Monthly Archives: September 2014

25 Stupid Arguments Christians Should Avoid

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stupid Christian argumentsHey, gang! Get your Christian Fallacy Bingo cards ready, and cross off the bogus arguments as they’re called out! These are some of the dumb arguments apologists often use. Christians, do us all a favor—yourself especially—and make good arguments. These aren’t what you want to use.

Stupid Argument #1: the consequences of atheism are depressing. Atheism is sad or unfortunate or otherwise discouraging, or atheism declares that life is hopeless and meaningless.

This is like saying that the consequences of earthquakes and hurricanes are sad or unfortunate. Sure, the consequences of reality can be sad, but that doesn’t make them untrue. “Atheism is depressing; therefore, it’s false” is a childish way of looking at the world. A pat on the head might make us feel better, but are we not adults looking for the truth?

As for life being meaningless, I find no ultimate meaning, but then neither can the Christian. I have plenty of the ordinary kind of meaning. Look up the word in the dictionary—there is nothing about God or about ultimate or transcendental grounding. (More on objective truth here.)

Stupid Argument #2: I sense God’s presence; therefore, God exists.

The argument is more completely stated: If God existed, I would sense his presence; I sense God’s presence; therefore, God exists. This is the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent (if P then Q; Q; therefore P). I’ve discussed this in more detail here.

I can’t tell whether you’ve deluded yourself or whether you’re justified in believing in a supernatural experience. Nevertheless, your subjective personal experience may be convincing to you, but it won’t convince anyone else.

Stupid Argument #3: defending God’s immoral actions. Christians might say that genocide or slavery was simply what they did back then, and God was working within the social framework of the time. Or they might say that God might have his own reasons that we mortals can’t understand.

This is just embarrassing. You’re seriously going to handwave away God’s being okay with slavery and ordering genocide? If it’s wrong now, it was wrong then. How do you get past the fact that the Old Testament reads just like the blog of an early Iron Age tribal people rather than the actual wisdom of the omniscient creator of the universe? And if you dismiss slavery as not that big a deal, would you accept Old Testament slavery in our own society?

As for God having his own unfathomable reasons for immoral actions, this is the Hypothetical God Fallacy. No, we don’t start with God and then fit the facts to support that presupposition; we follow the facts where they lead—whether toward God or not.

Stupid Argument #4: I’ll believe the first-century eyewitnesses over modern historians. The Christian gives more weight to writings closer to the events.

The Christian wants license to dismiss unwanted ideas from modern sources. It’s fair to be concerned about the accretion of layers of dogma or tradition over time, but a good New Testament historian would try to do the opposite and strip away these layers to uncover the history of the first century.

As for the “eyewitness” claim, this is often slipped in without comment or justification. None of the gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts. That Matthew and Luke (to take two of them) borrow heavily from Mark—often copying passages word for word—make clear that they’re not eyewitness accounts. And those gospels that do make the claim (the Gospel of Peter, for example) are rejected by the church. Show compelling evidence for the remarkable eyewitness claim before confidently tossing it out.

Of course, getting closer to the events is a good policy. Problem is, this doesn’t work to Christianity’s favor. We’re separated from both Islam and Mormonism by less time than from Christianity. Mormonism in particular fares much better than Christianity in a historical analysis (more here). This is an argument the Christian wants to avoid.

What arguments should be in this list?

There will be some controversy about this list. Maybe some of these have enough merit that they deserve more space. Maybe you’d combine or divide them differently. And I’m sure there are plenty that I’ve forgotten.

At the very least, referring back to the argument number might be a shorthand way for us to respond to bogus arguments by Christian commenters. But my hope is that thoughtful Christians will understand the problems behind these arguments and minimize them in their own discourse.

Continue with Part 2.

DNA and [radioisotope] dating shows that
we evolved with all life over billions of years.
Bible says God created us from dust and ribs.
I’m torn.
— Ricky Gervais

Appendix: 25 Stupid Arguments Christians Should Avoid (Complete List)

Continue with Part 2.

