The Offering from the Opposition Round-up

The following will exist as a landing page for those interested in my exchange with Dr. Luke Conway, The Apologetic Professor.

How it began:

My post about addressing atheism to his predominantly Christian audience.

Dr. Conway's post about apologetics to my predominantly atheist audience.

My four part rebuttal of his post:

• Part I in which I address the call to seek God.
• Part II in which I address the notion of religious instincts.
• Part III in which I address the claim that atheists must have no foundation for morality.
• Part IV in which I address notion that religion is an intellectual pursuit.

Dr. Conway's responses to my post:

• Are Theists Opposed to Science? in which he address my claim that theists often deny conflicting science.
• Miracles and Talking Donkeys in which he address my skepticism for miracles.

Bonus Material

• Response to a Response for The Apologetic Professor in which friend of the blog Cephus takes on Dr. Conway's post.

I will update this post if and when more content is relevant.

Hot Mohammad on Christ Action

Here's my last minute Draw Mohammad Day entry. I'm not sure who should be more offended by this sketch of the Islamic prophet on a post-"transubstantiated" Catholic wafer.

"I'll Pray for You."

Iron Apologetics

The following post contains spoilers for Iron Man 3 and, possibly, the existence of God.

If I believed in a benevolent creator, I could see myself being a huge fan of the guy. Not only would I owe my own existence to him/her/it, but also would I credit him/her/it for the existence of my friends, my family, my planet--basically everything that matters to me. Religion understandably has it’s share of fanatics, but for those who see no reason to believe, we direct our fandom elsewhere...like movies.

I saw Iron Man 3 this weekend. Robert Downey Jr. really owns the role and the inclusion of Guy Pierce as the villain was a great choice. As with most summer blockbusters, it is an explosive spectacle with a passable story as long as you don’t think about it too hard. I, unfortunately, thought about it too hard. I can’t help myself. (If you haven’t seen the movie and like the film of Marvel Studios, go see it. Spoilers begin now.)

Tony Stark spends the lion’s share of the movie out of the armor. This isn’t THAT surprising. Downey Jr’s ability to convey emotion is severely limited when he has a metal hood over his face. And, hey, why cover the cash register? The result of this choice puts the character in harms way pretty much the entire flick. I doubt the audience is worried that the most popular Avenger in the franchise will die, but, in theory, he is almost always killable to any guy with a gun. This leads me to what takes me out of movies most often--characters not acting like real, intelligent people. Tony Stark is always the smartest guy in the room, so if he is forced to MacGyver weapons out of groceries, I assume it’s because he has no other choice. Later in the movie they show that this was never the case--revealing the biggest plot hole of many plot holes. Tony Stark simply calls upon an army of automated Iron Men. Sure, it allows for a big climax, but it also throws into question why Stark never called upon just one or two Iron Men armors much earlier.

Here you may ask: are you going to bring this back to religion or are you turning this into a movie review blog? It’s the former. I’ve found that movie franchises, especially those catering to the demographic I lovingly call geeks, inspire a kind of irrational loyalty at times. I’ve mentioned this plot hole to Marvel fans in the past 48 hours and have been met with rationalizations that are far too charitable to what was actually shown on screen and hostile toward any critical views. Here are some reasons I heard as to why this plot hole is not a plot hole.

1. The armors were trapped under the ruble of Stark’s demolished home.
2. Tony couldn’t summon the armors because he had no way to contact JARVIS.
3. JARVIS couldn’t connect to the home server.
4. Tony was trying to stay under the radar when he was presumed dead.
5. It never occurred to Tony until the moment he used the protocol.

Each of these are grasps at straws to rationalize an emotional belief that the franchise they love is perfect. An critical assessment of these rationalizations shows they break down quite quickly.

