Monthly Archives: January 2017

Jesus and Vampires and Werewolves and Time Travel

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Remember the movie Groundhog Day? Phil Connors (Bill Murray) must relive the same day, over and over. The cause of this time loop is never explored or even brought up—he simply endures the drudgery and pleasures of reliving the same day, hundreds of times, until he gets it right.

The many mechanisms of time travel

That’s time travel of a sort, but it’s a very different kind than we see in Back to the Future. Here, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is accidentally thrust back in time so that he becomes a classmate of his parents-to-be, but he must tread delicately to avoid damaging his own timeline.

The crew of Star Trek IV goes back in time in a captured Klingon warship to retrieve extinct (in their time) humpback whales by going really fast. Superman (in Superman: The Movie) goes back in time to undo the death of Lois Lane by spinning the earth backwards. And in About Time, a few people can time travel by going into a dark place, clenching their fists, and thinking about when they want to go to. The father, an experienced traveler, assures us that multiple futures and the Butterfly Effect aren’t problems.

It works like this in religion. Religion A says that one god is in charge. Next, religion B says instead that it’s a pantheon of independent gods. And religion C says that it’s a Trinity of gods who are actually one. As with time travel, different fictional domains have their own view of what the magic is and how it works.

Fictional creatures

Partisans of this or that interpretation of time travel might argue for the logic of one approach and laugh at the idiocy of another, but you’ll probably find more spirited debate among the fans of various fictional creatures—vampires, werewolves, and so on.

For example, are vampires simply nocturnal, with no particular vulnerability to sunlight? Do they die or explode when touched by a single ray of sunlight? The vampires in the television drama True Blood burn on exposure to sunlight but can quickly recover if the exposure isn’t long. The vampires in the novel Twilight avoid sunlight simply because their skin reflects it like diamonds, which would reveal their true identity (why artificial light doesn’t do the same isn’t discussed).

What about garlic and crosses? What about wooden stakes and silver bullets? Do the vampires cast shadows or make reflections in mirrors? Are they hideous or attractive? What are their vulnerabilities, if any? Different fictional worlds have different answers.

There’s no authority. It’s not like you make a claim about the mythological with the fear that real vampires will present themselves to prove you embarrassingly wrong.

Religion

The same is true for religion. It’s is a worldwide Comic-Con—some people take things very seriously and get dressed in character, while others take a more casual approach. Some people are fans of this TV show or that movie character or some other comic book hero.

Scientology can claim that the galactic tyrant Xenu attempted to solve his overpopulation problem by destroying hundreds of billions of frozen people in volcanoes on earth using hydrogen bombs. Or the Mormon church can claim that God the Father was once mortal but attained godhood, and believers can do the same.

There’s no authority to reject these stories. No authority, that is, except common sense and our well-established understanding of how things actually work. Christians can say to the Scientologists or Mormons, “Hold on—you’re breaking the rules,” but then they break the spell and acknowledge that they are doing the same. They can’t awaken someone from their dream without being awake themselves.

You can ignore reality,
but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
— Ayn Rand

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/23/13.)

Image credit: Jason Cipriani, flickr, CC

 

Atheist Monument Critique: Ten Commandments and Ten Punishments

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Read part 1 of this series on an American Atheist monument installed on public property in Florida as a protest against a Ten Commandments monument. This post will conclude my response to criticism of the monument.

The right side of the monument lists Old Testament punishments for breaking any of the Ten Commandments. A law is only a law if there are consequences for breaking it—otherwise it’s just a suggestion. Let’s see what the punishments are.

The punishments

For breaking the “have no other gods before me” commandment:

Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 13:10)

For breaking the “no blasphemy” commandment:

Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. (Leviticus 24:16)

For breaking the “keep the Sabbath day holy” commandment:

Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death. (Exodus 31:15)

And so on (the full list is here). Though not true for every commandment, death is the go-to punishment. Death for killing. Death for adultery. Death for sassing your parents.

The other Ten Commandments

I know what you’re thinking, because I had the same reaction. What kind of nutty list of Ten Commandments is this? Whoever heard of “no blasphemy” in the Ten Commandments? Don’t be rude to your parents? No adultery? Good rules or not, these aren’t in the Ten Commandments.