 

Church Civil Disobedience: Pulpit Freedom Sunday

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church nonprofit statusIt’s another dreaded election year, and Pulpit Freedom Sunday, where pastors violate the law and critique candidates for political office, is around the corner (October 5, 2014).

The leaders of many religious organizations somehow feel imposed upon by the IRS because they can’t politick from the pulpit, as if that somehow comes along when preaching the gospel. But why? They can speak out all they want on social issues. No one forced tax-exempt donations on them—in fact, they took them willingly—so it’s surprising that they’re now chafing at the regulations that come along for the ride. The solution is easy: if nonprofit status is a deal with the devil, then don’t accept nonprofit status.

The Internal Revenue Service makes clear that churches and pastors may organize non-partisan voter education activities, voter registration, and get-out-the-vote drives (with an emphasis on non-partisan). Religious leaders speaking for themselves can say whatever they want, and they can speak “about important issues of public policy.”

However, all nonprofit organizations, including religious organizations

are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office. Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made by or on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity. … Religious leaders cannot make partisan comments in official organization publications or at official church functions. …

[Nonprofits] must avoid any issue advocacy that functions as political campaign intervention. Even if a statement does not expressly tell an audience to vote for or against a specific candidate, an organization delivering the statement is at risk of violating the political campaign intervention prohibition if there is any message favoring or opposing a candidate.

But some pastors can’t accept this. I don’t know if they honestly think that it’s unfair or if they figure that they’ve already tipped the playing field so much in their favor that they’ll try their luck for even more, but the Alliance Defense Fund has organized the annual Pulpit Freedom Sunday. On this day:

The pastors will exercise their First Amendment right to preach on the subject [of the moral qualifications of candidates seeking public office], despite federal tax regulations that prohibit intervening or participating in a political campaign. …

The point of the Pulpit Initiative is very simple: the IRS should not be the one making the decision by threatening to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status. We need to get the government out of the pulpit.

Wow—strange thinking. Tax-exempt status is granted by the government. It’s a contract, not a right, and it comes with strings attached. If we the public will be subsidizing an organization, we are entitled to limit its actions. No one’s strong-arming the church, and they can drop both the nonprofit status and the strings attached any time they want.

The motivation seems clear. Conservative politicians know that churches will in general tip the balance in their favor, so they do what they can to whip up anger about an imagined injustice.

The head of the IRS addressed this conflict of tax-exempt status and freedom of speech:

Freedom of speech and religious liberty are essential elements of our democracy. But the Supreme Court has in essence held that tax exemption is a privilege, not a right, stating, “Congress has not violated [an organization’s] First Amendment rights by declining to subsidize its First Amendment activities.”

If the IRS constraints against speaking out on political issues are a problem, then don’t enter into a contract with the IRS. Drop your nonprofit status, tell church members that they can no longer deduct donations, and then you can give your opinion about any candidate or issue.

But to keep your nonprofit status, you must follow the rules.

See also: “What Do Churches Have to Hide?”

No man ever believes that the bible means what it says;
he is always convinced that it says what he means
— George Bernard Shaw

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/11/12.)


Photo credit: Wikimedia

Making Sense of “Survival of the Fittest”

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Survival of the FittestThe term “survival of the fittest” did not initially come from Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, though later editions did use it. It was first coined by Herbert Spencer after he read Origin.

While a convenient phrase, it can be confusing. “Fit” in biological terms doesn’t mean what we commonly think (strong, quick, or agile, for example) but refers to how well adapted an organism is for an environment. Think of it as puzzle-piece fit, not athlete fit. Shortly after Origin, one commenter recommended “fittedness” instead of “fitness,” which might make a clearer mental image.

Creationists sometimes use the phrase to mean that might makes right or that the most savage or ruthless or selfish will survive. On the contrary, rather than might makes right, cooperation can be the better approach. This is the case for social animals like humans and other great apes. And even if evolution has some bloodthirsty aspects to it, how does that change whether it’s an accurate theory or not?

