The Lottery And The Fine Tuning Argument

To be clear, we are not certain the physical constants of the universe can vary and if they can, by how much. It is the assumption of those who use the fine tuning argument for God that they can vary by a great degree. Let’s assume they're right and, for the sake of argument, nail it down to five constants. The following compares winning the universal lottery to winning the actual lottery.

To win a State lottery, one needs to match five specific numbers.
For humans to live in this universe, it needs five physical constants to have specific values.

If I alone play the only draw of the lottery ever allowed and I guess the five numbers at random, the odds of me winning the lottery are 1 in 100,000.
If the only universe to ever exist forms randomly , the odds of that universe having the variables that support human life are 1 in 100,000.
Can either scenario happen by chance? Yes, but I’ll grant that it’s enough of a long-shot to be suspicious that the lotto was fixed or the universe was designed.

Now, imagine 100,000 people play the lottery. There’s about a 64% chance someone will win.
Imagine 100,000 universes form either concurrently or sequentially. There’s about a 64% chance that one of these universes have constants that support human life.
This illustrates how a sufficiently large multiverse should remove any suspicion of a cheater nor a designer.

Now, imagine a lottery in which each player plays different numbers so every combination is covered when 100,000 play. When the number is drawn, someone is ensured a win while everyone else loses.
Imagine a universe in which every combination of constants can support some manner of intelligent life. Human’s might not exist, but whatever is here in our place could likewise make a fine tuning argument for their God.
It would not be a valid argument because, whatever the constants, someone is here to claim that no one could be here otherwise. This illustrates the anthropic principle at work.

#notworthfollowing

It used to be that wearing a shirt with the headline “Atheist” was considered to be the gold standard in testing public reception of the label. Most of us never wore such shirts and assumed that non-atheists would be confrontational or, at the least, expect the shirt-wearer to be confrontational. Living in the bible belt, I get it. Don’t expect to see me wearing such a shirt to a job interview. Still, Americans came close to having our first non-Christian candidate for President this year with Bernie Sanders. This suggests that at least half the population of the US is more receptive than ever. So I made shirts.

They aren’t as explicit as a shirt with the big block letters A-T-H-E-I-S-T. Think of them as part of a campaign. Each shirt displays a passage of the bible, not unlike a Christian wearing John 3:16 across their chest. The primary difference is that the passages available here are the parts of the bible Christians don’t advertise. They are about God commanding the murder of kids, approving the institution of slavery and keeping women down. They highlight why the bible is #notworthfollowing.

Let me know what you think.

nwf.threadless.com

Religious Semantics

Words are ultimately invented, with definitions that were chosen arbitrarily. They are meaningful today, because most of us have a common understanding of the context of each set of letters. They are meaningful because those definitions are relevant to most of us in that they correspond to something in our consensus reality or experience.

Not, I find, when talking to religious apologists. They use theological jargon under the guise of common vernacular. Morality is defined, in part, as "that which can only exist with God." I've seen reason defined as "that which can only be accessed through God." I've often thought of making a master list of words apologists frame in terms of their deity, but it would always be incomplete.

Words are invented, with definitions that were chosen arbitrarily. The apologists break no cosmic rule by creating their own language, but when they try to communicate in secular society with these identically constructed variants, they hold value. Their definitions are not relevant to me. They do not correspond to anything in reality as I observe it. They match nothing that I've ever experienced.

When I use "morality" or "reason" I am not grounding them in anything I don't believe exists. The assumption that I do is irrational. The sooner apologists understand this and accept this, the sooner we can have a mutually beneficial dialogue.

An Inconsistent Adherence to Informed Models

I find that the best premises used in apologetic arguments for God take something that is true for the things we observe then assumes it is true for everything that we don’t observe. An example used in the cosmological argument for God is “everything that begins to exist has a cause outside itself.” We obviously haven’t observed everything’s origin of existence to confirm the premise, but it is seen as true to apologists for the things they have observed and are willing to assume those observations apply to everything everywhere.