Let’s review the story. Moses gets the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 20, but the anxious Israelites make a golden calf during his long absence. When Moses sees this, he’s furious and smashes the tablets of the law. He gets a new set in Exodus 34. At the conclusion of this list, we read:

And [Moses] wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant—the Ten Commandments (Exodus 34:28).

This is the first time the phrase “Ten Commandments” is used in the Bible, and this version of the law was placed in the Ark of the Covenant. It couldn’t be the other set, since it was destroyed. But this law bears only a vague similarity to the set popularly portrayed as the Ten Commandments: make no covenants with the Canaanites (#1), God gets all firstborn (#5), never boil a young goat in its mother’s milk (#10). Read them yourself.

Critique of the American Atheist monument

Let’s get back to the critique of the monument by Benjamin Wiker. About American Atheists’ use of the punishments to show the brutality of Old Testament Law, he says,

Again, we have monumental ignorance, or at least confusion.

Ouch! Looks like someone is about to get disciplined.

First, these come from the Old Testament Law that is directed at the ancient Israelites themselves.

So the Old Testament is irrelevant today? I’m surprised that we’ve so quickly found a point of agreement. But dismissing unpleasant bits of the Old Testament as applying only to the ancient Israelites won’t work.

God said, “If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:5–6). In other words, the Ten Commandments and the rest of the law—all of it—is directed at the Israelites. If Christians put up a monument to Ten Commandments that applied only to ancient Israelites, then it’s just as reasonable for American Atheists to put up a monument highlighting the punishments for breaking those irrelevant commandments. (h/t commenter UWIR)

Second, and related, the atheists make no allowance for the moral and theological development that took place from the Old to the New Testament. Jesus Christ transforms the Law by mercy, even while he intensifies and purifies its moral demands.

Moral development? The Law is transformed? What kind of evolving Law is this?

I’d have thought that the omniscient creator of the universe would get the law right the first time. Or does moral action change with time?

Apparently we’re to believe that the Old Testament law was actually version 0.5 because, I dunno, the ancient Israelites were too stupid or barbaric to handle the real thing. And for centuries, the priests just handed out warnings until the Israelites could mature as a culture to handle the message of Jesus.

Nope—Moses came down with the new law, and it took effect immediately. There were no warnings and no slaps on the wrist. The punishment for many transgressions was death, starting immediately. Jesus says this about the Old Testament:

Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled (Matthew 5:18)

Sounds pretty unchangeable.

Back to Wiker:

Third, while the American Atheists may disagree with the actual punishments, are they then also rejecting the moral foundation of all of the Ten Commandments? Is the prohibition against murder a bad thing? Against adultery? Against stealing? Against providing false testimony in court?

The moral foundation on which at least some of the Ten Commandments rest is good; just don’t pretend that the Ten Commandments gave those morals to society.

The Ten Commandments are religious and so are inappropriate for the state-supported public square. There, the U.S. Constitution rules, not the Bible.

And even more difficult for [atheists] to answer, in what way does atheism provide a moral foundation for these prohibitions? Atheism is almost invariably grounded on materialism, and that means that it’s not all that clear about why anyone should or shouldn’t do anything.

You don’t know where moral customs, taboos, and law come from? You can’t imagine a natural source? Take a civics class to learn where laws come from. Read an anthropology textbook to learn about morality. They don’t come from God.

To take one obvious instance, purely non-theistic evolution has one rule: nature works by the survival of the fittest, survival by any means.

It sounds like Wiker is twisting “Survival by any means” into “survival by few means: just the nasty ones.” It’s refreshing to debate a Christian who’s well-versed in what he’s attacking, but unfortunately, that’s not what we have here. “Survival of the fittest” (not a term coined by Charles Darwin, by the way) refers to how well suited an organism is to its environment. It’s the fit of a puzzle piece, not an athlete.

Sure, sometimes savagery is a good survival strategy. Grizzly bears are in the take-no-prisoners camp. And sometimes cooperation works best. Bonobos are in the make-love-not-war camp. That’s two different mammals shaped by evolution to use two different survival strategies.

