Monthly Archives: March 2018

25 Reasons We Don’t Live in a World with a God (Part 6)

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Do we live in a world with a god? It doesn’t look like it (part 1 here).

Let’s continue our survey with the next clue that we live in a godless world:

13. Because “Christianity answers life’s Big Questions!” is irrelevant

Christians like to claim that their religion can answer the Big Questions, the questions that are fundamental to all of us. (It’s usually just one Big Question, some variation of “What is the meaning of life?”) However, the power of this question and Christianity’s claim to answer it crumble under closer inspection.

This is a special case of C. S. Lewis’s Argument from Desire. Sure, we can want things—a blissful afterlife, a big brother to watch out for us, or God-given meaning for our lives—but that doesn’t mean that those things exist. The same is true with any big question: just because we can think up supernatural answers doesn’t mean that they’re valid.

Alister McGrath, a priest and professor of theology who wrote a book about his journey from atheism to Christianity (responded to here), explains the motivation of his quest to faith this way: “I began to realize that human beings need existential answers about meaning, purpose and value, not just an understanding about how the universe works.” We find a similar drive from apologist William Lane Craig, who traced his life’s work back to the “fear and unbearable sadness” he had as a boy when he first learned about death (more here).

Can we find common ground? Perhaps we must retreat to something as obvious as this: fear of death is no evidence of the afterlife. And I doubt that even this straightforward observation is agreed to by all Christian apologists.

Christians’ big questions (“Why are we here?” or “What is my purpose?”) are actually childish questions. Few people ask why a dog is here or what its purpose is, and science makes clear that humans are just another animal. If there’s no profound reason or purpose for dogs or badgers or mosquitos, why imagine that there should be for humans?

Think of some other biggish questions. Questions like “Why can’t I fly like Superman?” or “Why can’t I move things with my mind?” are frivolous, not important. Most of us accept that this just isn’t how reality works and move on. Questions like “Is this the right person to marry?” or “Should I take that new job?” are individual, not universal. We know that there is no perfect answer.

“Why are we here?” is both universal and important, which gives it few peers . . . but it’s still childish. Let me clarify that asking this question, which many of us wrestle with, is itself not childish. The problem comes when we see that this is a widely asked question and conclude that it must have a bigger-than-us answer. It’s as if they imagine that this question is powerful enough to create a God-shaped vacuum that will suck a supernatural answer into existence if asked by enough people.

Let’s grow up. It doesn’t work that way.

McGrath explains his frustration with science: “The epistemic dilemma of humanity is that we cannot prove the things that matter most to us. We can only prove shallow truths.” But McGrath has it backwards. Show us that there’s more than life here on earth, and then we can worry about those unanswered questions. Until that point, science is the discipline that’s tackling issues that actually exist rather than chasing pink elephants that don’t.

What McGrath labels as “shallow truths” are the fruits of science that prevent and treat disease, feed billions, and teach us about the workings of the atom, the cell, the solar system, and the universe. Religion can’t even get its act together to tell us how many gods there are or what their names are.

That Christians have the luxury of pondering these existential questions is proof of how comfortable their life is. These Western Christians don’t worry about their next meal or staying warm. They can think that food comes from the grocery store, that their favorite sitcom is real, or that Jesus invisibly walks next to them when life is tough. Contrast this with people who have real problems—boys used as soldiers in Congo or girls used as sex slaves in Cambodia. The “Big Questions” are the ultimate #FirstWorldProblems in a society with air bags and training wheels.

Many Christians ignore this and return, like a dog to his vomit, to claim, “Yeah, but I have the answers!” Uh huh. Lots of people have answers. Jim Jones had answers. The Westboro Baptist Church has answers. The Mormons who knock on your door have answers. Are your answers worth listening to? Why should I listen to your answers over theirs?

You ask what you say are the most profound questions of all, and yet the answers are location specific. In Pakistan, Muslims will give you one meaning for life; in India, Hindus will give you another; and in Mississippi, fundamentalist Christians will give you another. What kind of truth depends on location?

