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 Two

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 too.

"Religious Instincts."

Dr. Conway says that one of the few things atheists and theists agree on is that we have religious instincts. Judging from the original post’s comments, this certainly doesn’t seem the case, but I’d be willing to let the professor’s cited studies do the talking...if he only cited any. He merely mentioned that studies have been done. Dr. Conway should know that an audience of skeptics won’t take his word for it. As it is, there is nothing for me to address here. I have no studies, no interpretations of studies, nor specifics on what said studies were studying. Eventually, even the professor states he doesn’t care about this alleged research, nor will I.

It seems that an unjust jump must be made to say that the instincts and tendencies we may have are religious in nature--although it’s impossible to say not knowing exactly what specific instincts are in question. To fill out this post, I’ll guess.

Most of us have an innate barrier to sexual attraction toward those with which grow up, especially siblings. Looking at this tendency from the perspective of our culture, it appears like a moral instinct. Apologists claim moral instincts are evidence of God. Is this one of the religious instincts to which Dr. Conway refers? If so, I can explain this example without be pointing out the clear evolutionary benefit to incest aversion--seeing how it usually doesn’t bear offspring or increases the risk of birth defects. I’ll explore other seemingly moral instincts in my Rebuttal. Part Three dealing with morality.

I mentioned in my post to The Apologetic Professor that some people are naturally more trusting than others. We could call this a trusting instinct, which is highest in children. Parents know, kids will believe all kinds of crap. This is why I am opposed to religious indoctrination. It’s not fair to the kids. Their cognitive faculties aren’t completely online and will accept any answer to whatever basic inquires they may think up. Dr. Conway mentioned Santa, which largely works against his argument. Kids believe Santa not because they have a Christmas instinct, rather because they have a trusting instinct. A near defenseless youngster believing his or her world-wise parent is a survival trait that would be continuously selected from an evolutionary standpoint. Most people think Darwin set back apologetics only in regards to the Argument from Design, but evolutionary biology acts as a valid hurdle for many a theist assumption.

Finally, Dr. Conway states that he thinks probabilistically. As a poker player, I approve, although I wonder where faith comes in when one thinks God is only probable and not certain. I also question the probabilities the professor assigns to the variables. Just because two things are possible, doesn’t make them equally likely. This, again, will be a common thread as the rebuttal continues.

The Rebuttal, Part One

For this to make sense, please check out my post exchange with Dr. Luke Conway here and here.

First and foremost, thanks go out to The Apologetic Professor. It takes a high level of confidence in one’s beliefs to offer it to an entirely new, and let’s face it, less-than-receptive audience. Luke has this confidence. He also was willing to lend his audience’s eyes to a point of view contrary to what he believes. This is not common, not at all.

Here’s were it gets mildly insulting, Luke, but bare with me. The Apologetic Professor wasn’t my first choice for this meeting of the minds. I contacted the authors of other apologetic blogs first, most notably Apologetics315 and Truthbomb Apologetics. My motives were selfish to a degree. I knew these sites had a page rank higher than my own which would translate into my words reaching further into the interwebs. I got a lot of “thanks, but no thanks.” I pressed on researching other Christian blogs, finding few I liked, but many that were reputable within their community. I reached out those who were my peers in popularity. No takers. At this point I was going to cut my losses and write a post about how Christian apologists are so insecure about their own arguments that they’d rather preach to their choir than potentially save souls. I couldn’t deal with rejection any other way than to assume they were worried my words would topple the house of cards they built for their flock.

I never wrote that post. A last scan of Google brought me to The Apologetic Professor. At this point I was more concerned with content than metrics and his content was far more appealing than what I saw up until then. I found that Luke was an actual Professor of Psychology, which didn’t worry me nearly as much as it normally does when I find an outspoken believer in the education system. Sure, he’s well spoken and intelligent, but he also injects humor into otherwise dry and polarizing material. I’m a sucker for humor.

Thus ends my back-handed compliment. On to the the first part of my rebuttal.

“Seek and you will find.”

The Apologetic Professor offers decent advice, but not great. We see things through our own subjective lens developed by both conditioning and experience. Every story I've heard about signs from God are dripping with confirmation bias and superstition. We tend to find what we want to find, especially when the experiment is uncontrolled. So seek away...using the scientific method.

The whole point of the scientific method is to strip away biases and take the observer as much out of the equation as possible. Praying for a sign, seeing a white bird fly past at some point throughout the day, and interpreting the bird as the requested sign is pointless. Praying specifically for a white bird to fly past at high noon and recording the results is a much better start to ascertain the power of prayer. Find a way to objectively test your hypothesis, then test it, then repeat the test. Otherwise it's all just good vibes and vapor miracles.

