Monthly Archives: June 2017

Make Your Very Own Prophecy (That Actually Comes True!)

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Christian apologists sometimes claim that the Bible records hundreds of prophecies and their fulfillment. Impressive, aside from the small problem that these claims don’t hold up.

For example, Micah’s prediction of a Bethlehem birthplace doesn’t fit the details of the life of Jesus. Zechariah’s prediction of a king entering Jerusalem on a donkey is likewise talking about someone besides Jesus. Zechariah’s anecdote of the payment of 30 pieces of silver has nothing to do with betrayal as in the Judas story.

But let’s not worry about that. Instead, imagine a Bible prophecy that came true. Let’s say that the Jews returning to Israel is a fulfilled prophecy. As evidence, apologists might cite verses such as these.

I will bring you from the nations and gather you from the countries where you have been scattered—with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath. (Ezekiel 20:34)

[In that day, the Lord] will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth. (Isaiah 11:12)

I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. (Jeremiah 23:3)

The first question, of course, is the context of these verses. Conquest, exile, and repatriation are important topics in the Old Testament because they’re part of Israel’s history. The ten tribes in the northern kingdom of Israel were conquered by Assyria in 722 BCE and their inhabitants scattered. The southern kingdom of Judea was conquered by Babylon, and Jews were taken there as captives beginning in 605 BCE. After Babylon was conquered by Persia, exiled Jews returned home beginning in 538 BCE. Is this the re-gathering that these Old Testament books are talking about?

Some Christians don’t think so. They imagine instead that the Old Testament said that Jews will return to Israel and, sure enough, Israel once again became a Jewish state in 1948. Let’s ignore that the objection that the predictions listed above weren’t satisfied by the return from exile. How plausible is modern Israel as the fulfillment?

Not very. The “prediction” is vague—no time is mentioned. It’s also mundane—exiles have scattered and returned in many other situations, including the nation of Judea itself. It was also potentially self-fulfilling when Passover Seders within the Jewish diaspora worldwide concluded with the wish, “Next year in Jerusalem!”

See also: 8 Tests for Accurate Prophecy and Why Bible Prophecies Fail

But if National Enquirer-caliber predictions are all we’re looking for, they’re not hard to make.

You, too, can be a prophet!

To see how to create a record of correct prophecies, imagine a commodities broker who wants to attract new wealthy clients. He buys a mailing list of 1000 candidates who live in the rich part of town, and he makes up a fancy name for his proprietary technique of predicting the swing in commodity prices. To half of his candidates, he mails an introductory letter saying that he is able to take on a few select new clients. To prove his capability, he gives a free prediction: the price of gold will rise in the next month. To the other half, he predicts that the price will fall.

A month later, gold has either gone up in price or gone down, and he’s lost credibility with half his audience. No matter—to the other half, he mails another letter to remind them of his accurate prediction and gives another free prediction, this time about sugar (or natural gas or soybeans or pork bellies). To half, he says the price will rise, and to the rest, that it will fall.

And so on with a few more commodities. He discards the failures along the way. At the end of this process, he has 50 to 100 wealthy individual to whom he can say, correctly, that he has given them three or four accurate commodity swings in a row using his special method.

He has “predicted” the future by predicting in hindsight. The unskeptical potential clients don’t see the big picture.

You see the same thing in the days before a presidential election. There’s always the news story about the U.S. county with the longest streak of picking the winning president. Obviously, some county will be the most accurate, just like some path through a tree of random commodities predictions will be the most accurate.

With low standards like those that satisfy many Christian apologists, some of the many prediction-like verses in the Bible are bound to satisfy them.

And they wonder why the rest of us aren’t convinced.

A visitor to the home of 
Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr
noticed a horseshoe on the wall. 
“Can you, of all people, 
believe it will bring good luck?”
“Of course not,” said Bohr,
“but I understand it brings luck 
whether you believe it or not.”

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/22/14.)

Image credit: Chris Gladis, flickr, CC

 

Christian Magic Doesn’t Work if You Don’t Believe It

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video gameA Finnish karate master can defeat opponents without a punch or kick (see video on The Friendly Atheist). He used what he calls “Empty Force.”

You can, too—for a fee.

The video shows opponents falling to the floor, but these were students of the master. When he tried his magic on skeptics, nothing happened.

