How to Dissipate Anti-religion Activism

Food for thought from Nick, a commenter at Radio Open Source.

How to make Chris Hitchens and his ‘neo-atheist’ cabal lose interest in their current anti-religion activism. Imagine a new global, ecumenical convocation of the three Abrahamic faiths. All of them, from Branch Davidians to Greek Orthodoxy, from Hassidim to Islamists. And they end their massive convention by issuing the following statement:

We are appalled by the violence and intolerance our beliefs and faith-institutions have engendered, enabled, and otherwise promoted throughout the history of monotheism. We not only regret this, we seek, now, and admittedly belatedly, to atone. We recognize that the harm rises plainly from our claims to certain knowledge of the deity we purport to speak for—and we now candidly admit the implicit and explicit conceit of these claims. We have long claimed humility – but falsely – for surely mere humans cannot humbly claim to know the mind of the universe’s creator.We therefore renounce our claims to certainty.

Instead of conviction we offer hope: hope that our belief in an immortal soul is neither vain nor mere vanity masquerading as religiosity. Hope that the God we have long believed listens to our self-obsessed entreaties might actually exist in the cosmos beyond our minds’ capacity for imagination and outside of our hearts’ yearnings for the comforts of parental love and approval.

But we no longer promise this to the young we hope to influence. We will instead become, for the first time in monotheism’s troubled and troubling existence, authentically humble.We confess our abject ignorance.

We confess our dismay that so many more prayers prove futile than those that seem to have been postively answered as articulated. We admit that double-blind prayer experiments yield not a whit of difference in the lives of those prayed for.We will no longer pretend that our child recovered from a sickness because a Deity favored us and our prayer while apparently ignoring the even more devoutly offered prayers of parents and children living in dire poverty and in barbaric, hostile circumstances.We admit that such beliefs are unconscionable conceits.And we apologize.

We hope for something more, though: we hope to inspire greater love within the hearts of our co-religionists: not for themselves but for all others – even those others who do not share our beliefs and our hopes. We will no longer demand that human love be personified in our venerated mythological figures, but will hereafter allow and encourage love to be venerated as a good in and of itself. We will remodel our temples, churches, and mosques to reflect this – and will then invite non-believing others to share their stories of the profoundly transforming power of unpersonified love. Because, in our new and earnest humility, we confess that those outside our faith traditions might have profoundly valuable lessons of love to share with us.

And we will edit and revise our sacred texts to reflect this historical reformation from insufferable arrogance and the cocksure certainty of faith to genuine humility and plainly confessed hope.

Any religion or sect that cannot or will not make such a concession to reason, to humankind, and to its own parishioners fully deserves the scorn of Hitchens, Dawkins and the rest of us non-believers too. And why must it fall to plebeian skeptics like me to have to point this out?

Book Review: Why I Rejected Christianity

Rooted in biblical studies and a transformative encounter with Jesus, John Loftus lived a life of an Evangelical minister. During years of study and ministry he rigorously researched and publicly expounded a fundamentalist world view. Like most ex-Christians, Loftus had to first encounter a life situation that created emotional dissonance before he could do a rational recalc on his beliefs. His story is not an unusual one. What is unusual is Loftus’s breadth and depth of research in defense of the Christian faith before finally calling it quits.

“Recalc” is nerd-speak for re-running the numbers: dusting off old dogmas and evidence, adding any updates, and re-computing the conclusions. Once personal weaknesses and human hypocrisies opened the door, Loftus applied himself to this process with the same intellectual rigor he had applied to defending the faith.

Because of this rigor, Why I Rejected Christianity offers a window into a vast array of arguments relating to orthodox Christian assertions about the nature of God and reality. It is thoroughly referenced and quotes extensively from scholars on many sides. This makes it a great launching point for someone who is a relative newcomer to apologetics.

Approaching the text as a psychologist as well as an ex-fundamentalist, I found many of the arguments fascinating on multiple levels.

One was the logic and evidence in play. Particularly interesting were discussions about the historicity of biblical texts and demon-haunted world in which they were written. Glimpsing this world, one realizes quickly that superstitions of all sorts abounded: meteorological signs and wonders, virgin births, magical cures, resurrections, ghostly apparitions . . . . Most of us look with patronizing bemusement at the many superstitions of the Medieval Europeans, and yet we are taught that the perceptions of our Bronze Age spiritual ancestors should be taken at face value. Loftus brings together a chorus of experts and erases the double standard.

At another level, I found myself marveling at the impressively contorted reasoning used by apologists through the ages in defense their received traditions. Arguments on behalf of the “self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit” and the incarnation are extraordinary in this regard. These arguments are testimony to the power of the human mind when we are determined to make the evidence fit a preconceived story line---or when we are determined to hold an appealing belief despite being backed into an evidentiary corner. They are worth reading from the standpoint of cognitive psychology alone.

