where and how to have these conversations with our children is real.

Virtue and morality

One way to think about moral development is that bad behavior is simply the absence of virtue. When a child hurts another, it may be that their internal sense of kindness, patience or self-control has fallen short. When they sneak or steal, it means their internal sense of honesty wasn’t as strong as the external temptation.

Rather than making the bad behavior itself the focus of our attention and conversations with them, we can put our energy toward helping them to grow good qualities. This is not to say that bad behavior never needs labels and consequences. Rather, every time our child “crashes” is an opportunity to explain and encourage the virtues we are trying to cultivate.

Buried amidst the superstition and sanctified tribalism of our inherited traditions are nuggets of wisdom that can help us in this endeavour. Our ancestors have struggled for millenia to answer questions about good and how to live in moral community with each other. If we approach these traditions knowing we have a responsibility to pick and choose, we can glean the timeless useful nuggets and simply leave the rest aside. As individuals and parents, we don't have to start from scratch just because we seek to live in the light of reason and to raise our children there.

The Wisdom Commons

The Wisdom Commons is an interactive Web project that seeks to elevate universal ethics, or our shared moral core -- the ethical values that bridge across secular and religious wisdom traditions. It offers parents and educators a new tool for nurturing positive character traits. The Wisdom Commons is structured around a set of virtues that human beings generally agree are important, such as generosity, compassion and courage. As a way of promoting these virtues (and showcasing how widely they are valued), the site houses a library of more than 3,000 quotes, stories, proverbs, poems and essays from around the world. The Commons includes "god-talk" because when our ancestors valued a character quality, they often expressed this through the voice of a god or demi-god (e.g. Jesus says love your neighbor as yourself). But it also includes supernaturalism guidelines barring member/contributors from promoting otherworldly personages and ideas. The site is about what we humans can agree on, and supernaturalism is the topic of vast disagreement.

Once registered, you can click your favorite bits of wisdom to collect them in a “Personal Wisdom Page.” Soon you’ll be able to turn your collection into Mom’s or Dad’s Book of Common Wisdom, a print-on-demand book in which you can mix your collection with photos and a personal dedication. One easy way to find bits that are meaningful to you is to sign up for the “Daily Wisbit” sent out to members who request it.

Ideas for parents

1. Choose a “virtue of the week” to discuss at the dinner table. Why does this virtue matter? How is it honored in your family’s spiritual or cultural tradition? How have family members demonstrated this virtue recently? When have they seen it in other people?
2. Ask each child to find a quote that they really like. Have them read it to other family members and explain why they like it.
3. Make a game of reading bits of wisdom aloud together and giving each one a rating, thus prompting whatever discussion is needed to reach a family agreement or average.
4. Find a special quote each week that reflects your family’s values. Click the printer icon after the quote to print it out as an 8½ x 11 poster. (Available in late January.) Put it on the fridge.
5. Create a Wisdom Page and begin storing bits of wisdom you want to share with your kids. Alternately, create a shared family Wisdom Page together, with input from everyone.

When our kids start leading us

After watching me work on the Wisdom Commons with a team of software engineers and the wonderful volunteers who contributed the first 1,000 bits of wisdom to the site, my middle-school-age daughters, Bri and Marla, gave me a birthday present. Each of them adopted a virtue (justice and aspiration, respectively). They registered to create wisdom pages of their own and spent a morning researching their chosen virtues and entering quotes and poems they liked.

Then they went back to their other interests, or so I thought. Imagine my surprise and delight last month when I clicked on my “Daily Wisbit” email from the Commons and found a poem about confidence, secretly penned by Bri.

Our children not only learn from us about what it means to be good, loving, effective people, they also teach us — if we are willing to be taught. But it’s up to us to open the conversation.

Valerie Tarico, Ph.D., is a psychologist and author in Seattle, and founder of WisdomCommons.org. She is also the mother of two middle-school-age girls.

William Lane Craig on "Jesus and Pagan Mythology"

He responded to a question about whether Jesus was a real person here. What do you think?