The Friendly Atheist noted that the students falling to the ground in response to the master’s touch was like Benny Hinn’s celebrated public healings, where sick believers are “slain in the Spirit” as they fall back and writhe on the floor in response to Hinn’s magic wave. But you have to be a believer for it to work—or be in on the scam. When faith healers do their mumbo jumbo on children, the children don’t know that they’re supposed to flop backwards. Hilarious!

What if the opponent isn’t your own student?

Another example is Kiai Master Ryukerin, who has a touchless energy technique similar to Empty Force. Here’s a demonstration of the master sparring with and knocking over his students.

It looks like a stunt but is still intriguing. How would this work in an actual fight? Surprisingly, Master Ryukerin was confident enough not only to offer to fight anyone but to put up prize money. An MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter accepted the challenge, and the results are predictable. Though respectful, he quickly thrashed the old man. The magic force field was only in the mind of his students and had no hold over an outsider.

The Christian energy field

The naïve Christian street preacher or door-knocking missionary is similar to Master Ryukerin. They care what the Bible says, so they’ll support their argument with Bible quotes. They had a compelling personal experience of Jesus, so they’ll share it. They are swayed by emotional (rather than intellectual) arguments, so they’ll use them.

They’ll talk about how the church community is important to them, or that the pastor is charismatic. It works on them, so it should work on others, right?

But this has as much impact on skeptics who demand evidence as Master Ryukerin’s energy field does to a fighter not in on the gag.

More experienced evangelists faced with such an atheist may try intellectual arguments or move on to look for easier conquests.

Christians know what I’m talking about when it comes to cult leaders like Jim Jones or disgraced televangelists like Jim Bakker. They might enjoy a video of Benny Hinn fighting demons with video game sound effects. How could people have not seen through them? But, of course, to the people in their circles of influence, these frauds were very persuasive.

As was Master Ryukerin to his students.

If your religious faith 
is what stops you from raping and murdering, 
that doesn’t make you a good person, 
that makes you a sociopath on a leash.
— commenter Sven2547

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/20/14.)

Image credit: VGjunk

Does Christianity Lead to a Better Society?

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field of yellow flowersStudies have compared believers and atheists on lots of issues—compassion, mental health, happiness, intelligence, quality of marriages, and even antidepressant consumption. I have little interest in the game where the Christian and atheist each present studies to show how their group is superior in this or that social category. My interest lies more in which worldview is more accurate.

Nevertheless, we often hear that Christianity leads to a better society—or, perhaps more often, that the loss of Christianity leads to a worse society. In this scenario, God is furious about our acceptance of homosexuals or abortion or whatever, so he allows the 9/11 attack or Hurricane Katrina or the latest school shootings.

But this is a claim that we can test.

Researcher Gregory Paul used public records of social metrics such as suicide, lifespan, divorce, alcohol consumption, and life satisfaction to compare 17 Western countries (the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, and 12 European countries). He concluded:

Of the 25 socioeconomic and environmental indicators, the most theistic and procreationist western nation, the U.S., scores the worst in 14 and by a very large margin in 8, very poorly in 2, average in 4, well or very well in 4, and the best in 1. . . .

Because the U.S. performs so poorly in so many respects, its cumulative score on the [Successful Societies Scale is lowest,] placing it as an outlier so dysfunctional relative to the other advanced democracies that some researchers have described it as “sick.” (p. 416)

The metrics in which the U.S. ranks worst out of the 17 countries are homicides, incarceration, under-5 mortality, gonorrhea, syphilis, abortions, teen births, marriage duration, income inequality, poverty, and hours worked.

But it’s #1 in God belief, prayer, belief in heaven and hell, and in rejection of evolution! That’s not much consolation to the Christian, however, because this study destroys the notion that religious belief is correlated with societal health.

What causes what?

Why do we find this correlation of secularism with social health? And in what direction should a society move to improve social health?

Conditions in America are decent in spite of the strong influence of Christianity, not because of it. From a related article by Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman, here are the secrets to making a secular society:

It is to be expected that in 2nd and 3rd world nations where wealth is concentrated among an elite few and the masses are impoverished that the great majority cling to the reassurance of faith.