NewScientist magazine says:

Although the phrase conjures up an image of a violent struggle for survival, in reality the word “fittest” seldom means the strongest or the most aggressive. On the contrary, it can mean anything from the best camouflaged or the most fecund to the cleverest or the most cooperative. Forget Rambo, think Einstein or Gandhi.

What we see in the wild is not every animal for itself. Cooperation is an incredibly successful survival strategy. Indeed it has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life. Complex cells evolved from cooperating simple cells. Multicellular organisms are made up of cooperating complex cells. Superorganisms such as bee or ant colonies consist of cooperating individuals.

Note also that evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive; it simply says what is the case and doesn’t provide moral advice. “I’ll model my morality on evolution” makes as much sense as “I’ll model my morality on the fact that arsenic kills people.”

Creationists sometimes twist Darwin’s The Descent of Man to argue that he favored eugenics. Darwin’s damning paragraph said, in part, “hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” In the first place, whether Darwin ate babies plain or with barbeque sauce says nothing about whether evolution is accurate or not. In the second place, the very next paragraph clarifies Darwin’s position about denying aid to the helpless.

Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.

“Survival of the fittest” is a handy description of natural selection as long as all parties understand what it means.

Blogs are the opium dens of the 21st century.
— commenter Asmondius

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/21/12.)

Photo credit: EvolveFish

Pygmies, Buffalo, and Christian Hardwiring

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Half a century ago, anthropologist Colin Turnbull spent several years with Mbuti pygmies in eastern Congo. On one occasion, he took his Mbuti assistant to an overlook that offered a view of a distant plain where buffalo grazed. The Mbuti were familiar with buffalo, but they lived their lives in the forest and were not familiar with distance. The assistant pointed to the distant buffalo and asked what kind insects they were.

To him, distance was measured in meters, not kilometers, and he refused to believe that the bugs were actually huge animals.

(This was the point that Father Ted tried to make with Dougal when he contrasted the plastic toy cows with cows in a field: “These are small, but the ones out there are far away.”)

Escape from Camp 14

A more discouraging example of this hardwiring is the story of a 26-year-old man who escaped in 2005 from a North Korean prison camp, first to China, then South Korea, and then the United States. He was in the prison camp, not because he had committed a crime, but because he had been born there as the child of two inmates.

Though he made it to freedom, the story doesn’t have a particularly happy ending. Life had taught him since birth that survival meant husbanding precious energy by shirking work. Survival was immediate—steal food or shoes, avoid punishment, hide to rest from difficult manual labor. He adapted poorly in the West to the vaguer notion that if he didn’t arrive on time or didn’t complete his work that he might eventually lose his job.

Christian Hardwiring

This is similar to Christians who seem hardwired to not be able to see what, to atheists, seem obvious—for example, that the skepticism that Christians apply to other religions sinks theirs as well. Or that “the atheist worldview is hopeless,” whether true or not, is irrelevant to someone looking for the truth. Or that quoting the Bible does nothing to satisfy the atheist’s demand for evidence.

Remember the Mbuti assistant? He adjusted to the idea of distant animals and size constancy over a few days. And the Clergy Project—an intellectual halfway house for clergy who are losing or have lost the faith—shows that even the most-invested believers can choose reason over Christianity.

Other links:

  • Patheos has a new blog, Rational Doubt, started by members of the Clergy Project.
  • I argue that no well-informed atheist becomes a Christian for intellectual reasons here.

Study one religion, and you’ll be hooked for life.
Study two religions, and you’re done in an hour.
— Anon.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Proof, Theory, Law, and all That

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scientific theory and lawMisusing scientific terms is popular within some Christian circles, but perhaps it’s simply inadvertent. Let’s clear up a few terms, starting within mathematics and logic.

  • An axiom or postulate is a proposition (statement) taken as a given.
  • A lemma is an intermediate proposition or stepping stone rather than the final result, which is a theorem.
  • A corollary follows readily from a theorem—it’s often simply another way of stating the theorem.