This isn’t a great way to know objective truth, but it is a reasonable model to say something is probable based on current information. Of course, they aren’t using this in a probability model, they are using this as a justification for what they believe is objectively true. Misattributing a model for truth is a problem, but that isn’t what bothers m most.

These same apologists are presented with similar models that all observations confirm and treat them very different when they go against what they want to believe. For example, very observation shows that all people who are dead and cold do not spontaneously return to the living. All data points to the sun rising and setting at a steady rate. Animals don’t talk. Despite the perfect record of observations confirming these statements, they are not assumed to apply to everything everywhere. On the contrary, they believe that these models have already been broken.

Even if those using the arguments were consistent, they would hardly be airtight. As it is, I can’t even take them seriously.

Hard God Questions

I'm starting a new project over at HardGodQuestions.com. If you like this, follow me over there.

Don't Gotta Have Faith

Faith is a polarizing word in my circles. Depending on what side one comes down on regarding the existence of God, people have biased meanings for the concept. I know atheists who define it as “belief in something contrary to evidence” and theists who define it as “justified, true belief.” A working definition of faith for which I’ve had the most luck in finding agreement is “belief in something beyond what the evidence warrants.” Let’s plug this common term of “faith” into a few use cases for the word.

“I have faith that my wife will never cheat on me.” I think this works. My wife has never cheated on me in the past (as far as I know) and has never behaved in such a way that I think she would consider cheating. That said, I know relationship data shows that cheating is common. So in this case, I have a decent amount of evidence in the form of past experience that justifies a belief that she probably won’t cheat in the future, but a realist should still consider that it could happen more than I actually consider it. I’m willing to admit that I have faith in my wife’s fidelity. Thankfully, I don’t need as much faith as I would if I was aware that she cheated in the past.

“I have faith that the sun will rise in the morning.” I don’t think this is a good use of the term faith, even if the statement is understandable and technically accurate. Like the example with my wife, I have evidence in the form of past experience that the sun rises every morning. Not just decent evidence, but a perfect record of the sun rising every morning. One could argue that “morning” is defined by the sun rising. Depending on location and season, we can track exactly when sunrise will be and confirm that that fiery ball in the sky sticks to the schedule. Beyond personal experience, I know enough about astronomy to explain orbits and gravity so...faith doesn’t really come into play here. It is possible that the sun does not rise tomorrow at our expected time? Yes, but only if some catastrophic event with statistically insignificant odds--like earth being knocked off its axis--happens. To use the term more correctly, I have faith that some observatory or news outlet would give me notice before the night before such an event could occur.

“I have faith that God exists.” Okay, I don’t, but if I did, this is the best use case for the word so far. Even if we grant theists that there is some evidence for God’s existence, you know that I’d argue that it isn’t very good evidence. And since most religion requires belief to the degree of certainty, or at least an attempt for such belief, faith is what gets them the rest of the way from the perceived evidence available.

So is faith good or bad? It depends. The faith in my wife means that I don’t easily get jealous which is a positive in my relationship. However, that is but a bit of faith. If my wife cheated regularly or otherwise treated me poorly, having faith that tomorrow will be different would be a negative force for my well being. Faith can be good in small amounts, but should generally be avoided. Strive to have your beliefs reflect the evidence to the degree it merits and not far beyond, if any.

Insights into an Apologetic Mind

They See Concepts As Transcendent

Over and over again I see believers talk about concepts as if they exist outside of the mind that conceptualizes them. Morals, meaning, purpose, values, emotions, and the like are most often understood by the secular as constructs created as part of the function of the brain. Without sufficiently intelligent creatures to come up with this stuff, they don’t exist.

I think, to the theist, the concepts are still conceptualized by a mind, but not our minds. They come from the same mind they believe created everything--God’s. For this reason they are understood to be eternal and unchanging because that’s how they see their deity. Concepts that are eternal and unchanging exist whether or not humans or any temporary mind exists and can rightly be seen as being more real than even the universe itself.

