Guy P. Harrison is the author of the soon to be released book, 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God. He submitted the following essay to DC which was originally published in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 25, No. 1:
Where Are the Moral Believers?
Satan exists, say hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. But he is evil, so they reject him as a supernatural being worthy of worship. They do not pray to him for help in landing a new job or overcoming an illness, and they do not follow his instructions. Because of moral failings, this god of sorts is denied their love and obedience. But why do they only judge the devil? Why don’t believers scrutinize all gods in this way?
Pointing out examples of the Jewish/Christian god committing, commanding, or condoning slavery, violence, and sexism—as described in the Torah and Bible—is a favorite pastime for many atheists. Yes, it may be no better than a grown-up version of pulling the wings off of flies, but it is undeniably fun to watch a believer squirm trying to explain how slavery and stoning were somehow OK in “Bible times.” It is even more entertaining to watch smoke rise from the ears of the devout as they attempt to defend the “God of love” for his genocidal rampages.
Some atheists ridicule such exchanges, and they have a valid point. Arguing over a god’s moral character is a lot like debating the aerodynamic qualities of Santa’s sleigh. Still, there may be a real benefit to enlightening believers about the character of their gods. If pursued, it should be done only to challenge a believer’s loyalty to a god, however, not to make the case for nonexistence. After all, a god does not have to be nice in order to be real. Strangely, this pattern of belief coupled with morally based disobedience is virtually nonexistent when it comes to the popular gods. We just don’t see millions of believers in the Jewish/Christian/Islamic god, for example, shunning him solely for his moral crimes. There are no large organizations campaigning against religion from the moral high ground rather than the perspective of disbelief. There are few, if any, anti-god books written by theologians who still believe in a god. Rebellion need not be tied to nonbelief, so where are the righteous rebels who stand against gods who have done great evil? Where are the moral believers?
Fear of hell or some other divine punishment for refusing to follow a god does not seem to be an adequate explanation, not when one considers history’s long roll call of courageous heroes. Across cultures and across centuries, good people have suffered banishment, imprisonment, torture, and execution because they refused to bow down before evil human leaders. It seems likely that a significant number of believers would rebel in the same way, if they faced up to the serious faults and crimes attributed to their gods. Fear of torture and execution in the present (in reality) must be at least somewhat comparable to fear of a god’s wrath in some vague afterlife to come (in belief).
Most Christians are probably good people with a reasonable grasp of right and wrong. They know, for example, that it is wrong to kill children. (“At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon . . . there was a loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead” [Exodus 12:29, New International Version].) They also are likely to agree that it is wrong to punish children for the crimes of their fathers. (“He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation” [Exodus 34:7, NIV].) But they are loyal to a god who has done these things.
Why aren’t millions of believers saying, “Yes, I know my god is real because the universe is intelligently designed and I believe that the [Bible, Koran, or Torah] describes him accurately. However, based on the actions of this god. I cannot follow or worship him because I am a decent human being.”
I have long believed that religion will be educated out of humankind eventually. It may take many centuries, but it seems probable. After all, polls show that belief goes down as education goes up. And most of the extremely smart and educated people (such as elite scientists) already don’t believe in gods. But what if it never happens? What if educational levels do not continue to rise as they have over the last few thousand years? Or what if the cosmos is just too big, too complex, and too scary for most people to ever accept rational explanations and lingering mysteries? If so, eroding believers’ loyalty to their gods and encouraging greater respect for basic morality may be the way to go.
Militant atheists who are concerned with the proliferation of RMDs (Religions of Mass Destruction) may be missing an important point here. After all, it is not gods who inflict so much ignorance, hate, and violence upon the world. (Gods almost surely do not exist, remember?) The source of trouble, indeed, may be belief itself, but the direct cause of the many problems we are all burdened with is that so many people try to please gods by following their orders and their example. Consider the fact that millions of people believe in ghosts, but no one worships them in tax-free buildings under the guidance of trained professionals. Ghosts are just not respected in the way gods are. Therefore, the concept of ghosts is not pushing evolution out of classrooms or motivating people to strap bombs around their torsos. With ghosts, it’s mostly just a case of gullible people wasting a bit of space in their skulls with nonsense and causing relatively little harm to the world.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the gods lost their grip on humankind and fell to the status of mere ghosts, no longer able to command vast armies of believers? Even if millions still believed them to be real, it would be a vast improvement. Imagine if the gods were condemned to roam forever in fantasyland with no one willing to follow them. While this might not make for an atheist’s paradise, it would at least be a far better world, one where believers no longer work to please divisive and violent gods at the expense of all humanity.
I would like to propose another blog topic. How did God intend for our world to be? I think we can all agree that God did not WANT Adam and Eve to sin. So what would our world be like if they didn't, and presumably, this would be the state that god wanted the world to be in. Would we all be a bunch of naked, sinless, not knowing good and evil living in a wonderful garden happy go lucky skipping child-like clowns? Did god intend on Adam and Eve reproducing before the fall, or was it just going to be those two? What would life be like, right now in the year 2008 (some 6000 years later :)) if Adam and Eve had never sinned? I'm actually very curious to get some christian opinions on this.
In Richard Bauckham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, the author tries to show the power of testimony and why it is necessary for telling what happened when it comes to the unique events in the life of Jesus. So he uses Holocaust testimonies as examples. Here is page 497 in his book:
Bauckham writes:
The passage concerns perhaps the most unbelievably inhuman feature of the destruction of Jews in Auschwitz: the cremation of small children alive. I quote first another report of this before turning to Wiesel's account:
The other gas chambers were full of the adults and therefore the children were not gassed, but just burned alive. There were several thousand of them. When one of the SS sort of had pity upon the children, he would take a child and beat the head against a stone before putting it on the pile of fire and wood, so that the child lost consciousness. However, the regular way they did it was by just throwing the children onto the pile. They would put a sheet of wood there, then sprinkle the whole thing with petrol, then wood again, and petrol and wood, and petrol - then they placed the children there. Then the whole thing was lighted. [From L.L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies (Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 54-55].
Wiesel's reference to this way of killing children is in one of the most famous passages of Night. The young Wiesel and his father arrive in Auschwitz:
Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load -little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it - saw it with my own eyes ... those children in the flames. (Is it not surprising that I could not sleep after that? Sleep had fled from my eyes.) ...
I pinched my face. Was I still alive? Was I awake? I could not believe it.
How could it be possible for them to burn people, children, and for the world to keep silent? It was a nightmare ....
Isn't it strange that Bauckham uses these stories to make a point about testimonies of God's love in Jesus and utterly fails to see in them the horrible nature of God's impotence to help these children? What's with it, Christian?
These stories force Christians to do what theologian John Roth said when trying to justify God's purported ways with us: "No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children."
April 21, 2008, the headlines read:
Orthodox groups clash in Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
Christians fist fight at Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre,
Police breaks off clash at Church of Holy Sepulchre,
Priests exchange blows over religious rights,
And about 180 other headlines...[just visit google news and enter "church of the holy sepulchre"]
For stories about previous brawls at that "holy site" keep reading. There's also some interesting related news and opinion. (Paul Manata and Victor Reppert may want to take note; or better yet, J.P. Holding and James White; or J.P. Holding and Steve Hays)...
EARLIER FIGHT AT HOLY SITE
Six Christian denominations jealously guard their rights at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, so when one denomination moved a chair into a spot claimed by another, it was a declaration of war (a violation of the “status quo” law as enshrined in a 1757 Ottoman declaration). About eleven monks were taken to hospital after being hit by rocks, metal rods and chairs that they threw at each other.
Christian monks from rival denominations [Ethiopians and Egyptian Copts] have been warring for more than a century over the roof of the shrine which the Ethiopians call the “House of Sultan Solomon” because they believe the biblical King Solomon gave it as a gift to the Queen of Sheba. The Ethiopians lost control of the roof during an epidemic in the 19th century which enabled the Copts to take over. But in 1970, during a brief absence by Coptic priests from a rooftop chapel, the Ethiopian clerics returned and have been squatting there ever since. An Ethiopian monk huddles in the corner of the chapel day and night to guard the squatters’ claim. The Egyptian monk, who has been living with them on the roof since the 1970 takeover to assert the Copts’ rights, decided to move his chair out of the sun during a hot Jerusalem day. “They (the Ethiopians) teased him,” said Father Afrayim, an Egyptian Coptic monk at the next door Coptic monastery. “They poked him and brought some women who came behind him and pinched him,” he said. Each side accuses the other of throwing the first blow in the fist-fight and stone throwing that ensued. Police eventually broke up the brawl but by all accounts many of the protagonists were already wounded.
