About six weeks ago, I wrote a summary of a particular Chick tract (a Christian cartoon handed out to evangelize) in which a gallant Christian student stands up for the Christian truth in a classroom run by a dictatorial atheist. Now that I’ve seen the new “God’s Not Dead” movie, that tract does indeed look like the first draft of the screenplay.

The first thing to get past in this movie is that plausibility is out the window. In this world, philosophy professors can bully Christians to renounce their faith without consequences, then demand that they debate him in front of the class and put a large fraction of that student’s grade on the outcome.

Show me such a situation, and I’ll show you a professor who is in trouble with the college administration. Not only is that unethical, it is crying out for a lawsuit. Every atheist I know would be allied with the Christians to say that that’s way out of bounds.

Sure, Christian students can have their beliefs challenged when they go to college. I see no problem with that. But as long as we’re not pretending that school-sanctioned humiliation of Christians is typical in the real world (despite the long list of court cases at the end, I’ve yet to see even one example), I’m fine with Christians having their David and Goliath movie.

But there’s plenty more to criticize.

Atheist journalist gets cancer

A liberal atheist journalist discovers that she has cancer, and she’s immediately dumped as a result by her rich go-getter boyfriend. Then we see her talking with the doctor about her MRI results. The doctor asks if she has anyone that she’d like to be there with her. But no, she has no one. She’s alone and afraid.

At the end, she barges in on the Christian rock group about to play at a concert (that’s her journalistic style), and we realize that God pushed her to do that. Then they have a good pray.

But there was no mention of the helpful elephant in the room: science. That is, medicine, MRIs, surgery, chemotherapy, and all that. Yes, that’s coldly clinical, and a warm and loving friend would be a comfort, but science is the only thing that will actually, y’know, do anything about the problem. Even the prayer at the end did nothing more than encourage God to support her through the treatment.

Muslim tensions

Ayisha wears a niqab so that only her eyes are showing, or at least she does until her father drives away. You see, she’s become a Christian in the last year. When her father finds out, he beats her and throws her out of the house. He’s torn apart by his misguided devotion to a ridiculous faith, and he collapses in tears.

Yes, that happens. Yes, that’s a tragic thing. But why show it happening in a Muslim family when there are so many more Christian families in America broken up over religion? If the point is that religion can make you do crazy things, a Christian example would make the point more clearly.

Apologetics

There are other subplots to critique (and if you want more of a plot summary, I recommend the Geek Goes Rogue review), but I’d rather focus on the apologetics arguments. I’ll use David to refer to our plucky student and Goliath to refer to the dictatorial professor.

No one can prove God? Well, no one can disprove God, either! True, but that’s not how we make conclusions. We don’t believe in Bigfoot or unicorns because their nonexistence hasn’t been proven; rather, we follow the evidence. The evidence points to no Bigfoot, no unicorns, and no God. Let’s be open-minded enough to consider new contradicting evidence if it comes in, but for now, we have no justification for belief.

You want an explanation for the Big Bang? Look to Genesis: “Let there be light.” (Despite being unprepared for this challenge, David has unaccountably awesome presentations.) No new science has come from the Bible. You can try to show that, now that we know how things work thanks to science, the Bible was sort of pointing in the right direction (it wasn’t), but let’s not pretend that the truth was right there in the Bible all along.

Atheists say that the universe came from nothing, and they must defend that. First, it’s scientists who do the saying (not atheists), and second, no they don’t say that the universe came from nothing. Maybe it did, but the jury is out.

There’s nothing embarrassing or unreasonable in science saying, “We don’t know.” That’s how we focus on new questions to answer. Science not knowing something gives no grounds for the Christian to jump in and say, “But I do!!” Finally, note that any cosmological argument is a deist argument. Even if we accepted it, we’re a long way from Christianity.

Atheists ask, Who created God? but God was uncreated! Backatcha, atheists! You don’t respond to a scientific question with a theological claim. “My religion says that God was uncreated” is no answer in the real world.

Both Christians and atheists must explain how the universe started. Wrong again. Science always has unanswered questions. That’s no evidence in favor of Christianity. Science has explained much in the real world; Christianity has explained nothing. Weigh the evidence and choose the best explanation.

What about the sudden arrival of animal species? The Bible nicely explains it: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.” More theology in place of science. No, science doesn’t come from the Bible.

Note that Goliath made none of these rebuttals. He does little besides mock, and destroying David has become a personal mission. In one brief attempt at holding up his end of the debate, he quotes Stephen Hawking: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”

This is just an Argument from Authority. Hawking is a smart guy, but just because he said it doesn’t make it true. This is a data point, nothing more. But does David point this out? Nope, since he wants to respond with his own Argument from Authority by bringing up John Lennox. (I’ve responded to Lennox’s embarrassingly shallow apologetics here.)