I do find one response of his odd but interesting:

When they say that Christian beliefs about Jesus are derived from pagan mythology, I think you should laugh. Then look at them wide-eyed and with a big grin, and exclaim, “Do you really believe that?” Act as though you’ve just met a flat earther or Roswell conspirator. You could say something like, “Man, those old theories have been dead for over a hundred years! Where are you getting this stuff?” Tell them this is just sensationalist junk, not serious scholarship. If they persist, then ask them to show you the actual passages narrating the supposed parallel. They’re the ones who are swimming against the scholarly consensus, so make them work hard to save their religion. I think you’ll find that they’ve never even read the primary sources.

Maybe we skeptics should do something similar when it comes to the Christian belief system! ;-) But this advice does tell us what he actually thinks of the mythicist case, now doesn't it?

Then Craig ends with this challenge:

Remember: anyone pressing this objection has a burden of proof to bear. He needs to show that the narratives are parallel and, moreover, that they are causally connected. Insist that they bear that burden if you are to take their objection seriously.

What do you think when it comes to the burden of proof here?

Testing Religious Experiences by the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF)

Religious experience offers a believer the most psychologically certain basis for believing in a particular divine being or religion. When a believer has a religious experience it is really hard, if not psychologically impossible, to argue him away from his beliefs. How then is it possible for a believer who claims to have had such an experience to look at his experience as an outsider, as the OTF demands?

We can point out that the mind often deceives us and provide many examples of this phenomena (brainwashing, wish-fulfillment, cognitive dissonance). But the believer will maintain his particular religious experience is real because he experienced it, despite the odds that his brain is deceiving him about it.

We can point out that many people claim to have had the same religious experience whose beliefs are much different than his (i.e. Mormon, Muslim, Catholic, or Jew) but the believer will say his experience is true because he experienced it, despite the odds that what others believe as a result of these experiences makes it seem obvious he could be wrong.

Sometimes in the face of such an experiential argument I simply say to the believer that "if I had that same experience I might believe too. But I haven't. So why not? Why doesn't your God give me that same religious experience?" At this point the believer must blame me and every living person on the planet for not being open to such a religious experience. Depending on the religion in question that might include most every person here, up to six billion of us. But even this realization doesn't affect the believer who claims to have had such a religious experience. Some of them will simply say "God doesn't want various people to have a saving religious experience." It never dawns on these believers what kind of a mean-spirited barbaric God they love and worship, especially if such a God will send people to an eternal punishment for not having one.

There are other ways to test religious experiences as an outsider. Let me offer one example from a conversation I recently had with a friend I'll call Matt. Matt told me he knows there is an afterlife because he had a vivid dream of his father and grandfather who talked to him from beyond the grave. To him this dream was very real. His dad had died 10 years earlier and his grandfather had died 15 years earlier. But here they were both talking face-to-face with him from beyond the grave!

Now if there is one thing about dreams that everyone should know by now, it's that they can seem very real. You may actually feel like you're riding a horse, or that you were in a gun battle during WWII. So the fact that dreams seem real should mean nothing to us, well, except that dreams seem real. Dreams are just in the brain. This is what our brains do when we are asleep. We dream vivid dreams during REM sleep. So one way for Matt to understand the truth about his dream is to learn what science teaches us about the brain when a person is sleeping. That's science. That should cause room for plenty of doubt. Gone are the days of the Egyptian Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar who had dreams and demanded an interpretation of them by a soothsayer, or diviner. This is a superstitious world that is long gone, for good. As scientific understanding gains ground among the scientifically illiterate we should see dreams being used less and less to support religious beliefs.

Back to Matt. I asked him how he knew it was actually his dad and grandfather whom he was talking to. "Well," he said, "they told me things that only they could know." "Really?" I questioned. "How does that show you anything at all? If the people in your dream tell you something that you already knew about them before they died, then they're not telling you anything new. This information was already stored in your brain. There is at least one other person in that dream who knew the same things they told you, and that person is the one doing the dreaming...you! For this dream to be considered evidence to you that you were actually talking with them they would have to tell you something you didn't know that could be confirmed after you awoke."