Nor is it all that surprising that faith has imploded in most of the west. Every single 1st world nation that is irreligious shares a set of distinctive attributes. These include handgun control, anti-corporal punishment and anti-bullying policies, rehabilitative rather than punitive incarceration, intensive sex education that emphasizes condom use, reduced socio-economic disparity via tax and welfare systems combined with comprehensive health care, increased leisure time that can be dedicated to family needs and stress reduction, and so forth.

As a result the great majority enjoy long, safe, comfortable, middle class lives that they can be confident will not be lost due to factors beyond their control. It is hard to lose one’s middle class status in Europe, Canada and so forth, and modern medicine is always accessible regardless of income. Nor do these egalitarian cultures emphasize the attainment of immense wealth and luxury, so most folks are reasonably satisfied with what they have got. Such circumstances dramatically reduces peoples’ need to believe in supernatural forces that protect them from life’s calamities, help them get what they don’t have, or at least make up for them with the ultimate Club Med of heaven.

The U.S. is the anomaly among its peers. Why does its large, educated, comfortable middle class cling to belief in a supernatural creator? Paul and Zuckerman say that it’s because they are insecure: salaries and jobs are under pressure from companies eager to cut costs, health insurance is uncertain, social pressure to keep up with the Jones increases debt, and so on. A single extended illness can bankrupt a family.

They also reject the popular hypothesis that America’s separation of church and state has encouraged a vibrant mix of Christian denominations that have had to fight for market share, making a stronger Christianity. They cite Australia and New Zealand who both have a strong separation of church and state but far less religiosity.

What use is faith?

They conclude that a healthy society eliminates the need for faith.

Every time a nation becomes truly advanced in terms of democratic, egalitarian education and prosperity it loses the faith. It’s guaranteed. That is why perceptive theists are justifiably scared. In practical terms their only . . . hope is for nations to continue to suffer from socio-economic disparity, poverty and maleducation. That strategy is, of course, neither credible nor desirable. And that is why the secular community should be more encouraged. . . .

The religious industry simply lacks a reliable stratagem for defeating disbelief in the 21st century.

So perhaps many of us have it backwards. This is not a contest between religion and secularism that will determine the quality of society. Rather, the quality of society will determine whether religion or secularism will thrive. In a dysfunctional society, religion helps pick up the pieces, but in a society where life is secure, religion is unnecessary and withers away.

Do you want a religious society or a healthy one? You can’t have both.

Incredibly, I’m sure many American Christian leaders would happily choose a religious society over a healthy one.

Celebrate life: live better, help often, wonder more.
— Motto of the Sunday Assembly

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/6/14.)

Image credit: Peter Mooney, flickr, CC

Oral Tradition and the Game of Telephone: A. N. Sherwin-White’s Famous Quote

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WhisperThe time from the death of Jesus to the writing of the first gospel was about forty years. An exciting story being passed along orally in a world full of the supernatural seems bound to be “improved,” deliberately or inadvertently, as it moves from person to person.

While some epistles were written earlier, the details Paul gives about the life of Jesus can be summarized in one short paragraph (more here). How can we dismiss the possibility that any actual history of Jesus is lost through a decades-long game of telephone?

Christian rebuttal

Christian apologist William Lane Craig says that forty years is too short a period for legend to develop. He points to a claim made by A.N. Sherwin-White in Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (1963).

According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be “unbelievable.” More generations would be needed. (Source)

Craig’s summary has been quoted widely and was popularized in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ (2008), and it sounds like a thorough slap down of the legend claim. However, when we see what Sherwin-White actually said, we find that Craig’s confidence is unwarranted.

(From this point forward, I’ll use “SW” to refer to historian A.N. Sherwin-White.)

SW never said “unbelievable”

Incredibly, the word “unbelievable,” which Craig puts into the mouth of SW, is not used by him in the relevant chapter in this book. If the word comes from another source, Craig doesn’t cite it. Craig also quotes the word in his essay in Jesus Under Fire (1995).

We all make mistakes, but it’s been twenty years. Where is Craig’s correction?

What did SW actually say?

From his Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament:

Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, and the tests suggest that even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core of the oral tradition. (RSRL, 190)

SW proposes an interesting experiment. If we can find examples in history where legend has crept into oral history and we have more reliable sources that let us compare that with what actually happened, we can measure how fast legendary material accumulates.

