In today’s thrilling episode, our hero is tandem jumping out of an airplane. Things are exhilarating at first but then become terrifying when it’s clear that his partner, the experienced jumper, isn’t wearing a parachute and is planning on breaking their fall by landing on a haystack. He says that parachutes might make you feel good because you’re afraid of death or you remember them fondly from your childhood, but “just because something makes you feel good, it doesn’t make it true, does it?”

This continues our review of The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist by Andy Bannister (part 1), which critiques a number of atheist arguments.

Aim for that haystack!

Bannister connects his story to Freud’s theory that God is simply a heavenly version of our earthly father who’ll make sure that we safely get through this scary world, and Bannister admits his own frequent reflections on mortality. (Which reminds me of apologist William Lane Craig, whose own childhood anxiety about death seems to have set him on his path as an apologist.)

Let me quickly agree with Bannister’s point: just because you want something to be true is no evidence that it is. What’s strange though is hearing this from him. He imagines that it’s the atheists who have the problem with wishful thinking? He has this issue backwards for the entire chapter. It’s so backwards, in fact, that I use a quote from him to close this post.

He touches on C. S. Lewis’s Argument from Desire: thirst and hunger exist, so we know that there’s water and food, and a desire for God exists, so we know that there’s a God. (I dismiss that argument here.) The best that can be said about Lewis’s argument is that it isn’t quite as fanciful as the Ontological Argument.

He anticipates one obvious rebuttal. We all agree that water and food exist, but we don’t agree that God exists. He responds by handwaving that we don’t sense anything directly. The mind can be deceived or wrong. In an extreme case, you could be a brain in a jar.

After casting doubt on our knowledge of mundane things, he oddly thinks he’s laid the foundation from which to argue that we can know about God. “There is a wealth of evidence that you can engage with to explore that question, ranging from philosophical and scientific arguments, to moral and ethical arguments, to arguments from literature and history, as well as those from personal experience.” And (again) he gives us none of it, saying that this isn’t that book.

A bold claim backed by no evidence? You get zero points.

Could Christianity be invented?

He next considers the idea that Christianity was invented. “If Christianity were mere wish-fulfilment, just a psychological projection, then those who dreamt it up had pretty impoverished imaginations.” He sketches out the more comfortable religion he would invent: a distant god who didn’t interfere, relaxed moral standards, freedom, and easy entry requirements to an awesome heaven. But being a good Christian is really hard. Conclusion: Christianity wasn’t invented.

I know of no one who says that it was. In the set of religions with no god(s) behind them, there’s a big difference between a religion deliberately invented (Bannister’s proposal here) and a religion that was manmade. Myth and legend are manmade, but they aren’t deliberately invented.

Only Christians use this “Atheists insist that religion was invented” straw man. Note also that ordinary human morality constrains hedonism, too, so Christianity is just one more path that puts constraints on our lives.

And let me push back on his characterization of Christianity as a burdensome religion. I never read about a Christian who says, “Y’know, same-sex marriage doesn’t affect me a bit. In fact, I’m delighted by the idea that homosexuals can get married and that society supports that. But my hands are tied—my understanding of the Bible makes clear that this is wrong.” On the contrary, God always seems to conveniently agree with their moral position that the other guy is wrong. There are exceptions, but the God that Christians believe in is often a projection of themselves. Because the Bible is so ambiguous, the Christian hydra has morphed into tens of thousands of denominations, and Christians get to choose the God that fits best.

Bannister agrees: “If you are religious, a sure sign that you’ve [created your own God] is that the God you claim to believe in spends most of his time benevolently blessing all of your own prejudices, desires, and ambitions.” Perhaps atheists aren’t the group he should worry about.

I can’t resist adding the wisdom of third-century church father Tertullian: “The Son of God died: it is wholly believable because it is absurd; he was buried and rose again, which is certain because it is impossible.”

They couldn’t have made up this stuff, so therefore it’s true? Sorry—I need more evidence than that.

Tough love time!

Bannister quotes atheist Aldus Huxley to illustrate the problem with a flexible approach to reality: “We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.” Bannister expands on this: “Other atheists who have reflected carefully on their motives have similarly admitted that their atheism is not so much rational as emotional.”

