Category Archives: General

The ONE Bias That Cripples Every Christian Apologetic Argument

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Every apologetic argument? Well, perhaps that’s an exaggeration. But if not universal, it’s nearly so. The bias is this: Christians want to interpret or spin the facts to support their preconception. Instead of following the facts where they lead, Christians would prefer to select and interpret them to show how they can still justify their worldview. They don’t want to follow the evidence where it leads; they want to stay put and shore up their position with sand bags.
Consider these examples

  • Are we talking about the good and bad that happens in life? They’ll tell you how the good in the world points to God’s love or God’s perfect design, but don’t blame the bad on God. That’s from Man’s fallen nature.
  • Are we talking about the reliability of the New Testament? They’ll show you how their preconceptions can be maintained by reinterpreting the dating evidence to support an early date for the gospel of Mark.
  • Are we talking about the Amalekite genocide in 1 Sam. 15? They’ll want to take this one slowly, to show that the plain interpretation is wrong or that God must’ve had reasons that we are simply unable to understand.
  • Are we talking about God’s not lifting a finger when a tornado destroyed a church in Wisconsin? They’ll ignore the church and focus instead on the three crosses that were left standing. About that, the pastor said, “It has been a powerful sign, and it speaks volumes to us about the presence of Christ among us.”
  • Are we talking about gay marriage? They’ll tell you how Leviticus is plainly against homosexuality even though the sacrifice of Jesus dismissed the other ritual abominations (kosher foods, animal sacrifices, mixing fabrics).
  • Are we talking about morality? They’ll tell you how morals are unchanging and universal, and they’ll handwave away God’s support of slavery and genocide in the Old Testament.
  • Are we talking about Bible prophecy? They’ll ignore how they would reject popular Bible prophecies if they came from any religion but their own.
  • Are we talking about the value of science? The Creationist will emphasize the consensus view in the area of cosmology (“The Big Bang points to a beginning!”) but dismiss it in the area of biology (“Evolution argues, ‘from goo to you via the zoo’!”).
  • Are we talking about the age of the earth? The Young Earth Creationist will tell you how radioisotope data is flawed and rock strata can be interpreted to show that Noah’s Flood happened.

Special pleading vs. following the evidence
This is just special pleading—having a high bar for evidence from the other guy’s religion but a lower one for evidence from your religion. And if you want to argue that the Christian god could exist, don’t bother. I grant that. What I want is positive, compelling evidence for your position.
I’ve heard these arguments called “zombie arguments” because, after you kill them, they just pop back up again. They’re not defeated by reason because they weren’t created by reason.
The problem, of course, is that no open-minded person interested in the truth comes at the question with a bias that they’re trying to support. Rather, they set their beliefs and assumptions aside and go where the facts lead. Whether they like the consequences of that conclusion or not is irrelevant. The solution is easy: go with the flow. Follow the facts where they point, and the problems answer themselves.
Christians, be honest with yourselves. If your worldview is nonnegotiable, admit it—to yourself at least. In this one area of life, you don’t much care what the evidence says. But since you didn’t come to faith by evidence, don’t expect that evidence to convince someone else.
Or, if this is precisely what you don’t want to do, approach discussions or new ideas openly. Don’t be quick to rearrange or reinterpret the facts to show how your presupposition could still be true. Be aware of this potential bias in your own thinking and ensure that you follow the facts.
Photo credit: lintmachine

Frank Turek’s Criminally Bad C.R.I.M.E.S. Argument: Evil and Science

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This is the conclusion of a critique of Frank Turek’s arguments in favor of Christianity made at a recent debate. See the beginning of the discussion here.
The E in CRIMES is Evil
Turek wants to turn around the Problem of Evil (“Why would a good god allow so much bad in the world?”) to make it work for him.

Objective evil presupposes objective good, and objective good requires God.