And we return to the legitimacy of the question itself. To the Christian who pouts, “Yeah, but what is the purpose of my life?” I wonder if someone needs a hug. Jesus Christ, stop being a baby and answer it yourself. You’re an adult—if your life needs a purpose, give it one!

If you want answers to these questions, they’re right in front of you. You just don’t like them. What is the meaning of life? It’s the meaning you assign to it.

Why are we here? For no more eternally significant reason than why a dog or badger or mosquito is here.

Where did we come from? Big Bang explains the matter, and evolution explains the biology.

Science does a good job at answering questions about reality, it’s just that Christians don’t always like the answers.

Continued in part 7.

Religion convinces you you’re poisoned, when you’re not,
and then offers you the homeopathic remedy.
— Matt Dillahunty

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Image via johndal, CC license

10 Rules of Life

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Years ago, in the early days of the internet, there was a great site called Global Ideas Bank that was a clearing house for creative ideas to improve society. I can’t find it anymore (though a blog has picked up the idea), but one of the ideas cataloged there was a collection of rules about life. I’d like to pass those rules on with a few of my own.

These rules are rather contrarian. Instead of wise bits of encouragement or a pat on the head, this is tough-love advice that assumes that dealing squarely with reality is the best approach. Each ends with an implied “that’s life—deal with it.”

I’ve added a few comments and quotes.

1. You can’t make people like you. “I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time” (Herbert Bayard Swope).

2. There is no way of getting all you want. Admire without desiring. “My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions but in the fewness of my wants” (J. Brotherton).

3. The world is not fair. “Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian” (Shari Barr).

4. Being good often doesn’t pay off. Make good its own reward. “The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it” (General Norman Schwarzkopf).

5. There is no compensation for misfortune. Life isn’t fair, and it doesn’t owe you anything.

6. We don’t control most things. “Risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking” (Tim McMahon).

7. All important decisions are made on the basis of insufficient data. “He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses” (Horace).

8. Each of us is ultimately alone. There is no supernatural friend who is looking out for you, smoothing the way. This can terrify you, or it can empower you. “The most important things, each man must do for himself” (Sheldon Kopp).

9. When you die, that’s it. “Things work out best for those who make the best out of the way things work out.”

10. Most of us in the West are greatly privileged compared to people living in the rest of the world. It’s human nature to complain and look for more, but it is helpful to look up occasionally to appreciate how you fit into the big picture.

A Christian list would typically be more optimistic, and coming from that worldview, I can see how these rules might seem discouraging. To me, however, they simply seem to be a straightforward distillation of reality. It’s better to see life accurately, warts and all, than to live in a delusion.

I like optimistic advice, but I like realistic advice, too. What similar advice would you give as a bracing dose of reality?

Clothes make the man. 
Naked people have little or no influence in society.
— Mark Twain

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/9/14.)

Image via Enric Martinez, CC license

 

25 Reasons We Don’t Live in a World with a God (Part 5)

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Do we live in a world with a god? There are many reasons to reject that idea (part 1 here).

Let’s continue our survey with the next clue that we live in a godless world:

11. Because God is absent from where we’d expect him

Victor Stenger makes the Argument from Absence, which observes that we don’t find God where we’d expect to. This is a direct response to a popular Christian argument that goes something like this: “You say God doesn’t exist? Well let me ask you this: have you looked everywhere in the universe? How do you know he doesn’t exist if you haven’t looked everywhere?”

This is simply the “You can’t prove God doesn’t exist” argument, which is off topic because I’m not trying to prove God doesn’t exist. However, when you look in places where you’d expect to find evidence of God, and you find none, that is evidence against God.

Stenger explores eight areas.

1. Cosmology. We should find evidence for God in cosmology, but natural laws are sufficient. We find no data that needs a miraculous violation of laws. “Well established cosmological knowledge indicates that the universe began with maximum entropy, that is, total chaos with the absence of structure. Thus the universe bears no imprint of a creator.”

2. Evolution. We should find God in the structure of living things, but evolution is sufficient. Complex organisms evolved from simpler ones in a variations-on-a-theme way. Life forms are marvelously complex, but elegance is what we’d expect to find in a designed lifeform, not mere complexity. Far from being evidence of a Creator, the junk in DNA argues for the opposite conclusion.