And please, apologists, never assume the atheist you're speaking too hasn't sought God. Some haven't, but most have. I don't have stats for this other than anecdotal evidence and the fact that most people in the world are born into religious families and cultures. The topic of God comes up, often, and most of us pursue it. After all, who wouldn't want a personal relationship with a supreme being? I sought a few variations of the God Luke believes in. I didn't find him.

I will continue the rebuttal to the Apologetic Professor's post in three more parts to cover the three major points of the piece. Until then, check the comments from the original post. They are doing my job for me.

An Offering from the Opposition

I wish I could say I enjoy the ideological insulation of the yes men echo chamber that I’ve painstakingly assembled, but I don’t. You jerks still disagree with me--but that’s a good thing. The marketplace of ideas shouldn’t be one-stop shopping. For this reason, I’m shocking your system this week with a shot of Christianity courtesy of the last apologetic blogger I enjoy. Let me tell ya, I disagree with nearly everything this guy says, but I like how he says it. The Apologetic Professor is well spoken, seemingly sane, and has made me laugh on more than one occasion. I hope you don’t thoughtlessly dismiss what he has to say. Thoughtful dismissals only.

If you want more of me, the Apologetic Professor is posting the longest piece I’ve ever written on his site. Please comment here, there, everywhere and check back for our follow-up posts in which we will show that we’re in complete agreement on everything...I said sarcastically.

Do Not Wait on God

An atheist once gave the following advice about belief in God: “Wait and see. Or wait and don’t see.” The implication is that if you wait around long enough, you will finally decide that God does not exist…because He doesn’t. You cannot see a ghost.

It may surprise you, but there is a sense in which I completely agree with our unnamed atheist. Namely: I believe that if you wait around passively about the question of God, that you will likely not ever see Him.

You see, Jesus did not say “wait and you will find.” He said “seek and you will find.” Jesus openly encouraged you to explore the truth with an open mind.

Seeking is active; waiting is passive. If you just sit around on your hands, without ever truly exploring whether God actually exists with an open mind, you will be like someone who never sees Italy because you waited around in Montana.

Now, if you are the thinking person that I take you to be, you may reasonably say: Well, shoot, Mr. Christian-Pants (ok, please don’t call me that), God is God, right? I mean, if there is a God, why doesn’t He come to me? It’s all well and good to talk about not seeing Italy. But I have no reason to believe that Italy would come to me. Yet, I do wonder why the omnipotent Creator of the universe would make me seek Him to find Him? Shouldn’t I see Him anyway?

My answer to that perfectly reasonable question: I don’t know either. I could speculate (and indeed I have speculated about this question a bit on my blog). But the truth is: I did not design the universe. I certainly would not have allowed mosquitoes (or Michael Bolton or the Dallas Cowboys or 98 degree weather on Christmas day) if I had. I am not trying to claim I fully understand why the universe is what it is, exactly – though, as you’ll see, I think Christianity offers the best explanation that I know of. I am only trying to tell you that, until you have actively sought the truth about God with an open mind – and have not given up the pursuit until the day you die – you have not really followed the advice of Christ, and therefore should be cautious in claiming that it is invalid. I myself spent 4 years in a fuzzy state of half-Christian agnosticism – sometimes believing, always wondering – with apparent silence from Heaven before I became convinced of God’s existence. But during that time, I actively sought God. Granted, I sought God sporadically, imperfectly, stupidly…but I sought Him nonetheless.

So all I am asking of you is what I believe God is asking of you at this moment – I mean, this very
moment, the moment you are reading this, right now – and that is to honestly consider, with an open
mind, the legitimate possibility that He exists. With an open mind, I said. Not with the prejudice that
many of you have no doubt acquired. Maybe you’ve met religious hypocrites; well, I’ve met them, too. Many days, I no doubt am one of them. But stop thinking about them. They are irrelevant. Only the truth matters. If I’m right, then one day you will be standing, you alone, naked before the Creator of the universe…and you will have to answer for your life. The many dumb and mean hypocrites you and I have encountered will not be an excuse, in that moment, for our own choices. And deciding to simply close your mind to the possibility of the miraculous is a choice.

Now, it is in the spirit of open inquiry that I present three things for you to think about below. I do not present these as arguments designed to convince you of God’s existence. (If you read my blog, you will know that I do not believe there is such an argument). That would be ridiculous. Rather, I present these as things for you to ponder, openly and honestly, in the beginning or middle of an intellectual pursuit. Being in academia as I am, I have met many atheists, and indeed many of them I count among my best friends (ok, did I really just say that? Well, it’s true anyway). And many of them are open-minded, wonderful folk – and I have more in common with a seeking atheist than with some of the people that go to my church. I respect that kind of atheist. I am quite sure that many of my atheist friends will get into Heaven before I will. But I suspect that some of you have simply closed your mind to the issue because you have believed a lot of essentially myth-like statements about Christianity, or have never honestly challenged yourself to think hard about why people might actually reasonably believe in God. Maybe you are saying to God: OK, I’ll wait around and see, if you do something incredible, sure, I’ll believe then. But you aren’t seeking God like you mean it.

