I’d like to suggest a couple of ideas for the hard-to-buy-for people on your Christmas list—something a little more intellectual than a tie or gift certificate. My books Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey (2011) and A Modern Christmas Carol (2013) are available online as paperbacks or ebooks. Both are novels that wrestle with the God question.

While many books discuss the Christianity vs. atheism debate, Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey takes a fictional approach to tough apologetics arguments. Indeed, the intellectual debate becomes another character within the story.

The book targets two audiences. First, it gives thoughtful Christians something to think about and encourages complacent Christians to critique the foundations of their religion. Many Christian leaders make exactly this point, that they too want to push Christians to think. The book is an intellectual workout—a taxing project, perhaps, but one that leaves the reader a stronger person.

Second, I hope to reach atheists who might enjoy approaching these intellectual arguments in fiction rather than in the usual nonfiction form.

The book is set in Los Angeles in 1906, in an odd new church suddenly thrust into the national spotlight. The pastor’s prediction of imminent disaster had been front-page news the day before the great San Francisco earthquake—true story. Here’s the back-cover summary:

In 1906, three men share a destiny forged by a prophecy of destruction. That prophecy comes true with staggering force with the San Francisco earthquake and fire, and young assistant pastor Paul Winston is cast into spiritual darkness when his fiancée is among the dead. Soon Paul finds himself torn between two powerful mentors: the charismatic pastor who rescued him from the street and an eccentric atheist who gradually undercuts Christianity’s intellectual foundation.

As he grapples with the shock to love and faith, Paul’s past haunts him. He struggles to retain his faith, the redemptive lifesaver that keeps him afloat in a sea of guilt. But the belief that once saved him now threatens to destroy the man he is becoming.

Paul discovers that redemption comes in many forms. A miracle of life. A fall from grace. A friend resurrected. A secret discovered. And maybe, a new path taken. He realizes that religion is too important to let someone else decide it for him. The choice in the end is his—will it be one he can live with? 

Cross Examined challenges the popular intellectual arguments for Christianity and invites the reader to shore them up … or discard them. Take the journey and see where it leads you. About this book, Robert M. Price said, “A fascinating novel of ideas … puts a whole new light on apologetics.” Paul Gabel, author of Inventing Jesus said, “Cross Examined is a great read on two fronts. You won’t find a better book on Christian apologetics and the rebuttals … and the story is compelling, with a startling climax. Highly recommended.”

Buy copies for those hard-to-buy-for friends ($10.76 paperback or $2.99 ebook) who would enjoy a little different approach to the Christian/atheist debate. It’s guaranteed to be more intellectually stimulating than a necktie (and less cliché than frankincense or myrrh).

Journalists and bloggers: contact me for a review copy.

In a thought-provoking retelling of the Dickens classic, A Modern Christmas Carol tells the story of a shrewdly successful televangelist who receives unexpected Christmas visitors: first, his long-dead partner, and then three ghostly guides.

Finally able to acknowledge the shallowness of his message and doubts he has long suppressed, he makes amends with far-reaching consequences.

Most readers will enjoy seeing a televangelist get his comeuppance, but this book is more than that. It explores faith and the evidence for Christianity, and it should provoke and intrigue any reader interested in the impact Christianity has on modern society. It will engage thoughtful readers who enjoyed the intellectual workout of books such as C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity or Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.

It’s a novella like the original, so it’s a quick read, and it’s a good fit with the Christmas season. The book is available on Amazon as a 115-page paperback ($5.39) and ebook ($1.99).

Journalists and bloggers: contact me for a review copy.

Critiques

“[A] masterful retelling … well done!”
— Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry magazine and author of The Trouble with Christmas

“Clever and brilliantly told, I’ll even admit to tears at the end! A Christmas story I’m happy to share.”
— Gretta Vosper, minister and author of With or Without God

“A clever little book, filled with insights, that takes the conceptual framework of Dickens’s Christmas Carol to new heights of rationality without sacrificing any of its compassion.”
— Paul Gabel, author of Inventing Jesus

It seems like the War on Christmas 
comes earlier every year.
— seen on the internet

I read or listen to many arguments from Christian apologists, and they usually have a curious flaw. I’m surprised when they take little notice of this.