Fourth, as atheists tend to do, the American Atheists are simply lumping all religions indiscriminately together. But a moment’s thought about this would be a real wake-up call for them. It’s not among present-day Jews or Christians that you’ll be seeing calls for death for idolatry or blasphemy, but among Islamists.

Thank God most Christians are not faithful to their Old Testament.

I don’t think beliefs should be hereditary.
— Gregorio Smith (director of “Truth Be Told,”
a documentary film about leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses)

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/18/13.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

 

Atheist Monument Critique: Founding Father Freethinkers

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Read part 1 of this series on an American Atheist monument installed on public property in Florida as a protest against a Ten Commandments monument.

The back of the monument contains quotes by some founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Wiker (the Christian whose article I’ve been critiquing) responds:

The problem with the American Atheists using these quotes is that, while Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin were certainly Americans, they were certainly not atheists.

That’s debatable, but let’s let that go. Wiker continues:

They warmly approved of the moral doctrines that arose from Christianity. These moral doctrines were understood, by all three, to be essential to forming the character of the citizens for free government.

What moral doctrines are exclusively from Christianity? Good principles like “don’t murder” or “don’t steal” are hardly unique to Christianity or even to religion. (Admittedly, neither are stupid principles like Christianity’s support for slavery or genocide.) And basic principles that today we think are obvious like no slavery, no torture, non-coercive marriage, freedom from religion, democracy, and others that are listed in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not from the Bible (more here).

Moral principles come from people and society. We don’t need to imagine the supernatural to explain them.

Thomas Jefferson

Here’s the first quote:

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”
— Thomas Jefferson

Wiker tries to handwave a response:

The first quote shows a confidence by Jefferson that the foundation of belief in God is rational, not that reason leads to atheism.

Wrong again. Why would Jefferson demand that we question the existence of God if he meant that belief in God is rational? How stupid does Wiker hope we are?

John Adams

He has no rebuttal to the Adams quote:

“It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [writing the Constitution] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven.”
— John Adams

Benjamin Franklin

Here’s the final atheist quote:

“When religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
— Benjamin Franklin

Wiker responds:

[This] is spoken against having an established church (as England had its own established church).

I’d say, “Nice try” except that this is quite a pathetic try. No, that’s not what Franklin is saying. He’s saying that any god so ephemeral that he won’t support his own religion isn’t much of a god.

But that does not prove that secular atheism invented the separation of church and state. . . . The separation of church and state is (like hospitals and universities) the invention of Christianity.

The Church must’ve forgotten its embrace of church/state separation during the period when the Pope had his own country, ordered Crusades, crowned emperors, and in general meddled in the political affairs of Europe. Or when kings imagined a divine right to rule. Or when Henry VIII took the role of head of the Church of England. The church was up to its well-appointed elbows in politics. (And Wiker claims too much when he declares that Christianity invented universities and hospitals.)

True, “atheism” didn’t invent separation of church and state, but let’s not pretend that Christianity did, either. Martin Luther’s doctrine of two kingdoms, for example, is hardly the First Amendment.

But focus on the positive. Wiker is so adamant that church/state separation a good thing that he wants to take credit for it. His claim of invention is wrong, but let’s instead focus on his celebration of church/state separation.

Not only are we on the same page, we’ve come full circle. The initial news story was of a county in Florida giving exclusive use of their property for a Christian message. Wiker’s support for church/state separation makes clear he would stand alongside American Atheists in demanding either no religious messages or free access for all.

Concluded here.

We do not err because truth is difficult to see.
It is visible at a glance.
We err because this is more comfortable.
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/16/13.)

Image credit: Dave Muscato, CC

 

Atheist Monument Critique: Treaty of Tripoli

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benjamin wiker

Read part 1 of this series on an American Atheist monument installed on public property in Florida as a protest against a Ten Commandments monument.

The left side of the monument contains this statement from the Treaty of Tripoli (1797), a treaty between the United States and the Muslim state that controlled the coast of what is now Libya:

The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.

That’s pretty straightforward. The young United States wanted to make clear that it had no religious motives for antagonism with any Muslim countries.