Why I Rejected Christianity opens weakly, I think, with a personal narrative that is more confessional than it needs to be. Loftus lays out both his failings and his credentials as if to head off critics. He doesn’t need to. As a writer, he hits his stride when he enters the arena of scholarly discourse. His encyclopedic knowledge speaks for itself.

Norman Geisler's Review of My Book.

As I have said, Norman L. Geisler, known to many as "the dean of Christian apologetics," is recommending my book. Not that he agrees with it. He actually thinks it will confirm the faith of his seminary students (isn't that strange?). Anyway, if anyone would like to read his review you can order the Spring 2007 issue of the Christian Apologetics Journal, or check it out in a library. He titled it, "From Apologist to Atheist: A Critical Review" (pp. 93-110). At least he thinks it deserved a separate article rather than one in the usual "Book Reviews" section of the journal.

Dr. Geisler began his review by saying some very positive things about my book:

"First it is an honest and open account of how a Christian became an atheist. Seldom are unbelievers so candid and open. Second, every Christian--let alone Christian apologists--can learn some valuable lessons from it on how to treat wayward believers. Third, it is a thoughtful and intellectually challenging work, presenting arguments that every honest theist and Christian should face. Indeed, some of his criticisms are valid. In particular I would single out his critique of the subjective argument from the alleged self-authenticating 'witness of the Holy Spirit' by Loftus' former teacher William Lane Craig." (pp. 93-94)

Thanks Dr. Geisler. I appreciate you saying these things, even if you disagree with my over-all case.

But I have some concerns with Geisler's review. While I was indeed candid in telling of the experiences that provoked my thinking, I also gave the reasons for why I rejected Christianity. He seems to latch unto the experiential reasons for why I became an atheist. In a few places he says things like this: "one thing is certain: It was not evidence and rational arguments that led him (me) to atheism." (p. 101). However, this is a one sided presentation of my book. To the contrary, for me it wasn't an either/or proposition, but a both/and one (both experiences AND arguments). It's not unlike how Christians describe their own conversions to Christianity. Geisler admitted this about Christian conversions when he wrote: "There is more than reason, arguments, and evidence involved in people coming to faith as well as in people leaving the faith." (p.97). Yes there are, but to claim my rejection of Christianity is almost all experiential does not do my arguments justice, nor is it doing justice to what I said about the weight of my experiences in the book itself. He would object in a like manner if I claimed his faith was adopted almost purely because of experiential reasons, although, in a way I did, since I argued that he adopted the faith he was raised in. ;-)

In several places Geisler used an argument I had already dealt with in my book, just as if I hadn't dealt with it at all! Take for instance the argument I made about the problem of evil. Geisler claims such an argument is "circular," "for how can one know God is ultimately...just for allowing evil unless he knows what is ultimately just? And how can he know there is an ultimate standard of justice, unless there is an absolute Moral Law Giver?" (p. 101) But in that same chapter on evil I had answered such an objection in these words:

Some theists like C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, will argue from the start that there can be no evil with out absolute goodness (God) to measure it against. "How do you know a line is crooked without having some knowledge of what a straight line is?” In other words, I need some sort of objective moral in order to say something is evil. But the word “evil” here is used both as a term describing suffering and at the same time it’s used to describe whether or not such suffering is bad, and that’s an equivocation in the word’s usage. The fact that there is suffering is undeniable. Whether it’s bad is the subject for debate. I'm talking about pain...the kind that turns our stomachs. Why is there so much of it when there is a good omnipotent God? I’m arguing that it’s bad to have this amount of suffering from a theistic perspective, and I may be a relativist, a pantheist, or a witchdoctor and still ask about the internal consistency of what a theist believes. The dilemma for the theist is to reconcile senseless suffering in the world with his own beliefs (not mine) that all suffering is for a greater good. It’s an internal problem for the theist. (pp. 245-246)

My question is whether he just didn't see what I wrote, ignored it, or thought it was too trivial to respond to? I'll let our readers decide for themselves on this.

Geisler did the exact same thing with regard to my Outsider Test for Faith, where I make some statements defending the fact that a believer ought to test his or her faith from an outsider's perspective. Geisler claims: "Loftus does not seem to be aware of their self-defeating nature." "The truth," he writes, "is that the outsider test is self-defeating since by it every agnostic should be agnostic about his agnosticism and every skeptic would be skeptical of his own skepticism." (p. 105) But I had already acknowledged and dealt with this type of argument in that same chapter, when I wrote:

Four) One final objection asks whether this is all circular. Have I merely chosen a different metaphysical belief system based upon different cultural factors? Maybe it is in some sense, but it’s definitely not viciously circular. For I have very good initial grounds for starting out with skepticism.(p. 46)

I further argued...