3. Souls. We should find evidence that God gave humans souls, but the supernatural isn’t necessary to explain consciousness, memory, or personality (more). There is no evidence that souls are anything more than wishful thinking.

4. Revelation. The Bible claims that God gives communicates through revelations, but we can’t verify this. Even many of the un-supernatural claims like the Exodus and David’s empire now appear to be false.

5. Prayers. Jesus in the Bible claimed that prayers are reliably answered (more here and here). The Bible has no qualifiers like “if you’re worthy” or “if your prayer happens to line up with God’s plan.” Christians make billions of prayers, but there is no convincing evidence that God answers any. Prayer is easy to study scientifically, but the comprehensive Templeton Study found no evidence of the value of prayer.

6. Inhospitable universe. The Bible makes clear that the universe was created with man in mind, but the vast majority of the universe (and the majority of the earth) is inhospitable to man. The universe has 200 billion galaxies, but earth was the actual purpose? Nope.

7. New information. If God communicates with people through prayer or revelation, there should be evidence of people having information they could only have gotten supernaturally. Instead, no such claim has checked out, and the Bible has no information that wouldn’t have already been available to the people who wrote it (more here and here).

8. Morality. Is God the source of morality? Given the barbaric morality God displays in the Old Testament, it’s clear that he is no moral authority. For example, God said that slavery was fine, but we say that it’s abhorrent. Both can’t both be right. Christians must pick.

This relates to Hitchens’ Moral Challenge: identify a moral action taken or a moral sentiment uttered by a believer that couldn’t be taken or uttered by an unbeliever—something that only a believer could do and an atheist couldn’t. There is nothing.

But now think of the reverse: something terrible that only a believer would do or say. Examples from the Bible easily come to mind—Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac, for example. Today, Christians justify lots of things, from Westboro Baptist Church’s “God hates fags” to any hateful or selfish conclusion justified by “because God (or the Bible) says” such as condemning homosexuality, blocking civil rights, prohibiting stem cell research, and so on.

Could God be hiding under a rock somewhere that we haven’t peeked under? Sure, but this secretive god isn’t the Christian god who’s eager for a relationship. These are eight places where we would expect a god to be, and our searches have come up empty.

12. Because physics rules out the soul or the afterlife

This is a related argument by another physicist, Sean Carroll. He notes that there is plenty of physics we don’t understand, but the physics of the everyday world is very well understood. If a soul exists, it would need to exist in particles, and it would need particles to convey it into the afterlife. No such particles exist. Unlike “Have you looked everywhere in the universe?” we have looked everywhere for particles that interact in our daily lives. We’ve found them all, and none could explain the soul.

Here’s his critique of hiding places for the soul particle(s):

Could new particles hide from our view? Sure, but only if they were (1) very weakly interacting or (2) too heavy to create or (3) too short-lived to detect. In any of those cases, the new particle would be irrelevant to our everyday lives. (Source)

The Christian god needs physics to build a soul, but physics isn’t cooperating. This doesn’t offer much hope for the afterlife, either. (More)

Continue with part 6.

It ain’t supposed to make sense; it’s faith.
Faith is something that you believe
that nobody in his right mind would believe.
— Archie Bunker, All in the Family

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Image via John D, CC license

Arguing the Truth of the Bible (Fiction)

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This is excerpt from my book, Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey. These excerpts are a little longer than the usual post, but I think the fiction format is an interesting way to explore apologetics arguments.

Background: Jim is a wealthy, housebound, and somewhat obnoxious atheist, and Paul is the young acolyte of Rev. Samuel Hargrove, a famous pastor, doing his best to evangelize. It’s 1906 in Los Angeles, and they’re in Jim’s study.

Paul remembered that Jim was simply a lost sheep. Jim had understood the truth of the Bible, and he could be reminded of that again. Paul felt confident and enthusiastic as he began. “You argued yesterday that oral tradition is unreliable and that we can’t trust the Gospel story of Jesus.”

“I argued that the evidence the Gospels provide is paltry compared to what is necessary to justify such amazing claims.”