Benjamin Wiker, the Christian whose article I’ve been critiquing, doesn’t want to accept the obvious conclusion that the United States was not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. He raises two points.

WWFFD? (What Would the Founding Fathers Do?)

There are hundreds of other quotes [besides this treaty] from the Founders that show a Christian, or at least a Deist, grounding of their views.

Okay, so what?

Maybe in addition to supporting Christianity, some of the founders also liked fishing. Maybe they also believed in astrology. Maybe they also ate meat. Do we conclude then that the United States was founded for the benefit of fishermen or astrologers or carnivores? That it gives those people some sort of advantage over their fellow citizens? That the Constitution was inspired by the lore or wisdom from those activities?

Of course not. If the founding fathers wanted to institutionalize the eating of meat, for example, they had their chance. They could’ve put it in the Constitution, but they didn’t. The same is true for Christianity: if the founding fathers wanted Christianity to have some sort of advantage or cherished place or even acknowledgement within society, the Constitution would say so. It doesn’t.

Maybe Wiker is saying something else. Maybe he’s saying that Christianity is the origin of some of the ideas that are so foundational to American society and that the founders borrowed from Christianity.

If that’s the point, it’s a ridiculous one. Not only did democracy, limited government, freedom of religion and speech, the right to a jury trial, and prohibition against slavery not come from the Bible, most of these principles conflict with the Bible. How do we know? Because when Christianity was in charge in Europe a thousand years ago, those principles weren’t in effect!

If the Constitution is inconvenient, try elsewhere

Next, Wiker points to the Declaration of Independence,

which claims that the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” are the proper foundation of a nation, and that human beings “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” which must be respected by any government.

Whoa—you don’t want to go there. “Nature’s God” was understood as a deist reference at that time. This is not the Christian god.

And let’s see who’s in charge. The Declaration of Independence says that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” No, government doesn’t turn to God for its authority but to the people.

And what do you do when government becomes abusive? Do you appeal to God then? Nope. The Declaration says:

Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The government rules at the pleasure of the people, not God.

Wiker wants to trump the Treaty of Tripoli with the Declaration of Independence, but neither is law. The Constitution is, and it creates a secular government.

Radical secular atheism?

His knockout blow to the idea that the Treaty of Tripoli is relevant is:

we do not find support for the American Atheist’s notion that America should be grounded in a secular atheist government that is as radically opposed to Deism as it is to Christianity.

I don’t know what he’s talking about. The Constitution demands a secular government with no favors given or constraints imposed on Christian belief or unbelief. In a public school, the Christian can’t say a public prayer, and the atheist can’t explain why the Christian god doesn’t exist. If Wiker is worried about a government that imposes atheism (and therefore makes things difficult for Christians and other believers) then I’m on his side, but I’m pretty sure that American Atheists’ goal of imposing this on America is just his fantasy.

After all this, perhaps I should’ve cut to the chase earlier: I never point to the Treaty of Tripoli in my discussions with Christians. Wiker doesn’t want me using it, and I don’t want to. It is tempting, given that it so clearly faces the question, but it’s an obscure treaty that’s no longer in effect. I see why atheists find it attractive, but I think that it’s too complex to make an effective argument.

What I do instead is point to the Constitution. If the founding fathers had wanted this to be a Christian country, that’s where they would’ve said so. They didn’t.

Continue here

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do,
because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
— Susan B. Anthony

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/11/13.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

 

Bad Atheist Arguments: “Science Can Explain Everything” (2 of 2)

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Andy Bannister The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist bookThis is the conclusion of a response to Andy Bannister’s attack on the atheist argument, “Science can explain everything.” (Part 1 here.) You may be saying that atheists and in particular scientists don’t make that argument. I agree. Someone needs to tell Bannister that.

You know how authors sometimes put a slogan somewhere on their desk to focus their attention on the core idea of their project? If only Bannister had put up the subtitle of this book, “The dreadful consequences of bad arguments,” perhaps he would’ve caught a few of his stupid blunders.