1. If the armor was buried, then Tony also couldn’t summon them when he eventually did. If they weren’t buried, then he could summon them anytime.
2. Tony could have asked JARVIS to summon the armor before JARVIS went offline. He could have asked JARVIS when Tony got him online again, which happened long before he finally called on the armor,
3. Tony sent a message to Pepper very shortly after his disappearance showing that either his home server was accessible or that Pepper could have made it accessible.
4. Disregarding the fact the no one should have presumed Tony dead considering Iron Man shot into the sky not far from the attack on his house where news coverage was present, Tony openly admitted who he was to anyone who saw him. Also, he obviously had more desire to have an armor than to stay concealed since he was working on fixing his suit from the moment it was disabled.
5. Tony Stark isn’t an idiot.

Weak reasoning based on assumptions to defend what is an emotional faith in a franchise is essentially secular apologetics. This is just one example. Last year, negative reviews for The Dark Knight Rises prompted death threats from fanatics who hadn’t yet seen the movie. In the tech world, the Apple/Android/Windows faithful refuse to see design flaws in their favorite gadgets; instead, they are "features."

Am I over thinking this? Perhaps. Next week I’ll explore the theological implications of The Fast and the Furious 6.

An Abortion of a Post

A Catholic apologist I follow recently said that “religion isn’t required to show that an unborn child is a human being.” The particular phrasing of this statement makes it obvious. A child of a human is a human. No need for debate there. The less clear question is this: is an unborn zygote or fetus a child? For the sake of argument, let’s say yes, but that still isn’t entirely the point. After all, the corpse of a human is still a human. The morality of abortion must take into account more than black and white definitions.

Killing cells isn’t a morally wrong act by anyone’s standard. If it was, everything from sun tans to common medical procedures would be stigmatized or illegal. A fertilized egg is a very active collection of cells. In my opinion, the main distinction between human cells and human people is consciousness. While the moral argument of aborting a mind cannot be made until the brain develops, the moral argument for aborting a soul can be made at conception...providing one accepts that the spiritual enters the material during orgasmic climax or shortly thereafter. I know breeders tend to say “on my God” in bed, but I’m not sure that’s exactly what they mean. It’s magical thinking, and it’s the foundation for religious pro-life reasoning.

This post is probably painting me as a bleeding heart pro-choice advocate. I don’t consider myself as such--my view is more nuanced. Unlike religious pro-life reasoning, there is valid secular pro-life reasoning that takes into account the terms of the pregnancy as well as other factors. When the brain and nervous system develop and the unborn child begins to think and feel, I am far less comfortable with abortion. Watching the ultrasounds of my twins, I learned that this development happens surprisingly early. It’s hard to say exactly when my feelings on the subject change. As a rule, I am pro-choice for the first trimester and pro-life for the third, with my opinion during the second trimester contingent largely on the situation--but still leaning pro-life. I think this is a common take on the moral dilemma of the issue. The religious pro-lifers tend to defend their position with images of near-fully developed kids cut out of women’s bodies. This is always gruesome and, at least in my case, a straw man pictorial. In a way, it’s also misrepresenting their own position, considering Catholics focus the lion’s share of their propaganda  on late term abortions while they feel the exact same way about morning after pills.*

*This may be a generalization, but it’s a well informed one. I’m representing the Catholic Church’s position and very few Catholics defect from the Church’s position on anything much less a hallmark like abortion.

Rebuttal, Part Four

For this to make sense, please check out my post exchange with Dr. Luke Conway here and here. You might as well check my Rebuttal, Part One, Rebuttal, Part Two and Rebuttal, Part Three also.

Dr. Conway’s wraps-up his post venting his frustrations on a misconception about Christians--that they are stupid. I feel his pain. I spend much of my time correcting generalizations and perverse stereotypes about atheists. Christians, as a whole, are no more stupid then atheists are amoral. That said, it is also a generalization to say that atheists think Christians are stupid. No atheists I know think Christians are stupid (well, maybe Cephus.) More common is the belief that Christians are intelligent people who accept a relatively small set of stupid beliefs. This doesn’t sound like a charitable assessment, but when I hear someone say that a forgiving God is still blaming us for something a distant ancestor did at the dawn of time; or that one guy built a planetary-flood-worthy vessel to house two samples of all life on earth; or that morality is woven into the fabric of the universe--it’s all I can do to not assume that person is stupid.