Notice the limitations in what SW is saying.

  • He cites several examples where historians have (tentatively) sifted truth from myth, but Herodotus is the only example used to put a rate on the loss of historic truth. This isn’t a survey of, say, a dozen random historic accounts that each validates a two-generation limit.
  • He isn’t saying that myth doesn’t accumulate, and he’s not proposing a rate at which it does. He’s writing instead about the loss of accurate history (“the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core”).
  • He is careful to use the word “suggest” above. William Lane Craig isn’t as careful and imagines an immutable law that SW clearly isn’t proposing.

What is SW’s point?

Here is more of what SW is saying.

All this suggests that, however strong the myth-forming tendency, the falsification does not automatically and absolutely prevail. (RSRL, 191)

The point of my argument is not to suggest the literal accuracy of ancient sources, secular or ecclesiastical, but to offset the extreme skepticism with which the New Testament narratives are treated in some quarters. (RSRL, 193)

Craig imagines that myth never overtakes historic truth in two generations. By contrast, SW says that myth doesn’t always overtake historic truth.

Consider Craig’s difficulty. He proposes what may be the most incredible story possible: that a supernatural being created the universe and came to earth as a human and that this was recorded in history. We have a well-populated bin labeled “Mythology” for stories like this. If Craig is to argue that, no, this one is actually history, SW’s statement is useless. “Well, myth might not have overtaken historic truth in this case” does very little to keep Craig’s religion from the Mythology bin.

More limitations in SW’s statement

  • SW gives no procedure for reliably winnowing the myth out of the history.
  • It’s been more than fifty years since his book, which is plenty of time for scholars to weigh in. If they’ve said nothing, that gives us little reason to think that SW is onto something useful. But if a consensus response has emerged, that is what we should be considering, not SW’s original proposal.
  • The examples that SW considers—Tiberius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and others—are all important public figures. Jesus was not. Legendary drift is slow when everyone experienced the impact of the figure directly and might correct a story themselves. By contrast, only a handful of people could rein in an errant Jesus story (more here).
  • SW’s examples are all secular leaders. Is Herodotus a relevant example when we’re concerned about the growth of a religious tale? Consider Sathya Sai Baba, an Indian guru who died in 2011 with millions of followers. Supernatural tales grew up around him in his own lifetime. (More on the growth of legends here and here.)

SW proves too much!

Craig must walk a fine line since he can’t completely reject mythological development. Myth is his enemy when it comes to the New Testament books written forty to seventy years after the death of Jesus. He must downplay myth to label these as history. But myth is his friend when it comes to the noncanonical books of the second century—the Gospel of Thomas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and so on. Here he imagines the mists of time separating the authors of those books from the actual history.

Worse, the Bible itself documents legendary accretion in just months or a few years. When Jesus asked the disciples who people said he was, “They told him, ‘John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets’ ” (Mark 8:27–8). According to the gospels themselves, there was legendary accretion during Jesus’s own lifetime!

This observation cuts twice. First, it argues for much quicker development of legend than Craig wants. Second, it defeats the Naysayer Hypothesis, the claim that no false statement about the gospel story would last while the eyewitnesses were alive to stamp it out. Apparently not, if Jesus himself can’t stop the flawed rumors. (h/t Robert M. Price)

And incredibly, Craig’s own quote supports the skeptics’ concern about legend creeping into the gospels! Apologists don’t read SW’s chapter directly; they prefer Craig’s quote. It’s a much better data point with which to argue that the gospels are accurate—if you can get past that small issue of it being completely inaccurate.

Sticky, not accurate, is what gets passed along. This is true for Craig as it is for the gospel story.

In the beginning, God created man in his own image. 
Man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.
— Rousseau

References: These sources provided much valuable material for this post.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/30/13.)

Image credit: Jamin Gray, flickr, CC

 

A Defense of Premarital Sex

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Avoiding sex before marriage isn’t much of a problem in a society where people get married shortly after they become sexually mature. Unfortunately, the West isn’t such a society. Take a look at how things have changed.

Medieval marriage

Centuries ago, first marriages in Europe were typically at 25 years, with brides a couple of years younger than grooms. Yes, Shakespeare portrays Juliet as only 13, but that was uncommon. Noble folk typically married earlier, but Juliet would’ve been young even for a noblewoman.