I thought believers talk about concepts as if they exist outside of the mind that conceptualizes them, but now I think I was mistaken. I wasn’t considering the mind I don’t believe in. I'm not saying that it's rational or justified, it's just where they are coming from.

They Like Telling Others How They Feel And What They Believe

Christians continue to equate disbelief in God with hate for God. Why do they only confuse these terms in regards to God? They never tell someone who hates ISIS that they don't believe in ISIS. They never tell me I hate Superman because I consider him fictional.

They Like Pretending To Have It Both Ways

Most apologists say God has free will yet does no wrong then say if God made a world without evil he would have to have made us without free will. Using their own reasoning about God, their claim about his inability to make a free, all-good humanity is untrue.

A Christian apologist told me that physical constants and the uniformity of natural laws are evidence for God. A Christian apologist told me that the "constants" varying and natural laws losing their uniformity, what they call miracles, are evidence for God. Imagine if an atheist presented them a similarly structured argument: if x, then God doesn't exist; if not x, then God doesn't exist. How many do you think would accept such an argument?

Sin or Die

Is incest a sin? If you are representative of my primary audience you are probably saying “no.” Nothing is a sin. Sin isn’t a thing. However, think about it from a believer’s perspective...is incest a sin? I did a small, informal poll and 9 out of 10 Christians believe incest is a sin. That means one of two things to the Christian faith in particular. Let’s look at the possibilities.

Either

God has set up at least two situations in which his creations had to sin in order to not go extinct. Of course, I’m referencing Adam and Eve giving birth to children who then had to have sex with either each other or their parents and Noah and his nuclear family who faced the same choice. The only moral thing to do for our ancestors, from the Christian perspective, was to let the species die off. In fact, since both times the need for incest applied to all but the most asexually reproducing creatures, they all had to sin or die.

Or

Incest is a sin now, but wasn’t in Adam’s and Noah’s time. This gets God out of the position of creating something that he either wanted to die or disobey, questionable motivations for a loving father, but it means that sin is variable. It means that morality is not always constant. This notion throws a wrench into the apologetic premise that moral facts are absolute and moral values are objective.

Christian apologists tell me that certain things are morally right while others are morally wrong not because society defines them as such or even that they conform to God’s whims--but because they are facts of the nature of things. To them, God’s nature informs reality’s nature and God is unchanging. Assuming Christianity is true, incest switching values is profound. Does it mean God’s nature changes? No, it logically cannot. A “nature” is the way one is, without the subject deciding to be that way. If God’s nature changed, who are we saying changed it? They aren’t likely to say a greater deity and if they did, it would move this conundrum to that God. No, it means that the Christian God really does arbitrarily decide good and evil and, at least in this case, flipped the script. Why? Mysterious ways, man. Mysterious ways.

The Save My Soul Via Government-Run Gambling Challenge

The religious ask me from time to time what would convince me that God exists. I have written about various ways that I would be convinced, but they all lack in detail and specifics. Today I’m offering one example of exactly what would convince me in a challenge that would likely save my soul, be compelling to readers of my blog, and almost certainly make the news as a story that would be picked up by Christians everywhere.

The steps you, the believer, must take:

1. Ask your God for the winning Mega Millions lotto numbers for Tuesday, 5-5-15.
2. Give me the numbers privately.

I’ll take it from here. I’ll use my own dollar to play your numbers on that date. The odds of those numbers hitting, while not impossible to hit by chance, would be a sufficient sign to me that God gave you the numbers and I would therefore join your faith. If they win, I will donate the jackpot to a charity affiliated with your (our) religion. Yes, I imagine a guy donating his winnings to charity because he says that he was tipped off by God would make the news.

Why I think this is a reasonable challenge.