Huxley doesn’t speak for me. My rejection of Christianity is (to the best of my ability) entirely rational, and I’ve never heard anyone say that they pick and choose facts to cobble together a worldview they want.

No, let me correct that: I see Christians doing that a lot. It’s just that I never hear that from atheists.

Bannister next brings up atheists who say that they’re open minded enough that a compelling miracle would make them believe. “Really? Forgive me, but I think I need to call your bluff. . . . You see, belief isn’t really what God is looking for. As the New Testament itself memorably puts it: ‘Even the demons believe—and shudder!’” He wants to know if these atheists then just say, “Huh—so God exists. Who knew?” and proceed with life, or would they surrender to God and commit their lives to following him?

But where’s the bluff? Bannister is correct that belief in and commitment to God are very different things. Why should servitude to God automatically follow from belief? The Old Testament makes clear that God is a nasty piece of work (more here and here)—why serve that? And he moves past an important declaration from those imaginary atheists. What more can he ask of atheists than a commitment to follow the evidence?

We leave this argument with Bannister’s taunts following us: “But don’t walk away because you are rebelling at a deeper level and merely hiding behind the fig leaf of bad arguments.”

You flatter yourself. Don’t tell me that the atheists have bad arguments when you’ve got no arguments! Give me some plausible frikkin’ arguments and then we can decide if I’m rebelling.

See also: I Used to be an Atheist, Just Like You

To be continued. 

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/4/17.)

Image from Greg Palmer (license CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Who can be surprised that Richard Dawkins, author of the bestseller The God Delusion, is Andy Bannister’s favorite atheist to hate? Bannister imagines Dawkins in the office of his literary agent. The agent reports that things aren’t selling well. What to do? Dawkins says that maybe the world needs The Santa Delusion.

This is a reference to Dawkins saying, “Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us grow out of all three.”

Bannister was shocked: “I guess a good place to begin is by illustrating what a disastrous argument this is on many levels.”

Huh? Where’s the problem? Bannister says, “The first problem is that it’s a classic example of an ad hominem fallacy. That is when, rather than critique an argument or belief, you attack the person making it.”

Bannister is correct that that is the definition of the ad hominem fallacy. Trouble is, Dawkins doesn’t commit that fallacy. I wasted half an hour poring over the pages that precede his charge trying to see if there’s anything more offensive than Dawkins’ quote above. Nothing. Dawkins’ observation remains standing: “Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us grow out of all three.”

This is a continuation of our critique of Andy Bannister’s The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist (part 1 is here).

The role of parents

The second problem that keeps Bannister up at night is Dawkins’ concern with Christian parents. In The God Delusion (chapter 9), Dawkins said, “Horrible as sexual abuse [of children by Catholic priests in Ireland] no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.”

Bannister overflows with ridicule for Dawkins, but he has no studies. He has no arguments. He doesn’t even provide anecdotes of people who’d experienced harm (or good) from a Catholic upbringing. He’s a textbook definition of ad hominem. All he has is another invented story where he imagines Dawkins faced with two educational options for his daughter. One school is run by Catholic nuns and the other “by a group of sexually voracious convicted pedophiles.”

Bannister is too busy mocking to notice the irony. For this to be an analogy with Dawkins’ quote, both of Bannister’s options—sweet nuns and sexually voracious pedophiles—are within the Catholic Church. Sure, that accurately describes some Catholic priests; I’m just surprised that Bannister wants to dwell on it.

Let’s recall Dawkins’ quote to be clear what he’s saying. He’s not saying every child raised as a Catholic is psychologically damaged more than every child sexually abused by priests. He’s simply arguing that there is overlap.

Dawkins makes his case

Bannister only has time for ridicule, but Dawkins actually supports his claim with evidence. Right after we read the quote above in God Delusion, Dawkins introduces a woman who experienced trauma from both sexual abuse and her Catholic upbringing. At the age of seven, she was sexually abused by her priest, and a friend from school died. What made it worse was that the friend went to hell (so she was told) because she was a Protestant. The woman later recalled,

Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression . . . as “yucky” while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest—but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares.

Bannister’s book would’ve been better if he’d spent less time crafting witty dismissals and more time on actually making an argument.

He next quotes a psychologist lecturing for Amnesty International.

We as a society have a duty to protect [children from nonsense]. We should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.

Bannister then worries about the practical problems of a Big Brother state critiquing parents’ every action.

My response

Dawkins is right that religious indoctrination is a problem. However, I’ve never heard Dawkins demand that society ban religion or forbid parents from teaching their worldview to their children. That’s my belief as well.

(Aside: I propose a thought experiment where religion is in the adults-only category, like voting, driving, and smoking, here. Religion must have access to immature minds to propagate and would vanish like the Shakers without them.)

For Bannister to note that he agrees with Dawkins wouldn’t make for much of a chapter, I suppose, so he has to resort to strawman arguments, pushing back against what Dawkins isn’t saying. The result is that he loses any chance to offer a sensible critique of parents’ rights.

Symmetry: does free rein apply to parents and pregnant women?

Let me take a brief tangent. Bannister insists that parents be given free rein to raise their children as they think best. Society is there as a backstop to intervene as necessary, but the benefit of the doubt for how to raise children goes to their parents.

I agree, and that’s the philosophy that must govern pregnant women considering an abortion. In the same way, they are on the front line, they best understand the issues within their lives, and they must be given free rein to decide for themselves whether an abortion is the right course. (I talk more about abortion here and here.) Bannister must be consistent—if we trust parents to do the right thing, we must similarly trust pregnant women.

(Let me make clear that Bannister never mentioned abortion. I’m simply drawing a parallel that religious conservatives often miss.)

Separation of church and state

Now back to Bannister’s argument: I don’t want religion criminalized. Rather, I want religious privilege eliminated in the U.S. and education improved so that religion can be allowed to fall away. You don’t snatch away someone’s crutches; you cure them and let them discard the crutches in their own time once they’re unnecessary.

Some evidence points to religion being a symptom of a sick society. Religion is Marx’s opiate of the masses—a salve to cushion against problems within society. Fix those problems, and religion becomes unnecessary. Religion is arguably caused by poor conditions within society. Fix them, and the problems for which religion is a salve go away. It would have no more role.

Turn this around and see that conservative politicians or Christian leaders who push back against initiatives that improve society may in part be doing so to keep society dependent on the comfort religion offers.

Bannister ends the chapter with this: “When one believes something deeply, passionately, energetically, one has a tendency simply to grab hold of any arguments that appear to support you, however desperate.” That’s both true and relevant, though he’s thinking of atheists here. Can he really not see that it’s his side that is likelier to believe things without sufficient evidence?

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

Continue: Religion is a Psychological Crutch

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/2/17.)

Image from Bailiwick Studios (license CC BY-SA 2.0)

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The Christian rejects hundreds or thousands of gods, while the atheist rejects all those, and one more. The Christian and the atheist agree that humans have invented countless gods, so what’s the big deal about atheists taking that one final step?

Last time, we considered the Christian critique of this atheist argument from The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist by Andy Bannister. We’ll now look at the second half of the argument. He’s now moved on to argue that Christianity is special and that lumping it in with the unwashed masses of religions is wrong.

(Part 1 of this book review is here.)

Why Christianity is unique

According to Bannister, Christianity’s big difference compared to Zeus, Thor, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the other gods is:

Every single one of those other entities is an object inside the universe. God, on the other hand, according to Christianity is the creator and sustainer of the universe, the author of the story.

There’s an easy fix for that: make up a new character and call him the Creator. Make him outside. Now Yahweh has a competitor.

You don’t like that he was invented? All right, then revisit this character after 2000 years have passed so that the origins of this tale are clouded and it has become legend and mythology. That’s Christianity’s secret sauce—not that it’s correct but that it’s venerable and uncheckable.

Bannister simply declares that God is the creator, but that’s not good enough. He must prove it. Without evidence, this is not an argument, just theology.

I’d also recommend that he read up on the Combat Myth and then tell me that Yahweh is in a completely different category. Today’s timeless, outside-the-universe god isn’t what Yahweh was initially. He’s evolved. (Y’know how Superman at first was just pretty strong and could “leap tall buildings in a single bound” but then became ridiculously strong and could fly? Like that.)

And let me take issue with this claim of uniqueness—that the Christian god’s relationship with the universe is somehow unique. The Greek creation myth (to take just one) has Chaos creating Gaia (Earth). She created Uranus (heavens), and their offspring were the Titans. Cronus (the youngest Titan) was the father of Zeus, the ruler of the pantheon that’s now in power.

That sounds about as sensible (or ridiculous) as the two creation stories that Genesis opens with. Bannister wants you to ignore the man behind the curtain and look instead at the modern Christian view where new ’n improved God® 2.0 walks hand-in-hand with modern cosmology. God is now said to have triggered the Big Bang, sustained the laws of physics, existed outside of time and space, and so on, ideas that would mystify the original audience for Genesis.

No, that won’t do—you’re saddled with the pre-scientific thinking in your holy book that makes your origin myth no more compelling than the Greek one.

How can you dismiss religions without understanding them?

Bannister next complains:

The atheist making [the claim that the world’s religions are essentially the same] has not investigated all of them—probably not any of them—and is instead assuming that they must all be more or less similar to the characterless Catholicism or pedestrian Protestantism they half-remember from their youth.

Bannister has a PhD in Quranic Studies, so he has studied at least one additional religion in great depth. I wonder though if he and I are much different with respect to the other religions. He’s right that I’m no expert in the other thousand (to pick a number) of religions, but how can he criticize me for rejecting those thousand religions without cause? Didn’t he do the same thing?

Sure, let’s acknowledge that Christianity is different from all the other religions, but why is that a bold claim? Each religion is different from all the other religions! And as far as I’ve been able to determine, they all have the same unmet burden of proof. You’re right that I haven’t thoroughly investigated Santeria, Baha’i, Raelianism, and the hundreds of others. If you’ve compared them all against Christianity, show us.

Not only would a thorough comparison of Christianity vs. all the other religions be very long, but Christian will obviously do poorly in many of these matches. My favorite example is Christianity vs. Mormonism. Christian apologists like to brag about the importance of having many early manuscripts, a small gap between events and the documentation of those events, and so on. But Mormonism demolishes Christianity in this comparison. Christians must decide if they want to dismiss their claims about Christianity’s marvelous historical record. If not, consistency demands that they switch over to Mormonism.

Christianity vs. Islam

Returning to Bannister’s expertise in Islam, he tells us, “On almost every major point of Christian doctrine, I think it is safe to say that Islam teaches the opposite.”

But they’ve got the same god! Islam accepts Judaism’s Torah, so whatever properties you pull out for Yahweh you must assign to Allah as well. You can say that Mohammed took things in a very different direction to give Allah a unique character, but Christianity did the same with its New Testament.

You can focus on their common origin or their divergence, but let’s go where Bannister is pointing. He says Christianity and Islam are very different. Okay, they’re very different—so what? This example only emphasizes the made-up nature of both religions. This does nothing to support his thesis that Christianity is not just different from all the other religions, but it’s the only one that’s true.

Atheists aren’t allowed to play with God’s toys

Bannister wants to banish atheists from the field of intellectual discourse, though not for any good reason.

Truth, the pursuit of knowledge, the existence of ultimate values such as justice—those are grounded, ultimately, in God. And so to pick these things up and wield them as weapons against God is to play by his rules.

Give me a break. These things come from humans. Don’t flatter yourself that your God gives to humans justice, truth, and so on when they were the property of humanity to begin with.

And if this turns on the word “ultimate” (as in objective or absolute or God-grounded), I await the evidence for that as well. Ordinary justice is defined in the dictionary with no need for the word “ultimate.”

Continue to Christianity is Child Abuse

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/28/16.)

Image from Ketzirah Lesser & Art Drauglis (license CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Let’s jump into more bad atheist arguments!

The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist (2015) by Andy Bannister promises to critique a number of atheist arguments. The subtitle is, “The dreadful consequences of bad arguments.” I’m on board with bad arguments having bad consequences, so I’m curious to hear what I’m guilty of.

Scope of the book

In the introduction, Ravi Zacharias says, “Time and again the atheist is unable to answer the fundamental questions of life, such as ‘is there a moral framework to life?’” In the first place, Ravi has been revealed as a poor source of any critique of morality.

But back to the book: I disagree that atheists can’t answer questions about morality. More importantly, the Christian thinks he can?! Unfortunately, though the author seems to understand his need to show that Christianity is more than just groundless claims, all he provides in the entire book are a couple of references and apologies that pro-Christian arguments aren’t within the scope of the book. It’s like a Creationist approach in this regard—all attack and no defense.

The tone is deliberately lighthearted, often to an extreme of silliness, though it was too full of insults for me to find it amusing. I can’t in one paragraph frisk in field of lavender clover with a miniature pink rhinoceros who plays show tunes through a calliope in its horn but then two paragraphs later be lectured that my arguments are embarrassing, “extremely bad,” or “disastrous.” The flippant tone got old fast.

Bannister wrote from a UK context (and five years ago), and some of his “What’s the big deal?” comments in response to Christian excesses didn’t translate well to the religious environment in the United States. Christian privilege is indeed a big deal in the U.S., both for atheists living in the Bible Belt and for any American who must deal with Christian motivations behind federal laws and Supreme Court decisions.

Chapter 1. The Loch Ness Monster’s Moustache

He begins with the 2009 atheist bus campaign sponsored by the British Humanist Association that put the following slogan on hundreds of buses in the UK: “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” I remember being impressed when I first heard about this campaign. It seemed edgy—though public Christian proclamations were common—but the message was pretty tame.

If you’re going to give a reason to reconsider religion, there are plenty of harsher ones. Maybe: “In the name of God, the Thirty Years’ War killed 8 million people. God, I hope you’re happy.” Or: “Christianity makes you do strange things” with a photo of a child killed by parents who insisted on prayer instead of medicine or a teen driven to suicide by Christian bullies.

But the mild “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” still exasperates Bannister. He says,

The slogan, despite its friendly pink letters, is a perfect example of a really bad argument. An argument so bad, so disastrous, in fact, that one has to wonder what its sponsors were thinking. . . .

Much of contemporary atheism thrives on poor arguments and cheap sound bites, advancing claims that simply don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Only after several pages of throat clearing do we get a glimmer of an actual complaint.

One might begin by noting the preachy, condescending, and hectoring tone.

With that gentle slogan? Oh, please. Drop some of your Christian privilege and grow a thicker skin.

The atheist bus campaign was triggered by a 2008 Christian bus ad campaign that gave a web address “that said that all non-Christians would burn in hell for all eternity.” You’ve got to be pretty clueless to miss the difference between “There’s probably no god” and stating that non-Christians deserve to burn in hell forever.

How big a deal is this?

Bannister next asks, “What’s the connection between the non-existence of something and any effect, emotional or otherwise?” Do atheists complain about unicorns or the Flying Spaghetti Monster not existing?

In a dozen places, Banister writes something like this that makes me wonder if he’s just not paying attention. No, we don’t complain about unicorns—they don’t exist, and they don’t cause problems. Christianity, on the other hand, does exist, and Christianity and Christians do cause problems. See the difference?

He next gives Christian author Francis Spufford’s critique:

I’m sorry—enjoy your life? Enjoy your life? I’m not making some kind of neo-puritan objection to enjoyment.

If you’re not causing problems, that’s great, but if you’re not aware of the problems, you’re also not paying attention. Christian adults live burdened with guilt. Christian children startle awake at a noise and wonder if this is the beginning of Armageddon, which their parents have assured them is imminent. Christian homosexuals deny themselves romantic relationships to satisfy an absent god. This isn’t true for all Christians, of course, but imposing a worldview burdened with Bronze Age nonsense and informed by faith rather than evidence has consequences.

Bannister wants to highlight the problem with the slogan by proposing this variant: “There’s probably no Loch Ness Monster, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Imagine telling this to someone down on his luck, someone who’s been kicked around by fate. Would he be cheered by this new knowledge?

No, because the Loch Ness Monster has zero impact in anyone’s life. Remove Nessie’s non-existent impact from someone’s life and nothing has changed. But do I really have to explain that god belief has a big impact on many people? For example, the United States has a famously secular constitution, and Christians nibble at the edges like rats looking for ways to dismantle its separation of church and state for their benefit. See the difference?

Do you understand the consequences of atheism?

He wants to force atheists to take their own medicine.

If the atheist bus slogan is right and there is no God, there’s nobody out there who is ultimately going to help [you pull yourself together]. You’re alone in a universe that cares as little about you (and your enjoyment) as it does about the fate of the amoeba, the ant or the aardvark.

First, I hope we can agree that it’s vital for us to see reality correctly. If there isn’t a god out there, best we figure that out, come to terms with it, and shape society in accord with that knowledge.

And you’re seriously wagging your finger at us to warn that our worldview has no beneficent Sky Daddy? Yes, we know—we’re atheists! The heavens don’t shower us with benefits that disbelief will shut off. God already does nothing for us now—that’s the point. It’s not like we don’t want to admit that we don’t believe in Santa anymore because we’re afraid the Christmas presents will vanish.

You know who improves society? We do. We’re not perfect, and some of the problems are of our own making, but let’s acknowledge where we have improved things. Slavery is illegal. Smallpox is gone. Clean water, vaccines, and antibiotics improve health. Artificial fertilizer and improved strains of wheat feed billions and make famine unlikely. We can anticipate natural disasters. (More here and here.) God has done nothing to improve society.

As for the universe not caring about us, well, yeah. Is there any evidence otherwise? If so, make a case.

Atheists like Stalin are evil

A popular Christian argument shifts attention from Christianity’s excesses (wars, Crusades, and so on) to bad atheist leaders like Stalin.

What about atheism’s own chequered history? Stalin was responsible for the deaths of some 20 million people, while the death toll for Mao’s regime is at least double that.

Richard Dawkins lampooned this argument with this tweet: “Stalin, Hitler and Saddam Hussein were evil, murdering dictators. All had moustaches. Therefore moustaches are evil.”

Yes, Stalin was a bad man, but why? Was it the mustache? Was it his atheism? No, Stalin was a dictator, and dictators don’t like alternate power structures like the church. Religion was competition, so Stalin made it illegal. Atheist dictators didn’t do anything in the name of atheism. Lack of a god belief is no reason to order people killed. (I expose the Stalin argument here and here.)

Bannister concludes that the bus slogan and the moustache argument “are both examples of not just weak arguments, but extremely bad arguments.”

Uh huh. You’ll have to tell us why some day. He continues, “I have been struck by how many of my atheist friends are deeply embarrassed by these terrible skeptical arguments.”

Oh, dear. He’s disappointed in me, and I would be embarrassed at these arguments, too, if I had any sense.

Sorry, I’m not riding that train. Give me less outrage and more argument.

Argument by sound bite

Bannister laments, “The atheist bus advertisement illustrates the danger not just of poor arguments, but especially of argument by sound bite.”

This is coming from a believer in Christianity? Where some think that evolution is overturned by mocking it as “from goo to you via the zoo”? Where church signs have slogans like “How will you spend eternity—Smoking or Nonsmoking?”? Where emotion is the argument, not intellect? Get your own house in order first, pal.

Continue: “Atheism isn’t a claim”

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/19/16.)

Image from Wikimedia (license CC BY 2.0)

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The Bible in English has nearly a million words. Have you ever stopped to marvel at that? Why did God need so much space?

Not only is this a surprisingly large number of words, but it’s a clue that Christianity is false. Why would a perfect god need a million words? Couldn’t he have gotten his message across at least as clearly (or more clearly) with a tenth as many words? Or even a thousandth as many?

Just a page or two of instructions would be enough to teach you how to be a vegan. That’s a lifestyle with strict rules—why would it be any more difficult for a perfect god to convey its message with the same number of words?

For comparison, the U. S. Constitution was written by humans and has defined the U. S. government since 1787. It has just 4500 words. The U. N. Declaration of Human Rights has less than 1800 words. The Humanist Manifesto, 800.

The constitution of a god

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

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

This addresses world religions’ primary concerns—morality, purpose, how to please the god(s), and the afterlife—though this is obviously just a guess. A real god might have a different list, but a million words from a babel of books does not seem likely.

One additional point is why you should believe in these supernatural claims. This must be somewhere, and it might be conveyed through personal appearances or demonstrations. Could the evidence be included in this constitution? Before you say that it’s impossible to put something convincing in so short a document, don’t underestimate the capabilities of a god a trillion times smarter than any person.

Regardless of how it does it, this religion must have a mechanism for convincing everyone with evidence and argument that it is correct, unlike the myriad manmade religions.

Compare to the Bible

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

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

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

The Bible is just a rambling story that goes on and on. It was written by people and looks like it. There’s no hint of any supernatural guidance.

Take the book of Revelation as an example, a psychotic, Dalí-esque horror show. There are 24 elders around the throne of God, with the four living creatures. There’s a scroll with seven seals and different events with the breaking of each. There’s the seven trumpets and different disasters with the sounding of each. There’s the seven bowls with different disasters with the pouring of each. There are four horsemen and seven spiritual figures including a dragon and the Beast. Each punishment is lovingly detailed, as the novella drones on and on.

Or look at the practice of Christianity today. Why is there a Bible Answer Man—wouldn’t God convey his message so clearly that there would be no questions to answer? The web site GotQuestions.org crows that it has answered more than 600,000 Bible questions, but why are there 600,000 Bible questions?! Why are there 45,000 denominations of Christianity today, and why were there radically different versions of Christianity such as the Marcionites and Gnostics in the early days? Why did Paul have to help create Christianity—shouldn’t Jesus have done that? Jesus wrote nothing.

The more involved the story, the more you need to explain. Did Jesus have a human body or a spirit body? Why does God do immoral things in the Old Testament? Why isn’t God’s existence obvious? Why does God only care about his Chosen People but later decides to embrace the whole world? Why doesn’t the world look like it was created by an omniscient and loving god? And what the heck is the Trinity?

The church convened 21 ecumenical councils over the centuries to try to make sense of this. Swiss theologian Karl Barth tried to make sense of it all with his Church Dogmatics. He wrote six million words in 12 volumes, and he died before he could finish. Could a god be satisfied with something this convoluted?

The discipline of systematic theology tries to tie up all the loose ends, but why would the study of a perfect god need this?

Rebuttal

One Christian rebuttal is obvious: how do you know that this is what a god would do? How do you know that a perfect god would even want us to clearly understand his plan?

This is true and irrelevant. I’m given the claim that the Christian god exists, and I must evaluate it. I can’t peek at the answer in the back of the book, and I can’t give up and be told the answer. The buck stops with me. It seems to me that a god that chose to make itself known would do so simply and unambiguously. There would be a clear statement of his plan, like my hypothesized constitution above. Contrast that with the Bible—the entire story about all the stuff God did and how he got angry and then the Israelites did something stupid and then Jesus saved the day is unnecessary. Maybe it’s inspiring and maybe it’s great literature, but the entire Israelite blog is not needed to serve a perfect god’s goal.

Let’s step back and consider this another way. I look at the convoluted, redundant, and contradictory Bible and conclude that this is the hand of Man, not God. The Christian might demand to know how I can confidently reach this conclusion.

First, I’m simply following the evidence to its best explanation, not claiming proof. And second, I wonder how the Christian can be so certain that this mess looks like God’s handiwork. I don’t think it’s me who’s making the leap of faith.

A Stand to Reason podcast (9/27/17 @6:00) reviews a lecture by cold-case detective Jim Wallace where he said that the cold case binders with all the old evidence were often long, had parts that didn’t make sense, had parts that were boring, and were out of chronological order. And yet they were still useful. Why couldn’t the Bible be like this?

Wallace’s argument nicely makes my point. Cold-case files are human books. Humans are imperfect, so of course we’ll see evidence of people being sloppy, rushed, biased, or just plain wrong. That’s what you’d expect in a human book, and, sure enough, that’s what you find in the Bible. You’d expect quite the opposite from a book from God: short, to the point, perfectly clear and unambiguous, and focused with no tangents.

Another possible response: But the core of Christianity can be distilled into a tract! If you insist on a brief version, there it is.

But this merely ignores the problems. The Bible is still there, and it being a composite of manmade books, picked from an even larger set of candidates, means that the contradictions, tangential history, and unanswered questions remain.

I’m arguing for a different genre. A perfect god would give us a simple, unambiguous constitution. We have instead a book written by and focused on the people rather than the god, which is strong evidence that there is no actual god behind it.

See also: The Bible Story Reboots: Have You Noticed?

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/1/16.)

Image from olivier bareau (license CC BY-SA 2.0)
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The atheist worldview is bleak. How do we know? Because Christian apologists, who don’t understand the atheist worldview, tell us so.

But here’s a twist: Julian Baggini is an atheist who wrote an article, “Yes, life without God can be bleak. Atheism is about facing up to that.” Is this an atheist from whom we can get a fairer critique?

Nope. Those hopes were quickly dashed (see part 1). Baggini observed, “Sometimes life is shit and that’s all there is to it,” which is true, but it’s not like Christianity gives some advantage. Life does sometimes suck, but that’s a reality that applies to both the atheist and the Christian.

The usefulness of Christian belief

Christians might come at this from the other side: “Don’t you at least admit that it would be nice if there were a God?”

Not if it’s the monster described in the Old Testament.

“But the atheist worldview is so depressing! You imagine that we’re all alone. And what happens after you die?”

What happens to a pet when it dies? If animals just die, with no afterlife involved, why should it be different for humans (except that it would please you to be otherwise)? Let’s be adults and follow the facts—there simply is no good evidence for an afterlife, so we shouldn’t organize our lives as if there were one.

As for the atheist worldview being depressing, some parts are, as Baggini correctly points out. But we try to act as adults and accept the evidence. There are no fairies or unicorns or wish-granting genies, darn it. If you had cancer, wouldn’t you want the unpleasant truth so you could take action?

Reality or a pretty story?

Imagining away the bad parts of life without evidence is something atheists won’t do, and our lives are as fulfilled as Christians’ are. We take pleasure in a child’s laugh or a beautiful sunset just like anyone else. Because we accept that this life is all we have reasonable evidence for, we know that every day is precious. If instead you imagine that you’re en route to heaven, and life on earth is just a brief and insignificant stopover, you may treat life, not as a rare gift but as a chore to be gotten through.

It wouldn’t matter if the atheist worldview were bleak—as adults, we embrace reality and follow the evidence. And why think that the atheist worldview is the bleak one? The Christian must imagine that God is constantly monitoring them to make sure that believe and do the right things, and if they don’t thread this needle, they’re headed for Hell. They must imagine that God is there with them in terrible hardship, except that there’s never any evidence of this. And, of course, God was behind the hardship. Some Christians must admit that God never answers their prayers, though the Bible claims he answers every prayer. This view of God wouldn’t be any bleaker if God didn’t exist.

Maybe that’s why the most religious states tend to consume the most antidepressants (source data: largely Table 6 here).

The Christianity-is-pleasing view seems to be losing its power. The remarkable rise in the U.S. of the “Nones” (those unaffiliated with any religion)—26 percent now, up from 17 percent twelve years ago—comes from a rejection of Christianity’s intellectual standing. The leading reason by far for rejecting their childhood religion is that they simply “stopped believing in the religion’s teachings.”

Related posts:

• “A Distillation of Crazy”
• “Is Life Absurd Without God? A Reply to WLC’s Influential Article.”
• “Christianity’s Bogus Claims to Answer Life’s Big Questions”

Other posts responding to atheists:

• “An Atheist Celebrates the Comfort of the Christian Worldview”
• “Does Secularism Have a Debt to Christianity?”

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/10/16.)

Image from hannah k (license CC BY 2.0)

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