Monthly Archives: December 2016

’Tis the Season!

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Happy holidays, everyone! This is the 900th post for this blog.
Christmas presents atheismAs we near the solstice, one’s thoughts turn to topics of the season. If you’re looking for holiday gift ideas, let me suggest my two books. The apologetic argument becomes something of an additional character in Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey. It’s the story of a young man torn between two mentors, struggling to make the Christian case in the aftermath of the 1906 Azusa Street Revival.
A Modern Christmas Carol is a reworking of Dickens’ classic, in which a shrewdly successful televangelist receives unexpected Christmas visitors: first, his long-dead partner, and then three ghostly guides. Finally able to acknowledge the shallowness of his message and doubts he has long suppressed, he makes amends with far-reaching consequences.
Here are a few Christmas-y posts:

  • The virgin birth story is a popular one in the list of supposed fulfilled biblical prophecies. When you actually read it, however, it’s startling how many ways this claim falls apart.
  • The War on Christmas™ is a perennial favorite. Some Christians seem to enjoy being offended, and the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue is a professional at it. Literally—it’s his job. In one end-of-the-year survey, he thought he found a juicy factoid with which to attack the atheists, but it blew up in his face.
  • Stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt demolished a pop Christmas song and taught an important lesson about how God doesn’t work: “How Christianity Infantilizes Adults.”
  • A parable about two kids arguing about evidence for Santa has interesting parallels with evidence for Jesus. Be careful about dismissing the existence of Santa, because that reasoning may demand that you dismiss Jesus as well.
  • In 2013, in what must have been a War-on-Christmas miracle, I was given a copy of Sarah Palin’s newly released Good Tidings and Great Joy to review. I had a few thoughts. Here’s the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of that book.

And finally, here’s a Christmas present from a reader of this blog, a skeptical update on the song “Mary Did You Know?”

We cannot know that Santa definitely doesn’t exist. 
This is technically true. 
But what’s your best guess? 
Go on. Be bold. 
— Ricky Gervais

Image credit: Donnie Ray Jones, flickr, CC
 

“But Who Created God?” an Atheist Fallacy?

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MazeThe Christian is challenged to explain the universe or the apparent design in life. They say that God created it, but then the atheist responds, “But who created God?”
Christian response #1
The most popular Christian response is probably to attempt to invalidate the question by saying that God is uncreated by definition.

The answer is that [“Who created God?”] does not even make sense. It is like asking, “What does blue smell like?” Blue is not in the category of things that have a smell, so the question itself is flawed. In the same way, God is not in the category of things that are created or caused. God is uncaused and uncreated—He simply exists. (Source)
God by definition is the uncreated creator of the universe, so the question “Who created God?” is illogical, just like “To whom is the bachelor married?” (Source)

So have we somehow used a definition to create God? Or at least argue for his existence? Hold that thought, because that reminds me of a joke.

It seems that there was a dairy farmer with a large herd who wanted to improve milk production. He contacted the local university, and they assigned three professors to the project. After a month, they presented their work.

The psychologist showed how changing the wall color inside the milking parlor and playing soothing music relaxed the cows and improved milk production.

The mechanical engineer suggested improved pumps on the milking machines. Quicker turnaround meant more time eating in the fields.

The physicist was the final expert. He went to the blackboard, picked up some chalk, and drew a large circle. “Consider a spherical cow entirely filled with milk.”

Your reaction to the physicist is my reaction to the two quotes above. Sure, we can define God as “the uncreated creator of the universe,” but if that definition is supposed to be an argument for this God, then you’re as disconnected from reality as the physicist.
Don’t pretend that you can sit back with your arms crossed as if you’ve justified your position in any way. Your religion may say that God was uncreated, but that is no answer in the real world. If “Who created God?” exposes an unsupported part of your argument, then come back after you have justified the claim that God was uncreated. Make it a conclusion, not a presupposition.
Before you say that the Bible confirms that God is eternal (for example, “The hope of eternal life, which God . . . promised before the beginning of time,” Titus 1:2), remember that “the Bible says so” is theology, not evidence.
Response #2
Here’s an interesting angle:

As a logical refutation against God as creator and designer of the universe, the who created God question completely misrepresents philosophy of science. This is because, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, you do not have to be able to explain the explanation. In order to say that A caused B, you do not have to be able to explain where A came from. (Source)

So what are you saying? Are you admitting that you can’t explain where A (God) came from? If the ordinary questions (“Where did it come from?” or “How long has it been around?”) can’t be answered in an ordinary way, you don’t just assert that; you give evidence to justify it.
The typical response at this point is to argue that God is the unmoved First Mover or the necessary being required to create the first contingent being, but these philosophical approaches aren’t useful at the frontier of science. Science does have questions about the origin of the universe, but it has also answered many questions. Religion, by contrast, has taught us nothing about science.
Let’s return to that last source.