Matt replied, "But I am sure it was them. The evidence was that I know what I experienced!"

Then I asked Matt what they each looked like. He said they looked like he had remembered them. "Were they wearing the same kinds of clothes you knew them to wear?" "Yes," he said. "Had they aged any?" "No," he admitted. Then I asked him if people in the afterlife would always look the same, wear the same clothes and stay the same age? "What are the odds that they were really in your dream versus the odds that you merely had a dream about them based on what you knew them to be?"

At this point he began having some doubts, but then finally replied, "maybe they came back to me looking like this so I could recognize them?"

Wow, isn't this something? What does it take? I don't know sometimes. But evidence? Who needs that when you have an experience?

An outsider with this kind of "insider" experience would simply have to admit he just doesn't know if the experience was real or a delusion. But a delusion it was.

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Another Failed Christian Attempt to Explain Away Suffering: Mary Jo Sharp's Review of the 2nd Loftus/Wood Debate

I have debated David Wood in person on the problem of suffering for his belief in the Christian God. If you haven’t yet seen it you can do so by clicking here. (My PowerPoint presentation was not in sync for the first 3 ½ minutes). Later on January 12th 2007, I was on “The Debate Hour” with Mr. Wood once again debating the problem of evil, which was hosted by Reginald Finley (i.e. the Infidel Guy). It no longer seems to be available online. Mary Jo Sharp of Confident Christianity called this second debate "another failed argument from evil" so it’s time I comment on her criticisms, even if so late. I said I would write a response to her, so better late than never, especially since I now see she has a link to it on her blog.

The topic of the debate was expressed in a question: “Does the extent of suffering in the world make the existence of God implausible?” But it wasn’t a formal debate. In a formal debate each participant is given a certain amount of time for an opening statement; a rebuttal or two, or three; time for questions and answers; and then a final statement, or something like this. Our debate was one-on-one for about an hour and a half, if I remember the time correctly, with Finley commenting and interjecting a few questions during that time. If someone put a stop watch on it then Wood dominated with about 65% of the time, Findley with 10% of the time, and me with the remaining 25% of the time. Most always when I began speaking Wood interrupted me. Finley did not give me equal time. I was just not going to get in a shouting match, which would’ve been required several times to get a word in edge-wise.

I shall not rebut every point Sharp made. It’s not necessary, although I think I treat most everything she said in what follows. We just see things differently, no doubt. I did make a formal argument, too, which was earlier expressed clearly in our first debate in my opening statement, of which this second debate was a continuation of that one.

Sharp wrote:

Loftus claims that he is looking at this world and asking whether or not God exists while Wood already believes God exists and is trying to explain intense suffering “given that prior belief.” From the outset of his argument, Loftus assumes that only the theist has prior commitment to a belief. However, this idea is oblivious to the atheist’s own commitment to the non-existence of God, which is a governing worldview itself. Loftus takes the position of being the only one who is able to objectively argue due to his non-commitment to a religion, whereas Wood must “punt” to his worldview considering the reality of evil. I do not find a solid line of reasoning for Loftus’s statement; it is simply an attempt to discredit the ability of a theist to argue objectively. However, both the theist and the atheist come to the debate carrying their worldviews on their back.

Well, in the first place my worldview includes every belief I have about the world, but atheism, per se, is not a worldview. There are many kinds of atheism and many differences among people who call themselves atheists. Another thing Sharp should realize, but which most theists don't understand, is that the only thing I affirm is that Christians have not made their case. My atheism is a position of last regard. I came to it by the process of elimination. She herself is an atheist when it comes to Islam. I just reject her God with the same confidence she rejects the Muslim faith. I simply reject one more God than she does. I don’t think any believer in any religion has made her case. I don’t even have to make a case that there is no God, but I do. Furthermore, since the argument from evil is a serious problem for the believer, as admitted by everyone who has ever written about it (otherwise why write on a non-problem?), then if this is the only issue we had to deal with to settle the question of the omni-God's existence, it would be obvious that such a God does not exist. Christians retreat, or punt, to background beliefs to help settle this problem without which they would not believe in the first place. I mean really, if she looked at this present world and were asked whether or not an omni-God created it without reference to any other background belief of hers, I dare say she would conclude as I do.