Reuters, July 29, 2002
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ANOTHER FIGHT AT HOLY SITE
Greek Orthodox and Catholic Franciscan priests got into a fist fight at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, Christianity’s holiest shrine, after arguing over whether a door in the basilica should be closed during a procession. Dozens of people, including several Israeli police officers, were slightly hurt in the brawl at the shrine, built over the spot where tradition says Jesus was crucified and buried. Four priests were detained, police spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby said. Custody of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is shared by several denominations that jealously guard territory and responsibilities under a fragile deal hammered out over the last centuries. Any perceived encroachment on one group’s turf can lead to vicious feuds, sometimes lasting hundreds of years.
Monday’s fight broke out during a procession of hundreds of Greek Orthodox worshippers... Church officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that at one point, the procession passed a Roman Catholic chapel, and priests from both sides started arguing over whether the door to the chapel should be open or closed. Club-wielding Israeli riot police broke up the fight…
In 2003, Israeli police threatened to limit the number of worshippers allowed to attend an Easter ceremony if the denominations did not agree on whom would lead the ceremony… But a year earlier, the Greek patriarch and Armenian clergyman designated to enter the tomb exchanged blows after a dispute over who would be first to exit the chamber.
CATHOLIC MARCHERS TURN ON GLASTONBURY PAGANS
Local pagans were pelted with salt and branded witches who “would burn in hell” during a procession organised by Youth 2000, a conservative Catholic lay group. The Magick Box, a pagan shop on the route of the march, was also singled out and attacked. Maya Pinder, the owner of the shop, said: “We’ve had to hear comments such as ‘burn the witches’, we’ve had salt thrown in our faces and at our shop, people were openly saying they were ‘cleansing Glastonbury of paganism.’ It was as if we had returned to the dark ages. This is hugely damaging to Glastonbury… it is hard enough to trade in Glastonbury as it is, if you were to take away the pagan element it would be a dead town.” The Somerset town is known for having a large population of resident and visiting pagans.
The archdruid of Glastonbury, Dreow Bennett, said: “To call the behavior of some of their members medieval would be an understatement. I personally witnessed the owner of the Magick Box being confronted by one of their associates and being referred to as a bloody bitch and being told ‘you will burn in hell.’”
Father Kevin Knox-Lecky of St Mary’s church said that after meeting representatives of the pagan community he had decided not to invite Youth 2000 to the town again. He said: “A family appeared who we don’t know, who were very destructive not only in the town and to the pagan community, but were also swearing at our parishioners as well.” He said the majority of Catholics taking part in the procession had been well-behaved and respectful of the pagans. The retreat was organised last week to mark the 467th anniversary of the beheading of the last abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, Richard Whiting, and fellow martyrs. Youth 2000 describes itself as “an independent, international initiative that helps young adults aged 16-35 plug back into God at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church.” It was set up 10 years ago by a disenchanted Catholic barrister who wanted a return to the traditional teachings of the church for young people.
Charlie Conner, the managing director of Youth 2000, said: “There were several incidents that happened that same weekend that were linked to people who had come to Glastonbury for the retreat. This was in direct contravention of the general spirit of Youth 2000 and its express instructions. The young man who was fined was not in fact registered on the retreat, although he did attempt to attend it. Youth 2000 does not condone or encourage this kind of behaviour from anyone. We fully agree that differences on matters of faith cannot and should not be resolved by any kind of harassment.”
A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police confirmed a youth had been arrested at Magick Box on suspicion of causing harassment, alarm or distress. Two women were also given cautions and warned about their future conduct.
Thair Shaikh, “Catholic marchers turn on Glastonbury pagans,” The Guardian, UK, Nov. 4, 2006 www.guardian.co.uk
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MARK TWAIN’S EXPERIMENT
Consider my experiment. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately. Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk [Muslim] from Constantinople; a Greek Orthodox Christian from Crete [Greece]; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahmin [Hindu priest] from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.
Man is the only animal that has religion, even the True Religion--several of them.
Mark Twain, “Man’s Place in the Animal World,” 1896
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A VERSION OF MARK TWAIN’S EXPERIMENT
In the middle of the 20th century in the eastern European country of Rumania (that was communist at the time), anyone whom the government considered “anti-communist” was imprisoned. In one case ministers of different religions were imprisoned together in the same close quarters:
“In the hour which the priests’ room had set aside for prayer, Catholics collected in one corner, the Orthodox occupied another, the Unitarians a third. The Jehovah’s Witnesses had a nest on the upper bunks; the Calvinists assembled down below. Twice a day, our various services were held: but among all these ancient worshippers I could scarcely find two men of different sects to say one ‘Our Father’ together. Far from fostering mutual understanding, our common plight made for conflict. Catholics could not forgive the Orthodox hierarchy for collaborating with Communism. Christians of minority beliefs disagreed about ‘rights.’ Disputes arose over every point of doctrine. And while discussion was normally conducted with genteel malice, as learnt in seminaries on wet Sunday afternoons, sometimes tempers flared.” [Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, In God’s Underground (London : W. H. Allen, 1968), p.218, 232)]
Their “quarrels...came to a halt” only after loudspeakers were put in their cells that blared communist slogans day and night, and they were forced to attend lectures advocating communism. That was when the priests and ministers “learned that all our denominations could be reduced to two: the first is hatred, which makes ritual and dogma a pretext for attacking others; the second is love, in which men of all kinds realize their oneness and brotherhood before God.” But if the communists had not added those blaring speakers and forced them to attend lectures, would the pastors and priests have all joined together against their common enemy and “learned” how to avoid “disputing over every point of doctrine?”
E.T.B.
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“EQUUSTENTIALISM” BY EMO PHILIPS
(Excerpts from his 1985 comedy CD for Epic Records, E=MO2)
Emo: I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said “Stop! don’t do it!”
Jumper: “Why shouldn’t I?” he said.
Emo: “Well, there’s so much to live for!”
Jumper: “Like what?”
Emo: “Well...are you religious or an atheist?”
Jumper: “Religious.”
Emo: “Me too! Are you a Christian, Jew, or something else?”
Jumper: “A Christian.”
Emo: “Me too! Protestant or Catholic?”
Jumper: “Protestant.”
Emo: “Me too! What franchise?”
Jumper: “Baptist.”
Emo: “Wow! Me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
Jumper: “Northern Baptist.”
Emo: “Me too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
Emo: “Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Eastern Region?”
Jumper: “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region.”
Emo: “Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?”
Jumper: He said, “Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.”
Emo: And I said, “Die, heretic!” And pushed him off the bridge.
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But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!
Denis Diderot (1713-1784), cited in Against the Faith by Jim Herrick
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Men have gone to war and cut each other’s throat because they could not agree as to what was to become of them after their throats were cut.
Walter Parker Stacy (1884-1951)
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There’s a tendency [in religion] to declare that there is more backsliding around than the national toboggan championships, that heresy must be torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye and tongue, that it’s time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered very efficient for this purpose.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
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Religious tolerance has developed more as a consequence of the impotence of religions to impose their dogmas on each other than as a consequence of spiritual humility.
Sidney Hook, The Partisan Review, March, 1950
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The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they’ve realized they can’t get away with it.
W. H. Auden, in Alan Arisen, ed., The Table-Talk of W. H. Auden (1990), quoted from Jonathon Green, The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations
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EVERYONE’S A SKEPTIC
(ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE’S RELIGION)
Millions of Hindus pray over statues of Shiva’s penis. Do you think there’s an invisible Shiva who wants his penis prayed over--or are you a skeptic?
Mormons say that Jesus came to America after his resurrection. Do you agree--or are you a doubter?
Florida’s Santeria worshipers sacrifice dogs, goats, chickens, etc., and toss their bodies into waterways. Do you think Santeria gods want animals killed--or are you skeptical?
Muslim suicide bombers who blow themselves up in Israel are taught that “martyrs” go instantly to a paradise full of lovely female houri nymphs. Do you think the dead bombers are in heaven with houris--or are you a doubter?
Unification Church members think Jesus visited Master Moon and told him to convert all people as “Moonies.” Do you believe this sacred tenet of the Unification Church?