In order to say that A caused B, you do not have to be able to explain where A came from. For example if we came across a pit of ashes in a field, we would be justified in inferring that there was a fire, even if we had no idea whatsoever where the fire came from or what caused it.

Answer 1: Instead of a fire, I’d prefer to explain the ashes by a wizard. You’ll say, “But where did the wizard come from?” Sorry, that question is out of bounds and can’t be used to cast doubt on my explanation. Remember that you don’t need the explanation of the explanation.
Answer 2: I’ll accept fire as a reasonable explanation for ashes because fire is common and we know it creates ashes. Now tell me why I should find God’s actions in the world as familiar as those of fire.
Fires are common and unsurprising, but there is no good evidence for a supernatural anything (in particular, creators of universes). See the difference? Don’t draw a parallel between something common (fire) and something so uncommonly uncommon as to be nonexistent (God).
Response #3
A final response attempts to shore up the claim that God was uncreated. One Christian blog responded by saying that everyone says that the ultimate cause was uncaused and that if this challenge knocks down the Christian worldview, it knocks them all down. Atheists are living in glass houses when they demand justification for an uncaused beginning.
The problem, of course, is that there is no scientific consensus about the origin of the universe that says that it was uncaused. And when there is a consensus, it will be based on evidence.
Unlike how Christianity makes its conclusions about the questions of nature.
(See also: “How Does the Kalam Cosmological Argument Suck? Let Me Count the Ways.”)

Science continues to replace
God-filled gaps in our understanding
with all-natural ingredients.
And since we don’t need God
to explain the existence of the nature of the universe,
 we don’t need God, period.
— Mitch Stokes, paraphrasing an atheist argument

Image credit: Tim Green, flickr, CC

ONE Bias That Cripples Every Christian Apologetic Argument

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Every apologetic argument? Well, perhaps that’s an exaggeration. But if not universal, it’s nearly so. The bias is this: Christians want to interpret or spin the facts to support their preconception. Instead of following the facts where they lead, these Christians would prefer to select and interpret them to show how they can still justify their worldview. They don’t want to follow the evidence where it leads and they certainly don’t want to question their position; they want to stay put and shore up their position with sand bags.
special pleading

Consider these examples

  • Are we talking about the good and bad that happens in life? They’ll tell you how the good in the world points to God’s love or God’s perfect design, but don’t blame the bad on God. That’s from Man’s fallen nature.
  • Are we talking about the reliability of the New Testament? They’ll show you how their preconceptions can be maintained by reinterpreting the dating evidence to support an early date for the gospel of Mark.
  • Are we talking about the Amalekite genocide in 1 Samuel 15? They’ll want to take this one slowly, to show that the plain interpretation is wrong or that God must’ve had reasons that we are simply unable to understand.
  • Are we talking about God’s not lifting a finger when a tornado destroyed a church in Wisconsin? They’ll ignore the church and focus instead on the three crosses that were left standing. About that, the pastor said, “It has been a powerful sign, and it speaks volumes to us about the presence of Christ among us.”
  • Are we talking about gay marriage? They’ll tell you how Leviticus is plainly against homosexuality even though the sacrifice of Jesus dismissed the other ritual abominations like kosher foods, animal sacrifices, and mixing fabrics.
  • Are we talking about morality? They’ll tell you how morals are objective and unchanging, and they’ll handwave away God’s support of slavery and genocide in the Old Testament.
  • Are we talking about Bible prophecy? They’ll ignore how they would reject popular Bible prophecies if they came from any religion but their own.
  • Are we talking about the value of science? The Creationist will emphasize the consensus view in the area of cosmology (“The Big Bang points to a beginning!”) but dismiss it in the area of biology (“Evolution argues, ‘from goo to you via the zoo’!”).
  • Are we talking about the age of the earth? The Young Earth Creationist will tell you how radioisotope data is flawed and rock strata can be interpreted to show that Noah’s Flood happened.