So I present these as food for thought – things to ponder as you decide the plausibility of God’s
existence or what Christianity is actually like. Many of these are issues I have elaborated upon in my own blog.

1. Religion is built into us. Let’s start with one of the few things that atheists and theists seem to agree on: People have religious instincts. Indeed, modern research (by atheists) in my own field suggests that people are, without higher-order thinking, by nature religious. Some other neuropsychology work with FMRIs suggests that religion is literally built into our brain. Other work in developmental psychology suggests that children, even children from secular homes, have something like an intuitive theism. Yet more work studying atheists suggests that most of them go through a kind of “religious” phase.

Now, I really don’t care about this research, because I find it unnecessary – it is obvious to me that people are primed in some form to believe in the supernatural. That’s kind of our unthinking default. We wanted Santa Claus to be real as children, whether we believed in him or not. The real question is: Is this some kind of primitive system that evolved by chance and does not correspond to anything real, or does it reflect some reality of religious truth? Does this intuitive system need to be overridden (as some claim) by higher-order processes, as when we cease to believe in Santa, or does it simply need to be understood by them and integrated into them? Is our religious instinct like our hunger instinct – does it exist because there is a real food to satisfy it? Or is it like our instinct that the sun moves around the earth – when in fact the opposite is true?

Well, I think both theories are plausible – both can account for the way we are. But that means that the theist theory is in fact plausible. That’s my point. I find many of the atheist arguments against what I believe intellectually as strange as you no doubt find many Christian arguments. Not because they are always bad, but because they are obviously false when stated as absolute proofs. I think probabilistically. Probabilistically speaking, I see no reason up front to choose between these two theories, if we are trying to explain why we have a religious instinct. Thus, contrary to what a lot of high-brow academics seem to think, theism certainly is a plausible theory of why our religious instinct exists. Indeed, it is clearly the straightforward, front-door answer to the question; much like a straightforward answer to the question of why we have hunger is because there is such a thing as food. That doesn’t make it true; but it ought to at least make blithe, unthinking dismissals of it the intellectually vapid things that they actually are.

2. Theism provides a more coherent view of morality than atheism. If you are an atheist, you are faced with the following intellectual problem that I, as a theist, do not have: Namely, you believe in a universe that has absolutely no moral will. Materialist atheism assumes that we are all atoms…and nothing but atoms. That universe cannot have a moral will. A chance physical process cannot, by definition, exist in order to produce morality. 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. And if those chance physical processes had happened to produce the thought killing for fun is cool in all our heads, then that’s what we’d believe, and that’s what morality would be…because there is no actual morality.

Indeed, that much is elementary – and certain. 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. (Philosophically speaking, I mean – atheists themselves are typically highly moral people – indeed, that’s the reason for the dilemma. More on that in a second). Morality has no meaning in that world.

Now that would all be well and good, except for the other fact: 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.

But the atheist philosophy is not at all a comfortable fit with this practical atheistic moralism. Atheism actually provides no real reason to suppose morality has any meaning. It’s like trying to build a science without believing in the scientific method.

Well, my philosophy does not have this intellectual incoherence. My philosophy says that God built morality into the fabric of the universe; that the moral law that exists in my head to avoid killing my neighbor for fun exists because, well, it really is actually bad to kill my neighbor for fun. This intellectual coherence does not make my beliefs true – and Christianity has its own intellectual difficulties, to be sure – but I am not trying to provide a proof, only to open a door for sound thinking. Atheism may digest some facts about the universe more easily than Christianity; but this is not one of them. And the thinking person should consider all sides of the facts when deciding on the possibility of a theory being true or not.

3. Christianity is a highly intellectual enterprise. One of the most curious things about much of the modern atheist attack on Christianity is its bold assertions of how stupid and unintellectual we all are. These sorts of things make me laugh, not just because I am an academic whose research has been featured in USA Today and the Washington Post...and who has been interviewed on BBC Radio and NPR…but also because they are so historically and comically indefensible. I gave a whole talk on this topic which the curious can access on my blog, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it in this already-too-long blog post. I will limit myself here to saying that (a) even secular historians credit Christianity with creating the very icon of intellectualism, the modern university system, (b) 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, (c) Christianity has spread literacy and education pretty much everywhere it has ever taken root, and (d) 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. (The primary difference between thinking and unthinking people is the thinking person recognizes their untestable assumptions and can defend them; the unthinking person is simply unaware of them).