Consider the following popular arguments and see if you can find the common feature.

Popular Christian apologetics

• Cosmological Argument: “Someone had to get everything started, therefore God”
• Moral Argument: “Objective morals exist, and who but God could create them?”
• Transcendental Argument: “What grounds logic? God does.”
• Ontological Argument: “If ‘God’ is the greatest possible being that we can imagine, and a being existing is greater than being imaginary, then this greatest being must exist.”
• Design Argument: “Just look around you and you’ll see the marvelously complex design of a Designer.”
• Fine Tuning Argument: “The constants that define the universe are fine-tuned for life, therefore God.”
• Argument from Incredulity: “It’s all just so … so incredibly complex! Therefore, God.”

What’s the common feature? It’s that these are all deist arguments. If I accepted any one of them, I’d only be agreeing that some deity (or deities) created the universe. But which one? These arguments are as good for Islam or Shintoism as Christianity and Judaism.

(This reminds me of the famous Sidney Harris cartoon with the punch line “I think you should be more explicit here in step 2.” Christians likewise need to make sure their arguments are comprehensive.)

And yet the apologists often seem unaware of the problem. They finish their deist argument with a “Ta-dah!” and a sweep of the hand and think that they’ve made the sale, but they’ve got a long way to go to convince me that their particular deity is the real one and it’s actually all those other ones that are mere human inventions.

Maybe they count on ambiguity to help. They conclude that God created everything and—whaddya know?—their god is named “God.” I’ve written before about this odd confusion of names. It’s like a cat named “Cat.”

One exception is John Warwick Montgomery, an apologist from an earlier generation. He takes the opposite approach and first uses the New Testament to argue the resurrection of Jesus. From there, he tries to build the rest of the Christian worldview. This approach is no more convincing, but at least it avoids this problem with deist arguments.

The general problem with deist arguments

Remember Sherlock Holmes’ famous dictum? “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” The problem with this rule for us mortals is that either we’ve eliminated something in error or there’s another possibility we didn’t consider. While the dictum is true in principle, it’s very impractical to follow in practice.

The problem with the deist argument is similar because it also uses the process of elimination. Since there’s no direct evidence of God, deist arguments attempt to eliminate the natural answer(s) and leave the supernatural as the only viable possibility. But how do you know that all the scientific possibilities are on the table? A last-man-standing approach is risky because science is always provisional. It continues to surprise us. Christian philosophers often appeal to common sense, but this only leads us astray in fields like quantum physics or cosmology where common sense is frequently upset.

Christian apologists need to put forward positive evidence of their own.

How can we access the supernatural?

If we explain the world in a Christian way, God is active in our natural world, and we can see his hand in Nature. This runs into a problem for Christians that is at least as big as the Problem of Evil: the Problem of Divine Hiddenness. If God enters into our world and is eager for a relationship, why the mystery? Why make things so difficult? Why is our world exactly like a world without a god?

If we imagine the opposite, that God isn’t particularly eager for a relationship or isn’t motivated to provide compelling evidence that he exists, then we’re back in the deist camp. We have a deity who exists, but we’re on our own to show that he exists anywhere but in our minds. If the deity hasn’t provided a conduit between the Natural and the Supernatural, why imagine that natural techniques (prayer, meditation, or logic, say) could prove the existence of the supernatural? If God is just sitting there and not helping us out, how can we show that he exists?

Christians sometimes retreat by arguing that science is incapable of detecting the supernatural. That would be relevant if supernatural beings never interacted with our reality. But if those beings interact (that is, change) our world, then this is in principle detectable by science.

Also consider that the boundary of “natural” expands with time. Seeing through opaque objects was supernatural before X-rays, for example. And even if science can’t detect supernatural beings, what makes those Christians imagine that they can?

A couple of analogies come to mind. Imagine using integers (1, 2, 3, …) with addition and subtraction and trying to creating anything but more integers. You couldn’t reach 7.65, the square root of 2, or pi, for example. Or, imagine a two-dimensional Flatlander trying to prove the existence of three-dimensional space. Sure, he can hypothesize “a dimension at right angles to all of my dimensions,” but that’s hardly a proof that it exists.