Special pleading vs. following the evidence

This is the fallacy of special pleading—having a high bar for evidence from the other guy’s worldview but a lower one for yours. And if you want to argue that the Christian god could exist, don’t bother. I grant that. What I want is positive, compelling evidence for your position.
I’ve heard these arguments called “zombie arguments” because, after you kill them, they just pop back up again. They’re not defeated by reason because they weren’t created by reason.
Ray Comfort is an example. The profile of his anti-evolution blathering is high enough that he’s gotten the attention of some of the world’s most prominent biologists, and they’ve corrected his childish “Well, why don’t we see a crocoduck?!?” arguments. Maybe Ray is too stupid to understand, or maybe he simply knows that his anti-evolution argument doesn’t need to be correct to satisfy the flock.
The problem, of course, is that no open-minded person interested in the truth comes at the question with a bias that they’re trying to support. Rather, they set their beliefs and assumptions aside and go where the facts lead. Whether they like the consequences of that conclusion or not is irrelevant. The solution is easy: go with the flow. Follow the facts where they point, and the problems answer themselves.
Christians, be honest with yourselves. If your worldview is nonnegotiable, admit it—to yourself at least. In this one area of life, you don’t much care what the evidence says. But since you didn’t come to faith by evidence and don’t have much use for it to support your position, don’t pretend to be an honest participant in the intellectual debate.
Or, if this is precisely what you don’t want to do, approach discussions or new ideas openly. Don’t be quick to rearrange or reinterpret the facts to show how your presupposition could still be true. Be aware of this potential bias in your own thinking and ensure that you follow the facts.
This is related to the Hypothetical God Fallacy.

You will not find an American astronomy, a Baptist biology,
a capitalist chemistry, a mammalian math, or a feminist physics.
There’s only one worldwide version of each, because they’re all based on facts,
not accidents of birth or matters of opinion.
Conversely, religion is nothing but opinions, no facts involved,
which is why anybody’s word on religion is just as good as anyone else’s
(to wit, no good at all).
— commenter Richard S. Russell

 (This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/19/13.)
Image credit: Luis Marina, flickr, CC
 