Jehovah’s Witnesses say that, any day now, Satan will come out of the earth with an army of demons, and Jesus will come out of the sky with an army of angels, and the Battle of Armageddon will kill everyone on earth except Jehovah’s Witnesses. Do you believe this solemn teaching of their church?
Aztecs skinned maidens and cut out human hearts for a feathered serpent god. What’s your stand on invisible feathered serpents? Aha!--just as I suspected, you don’t believe.
Catholics are taught that the communion wafer and wine magically become the actual body and blood of Jesus during chants and bell-ringing. Do you believe in the “real presence”--or are you a disbeliever?
Faith-healer Ernest Angley says he has the power, described in the Bible, to “discern spirits,” which enables him to see demons inside sick people, and see angels hovering at his revivals. Do you believe this religious assertion?
The Bible says people who work on the Sabbath (Saturday) must be killed: “Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 31:15). Should we execute such people--or do you doubt this scripture?
At a golden temple in West Virginia, saffron-robed worshipers think they’ll become one with Lord Krishna if they chant “Hare Krishna” enough. Do you agree--or do you doubt it?
Members of the “Heaven’s Gate” commune said they could “shed their containers” (their bodies) and be transported to a UFO behind the Hale-Bopp Comet. Do you think they’re now on that UFO--or are you a skeptic?
During the witch hunts, inquisitor priests tortured thousands of women into confessing that they blighted crops, had sex with Satan, etc. then burned them for it. Do you think the church was right to enforce the Bible’s command, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18)--or do you doubt this scripture?
Members of Spiritualist churches say they talk with the dead during worship services. Do you think they actually communicate with spirits of deceased people?
Millions of American Pentecostals spout “the unknown tongue,” a spontaneous outpouring of sounds. They say it is the Holy Ghost, the third god of the Trinity, speaking through them. Do you believe this sacred tenet of many Americans?
Scientologists say each human has a soul which is a “Thetan” that came from another planet. Do you believe their doctrine--or doubt it?
Ancient Greeks thought a multitude of gods lived on Mt. Olympus--and some of today’s New Agers think invisible Lemurians live inside Mt. Shasta. What’s your position on mountain gods--belief or disbelief?
In the mountains of West Virginia, some people obey Christ’s farewell command that true believers “shall take up serpents” (Mark 16:18). They pick up rattlers at church services. Do you believe this scripture, or not?
India’s Thugs thought the many-armed goddess Kali wanted them to strangle human sacrifices. Do you think there’s an invisible goddess who wants people strangled--or are you a disbeliever?
Tibet’s Buddhists say that when an old Lama dies, his spirit enters a baby boy being born somewhere. So they remain leaderless for a dozen years or more, then they find a pubescent boy who seems to have knowledge of the old Lama’s private life, and they anoint the boy as the new Lama (actually the old Lama in a new body). Do you think that dying Lamas fly into new babies, or not?
In China in the 1850s, a Christian convert said God appeared to him, told him he was Jesus’s younger brother, and commanded him to “destroy demons.” He raised an army of believers who waged the “Taiping Rebellion” that killed 20 million people. Do you think he was Christ’s brother--or do you doubt it?
James A. Haught, “Everyone’s a Skeptic--About Other Religions” [Originally delivered as a talk to Campus Freethought Alliance, Marshall University, Huntington, WV, July 12, 1998] http://www.infidels.org/secular_web/feature/1998/skeptic.html
Warning! Read this first! What you are about to see is not an internet prank or a hoax, but is very, very real and VERY, VERY disturbing! Prepare yourself!
In 34 years of life, I don't know that I've seen anything that actually outclasses this in terms of producing horribly unsettling feelings. Worse than blood, guts, or violence from a Hollywood horror flick, and worse than anything that's been shown as an alien virus from outer space invading a human body is Dede's (a.k.a. "Tree man's") condition. This poor man suffers from the typical HPV virus that so many of us get and have without even knowing it. But unlike our bodies, Dede’s body doesn’t have the genetic requirements to fight it off. The result is his freakish appearance as the virus hijacks his cells.
This guy was an Indonesian fisherman whose wife left him because of this condition. He lost his job and even sold himself as a circus freak for a while, but the ridicule became too much. And that's not all; the guy can't work, bathe, take care of his teenage daughters, or do anything without the support and assistance of his family.
He's been begging for help – any help – and when the doctors in his homeland could do nothing, he was out of luck. Then, finally, help came in the form of a skin doctor from the U.S. who volunteered to help him. But still, there are no guarantees. He will never have a normal body, even with the help of modern science, though he might be able to use his hands again.
My question is, what can those who believe in a divine Creator possibly say to this? What was God thinking when he created this man? Where was Jesus and his grace? What would this man have done had he been born in a time before modern medicine? How could he have had any quality of life at all, much less a prognosis for improvement?
It's seeing things like this that never fails to reaffirm my atheist convictions. If seeing children dying from cancer is not enough, if seeing gross bone deformities and massive, out-of-control tumors isn’t enough, just getting a gander at this poor guy is a one-way-ticket to heathen-ville U.S.A. Nope, it's safe to say that no compassionate deity would have allowed such a terrible thing. Our bodies would not be so poorly designed that cells go crazy like this had we been created by a heavenly tailor.
But I wonder what kind of quibbling our Christian readers will offer us when they see this? What excuses for the Almighty will they give us for this genetic monstrosity? And the really sad part is, Christians believe that if this man chose to kill himself to get out of a life of misery and ridicule, he would go straight to hell, having his own blood on his hands. So he’d suffer not only in this life, but in the one to come. I really am glad I'm an atheist!
ScienceDaily.com A team of scientists has unraveled how the brain actually unconsciously prepares our decisions. Even several seconds before we consciously make a decision its outcome can be predicted from unconscious activity in the brain. (Thanks to Scott.)
So what does this mean for passages such as Matthew 5:21? "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
In light of this research, that seems extreme. How is one accountable for "Flash" Anger? How does one prevent "Flash" Anger? If a large percentage of your action or decision is prepared in the "background" how much of that are we in control of? I'll stipulate that we have the final choice, but how we feel about it is quite another thing. The brain is like a modular unit. Its made up of modular circuitry that have processes that run in background of which we are not aware. Any poor performance in any one of those circuits could cause us to do something or feel someway we wouldn't normally. For example lack of sleep and the resultant crabbiness that accompanies it. It seems extreme to put our fates in the hands of a three pound meatball that is so easily influenced to operate outside of "specifications"
Excerpts from the article.
This unprecedented prediction of a free decision was made possible by sophisticated computer programs that were trained to recognize typical brain activity patterns preceding each of the two choices. Micropatterns of activity in the frontopolar cortex were predictive of the choices even before participants knew which option they were going to choose. The decision could not be predicted perfectly, but prediction was clearly above chance. This suggests that the decision is unconsciously prepared ahead of time but the final decision might still be reversible.
More than 20 years ago the American brain scientist Benjamin Libet found a brain signal, the so-called "readiness-potential" that occurred a fraction of a second before a conscious decision. Libet’s experiments were highly controversial and sparked a huge debate. Many scientists argued that if our decisions are prepared unconsciously by the brain, then our feeling of "free will" must be an illusion. In this view, it is the brain that makes the decision, not a person’s conscious mind. Libet’s experiments were particularly controversial because he found only a brief time delay between brain activity and the conscious decision.
In contrast, Haynes and colleagues now show that brain activity predicts -- even up to 7 seconds ahead of time -- how a person is going to decide. But they also warn that the study does not finally rule out free will: "Our study shows that decisions are unconsciously prepared much longer ahead than previously thought. But we do not know yet where the final decision is made. We need to investigate whether a decision prepared by these brain areas can still be reversed."
When I first started this blog in January '06 I wanted to choose a title that best described what I intended to accomplish that would also grab people's attention, so I chose the present title, Debunking Christianity. It has done it's work well. When you see it listed on another blog or website it grabs your attention. It has increased our traffic.