All of this to say: Some of you may have the idea that you are smarter than Christians because you are atheists…as if that is enough. But that’s just a stereotype (one of the things I’ve studied in my career) – a stereotype with little basis in reality. Christians are a highly intellectual group as a whole, historically-speaking. It’s tough to argue that Christians are opposed to intellectualism when we created so many intellectual disciplines, and indeed created many of the very mechanisms by which intellectualism itself grows and advances (the university and the scientific method, to name a couple).

Now, I partially blame this rather bizarre view of Christianity on Pat Robertson and some truly anti-intellectual elements of the modern North American church…so don’t think I’m blaming you. There’s plenty of blame to go around here. Nor am I saying that I’m smarter than you because I’m a Christian. That would be ridiculous. Atheists as a group also have much to be proud of in terms of their intellectual contribution to the world’s body of knowledge – for example, a disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners are atheists. This isn’t in any way intended to denigrate atheists…only to remove what I believe is a completely indefensible view – a view that in my experience, many atheists hide behind without facing the real intellectual issues head-on – a view that suggests Christians are just stupid, so why bother with them? Well, we aren’t stupid at all; having faith is not stupid; and there’s an end to that.

Death and Penalties

So we have Dzhokhar Tsarneav in custody, a kid with a charge of “using a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death.” It’s an impressive crime, insofar as crimes can be impressive, but I kinda wished they tacked on a possession of marijuana charge for good measure. As it is, this kid either faces life in prison or the death penalty, which got me thinking more about the surviving Boston marathon bomber.

First, there’s way too much unneeded discussion on the guy. I know the 24 hour news cycle needs to fill time and I’m as tired of Justin Bieber stories as he next guy, but it’s already starting to sound like the bomber is a victim in the narrative. Frankly, I don’t care if the surviving bomber came from a culture where brothers stick together and was stuck with a manipulative extremist sibling. I don’t care if he came from a hostile environment, was indoctrinated or was born with a dusting of psychopathy. We are all victims of our brain chemistry, genes, upbringing and surroundings--that doesn’t lift responsibility off the guilty. If these topics matter, we need to address them with solutions in mind that can be applied to our future safety. If his culture is the problem, the culture should be changed. If Islam promotes extremism, then Muslims should fix that or the rest of us should judge them accordingly. I don’t know what parts of the story are true anymore, but it applies to all the acts of violence in the news from here to the dawn of man.

My second thought is this: how are Christians supportive of the death penalty? While not all Christians are conservative and not all conservatives approve of capital punishment, there’s no argument that there isn’t massive overlaps in this ideological Venn Diagram. Not only do Christians need to ignore everything their namesake preached from “turn the other cheek” to “love thy enemy,” they also are taking responsibility for hastening the criminals decent into hell without a fair shot at forgiveness. I don’t mean forgiveness from society, I mean forgiveness from the Almighty in which they believe.

Ironically, atheists are generally liberal who are generally against capital punishment. I don’t have the hold up of breaking a divine law that transcends humanity. “Thou shalt not kill” is an awesome guideline, but I can waive it when taking a serial killer permanently off the board. Apparently Christians can waive it too, but only hypocritically. Not only do they endorse infinite torture for finite crimes by worshipping the God who instates it, they do their best to limit the chances of rehabilitation/confession/conversion/whatever they believe is necessary to enter the Kingdom of God. It really boggles my mind that these types of Christians claim the moral high ground on anything.

On Persecution

After the man we know as Jesus kicked the bucket, his followers had a hard road ahead. The ruling class was largely unimpressed by the alleged miracles and sought to suppress speech and action that could be seen as revolutionary or offensive to their god of choice. Early Christians would meet in secret for their safety at a kind of church speakeasy. I imagine the first rule of Christ Club was that you did not talk about Christ Club. When met with a newcommer, they faced a dilemma. Should they turn away a person of faith or reveal themselves to a potential sting operation?

I doubt what follows is the invention of the secret handshake (especially since hands aren’t involved,) but it was likely an early iteration of the concept. Here’s how it went down: A Christian would draw an arch in the sand with his sandal, then a second Christian would reveal himself as a friend by drawing an intersecting arch--making what we would recognize as the Jesus fish in the sand.

A Catholic priest told me this story. It may or may not be true. I don’t have a great track record gaining accurate information from clergy. Since this tale contains no miracles and Snopes wasn’t around back then, I’ll at least accept it’s premise. Christians were persecuted. They are still persecuted in some parts of the world, Muslim countries for example. You know who else are persecuted in Muslim countries? Atheists and Jews and, well, non-Muslims. Every minority viewpoint that runs contrary to the majority is persecuted.