1. Most religious apologists already say God makes his existence known via a similar trick of probability in their fine tuning argument. However, the fine tuning argument is only meaningful under a variety of assumptions that make the odds that we are here unlikely. No assumptions will be needed in this challenge. It will be a very straight forward beating of the odds. Obviously when this hits the news, it wouldn’t convince everyone because, well, someone has to win the lottery, but it will convince me and I’ll do what I can to convince others.
2. I’ve heard that prayer works best when they are not made selfishly. Praying for the winning numbers in this case is not selfish. (It might be the first time in history praying for the winning lotto ticket isn’t selfish.) You are praying for someone else to win (me) who will give all the money to charity and use the experience to spread the good news.
3. Biblically speaking, God occasionally proves himself--whether it be a resurrected Jesus appearing to doubters to staffs turning into snakes to convince the authorities. I'm asking for a much lower-key miracle here.

What if the challenge fails?

If it fails, it fails. I remain an atheist and you remain a whatever. I don’t ask anything of you beyond an honest acknowledgement that we tried and it didn’t work. Ideally, you'll also think on that.

The untrusting, less interesting alternative.

After buying the ticket and before the drawing I will post the vendor from which I bought the ticket. If there is a winning ticket, it will be a matter of record where the ticket was sold and you'll all know if it could have been me. That said, if you still don’t trust that I will keep up my end of the challenge, you can post the God-given number you are going to play publicly in the comments and you can donate the money to charity yourself. It won’t be as good a story and you might have to split the winnings with someone else who plays your posted numbers, but it’s your call. I save a dollar.

Rules and regulations

I will buy multiple tickets if needed, but I am only accepting one challenge per faith. So if a Catholic gives me numbers I won't accept numbers from another Catholic. If the Catholic God wants to convert me, he should be able to do it in one-shot.

The Subjective Scope of the Natural

God, or any sufficiently powerful supernatural entity (if such a being exists), could have designed us to operate miraculously. We could see through pores in our skin, hear via golden halos, and float from place to place--all without any mechanism for how our bodies function. Instead we have a naturally comprehensible biology of which we have a deep understanding. Why would God make us, and all organisms, in such a way when he could have just as easily made magic-powered life?

I wonder why God, if he exists, would make the workings of anything subject to human discovery. I say anything, but really it could be everything. We have yet to find something that science is fundamentally incapable of explaining. Before the apologists chime in, yes, I realize there are aspects of nature we have yet to understand, but that doesn’t show that they are fundamentally beyond natural understanding. Take something like human consciousness. We knew next to nothing about it in the recent past, but now we know of neurons and synapses. We know roughly where in the brain is most important for memory and cognition. We know how chemicals affect thoughts, perception and personality. It seems everything is within our ability to grasp.

I know that these questions I pose may be unanswerable. I don’t expect the believer to know God’s motivation for making things how they are, even if God exists. Mysterious ways and all that. But consider this, believers: since everything that God created, if he did, seemingly operates by an intelligible natural process, why reject evolution by natural selection as the process responsible for the diversity and apparent design of life? If the evidence supports it, and it does, denying it outright because it isn't miraculous is a bizarre exception considering all the things you accept that are not magical. Evolution happens and the process is unguided by any external agency--embrace this knowledge or ask yourself why God would make this one aspect of reality supernatural. Or ask God. If he answers, let me know.

Bandwagon Belief

In my experience talking to Christians I’ve learned to not assume I know the beliefs of the individual...with a few exceptions. Every Christian I know believes that Jesus Christ existed, that he was crucified, and that he rose from the dead. From there they vary wildly. A big disagreement is over which Biblical bits are historical and which are fictional stories--beliefs that are dependent on their personal credulity or that of their chosen church.

The resurrection of Christ is so indoctrinated into their culture that it’s unquestioned and taken for granted even when talking snakes and planetary floods are considered too outside the realm of possibility to be seen as factual. This cultural familiarity somehow makes ideas plausible. So lets imagine something unfamiliar.