This title also best describes my goals. My goals are negative ones. I do not intend to defend atheism, per se, even though I am an atheist, but to argue against evangelical Christianity, which is the most obnoxious type of that faith held by the majority who are so cocksure of their views. I'm merely claiming that their type of Christianiy is a delusion, something every non-Christian and liberal Christian can agree with me about. This is my niche, and I hope I'm doing this well. To those who disagree with these goals I respond that by having narrow goals of this type I can better achieve them. Larger goals are harder to achieve, because the larger the claim is the harder it is to defend. My goals allow me to focus on one thing and to do it well. My primary goal is to knock conservative Christians off of center...to make them question their beliefs. Where they end up after this is not my immediate concern. There are other sites and other books that can take up where I leave off. But I'm doing the hard work, not that debunking evangelical Christianity itself is difficult, but that getting Christians to acknowledge that their faith is delusionary is indeed difficult. And I've been willing to take the barbs thrown my way (not with pleasure) for this purpose.
Then I began inviting people on DC who shared these same goals, and we have developed quite a nice list of contributors, beginning with exbeliever. Some contributors merely wanted to post their deconversion stories, while others have come and gone for various reasons, and I thank them all for their contributions.
But the title of this blog also leads to some confusions. One confusion is that it sounds offensive. It sounds as if we are hostile to Christian people themselves. It sounds like a personal attack. But we're not at all hostile to Christian people, unless provoked, and I have been provoked quite a bit simply because this blog exists. We try our best to be cordial and polite, although this is difficult to do in the midst of these type of debates, especially when dealing with a belief system we think is akin to Holocaust deniers and Flat Earth Society members. It's hard not to ridicule what we think has no evidence for it, but we try really hard not to so.
The title may also lead Christians to think we are ignorant, since skeptics have tried to debunk Christianity for millenia to no avail. Some Christians have shown up here, read one post, and blasted us without seeing the depth of our arguments. They in turn soon realize that we do know what we're talking about. No one can say all that he knows in one post. So because we leave out something, a Christian might retort with a Bible passage as if we've never considered that before. It doesn't take long for that Christian to see we have considered it and rejected something about it.
The title also sounds as if we are hostile toward the Christian faith, so it provokes hostility in return. Well, in some real sense we are a bit hostile to Christianity. We think it causes harm in many ways, yes. But even though this is true in varying degrees, we try to dispassionately argue against it. We are testing our arguments against what Christians can throw at us, and we have learned a few things in our debates. I personally love to learn from others no matter what they believe, and I do. No one has a corner on the truth. We admit this. If we are wrong show us, that's all we ask, although we no more think we are wrong then others who disagree.
As former insiders to the Christian faith we reject it with the same confidence that Christians reject the faiths of all other religions, even other branches of Christianity. The rejection is the easy part. We all do it. My claim is that agnosticism is the default position, which merely claims "I don't know". Anyone moving off the default position has the burden of proof, for in doing so that person is making a positive knowledge claim. When I argue for atheism I too am making a positive knowledge claim that must bear its own burden of proof. But I also claim moving from agnosticism to atheism is a very small step when compared to moving up the ladder to a full blown evangelical Baptist Christianity (as but one denomination among many), past pantheism, panentheism, deism, theism, Christianity, and evangelical Christianity itself.
Repeatedly when discussing the posts on this blog, the last refuge of the theist is that without a God, there can be no objective morals. If all we are is bags of chemicals or, in my favorite Star Trek quote, "Ugly, ugly bags of mostly water," then what is the source of our morality? How can we be objective when we are accusing the fictive God of immorality?
Jim Holman, not to be confused with Joe Holman, asks at one point:
It seems to me that the concept of morality depends on all sorts of metaphysical concepts that would have no place in a strictly scientific worldview. These include concepts such as a "person" who has "free will" to do things both "good" and "evil." It depends on the idea that actions can be "right" or "wrong."
But in a scientific worldview, where everything is ultimately reduced to physical components, electrical and chemical interactions, and so on, how would any of these metaphysical concepts have a place?
To me the key answer is in checking what our premises are. Concepts exist in brains. They don't exist anywhere else. So any explanation of metaphysical concepts has to understand that they exist in brains and manifest themselves in the world as communication from one brain to other brains.
When I tell you I have a car, you know what I mean. This is true even though the myriad varieties of car make it very unlikely that the car you are imagining as "car" when I talk to you about my car is actually what my car is. When we walk outside to get in my car, you then change your concept of "my car" to fit the data that looking at my greenish, dusty Mazda 3 hatchback impresses on your brain. If you are blind, you don't make that transition until you get in the car.
Once we start driving I then have a plethora of driving choices I can make. The rules regarding driving are sometimes quite detailed and sometimes quite vague, but they are generally agreed upon within one locality and violations of the local rules regarding driving are frequently commented on by other drivers and occasionally result in punishment ranging from citation to jailing and sometimes to execution.
The rules regarding driving are indeed and in every way objective. They are man-made and they don't relate to anything of any cosmic significance. I drive within a lane that is painted on the road not because it is made of Plexiglas that will destroy my car if I run into it, but because that lane is objectively painted there so it can be my space on the road and other drivers agree to accept it as if it is real. However, I am a fool if I regard the lanes as always real. If one night, on an open road, I see a person stumbling across the street and fail to swerve out of his way because I was obeying the objective facts of the lanes on the road, I am not driving well. In fact I am criminally culpable.
We allow several groups of drivers and other road users to break the rules when they are following instructions or responding to other crises, and we rarely see those who enforce the laws of the road being punished for violations that they punish others for. Yet this does nothing to make the rules of the road any less objective. Just because their enforcement is subjective it does not follow that the rules are.
Therefore, cars exist, traffic rules are objective, and they are all man-made and work not because of some universal proper way they must function but because there are a limited number of ways to utilize the variables that come with driving. We obey the traffic laws and regard things like intersections and lanes as "real" because failing to do so is harmful to us and harmful to others. Intersections and lanes exist objectively, yet they are totally man-made.
In just the same way, people exist, morals are objective, and they are all man-made and work not because of some universal directive but because there are a limited number of ways to make a successful society. We obey the social customs, folkways and moral codes of our society because failing to do so is harmful to us and harmful to others. This doesn't require natural selection. It only requires a group of like beings who view each other as possibly helpful.
Now the objection I imagine that will come from a theist is that traffic laws are simply a subspecies of morality and that Yahweh not only gave us universal objective morals and instructions on what fabrics can and cannot be mixed, but he also planned out the objective rules of traffic laws before the foundations of the earth had been laid.
Yet I think this fails too, because of the variation of rules throughout the world and according to local custom. Traffic laws are in no way universal, even though they are objective, and the only ones that are somewhat universal are those that safeguard people from violence deliberately inflicted with a vehicle, and this again has obviously positive benefits for any society that chooses to enshrine it in law.
Brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens debate the Iraq War and religion at an event organized by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies with the support of the Center for Inquiry of Michigan, and the Interfaith Dialogue Association. There are fourteen parts; just keep looking for the next one. On Part 5 the debate turns to religion.
To keep you up to date on the debate between Arminian Reppert and Calvinist Paul Manata which I previously reported about here, Reppert throws a knockout blow, which Manata doesn't realize because he's numbed by his faith. So all he can do is attempt a feeble reply. When will Calvinists like Manata ever understand how morally bankrupt their theology is and that it creates atheists?
(Revised: added a poll at the end just for fun) Since most people in the world (some of them Christians) don't believe in Adam and Eve based on the conclusions resulting from scientific disciplines such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology from now on I will disqualify it as a datum in any discussion I have on this site. That means that I will no longer accept the historicity of Adam and Eve as a premise supporting any conclusions, I will dismiss it out of hand and I encourage this viewpoint from others.
In my view, to entertain or even to discuss the historicity of Adam and Eve is irrelevant. They have already been shown to be infinitesimally unlikely by fields such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology. In my view it is a sensible position to commit to the view point that Adam and Eve are folklore until the introduction of new information warrants reconsideration. In my view to recognize the possibility of the existence of Adam and Eve as a premise in a discussion is to give it the appearance that it is a real consideration and worthy of discussion. I say that it is no more worthy of discussion than a flat earth or the existence of Leprechauns.
Logically, using the same criteria to support the existence of Adam and Eve, one could argue for the existence of Leprechauns. To concede that the existence of Adam and Eve is a possibility is to prevent the discussion from going forward toward a resolution because the insistence of the opponent to disregard the conclusion of the disciplines of Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology is counter to the most widely held viewpoint in the world and is irrational in the face of sound reasoning. If another Christian doesn't believe it why should I give it the benefit of doubt? Why should I allow it as a premise in any discussion?