What gets me is that Christians in America still say they are persecuted. Relatively speaking, that is ridiculous. We just came out of an election year where one of the more accepted-as-kooky Christian sects. Mormons, had a candidate that almost won! To the so-called persecuted Christians out there, what chance would an open atheist have had running on the Republican ticket? None. Zero. Come 2016, there isn’t a political advisor in the country, Democrats included, that would recommend coming out as atheist prior to election.

“Coming out.” We actually have a name for the reveal of our divine disbelief. Technically, we share the term with gays...who I should mention are far better represented in the media then atheists. Out of the 20 proud atheists I've interviewed, only seven use their full real name--or should I say at most seven, I haven't confirmed even those names aren't aliases. Each blogger has put a ton of time into their projects and can barely take credit of them because of the association to their real life could bring negative consequences. It's sad. And here I am, Grundy. No, my parents weren't mean enough to name me Grundy, but if they knew the extent of atheist activism I engage in, I would never hear the end of it. I am forced to live with an alias and not teach my mom how to use a computer.

If you're a put-upon Christian or make-believe martyr, I don't want to hear it. My country is one where those who don't accept a history of magic are pariahs.

The Revelation

Yeah, so remember my Easter post? You should, it was yesterday.

I’ll come right out and say it, I had a revelation. My Easter post was meant as a snarky set-up for a post about the impotency of prayer. Looking back at where I was when I wrote it, I feel like a fool...and yet, I’m very grateful that it was written. It lead me to my revelation.

I don’t know where to begin writing. My hands are just on auto-pilot, so bear with me. (I wonder if this is how the authors of the Bible felt.) The atheist perspective is that prayer can’t be meaningful because people can and do pray against each other. For example, I pray for Team A to win while someone else prays for Team B to win. Since we can't know what the Lord has planned, it's even possible for us to pray against God’s will. I still think this is a valid point, to a degree, but I can’t ignore the coincidence of it. My reader's prayers were answered, they just can't be quantified. God always knew this would be when I was saved and He also knew I would be prayed for. In this way, I know your prayers helped. If you didn't pray for me, you may ask "how do you know I was prayed for in the first place?" I could feel it! No, I’m not that connected to the divine just yet. I read it. I received an Easter email from a Christian that told me exactly what I needed to hear. I have since wrote him back asking for permission to post his letter, in hopes it will touch my many atheist readers like it has touched me. So far, no response. It will have to wait for another post.

You should know that I went to church with my wife’s Catholic family on Sunday. As an atheist, I generally agreed to show up on holidays to spend time with the in-laws, secretly critiquing the homily in my mind. I couldn’t think of anything this time around. Strangely, I drew a blank. The service all happened so fast, very different from how I usually feel it drag on. I left the church an atheist, same as always--but in a daze.

Family dinner was pleasant, the evening went well. I barely had a concept for my life changing. In my interviews with Christians-turned-atheists, I've learned the change is usually gradual. From cult to mainstream to liberal believer to agnostic to atheist. I wonder if the conversion to atheism moves slowly because it is unnatural or against God's will. Either way, the Lord provided me the perspective needed to hasten my reconversion.

Did I have an “a-ha,” or perhaps an “amen!” moment? If I did, it happened between the hours of 11pm and 5am. I woke up with  the force of knowledge only an epiphany of this magnitude could deliver. My revelation? It was the first of April. All Fools' Day.

Happy Mr. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from a guy with no time for saints!

Take an argument for God to appraise
Debunk it and watch them rephrase
To language that confuses
And maintains their excuses
To feel superior to atheists and gays

The bible is a guide to morality
(Providing we ignore the brutality)
But the guide is unwise
When it no longer applies
To any semblance of modern reality

Biblical spectacles were so ambitious
Now consider their absence suspicious
Yes, the poem is satirical
To show a divine miracle
Is, was, and forever will be fictitious

Here are a few from the archives.

Here are some others I found via Google+.

Maybe I should get into Haikus. :-)

The Truth Is Out There, We Just Can't Reach It

I used to debate theists on the merits of evolution, the origins of the universe, and the foundations of morality. I never thought I’d say it, but those were the good ol’ days. I’ve had seven of my last ten apologetic opponents throw literally everything into question as soon as they realized they weren’t debating a newb. It's finally happened. They've come to the conclusion that there’s only one defensive strategy when the entirety of human knowledge is mounting against their belief: to throw human knowledge under the bus.

Epistemology (\i-ˌpis-tə-ˈmä-lə-jē\) is the study of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity. Apologists have their own theory on the validity of knowledge--that is, knowledge is only valid when grounded in the divine. There is no truth, only Truth. The capital “T” relates the word to the imaginary and changes the definition to the less accepted yet, in their minds, more accurate attribute and/or synonym of God.