It seems to me that our pointing to evidence of the supernatural with a deist argument is like creating all real numbers using addition and subtraction on integers, or a Flatlander proving the existence of 3-space. Sure, we can imagine something more, but that’s no proof and not even particularly compelling evidence.

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. 
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; 
But will they come when you do call for them?   
— William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, act III, scene i

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/28/13.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Today the Cross Examined blog gets a new commenting system, World Table. Older posts still have their old Disqus comments, and new comments can be entered with either system. Going forward, however, posts will only allow comments with World Table.

Why?

The New Idea is the ratings system, which is designed to create more civil conversations—take a look at the comment box below, and you’ll notice the slogan, “Credibility Matters.”

A top-level comment (a comment on the post) shows four “virtues” of the post, and you’re invited, though not required, to rate each one. Was the post respectful? Helpful? Honest? Likable? You’ll see “Bob’s post is …” to remind you what you’re rating.

A comment on a comment shows a different label, “BuddyChrist’s comment is …” so it’s clear that now you’re rating his comment.

You can write a reply or just give a rating, or you can do both.

Civil conversation

We’ve had discussions through comments lately of what to do with commenters who are more trouble than they’re worth, but with World Table, the problem resolves itself.

As an example, take my profile below. I’ve made a couple of comments at another Patheos blog that uses World Table. My score (scores run from 0 to 100) started at 50, and now it’s up to 62. The faint “(16)” means that I’ve gotten 16 virtue ratings (4 ratings that set all 4 virtues). But suppose readers felt that I was not respectful, helpful, honest, and/or likeable. In that case, my score might’ve fallen below 50. At some point, it could fall below the threshold at a particular blog (say, 40), and I would no longer be allowed to comment or rate. Someone might have a decent score but have bad ratings on one comment. When the ratings are bad enough, that comment will be hidden.

Banning as such will be unnecessary. Ratings are crowdsourced, and obnoxious or useless commenters will soon find themselves unable to comment, and they will know why. Ratings by commenters with high scores count more than ratings from low-score commenters.

You have a single World Table score that follows you around to other sites that use it. That score becomes part of one’s introduction, and a new commenter with an 85 score might deserve a closer look than someone with a 55.

Commenting with World Table

You must sign in the first time, but your profile at Disqus (or other social media) can be used.

I found the various features very discoverable, so jump in and have a go. Write a sample comment below to see what happens.

Patheos is rolling out World Table among the blogs gradually. It’s an alpha version, which means that there will be both bug fixes and new features in the future. More information from World Table is available here, and a brief introductory video will be helpful to those people now saying, “We’ve got to learn another commenting system again?”

Issues

• The Internet Explorer browser is not supported, though Microsoft’s new browser (Microsoft Edge) is.
• Comments are not editable (yet).
• If you sign up through Disqus, the email address isn’t passed along to World Table, so you won’t get email notifications as with Disqus. This should soon be fixed, but you can add other accounts like Facebook to your profile here to get an email address attached to your account.
• If you have questions, ask them below, and if you find bugs, have complaints, or get new ideas, send feedback to World Table.

The aim of an argument or discussion
should not be victory, but progress.
— Joseph Joubert, French essayist

Image credit: pixabay, CC0

Christian apologist Greg Koukl in a recent podcast (“Bobby Conway – Doubting toward Faith”) raised the issue of ultimate justice. With this topic, he thinks he’s found a winner.

I think the problem of justice is a double down for us because not only is there no justice executed in an atheistic worldview, which is trouble, but there is no justice in an atheist worldview in the sense that the word can’t get any traction. The word justice itself, which requires that there is a right and proper end for those who do what is wrong, entails objective right (justice) and objective wrong, which are categories which don’t even exist in a naturalistic worldview, so in a certain sense they have a double problem with the issue of justice. (@11:05)

Koukl identifies atheists’ “double problem” with justice as (1) there is no ultimate justice within an atheist worldview and (2) the word justice itself makes no sense without objective morality to ground it.

I wonder how many things are wrong in this one brief paragraph. Let’s count them.

Note that this isn’t the introductory paragraph to a longer discussion. This is Koukl’s entire argument, so I’m not strawmanning his position by responding to just this paragraph.