Christians are not stupid. They didn’t come up with this crap on their own. They are gullible. This tradition of delusions has been passed down and added upon from pagans to Jews to Christians--so it’s obviously hard to shake. Many atheists like myself take care to not be overly hard on believers, seeing how we were once one of you. I don’t want to be stupid retrospectively, but I recognize that I was certainly gullible. As alluded to before, I had a child’s trusting instinct, but this isn’t about me. Let’s assess the Apologetic Professor’s claims directly.

Secular historians credit Christianity with creating the very icon of intellectualism, the modern university system.

They do? If so, great, but lemme guess, in the cases that Christianity is credited, they closely tied religious education to the program. The university system is a by-product of what is ultimately organized indoctrination. I’m glad the more secular landscape of academia took over.

A large number of intellectual disciplines (e.g., chemistry, a lot of mathematics, genetics, existential philosophy) were founded (and understood by everyone to be founded) by Christians.

No examples are made so we’ll just have to take your word for it. Again, this shows Dr. Conway isn’t used to a skeptical audience. There are significant problems with this kind of claim in that these alleged Christians are no longer with us to clarify their beliefs. Hell, Christians and atheists still argue about who can claim Einstein when he wrote more clearly about his religious beliefs then most other academics or scientists of which I’m aware. Regardless, if Dr. Conway’s claim is true, I’m not surprised. Most of the people in the developed areas at the time when these disciplines could be developed were Christian. It’s a numbers game--odds are Christians would do a lot of the developing if the intelligence of the people belonging to various religions and secular belief systems were roughly the same, which I imagine is the case.

Christianity has spread literacy and education pretty much everywhere it has ever taken root.

Christianity gaining popularity and staying popular in the last 2000 years just happens to coincide with all kinds of advancements in modern civilization. I see it as hitting the sweet spot between cultures ignorant enough to seek religion for answers and cultures advanced enough to not need religion for answers. For whatever reason, Christianity has been the preferred faith for cultures valuing equal rights and freedom than, say, Islam. I suppose it deserves a little credit (but, really, look at the competition.)

Contrary to the idea that “faith” is unintellectual, all thinking people recognize that some elements of their most cherished beliefs require faith in something unseen that cannot be directly proven.

Faith is firm belief in something for which there is no proof. Depending on your requirement of proof, I have faith that the rotation of the earth will make the sun appear to rise in the morning. Since I can't see the future, I have no proof. I do, however, have extraordinary evidence--I have personal data for over 30 years; eye witness accounts with a sample size of the planet's population; historical records going back to cave paintings; and the knowledge that if the earth's rotation ever did stop, we'd all be dead or never born. It's a far cry from faith in the bible--which, coincidentally, does mention the sun rise being delayed at some point. Look it up. Faith in the sun rising is in no way unintellectual. Faith in the bible, well...

The Rebuttal: Part Three

For this to make sense, please check out my post exchange with Dr. Luke Conway here and here. You might as well check my Rebuttal, Part One and Rebuttal, Part Two also.

I’ve covered the moral argument for God multiple times on this blog and consider it the worst argument in the long, sad history of apologetic arguments. The only way I can address this again and remain sane is if I break up Dr. Conway’s post and address it in segments. The bold bits are the words of The Apologetic Professor. Here it goes.

Theism provides a more coherent view of morality than atheism.

No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t. It. Does. Not.

If you are an atheist, you believe in a universe that has absolutely no moral will.

This part is true. I believe the universe has no will, moral or otherwise.