The apologist is applying the philosophical argument that objective truth is impossible to determine to the naturalistic worldview. This speaks to my aversion to pointless philosophy, and yet, I must admit, I can’t refute their claim. When I take into account thought experiments in which our reality could be an elaborate holographic simulation or our brains could be drugged and electrically stimulated to perceive things that are false, I intellectually have no choice but to accept that any objective truth is out of my jurisdiction. Where the apologist goes wrong is their claim of exception.

Any philosophical argument for why I can’t know what I believe can also be applied to Catholics, Fundamentalists, Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Taoists, Scientologists, Buddhists, Pagans, Occultists, Rastafarians, whatever. In a naturalistic framework, we are all in the same uncertain boat. Claiming divine revelation of capital “T” Truth isn’t an argument based on reason or logic, it’s a claim of exception based on probable myth--which tends to be unconvincing to those who actually value reason and logic. Moreover, believers face further uncertainty simply by subscribing to a supernatural worldview. Sure, their brains could be in something as pedestrian as vats, but also could their brains be telepathically manipulated by any number of magical entities (gods included,) forever beyond our ability to quantify. For the supernaturalist, all bets are off, giving any epistemological high ground to the naturalist.

While I can’t deny philosophical uncertainty, I see no reason to apply it. Absolute truth is beyond our grasp, fine. Then there’s no point in trying to grasp it. I’m pragmatic. If something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck--that’s good enough for me. It’s a duck--especially if others agree. There is something to be said for consensus reality. Essential truth is what we can ascertain about our consensus reality, and science is the most objective method to ascertaining this truth. When I say something is true, I mean it is the best, most objective data available. It’s not capital “T” Truth, but then nothing is.

Shave and a Faith Cut

Little known fact about Occam, he labeled his razors.

On-line Debate Goes Postal!

You've probably heard this before:

If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby.

A theist and I carried the analogy of stamp collection as religion further on Google+. Some might say too far. I thought I'd share.

Theist: I have been informed that there is a Google+ community for Atheism. I'm not sure what would be discussed in such a community, since atheism is about not subscribing to something. 

I don't collect stamps, so I think I will start a Google+ community for those of us who don't collect stamps. We can all log in and discuss...ummm...how we....um...don't collect stamps, I guess? ...and....ummm...maybe make fun of those who do ... ?

Me: If stamp collectors decided those that didn't want to collect stamps were less moral people and the collector's handbook claimed some were going to hell and the collector club's top positions discriminated against women and gays, I imagine a group of non collectors would form in protest. 

Theist: At that moment, the stamp collectors would probably inform the non-stamp collectors that they don't know what they're talking about and that maybe they should read the collector's handbook using proper hermeneutics instead of behaving like a fundamentalist stamp collector. 

Me: The stamp collection hobby has broken into so many different organizations, each with different hermeneutics of said handbook and some with entirely different handbooks or handbook companions that it's too hard to tell what the price of a stamp is these days. 

Theist: Then I guess some research will be required before commenting on what stamp collecting is or isn't and what the price of a stamp should be. 

Me: True, but since so many are moving to email, I doubt stamps will continue to be relevant enough in developed countries to take up collecting in the first place. They will probably be lost to history like other antiquated means of communication like the pony express and carrier pigeons.

Gaps All The Way Down

“God of the gaps” is a type of theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence. (from Wikipedia) History has shown us that many gaps can and have been filled as scientific knowledge grows. So much so, in fact, that it is perfectly reseasonable to assume that there is a natural explaination for our remaining gaps. Theists tend not to come to this conclusion, for obvious reasons, but I wonder how long this conclusion may be avoided.

The best example of a closed gap is Darwin’s shutdown of the argument from design. Of course, I realize there are still individuals and backward denominations that dismiss evolution as a valid explainer of the world’s biological complexity, but if the slow-to-come-around Catholic Church is on board, it’s safe to say that the others are simply in denial. From most of my interactions with honest theists, their main beef with “evolution” is that it is incomplete--meaning that it doesn’t take into account life’s ultimate origin. We should recognize this for what it is: a misunderstanding of the Theory of Evolution’s scope, a moving of the goal post from the argument of design to entirely different argument, and a detour from one closed gap to another open gap.