“Yes. I’d like to challenge that—”

Jim held up a hand. “Before you begin, let’s try an experiment. You think that oral tradition is reliable. Let’s simulate a step in that process. I’ll tell you a story, and then we’ll see how well you remember it.”

Paul didn’t expect a quiz. “I suppose, but remember that I’m just an ordinary person. I’m not trained in memorizing stories.”

“And neither would have been an ordinary citizen in Palestine who heard the story of Jesus and passed it along. From Jesus’s death to the first Gospel was thirty or forty years. The story wasn’t confined to scholars—it was passed through ordinary people.”

“I suppose so,” Paul said. Samuel had talked about trained scholars memorizing the story, but the story passing through common people made sense.

“Do you know the story of Circe from the Odyssey?”

“No—I’ve only read the Iliad.”

“Then you know the context.” Jim got up and walked to the bookcase on his left. The bookcase was densely packed with no apparent order. He ran his fingers across the spines of the books on one shelf, muttering titles to himself. After a few moments, he pulled off a book and leafed through it as he returned to the sofa. “The Iliad is about the Trojan War, and the Odyssey is the story of the Greek hero Odysseus and his ten-year trip home.

“Here’s the story—pay attention.” Jim looked down at the book as he spoke. “Odysseus and his men were lost and they landed on the coast of a strange land. After a few days of rest, Odysseus sent Eurylochus, a trusted friend, with a party of twenty-two men to explore. They found a house in a clearing guarded by lions, wolves, and other animals but were surprised to find the animals tame. They approached the house, and a woman named Circe invited them in. The men were delighted to find so beautiful a hostess and accepted the offer—except for Eurylochus, who suspected a trap. Circe showed the men a banquet and they ate enthusiastically, but she was a witch and the food was drugged. She turned the men into pigs and locked them in pens. The wild animals were men from other expeditions that Circe had also transformed.”

Jim looked up at Paul and then continued. “Eurylochus saw all this and hurried back to tell Odysseus. Odysseus was determined to rescue his men and went alone to Circe’s house. On the way, he met the god Hermes, who wanted to help. He gave Odysseus an herb that would protect him from Circe’s magic, and he told Odysseus that the threat of his sword would beat the threat of her wand. The encounter went as Hermes had predicted—Circe was no match for Odysseus, and she returned the men to human form. Odysseus and his men enjoyed Circe’s hospitality for a year, and she and Odysseus became lovers.”

Jim looked up and set the open book on the sofa. “That’s long enough. The Jesus story is far longer, of course, but let’s see how you do with that. Make sure you got it right—are you unclear on anything?”

Aside from Hermes and Odysseus, the names in the story were new to Paul, and he asked to have them repeated. He checked on the number of men, the kinds of animals in the clearing, and other details.

“Okay,” Jim said after Paul was satisfied, “let’s sit on that for a bit and return to what you were saying about oral tradition.”

“My point is that if the Gospel story was wrong, there would have been people who said, ‘Hold on, now—I was there, and that didn’t happen’ or ‘I knew that fellow, and he didn’t do that.’ A false story wouldn’t have survived.”

“Have you thought this through?”

“Sure,” Paul said.

“I doubt it.”

Paul again felt the punch in the stomach.

Jim frowned. “Think critically about claims like this. You’re smart enough to demand the truth, not just a pleasing answer. First, let’s get an idea of how few potential naysayers there could have been. I’m guessing a few dozen.”

“But there were thousands who saw the miracle of the loaves and fishes. And that’s just one miracle—there were many.”

“That doesn’t help us. A naysayer must have been a close companion of Jesus to witness him not doing all the miracles recorded in the Gospels. He would need to know that Jesus didn’t walk on water and didn’t raise Lazarus. Seems to me that a naysayer must have been one of Jesus’s close companions during his entire ministry. No, there’s no reason to imagine more than a few dozen.”

Odysseus, Eurylochus, Circe, Hermes, Paul thought to himself.