“Woman gives birth to squid!” How’s that for a headline? Imagine you read that, not as a modern headline, but as an event expressed in a book over a thousand years old. The obvious context is that every woman you’ve ever known has given birth to a human boy or girl, every account from every person since you were born bares out the identical report, and every historical record of births since modern bookkeeping confirms that humans give birth to humans. So would you believe that a woman from antiquity bore an ink-squirting, tentacled baby? Given that, biologically speaking, there is no mechanism for such a birth to be possible, would a Christian believe it?

I doubt neither you nor that Christian would accept such a claim, because it’s absurd, sure, but more importantly it's novel. There is no cultural familiarity with the notion of squid-babies (outside of that one scene in Men in Black.) If everyone you knew happened believed that old squid's tale from childhood....suddenly it becomes plausible. Credulity becomes communal when fitting in is praised over critical thought. I think that's a given. How we change that requires more thought.

Why I Talk About God

Why do I talk about about something I don’t believe in? I get this a enough that I should probably address it no matter how obvious the answer are to me. Yes, answers--plural. Here’s a bunch of answers, all of which apply, some more than others, depending on the context.

1. Because gods, as concepts, are some of the greatest influencers of our age or any age. The majority of people use the concept of one or more gods to inform how they socialize, how they raise their families, how they vote, and their overall behavior. I am one of the people they and their families socialize with and the people they vote for also govern me. For this reason, I have an interest to lessen religion’s influence when it could otherwise negatively impact me unchecked.
2. Because believers often tell me they are interested in the truth. Given that, I am providing, to the best of my knowledge, what they seek. I recognize that I may be wrong about some things, in which case something they provide could bring me closer to the truth, which is great since I am a truth seeker myself. Sharing experiences, data, and philosophies in a marketplace ideas, rather than in an echo chamber, is the best way I’ve found to examine the truth of claims.
3. Because I wish someone talked about the possibility of being an atheist to me earlier in my life. Growing up exclusively among Christians makes the notion that I could choose to be anything else untenable. Free will is a cherished concept to Christians so another option should be openly provided in order to express that will--especially to children.
4. Because I find the topic interesting. Since no single religion is a majority on this planet yet most people are religious, it means that the majority of people in the world believe in stories every bit as fantastical and made-up as The Lord of the Rings as if they were historically accurate. Everyone must admit this. The psychology of the human mind that allows us to be so willing to be believe wild fictions should be understood by all, even if it isn't directly applied to one's own beliefs.

Why do you promote your worldview?

To Falsify Evolution

I recently had a discussion about what it would take to falsify evolution with another atheist. We both agreed that theories based on evidence are all falsifiable by counter-evidence, but we disagreed on the amount of counter-evidence it would take in the case of evolution.

Here is the hypothetical evidence that he believes would falsify the theory: “If we found an organism that clearly breaks out of the evolutionary tree we know. Say - a 5 legged creature, or an animal without DNA, or an animal that has a DNA that doesn’t have any common parts with the rest of the life on earth.”

Such a find would certainly be compelling, but I would first consider that the outlier was created artificially or evolved in isolation of all other known life before throwing out evolutionary theory. As unlikely as either of these sound, they would be more reasonable explanations. To show evolution is false, each line of evidence needs to be overturned. Each aspect of the theory needs to be falsified. Evolution isn’t too big to fail, but it’s certainly too big to die of a single counter-point.*

(*Unless, of course, that counter-point was that all known evidence was found to be lies planted by the Great Deceiver. Positing the devil as a way to reject evolution is one of the more honest and internally consistent methods--if only it wasn’t based entirely on mythology.)

Back to reality...or at least hypothetical reality--even if such a find could impact evolution as a whole, it would revise the theory, maybe falsifying parts, before it would falsify the whole shabang. This happened before with the theory of gravity. Isaac Newton understood gravity in a manner that worked to explain all gravitational movement...at first. It didn’t quite work with the solar orbit of Mercury, much like current evolutionary theory wouldn’t work for the aforementioned hypothetical creature. It wasn’t until Einstein hashed out relativity that a new understanding of gravity could account for Mercury. If we one day discover gravitons or something, we might have to adjust gravitational theory further. Edits aside, I can think of no natural evidence regarding either evolution or gravity that could falsify all previous findings that work perfectly well with what we have. Natural selection happens. Mutations occur. Heritability is a thing. If you find a glaring example of uncommon decent, let me know. It could modify evolutionary theory, but smart money says it's an alien.