Darwin closing one of the biggest gaps unintensionally converted many theists across the world. Atheist favorite, Richard Dawkins, wrote that he would still be swayed by life’s apparent design if not for the Theory of Evolution. However, explaining the complexity of life doesn’t explain the existence of life. Our biological origin is still an open gap. Science calls it abiogenesis. We have some ideas how it could have happened, but no reproducable experiments to prove which hypothesis is correct. Like the other gap of note, the ultimate origin of the universe, we are unsure. Whether you’re in the quantum foam camp, the violation of causality camp, or any of the other camps that could all be possible from what we see at the quantum level, there’s no smoking gun...yet. My question to theists is this: would settling your lingering questions allow you to let go of God? Humanity is crazy smart. I used to think some answers would be forever beyond our grasp, but now that I have a clearer sense of where science is going, I wouldn’t take anything off the table. My advice? Don’t take atheism off the table. It’s already the most reasonable worldview, and it’s getting more reasonable everyday.

I realize this is my second post directed towards theists in a couple weeks and I'm fully aware that mostly atheists read this blog. I am trying to engage some believers so that I'm not always preaching to the choir (ironically.)

Whether you are theist or atheist, I'd be interested in your opinion of the truth of this statement:

Theists accept that there are some things are beyond our understanding while atheists accept that there are some things we don't yet understand.

Thanks for reading.

Magic Salvation

An Open Letter to Theists

Theists, we need to talk. I know your kneejerk reaction toward this blog and myself is dismissal. I do, after all, regularly attempt to disprove your one true God, but the fact that I just used the phrasing “attempt to” should be seen as an olive branch. I know I’m not always right, but I’m pretty damn sure the following is in all of our best interest. Please, humor me.

I’m prepared to let you keep on believing what you believe without constant badgering...as long as you try to understand. I don’t mean understand me, or understand atheists, I mean understand in general. You believe God created life, the universe and everything--fine, just don’t stop there. Try to understand how God did it. Supernatural explanations are dead ends in knowledge and poison to curiosity  As a member of humanity, you belong to an enormous team who has never given up searching for answers even when a wall is hit. Walls are temporary. We learned how cells work, but, wanting to learn more, we looked deeper. We found atoms and still strive to understand further. The discovery of protons, neutrons and electrons allowed for us to make our life and the life of others easier through invention and innovation, so it stood to reason that more could be gained by looking deeper. We did and continue to do so. Saying that Thor or Zeus brings the lightning is an explanation of sorts, but it wasn’t until we attempted to know how Thor brought it did we understand that lightning had a completely natural explanation. Consider that abiogenesis, the ultimate origin of the universe, and other gaps in the knowledge that divides us might have a natural explanation as well.

Einstein said “I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.” Do that! Seek to learn the mind of God by accepting science, learning it, and doing some of your own. It’s not playing God to be master of the reality He made us to have dominion over, if in fact He did. Maybe what you learn will shake the foundations of your prior beliefs or maybe it will reinforce them. Either way, you’ll be closer to the truth you claim to seek. The secular don't tend to believe that claim, let's say you prove it.

The Twofold Problem of Fairness

Christians believe, by definition, that there is but one way into heaven and that is the acceptance of Jesus Christ. From here, there are as many disagreements as there are churches. I picture a sliding scale with “live according to Christ’s teachings” on one side and “have complete faith that Jesus died for our, and, more importantly, Adam and Eve’s sins” on the other. Most Christian traditions value both ends of the spectrum, but all seem to implicitly or explicitly place more weight on one more than the other. I’d argue both premises for the most widely distributed religion in the world are flawed by something I call the problem of fairness. In fact, I will argue it, right now.

Let’s look first at “live according to Christ’s teachings.” This is already ambiguous in that the biblical carpenter sends mixed (if not contradictory) messages about how to live. While a problem in it’s own right, it doesn’t factor into my argument from fairness, so let’s imagine Christ’s message is wholly positive and consistent with modern values.

The problem of fairness lies in the fact that not every person has the same opportunity to be good. A poor child without a positive role model--say with a deadbeat dad and an alcoholic mother--statistically has a much higher likelihood to sin than an upper-class kid with an intact family. I’m talking about the BIG sins here--theft, rape, murder--harmful deeds rather than the less-than-honorable thoughts some theists claim are their equal.

Ask yourself, why would God judge someone born into a culture that doesn’t value ethics and must sin to survive as harshly as someone who wants for nothing and was raised into a compatible moral code? As the world is, the Almighty needs to grade on a curve. If He was truly fair, we’d all be put on the same playing field and terms like “the cycle of violence” would have no meaning.

On the other end of the spectrum we are more concerned with belief and less with sin, yet the problem of fairness is still in full effect. For a child born into the “correct” faith of such-and-such flavor of Christianity, indoctrination makes acceptance of Christ natural, but consider a Indian kid who dies before he is ever exposed to religion outside Hinduism. Consider people of a different place and time isolated from evangelization. Consider someone like me who has a skeptical disposition and seeks truth in the form of evidence and logical consistency. If, in fact, it’s Christ’s way or the highway to hell, God has screwed us all with a scarcity of or an aversion to the one true God.