Pascal’s Problem: A Mathematical Disproof of Pascal’s Wager

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Guest Post This guest post comes from Chad DeVillier. He was raised Creationist/Christian, was very active in church, and attended bible college for a couple of years. He began questioning and eventually left the life of faith behind.
Pascal’s Wager (or Pascal’s Gambit) is stated in simple form thusly: It is better to bet on the existence of God because if you believe (B) and there is a god (G), your gain is +∞ (infinite reward), but if there isn’t a god (–G), your loss is –1 (inconsequentially small). If you don’t believe (–B) and there isn’t a god (–G), your gain is +1 (finite reward), but if there is a god (+G), your loss is –∞ (infinite punishment).
It can be expressed visually as follow:
image 1
The problem with Pascal’s Wager (the one I’m putting forth, anyway) is that it is one sided in its perspective. It was formulated within a Christian framework and, as with most ideas formulated in such a manner, it only takes into account the religious perspective.
The postulation states basically that belief in the specific deity yields infinite gain if true and finite loss if false, whereas disbelief in that deity yields infinite loss if true and finite gain if false. And from the selected monotheistic standpoint, this of course is true.
If your chosen deity exists, you lose one fleeting lifetime in pursuit of him (at the expense of your own autonomy) in order to gain blissful eternity by accepting him, rendering your lifetime on Earth unimportant in comparison. If one doesn’t believe in this deity, he or she loses out on said eternity because he or she wagered to win only one lifetime of pursuing his or her own brand of happiness. The choice, for the Christian, is clear.
But what if this were viewed from a non-religious context? Would the formula still look the same? I submit that no, it would not, and here’s why. Firstly, Blaise Pascal is allowing for two options and two alone—God or not God. He is ignoring the multitude of other gods, many of whom are expressly concerned with being the only god of choice. To choose one is to not only reject “not God” but to reject all the other gods fighting for your undivided allegiance.
The odds are now a very far cry from the 50/50 that Pascal initially proposed, because a bet in favor of any wrong god is a bet against the right one, and in addition to the thousands of known gods throughout history, the true god could yet be one that we have no knowledge of currently.
Secondly, a lifetime can only be understood as a finite gain or loss if your maximum understanding is infinity. But from the perspective of a nontheist, infinity is not on the table. The maximum span of a human’s existence is one lifetime, and therefore is the closest he or she can come to infinity.
Taking this perspective into account—with one lifetime being another infinity—the equation goes from this:
image 2
… to this:
image 3
The reason for this is simple: if there is no God, there is no infinite afterlife. The devout believer who is incorrect has not misspent one lifetime in the span of an eternity, they have misspent one lifetime when that is all there is and ever will be for them. A lifetime is their infinity, and the devout believer has spent it praying to either nothing or—random deity forbid—to the wrong god who is now disallowing them into the afterlife, bringing about either nonexistence or an afterlife of punishment.
In this last case, the net loss for the believer is infinitely negative. The formula above includes for such a contingent in the form of -∞. This allows for the parameters to be set by each specific possibility: in the maximum span of infinity, the infinite is infinite; in the maximum span of a lifetime, a lifetime is infinite.
One should notice that the above formula shows equal potential for gain or loss for both categories, the believer and the nonbeliever. If there are no other variables to take into account, there would be no perceivable benefit in either accepting the Christian god or rejecting him. Therefore, there is neither mathematical advantage nor disadvantage to disbelief.
It is important to note that, in matters of science, one must always begin with disbelief and only develop belief as facts emerge and are tested; one may indeed begin with an idea, but only an idea void of rigid belief since there exists at the onset no objective proof to form the basis of rigid belief. As the idea is tested, it is modified over time until it can be objectively seen as a credible and vindicated theory.
With mathematics unable to aid us in making a logical decision, the scientific mind must turn to other variables. Pascal’s Wager—while once explorative with probability theory and beneficial in the very inception of decision theory—is of no use here. It is antiquated and largely disproven, much like the religion it was intended to validate.

I have to confess that I now regard “the case for theism” as a fraud
and I can no longer take it seriously enough
to present it to a class as a respectable philosophical position—
no more than I could present intelligent design
as a legitimate biological theory.
— philosopher Keith Parsons,
on his leaving his profession

Simplicity: the Trait Missing from Christianity

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Ficus treeThe Bible in English has nearly a million words. Have you ever stopped to marvel at that? Why did God need so much space?
Let’s explore the idea that not only is this a surprisingly large number of words, but it’s a clue that Christianity is false. Why would a perfect god need a million words? Couldn’t he have gotten his message across at least as clearly (or more clearly) with a tenth as many words? Or even a thousandth as many?
Just a page or two of instructions would be enough to teach you how to be a vegan. That’s a lifestyle with strict rules—why would it be any more difficult for a perfect god to convey its message in the same space?
For comparison, the U. S. Constitution was written by humans and has defined the government for several centuries. It has just 4500 words. The U. N. Declaration of Human Rights has less than 1800 words. The Humanist Manifesto, 800.

The constitution of a god

Pare away the fluff and think about what a perfect god’s constitution might convey.

  • Personal details about the supernatural: the number of gods, name(s), and relationship to each other if more than one.
  • The fundamentals of non-obvious morality: slavery is good/bad, abortion is okay/forbidden, vegetarianism is mandatory/optional, and so on
  • The afterlife: what happens, if anything, when people die? If there’s a supernatural realm that we should know about, how does it fit with and interact with our own?
  • The god(s) purpose for each person. What, if anything, should we be doing to satisfy them?
  • What, if anything, we should know about the future

This addresses world religions’ primary concerns—morality, purpose, how to please the god(s), and the afterlife—though this is obviously just a guess. A real god might have a different list.
One additional point is why you should believe. This must be somewhere, and it might be conveyed through personal appearances or demonstrations. Could the evidence be included in this constitution? Before you say that it’s impossible to put something convincing in so short a document, don’t underestimate the capabilities of a god a trillion times smarter than any person.
Regardless of how it does it, this religion must have a mechanism for convincing everyone with evidence and argument that it is correct, unlike the myriad manmade ones.