Three Thoughts on a Dead Friend

One.

A good friend of mine died this week, so I’ve been thinking a lot about grief. It is a surprisingly selfish process. I don’t feel bad for my friend. I feel bad for me. I guess this should be true for anyone who believes there is no afterlife or that their loved one is in a pleasant afterlife--heaven, most commonly. In the first case, like with me, there is no longer any friend to feel bad for. In the second, the friend is now better off than those he left behind. Unless one expect’s that their dead friend is in hades, no worries.

Two.

Atheists, who obviously don't offer prayers or comforts of the beyond, generally offer condolences by saying that the passed lives on in our memories. This should make me feel better, but it kinda bums me out. I know how flawed memory recall is. I know that some of what I remember of him has faded or has been altered and that this will only get worse the more I think back on him. This seems to be one of those cases where being informed backfires. Ignorance is, occasionally, bliss.

Three.

So is there any chance my friend still exists? The only comfort I can come to is that it's possible that there is a multiverse and my friend has duplicates still kicking, perhaps infinitely so. In some universes he didn't die. In others he survived and is wildly successful. In others still he died younger or was never born, but let's not dwell on those. This notion isn't so much supported by evidence as it is speculation based on interpretations of theoretical physics, but it's a hell of a lot more likely then, well, hell.

The service is Sunday and it will be Hindu in nature, which should be interesting. Thanks for reading.

The Burden of Probability

If you claim something is true and intend to convince others, you have the burden of proof.

If you claim something is likely and intend to convince others, you have the burden of probability.

A strong theist, one who claims God exists, would have the burden of proof when engaged in debate. A strong atheist, on who claims God does not exist, would also have the burden of proof when engaged in debate.

A weak theist or atheist, those who claim the existence of God is likely or not likely, has the burden of probability when engaged in debate.

Weak theists and strong atheists are rarer breeds than strong theists and weak atheists, so it is accurate to say that it's more common for theists to have a more rigorous burden on their hands.

There is no inherent burden to any personal belief, just don't expect it to be meaningful to anyone else without accepting the burden to satisfy reasonable skepticism when engaged in argument.

Infinite Regression & You

Mathematically, .9 repeating is equal to 1. Here's the proof: two-thirds (.6 repeating) plus one-third (.3 repeating) is equal to 1 (.9 repeating) You can think of the 1 as an infinite whole and the .9 repeating as an infinite regress of 9s, yet they are equivalent.

You, in your body, exist in this moment. When did you exist before now? The moment before. These moments regress back to when you were conceived. Before that moments regressed back to the Big Bang. Moments, as I'm using it, is shorthand for any length of time you'd like--seconds, minutes, days, whatever.

Before the Big Bang it gets more complicated because it seems as though space and time as we understand them originated in same singularity as all the matter and energy of the universe. It isn't technically correct to say anything precedes the Big Bang, but that isn't going to stop this thought experiment. After all, believers assume something (God) came before the Big Bang and they won't simply give up that belief because of y'know, physics. So we need to imagine another, greater spacetime-like dimension the singularity is within...or something.

I've already written about possible causes of the Big Bang that don't involve the Almighty. Religious apologists say any non-God cause is only pushing the need for God back a step. "What caused the cause?" they say. The answer, "the cause before that." That's what infinite regress is in terms of religious debate, an infinite chain of causes with our universe as an effect (and perhaps a cause) on said chain.

Back to God. According to believers, God doesn't have a moment of origin, but can still be understood as existing at every moment. When did God exist before this moment? The moment before, ad infinitum. What caused the cause? The cause before that, ad infinitum. God is in the exact same boat as an infinite causal series. One can't argue that one is impossible without arguing that both are impossible.