Now an apologist may accuse me of appealing to authority and the bandwagon fallacy. However, those are labels for a fallacious reasoning scheme. To apply that label to my process of reasoning in this case necessitates showing that my presumption about the validity of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines is flawed and/or that the viewpoint of the majority is based on the underlying fallacy of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines. It necessitates discrediting the conclusions of those disciplines. That is an uphill battle if there ever was one. In both cases I am insulated from the charge of fallacy.
In my view, the persistence of groundless beliefs such as Adam and Eve is due to the tolerance of them in discussion by those that know they are groundless. We can still tolerate other viewpoints until those viewpoints begin to intrude or become harmful in the practical and pragmatic business of day to day life. Discussants need to make the same commitment to discourage and challenge the use of inaccurate information in their personal lives that they do in other areas of their lives.
Now how does this relate to Us and God? How do we know that God has a mind? How do I know that you have a mind? How do I know that I am not a brain in a vat? As interesting and as fun as all these questions are to think about I want to look at it more pragmatically.
That's cool. I know what I mean, but do you? What does that mean? It depends on context doesn't it? This is the problem of other minds. I don't know if you've understood what I mean. I would know if you've understood what I mean if I could put the thoughts in your head exactly the way they should be but I can't. I have to tell you.
So now I'm planning a project and I have to describe to these people what the specifications are going to be. I am going to try to use the principle of clarity and minimize as much uncertainty as I can. I use email but someone always misunderstands what I mean. They take their misunderstanding of what I mean and shoot off an email to some other people pretty soon, the project is off track. I draw a picture, scan it, and send it in the next email. This works better but there is always some information missing or some information that will get interpreted in a way that I didn't expect. It would be so much better if they could read my mind. It would be so much better if I could just download the electrochemical state in my head and pass it on to them to upload. But the problem is that they would still be missing information unless I passed onto them the whole configuration of my brain, because they don't have my memories or resultant heuristic algorithms that I have acquired over time.
The truth is, it is a 'miracle' if this project turns out as planned and on schedule and within budget because people can't read minds and, regardless of their best efforts, can only understand what they have a foundational knowledge about.
Since this is the case and is a source of my frustration, either I am the only one this happens to, or it is a symptom of human cognition.
Since this is the case, it is silly for me to expect that generating text is going to keep this project on track. It is silly for me to use terms and examples that my associates don't have a foundational knowledge of. It would be better if I could just impart this knowledge into them with no chance of mistake or misinterpretation.
The only way I could do that is to be God. But we know that Gods don't work that way. But I bet they would if they were real.
Looks to me this choice of his is a forced one, as William James wrote about. It seems to be an agonizing one for him. Agnosticism isn't an option for him. Okay. But there are two other options for him. I want to offer them up here.
One option is Christian atheism, or secular Christianity. This theological view was the one that hit the cover of Time magazine in the ‘60’s. It stems from things Nietzsche said that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about during WWII in the face of Hitler, which in turn was developed into a theology by Gabriel Vahanian, Paul van Buren, William Hamilton and Thomas J. J. Altizer. You can Google these theologians to read more. Today Don Cupitt in his book Taking Leave of God is a modern defender of this view.
The second option is to protest the lack of evidence and the lack of a caring God by proclaiming yourself an atheist, even though you aren’t sure he doesn’t exist. Theologian John Roth has developed a “Theodicy of Protest” to deal with the problem of evil which can be seen in a chapter for the book edited by Stephen T. Davis, called Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy (John Knox Press, 1981). Roth protests the evil in the world by attempting to shame God into doing what is right. Likewise, Kirby can protest the lack of evidence and the lack of a caring God by proclaiming himself an atheist. I do that. Why not?
You know it’s a crazy world if a sci-fi hero like Captain Kirk can weigh in on real-life philosophical issues and be right. Well, it must be a crazy world then because we have at least one such example. Get your trekkie shoes on as we gaze into the vault of 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sybok are on the surface of a distant world called Nimbus III beyond “The Great Barrier,” where the ambitious Vulcan half-brother of Spock named Sybok has forcefully led them on a quest to find ultimate universal truth and meaning—a.k.a. the search for Eden and God. Moments after their arrival, they are met by a Father Time-ish being who, incidentally, couldn’t have looked more like Caucasian humanity’s version of God if all the artists in the world tried to get him to…but I digress.
This sagely-looking, incorporeal being of obviously great presence and power learns of the starship that brought them to his world. He informs them that he has been imprisoned in this distant world for an eternity, unable to reach the rest of the galaxy, and that the Enterprise would be his means of travel beyond it. But the red flag of skepticism had already been raised in the mind of Kirk, who boldly asked: “What does God need with a starship?”
Now, the situation becomes especially tense. McCoy says, “Jim, what are you doing?” Kirk says, “I'm asking a question.” The so-called “God” says, “Who is this creature?” Kirk asks, “Who am I? Don't you know? Aren't you God?” Comically, Sybok remarks, “He has his doubts.” “God” asks, “You doubt me?” Kirk says, “I seek proof.” McCoy says, “Jim! You don't ask the Almighty for his ID!” “God” tells Kirk, “Then here is the proof you seek.” At this point, Kirk is struck by a bolt of energy and knocked to the ground.
Despite the brutal nature of this “God” emerging in such a terrifying fashion, the planted seeds of doubt begin to grow into what would be considered by any god a tree of heresy. Kirk asks, “Why is God angry?” Even Sybok, the kooky believer of the bunch, is now compelled to ask, “Why? Why have you done this to my friend?” Coldly and bluntly, “God” says, “He doubts me.” But that evil, heretical Kirk had already spread the disease of disbelief. Spock reminds “God,” “You have not answered his question. What does God need with a starship?” So “God” hits Spock with lightning as well, and then it addresses McCoy: “Do you doubt me?” And at this point, even emotional, sentimental, non-reasoning McCoy is forced to go with his mind: “I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure.”
Now this perceived “God” and the God of the Bible should do lunch sometime. They have lots in common, don’t they? In any other context, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart judging by their actions and attitudes. For instance, they both believe they are the final authority and should be obeyed without question. They both prefer human instrumentality to get their will done (even though they shouldn’t), they both use torture to enforce their demands, and they both hate the living hell out of skeptics! As with just about every god there ever was, doubt is the most damnable of all offenses. Make no mistake about it—asking the Alpha-and-Omega probing questions will get your ass struck down! This tendency describes the God of the Bible to a “T”.
But that’s not what I’m hitting at here. I’m honing in on the question asked by Kirk: “What does God need with a starship?” The question is priceless in that no matter what theistic concept is under investigation, it is the mere asking of the “need” question that leads to the unraveling of theism. Ask a lot of questions and you’ll be called an annoying kid, ask a few more questions and you’ll be called a UFOologist or a new-ager, but ask too many questions and you’ll end up an atheist! You have been warned! But again, I digress.
The gods have always hated questions as badly as they hate the questioners. To question God is to totally rob him of all power whatsoever because when you begin to question him, you naturally undercut his authority as you take on the role of one asking a subservient to give an account of himself to a superior. And when God’s authority is undercut, not only is his power rendered inert, his afflicting guilt can’t get to you either, nor can his tug at your pocketbook. So the logic of inquiry and God just don’t line up, much like Air Traffic Control scoping for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
Now God doesn’t “need” anything. He can’t need anything, being that he’s omnipotent as the fully self-sufficient prime mover and sustainer of the cosmos. And Christians will fully agree. God doesn’t need to have children sacrificed to him by having babies thrown to the hungry crocs of the Nile. God doesn’t need to have the still-beating heart ripped out of a young Aztec man’s chest and held up to the sun as a means to preserve or sustain the universe and “feed” God. God doesn’t need to be clothed or bathed or groomed. He doesn’t need a W-2 booklet for tax time, he doesn’t need Febreaze air freshener, he doesn’t need patio furniture, and he doesn’t need Limewire. He just doesn’t.
But Christians don’t go far enough. It’s not enough to look down on the pagan gods and goddesses of old and talk up how inferior they are for having typically carnal (and often conjugal) needs. They need to look down on their own God as well. Christians gloat in the supposed superiority of their own deity, but their gloating is as short-lived as an Oprah trim-down. The God of Christianity is, in fact, guilty of the very same absurdity of having unjustifiable needs as any pagan god ever was. To be forthrightly logical about it, if God exists, he can’t want anything at all – nothing – because to want is to have a lack of something, which is to have a need. And as we have already seen, a God cannot “have needs,” like I do at the moment (Ohhh Belindaaaaa? Where are you, hun? I’m a comin’ for ya!) Well, for yet a third time, I digress!
What application does this have for the Christian? It means that God doesn’t need a starship for the same reason that he doesn’t need a temple, a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a shrine. And God doesn’t need worshippers, and therefore, a universe to house them. It means that even if an omnimax deity like the God of the scriptures existed, that being would have no desire to create us or anything else at all. Nope, God doesn’t need solar systems or planetary bodies, and he doesn’t need fleshly flattery in the form of blubbering blood-bags to tell him he’s so, so, so, so, so, sooooo worthy. He would know that already and wouldn’t have a complex about it, causing him to fixate on himself so much with the neurotic narcissism of a throat-slashing serial killer.
And God wouldn’t need or want a son. The idea of a god having a son doesn’t even make sense on the face of it. That is, it makes about as much sense as a god who ejaculates to make a son (if you can imagine that?!) Nope, God wouldn’t have a son and he certainly wouldn’t have a virgin-born son, and he wouldn’t have his son brutally killed and then raised to life again for the purpose of setting up a death-glorifying, cannibalistic cult where beings who are infinitely less powerful than he sit around and eat the flesh of his dead/resurrected little boy, and then proceed to clamor on about how junior’s the greatest thing since sliced bread (well, actually before sliced bread!)
Now God may not need anything, but it is definitely an understandable mistake for Christians to think that he wants things. Talking about a God creating a people to be tokens of his glory or sending disciples on a mission to do “his will” is understandable. I mean, we collect keepsakes and send people to the store for us. We build houses and make plans, and so it should come as no surprise when the gods we create in our image “do things” just as we do. That’s why the gods get angry just like we do and command to have the heads of their enemies placed on sticks to face the sky until the evening so that their fierce anger will be turned away (Numbers 25:4).
But that’s another problem; a god can’t be angry anymore than a god can need or want a thing, because getting angry can only happen when a being is limited in power and unable to rectify a situation or is put in an edgy predicament of some sort. But you can’t put the great “I Am” in a predicament, and so to say that he can get angry (or become jealous, or regretful, or embarrassed, or amused) makes no clear sense. We’re dealing with the classic anthropomorphic problem here—you can’t take the emotions found in limited beings and expect them to fit beings who transcend all limits. This tells us that the gods were made in our image and not the other way around.
So no, God wouldn’t need a starship, but he also wouldn’t need us.
The religious right has launched yet another wave of efforts this spring to get creationism into science classes. Their new strategy is to talk about academic freedom, "teaching the controversy" and allowing all ideas to be weighed on their merits. They allege that “big science” is keeping dissent out of the laboratory and out of the classroom. It’s all so Orwellian that it’s positively dizzying. Please help the public understand that their controversy is manufactured. After reading this article, please weigh in at MySpace and Manufactroversy.NewsLadder.net as well as in the comments here at Debunking Christianity.
Biblical creationism, repositioned as creation science and most recently intelligent design has lost the contest of ideas on all counts: the rules, the criteria and the judging. It doesn't follow the scientific method; it doesn't allow us to explain, predict, and control better; and the jury of relevant experts (aka biologists) keeps returning the same verdict.
Now the creationists have taken a new approach that they hope will help them achieve their goal of teaching religious beliefs in our schools as science. That approach can be summed up in one simple word: whining.
One week from today, the new movie, Expelled, attempts to turn creationist complaints into mainstream media. Featuring Ben Stein, one of the conservative right's biggest whiners, the film makes several plaintive appeals: There's a conspiracy among big government and big science, and it's not fair! All we ask is for our perspective to get equal time! (Read: we lost, so let's split the prize.) All we want is for teachers to "teach the controversy"! This is all about academic freedom. Americans like freedom, right?
The whiners actually have spent millions of dollars on the movie, and even more on the marketing of it. You have to give them credit: by bundling Creationism with freedom, they have created a sophisticated strategy. Of course, Americans like freedom! More importantly, both democracy and scientific progress depend on intellectual freedom -- the freedom to ask questions and, unencumbered by ideology, to follow the answers where they lead. After centuries of heresy trials and book burnings, for biblical creationists to position themselves as the champions of academic freedom is a brilliant Orwellian move.
University of Washington professor, Leah Ceccarelli has pointed out that their "teach the controversy" strategy depends on a very specific sleight of hand: blurring the difference between scientific controversy and manufactured controversy or Manufactroversy. You can say you first heard it here, well, if you haven't heard it already on MySpace or Facebook: Manufactroversy -- a made up word for a made up controversy. There's even a new website, Manufactroversy.NewsLadder.net that aggregates articles and blog posts about this manufactroversy and some other pretty famous ones as well.
Scientific controversy exists only when the jury of relevant experts is out on whether a new finding meets the standard of evidence. The debate and evidence gathering still are in process. A manufactroversy is when someone motivated by profit or ideology fosters confusion in the public mind long after scientists have moved on to the next set of questions. Think tobacco and lung cancer. Think Exxon and global warming. Now think Ben Stein and evolution.
The fact is, there is no scientific controversy about evolution, just like there is no scientific controversy about whether tobacco causes lung cancer or whether human activity causes global warming. However, in all three examples, someone powerful and well established loses out when and if the scientific mountain of evidence becomes common knowledge and widely accepted.
The tobacco industry in the 1960's wasn't anxious to part with its profits just like the oil companies of the 1990's had no desire to walk away from theirs. So they manufactured controversies, paying scientists to publish papers they knew would distort the issue.
In the case of creationism, the a vast preponderance of evidence, conflicts with traditional mythos. What possible explanation but that the scientists are colluding, corrupt, and biased. But, of course, they're not. The proponents of intelligent design can't gain credibility among hard scientists because their evidence is pathetic. So what do they do? Follow in the footsteps of the tobacco and oil companies and spend millions in an effort to create public doubt. They plea for their side to be told, they imagine vast conspiracies and they cry out for fair play, but the reality is much simpler.
The mountain of evidence supporting mainstream biological science is overwhelming. The paltry evidence for "insurmountable gaps" and "irreducible complexity" is actually shrinking. Evolution should be taught as science and creationism, in its many guises, as religion, including the rich pre-scientific stories about origins from many cultures and traditions. So why not just ignore the whiners and hope they will go away? Because they won't until we force them to stop their marketing of religious beliefs as science. We're still fighting the tobacco industry to this day. Oil companies still fund global warming deniers.
Besides, how long has it been since the famous Scopes trial? How long have creationists been talking about "Darwinism" as if no one but Darwin had noticed the fossil record or the DNA code in the last 100 years? It does get tiresome, responding to their ever evolving anti-evolutionary rhetoric. But we need to expose the bizarre supernaturalist agenda behind all the sudden whining about academic freedom. And somebody needs to gently remind Stein and his creationist cronies that they haven't been expelled from school, they flunked.
In a major article my friend Paul Copan argues that the God of the Old Testament is not a moral monster. I haven't yet taken the time to read all of it, but I'm sure it's the best answer from an evangelical perspective. If it fails, and I think it does, then Christians should reject such a God. As you get the chance, tell me what you think.
This is a kind of commentary and overview of my observations after participating here for a year.
Reasoning is a discipline. There are several heuristics you can use for reasoning that speed up the process, but the process depends on the quality of detail and evidence you introduce into the process. I solve problems for a living. My bread and butter depends on how well I provide solutions to other peoples problems. I became an atheist after I started using the tools that contribute to my success to my personal philosophy. My religion.
Stephen Toulmin, Richard D. Rieke and G. Thomas Goodnight all talk about spheres of influence or reasoning. The concept goes that there are schemes of reasoning that are more successful depending on the field they are applied in. For example you don't use the same reasoning schemes in critiquing art that you use to convict criminals or determine a drug is safe for use. However, there have been plenty of artists and writers that have discovered and investigated, in their own way, concepts that have been incorporated into science. The most notable ones are that Natural Philosophy has a relationship to Science, the exploration in literature of Human Behavior and Psychology has a relationship to modern day Cognitive Sciences. Artists discovered the Golden Ratio as a perspective that just "looked good" and it was later described in mathematical terms and has a relationship to Architecture.
Religion is and always has been a philosophy about life. A way of thinking about life. This is what it has in common with art, music, law, medicine and science. Dealing with the questions of life. Since all these disciplines share this commonality, and since we know there is overlap, the principle of science can be used to investigate religion.
Christianity depends on the Bible. What is the bible? It is scripture. Where did this scripture come from? That is the question. It says it came from God. But applying the principles of Science, Law and Medicine to this question necessitates another form of validation, or another form of ID. Something to verify that it is what it says it is.
This is where looking at the details comes in. Looking at where these scriptures came from. Tracing the source. Doing this will take you from textual criticism, to sociology, to psychology, to biology, to paleontology, to archeology, to philosophy and not in that order.
Most of the arguments that Christian use here are some kind misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the world. They are referred to commonly as "straw man" arguments. Their philosophy is outdated, needs an upgrade, it doesn't represent an accurate picture of the world. They need new information. Decision making depends on new information. People should change their minds according to assessment of new information. It shouldn't be discouraged or looked at as being indecisive or wishy-washy, it should be demanded! It should be a virtue!
Solving peoples problems requires looking at the details and following the evidence. It requires suspending the tendency to follow authority, tradition and personal bias and instead use logic and inference. We should depend less on authority, consensus and tradition and more on principle, inference and strong criteria for evidence.
In my mind, to Debunk Christianity, or Break the Spell, requires people to follow George Santanaya's advice and don't forget the lessons of the past. Learn about the past, learn about where we came from, find out where those Virtues first appeared, find out where that "let your light shine" came from, find out which god was the first to die and go to hell and come back and have a son, how most of the kings in antiquity were sons of gods or gods incarnate or somehow related to gods.
People need to take the principles they use in the practical application of living their lives and apply it to their religion. When this is done, it brings to light how silly eternal punishment is compared to rehabilitation or just scrapping everything and starting over. How silly it is punish other people for the 'sins' of another group. How silly a human sacrifice is, or just a sacrifice to appease a god is. How silly it is to depend on premises that have no precedent and then create a philosophy of life around it. Just try to plan and execute a project using premises without precedent, and see how successful you are.
Here are some hints to Debunk Christianity. Apply your practical principles to your religion. And do your homework. Find your heritage.
Look up syncretism, sumeria, mesopotamia, ancient egypt, indus valley, harrapas, the axial age, greece, minoans, phoenicians, canaanites, hittites, fertile crescent, hellenism, Byzantium, trade between the indus valley, sumeria and mesopotamia, and follow the water, and pay attention to ancient peoples whos culture and religion idealize life as a journey. Key word "Journey" as in spiritual and economic and trade. Learn about World History between 40,000 bce and 500 ce. Learn about what was important to those people. Learn about their religions.
You will find, the Devil is in the Details, but so is your solution.
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with Ben Stein addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein's screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, 'the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus' but that 'the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein's lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university.'
Expelled trots out some of the people whom it claims have been persecuted. First among them is Robert Sternberg, former editor of the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, who published an article on ID by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute. Sternberg tells Stein that he subsequently lost his editorship, his old position at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and his original office.
What most viewers of Expelled may not realize—because the film doesn't even hint at it—is that Sternberg's case is not quite what it sounds. Biologists criticized Sternberg's choice to publish the paper not only because it supported ID but also because Sternberg approved it by himself rather than sending it out for independent expert review. He didn't lose his editorship; he published the paper in what was already scheduled to be his last issue as editor. He didn't lose his job at the Smithsonian; his appointment there as an unpaid research associate had a limited term, and when it was over he was given a new one. His office move was scheduled before the paper ever appeared. [For more details see Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin by Michael Shermer.]
Stein's case for conspiracy centers on a journal article written by Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the intelligent design think tank Discovery Institute and professor at the theologically conservative Christian Palm Beach Atlantic University. Meyer's article, 'The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories,' was published in the June 2004 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, the voice of the Biological Society with a circulation of less than 300 people. In other words, from the get-go this was much ado about nothing.
Nevertheless, some members of the organization voiced their displeasure, so the society's governing council released a statement explaining, 'Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The council, which includes officers, elected councilors and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings.' So how did it get published? In the words of journal's managing editor at the time, Richard Sternberg, 'it was my prerogative to choose the editor who would work directly on the paper, and as I was best qualified among the editors, I chose myself.' And what qualified Sternberg to choose himself? Perhaps it was his position as a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, which promotes intelligent design, along with being on the editorial board of the Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group, a creationism journal committed to the literal interpretation of Genesis. Or perhaps it was the fact that he is a signatory of the Discovery Institute's '100 Scientists who Doubt Darwinism' statement.
Meyer's article is the first intelligent design paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it deals less with systematics (or taxonomy, Sternberg's specialty) than it does paleontology, for which many members of the society would have been better qualified than he to peer-review the paper. (In fact, at least three members were experts on the Cambrian invertebrates discussed in Meyer's paper).
Meyer claims that the 'Cambrian explosion' of complex hard-bodied life forms over 500 million years ago could not have come about through Darwinian gradualism. The fact that geologists call it an 'explosion' leads creationists to glom onto the word as a synonym for 'sudden creation.' After four billion years of an empty Earth, God reached down from the heavens and willed trilobites into existence ex nihilo. In reality, according to paleontologist Donald Prothero, in his 2007 magisterial book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia University Press): 'The major groups of invertebrate fossils do not all appear suddenly at the base of the Cambrian but are spaced out over strata spanning 80 million years—hardly an instantaneous 'explosion'! Some groups appear tens of millions of years earlier than others. And preceding the Cambrian explosion was a long slow buildup to the first appearance of typical Cambrian shelled invertebrates.' If an intelligent designer did create the Cambrian life forms, it took 80 million years of gradual evolution to do it.
Stein, however, is uninterested in paleontology, or any other science for that matter. His focus is on what happened to Sternberg, who is portrayed in the film as a martyr to the cause of free speech. 'As a result of publishing the Meyer article,' Stein intones in his inimitably droll voice, 'Dr. Sternberg found himself the object of a massive campaign that smeared his reputation and came close to destroying his career.' According to Sternberg, 'after the publication of the Meyer article the climate changed from being chilly to being outright hostile. Shunned, yes, and discredited.' As a result, Sternberg filed a claim against the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for being 'targeted for retaliation and harassment' for his religious beliefs. 'I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist,' he tells Stein. In August 2005 his claim was rejected. According to Jonathan Coddington, his supervisor at the NMNH, Sternberg was not discriminated against, was never dismissed, and in fact was not even a paid employee, but just an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term!
The rest of the martyrdom stories in Expelled have similar, albeit less menacing explanations, detailed at www.expelledexposed.com, where physical anthropologist Eugenie Scott and her tireless crew at the National Center for Science Education have tracked down the specifics of each case. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, for example, did not get tenure at Iowa State University in Ames and is portrayed in the film as sacrificed on the alter of tenure denial because of his authorship of a pro–intelligent design book entitled The Privileged Planet (Regnery Publishing, 2004). As Scott told me, 'Tenure is based on the evaluation of academic performance at one's current institution for the previous seven years.' Although Gonzales was apparently a productive scientist before he moved to Iowa State, Scott says that 'while there, his publication record tanked, he brought in only a couple of grants—one of which was from the [John] Templeton Foundation to write The Privileged Planet—didn't have very many graduate students, and those he had never completed their degrees. Lots of people don't get tenure, for the same legitimate reasons that Gonzalez didn't get tenure.'
Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life. Tenure decisions for astronomers are based on the number and quality of scientific papers published, the prestige of the journal in which they are published, the number of grants funded (universities are ranked, in part, by the grant-productivity of their faculties), the number of graduate students who completed their program, the amount of telescope time allocated as well as the trends in each of these categories, indicating whether or not the candidate shows potential for continued productivity. In point of fact, according to Gregory Geoffroy, president of Iowa State, 'Over the past 10 years, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in the physics and astronomy department were not granted tenure.' Gonzales was one of them, and for good reasons, despite Stein's claim of his 'stellar academic record.'