The limitations of science

Bannister tells us that science is a great tool, but it’s only a tool. You can’t paint a portrait with a shovel—each tool has limitations. “We need more tools in our philosophical toolkit than just science if we’re going to answer all the wonderfully rich and varied questions that are out there to be explored.”

What do you have in mind? Of course I agree that physics, chemistry, and geology have limits, but show me a discipline that gives us reliable new information (say, philosophy recommending ethical standards for a new technology or economists understanding how people respond to incentives) that doesn’t use evidence and hypothesis testing—that is, scientific thinking.

Atheist scientists admit their bias?

To support his position, he quotes geneticist Richard Lewontin who states that scientists “have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. . . . Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Aha! Have the scientists finally admitted their biases? Not at all, if we read what comes next (which Bannister omitted):

. . . we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.

Lewontin wasn’t saying that we must conclude beforehand that the supernatural isn’t possible but rather that using science with a God option is like blowing up a balloon with a hole in it. You can’t get anywhere since everything must have a God caveat. It’s “F = ma, God willing” or “PV = nRT, if it pleases God.” When you make a measurement in a world where God messes with reality (that is, you “allow a Divine Foot in the door”), what part of that measurement is the result of scientific laws and what part was added by some godly hanky panky?

Where does science fit in?

Bannister wants us to know that he’s a reasonable guy. He doesn’t hate science—far from it.

I’m simply arguing for “science and”—science and the humanities; science and philosophy; science and art; science and history; science and theology. . . . Why can’t we throw open the shutters, fling wide the doors, and embrace a world of knowledge that is vastly bigger and more glorious than just the physical sciences?

That sounds fine, but let’s stick with the scientific method. Andy “Mr. Reasonable” Bannister doesn’t look so reasonable when you notice that he slipped Theology in, hoping we weren’t paying attention.

Tell you what, Andy: when Theology can get its own story straight, get back to me and we can reconsider if this discipline actually has anything worth telling us. At the moment, it can’t even figure out how many gods there are or what their names are (more).

In one final attempt to show those smug scientists the limitations of science, he asks about the origin of the universe. He ticks off a few options—it came uncaused from nothing, there’s a multiverse, and the obligatory “God dun it.” What’s common about these, he says, is that “each one takes us outside science. . . . [Science] is entirely the wrong tool . . . to explain how we got stuff in the first place.” A hammer is good for hitting nails but bad for telling us where nails came from.

But what tool do we have to study this question besides science?? Bannister wants to drop science, the discipline that has actually told us uncountably many new things about reality, in favor of theology, the discipline that uses faith rather than evidence and has never taught us a single new thing that can be verified.

The obligatory Hypothetical God Fallacy

Bannister wraps up with an appeal to God.

[And if there is a god,] we need to ask the next question: is there more that can be discovered about God than simply what we can discern about him from his handiwork as revealed in the structure of the universe? Is it possible to learn about the artist himself, not just his works?

When I read, “If there is a god,” I might as well have read, “If unicorns exist.” Unicorns don’t exist, so what follows must be hypothetical. And gods don’t exist—certainly not as far as Bannister has convinced us—so what follows can only be speculation about a world that isn’t ours and is therefore completely irrelevant to me. (More on the Hypothetical God Fallacy here.)

I marvel that any Christian can casually drop in that phrase, oblivious to how bold a speculation it is. This progression might help: think of something incredible (a unicorn). Now, make it more incredible (a thousand unicorns). Now make it more incredible (a thousand unicorns that grant wishes and cure disease). Keep going with this, and you get to the Christian claim: a god created everything, knows everything, can do everything, is everywhere, cares about you, and will do what you ask him to. It’s the biggest possible claim. Don’t make it without evidence to back it up.

Continued to part 8.

Faith is a process substitute
the way margarine is a dairy product.
— commenter Greg G.

Image credit: Hey Paul, flickr, CC

Bad Atheist Arguments: “Science Can Explain Everything”

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Andy Bannister The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist bookThis is part 7 of a critique of The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist: The Dreadful Consequences of Bad Arguments (2015) by Andy Bannister (part 1). The book promises to critique a number of atheist arguments.