Sharp wrote:

What kind of world should we expect an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good being to create? Wood handles the question by suggesting that a world in which human pleasure is maximized and human pain is minimized is not what would be expected of this type of Creator. He posits a two-world theodicy in which ‘good’ is maximized: this world with its goods, and the next world (heaven) with its goods. Neither world can contain all of the goods (since some of them are mutually exclusive) and therefore the best possible situation is one with both worlds, in which the world of greater goods is eternal and the world of lesser goods is a limited world.

The words "lesser goods" is a euphemism for things like gang rapes, genocide, witch hunts, brutal slavery, the Indonesian tsunami, cholera, hurricanes, the Brazilian Wandering Spider, and many parasites of which it's estimated that from them one person every ten seconds dies. Yeah, these are "lesser goods." Well if these things are "lesser goods," then what would it take for Wood or Sharp to call something evil? And what notion of a perfectly good God do they have anyway, that would allow for these "lesser goods"? The bottom line is that Wood is expressing a consequentialist ethic in his two world's theodicy, in which the ends (heavenly existence) justify the means (earthly existence). Conservative Christians reject such an ethic, so my challenge is for them to be consistent. Either acknowledge the argument from evil succeeds, or change your ethic.

Sharp wrote:

In order to maximize good, this world could not be by-passed, for there are goods in this world that cannot be achieved in the heavenly world in God’s full presence. Wood gives several examples of the goods of this world, including the choice of whether or not we will follow God, morality, and virtues such as courage and compassion. Morality in this world is only possible due to our free will to choose whether or not we will act morally. If God’s presence were fully known in this world, either His presence would overwhelm human will or humans would only be following God due to a fear of being “zapped” by this all-powerful watchman. By contrast, the goods of the heavenly realm include a lack of suffering and the full presence of God—the latter being the ultimate good.

With regard to the two world's theodicy, what possible good can come in this world that is important in the next one? Courage, generosity, and compassion are only needed in the face of poverty, suffering and pain, so how are these virtues even needed in heaven without pain and suffering? Besides, I truly think neither Wood nor Sharp understands the nature and value of free will.

I also find it very odd that in order to exonerate God they must explain the lack of his revealed goodness due to an "epistemic distance," otherwise known as divine hiddenness. I find no satisfactory understanding for why God created in the first place such that he wanted any creatures to love him. Theists ask if God is to be blamed for creating this world and for wanting people who freely love him. Yes, most definitely yes, until or unless she can tell me why a supposedly reasonable triune completely self-fulfilled God wanted this in the first place (“grace” is not an answer at all); why libertarian free-will is such an important value to God when compared to the sufferings that have resulted from this so-called gift; whether human beings actually have free-will if God created us with our specific DNA and placed us within a specific environment (an environment that actually obstructs many people from receiving the gospel because of the “accidents of birth”); why God suspends some people’s free choices (i.e. Pharaoh) but not others; why God even cares to have free-willed people who love him, knowing full well the consequences for the billions of people who wind up in hell (the collateral damage), and why God will allow sinners in hell to retain their freedom but take it away from the saints in heaven (and who subsequently completes the sanctification process for these saints without their own free choices doing it).

There are three attributes of God we're dealing with here, God's power, his love and his knowledge. God must reveal his love to us irregardless of whether he reveals his power to us. If a man courts a woman and tests her to see if she loves him by not showing her his true love, then that is quite simply a false test. If she doesn't see him as a loving person she will naturally reject him. So the woman would not actually be rejecting that man but only the man he showed himself to be. And so likewise, if God is all-knowing then he would know we only rejected a false caricature of him and not who he really is. So I find it wildly improbable to think this settles anything for Sharp or Wood or any Christian theist. Maybe Mary Jo should try this on her own children if she has any, and see how her own children react to it. See what that gets her as a mother and she'll understand the seriousness of the problem.

Sharp wrote:

At this point in the program, Reginald Finley, the host, asked how Satan could have been in God’s perfect presence and yet still rebelled. However, this is a misunderstanding of the theodicy. In Wood’s theodicy, this present world and the restored, future world are the two worlds. The “heavenly realm” from which Satan fell could not have been a place of God’s full presence or Loftus would be correct in stating that Satan would be “dumber than a box of rocks” for rebelling. More accurately, Satan would not have been able to rebel in the full presence of God. So this original heavenly realm is not the same as the restored heaven and earth to come. Loftus interjected, “So there’s a rule change then.”

Yes, I "interjected" because that's all I could do as Wood droned on.

Satan is a mythical figure derived mostly during the inter-testamental literature. He was not viewed as an evil being in the Old Testament itself. In the OT Satan was a fully credentialed member of the heavenly court who is best described as a prosecutor, the high ranking head of the ancient barbaric "thought police." Prosecutors are not evil because they are doing their jobs and we find him in God's heavenly court a few times in the history of Israel simply doing his job. As such he was not the serpent in the Garden of Eden earlier, otherwise God later allowed sin in his presence if he allowed Satan to be a member of his heavenly court. Christians deny God allows sin in his presence and they also claim sinners could not bear to be in God's presence. So why do we find Satan in God's presence doing God's will later in passages like Job 1-2; Numbers 22:22-32; II Samuel 24:1 (cf. I Chron. 21:1); and Zechariah 3:1-5?

But even if Wood's concocted view is correct, he has merely pushed back the problem of evil before the Fall of humankind. Why didn't God allow Satan into his direct immediate presence to see all of his power and love such that Satan would neither desire to rebel against him or think he could succeed? Because of this divine decision every person who suffers in this world and every person who will suffer for all eternity (along with Satan himself) will do so because God failed to show Satan his love and power. Apologists say God did this to show us his glory and grace, but then that's using people for his own ends. This is the ethic of consequentialism, again. Why does God hide his love from his creatures, for instance, knowing it would cause such intense suffering? This theodicy sounds much more like an excuse for what God should have done than it offers anything by way of a reasonable justification for a so-called perfectly good God.

Given the suffering that resulted from Satan's supposed rebellion, why didn't God simply deal with him and put him down immediately? That's what a good and reasonable ruler would do. Listen, does a perfectly good God want a peaceable kingdom, or not? A good ruler would not allow such an evil in his kingdom in the first place. Evil like that is to be eliminated as soon as possible by a good ruler. Too many innocents would be hurt if he didn't do this immediately.

Sharp wrote:

The argument Loftus presents, at its foundation, reasons that if God had foreknowledge of those who would choose Him and those who would not, He should have only made those who would choose Him. This argument essentially disregards free will, making it appear as practically useless in this world.

Not so. If God has foreknowledge of future free-willed contingent actions then he could foreknow our free choices. We wouldn't have to actually choose anything since if God has this kind of foreknowledge he would already know who would.

Sharp wrote:

Loftus believes that it would be better for us to have no free will, but to live a utopian life in which peace, happiness, and health are maximized. Although I have seen this type of existence portrayed on Star Trek, I highly doubt this is the type of existence we really desire. In listening to Loftus, I wondered if he had spent any time formulating what that type of existence would actually look like.

I'm merely thinking of what the theist conceives heaven to be: a heavenly existence, is after all, the one Christians believe they will experience in the future, with an incorruptible body including eternal peace and happiness in a world of utter bliss.

Sharp wrote:

Loftus uses instances of immense suffering to bolster his argument, but he ignores the issues of “not-so-immense” suffering such as the girl who doesn’t feel ‘pretty enough’ who wants to commit suicide. How would this situation be remedied in Loftus’s utopia? Would God therefore have to make every person look alike so as to avoid even the smallest amount of suffering? (He does argue that God should have only created one race of people.)