In the end, David hammers Goliath with, “Why do you hate God?” And then it comes out, in front of his class: it’s because God killed his mother. As a 12-year-old, little Goliath had prayed to God to cure his mother’s cancer. God didn’t, and he’s held a grudge ever since. So, it turns out that Goliath actually does believe; he’s just mad at God.

The students then stand, one by one, to render their unanimous verdict: “God’s not dead.” The professor walks out, humiliated.

Marketing God? Or marketing the movie?

Our Christians celebrate at the concert at the end. David’s noble battle is publicly acknowledged, and everyone at the concert is encouraged to text “God’s Not Dead” to all their friends. (Wait a minute—isn’t that also the name of a current movie?) And, of course, we in the real audience are next encouraged to tell all our friends that “God’s Not Dead.”

If the flabby arguments in the movie are any evidence, however, there is scant reason to think so.

The Almighty deserves better advocacy
than he gets in this typically ham-fisted
Christian campus melodrama.
— Scott Foundas critique of the movie in Variety

Photo credit: Rotten Tomatoes

Ed Suominen, author with Robert M. Price of Evolving Out of Eden: Christian Responses to Evolution, recently wrote a nice review of my Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey, which he titled “Dismantling Design with Fact and Fiction.”

He illustrated the post with his own photos of San Francisco, which brings to mind the setting and inciting incident of the book, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Not only does Ed’s book give a great analysis of evolution from a Christian viewpoint, but I was delighted to find a bit of my own book quoted in it (page 201 in Evolving out of Eden, where Jim critiques Paley’s watch argument).

Ed concludes his review, “It’s fiction with focus, and well done. Highly recommended.”

You can find Cross Examined on Amazon as paperback or e-book, or read more about my books here.

A fascinating novel of ideas …
puts a whole new light on apologetics.
— Dr. Robert M. Price, about Cross Examined

Stone Age man 10,000 years ago had no use for calculus.

We have pretty much the same Stone Age brain and, with effort, we can understand calculus. And physics. And chemistry. And economics, math, literature, and other complicated topics for which primitive man had no use. These particular skills couldn’t have been selected by evolution.

As Einstein observed, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”

The Christian has a ready answer: God did it. Our brains are able to understand the universe because we’re made in God’s image, and he wants us to understand.

A related example: skin

Let’s consider another marvel, animal skin. It can heal after being burned, but it’s possible that getting burned was such a rare event that natural selection didn’t have the chance to select animals for skin able to recover from burns. Worse, evolution has had no time to prepare us for modern injuries such as skin burns by nuclear radiation or from concentrated acids or other nasty chemicals.

And yet human skin does heal after injuries from fire, chemicals, or radiation. Evolution selected for general-purpose skin that responds well to general injuries like cuts, bites, and scrapes, and it’s able to repair after the new injuries as well.

In the same way, it seems to have also selected for a general-purpose brain that could make tools and coordinate hunting parties—and understand calculus and physics. So the quick answer to, “Why did evolution give us a brain that could understand calculus, physics, and the universe?” is, “Why not?”

The Flynn effect is a startling recent example showing how our brain adapts to environments that would be novel not only to the humans of thousands of years ago, but even to the previous generation. For about a century, new stimuli (possibly including new media like movies, TV, and the internet; broader education; or new work challenges) have driven up average IQ scores in the West by three points per decade.

The evolution connection becomes clearer when we consider some of the new fields we’ve entered in the last century or two. We’re comfortable with the everyday physics we see around us—gravity, buoyancy, air pressure, centrifugal force, and so on. But we live in a medium world, and the world of the tiny (cells, atoms, quantum physics) and the enormous (galaxies, black holes, the universe) are described by science that is well validated but often violates our common sense. As physicist Richard Feynman is quoted as saying, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

But is the universe comprehensible?

Before we congratulate ourselves too much on how much we can understand, keep in mind that we understand only what we’re capable of understanding. There could be enormous reservoirs of scientific fact that we’re inherently unable to perceive, let alone understand, because of our limited brains—like a red-green color distinction to a color blind person or a joke to a lizard.

The part of the universe that we comprehend isn’t that surprising, and much of what we don’t comprehend may be forever beyond our grasp.

Tide goes in, tide goes out.
Never a miscommunication.
You can’t explain that.
You can’t explain why the tide goes in.
— Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, 1/4/2011

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The Friendly Atheist recently highlighted the video of a Finnish karate master defeating opponents without a punch or kick. He used what he calls “Empty Force.”

You can, too—for a fee.

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

The Friendly Atheist noted that the karate students falling to the ground in response to the master’s touch was like Benny Hinn’s celebrated public healings, where sick believers are “slain in the Spirit” as they fall back and writhe on the floor in response to Hinn’s magic wave. But you have to be a believer for it to work—or be in on the scam.

What if the opponent isn’t your own student?

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

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

The Christian energy field

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

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

But this has as much impact on skeptics who demand evidence as Master Ryukerin’s energy field does to a fighter outside his school.