Lemmas, theorems, and corollaries are all proven, but proofs are only possible within mathematics and logic, not within science.

By contrast, all scientific statements are provisional. A scientific hypothesis is a testable explanation for a phenomenon. It explains and predicts. Once a hypothesis has proven itself, it becomes a scientific theory.

A scientific law is a description of a natural phenomenon, often an equation. Laws and theories are both well-tested, widely or universally accepted within the field, and falsifiable. The key thing to remember is that a theory explains while a law describes.

For example, germ theory, quantum theory, and the theory of evolution are explanations. Boyle’s law, Ohm’s law, and Newton’s law of gravity are all descriptions (and are all equations).

To see the difference, consider Ohm’s Law, I = V/R. This is a description of how electrical current, voltage, and resistance are related. Why it works this way is not part of Ohm’s Law.

A common misconception is that scientific hypotheses mature into theories, which mature to facts or laws. Instead, facts (the observations from an experiment, for example) lead to hypotheses (a plausible but immature explanation), which lead to theories (well-evidenced explanations). In the category of scientific explanations, a theory is as good as it gets and it doesn’t graduate to become a law.

It’s a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable;
it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge.
— Stuart on Big Bang Theory

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 2/27/12.)

Photo credit: Marvin (PA)

WHAT God? Religion Keeps Not Finding Him.

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This colorful drawing is a tree of world religions. From a poorly understood past, represented as the twisting vines of ideology in the trunk, the myriad human interpretations of the divine are shown branching out like tendrils on a vine, groping for something to grab on to. Searching, searching, but never finding. New tendrils reach out with the never-ending confidence that they’re the one true religion.

Example 1: Tree of religion

The trunk expands into named religions 3000 years ago. Here’s one small fragment (the outer shell is the present day, with modern denominations in green, and each curved gray line represents 100 years of evolution):

The tree details the evolution of the great Asian and Middle Eastern religions. Though it ignores religion from the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific, it makes a heroic attempt at what it does attempt to cover. It nicely documents the complex project that human religion has become.

Example 2: Church’s many views of government

Consider a very different look at the varieties of church. This one plots American Christian churches on a two-axis chart. The axes consider how big a role government should play in providing social services vs. how big a role it should play in imposing morality.

Here again, we see the dramatic differences in the many variant forms of American Christianity. For example,

  • The Southern Baptist, LDS, and Church of Christ want more government involvement in morality but fewer social services.
  • Unitarians want the reverse: more social services provided by government but less government involvement in morality
  • Black churches want both: more government services and more legislation of morality
  • Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians (PCUSA) want neither

Example 3: Map of World Religions

Don’t forget the Map of World Religions (longer discussion here). Contrast the stable map of world religions (Roman Catholics in red over here, Hindus in green over there, and so on) with the map of world science, which is just one color. New and better ideas sweep the world of science within a decade or two, but an established religion isn’t interested in better ideas. It already thinks it has the truth and has no interest in changing.

Search for the truth

If religious claims were as obviously correct as the claim that the sun exists, everyone would quickly agree. That’s not the world we live in.

Alright then, suppose that religious truth does indeed exist, but it’s fuzzy or cloudy. We see, but as if “through a glass, darkly.” Why then aren’t worldwide religious beliefs at least converging on the truth? It would be like evolution, with false beliefs gradually falling away and correct beliefs encouraged and strengthened, either by divine intervention or because they matched up better with reality.

The tree of world religions above makes clear that religion is doing the opposite—diverging instead of converging. Christianity has fragmented and morphed over time as new cults and sects form. We see that same fertility in other religions. The only commonality we see across religions is humans’ interest in the supernatural.

This disconnect between religion and the reality that would ground it makes plain that religion is just a man-made institution.

Asking which [religion] has the best evidence
would be like asking which of the Three Stooges was the smartest.
— commenter Greg G.

Photo credit: The 40 Foundation