Listen, the argument from evil is only as forceful as the suffering that exists in this present world. If there was no intense suffering the argument would lose most of its force. If there was no suffering at all then it would have no force at all. I have struggled in life, although I have not experienced any prolonged intense suffering. I've always had good health, with enough food and money and friends to get by. So if my kinds of struggles are good enough to test me then why couldn't everyone's struggles be no more than mine? Why do some suffer for years and years, and a few commit suicide because of their sufferings? Do they need this suffering whereas I don't? Not everyone suffers the same. Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths while others struggle with financial woes and health issues and the loss of loved ones throughout their whole short lives. Why?

Sharp wrote:

Loftus’s assessment of this life as a cruel game of hide and seek is, to quote him in another statement, “expecting way too little of God.” This judgment of God’s method of Divine expression oversimplifies the total issue. The atheist, as Wood explains later in the debate, has to explain why anything exists at all. The problem is amplified when we consider the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the cosmos for life, the design on earth that enables survival, and the astronomical odds that complex life would arise on this one planet, in order to even get to a brain that can ponder the problem of evil. The theist has a foundation for the existence of God rooted in all of these things to which he then adds theodicies to help make sense of suffering in the world. What evidence should we expect from a God-level intellect concerning His existence? The evidence He has provided in the cosmos, nature, human reasoning, and the written Word allow humankind to thoughtfully consider who we are and where we came from without being mindlessly forced into accepting God as our Creator.

Here is but another example of how Christians count the hits and ignore the misses. They do this with prayer too. If a prayer is answered they count that as a hit. If it's not, they ignore it. With regard to the universe and its form they simply ignore the vast amount of natural evil in it, as I mentioned earlier. One cannot look at this universe objectively and come away believing in the omni-God Sharp believes if she takes into consideration all of the evidence of unintelligent design. At best one should be agnostic about what the evidence can lead us to think. Even if one is to conclude some divine entity created a "quantum wave fluctuation" we don't have an explanation for where this divine being came from, nor whether he still exists, nor whether he is good, or all-powerful. For her to believe in God she must believe in a historically conditioned interpretation of a selected group of ancient anonymous superstitious writings. And we certainly cannot verify the claims of miracles by the historical method, especially as outsiders looking in. Those beliefs of hers are to be described simply as bizzaro! If she understood the full range of problems for the Christian faith, then as I argued with respect to William Lane Craig, she would never have believed in the first place!

Sharp wrote:

In the argument from evil, the atheist points out instances of intense suffering, especially undeserved suffering of innocents such as children and animals. In an attempt to make this the sole issue regarding God’s existence, the atheist skips over any good found in the world. The scales of good and evil thus tip to the evil side making it appear as though evil, all by itself, is enough to prove a godless world. The problem is that the scales are tipped and weighted on one side, not putting enough consideration on the good side. One of the differences in the perspectives on this issue is that Loftus and Finley view this world as bad and the (imaginary for them) future world as good, whereas Wood views this world as good and the future world as good.

This claim of hers is quite simply a red herring. For me personally life is good. That has nothing to do with the argument itself. My claim is that neither Sharp nor Wood can actually see the blood stained whip in the slave master's hand, nor smell the flesh of the witches burned at the stake, nor hear the screams of the woman whose child is eaten alive by a pack of wolves, because they are blinded by their faith. They cover their eyes their noses and their ears to the truth of this world in order to have the comforts of a delusional belief. Whether we think this present world is a good one over-all, probably depends on where we were born. If someone was born in the Gaza Strip, life right now would be terrible. Besides, we're not just talking about whether this world is merely good, anyway. We're talking about whether this world reflects a perfectly good God.

Sharp wrote:

Wood argued thus: Given our world, God can either put animals in it or not put animals in it. If He does put them here, then they are going to be a part of our world, which is governed by natural law. Animals are good-in-themselves. Wood suggests that Loftus’s question is spurious by giving an example of the tiger. Tigers are in danger of going extinct in the wild; however, no one says, “Hooray! Now all the animals the tiger hunts will no longer have to suffer.” In fact, the general feeling is that we should keep tigers from going extinct. Why do we react this way if tigers just cause a lot of pain and suffering? Returning to what Wood said, we must know on some level that animals are good-in-themselves. If we want a world with less animal suffering, then God offers us one—the heavenly world. If we reject that offer, then we still have this world, which is good.

Whether or not we are concerned if tigers go extinct is another red herring. We are concerned because of our delicate ecosystem and its ability to support all life. My question has to do with what God should be concerned about and that makes all the difference in the world. My question is whether or not a fine-tuned ecosystem is more important to God than one in which divine maintenance is needed to correct anything in an incomplete ecosystem, given the massive amount of intense suffering in it. I think God should care more about sentient beings than having a fine-tuned ecosystem that causes this much suffering. Is God lazy, or what? Can God do perpetual miracles by miraculously feeding human beings through the process of photosynthesis without any animals at all--animals who have viciously preyed upon one another for hundreds of thousands of years prior to our arrival on earth? Finally, when it comes to animals do all dogs go to heaven?

Sharp wrote:

...the theist could turn this argument around and ask what a universe should look like without a God and point out all the instances of good, concluding that there must be a God because there is immense good and incredible joy in the world.

Such a tactic undercuts the Christian claims, I think, for such arguments cancel each other out, leaving nothing but a blind indifferent world, which is actually what I'm arguing for.

Sharp wrote:

Nearing the end of the debate, Loftus and Finley agree that naturalism better explains immense suffering in the world. Wood responds by stating that naturalism cannot explain the standard by which the atheist views certain events as evil. Presupposed in the atheist argument is some sort of standard of goodness. Wood explains that though Loftus denies God’s existence, the morality he bases his argument on has as its foundation an absolute Moral Law Giver. Atheists may be able to say that naturalism explains suffering better than theism, but then they have to explain the concept of ‘right and wrong’ through naturalism as well. This is one area where atheism can be seen to lack the explanatory power of theism.

I have dealt with Wood's red herring extensively right here. I have briefly dealt with the problem of an atheistic ethic here. I adjure Wood and Sharp not to try to escape their problem by claiming I have one too. I've adequately deal with my difficulty. They need to adequately deal with theirs.

Sharp wrote:

At one point, Loftus was asking Wood to answer the question, “Was it good that God did not stop the earthquake which caused the Indonesian tsunami?” How would answering this one particular instance explain the universal problem of evil? It would not help. Wood is correct in consistently reminding Loftus that the argument itself needs to be dealt with in order to discern whether the argument is sound. Loftus can ask “why?” all day long, but as Wood has said, “why?” isn’t an argument.

Asking Wood to answer the massive amount of suffering in this world is, I think, an important strategy for a theodicy. My argument, since I couldn't fully express it given Wood's propensity to interrupt me, can certainly be expressed as a rhetorical question, for that's what it was. I say he cannot sufficiently explain why God did not stop that earthquake, for if he had stopped it no one would ever know he stopped it simply because it wouldn't have happend (and thus God would stay "hidden"). If that earthquake was needed for the ecosystem then I see no reason why God didn't wait a few years when better warning systems would be in place. Most importantly I see no reason why an omnipotent God who created the laws of nature could not have performed a perpetual miracle by stopping that earthquake from ever have taken place.

I think the more power a person has then the more of an ethical obligation he has to alleviate suffering. If, for instance, a woman is being gang raped, no one would fault me if I didn't physically try to stop them, for then I would be beaten up and perhaps killed along with her (although I would be held morally responsible if I didn't call the police). But if I was Superman and did nothing then everyone would rightly fault me if I didn't stop them. So since God supposedly has all power he is the most obligated to alleviate suffering in our world. Without a suffient explanation for these things I argue that it's probable such an omni-God doesn't exist. Wood has not made his case.

Sharp wrote:

In the end, Wood shows that the background information presupposed in the argument from evil itself points to theism....Loftus’s argument is that suffering provides enough evidence to lead us away from God. However, suffering itself is just not enough evidence in light of a comprehensive look at the world to move the theist away from a reasoned, evidenced belief in God.

With regard to Wood and Sharp's worldview background beliefs I have thoroughly debunked all of the important ones in my book, one after another. Given the demise of their background worldview beliefs they no longer have a leg to stand on in the face of the massive amount of intense suffering in this world, since it becomes quite obvious that without them they cannot sufficiently explain why a good God allows this suffering.

Sharp wrote:

The theistic worldview explains the conditions assumed in the argument from evil far better than atheism does. In fact, atheism does not satisfactorily account for any of the conditions presupposed in the argument. When the atheist points to suffering as his reason for rejecting the existence of God, he assumes all of these conditions, which atheism simply cannot account for. Hence, theism has far more explanatory power than atheism, and the argument from evil therefore does not make the existence of God implausible.

Atheism, as I understand it simply means one is a non-theist, or a non-believer in the particular religion being discussed. Christians, after all, were called "atheists" by the Romans. So the options are not between being an atheist (qua metaphysical naturalist) or a Christian theist. There are a host of other positions on this question, most notable panentheism, or process theology. My claim is that the more beliefs a person has that are essential to his worldview then the less likely the whole set of beliefs comprising his worldview are true. He must maintain not only that there is a three-in-one God, but that the collection of books in the canonized Bible are all inspired by God, and that God became incarnated through a virgin in Bethlehem, atoned for our sins, resurrected from the grave, and will return, for starters. These beliefs, along with a multifaceted number of others, all stand or fall together. If one is shown wrong then his whole worldview collapses. By contrast, as I said earlier, the only thing I affirm is that Christians have not made their case. My atheism is a position of last regard. I came to it by the process of elimination. I don’t think any believer in any religion has made his case. I don’t even have to make a case that there is no God, although I do.

Does Satan Know Electronics?

After I left the ministry over twenty three years ago, I worked with an experienced radio technician who, like myself and at the time, was required to hold a Federal Communication License.

Both John and I held the highest federal certification available out of the three radio telephone classes: The First Class Radio Telephone License. Very few achieved this level and it was only given after one took an extensive test in electronic theory and the math that was used in, say phasing directional towers for an AM station as well as computing impedance, reactance and resistances on antenna rays, tuning transmitters and knowing the FCC rules and regulations required to operate a commercial radio or TV station. The exams were only given at the FCC Field Offices in Charlotte, NC or Atlanta, Ga. as well as other major cities in the U.S.

John felt “lead” to use his electronic experience to help maintain Christian evangelical commercial radio stations operating in the AM and FM bands. Since John had been an electronics major at Bob Jones University, it was probably natural for him to go into missionary work in a foreign country both as an electronic tech and a preacher.

Over the years, I occasionally receive a New Letter / Prayer List via email sent out to all John’s past associates and missions supporters.

In his last news letter, John opens with electronic troubles at the stations transmitter with this assessment:

Christmas is a time when people turn their thoughts to the birth of Christ. It is a wonderful time to send out over the airwaves the truth of the Christmas story.  Satan is aware of this, and he often uses equipment trouble to try to thwart that message. It was not surprising that we had some problems this year.

I’ve notice that over the years, Satan has cut tower guy wires, used the wind to blow down antennas and has done other mischievous things to thwart the message of salvation.

Sometimes I come away form reading his News Letter wondering just where the hell God was while Satan was running amuck in Christ’s broadcast station.

The following are some basic questions for comments to this post:

Do you think it’s because neither God, Jesus nor the Holy Spirit know electronics?

Or do you think the God (via the Holy Trinity) is always “Testing” both John’s faith and the electronic equipment to see which fails first?

Or does John’s brain just have a leaky / shorted capacitor?