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

Christians know what I’m talking about when it comes to cult leaders like Jim Jones or disgraced televangelists like Jim Bakker. How could people have not seen through them? But, of course, to the people in their circles of influence, these frauds were very persuasive.

As was Master Ryukerin to his students.

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

Photo credit: VGjunk

Happy new year! Here’s a short story that I think you’ll enjoy.

“Good morning, Dr. Jones.” Oliver Jones’ secretary smiled at him from behind her desk. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you,” he said. He had no memory of ever seeing the woman before. He paused to read the label on his unfamiliar office door: “Oliver Jones PhD, Chancellor.”

This was his first day back at work after his accident. He had been out for just a few days, but it felt like nine years. His neurologist diagnosed the problem as retrograde amnesia. The nine years of memory loss could be permanent, his memory might return gradually, or it might return quite suddenly. “I’ve had patients who’ve said, ‘Oh, yeah …’ and then they can almost watch their world rebuild itself as the memories return.”

Nine years earlier, he had been a successful and ambitious college administrator and very much an atheist. Today, he was the head of Tabernacle University, perhaps America’s most aggressively Christian university.

Only his neurologist shared the secret. Jones’s public story was that he had some limited amnesia and that he needed to take things slowly. He hoped that his secretary’s prepping visitors with this vague prognosis would explain away any erratic behavior.

He looked around his big office. He saw many books on Christianity and atheism that he remembered reading. There were other familiar touches—artwork that he recognized and a few nerdy desk toys. But then there were the photos—photos of him shaking hands with televangelists, prominent religious leaders, and a presidential candidate. Who was this guy?

He looked himself up online. He had become Tabernacle’s chancellor four years earlier after some sort of religious epiphany. As a prominent and outspoken atheist, he had apparently been quite a catch for conservative Christianity.

On this first day back at work, he blundered through the day with impromptu staff meetings to update him on the latest issues. As with his first look at his secretary, each of his colleagues was a stranger.

In his house that evening—he was apparently still a single divorced man—he considered his situation. Should he come clean and quit? Find a new job? Or could he use his bully pulpit to attack Christianity from the inside?

He weighed his options as an interesting route took shape—remain as chancellor, but be a reformer. He could use his position to steer this inept leviathan onto a healthier course. The board might fire him, of course, but as an atheist who woke up at the helm of a prominent Christian institution, this was too good an opportunity to pass up.

He thought of the students. The image came to mind of a jungle explorer who slips into quicksand. He struggles but sinks deeper. Exhausted, he calls for help, but no one comes. His students were like that, living and breathing reason but imperceptibly slipping under. He could throw them a rope.

The university charter made clear that the Christian student had nothing to fear from an honest search for the truth. With this as his lodestar, Jones pushed through his reforms. He sidelined projects that had been on his desk and started with a lecture series with nationally known atheists. His students needed to see the real debate, not some neutered version. No longer could his professors set up flimsy atheist arguments but would need to respond to the best. He dropped the faith requirement for professors and created a new professorship for Atheist Studies. He charged the science department with teaching only the scientific consensus—no more Creationism or 6000-year-old earth. He launched a project to earn an honorable accreditation for the university rather than one given only to Bible colleges. Students would discover the truth, not have it imposed as dogma.

Reactions came quickly. Alumni protested, and parents demanded that the school be turned back into a safe haven for their children. The board warned that neither group could be alienated. Jones responded by pointing to the school’s confident charter. Wasn’t it still in force? He said he wanted nothing more than to honor the founders’ vision.

With a bit of breathing room, he courted the press and soon became the darling of the mainstream religious media. Each strategically timed innovation brought a new round of interviews higher profile than the last.

Tabernacle had been a stodgy refuge from reality but was evolving in the public mind into an innovator in Christian thought and higher education. The board got off his back.

At the end of the semester, Jones took stock of his work. Four months earlier, he had felt like Alice, newly through the looking glass. Now he could point to solid progress in smoothing off the sharp edges, at least for this Christian institution. For all the enemies he had made, he seemed to have even more allies. Who could say what additional improvements he might make in the years to come?

It finally felt right to make this office his own, to replace photos of that other guy with recent magazine cover stories and pictures with new friends.

He studied the old photos as he took them down. He was surprised as they brought to mind dreams he’d had recently—dreams of an unfamiliar past that now came more into focus—and he went through the photos again. Oh yeah, he thought, as memories finally trickled back to become ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle pieces. The man in the top photo, that was the outgoing chancellor. He remembered him now. And the photo with the famous preacher—he remembered when the photo was taken.

He even remembered the event that led to his being there, that low point when he got on his knees and embraced Jesus. He was getting his life back, though instead of walking into a welcoming and familiar new world, he felt that old life creeping up around him like a jungle vine, pulling him under, yanking him back to his Christian past.

He could call for help, but who would come?

Photo credit: The Atlantic