1. We can’t let Hitler get away with it … but is the Christian view any better?

The idea of Hitler starting World War II and then using suicide as an escape with no further consequences frustrates Koukl. If you do the crime, you should do the time. But Christians themselves don’t do the time. They claim that accepting the sacrifice of Jesus gets them a suspended sentence and a ticket into heaven, so what happened to justice?

Maybe that’s how it worked with Hitler. Hitler was raised Catholic. Suppose in his final hours in the bunker, he returned to his roots, accepted Jesus into his life, asked for forgiveness, and then pulled the trigger. He’d be up in heaven right now playing shuffleboard with Jesus, and to hell with justice.

2. God’s mercy conflicts with his justice.

Koukl likes to imagine everyone getting what’s coming to them. But God doesn’t do it that way. When God gives justice, we get what we deserve, but sometimes he gives mercy and we get less than what we deserve. So which is it?

Christians celebrate both mercy and justice, but they can’t apply at the same time.

3. God’s justice is not modern justice.

God’s primitive justice may have made sense in the time of Jesus, but it is ridiculous from a modern standpoint. God, the perfect judge, apparently is too dull-witted to conceive of anything but two options: perfect bliss in heaven and perfect torment in hell. That’s it.

That’s not “justice” by any definition used by people here on earth. “The punishment fits the crime” is something that we imperfectly strive for here on earth, but God doesn’t even bother trying.

4. There’s no evidence for objective morality or ultimate justice.

Koukl said, “The word justice itself … entails objective right and objective wrong, which are categories which don’t even exist in a naturalistic worldview.” Koukl is right, but while the Christian worldview does imagine objective morality, it’s nothing more than wishful thinking.

Look up morality or justice in the dictionary. There is no objective, ultimate, absolute, or transcendental anything in the definitions. Not only does the dictionary argue against him, but Koukl doesn’t make any meaningful case for objective morality. Admittedly, he didn’t have the opportunity to argue for objective morality here, but he’s had it in the past and provided nothing compelling. I’ve dissected Koukl’s childish view of objective morality in prior posts.

5. The claim is that Christianity is useful, but wishing it were true doesn’t make it so.

Koukl doesn’t like the atheistic or naturalistic worldviews, but he makes no argument that Christianity is true or atheism false. I think atheism as a worldview is invigorating and empowering, but Koukl is making no argument against the accuracy of atheism. At the top of my list of 25 Stupid Arguments Christians Should Avoid, was “The consequences of atheism are depressing.”

6. What’s the point? The Bible makes clear that we’re all good.

Paul said, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). We’re tarred with Adam’s brush, but we’re made clean by the sacrifice of Jesus.

Paul says we’re all righteous, Hitler included. So much for Koukl’s justice.

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person
for doubting or denying its teachings,
and most of these teachings have been true;
but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas,
and most of these dogmas have been false.
— George P. Spencer

Image credit: Evan, flickr, CC

I’d like to highlight an analogy that Christians would do well to avoid.

Here’s one instance of it.

A man found the girl of his dreams. She was intelligent, beautiful, and she loved him. He was convinced that she was the perfect mate. He wanted to marry her. But he never asked her. So, they were never married. Wanting to be married doesn’t make it so. You have to decide and then act.

Our situation with God is something like that. We feel the God-shaped vacuum. We desire relationship with him. We hear that Christ’s sacrifice makes that relationship possible by paying the price for our wrongdoing.

But the relationship will never happen unless we decide and then act.

As Beyoncé observed, “If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it.” Take the plunge. Make a leap of faith and commit to Christianity.

I don’t find the story compelling, but that’s not my point. My point is that I don’t find the story logical. What’s the girlfriend doing in the story? How does that relationship illustrate our relationship with Jesus? Jesus is like the perfect girlfriend … that you just never get around to committing to? If you’re shy or noncommittal, couldn’t your girlfriend (or Jesus) suggest getting married?

No, this story is not at all what the Christian claim is like. Here’s a better parallel:

A man wanted to settle down with someone special, and his friend Paul told him about a girl he knew, Diana. Paul described her as intelligent, beautiful, caring, and the perfect mate. The guy was eager to meet her and asked Paul to arrange it, but Paul kept giving excuses—she was busy, she had to reschedule, she was out of town, and so on. But Paul said that she was also eager to meet.