Onset of puberty in the 1800s was about 16–17 for girls and a year later for boys, with sexual maturity requiring another five years.

This meant that young people typically had just a few years between sexual maturity and marriage. Even so, premarital sex was common (though out-of-wedlock births were frowned upon). Until the mid-1700s in Britain, betrothed couples could live together and have sex, and pregnant brides were common and accepted. Customs in Colonial America were about the same, and a third of New England brides were pregnant.

Marriage today

The average age at first marriage in the U.S. is now 27 for women and 29 for men, a bit older than centuries earlier. The bigger difference is the age of sexual maturity. Onset of puberty is now 10–11 for girls and a year later for boys. The process is complete about five years later.

While the cause of this change in puberty is debated—some combination of improved nutrition and hormone-like chemicals in our environment?—this means an average of over a decade of sexual maturity before marriage. Abstinence before marriage is now much more of a trial.

What does the Bible say?

The Bible has a lot to say about sex. It talks about a girl who is presented as a virgin but isn’t. It talks about adultery. It talks about when rape is okay. It talks about how to take captured women as wives. It talks about which relatives you may not sleep with. It even talks about which relatives you must sleep with. (More on the Bible’s crazy marriage and sex customs here.)

The Bible also has plenty to say about premarital sex. Or nothing, depending on your interpretation. The issue revolves around the Greek word porneia.

The New Testament uses this word a lot. It’s clearly a bad thing, but it’s not clear exactly what it means. It’s often translated as “fornication,” which is consensual sex between two persons not married to each other. That includes premarital sex, so the Bible prohibition appears to be clear.

But explore other translations, and the issue is trickier. Some define the word as “prostitution,” because the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) used it this way.

A popular translation is “sexual immorality,” though this ambiguous. Even if the sins in this category were clear in Paul’s mind, they’re not clear in ours, and we are only projecting our own biases when listing what this prohibition must mean. No, “sexual immorality” doesn’t clearly prohibit premarital sex, and it’s not included in the long list of sexual sins in Leviticus 18 and 20.

Even if premarital sex were prohibited in the Bible, so what? The Bible celebrates genocide, polygamy, and slavery, and yet we reject them. You might say that God was bound by the customs of the time, and that’s why they’re allowed. But no matter—they’re not allowed today. Similarly, if a ban on premarital sex makes no sense for modern society, drop it.

The Christian response

One approach, often adopted by conservative Christians, is to get married early. You want sex? Fair enough—just get married first. But a rush to marriage driven by a desire for sex can make for a poorly grounded marriage. A Barna study came to similar conclusions as earlier studies when it concluded, “divorce rates are higher among people who are members of conservative Protestant faiths,” and “divorce rates were lower for people who described themselves as atheist or agnostic.”

Just as sex-driven marriage isn’t the best approach, neither is abstinence-only sex education. More knowledge leads to less risky sexual behavior. Not teaching safe sex or discouraging teens from the HPV vaccine is like banning fire extinguishers because otherwise everyone will set things on fire.

Another approach

Let me propose a different approach. Nature will give adult bodies to teens whether we like it or not. We don’t give them the keys to the car without driver’s education, so give them the owner’s manual to go along with their adult bodies as well (more).

Instead of a one-size-fits-all demand that premarital sex be off limits, society should (1) provide sex education that minimizes unwanted pregnancy and STDs, (2) make contraception and condoms easily available, (3) emphasize that “No” means no in a relationship, and (4) teach that sex alters a relationship and shouldn’t be treated lightly. Finally, have abortion available as a backstop.

Yes, there can be harm with sex, but there can be harm with cars and the internet, too. Sexual compatibility is an important component of a strong marriage. Should the couple figure that out before or after committing their lives to each other?

The gap between sexual maturity and marriage has gone from a couple of years to more than a decade. The ban on premarital sex is naive, especially when it’s just a tradition and isn’t in the Bible. This is like female genital mutilation in predominantly Muslim societies—it’s only a tradition, and it’s not in the Quran.

There’s nothing inherently harmful in premarital sex, and the sin of premarital sex is one of those rare problems that you can simply define away.