You can think of God's existence as infinite, eternal, or forever--it's all semantics. God is described by apologists as indivisible. They obviously don't describe God this way because they are informed by evidence, they describe God this way because they want God exempt from the perceived infinite regress problems of secular explanations. To them I ask, if God doesn't exist every moment into the past, at what moment does God stop existing?

Put another way, to avoid the apologist's denial that God's existence can be segmented the same way as literally everything else, let's talk about God's actions marking points on a line. We can pick a point for a reference--in universal apologetics creating the universe is the best choice. So universe creation is point X. Actions after, like creating life or sending his son can be represented as points X1, X2 and so on. Points before X can be represented as -3X, -2X, -1X. This assumes God can act before he created the universe, which he can if he is omnipotent.

Now, when could he act before -3X? Well, -4X. When could God act before -1000X? -1001X! This either regresses infinitely making apologetic objections to secular infinite regress hypocritical and invalid or the apologist must admit there is a point in which God cannot act, just as there is a point in which God cannot exist, making their deity limited and finite. Which begs the question, what caused God?

A Darwin Day Exchange

Darwin Day was last week, or as religious apologists call it "question evolution day." In that spirit, I posed a question to those not sold on the theory.

What aspect(s) of evolution do you have a problem with?

• Is it that you don't believe in heritability?
• Is it that you don't believe natural selection is a sufficient mechanism to propagate beneficial genes and weed out harmful or useless genes?
• Is it that you don't believe in genetic mutation?

There was one apologist who answered saying that they didn't believe in heritability--he actually didn't believe that traits were based down from parent to child. I asked if he noticed that black parents typically have black kids and that tall parents usually have tall kids, but to that he said anecdotal evidence can't be used to show anything. Luckily, only one respondent went to this extreme a denial.

There was another apologist who didn't believe natural selection is a sufficient mechanism for the theory. I asked him to hear out this simplification of the process:

You have a random selection of rabbits in a room with the only food source on the ceiling. They all need to get up on their hind legs and stretch to try and get the food, but only about half can actually reach. Very quickly the ones who can't reach starve, most before mating. The remaining rabbits go about their lives, stretching for their food every day. Eventually they have kids. Given that the mating pool is taller rabbits, the next generation of bunnies inherit traits from taller rabbits--making the new generation taller, on average, than the group we started off with.

Say we very slowly raise the ceiling, weeding out rabbits that don't meet the new minimum height to eat. Each generation would be taller and taller as the shorter die off. Given that mutations occur, (which this apologist admitted do occur) some rabbits might even be taller or shorter or more or less stretchable or better or worse jumpers than the heritable gene pool suggests. Those with an advantage, the better jumpers, the more stretchable, the taller, whatever then mate and pass on their new mutation while useless mutations die off.

The apologist actually agreed that this would happen. So...does he believe in evolution now? Of course not. Once he couldn't deny evolution on a scale of a lot of generations he opted to deny evolution on a scale of a whole lot of generations. The vague micro- versus macro-evolution divide.

Yet another apologist argued that mutations and heredity happen, but only as changes or improvements on preexisting traits. In his words "this can give you blue eyes instead of brown but it cannot create eyes." He then went on to list the various cells that are absolutely required for a working photoreceptor in an effort to show that multiple mutations with no benefit would need to exist for generations before anything light sensitive could kick off the evolution of an eye...then I pointed out single-celled organisms that exists today, euglena, that demonstrates phototaxis (movement according to a light source) via a photoreceptor literally called an eyespot. At this point his brain seemed to get caught in a feed back loop.

There are many ways to deny evolution, just none that I've found are internally consistent or based on reality. For a reading of the exchange that prompted this post click here.

Asymmetrical Skepticism

Christians are skeptical.

Christians, and theists in general, are skeptical of life arising from non-life and the universe originating from quantum fluctuations they’ve never observed. They don’t feel inclined to believe that consciousness as deep and self-aware as ours can arise through random mutations that are built upon guided by selective pressure.