Atheists often cite the problem of evil as a defeater of a benevolent God, but I tend to opt out of this cliche despite it’s obvious truth for two reasons. First, Christians often have a response chambered from their apologetic source of choice--usually placing the responsibility of evil on man, citing free will or the fall from Eden. While neither avenue is valid (considering that God’s omnipotence in regards to the future implies a lack of free will and the fall was preceded by evil serpents) the chambered response shows they’ve heard it all before and have defended their mind against conflicting input. Second, an atheist admitting that evil exists at all will prompt some Christian debaters to detour the conversation to the argument from morality because they only define “evil” in terms of their religion. I’d rather the debate stay on topic. Replacing “evil” with “fairness” is both more specific and more accurate for my biggest problems with religious dogma.

Sadly, the world isn’t fair. This leaves two options: the universe is unguided and shit just happens, or the universe is guided by a force unlike what the Abrahamic religions have to offer.

Grundy Disagrees #3

I've been disagreeing all over the Internet, so I figure it's time to post a couple more.

I argue against the Fine Tuning Argument to find the debate branched into a subject I've never heard of before--a Boltzmann Brain universe. The blogger claims it is a problem for positing a multiverse as an avenue for the anthropic principle to make sense of our life-friendly fundamental constants. I actually consider the apparent fine tuning of the universe the best evidence for a designed universe, but mostly because all the other arguments are just so bad. The blogger then turned the debate to a version of the cosmological argument, which anyone can tell from my recent posts, I consider intellectually bankrupt at his point. I said...

The cosmological argument is constantly subject to new forms in an effort to adjust for legitimate criticism, but ultimately they all rest on the same assumptions–that the universe needs a cause and that the cause must be God. If you define God as simply the thing that causes the universe, then I freely admit that God could exist, but most define God as an agent possessing will/intellect/personality/and the like, which is an assumption unwarranted by the Leibnizian cosmological argument or any other form. I find the fine tuning argument superior because it implies the cause (God) had an active role in deciding the nature of the effect (the universe.) This choice is enough to show agency, at least for me.

Ironically, while this disagreement continued, I debated with the atheist author of Somewhat Abnormal for the Fine Tuning Argument (kinda.) He tried turning the argument on it's head to make it an argument for atheism, which just didn't hold up. He basically admitted as much. I said to a commenter:

There is a fine tuning argument for life within our universe and a fine tuning argument for life within any possible universe. You seem to be referring to the argument that life on earth is fine tuned. This appears true in that life as we know it could only exist under parameters very similar to earth’s--we aren’t too close or too far away from a star that isn’t too hot or too cold; we have the right atmosphere; we have Jupiter to catch or redirect asteroids and comets away from us; ect. However, there are so many stars and planets in our universe that the odds of other earth-like situations existing somewhere in the universe is high. The original poster is taking into account the anthropic principle which makes the fine tuning argument for life within our universe a very weak one. 

I disagree that the anthropic principal can be applied to the fine tuning argument for life within any possible universe because we don’t have the required information to make this judgement. We know that there are a shitload of stars and planets, we only know that there is one universe. There could be more, but we can’t assume that. The fine tuning argument for naturalism as stated here just doesn’t work. It’s true an omnipotent being could maintain life where life shouldn’t exist, but this is beside the point.

Then the conversation turned to poker and probability, both of which I love.

Bonus quicky: I debated the Kalam over here and then again here where he posted an explanation to a straw man version of my originally stated problems with the Kalam.

A God out of Time

Click to Embiggen

Seventh Day Revisions

Resting for an omnipotent being seems odd to me--especially for one who apparently didn’t do anything with His eternal life up until the book of Genesis. It’s one of the many (many, many) reasons I don’t accept the bible at face value. This got me thinking...what could the bible say about that 7th day to make the story just a little more believable? I’ll give it a shot. Update your holy books, Christians, you can thank me later.

• On the 7th day, God went off his medication.
• On the 7th day, God planted fossils to cover his tracks.
• On the 7th day, God created a talking snake to undermine his plans.
• On the 7th day, God developed multiple personality disorder.
• On the 7th day, God adds defective genes, unused biology, occasional congenital diseases and birth defects, and other design flaws to his creations.
• On the 7th day, God establishes a place of eternal torment to send those who refuse to believe he is a loving god.
• On the 7th day, God created narcissists and sociopaths in his image.
• On the 7th day, God gave man the imagination to come up with crazy notions like, well, gods.
• On the 7th day, God rested...and every day thereafter. Amen.

Have a 7th day revision of your own? Add it in the comments!

I Have So Many Questions...