We are living at a time where some people . . .
want to test whether the milk is good before they buy the cow.
— John Sentamu, Archbishop of York
(commenting on the decision of Prince William and Kate Middleton
to live together before their wedding)

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/23/13.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

 

Argument for God from Differential Equations

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equations

No serious mathematical understanding, aptitude, or even interest is required to enjoy this post. There’s a fascinating thing that I want to share with you, but there’s a bit of mathematical throat clearing we need to get through up front.

Here’s an example of a differential equation (seriously, this isn’t on the test):

E1

This differential equation describes a damped oscillator. Imagine a weight on a spring. Drop the weight, and it bounces up and down, but less each time until it comes to a stop. That motion is described by this equation. Here it is in graphical form:

damped_osc

Equation 2 is a simplified representation of equation 1 (the dots represent a derivative with respect to time):

E2

Move some terms around for one last simplification:

E3

Analog computers

Okay, now it gets interesting. Decades before the early room-sized electronic digital computers like ENIAC, there were analog computers. They solve differential equations like this one.

Analog computers are made from elements like integrators, multipliers, and adders (I leave as an exercise for the reader why integrators make much more sense than differentiators).

To solve the equation above, we first assume that we have ẍ.

Crazy, right? We just proceed blithely along after first assuming that we already have the second derivative of the thing we’re trying to find.

Stick with me and see how this turns out. First, integrate it twice (each integration removes a dot—that is, one derivative of time). The signal moves from left to right through two integrators:

analog computer 1

Okay, we’re almost there. We use the analog computer to create the right side of equation 3:

analog computer 2

Magic time!

And here’s the fun part. We’ve now computed the right side of equation 3. But wait a minute—that’s equal to ẍ ! So that bizarre, unfounded assumption—we just assume that we have what we don’t have—was actually justified. We feed that output back in as ẍ and we’re done. Here’s the final layout:

analog computer 3

Ah, if only faith worked like that in religion.

Augustine’s contribution to differential equations

Augustine (354–430 CE) didn’t have much to say on this subject, but see if this sounds like our analog computer project: “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”

Just believe. Don’t worry about it making any sense—understanding will come with time. It’s like solving a differential equation with an analog computer: assume the result, and you will be rewarded.

The problem, of course, is that it actually works with an analog computer. Every time. By contrast, “just believe” is terrible advice when evaluating a claim with poor evidence—fairies, leprechauns, Oz, the Force, and so on.

Begging the question, Christian style

We see a similar assumption of the conclusion with many responses to challenges against Christianity. For example, we see in the gospels just what we’d expect to see if the resurrection were true. Therefore, the Christian apologist says, the gospels are important evidence for the resurrection being true.

Or, take the order and beauty we see in the world. The apologist tells us that this is just what we’d expect if there were a god.

But is this approach justified? Take an analogous argument:

  1. If space aliens caused car accidents, we’d see car accidents.
  2. We do see car accidents.
  3. Conclusion: we now have more evidence that space aliens cause car accidents.

The Gigantic If

Or (for a different kind of rationalization) take the Problem of Evil, the puzzle of why an all-good god allows so much bad in the world. An all-knowing god could have his reasons, couldn’t he? That you skeptics don’t understand is hardly surprising—your finite mind may just be incapable of understanding it from that god’s perspective.

In other words, assume the Christian position and rearrange evidence to support it rather than start with the evidence and then reach a conclusion. This is the Christians’ Gigantic If: an argument that begins, “if God exists . . .” or “if objective morality exists . . .” or “if Jesus resurrected. . . .” (I’ve discussed this in more detail as the Hypothetical God Fallacy.)

Yes, Mr. Christian, if God exists then you win the argument, but you don’t get to just assume God or any other fanciful claim. Simply showing that your claim is compatible with the facts counts for nothing. You must do it the hard way, like a scientist or historian, showing the evidence that leads us unavoidably to your conclusion. I’ve seen the Gigantic If so often that it’s like fingernails on a blackboard for me, and I hope that it will be for you, too.

Assuming the conclusion works great when solving differential equations, since we have evidence that it works. The opposite is true for supernatural claims.

 In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, 
blind physical forces and genetic replication, 
some people are going to get hurt, 
other people are going to get lucky, 
and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. 
— Richard Dawkins

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/11/13.)

Image credit: Bryan Alexander, flickr, CC