Chapter 7. The Lunatic in the Louvre

In today’s opening episode, Fred takes our hero to the Louvre but then drugs him in the cafeteria. When he awakes that night, he first thinks that Fred plans to steal the Mona Lisa, but no, he just wants a paint sample to test. Why can’t Fred just find what he wants on Wikipedia? Because he’s a scientist and insists on doing his own research.

To attempt to tie this to reality, Bannister quotes Nobel Prize winner Harry Kroto, “Science is the only philosophical construct we have to determine truth with any degree of reliability.” But just two sentences later, Bannister bungles that into, “Science can answer any and all questions.” Yes, that is quoted accurately. And no, that’s not even close to what the scientist said.

In previous chapter critiques, I’ve defended the atheist argument against Bannister’s attacks. But I don’t defend this argument because no one makes it. No one makes it, that is, except theists who seem to be drawn to strawman arguments like flies to garbage.

Can science answer ethical questions?

Back to Bannister. “If the scientist in question is opining . . . that Science Can Explain Everything, well we need to point a few things out.”

Oh, good. We’re about to get schooled by a guy who can’t correctly paraphrase a simple idea.

Bannister challenges us: “What is the value of a human life?” How would atheists answer this with science alone? A chemist might tally the value of the salvageable chemicals inside a human body. An economist could look at the net contribution to the economy of each person. But surely humans have an intrinsic value that science can’t tell you.

How do we compute the value a human life?

We all know how a human life can be given a financial value when you look at how life insurance works. Or we can weigh the cost of an improvement in food or road safety, for example, against the number of lives it will save. This computation isn’t horrifying; it’s something we’re familiar with.

But Bannister probably wants a more intangible or intuitive approach. He’d probably say that we all feel that one human life is worth more than one animal life. Or do we? When Harambe, a lowland gorilla (which, as a species, is critically endangered), was killed in 2016 to protect a four-year-old boy who had fallen into his zoo enclosure, many criticized the zoo for its actions, and the boy’s mother received torrents of online outrage for her supposed negligence.

Your life is more valuable than the life of a slug or a rat, but would it be more valuable than the last breeding pair of bald eagles? What’s more valuable—the life of a random stranger you will never meet or your beloved pet? Is a human life so precious that capital punishment is immoral?

Another example is Peter Singer’s drowning child experiment: you pass a pond with a child drowning. There are no difficulties stopping you from wading out and rescuing the child except that you would ruin your $500 shoes. Would that stop you? Of course not—anyone would sacrifice an expensive pair of shoes to save a child’s life. But that means that saving a life is worth $500 to you. Now suppose a nonprofit organization that provides bed nets to protect children from malaria-carrying mosquitoes (or some similar project) shows you how a $500 donation would save one life or more. Most people would discard this appeal after a few seconds’ consideration, including those who would have sacrificed their shoes.

Using science to uncover and explain moral conclusions

That was a detour, but I think it was relevant to Bannister’s challenge that we find the value of human life without appealing to something outside science. My point is first that we can indeed put a crass monetary value on human life. We do it all the time. And second, Bannister’s unstated supernatural valuation of human life is probably a cheery declaration that God made Man the pinnacle of his creation, QED, and yet it’s more complicated than that.

Let me now directly respond to his challenge. Our moral programming tells us (in general) to value human life over other kinds of life. Why is this? It’s a product of our evolutionary path, which is explained by science. When legislators evaluate a proposed improvement to a dangerous intersection, they uncover and follow evidence and test hypotheses to make their decisions—and that’s the scientific method. What’s unexplained?

Bannister reminds me of the child who mindlessly asks “Why?” in response to every statement. He asks, “Why is the pursuit of knowledge a good thing?” and “Why is it wrong [for a scientist] to lie about [experimental] results?”

Well, little Andy, lying slows down knowledge finding, and knowledge is good because sometimes we can use it to improve life—eliminate a disease or improve food production, for example. Why is that good, you ask? Because we seek happier, healthier lives—that’s just how we’re programmed. “Good” in this case is defined by our programming, put there by evolution. There’s no need to appeal to the supernatural to explain this.

Continue to part 7b.

If science can’t detect your God,
your priests can’t either.
— commenter Pofarmer

Image credit: Wikimedia