Compare to the Bible

Categorize every verse in the Bible, and then sieve out everything that wouldn’t fit into the categories above. What would be lost?

  • The history of the Israelites and then the Jews and then the Christians. This does nothing to help understand god’s constitution.
  • Examples of God’s actions. With many questions raised but not answered by the Bible, believers scour every verse for clues.
  • Just so stories. For example: did you ever wonder why we hate the Moabites and Ammonites? Because they’re the result of Lot having sex with his own daughters—yuck! Or: ever wonder why this place is named this? Here’s the story behind that name.
  • Ideas borrowed from other cultures. For example: the Sumerian cosmology of water above and below the earth, a world-destroying flood, and a dying-and-rising god.
  • Contradictions. When not guided by a perfect hand, the more you write about your religion, the more contradictions you introduce.
  • An evolving message. Changes to the message from a god who doesn’t change can be embarrassing. For example: we used to sacrifice animals but not anymore; we used to have a works-based view of God but now it’s faith based; Jesus didn’t exist before, but now he’s mandatory.


See also: Christians’ Damning Refuge in “Difficult Verses”

The Bible is just a rambling story that goes on and on. It was written by people and looks like it. There’s no hint of any supernatural guidance.
Take the book of Revelation as an example, a psychotic, Dalí-esque horror show. There are 24 elders around the throne of God, with the four living creatures. There’s a scroll with seven seals and different events with the breaking of each. There’s the seven trumpets and different disasters with the sounding of each. There’s the seven bowls with different disasters with the pouring of each. There are four horsemen and seven spiritual figures including a dragon and the Beast. Each punishment is lovingly detailed, as the novella drones on and on.
Or look at the practice of Christianity today. Why is there a Bible Answer Man—shouldn’t God’s message be so clear that there would be no questions to answer? Why are there 45,000 denominations of Christianity today, and why were there radically different versions of Christianity such as the Marcionites and Gnostics in the early days? Why did Paul have to create Christianity—shouldn’t Jesus have done that? Jesus wrote nothing.
The more involved the story, the more you need to explain. Did Jesus have a human body or a spirit body? Why does God do immoral things in the Old Testament? Why isn’t God’s existence obvious? Why does God care just about the Israelites but later decide to embrace the whole world? Why doesn’t the world look like it was created by an omniscient and loving god? And what the heck is the Trinity?
The church convened 21 ecumenical councils to try to make sense of this. The discipline of systematic theology tries to tie up all the loose ends, but why would the study of a perfect god need this?

Rebuttal

The Christian rebuttal is obvious, and I’ve already gotten a lot of this in response to a recent post: How do you know that this is what a god would do? How do you know that a perfect god would even want us to clearly understand his plan?
This is true and irrelevant. I’m given the claim that the Christian god exists, and I must evaluate it. I can’t peek at the answer in the back of the book, and I can’t give up and get the answer. The buck stops here. It seems to me that a god that chose to make itself known would do so simply and unambiguously. There would be a clear statement of his plan, like the constitution above. Contrast that with the Bible—the entire story about all the stuff God did and how he got angry and then the Israelites did something stupid and then Jesus saved the day is unnecessary. Maybe it’s inspiring and maybe it’s great literature, but the entire Israelite blog is not needed to serve a perfect god’s goal.
Another possible response: But the core of Christianity can be distilled into a tract! If you insist on a brief version, there it is.
But this merely hides the problems. The Bible is still there, and it being a composite of manmade books, picked from an even larger set of candidates, means that the contradictions, tangential history, and unanswered questions remain.
I’m arguing for a different genre. A perfect god would itself give us a simple, unambiguous constitution. We have instead a book written by and focused on the people rather than the god, which is strong evidence that there is no actual god behind it.
See also: The Bible Story Reboots: Have You Noticed?

Living forever with God is the endgame,
so what’s the point of creating this elaborate,
blink-of-an-eye, soul-filtering machine called Planet Earth,
where beings have temporary bodies made of meat?
WTF?! Just create everyone in “Heaven” to begin with,
and none of the rest of this horror-show ever has to happen.
— commenter Kingasaurus

Inspiration: John de Lancie at the 2016 Reason Rally said that religion for him fails the KISS test, which inspired this post.
Image credit: olivier bareau, flickr, CC