The materialist must assume that I have a moral will for the same set of reasons that I have blue eyes or a love of the Indigo Girls, or that the sky appears blue or rocks are solid substances – they are the result of a long chain of purely physical events guided by physical laws or chance or what-have-you. I presume none of you believe that, at the Big Bang (or whatever), the atoms there assembled in the way they did so that someday they could produce the thought I should not kill my neighbor for fun inside my head. Such a thought exists because of chance physical processes.

This harkens back to Rebuttal, Part Two talking about instincts. It could be said that we have a moral instinct brought to us by the very same long chain of physical event that which Dr. Conway takes issue. Think of aspects of morality as adaptions that are selected for survival. The survival of the altruistic can be simplified to a generational game theory. Like the famous prisoner’s dilemma, two socially interacting creatures share a larger net gain by cooperating, even at the cost of personal loss by not defecting and claiming an individually larger gain for themselves. This defection could get the creature killed or made an outcast--taking it out of the gene pool either way. In addition, by leaving the increased gain on the table by continuously acting selfishly ends with the result of less resources than those held by cooperating creatures.

This is an example of how everything from instinctual sharing to general empathy could have evolved. I also find it difficult how one couldn’t see that cooperation is the best policy from the experience of just a single lifetime. This is, in part, what apologists argue when morality comes up.

Now, if the professor is saying that thought in general couldn’t have evolved through “a long chain of purely physical events,” that is a actually a better argument than saying moral thought specifically could not. Still, that is an entirely different debate. I’d like to know that he admits the moral argument is bunk before delving into cognitive sciences.

The atheist universe isn’t an immoral universe, as some have claimed. It’s an amoral universe. Morality isn’t bad in the atheist universe; morality doesn’t exist in the atheist universe. Morality has no meaning in that world.

Dr. Conway, I don’t think morality means what you think it means. Seriously, this is a fundamental conflict of definitions that is an insurmountable hurdle in every atheist/theist debate I’ve ever had. Morality as defined by God’s nature is invalid in my book and morality as defined by human culture is invalid in theirs.

Pretty much every atheist I know actually believes in morality (including all of the “new” atheists, e.g., Dawkins, Harris, etc.). And they don’t just believe in it in a “well, that’s nice” kind of way; they don’t believe that it’s wrong to kill people for fun is just a chance-y neuronal deal and they’d be fine if it had turned out the other way around. No; they really believe in it – like it matters that it turned out this way. In fact, they believe in it so much that they often use moral arguments against theism, as a reason to get rid of it.

Yeah, for two reasons. One, most of us have a high degree of empathy--a trait selected for survival (see above.) And two, because morality works. What’s the alternative? Killing fellow humans on sight? Most of us are intelligent beings who can see that would result in living in fear and constant danger. The Golden Rule is the best thing in the bible, yet pre-dates it. If you see moral acts as those that benefit others and immoral acts as those that harm others--pair that with reasoning to weigh the scales of a given situation fairly and our desire to be benefited and avoid harm, ta-da! Morality. I really don’t see why this is so hard. Yes, it allows for some things to be morally ambiguous, which it distasteful, but some things are morally ambiguous. That’s why we are constantly debating things like capital punishment and abortion. It’s objectively clear that at least some moral issues have no objectively clear answer. Saying that you believe you are right on a divided issue is fine, but saying that you are absolutely right because it was written in a book in another language from a less civilized culture over a thousand years ago is crazy. Doesn’t it sound crazy? I think it’s crazy.

My philosophy says that God built morality into the fabric of the universe.

Do rocks have morality then? Do tornadoes strive to be nice? Or is this only evident in intelligent, social beings who have a vested interest to act civil, all things being equal?

Theists attempt to show that morality without God is arbitrary. On the contrary, I can think of multiple reasons why any given moral choice is right or wrong. To apologists I ask, does God have reasons for what is right and what is wrong? Is there a reason His nature is how it is? If so, let’s say we can come to the same reasoning and cut out the middle god. If not, then it’s the theist's morality that is arbitrary. Even if the Christian God exists, we face the exact same pointless morals...except, y’know, my perceived source of morality doesn’t occasionally commit genocide.