Jim looked up at the ceiling and counted off numbers with his fingers. “Two: the naysayer must be in the right location to complain. Suppose he were in Jerusalem, and say that the book of Mark was written in Alexandria, Egypt. How will our naysayer correct its errors? Sure, Mark will be copied and spread, but there’s not much time before our 60- or 70-year-old witnesses die. Even if we imagine our tiny band of men dedicating their lives to stamping out this false story—and why would they?—believers are starting brush fires of Christian belief all over the Eastern Mediterranean, from Alexandria to Damascus to Rome. How can we expect our naysayers to snuff them all out?

“Three: remember that two thousand years ago, you couldn’t walk down to the corner newsstand to find the latest Jesus Gospel. How were our naysayers to learn of the story? Written documents at that time were scarce and precious things. The naysayers would be Jews who didn’t convert to Christianity, and they wouldn’t have associated much with the new Christians and so would have been unlikely to come across the Jesus story.

Twenty-two men, the food was a drug, the men became pigs, Paul thought.

“Four: there was another gulf between the naysayers and the early Christians. The Gospels were written in Greek, not the local language of Aramaic spoken by Jesus and the naysayers. To even learn of the Jesus story in this community, our naysayers must speak Greek. How many could have done this? And to influence the Greek-speaking readers of the Gospels, a rebuttal would have to have been written in Greek—not a common skill in Palestine.

“Five: suppose you knew the actual Jesus, and you knew that he was merely a charismatic rabbi. Nothing supernatural. Now you hear the story of Jesus the Son of Man, the healer of lepers and raiser of the dead. Why connect the two? ‘Jesus’ was a common name. Your friend Jesus didn’t do anything like this, so the story you heard must be of a different person. So even when confronted with the false teaching, you wouldn’t raise an alarm.”

“Six: consider how hard is it today for a politician or business leader to stop a false rumor, even with the press to get the word out. Think about how hard it would have been in first-century Palestine. How many thousands of Christians were out there spreading the word for every naysayer with his finger in the dike?”

Magic plant for protection, sword beats wand, Paul thought.

“Seven: you say that there were no naysayers, but how do we know that there weren’t? For us to know about them, they would need to have written their story and have some mechanism to recopy the truth over and over until the present day. Just like Christian documents, their originals would have crumbled with time. What would motivate anyone to preserve copies of documents that argued against a religion? Perhaps only another religion! And it’s not surprising that the Jesus-isn’t-divine religion didn’t catch on.”

Jim let out a sigh. “That’s a longer list than I expected. I hope you can see that naysayers could hardly be expected to stop Christianity.”

“A lot to consider,” Paul admitted. “But I still think the oral tradition preserves the truth.”

“That’s a poor rebuttal!” Paul looked away as Jim glowered at him and continued. “Think about it—you’re smarter than this. I hold you to a higher standard, one that doesn’t abide by sloppy thinking. Does God exist? If so, he gave you that mind to use. Your mind is an engine to be harnessed, not a vessel to be filled. You must be a truth seeker; don’t blindly follow someone else’s thinking.”

A soft metallic clap came from the hallway. Paul appreciated the break in the scolding as Jim walked to the door. He returned holding a postcard, dropped it in a trash can, and stood over the chessboard.

“You must read awful fast,” Paul said.

“It was a short message: ‘Knight to king’s bishop three.’ I’m playing chess through the mail with an old friend from college. He still lives in Boston, so this will be a long game.” He moved one of the white pieces. “Do you play chess?”

“I know the rules for how the pieces move, that’s it,” Paul said. “Do you know how you’ll respond?”

“Yes. The early moves in a game are rather predictable, but still interesting. They’re the foundation on which your position rests.”

Jim gazed at the board a few moments, then slowly walked back to the sofa and sat. “Do you eat nuts every day?” He pushed a bowl of shelled almonds across the table toward Paul with a bare foot.

“Uh … no, not often.”

“You should. Your body is a machine, and it needs lubrication. Nuts provide oils that are essential to good health.”

“Well, thank you. I didn’t realize that.”

“And I suppose you eat meat.”

“You don’t?”

“I’m a vegetarian—I follow the Battle Creek Sanitarium diet. Whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. And lots of nuts. Nature provides all that we need to be healthy—no need to kill animals for us to live.”

Paul said nothing as he wondered how to get this derailed train back on track.

“And do you enema?” Jim asked.

Paul assured him that he did not.

“You should, every day. And drink lots of water.” Jim described in unnecessary detail how the colon works and the benefits of daily cleansing. “You’d be shocked at what comes out,” he said.

Paul felt vaguely ill as he agreed.

Jim moved on to how to avoid mucus and the need to chew food so thoroughly that it slithered down the esophagus by itself, but this was mercifully interrupted by a knock on the door. “This should only take a moment,” Jim said.

“Groceries,” he said as he walked into the kitchen carrying a small wooden box. “I get a delivery every day.”

Home delivery seemed to be an extravagance when there was a grocery store two blocks away. Paul mused that the rich lived quite differently than ordinary folk.

When he returned, Jim picked up his copy of the Odyssey as he sat and thankfully dropped the topic of healthy living. “Now, pretend that I’m someone who hasn’t heard the amazing story of Odysseus and Circe and that you’re eager to pass it along.”

Paul said a little prayer as he slid to the edge of his chair. He gestured as he spoke. “Odysseus and his men walked into a strange land. Odysseus stayed behind and Eurylochus took the remaining twenty-two men to investigate. They found a witch named Circe in a house in a clearing, surrounded by wild animals that were actually tame. She invited them in for a banquet. All entered, but Eurylochus refused. One of the foods was a drug, and the men turned into pigs after they ate it.”

“Go on,” Jim said, his left index finger tracing the story in the open book.

“Eurylochus went back to Odysseus and reported what happened. Odysseus went to the house to free his men, and on the way he met Hermes, who gave him a magic drug to protect him. When he met the witch, they fought, Odysseus using his sword and Circe her wand. Odysseus won, and he forced her to release his men. She became nice—though I’m not sure why—and they stayed with her for a year.”

“Not bad,” Jim said. “The basic story is correct, but you changed a lot of details. First off, Odysseus and his men were sailors—they didn’t come marching in overland.”

“I didn’t hear ‘sailors.’ ”

“I said that they landed on the coast,” Jim said, looking down at the book. “These are minor changes, but multiplied with the retelling, they soon turn into big changes. You forgot that they rested first … the party of men who went to the house was just part of Odysseus’s crew, not all of it … you forgot the kinds of wild animals—lions and wolves … Eurylochus stayed outside, he didn’t refuse to enter … you said one food was a drug, but I said ‘the food was drugged’ … the food didn’t turn the crew into pigs, Circe did … the wild animals were also men … Odysseus and Circe didn’t fight.” Jim looked up. “Well, how do you think you did?”

“Okay, I guess. That’s a lot to remember in a short time. But the early church was a web of interconnections. If one person is telling the story to a group, another person in the group may well have heard it before. He could correct any errors.”

“Based on what?” Jim asked. “When I corrected your story just now, I was reading from a book—that’s our authority. There was no book when the Jesus story was oral tradition. When two people’s memories conflicted, whose was right?”

“There were scholars who memorized whole books of the Bible. They would have been an authority.”

“Are you saying that the Jesus story went from scholar to scholar, with a student sworn to secrecy until he could flawlessly repeat the story? That’s not how it was told.” Jim gestured impatiently as if unable to contain his amazement at Paul’s stupidity. “It was a dramatic and exciting yarn that went from fallible person to fallible person, just as stories do today. Society has changed since then, but the basics of storytelling haven’t. When you see two women gossiping over the back fence, you’re seeing something that hasn’t changed in thousands of years.”

Jim leaned back into the sofa, and his voice softened. “You did pretty well, but now imagine that the story was far longer, and you waited days instead of minutes to retell it. Such a story can change dramatically after decades of retelling over and over. What better explains the supernatural elements of the Jesus story—that they actually happened that way or that the story is legendary? Sure, the supernatural claims could be accurate, but why think that? You’ve got a long way to go to show that that’s the best explanation.” Jim grabbed a handful of nuts and ate them one by one. “I’d as soon believe that you could turn me into a pig with magic.”

Paul felt emotionally drained. Empty. His intellectual arsenal was spent as well. He could only pray that Samuel had more ammunition.