Don’t make fun of them for this.

They are right to be skeptical of these things. These are counter intuitive concepts with evidence that can’t be assessed directly by laymen and requires a large commitment to gain any competence.

Make fun of them for believing in miracles.

Where does that skeptical instinct they methodically apply to naturalism go in regards to virgin birth, resurrections, and transubstantiation? One one hand they deny living matter arising from unliving matter, but one the other they freely accept living matter arising from non-matter. It’s okay to be extremely skeptical of both--they are extraordinary claims that are so rare that we only have clear reason to believe one or the other happened once in the history of the universe--but be consistent.

Why? What specifically makes walking on water and the magical duplication of bread and fish more believable than quantum mechanics or a multiverse? Why be understandably skeptical about some extraordinary claims and so faithful about a host of others?

I've asked Christians these questions and the answers, when given, are never satisfying. If I had to distill their varied answers to a core principle, it's an emotional connection to their indoctrination. In lieu of understanding, embrace what is comfortable.

Consensus & Source

I see both atheists and theists finding a scientific study or paper from somewhere on the internet and posting it as a central support to their argument or claim. This study or paper might even be written by someone with a degree in a relevant field. That's great, but the internet is a big place and there are all kinds of people who use it. The interpretations of data and the conclusions to be drawn from them can vary as much as the agendas and biases of the article writers. The best thing to do is to only look at the data and apply your own encyclopedic knowledge gained from being an expert in the field to draw your own conclusions.

Oh, that’s right, I’m not. I only know the broad strokes of evolution, TV cosmology and pop-quantum physics. In other words, I don’t know shit. I know a lot more than the average guy walking down the street, but it’s relative. If I know anything, it's my limitations.

Which brings me to the conundrum. In order to talk about issues beyond my pay grade, I need to trust some of those papers and studies by the professionals. The best way I see to go about this is by focusing on consensus and source. Papers from respected journals with no clear agenda are more valuable than those from publishers with a vested interest in certain kinds of conclusions. The assessments supported by the majority of the community should be taken more seriously than fringe assessments by outliers.

I know this is the road to the fallacious arguments from authority and popularity, that’s why it’s important to consider source and consensus not as markers of truth, but as markers for a better likelihood of truth. It’s not perfect, but I can think of no better way. Can you?

A Gap In Every Argument

Many arguments for god(s) take something the apologist intellectually doesn't understand and compensates with an assumption that reinforces the belief they've been taught is true. Sometimes they disregard or deny the available information because it doesn't jive with their indoctrination (committing the fallacy of personal incredulity) and sometimes there is no information available in which case they are filling a gap in knowledge with their divine explanation of choice (called the god of the gaps.)

Example time.

Those who use the cosmological argument: "I don't know if the universe has an ultimate origin or what that might be, so let's assume there is and it's God."

Those who use the fine tuning argument: "I don't know if the constants that apply to our universe could be different nor how different nor do I know if there are other universes or variables, but let's assume they can differ wildly and our universe is unique because God designed it that way."

Those who use the argument from design: "I don't know how the diversity of complex organisms could have came to be as they are now, so let's say it's God."

Those who use the moral argument: "I don't know why I feel so strongly about certain things being right and other things being wrong, so God must have made me aware of those moral values."

In the case of the cosmological and fine tuning arguments, humanity hasn't nailed down the mechanics of the origin of the universe nor why the universe has the constants it does. We have theories that cover part of the answer and hypotheses that speculate the rest, but there is enough that we don't know that I consider these arguments, in part, god of the gaps arguments.

The argument from design and the moral argument are different. Since the Theory of Evolution, the only way to find the argument from design convincing is by sticking your head in the proverbial sand to avoid the evidence. Saying they are personally incredulous of evolution doesn't an argument make. The moral argument is more nuanced and, depending on definitions, suffers the same fate of the argument from design. There is enough selective pressure to be altruistic, especially within one's own gene-mates (which some call their family), that that feeling to be good is also covered with evolutionary theory.