As our hero continued to ask about the mysterious Diana over subsequent days, Paul responded with more excuses and gave her increasingly New Age-y attributes: Diana had lived past lives, she could sense the future, she could move things with her mind. And then ever more comic-book skills: she could materialize objects, she could heal in seconds after an injury like Wolverine, she could fly like Superman.

Our hero has now lost interest. This tale sounds like an invention, even like fiction. He doesn’t imagine that Paul would deliberately lie to him, but Paul’s story has few characteristics of an authentic biography.

Why should he imagine that Diana exists, especially when she looks invented and his pleas for evidence turn up nothing? Wonder Woman doesn’t exist; the Wicked Witch of the West doesn’t exist; why imagine that Diana does? Yes, the man really wants a great woman in his life, and yes, this one sounds pretty amazing. But why imagine that she even exists?

And that’s the problem with these “Jesus is like” or “God is like” analogies. The least interesting feature of the Christian girl-of-his-dreams story is that the girl actually exists. Well, duh—it’s hardly a remarkable claim.

And yet existence is the central feature of the claim about Jesus or God. Somewhere very early in that story must be some variant of, “Okay, I know this sounds pretty fanciful. I know God sounds just like all those other gods that we both agree don’t exist. But this one’s different! Let me tell you why.”

Don’t pretend that one’s relationship with a person is like that with God. Christians should avoid this inept analogy.

I choose not to draw vast conclusions 
from half-vast data.
— Dr. Jerry Ehman

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/2/13.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Hey—what’s the difference between a jellyfish and a lawyer? One is a spineless, venomous blob, and the other is a marine animal!

Hey—how does a lawyer sleep? First he lies on one side, then he lies on the other!

Hey—whaddya call ten lawyers buried to their necks in concrete? A good start!

No, this isn’t a rant against lawyers, despite my recent discussion of lawyer thinking. I understand their important role in society. I even understand what it’s like to be in a minority that some in society dislike—I’m an atheist, remember?

J. Warner Wallace at the Please Convince Me podcast responded a few years ago to an earlier version of my recent “Scientist Thinking vs. Lawyer Thinking” post. He is a homicide detective who applies his investigative thinking to Christian apologetics.

Wallace raises some interesting points. I’d like to respond to those and put to rest his fears that this is an attack on lawyers.

Wallace begins by emphasizing that prosecutors weigh the evidence provided by the police. They don’t want to lose and only pursue strong cases that they are likely to win.

I understand. This isn’t the lawyer thinking I’m talking about. I’m only talking about the model used in the courtroom where the actions of lawyers are constrained. Collaboration and openness aren’t an option in the courtroom, unlike a scientific setting.

The prosecution and defense attorneys make the best argument for their side, regardless of their personal opinion of the evidence. A defense attorney might think that their client is actually guilty as charged, for example, but that information doesn’t come out in the courtroom. That attorney wouldn’t be doing their job if it did.

Wallace attacks the idea that science is the only way to find the truth, especially for past events. He points out that both the events in a crime and the gospel story are past events.

Agreed. History isn’t science. But a criminal investigation and history both use what I’ve defined as scientist thinking—a collaborative and open search for the truth. Lawyer thinking—presupposing one side of an issue and picking and choosing facts to support it—is unhealthy in either science or history. And this thinking must be especially unhelpful in a police officer.

An observation by commenter avalon undercuts Wallace’s project of showing that Christianity’s route to truth is supported by its analogy to methods used in the courtroom, “Christianity ultimately rests on intuition and revelation, two methods soundly rejected in the courtroom.”

Wallace emphasized four points.

1. “The nature of the courtroom vets the claims far more aggressively than any other environment.” The many discarded consensuses from the peer-reviewed scientific process show the flaws in the scientific method. The courtroom’s adversarial process is better.

You want adversarial? The scientific process is not for the faint of heart, as Creationists will tell you. Scientific careers are made by finding something new, and that means subjecting one’s findings to attack by others. Claims aren’t taken on faith, and scientists replicate each other’s experiments to validate or overturn the results (remember cold fusion?).