The most deplorable dishonesty of Expelled, however, is that it says evolution was one influence on the Holocaust without acknowledging any of the other major ones for context. Rankings of races and ethnic groups into a hierarchy long preceded Darwin and the theory of evolution, and were usually tied to the Christian philosophical notion of a 'great chain of being.' The economic ruin of the Weimar Republic left many Germans itching to find someone to blame for their misfortune, and the Jews and other ethnic groups were convenient scapegoats. The roots of European anti-Semitism go back to the end of the Roman Empire. Organized attacks and local exterminations of the Jews were perpetrated during the Crusades and the Black Plague. The Russian empire committed many attacks on the Jews in the 19th and early 20th century, giving rise to the word 'pogrom.' Profound anti-Semitism even pollutes the works of the father of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, who reviled them in On the Jews and Their Lies and wrote, 'We are at fault in not slaying them.' I don't think Protestantism is accountable for the Holocaust, either, but the focus on 'the Jews' as scapegoats, and the added idea that their 'bad non-Aryan blood' had to be eliminated by killing them, were not Darwin's ideas.
The weakness of the logic of Expelled is beside the point, however. No one who is familiar with the evidence for evolution is likely to leave the theater shaken. Some people with looser understandings of the science or the legal issues might buy into its arguments about 'fairness' and protecting religion against science. Expelled is nonetheless mostly a film for ID creationism's religious base. That audience has seen one setback after the next in recent years, with science rejecting ID as useless and the courts rebuffing it as for a constitutional violation in public education. For them, Expelled is a rallying point to revive their morale.
The Kalam argument for the existence of God is based on a short argument:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
Let me focus on the second premise...
William Lane Craig is the leading defender of this argument. Let's take a look.
There is a distinction to be made between absolute and relative theories of time. Absolute theories entail that time exists independently of objects and the relationship between them in the physical universe. Relational theories entail that space/time is nothing but objects and the relationship between them in the physical universe. Einstein's Theories of Relativity support relational theories of time. As such, time is relative to the observer in a four dimensional framework (in addition to length, width, and height). Each physical object in space/time is an event in space/time. If no mass/energy existed, then time would not exist either. Therefore, time began with the Big Bang inside the physical universe. Craig must dispute this as a defender of absolute time, even though no scientist agrees with Craig on this point.
Craig begins his philosophical arguments by making the distinction between an actual infinite collection of things (which is numerically infinite) and a potential infinite collection of things (which is merely “indefinite,” having the potential of being numerically infinite). Using several thought experiments Craig argues that an actual infinite collection of things is impossible. In one of them Craig tries to show that an actual infinite cannot be formed by adding one number after another successively. This is impossible, he says. If someone began the task of counting in the distant past she could never count to infinity no matter how high she counted, for there would always be one number higher to count. But his argument says nothing against an immortal being counting to infinity if she has always been counting, since at no time in the past does she ever begin counting. It only shows, at best, that if someone began counting she couldn’t count to infinity, which is an uninteresting argument and off the mark if he intends to show by it that the physical universe couldn’t have always existed.
Craig’s favorite thought experiment is about Hilbert’s Hotel. This hypothetical hotel has an infinite number of guests each in their own separate rooms. Absurdities set in at this point, Craig argues. For even though we already have an infinite number of guests in the hotel, we can always add more guests by simply moving them all down one room and then adding the newest guest to room number one. By doing this over and over we could add an infinite number of new guests without the actual number of guests increasing. Furthermore, an infinite number of guests could check out of the odd numbered rooms leaving an infinite number of guests in the even numbered rooms. Craig claims this is absurd. Therefore he concludes that an actual infinite collection of things is impossible, and by analogy, there cannot be an actual infinite series of events in time either.
Contrary to Craig, an actual infinite could exist if his God had decided to eternally create the universe, for then such an eternal universe would have an actual infinite series of events. Craig doesn’t believe this, but I don’t see how he can reasonably claim that his God could not have done so, just as Aquinas saw no problem with an eternal universe and supposed it for the sake of his arguments. Unless Craig can show that this is not possible for his God to have done, there can indeed be an actual infinite series (or collection) of events in time, and his argument fails.
Craig argues that the universe had a beginning since it leads to absurdities to suppose that it didn’t. For example, if in the distant past an immortal being finished counting an infinite number of events down from negative infinity to zero (…-3, -2, -1, 0), then we could never travel back in time to see her counting, for no matter how far back we go she would already be finished. That’s absurd, Craig claims. But Craig is begging the question here. If she finished her task then we should be able to travel back in the distant past to see her still counting events, based upon his argument that an actual infinite cannot be formed by adding one number after another successively, as we just explained. According to Craig’s own logic there could only be a finite number of events between when she finished her task and today. Furthermore, Craig cannot have it both ways. He cannot have an immortal being who has always been counting events and one who never counts any at all! Either we can go back in time to find her counting or she never was counting at all!
Craig’s basic problem is that he conflates counting an infinite number of events with counting all of them. An immortal being could finish her task (…-3, -2, -1, 0) and yet not count all events (1, 2, 3…). Besides this, what reason does Craig have for supposing that the immortal being necessarily finished counting all of the events before today? It could be that the immortal being is nowhere close to finishing her count. There’s nothing absurd about this. He cannot merely say she could be finished counting, he needs to say that she must be finished counting, and that’s something he cannot say.
Let me single out for comment something Dr. Avalos said in response to the non-credentialed nasty wanna-be apologist JP Holding found here. Avalos said...
Florence Ophelia Russell died nine days ago. Friday, it was reported to the police in the Bahamas that her family had kept her body in the apartment as her family prayed for her to be resurrected.
This is what the little Neumann girl's parents tried to do as well as the ambulance took her dead body away. Yet over and over we keep being told that no Christian really believes this. And in less than 1 month we've had many many cases showing that actually, LOTS of Christians really believe this.
The job of convincing Christians to seek medical care should not need to be undertaken by atheists. It should be the job of Christians. The pope, the archbishop of Canterbury, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and any other self-styled leader of Christianity should be on TV begging parents to take their sick kids to the doctor. The fact that they don't, and even lobby for an exception to law mandating medical care for children shows what the mainstream Christian tradition really is: Pray for your kids until they are dead.
The opinion piece from Wisconsin sums up the case very well for me:
The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect concluded, “There are more children actually being abused in the name of God than in the name of Satan.” As Gerald Witt, mayor of Lake City, Florida, said about local faith-based deaths, “It may be necessary for some babies to die to maintain our religious freedoms. It may be the price we have to pay; everything has a price.”
But religious zealots need not pay the ultimate price of sacrificing their children on the altar of faith. It says so in the first book of their bible. “Abraham built an altar . . . and laid the wood . . . and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham . . . lay not thine hand upon the lad . . . for now I know that thou fearest God . . .” (Gen. 22:9-12).
Should parents decide to disregard both their god’s admonition against sacrificing children to prove a fanatical faith and society’s laws against homicide, they should be held accountable to a secular “higher power” in a court of law that does not accept the strength of a person’s religious belief as evidence of their guilt or innocence.
Again, for those of you apologists arguing that Christians aren't really like this, how does the Mayor of a Florida town say that in public and keep his job, much less avoid being attacked? He's come out in favor of the death of children, but because it's a Christian death, there is no outcry.
Christian philosopher Victor Reppert has made the same argument I have repeatedly made against Calvinism. He wrote:
God, by definition, is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. A being who predestines people for everlasting punishment doesn't meet the third requirement, and therefore isn't God.
In the comments section below this post I wrote:
We agree about this Vic, very much so. The difference is that when I make this same argument Hayes and company ask me where my standard for objective morality comes from. Funny, the argument seems to stand on its own, for surely (without reading their comments) they cannot say that of you.
Which should they believe, that they have properly interpreted a historical conditioned book, or that the logic you present indicates that they have misinterpreted it?
Like you I'd go with logic every time, and they cannot say you don't have a standard for logic either. Yes, the divine decree is indeed "horrible" but those who accept that it is a divine decree are made to be horrible.
Oh, I'm sorry, I cannot make that same argument, can I? LOL
So the question I have is this one. What difference does it make who makes a particular argument? Why does it matter whether I make it or Reppert does? It's the same one.
I think it's foolish to say there is a difference at all.
I received an email by someone informing me of the fact that my friend Richard Carrier, in his words:
"...is seeking donations in order to write a book on the historicity of Jesus. His goal is to receive $20,000 from donors. If many people donate small chunks, the goal can be reached. Perhaps if you wrote a short blog entry on Debunking Christianity, the message will reach more potentially interested people. Richard Carrier is a great writer, and a book from him on the historicity of Jesus would be awesome. More information can be found on Carrier's blog."