“Do my cultural conditions overwhelmingly ‘determine’ my presumption of skepticism? If so, then others don’t have much of a reason to adopt the skeptical stance. If not, then why do I think I can transcend culture, but a Christian theist can’t transcend her culture?” In answer I say that if it’s the case that “the accidents of birth” overwhelmingly determine our religious beliefs, especially in those areas where there is no mutually agreed upon empirical tests to decide between them, then that’s a sociological fact everyone must wrestle with when thinking about such matters. Let’s say this is the case, i.e., that whatever we believe about the origin of this universe is overwhelmingly determined by when and where we are born. I am much more willing to accept the consequences of this than a great majority of people who have religious faith and are so dogmatic about their faith. If this is the case, then we agree that what we believe is based upon when and where we're born.

If true, this does not undercut what I'm saying at all--it supports it. I'm arguing that cultural conditions have an extremely strong influence on us to believe in a given communally shared religious faith in a primary sense. And although cultural influences also apply in a secondary sense with regard to non-communal metaphysical beliefs, if I am a skeptic because of these cultural conditions, then I'm right that cultural conditions lead us to believe these things after all. And while I might be wrong about what I believe, such an admission doesn't undercut the main reason for the Outsider Test and the skeptical presumption that goes with it. If cultural factors overwhelmingly cause us to believe what we believe, then we should all be skeptical of what we believe.

The best that could result from this admission is agnosticism. But this doesn’t grant the believer any ground. For to be agnostic would again be admitting the basis for testing between beliefs that cannot be decided upon empirical grounds, and that is to be skeptical all over again, which once again is something I’m asking of believers. So I don't object to being skeptical of my own skepticism. But it's redundant from my perspective, and so it merely reinforces itself. (pp. 45-46)

How Dr. Geisler can say that I'm not aware of this objection astounds me, even if in the end he disagrees with me.

Of my book he says "there is nothing really new here that has not already been answered elsewhere." (p. 100). And then he proceeds to ask questions of my arguments that I think I have already addressed in the book itself! While I appreciate him as a friend and wish him the very best, I'd have to say of his review, as he said of my book, that there is nothing really new here that has not already been answered...in my book! ;-)

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To read FormerFundy's Review of Geisler's review see here.

Why This Universe?

Edward T. Babinski pointed out an article in the Skeptic e-magazine titled Why This Universe?, by Robert Lawrence Kuhn. I haven't read it yet but it looks like a very good read.

An Atheistic Ethic: A Concluding Thought

I’m going to cut short my defense of an atheistic ethic for now. I think I’ve already argued enough for people to get a rudimentary view of it. Let me sum it up so far and then conclude with a thought.

I previously said here that we need an ethic that is based upon some solid evidence about who we are as human beings and why we act the way we do. I also argued that the Christian ethic is practically impossible to obey, and the motivation for obeying must be judged to be based upon self-interest, which is basically the same ethic I argue for, without the barbarisms in the Bible.

Then I argued there is solid evidence that people want to be happy here, and that non-rational people do not want those things that make for happiness.

I dealt with the book of Ecclesiastes here, which claims we cannot find ultimate happiness without God.

I distinguished between selfishness and rational self-interest here.

I further argued there is an element of self-interest in almost every act we do, certainly with our over-all life-plan itself, which is the position of modified psychological egoism, better called "predominant egoism." To show this I took some of the toughest scenario’s and explained that there may be an element of rational self-interest in them.

I answered the Christian question of why we shouldn’t kill someone when we think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages by claiming there will never be such a scenario for a rational person here.

Let me just close this off by talking about the kind of character that rational self-interested people need to be happy. It must be a stable character.

The late Louis P. Pojman argued that it is reasonable to choose and to act upon an over-all “life plan,” even though there will be many times where I may have to act against my own immediate or short-term self-interest in keeping with that plan. “To have the benefits of the moral life—friendship, mutual love, inner peace, moral pride or satisfaction, and freedom from moral guilt—one has to have a certain kind of reliable character. All in all, these benefits are eminently worth having. Indeed, life without them may not be worth living.” “Character counts,” Pojman wrote, and “habits harness us to predictable behavior. Once we obtain the kind of character necessary for the moral life--once we become virtuous--we will not be able to turn morality on and off like a faucet.” With such an understanding “there is no longer anything paradoxical in doing something not in one’s interest, for while the individual moral act may occasionally conflict with one’s self-interest, the entire life plan in which the act is embedded and from which it flows is not against the individual’s self-interest.” [Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong 5th ed. (p. 188)].

Times/Harris Poll: 1/4th of Us Could Be Either Agnostic or Atheist

Source: The Nation [from the June 25, 2007 issue]

"We commonly hear that only a tiny percentage of Americans don't believe in God and that, as a Newsweek poll claimed this spring, 91 percent do. In fact, this is not true. How many unbelievers are there? The question is difficult to assess accurately because of the challenges of constructing survey questions that do not tap into the prevailing biases about religion."

"According to the American Religious Identification Survey, which interviewed more than 50,000 people, more than 29 million adults--one in seven Americans--declare themselves to be without religion. The more recent Baylor Religion Survey ("American Piety in the 21st Century") of more than 1,700 people, which bills itself as "the most extensive and sensitive study of religion ever conducted," calls for adjusting this number downward to exclude those who believe in a God but do not belong to a religion."

"Contrast this with a more recent and more nuanced Financial Times/Harris poll of Europeans and Americans that allowed respondents to declare agnosticism as well as atheism: 18 percent of the more than 2,000 American respondents chose one or the other, while 73 percent affirmed belief in God or a supreme being."

"A more general issue affects American surveys on religious beliefs, namely, the "social desirability effect," in which respondents are reluctant to give an unpopular answer in a society in which being religious is the norm. What happens when questions are framed to overcome this distortion? The FT/H poll tried to counteract it by allowing space not only for the customary "Not sure" but also for "Would prefer not to say"--and 6 percent of Americans chose this as their answer to the question of whether they believed in God or a supreme being. Add to this those who declared themselves as atheists or agnostics and, lo and behold, the possible sum of unbelievers is nearly one in four Americans."

"All this helps explain the popularity of the New Atheists--Americans as a whole may not be getting too much religion, but a significant constituency must be getting fed up with being routinely marginalized, ignored and insulted. After all, unbelievers are concentrated at the higher end of the educational scale--a recent Harris American poll shows that 31 percent of those with postgraduate education do not avow belief in God (compared with only 14 percent of those with a high school education or less). The percentage rises among professors and then again among professors at research universities, reaching 93 percent among members of the National Academy of Sciences. Unbelievers are to be found concentrated among those whose professional lives emphasize science or rationality and who also have developed a relatively high level of confidence in their own intellectual faculties. And they are frequently teachers or opinion-makers."

Thanks to Edward T. Babinski for finding this.

Another Review of My Book

I'm sorry to bore people with the reviews of my book, but another 5 star review of it appeared today here on amazon (scroll down to Pilgrim). The author wrote:

John W. Loftus' book is a great read for anyone confused by Christianity's many contradictions. As a former paster himself, Loftus' position lends extra credibility to his conclusions.

Here are four reasons why this book is superior to many similar texts:

1. Loftus is well-read in the Christian apologist realm, and he cites these authors' works frequently. Anyone in the "Zondervan school of thought" will quickly become comfortable in his context, even if he/she is in total disagreement with his point.

2. The book reads without even a hint of condescending tone towards his former faith. It is obvious that the man is simply sincere, and he resorts to no personal attacks on any level. This is more than can be said of most current atheist authors.

3. The level of research and brutal logic applied to the Bible is absolutely stunning, as is the sheer number of examples given. Loftus mentions several of the most popular Biblical contradictions, but goes so much further, offering reasons why even many of the simple stories found in the Bible defy any logic.

4. There is "no stone unturned", as Loftus takes on nearly every apologist angle ever conceived. Science vs. religion debate? It's here. ID people knocking on your door? Read this book. Historical evidence issues? Loftus tackles them head-on.

On the back cover, the book is critiqued by Dr. James Sennett, who is credited as a Christian philosopher and author. One of Dr. Sennett's quotes (taken out of context here) is, "Scholarly unbelief is far more sophisticated, far more defensible than any of us would like to believe." This book will give more insight into this "scholarly unbelief" than you ever thought possible.

An Atheistic Ethic: The Christian Debate Stopper

salvationfound voiced what I was waiting for a Christian to say. He or she wrote:

If someone wants to kill and they feel the advantages outweigh the disadvantages why shouldn't they kill?

I'm assuming here that sf is talking about a premeditated unlawful and unjust killing of another human being. My answer?

Under these circumstances then he will kill, because that's why people get murdered in the first place by others who kill them. Since I'm arguing that every human being is motivated to act from self-interest, then if these conditions obtain for someone, they will therefore kill. And it doesn't matter what a person's religious or non-religious beliefs are at that point, because these beliefs also factor into whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Whether one is a Christian or not, people will kill under these circumstances.

There is no ethic that can stop someone from killing under these circumstances...none. Since Christianity numberically dominates in American society then a whole lot of Christians are killing other people. Men kill their wives. Women kill their husbands and children. Others kill while stealing. Men kill after raping a woman. Who do you think are doing most of the killing here? Christians. Why do they do this? Because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Some do so while in an irrational rage, or because of paranoia, or due to drugs or alcohol. But they do it. And so do atheists and agnostics.

Christians will say that the Christians who kill others are not "real Christians." What can we make of this? According to such a definition a Christian is someone who obeys the Bible? But how does that follow from the contrary idea that we cannot earn our way into heaven? How can they have it both ways? Deeds mean little to the evangelical mind in front of a merciful God. Evangelicals will claim there is no deed God cannot forgive, so murder should be no problem for God. Christians say a person must repent before he can be forgiven, but does that mean they can fall away from God's grace, or that their repentence must be perfect before God can forgive them? And does this mean they should search out every possible sin and daily repent of it before God will forgive? Surely not. Lewis B. Smedes [in his book Mere Morality] makes a strong case that God can and does forgive suicide, and there can be no repentence after such a deed is committed.

Christians can have an excuse whenever they want to do wrong. I know. As a former Christian I knew God would forgive me if I did something wrong. So, when I felt the advantages outweighed the disadvantages I did it knowing full well God would forgive me.

Having said all of this, I dispute the basis of the question sf asked. I claim that the advantages will never outweight the disadvantages in unlawfully and unjustly killing someone, period. Give me a scenario and I doubt that rational self-interest will ever conclude the right thing to do is to kill someone (except in self-defense). My position is that people who kill are not acting rationally.

An Atheistic Ethic

This is a continuation of an atheistic ethic that I’m arguing for.

I think there is an element of self-interest in almost every act we do, which is the position of modified psychological egoism, and might be better called "predominant egoism." I view altruistic acts and self-interested acts on a continuum, with one side representing acts that are almost completely self-interested ones, and the other side representing those acts we would call altruistic but which nearly all contain some self-interest in them. Let me present my case.

To show this let me take some of the toughest scenarios, then in a later post I'll deal with some objections to what I’m saying.

1) How do you deal with the obvious counterevidence against psychological egoism provided by, say, the firefighters on 9/11. What does it mean to say that their actions, which apparently resulted in their risking their lives for others, were really selfish?

In the first place I'm not saying their actions were selfish. As I argued earlier, I made a distinction between selfish acts and rational self-interested acts. Selfish acts do not gain a person happiness in the long run.

These firefighters have been trained to do a job. Their reputation is on the line. They have accepted the challenge of seeing how many people they can save. They did not think they would die in the process. Besides, people do risky behavior all of the time, most of it for fun. People enjoy taking risks and accepting challenges, especially if they can get paid for it. They also love the mutual respect from other firefighters (and policemen) for being a part of an organization that saves lifes.

Of course, some of them may have been operating from the delusion that God will reward them in heaven. But if this life is all there is, and we will die one way or another, then why not be remembered for doing great deeds? For the egoist that might be the only way for your life to count. If however, someone shirks in the face of responsibility, and saves his life while letting others die, he is known as a coward from that day onward. Sometimes in such a situation as this, it's better to die and be remembered as a great person than to live with the social shame and loss of employment in the only job said person ever wanted to do.

2) The "Freedom Rider" who went south to work for civil rights at the potential -- and actual -- risk of his life to benefit people he did not know, and in so doing expanding their own political power and rights, lessening his own or those of his family and friends.

What must be understood is that human beings enjoy a challenge. They enjoy fighting a good fight and winning, like any contest. They also have a need to belong. So they join causes to belong. Life would be boring if they didn’t. Those who fought and won can say they accomplished something great in this life. Why was this considered a good fight? Because whenever the rights of some people can be denied in a democracy then the rights of all people are at risk. Many of them did so because they had friends who were black, so it was personal with them. Many of them did so because they couldn’t stomach their own country. They might’ve thought, “If this was my country, and I am a part-owner of its policies, then I object to what I am allowing to happen, since I value freedom for all. I don’t like who I am for allowing it.” To deny anyone rights is to deny everyone's rights to some degree. It's about the kind of country they wanted to live in, and they valued the rights of everyone, because everyone includes themselves and their kin.

Why should they care about anyone else? Largely because they care for themselves. How many times have you heard that in order to love others you must first love yourself? Once people do care for themselves, in the rational self-interested sense I've previously argued for, they will quite naturally love others.

3) The soldier who sees the war he is fighting is lost, but who continues to fight on and even go on a 'suicide mission' out of a sense of honor or duty.

Once a soldier is in an army he gives up his rights to his own life. At that point he’s already committed to the possibility he might die. He was either forced into the army (in other countries) or he volunteered. If he volunteered he didn’t volunteer to die, although some volunteers are not acting rationally in that they just may want to die. He volunteered for the challenge. Some of these volunteers saw no better option, given the fact that they needed structure in their life and couldn’t do well out in a free society. Some wanted the hope of an education. Some are raised in military families who highly prize their service in defense of their country, so they might not know anything different. Seeing how his family highly values military service, he will probably do so as well. As a soldier he is also trained to follow orders and it’s terribly difficult to disobey such a command, since his mission may help save other soldiers in the field, and since being a deserter brings shame upon him and his family as a punishable crime. No one knows for sure it’s a suicide mission, either. And no one knows for sure the war is lost, since a soldier on the field doesn’t have all of the information needed to make that judgment. He’s defending his homeland, his family and his friends, even if the war is in fact “lost.” And since we are all going to die anyway, what better way to die than to be a hero, since being remembered well is the only thing a man has to live on after he dies.

4) The soldier who falls on a grenade to save his fox hole buddies.

Once the grenade hits the dirt this soldier is dead anyway, one way or another. If he chooses to run away, his life will never be the same, even if he does get lucky to save his own skin, and that's not sure. The guilt will be unbearable if he lives. Like Sophia in the movie "Sophia's Choice," she died the day she chose to save one of her children while letting the Nazi take the other one away. So why not do what the soldier was trained to do and save others by falling on the grenade? In the process he will be remembered as a hero, and by saving others who will continue to fight he will help protect those who will remember him back home.

5) Why should we care for pets? Because they give us pleasure. It makes us feel loved. They make us laugh. To hurt them is not acting rational. It would betray a hatred for oneself, and that’s not acting out of rational self-interest.

An Atheistic Ethic

This is a continuation of a discussion about an atheistic ethic. I've already argued that any ethic must be based on who we are as human beings, and that Christians obey God because of self-interest. Then I argued that what we humans want above all else is to be happy. I also dealt with the book of Ecclesiastes which seems to claim we cannot find happiness without God. I'm arguing that rational self-interest can be a sound basis for an atheistic ethic.

I will not be arguing for selfishness as a basis for an atheistic ethic. My dictionary defines selfishness as being “concerned with your own interests, needs, and wishes while ignoring those of others.” It implies that a person is out for himself alone. It implies the unholy trinity: me, myself, and I. Rational self-interest is something different. A selfish person will lack things that make him happy. A selfish person will not gain the things in the list I mentioned earlier that make for happiness. Being short-sighted, he is only interested in instant gratification, not in the long-lasting benefits of being a good friend of others. A selfish person will usually reap what he sows. He will experience loneliness, anxiety, guilt, self-destructive tendencies, few trustworthy friends, depression, fear, paranoia, disappointment with life, possible jail time, and a short life. To the degree he is selfish he will be alone. He will be ostracized, and even banished from society. He will not work well with others and probably be fired for laziness, or for not getting along with co-workers. So he will probably not reap the financial rewards he wants to make him happy.

What I’m arguing for is different. It’s a rational self-interest that seeks the long lasting benefits of happiness. This means denying oneself instant gratification for those better, more beneficial, long lasting goods.

Next time I’ll argue that everything we do contains an element of self-interest to it.

If God Wanted Us to Believe...

aboveandbeyond said: If God is God, then couldn't he create a 4.5 billion year old planet in six days? I'll do it in six seconds. #=Geo-what, status: planet, age: 4.5 billion years old.
Time it took to create: six seconds.

Yes, and if God wants us to believe in him then he could've made his creation so haphazard that we couldn't even begin to explain the origin of the species. The separate species could be so far apart and distinct from each other that there would be no fitting the pieces together like scientists have done.

In fact, the creation of the law of predation among all creatures on earth is absolutely horrible. Something has to die for another animal to eat. With the existence of several species of vegetarians and the fact that human beings themselves could be vegetarians, I see no reason for creating meat eaters at all. In fact, I see no reason why God created animals at all, since they have no eternal purpose and there are no moral lessons that animals must learn. To see more of what God could've done see what would convince me Christianity is true.

Homosexuality Is An Indicator Of Lack Of Divine Participation In The Creation Of Scripture

Note: I was working on this in the 'drafts' and it got published by accident. I'll stop working on it now and consider it published.

My presumption about the bible is that if it is to be called divinely inspired, then there must be some quality of divinity about it. I presume that if there were a holy spirit, and it can inhabit and influence all people who believe, then that spirit would be able to provide Quality Assurance to the writings that make up the Bible. This Quality Assurance about the internal consistency of the content of the Bible would be an indicator of aspects of its divinity.

And now, at the risk of "Political Incorrectness" I present my presumptions about homosexuality. I presume that it is like my heterosexuality. I presume that they didn't have any more choice about their sexual preference than I did. I presume that since most people are heterosexual, homosexuality is a deviation from the norm.

With these presumptions I intend to show that the treatment of Homosexuality in the bible most likely does not have any divine aspects about it. The following are some important passages regarding homosexuality in the Bible.

* Leviticus 18:22 (New American Standard Bible)
22 You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.

* Leviticus 20:13 (New American Standard Bible)
13 If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.

* 1 Corinthians 6:9 (New American Standard Bible)
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,

In summary, it is an abomination, it is detestable and they shall be put to death, and they will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But research into human sexuality casts doubt on the 'Righteousness' of biblical principles regarding homosexuality. In the recent edition of Scientific American (June 2007) there is an article called "Going Beyond X and Y" by Sally Lehrman. Dr. Eric Vilain researches the phenomena of babies born with mixed sex organs. He has discovered new information that modifies traditional thinking about how developing babies sex is determined. He has discovered that it has genetic factors that are more complicated than previously thought. I am paraphrasing but he is researching the likelihood of competing genes that affect the organs, genitalia and brain development. He says that the gender effects in the brain happen before the organ effects. 1 in 4500 babies wind up with mixed sex organs. When this happens, the doctor makes a best guess on what the sex of the infant should be and performs surgery to facilitate it. Dr. Vilain has proposed that it be classified as DSD (Disorder of Sexual Development). In America, out of 300 million people, that comes out to be 66,666 people. It is a predictable rate. God is very consistent or he has nothing to do with it. Because of rushed gender assignment surgery to the infant, you will have cases where a woman is "trapped" in a mans body or vice versa.

Homosexuals shouldn't be considered an abomination, detestable or punishable by death and assignment to hell. Furthermore, we should be able to assume that some of that complex process will get mixed up to a lesser degree and result in a mans sexuality in a womans body and vice versa to include bi-sexuality.

Dr. Vilain recommends waiting on the sex assignment surgery, carrying out psychological counseling and classifying this as a clinical disorder. That seems pretty compassionate of him. He could just kill the baby in accordance with Leviticus if it weren't illegal by secular law, thank god [ ;-) ]

Does God do it on purpose or does it happen naturally? If he does it on purpose, then to what purpose? What value does it add? As a christian my justification that Homosexuality was an abomination was because logically, it would mean the end of the human race. But it doesn't happen enough to make this facet significant. As it stands, according to The Bible, it happens either naturally or divinely and then the subject should be killed or at least detested. If it happens naturally and God doesn't have anything to do with it, what is the principle by which Homosexuals are condemned? What is the principle in either case? Am I missing something? Where is the sense?

But homosexual behavior is exhibited in nature in other species. This means that it is not a specifically human trait. It spans species. This is the type of thing that is predicted by evolution. There is a museum exhibit in Norway that details the 1500 species that homosexual behavior has been observed in. I observed two camels doing something homosexual the last time I went to the zoo. One camel evidently was a cunning linguist. [ ;-) ]

I assert that the fact that there are biological determinants to human sexuality discredit the christian presumption that Homosexuality is a sin. It may be a disorder, but evil?
Is color blindness evil? Is dwarfism evil? Is a curved spine evil? Are they an abomination, detestable, punishable by death and assignment to hell?
No to all of the above. And neither is Homosexuality.

The attitude in the bible is simply an example of Bias against those that don't fit the standards for the group. It is human fear. Human Homophobia. Otherizing. It is obviously not very divine.

Note: Otherizing is
"(s)tereotyping…is part of the maintenance of social and symbolic order. It sets up a symbolic frontier between the ‘normal’ and the ‘deviant’, the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological’, the ‘acceptable’ and the ‘unacceptable’, what ‘belongs’ and what does not or is “Other”, between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, Us and Them. It facilitates the ‘binding’ or bonding together of all of Us who are ‘normal’ into one ‘imagined community’; and it sends into symbolic exile all of Them —“the Others’—who are in some way different--- ‘beyond the pale” (Hall, 1997, 258).

Since Alfred C. Kinsey published his seminal research, Research into Human Sexuality has suffered setbacks due to the influence of the religious right. "Kinsey's research polarized a segment of society. Many in the Christian Right found their religious and socially conservative views in conflict with Kinsey's methods and underlying principles. They saw his supporters as dissolute libertines and his work as morally corrupting. Even today, Kinsey's name can elicit partisan rancor." Many of Kinseys general conclusions have been verified by other research and are now considered valid by the scientific community. (Wikipedia, Alfred Kinsey)

Further Reading/References:

This paper discusses problems in Education regarding "Otherizing".

Hall, Stuart. ed.(1997). Representation : Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Open University.

Here is a link to a story of one families effort to force a son to be a girl after a circumcision tragedy. It didn't turn out too well. He didn't seem to be able to willfully change his sexuality.

Here is a link to more information on Homosexuality
Alfred C. Kinsey
Some other DC articles that discuss Homosexuality:
Was Jesus Left Handed?
Homosexuality Bible vs Nature
Homosexuality and the Christian

Is There a God? Go Ask Alice

David Koepsell wrote the following article in The Free Inquiry magazine:

A recent study conducted at Johns Hopkins sought to explain the neurological effects of psilocybin, the active ingredient in the Psilocybe genus of mushrooms. While millions of amateur researchers have been investigating the subjective effects of so-called magic mushrooms for decades, and they've been used in Native American ritual for perhaps thousands of years, the psychopharmacological studies conducted by the researchers were intended to explore the potential therapeutic use and effect of the drug. Such studies have been conducted before, including significant studies in the sixties and seventies regarding the use of another popular compound, MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, commonly known as ecstasy), in psychotherapy. Of course, these studies have typically been frowned upon in the context of the ongoing and largely fruitless "war on drugs"-which is why, perhaps, the latest results have been cast in the light of "spirituality."

The investigators of the magic mushrooms took pains to couch their findings in the language of spirituality, describing the effects as a "full mystical experience." Researchers also noted that a good majority of the subjects used in the study described feelings of well-being that lasted for months after they ingested the drug. About a quarter of the subjects, however, experienced depression, anxiety, and other negative effects. Nonetheless, the study offers interesting promise for potential therapeutic uses of psilocybin, or at least for considerable further study. Two things are striking about this study: the language used by researchers in describing the results and the rather odd reaction from some theologians.

Naturally, the notion that mystical experiences could be chemically induced threatens those believers who insist that direct experience of a deity is not simply a brain state. Linking supernatural or spiritual events to natural causes (rather than vice versa) undermines theology. This is perhaps why, in reaction to the results of the study, some theologians felt it necessary to alert people that magic mushrooms are not the ticket to a bona fide religious experience: "All this did was stimulate that part of the human personality that produced certain feeling states and altered states of consciousness," said theologian Dave Reed, a professor at the University of Toronto. "Those are no criteria for an authentic encounter with God" (CBC News, July 12, 2006).

Of course, we are left to ponder what would qualify as an "authentic" encounter with God, given that accounts of such encounters from saints and prophets are generally as trippy as those of your average stoner. Take, for example, the words of St. Teresa of Avila, who wrote in The Interior Castle that, during her mystical experiences, the soul "is utterly dead to the things of the world, and lives solely in God . . . I do not know whether in this state she has enough life left to breathe. It seems to me she has not; or at least that if she does breathe, she is unaware of it." What did she eat for lunch, do you suppose?

In fact, mystical experiences are not uncommon. The naturalist philosopher/psychologist William James described some common elements such experiences often share. He was also known to induce them chemically in experiments on himself. The common elements he noticed were: (1) ineffability: they involve emotive rather than intellectual components and are difficult to describe or understand; (2) noetic quality: they involve a transcendence of time and space; (3) transiency: they ebb and flow quickly and cannot be held onto for long; and finally (4) passivity: the experiencer is overcome, swept up in the state beyond control and beyond exertion of his or her will.

Neuroscience has actually shown a number of ways in which these experiences can be induced, including by electromagnetic fields and low-oxygen environments, in connection with which near-death experiences are also routinely noted. It is thus surprising that the scientists associated with the study felt compelled to back off any conclusions regarding the applicability of their study to a scientific understanding of the weight of the evidence for the existence of God based upon chemically induced mystical experiences: "We're just measuring what can be observed," said Roland Griffiths . . . who led the study. "We're not entering into 'Does God exist or not exist.' This work can't and won't go there" (CBC News, ibid.).

In fact, isn't one of the obvious conclusions of this and similar studies that mystical experiences are chemically or environmentally induced brain states and that no alleged encounter with God can be deemed any more or less authentic than ones brought about by hallucinogenic drugs or a lack of oxygen to the brain? A fair and honest path of further exploration, based upon this and other similar studies, would be to delve into the neurochemical basis for all mystical experiences, even so-called authentic ones, rather than to dismiss automatically, without such study, the potential that all experiences of this sort arise from brain states.

What seems likely at this stage, because of the potential of such studies to undermine traditional mystical theology and our nation's aversion to legitimizing therapeutic uses of drugs that are commonly abused, nothing further will come of this study, despite its interesting promise. In the meantime, we should feel comfortable with some preliminary confirmation of a thesis many of us hold: that mystical experiences do in fact occur, that they are completely naturalistically based, and that there is no basis to view those occurring in convents or seminaries as any more legitimate than those that occurred on the corner of Haight and Ashbury back in its heyday.

David Koepsell is the executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism and an assistant research professor at the University at

Blind Faith

Here is a free downloadable book called Blind Faith: Quest for the Truth About Christianity which can be found here. Lot's of good stuff! Enjoy.

My Deconversion from Magical Thinking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lee's Non-Atheistic Recommended Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What About Transitional Fossils and Biological Complexity?

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

25 Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Christian

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

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

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

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

Am I Afraid Of Hell?

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

NO!

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

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

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

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

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

I've previously dealt with this question here.

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

Paul Copan on Why God Would Send People to Hell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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