The review process is never over, and the better established the scientific claim, the bigger the acclaim for the scientist who overturns it. That’s why the claim by some Creationists that evolution is bankrupt and biologists know it is ridiculous. The biologist who overturns this consensus can count on a Nobel Prize and its $1.1 million prize money.

Science is also a meritocracy, with a high barrier to entry. No participant is flawless, but each is highly trained. There’s no equivalent of (or need for) lay jurors within science.

Surely Wallace isn’t suggesting that we replace scientist thinking by lawyer thinking in the laboratory. The problem isn’t that lawyer thinking needs to be applied more widely but that it is already too easy for us to fall back on. It serves us well in the courtroom but would be no asset to science.

2. “Historical events by their very nature are unrepeatable.” Science isn’t the tool to use.

True, but scientist thinking is what historians use, not lawyer thinking. The only value in lawyer thinking is as a disastrous example of what not to do.

To illustrate how scientist thinking is supposed to work, Richard Dawkins gave this anecdote in The God Delusion.

I have previously told the story of a respected elder statesman of the Zoology Department at Oxford when I was an undergraduate. For years he had passionately believed, and taught, that the Golgi Apparatus (a microscopic feature of the interior of cells) was not real: an artifact, an illusion.

Every Monday afternoon it was the custom for the whole department to listen to a research talk by a visiting lecturer. One Monday, the visitor was an American cell biologist who presented completely convincing evidence that the Golgi Apparatus was real. At the end of the lecture, the old man strode to the front of the hall, shook the American by the hand and said—with passion—“My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years.” We clapped our hands red.

No fundamentalist would ever say that. In practice, not all scientists would. But all scientists pay lip service to it as an ideal—unlike, say, politicians who would probably condemn it as flip-flopping. The memory of the incident I have described still brings a lump to my throat.

Wow—talk about a teachable moment.

3. “Science isn’t absent from the courtroom.” Forensic science is presented as evidence when appropriate. Science isn’t rejected or demeaned.

Wallace is trying to rehabilitate “lawyer thinking” by pointing to where the legal process uses scientist thinking. That’s fine, but if that’s where the better analogy lies, then just drop the unhelpful courtroom analogy and push for scientist thinking.

Lawyer thinking is still best left in the courtroom.

4. “Lawyers don’t make the final decision in a courtroom.” The jury or judge are the final arbiters, not the lawyers.

Similarly, a scientist doesn’t create a consensus solo; the scientific community evaluates that scientist’s claims.

One important difference is that there is no equivalent within science to letting someone off on a legal technicality (not reading the accused their Miranda rights, for example). Having a formal process is important and useful in the legal system, but science gets as many second chances as needed to get it right.

Wallace concludes:

[The courtroom model has] been established for a reason. It’s still the single best method of determining what happened in the past. It’s time-tested, it’s vetted, it has an elaborate set of regulations and precautionary rules that attempt to limit error to begin with, and then they provide for appeal when error occurs.

The courtroom process is fine, as are lawyers and lawyer thinking. What’s not fine is lawyer thinking misapplied, and lawyer thinking within the discipline of history would be an example.

Philosopher Walter Kaufmann highlights how different scientist thinking is by illustrating the connections between theologians and lawyers in his The Faith of a Heretic. First, both have books and traditions that they may not criticize.

Secondly, many theologians accept the morality that in many countries governs the conduct of the counsel for the defense. Ingenuity and skillful appeals to the emotions are considered perfectly legitimate; so are attempts to ignore all the inconvenient evidence, as long as one can get away with it, and the refusal to engage in inquiries that are at all likely to discredit the predetermined conclusion: that the client is innocent. If all else fails, one tries to saddle one’s opponent with the burden of disproof; and as a last resort one is content with a reasonable doubt that after all the doctrines that one has defended might be true.

Lawyer thinking does not follow the evidence where it leads; it begins the conversation with a bias to one answer and presents only information that confirms that presupposition. It’s natural and often feels right, but, outside the courtroom, it is not the best way to find the truth.

Make instead an egoless and collaborative search for the truth by following the facts where they lead.

Faith is no virtue.
Demanding evidence is no vice.
— Unknown

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/29/12.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia