Author Archives: Bob Seidensticker

About Bob Seidensticker

I'm an atheist, and I like to discuss Christian apologetics.

Four Years After Obergefell: Has the Sky Fallen?

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The landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges passed its four-year anniversary a few days ago. Let’s check in with a conservative Christian declaration published just before the case was decided. How well do their warnings hold up four years after the decision?

Their “Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage” outlines an inept argument against such a ruling and threatens unspecified consequences if the Supreme Court makes them mad. Let’s explore that jeremiad pledge and an advertisement that went along with it.

(Time hasn’t been kind to this argument when we notice that the original links are no longer valid. Perhaps these conservatives realize that this project isn’t something they want to be reminded of. Let’s shove their faces in their dirty laundry.)

God has spoken!

First, the ad wants to make clear who’s the boss.

We will not honor any decision by the Supreme Court which will force us to violate a clear biblical understanding of marriage as solely the union of one man and one woman.

Is there a “clear biblical understanding of marriage”? Not really. Not only do you disagree on same-sex marriage within your own religion, the Bible says much about all sorts of embarrassing marriage customs and prohibitions sanctioned by God: a prohibition on interracial marriage, concubine sex, sanctioned rape, genocide while keeping the virgin girls, slave marriage, levirate marriage, and of course polygamy. You still want to go with “clear biblical understanding”?

You can believe whatever you want, just don’t imagine that your beliefs will be taken into account when making laws. You need a secular argument in a land governed by a secular constitution.

What Would MLK Do?

From the ad:

We affirm that any judicial opinion which purports to redefine marriage will constitute an unjust law, as Martin Luther King Jr. described such laws in his [1963] letter from the Birmingham Jail.

Not quite. Let’s look at what Dr. King actually wrote about just and unjust laws in that letter. He said, “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” King’s work was exclusively aimed at expanding rights and privileges for those who had been discriminated against. You want to follow his advice? Then in the debate over same-sex marriage, look to what ruling would “[uplift] human personality” and what would degrade it.

There’s not love enough in your heart to expand the institution of marriage so that other loving couples can share it? You complain about easy divorce and raising families outside of marriage, and yet you snub a group that wants to embrace marriage? Rethink your position.

Dr. King added, “An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself.” Here again, the “defense of marriage” faction that hopes to repurpose Dr. King finds that he isn’t cooperating. Law that restricts marriage to two straight people suits these Christian conservatives just fine. They can marry whomever they love, though it doesn’t work that way for homosexuals. The majority seeks a law that it “does not make binding on itself.”

To take this further, some conservative Christians say that their church would embrace homosexuals, as long as they’re celibate. This sounds like an enormous burden they thoughtlessly impose on others with no concern for the cost. What I want to see is such a Christian walking the walk. That is, I want to see a 20-something straight Christian who commits to a celibate life to demonstrate that it’s a reasonable request. They declare how much they love their homosexual brothers and sisters. Surely there are thousands of Christian men eager to make this pledge—no?

Apparently, marriage is all about the sex. Who knew?

The Pledge says:

Conferring a moral and legal equivalency to any relationship other than marriage between a man and a woman, by legislative or judicial fiat, sends the message that children do not need a mother and a father. As a policy matter, such unions convey the message that moms and dads are completely irrelevant to the well-being of children.

Flailing around for an argument, these conservative Christians want to imagine that marriage is about nothing but children. But of course there’s nothing in the traditional marriage vows about making babies: “To have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” Nor is there an obligation in a state’s marriage license about making babies. Nor are married couples ever penalized for not having the correct number of babies (more).

That they’re forced to shoehorn marriage into this “making babies” mold proves that playing politics is their goal, not guarding the sanctity of marriage.

What fraction of the population is homosexual? What fraction of that will get married? And what fraction of that will bring new children into the marriage? This is a very small percentage of all children. If caring for children were actually a goal, they’d focus on helping the millions of children in imperfect homes—those with just one parent or poor medical care or a dangerous neighborhood or not enough income. A mixed-gender couple isn’t mandatory for children; rather, a healthy family environment is what’s important.

This is not their focus, and caring for children is obviously not their goal.

The Court had better know its place

Back to the ad:

No civil institution, including the United States Supreme Court or any court, has authority to redefine marriage.

That ship has already sailed. There’s Davis v. Beason (1890), which stomped on the Mormons’ biblically based right to polygamy. There’s Loving v. Virginia (1973) that threw the Bible in the garbage by declaring that mixed-race marriage was legal in every state. Divorce has been made easier. Adultery has been largely decriminalized. Marital rape is now a crime. “Head and Master” laws, which put the man in charge of a household’s assets, are gone.

You do know that the Bible doesn’t call the shots in a country with a secular constitution, right?

The sky is falling! Marriage will be destroyed!

No kidding—that’s what they really claim will happen.

We will not stand by while the destruction of the institution of marriage unfolds in this nation we love.

My, aren’t we dramatic! I think someone needs some pearls to clutch.

It’s been four years for the country and fifteen years for the first state, Massachusetts. Same-sex marriage is legal in about 30 countries. Has marriage been destroyed? It seems to me that this fight has only enhanced the reputation of marriage as a desirable and valuable institution at a time when it’s seen as optional to many.

Punch line: don’t infringe my right to discriminate

This will bring about an inevitable collision with religious freedom and conscience rights.

Yep, just like before. And the state will prevail over religious prejudice, just like before. The Mormons lost their fight for polygamy. Racists against mixed-race marriage lost their fight for racial purity. I’m all for people’s right to their religious beliefs, regardless of what I think of those beliefs, but that right ends when society declares that it infringes on something more important.

As people of faith we pledge obedience to our Creator when the State directly conflicts with higher law. We respectfully warn the Supreme Court not to cross this line.

In the U.S., the Constitution runs the country, not the Bible. If that’s a problem for you, I can help you find the door.

We stand united together in defense of marriage. Make no mistake about our resolve.

Seriously? This is the hill you want to die on—the right to discriminate? To restrict rights? You worship a god whose prejudices mirror your own?

Remember that Martin Luther King was universally trying to expand rights. Don’t you get tired of always being in the same bin as the KKK? Can’t you pick an important issue to focus on?

Go ahead—hold your breath to try to get your way. Your view is becoming more extreme. It will look even more so tomorrow.

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—
deliberate, contrived and dishonest—
but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears.
We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations.
We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
— John F. Kennedy

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/17/15.)

Image from James Dobson’s Family Talk
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25 Stupid Arguments Christians Should Avoid (Part 9)

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stupid Christian arguments to avoid

And we’re back with yet more stupid arguments! I’m sure it’s a tossup whether there are more atheists here comparing this list against their own mental list or more Christians carefully taking notes on what to avoid.

Right?

This is a continuation of a list that begins here.

Stupid Argument #29: America is a Christian nation

Remember what the Founding Founders said: “All men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” The government back then wasn’t shy about declaring national days of thanksgiving or fasting. And look at their personal letters—they’re full of God references.

If you simply mean by “America is a Christian nation” that most Americans today are Christian, that’s true. But it’s obviously false to imagine Christianity as somehow part of the country’s governance.

That quote is from the Declaration of Independence, the document that also said, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from . . .” no, not God, but “the consent of the governed.” You’ll find deism there but not Christianity. But this is irrelevant. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t govern the United States, the Constitution does. And it’s one hundred percent secular. Indeed, it was the world’s first secular constitution, one of America’s greatest examples to the world.

The founding fathers could say whatever they wanted to in their letters. They could believe in God, pray to Jesus, or imagine getting strength from Christianity. None of that matters when an honest reading of the Constitution makes clear that America is defined to be secular, not Christian. If they had wanted explicit references to Yahweh or Jesus, they would have put them in. Reinterpreting history is popular among faux historians like David Barton, but the preferences of a gullible public aren’t the best guide to truth.

Stupid Argument #30: Atheists just had bad father figures

Psychology professor Paul Vitz makes a powerful case that the absence of a good father creates atheists. A poor relationship with one’s earthly father creates a poor relationship with the heavenly Father. Atheists are driven by psychology, not reason.

I analyze this in more detail, though it doesn’t deserve much. Vitz’s analysis is little more than cherry picking, with examples of famous Christians who had good fathers or father figures and atheists who had bad ones.

And, of course, you can find opposite examples. To take one, here’s what C. S. Lewis said about his father: “God forgive me, I thought Monday morning, when he went back to his work, the brightest jewel in the week.”

Imagine compiling the opposite list of atheists with good fathers and Christians with poor ones with the justification that Christians’ poor family life drew them to an (imaginary) celestial father to replace the flawed one they actually had. I’m sure Vitz would complain that it was a biased selection. And it would be, just like his own version.

Stupid Argument #31: Excusing Christian scandals

No one’s perfect. Don’t forget that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

No scandal with a Christian leader can be so great that they lose all of their flock. Consider rehabilitated televangelists like Jim Bakker (five years in prison for fraud), Peter Popoff (shown by James Randi to be using tricks to simulate miraculous knowledge), Ted Haggard (sex), and Jimmy Swaggart (sex). They’re all back preachin’ the Good News.

Or the scandals of pedophile priests and the Catholic leadership that hid and enabled their crimes.

Or the false prophecies of Harold Camping and Ronald Weinland (who both committed the sin of being precise and therefore testable) or Ray Comfort and John Hagee (whose baggy prophecies could fit just about any events).

If “don’t worry about that—they’re only human” applies when Christian leaders do bad things, why doesn’t it apply when they do good things? If God’s actions are visible through Christian leaders when you’re pleased with them, why not when you’re disappointed? Why would God not protect them from error—or if he did, why did he stop? Things are explained much better by dropping the God assumption.

Jonny Scaramanga of the “Leaving Fundamentalism” blog noted the double standard. Ex-addicts were quick to give Jesus the glory for their recovery. But “as soon as that televangelist fell from grace, it was all ‘Well, we all have a sin nature.’ Well, which one is it? Do we have a sin nature or are we transformed by the saving grace of the Holy Spirit?”

Continue on to part 10.

See the complete list of arguments here.

For every complex problem
there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
— H. L. Mencken

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/15/15.)

Image from NeilsPhotography, CC license

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Your Religion Is a Reflection of Your Culture—You’d Be Muslim if You Were Born in Pakistan

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Don’t be too confident in the correctness of your Christian beliefs—they’re just the reflection of your culture. You’d be a Muslim if you were born in Pakistan (or Saudi Arabia or Iran or any other overwhelmingly Muslim country).

This argument feels right—it’s hard to imagine a baby born in Yemen growing up as anything but a Muslim—but let’s put our confidence on hold until we explore some popular objections.

Objection 1: The argument fails when stated in absolute terms.

There are people born in Pakistan and Somalia who grow up to not be Muslims. Some come from Christian communities, and some grow up to reject the Islam of their birth. Ayaan Hirsi Ali (raised as a Muslim in Somalia) is one well-known example. And a large fraction of the American atheist community must’ve rejected their Christian upbringing.

You’re right. We’re talking about a tendency or correlation, not a certainty. “You’d be a Muslim if you were born in Pakistan” is a concise way to express the observation, but it isn’t precisely correct. Better would be: “People tend to reflect the religion of their environment.” Or: “We find a very strong correlation between belief and the environment of the believer. Why is that?”

While adults can switch religions, this is rare. A 2015 Pew Research study of the changes in world religions estimates that of the 8.1 billion believers in 2050, just 65 million (less than one percent) will have switched into their belief (chart).

People don’t randomly pick their religion by throwing a dart at a grid of the hundreds or thousands of religions of history. They don’t even roll the dice and pick a religion based on its popularity at the moment (31% Christian, 23% Muslim, 15% Hindu, etc.). The religion of young adults is very strongly correlated with that of their culture.

Objection 2: So there’s a correlation; so what?

Does it therefore prove one’s religious beliefs are false? This is the genetic fallacy (think “genesis”—the genetic fallacy criticizes an argument based on where it comes from).

No, this argument doesn’t prove anything. It simply points out a correlation that must be explained. When someone’s religion can easily be explained naturally—that they are a reflection of their culture—then we don’t need to reach for a supernatural explanation.

Alan Shlemon of the STR ministry said, “[This argument] confuses motivation with justification. It makes no difference what motivates a person to arrive at their belief. It only matters whether or not the belief is true.”

When we have a very plausible natural explanation for their beliefs, that doesn’t prove those beliefs wrong, but the natural explanation is the way to go.

Shlemon again: “If a challenger wants to undermine your faith, they must first show why it is false with reasons or evidence. . . . It only makes sense to ask why someone came to believe something false after you’ve done the hard work of refuting that belief.”

Here again is the familiar Christian response: the atheist has the burden of proof. I don’t want it.

Uh, no. You’re the one making the incredible claim. The burden of proof is yours. Atheism is the default position.

Objection 3: A pro-Christian argument stands on its own.

When I present an argument for Christianity, you must respond to the premises. Let’s say I’m biased. Or let’s say that I’m a Christian because I come from a Christian society—so what? That does nothing to prove my argument wrong.

Agreed, but we’re not talking about your arguments. The issue is that upbringing correlates with belief, and therefore religion looks like nothing more than a cultural custom.

Objection 4: The atheist is hoist with his own petard.

The argument applies to the atheist as well. Was the atheist raised in an atheist environment? Then his conclusions about religion must be as suspect as those of the Muslim raised in Pakistan! Was the atheist instead raised in a religious environment? Then since the atheist is confident in his beliefs, adults can then be trusted to correctly wade through the possibilities, whether they arrive at atheism or Christianity (or any other religion).

Imagine four people. One has malaria, one smallpox, one yellow fever, and one is healthy. Which of these is not like the other? “Healthy” isn’t a kind of sickness just like bald isn’t a kind of hair color. We don’t see four people with different sorts of sickness; rather, we see three people sick and one healthy.

In the same way, the symmetry that you imagine doesn’t exist. Children raised in a religion-free environment usually aren’t atheists because they were taught to be atheists but because they were not taught to be religious. By contrast, Christians are Christian because they were taught to be. Remove tradition and religious books, and Christianity would vanish. There is no objective knowledge from which to rebuilt it. (I explore religions vanishing in such a scenario here.)

No supernatural beliefs are self-evident. Atheism is the default position. To see this, suppose we see this religious correlation of Muslims in Pakistan, Christians in Alabama, atheists in Sweden, and so on. So we dismiss them all and say that each is a biased worldview. They’re all invalid. So what’s left? What’s left is no opinions about supernatural beliefs at all—in other words, the default view is simple atheism.

Remember the chart of religious switching mentioned above. Religions must continually get new recruits to thrive, and adults switching in isn’t where they get them. They get them through childhood indoctrination: they get them through making babies (discussed more here).

These four objections are representative of the dust raising that I’ve found on the internet in response to this argument. But when the dust settles, the problem remains. The strong correlation between adult beliefs and environment must be answered: almost all religious adults got their religion from their families, friends, or elsewhere in their environment.

Glass House rebuttal

Christians must be careful about pushing back too much. If they deny that the correlation between upbringing and adult belief means much, they’re left explaining why there are 29 countries that are 95+% Muslim and ten that are 99+% Muslim. Is it because the claims of Islam are correct? Or is it (dare I say it?) that people tend to adopt the religion of their culture?

What explains this?

Religion is a cultural trait like customs, fashion, or traditional foods. If there really were a god, we would expect people to be drawn to the true religion over all the others because its claims were supported by far better evidence, not that people would mirror their environment and religions would fill their ranks by indoctrinating children before their critical thinking skills are developed.

Religion is like language. I speak English because I was raised in the United States. I didn’t evaluate all the languages of the world before I picked the best one; it was just part of my environment.

Language, customs, fashion, and food aren’t things that are evaluated on a correct/incorrect scale. English isn’t any more correct than French or Chinese or Farsi; it’s just what some people are accustomed to. It’s not incorrect to understand or speak or prefer French; it’s just uncommon in the United States.

In the United States, one speaks English—not everyone, of course, but mostly. And in the United States, one is a Christian—not everyone, of course, but mostly. There’s no value judgment behind either one. Religion and language are simply properties of society.

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that,
wherever you happen to be born,
the local religion always turns out to be the true one.
— Richard Dawkins

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/8/15.)

Image from Arian Zwegers, CC license

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Response to Atheists’ “Five Worst Arguments” (2 of 2)

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Evangelical blogger John Mark Reynolds is trying to help out atheists with a survey of “The Five Worst ‘Arguments’ (or Claims) Made by Internet Atheists.” It’d just be rude to not open this gift.

Part 1 looked at the first three arguments. Let’s continue to see if these atheist arguments are all that terrible.

Bad argument 4. “Stalin was trained in a seminary and his tyranny was really a religion not True Atheism.” 

Atheism is just one answer (“No”) to one question (“Do you have a god belief?”). So, yeah, you can’t find Stalin’s tyranny in atheism. There is no atheist bible that would guide Stalin’s actions.

Reynolds falls back on his 2015 post that took “Stalin was bad,” combined it with “Stalin was an atheist,” and spun a scary tale to spook the kids at the campfire.

Stalin was an atheist before he was a communist. He found a worldview to fit his atheism. He allowed a “state church” since atheism is so counter-intuitive that even with great persecution, theism kept cropping back up.

Stalin was bad because he was a dictator. Atheism is relevant only because a dictator couldn’t have a competing source of power, the Russian Orthodox Church, second-guessing his orders. Shutting down the church and imposing atheism was a consequence of his being a dictator, not the other way around.

Atheism isn’t at all counterintuitive, but religion thrives in desperate times. That a familiar and comforting religion pops up in a bleak Soviet Union says nothing about religion’s truth value, and if the traditional Russian religion had been something besides Christianity, that would’ve “kept cropping back up” the same way.

Atheism says nothing about morality. Christianity, on the other hand, says a lot about morality, and much of that sucks (more on genocide, the Flood, and slavery).

I rebut Reynolds’ Stalin argument here.

Bad argument 5. “Faith is believing things despite the evidence.”

“There are out of the two billion Christians (not even counting the other theists) surely someone who asserts this.”

I bet more than someone asserts it. The popular book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek makes clear in its very title that “believing things despite the evidence” is exactly how they’re defining faith. Just in case it wasn’t clear, they say in the book:

The less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge. (p. 26)

If Reynolds wants to say that Christians using this kind of faith is embarrassing, I get it—it is. But he can’t pretend that it isn’t a widespread idea within Christianity.

Here are a few more examples of this interpretation.

[I don’t understand to believe but rather] I believe to understand. (Anselm of Canterbury)

If all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. (Dr. Kurt Wise, geologist)

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa. (Dr. William Lane Craig, philosopher)

Snake handlers have much of the unevidenced kind of faith. Pastor Jamie Coots died after a snakebite in 2014. If anyone knew that God doesn’t protect believers from snakebite it was him, since that was his ninth snakebite. In the face of this evidence, these Christians maintain faith in the (noncanonical) words of Jesus, “In my name . . . they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all.”

Here’s a final quote, this time from Reynolds himself:

Almost all the world’s Christians will use the world “faith,” but they have varied understandings of what “good faith” would be. . . . When Soren Kierkegaard uses “faith,” the term is different in important ways than when Saint Thomas Aquinas uses it.

Returning to Reynolds’ quote above, yeah, I guess someone thinks that “faith is believing things despite the evidence.” If Reynolds is frustrated by the various ways evidence and faith fit together, I suggest using “trust” to mean belief well supported by evidence and leave “faith” for the fuzzier version.

Reynolds says that he’s annoyed when atheists tell him what he means by faith, and I see the problem. Important words like “faith” often have multiple meanings, so we should make sure we’re not talking past each other.

6. “Bonus: Jesus did not (or probably did not) exist.”

“This is so foolish, I have never met more than one relevantly trained atheist who believed it.”

You need to get out more. I’ve met two, Dr. Richard Carrier (doctorate in history) and Dr. Robert M. Price (two doctorates: one in Systematic Theology and another in New Testament).

I’m not well read on the historical Jesus issue and so don’t make this argument, but I also avoid it because it’s tangential. There are much simpler and more effective attacks on Christianity.

Some religions start with real people who actually lived (Joseph Smith for Mormonism, Mary Baker Eddy for Christian Science, Bahá’u’lláh for Bahá’í), and some may not have (Buddha for Buddhism, Lao Tzu for Taoism, Zoroaster for Zoroastrianism). “Jesus was just a myth” is hardly a radical claim. Said another way, providing overwhelming evidence that Jesus was historical would be a difficult challenge.

If having good historical foundation at the birth of a religion is important, I’m surprised that Mormonism isn’t more attractive to evangelicals like Reynolds. No one doubts that Joseph Smith existed. We have a painting of him and might even have photos. And every historical argument Christians make about the New Testament (lots of manuscripts, short time from event to autograph, short time between autograph and best copies) has a much stronger equivalent within Mormonism. If they value historical grounding as much as they say they do, these Christians should become Mormon.

Agreements

Reynolds is right that some atheist arguments are poorly framed or thought out. I’ll summarize these six arguments and try to highlight points of agreement.

  1. The church had enormous power in Europe for 1500 years, and yet this was a period during which social conditions regressed before progress returned. Since God promised bounty on those who followed him, what we should’ve seen instead was Europe making remarkable, unexplainable (from natural means) growth to a universally healthy and prosperous society. What we saw instead was natural growing pains in a society handicapped by wars, famine, and disease.
  2. I agree that we should confidently comment only on those things we have competence in. Nevertheless, Plantinga’s modal ontological argument was a bad example. That argument doesn’t point to a God, and Plantinga himself admits it. Reynolds’ rejection of evolution undercuts his demand that we rely on competent experts.
  3. Science delivers. Philosophers who pretend to be scientists add nothing.
  4. Yes, Stalin was a bad man. No, atheism didn’t drive his ruthless policies. Atheism was a consequence of his being a dictator, not the other way around.
  5. Faith defined as “believing things despite the evidence” is a perfectly good definition and is widely held within Christianity. If you want faith to mean trust, I suggest you start using “trust.”
  6. The Jesus-was-a-myth argument is widely rejected by New Testament scholars. I don’t use it, partly for that reason, but also because it’s a tangent.
In response to my quoting the Bible, I got
“You shouldn’t quote the Bible unless you read it every day.”
I resisted the temptation to respond,
“Does it change that often?!”
— seen on the internet (paraphrased)

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Image from Simone Berna, CC license
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Response to Atheists’ “Five Worst Arguments”

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A blogger in the Evangelical Christian channel at Patheos has helped us out by identifying atheists’ worst arguments. The post is The Five Worst “Arguments” (or Claims) Made by Internet Atheists by John Mark Reynolds.

Are these arguments as shallow as Reynolds tells us? Let’s put on our waders and jump in.

1. “The Middle Ages were the Dark Ages, because ‘religion.’” 

This isn’t quite the argument I make, though it’s an intriguing area of research. During the medieval period in Europe, the church punished incorrect science (which to them wasn’t science poorly backed by evidence but science that offended or contradicted the church). Galileo wound up on the wrong side of this, for example.

What if there had been no Christian church dominating the conversation? No Witches Hammer to guide the torture and punishment of witches. No easy “God did it” answers or “That’s blasphemous!” restrictions to shut down inquiries about nature. No Index librorum prohibitorum (list of forbidden books).

On the other side of the ledger, the church did create religious colleges and primitive hospitals, and it funded artwork and cathedral building.

But that’s not the issue here. Let’s return to Reynolds.

Historians do not call the period of Western European history the “dark ages.” They were not dark.

The Dark Ages (roughly 400 – 1000 CE) can mean several things. The term can refer to the lack of historical records (that is, our view of that period is dark), or it can refer to the slow progress during the time between Roman times and the Renaissance (that is, it was a time of intellectual darkness).

Richard Carrier argues for the latter interpretation with charts showing dips during the Dark Ages for metal production, shipwrecks, urbanization, and wealth over time.

Quibbling over labels isn’t interesting. What is interesting is that Christianity presided over a regression of progress. In much of Europe during the Dark Ages, old Roman roads, buildings, and aqueducts were still in use but beyond the engineering ability of the civilizations that inherited them (more here and here). That sounds pretty dark to me.

Second, the discussion ignores the Eastern Roman Empire that maintained a secular “university” tradition for almost all her history as a Christian area.

Guess what event shut down higher education in Constantinople. It was the capture of Constantinople in 1204 during one of the Christian Crusades.

And support for higher education (not really universities) in the Byzantine Empire doesn’t change the fact that Christianity had a huge influence in Western Europe during this time with little to show for it.

Remember what the Bible promises. Jesus said, “Give, and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:38). He made many assurances that prayers will be answered without qualification. For example, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (John 14:14). The Bible tells us the beneficence of God:

No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (Mark 10:29–30).

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse . . . and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it (Malachi 3:10).

The religion of this generous god was in charge of Europe for 1500 years? You certainly wouldn’t know it from the slow rate of progress.

2. “I do not know modal logic, but Plantinga’s version of the ontological argument is bad.” 

If I can’t read Russian, I shouldn’t judge the Russian version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. “Since I do not read Russian, I must go with the consensus or cite and follow responsible dissident scholars. . . . In the same way, I cannot evaluate a modal argument, if I cannot read a modal argument.”

Let’s go to the source. Here is Plantinga’s conclusion on his own argument: “Our verdict on these reformulated versions of [Anselm’s ontological] argument must be as follows. They cannot, perhaps, be said to prove or establish their conclusion.” Plantinga himself says that nothing can be built on this argument.

I put in the tedious hours to understand this argument, and, just as I suspected, this was just more dust thrown up to obscure things. The various ontological arguments are effective, not because they’re accurate but because they’re confusing. They’re caltrop arguments. Lay Christians can easily point to arguments like this that are opaque to them and demand that the atheist answer it. It doesn’t convince them, and it’s not important to support their faith, but it’s an effective apologetic tool because it’s a confusing argument put forward by a respected scholar. Gee, the atheist thinks, maybe there’s something to this one . . .

Nope, they’re crying wolf again. My critique is here.

But back to Reynolds: he’s right, of course, that we should have good reasons for our conclusions and fall back on the experts (where there is a consensus) in areas where we’re unqualified. He concludes, “Opining or constructing counter-arguments with no training or ability is like attacking Tolstoy’s Russian with no Russian.”

There’s more than a bit of hypocrisy in this good advice when we discover that he’s a young-earth creationist, even though he’s not a biologist, cosmologist, or geologist.

3. “Philosophy is useless. We just need science.” 

“This is, of course, a statement of philosophy and not science. The statement refutes itself.”

Then fix it. Don’t say, “Aha! You didn’t say ‘Simon says’!” to get off on a technicality. I’ve written more about the cowardice that’s sometimes behind Christian charges of self-defeating statements here. (Reynolds does, to some extent, strengthen this argument and respond to it.)

I’m happy to give philosophy its due. I do notice, however, that there are annual top ten lists of science and engineering developments but none for philosophy. Science delivers.

Was Werner Heisenberg doing philosophy when he came up with his uncertainty principle? Maybe so. But that was a physicist putting on a philosopher’s hat. The problem is when a philosopher puts on a physicist’s hat as (for example) William Lane Craig tries to. His bringing philosophical truisms (“Whatever begins to exist has a cause” or “Out of nothing, nothing comes”) to a cosmological issue is to bring a knife to a gun fight.

I explore the limits of philosophy here.

To be concluded in part 2.

I broke up with Jesus. People often ask me why.
There were plenty of reasons but one of the main ones
was that he wouldn’t return my calls.
— Neil Carter, Godless in Dixie blog

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Image from micadew, CC license
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Which Does Technology Benefit More: Christianity or Atheism?

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I attended an atheist conference in Seattle about seven years ago and met a woman who was falling away from religion. In the early years of her marriage, she and her husband had both been conservative Christians. Decades later, he still was. She wasn’t.

Openly reading The God Delusion to explore the other side of the issue wasn’t an option—at least not as a conventional book. But using a Kindle, no one could see if she were reading Richard Dawkins or Billy Graham. This was the first time the advantage that technology gave to the spread atheism became clear to me.

Cambrian Explosion, Technology Explosion

Daniel Dennett compared the effect modern technology is having on religion with the Cambrian Explosion. This explosion of new life forms is thought to have been triggered by oceans finally becoming transparent. Evolution could then select for eyesight, and prey could see predators and vice versa. This led to an arms race of not just improved eyesight but camouflage and armor (on the defensive side) and strength and teeth (on the offensive side).

Compare the sea beginning to become transparent 543 million years ago with the early Web in 1991. Now, 28 years later, technology has brought transparency to religion with Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and other technologies, plus the smart phones and computers with which to view it. Secrecy has become much more difficult.

Technology has played a role in religion for centuries. Just decades after Christianity’s beginning, scribes began to create codices (books) instead of scrolls, first on papyrus and then on parchment. The printing press (1455) made Bibles, the Book of Hours, and other Christian books more widespread. The Bible became available in local languages, not just Latin.

As revolutionary as Gutenberg’s press was, its design didn’t change much for close to 400 years until the early days of the Industrial Revolution. But with the steam press in the early 1800s, printing rate increased tenfold. With the rotary press shortly afterward came another tenfold increase. Religious books and tracts of all sorts became economical.

Then radio, then movies, then television—each was used by Christianity to drive its message.

Technology harnessed by atheism

Technology has changed the landscape. Atheists have recently begun getting the message out with books (perhaps the most important “new” in New Atheism is the new bestseller status of some of their books), but with many thousands of new titles per year for the last few hundred years, atheists have always had a voice here.

Instead, it’s the new technologies that have really changed things: podcasts, blogs, e-books, print-on-demand technology, and the searchable internet to let doubting Christians (or even just curious or studious Christians) bypass the traditional gatekeepers of pastors or parents to find the often-embarrassing truth.

Of course, Christians can use this new technology, too, but they’ve always had the technological edge. They’ve had no competition in radio or TV, for example. But with the internet, all voices can get a hearing. The barrier to entry is now much smaller. Information that flows easily is a disadvantage to the group that discourages questions, values faith or unthinking obedience, or has skeletons in the closet.

Sure, potential Christians can search for arguments for Christianity online, but what non-Christian in the West hasn’t heard the Christian message? By contrast, there are plenty of Christians who until recently had no easy way to get a second opinion. The free flow of information helps atheism.

Faith statements vs. reality

Consider that many Christian organizations have faith statements that bind their professors, researchers, or staff. As a personal example, I’ve considered attending Frank Turek’s Cross Examined Instructor Academy for Christian apologists, but it had an obligatory faith statement that I couldn’t sign. (This makes me wonder how these future apologists will fare against someone like me in the real world if they must be protected from arguments from actual atheists in the classroom.)

The constraints of faith statements were highlighted in 2011 when Christian scholar Mike Licona got into hot water over a book in which a single brief topic didn’t come to the conclusions predetermined by his faith statement. Imagine that approach to reality trying to compete against Google and Wikipedia. “But you can’t say that—it contradicts my faith statement!”

How will things change in the future? Technology is infamously hard to predict. (My favorite quote on this subject: “When you get the urge to predict the future, better lie down until the feeling goes away”). Nevertheless, business will continue to demand ever easier access to information and freer flow of ideas. Advancing technology can only make it more difficult for religion to keep secrets.

We’ve seen how this plays out

A few years ago, the man in charge of the Mormon Church in Europe recently faced questions from parishioners. In answering them, he had to deal with how his church’s story differed from what he found on the internet, and his faith failed. The church recently responded to the crumbling dike with honest information about Joseph Smith’s polygamy—common knowledge to historians but startling news to many Mormons.

Or consider Scientology. The church’s story had been doled out to students who paid thousands to learn Scientology’s secrets. Now that uninspired story is available for free on Wikipedia.

In some surprising candor, Christian apologist Josh McDowell sees the situation just as we do, that the internet levels the laying field and that Christianity doesn’t like a level playing field.

As another example of Christianity’s pushback against open access to information, consider the response to each of Bart Ehrman’s bestselling books that shine a light into Christianity’s dirty recesses. Christians can’t attack his credentials, so they often try to dismiss the information by saying that this isn’t new. Seminaries have been teaching this to religious scholars and pastors for centuries, they tell us.

Uh, okay, but then why did your flock have to hear this from a non-Christian? Why is Bart Ehrman spilling the beans to the world instead of you? It almost sounds like you’re embarrassed by this information. And for every bestselling Bart Ehrman (or Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris), there are ten thousand podcasters, bloggers, and self-published authors adding to the conversation.

I expect that this clash of orthodoxy and internet is a growing problem for every large Christian denomination in the West and will become one in the developing world as the internet becomes more available.

A Christian response

What if religion simply absorbs the new truth and keeps going? So what if Joseph Smith was flawed and the church covered that up? So what if the New Testament story stands on a poor historical footing? So what if the virgin birth story is false, the Old Testament has two completely different versions of the Ten Commandments, the Jesus in the New Testament had no concept of the Trinity, or Christianity is full of contradictions?

If Christianity adapted by becoming less interested in reality and evidence, it would have abandoned the intellectual question, Is Christianity correct in its claims? If Christianity must simply withdraw from reality because it can’t compete in the intellectual town square, pause and consider what that means. It’s already easy to find apologists who make, “Yeah, but which story would you rather be true?” as an actual argument.

Changes to Christianity over time

I recently wrote about demographic changes predicted for Christianity and other religions. The make-more-babies growth phase is waning, and Christianity will soon have to compete in the marketplace of ideas. It will not be pretty, and technology will hasten the exit of religion. There might even be an unanticipated tipping point where falling Christian belief triggers the growth of the Nones to accelerate.

The Nones in the U.S. have recently become as large a belief system as Evangelicals and Catholics. The difference is that, while Evangelicals and Catholics have been to slowly shrinking, the Nones fraction continues to surge. There’s an interesting chart that tracks the rise in Nones with the fraction  internet users.

What does it say about Christianity that it survives best in a hypoxic environment that enables censorship and discourages questioning and straying? Expect technology to continue to provide increasing access, showing religion for what it really is.

Bible Belt near-Christianity is teetering.
I say let it fall.
— Russell Moore, president of the
Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/3/15.)

Image from Sue Clark, CC license

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