That is, from evil we get objective morality, and from there, God. As C.S. Lewis said, “A man does not call a straight line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” God’s morality is that straight line.
Once again, Turek makes a bold assertion of objective morality with zero evidence that it actually exists (more in the critique of his morality argument). Drop this assumption, and his argument deflates like a flabby balloon.
The S in CRIMES is Science
Turek asks why the laws of nature are predictable.
Why does he ask? Would it be more likely to have the laws of nature to be unpredictable? That’s an interesting claim—I invite Turek to show that in a godless universe, we’d expect the laws of nature to be unpredictable. Only with that will his question be provocative.
Turek says that God is holding the universe together right now. Again, that’s an interesting claim with no evidence to back it up.
Next, he quotes Einstein, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible” and concludes,

Science can’t be done if atheism is true.

Turek turns Einstein’s provocative observation into a supernatural conclusion. He says, “Ooh! Ooh! I know! It’s because God did it.” No, you need evidence.
Turek thinks that the success of science proves God, though the scientists who actually understand the science disagree. If the fact that we can do science disproved atheism, wouldn’t we learn that first from science? In fact, the higher up the science ladder you go, the less the Christian belief. Only one third of U.S. scientists believe in God, far less than the fraction in the general population.

Science is built on a foundation of immaterial realities that theism, not atheism, can explain.

Sure, you can explain the foundation of science. You can explain anything. But is your explanation worth listening to?
Think of the map of world religions—Protestants in the green area and Roman Catholics in the blue and Hindus in the yellow. Consensus extends to the boundaries of a particular religion or religious sect and not beyond. Simply understanding another religion better doesn’t mean that the boundary will break down, because religion isn’t built on a foundation of evidence.
Contrast this with science. Why is there a map of world religions but not world science? Understanding and evidence do break down barriers within science. Incompatible theories demand resolution, and further experiments determine which theory explains reality better. There is no map of world science (say, with the Geocentrists in green and the Heliocentrists over there in blue).
Axioms of science
He moves on to a long list of fundamentals that science can only assume but his theology can explain.
Science does have axioms that we take as givens and are not built on still-more-primitive axioms. Turek seems to imagine that they’re taken on faith, but axioms are continually tested.
Let’s imagine that 1 + 1 = 2 were such an axiom. If that were an axiom at the foundation of an argument that came to crazy conclusions, every step, including this axiom, would be reconsidered. There is no dogma within science. Everything is challengeable, and nothing is sacred. If 1 + 1 = 2 were only true in some situations but not others, that would be duly noted. For example, Newton’s law of gravity worked until it didn’t, and relativistic caveats are now part of that law.
Here are three of Turek’s fundamentals.

  • We assume orderly natural laws. Show us that disorderly laws are to be expected. Without that, why is your observation interesting?
  • Causality. “You have to assume the law of causality to do a science experiment.” If the “law of causality” states that every effect must have a cause, we know that that’s not the case. Quantum events may not have causes, for example. Second, nothing is taken on faith, including any assumption of causality.
  • Laws of logic. When presented with a puzzle such as “Can God make a rock so big he can’t lift it?” (or a square circle or a married bachelor), I’ve heard apologists sidestep this by saying that God can only do things that are logically possible. But in so doing, they defeat Turek’s objection. God is then bound by logic; logic is external to God. Logic becomes a property of reality, not an invention of God.

WWSD (What Would Sherlock Do?)
Sherlock Holmes observed, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” While this sounds appropriately wise from the Sage of Detection, I find this dictum useless in practice.
Say that I’m looking for my car key. I drove home and haven’t left since, so it has to be in the house. But it’s not in the key drawer or my pants pocket, and my wife didn’t take it. With the obvious options eliminated, does that mean that “ghosts took it” becomes a viable option? Of course not. The weak part of Holmes’ scheme is being sure that you’ve eliminated the impossible. I’ll likely find that my key was in the key drawer but I didn’t see it, or it’s in the pocket of my other pants, or my wife did take it but forgot or misunderstood my question.
This seems to be Turek’s approach to apologetics. He tries (ineptly) to eliminate natural explanations and show, by elimination, that his pet theory is the winner.
No, it doesn’t work that way. Does God exist? Great—then show us the evidence. Science has to; why should you get a pass? Without evidence, your hypothesis isn’t even in the running.

Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders,
or is God one of man’s?
— Friedrich Nietzsche

If God has made us in his image,
we have returned him the favor.
— Voltaire

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Pointless Parables

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I like some of the parables in the New Testament. The parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, for example, give good examples of the right path and add to the moral vocabulary of civilization.
Lately, however, I’ve come across a few modern apologetic parables that fall far short of those in the Bible. Let me start with a tediously long story making a very small point. (I’ve abbreviated all the parables here. You’re welcome!)
“The Blind Faith of Atheism”
An atheist professor was harassing his Christian students about their God belief, so they challenge him to a debate. The arrogant professor agrees, thinking he could shut down this God thing once and for all.
The atheist’s opening remark likens God belief to Santa Claus belief. We give up one when we grow up; why not both?
The Christian debater goes through a long process of arguing that the atheist doesn’t know everything, to which the atheist agrees. And now he releases the snare: isn’t it possible that evidence of God could exist in that huge fraction of all knowledge that the atheist doesn’t understand? “Have you been to South Yemen?” the Christian asks. “Maybe God is in South Yemen.”
The debate isn’t going his way, so the atheist complains that the debate isn’t fair.
The Christian pushes his point and gets the atheist, now meek and whiney, to admit that the claim “There is no God” is indefensible and that the atheist’s claim is actually a faith position. A little more back and forth, and the atheist slinks away, publicly humiliated.
This is rather like the Chick tract in which the nasty Biology professor gets shredded and then converted by a calm and polite Christian.

So the moral is: don’t say, “God absolutely, for sure doesn’t exist.” Got it. I never have.
In the first place, very few atheists are certain that there is no God. They would say instead that they have no God belief, just like the Christian has no Poseidon belief. We follow the evidence and say that the evidence points more to not-God than God.
Second, “there is no God” is a faith position just like “there are no unicorns” is—that is, not at all. Could unicorns exist? It’s possible, but the evidence strongly argues that they don’t. We don’t have faith that unicorns don’t exist; we trust that they don’t because we have evidence that they don’t. In the same way, belief in God is a faith position, but following the facts where they point (and tentatively concluding that God is in the same bin as Zeus, Shiva, and the other gods from history) is a trust position.
Here’s story #2.
“A Man and His Barber”
As the barber trims a customer’s hair, he says that he doesn’t believe in God. He points to the problem of evil—why would there be so much pain and suffering in the world if God existed?
Wanting to avoid antagonizing the man who had his coiffure in his hands, the Christian customer doesn’t engage in the argument, but after leaving the shop, he sees a man with a scruffy beard and long unkempt hair. He returns to the barber shop and says, “I just realized something—barbers don’t exist either.”
“But I just cut your hair!” the barber replies.
“If barbers existed, there would be no one with long hair, like the man I just saw.”
“Don’t blame me if they don’t come to me.”
“Exactly!” the Christian replies. “And we can’t blame God if we don’t go to him. He exists; the problem with pain and suffering is that people don’t seek God.”
Huh? But Christians do go to God. How does that help the pain and suffering in the world? How does that remove pain and suffering from just the lives of Christians? How does that undo the damage from tornadoes or tsunamis? Praying to a God, even one who’s not there, can bring comfort, I’ll admit, but that’s no evidence in favor of the Christian’s claim, that God exists.
Finally, a well-made video from the Macedonian Ministry of Education and Science.
“Does God Exist?”
The video opens with a schoolboy running into school. The time period looks to be about 1900.
The teacher at the front of the room speaks in German, with English subtitles. He declares that if God exists then he is evil. If he created everything, then he created evil, right?
Our schoolboy protagonist stands to challenge this. “Professor, does cold exist?”
“Of course it does.”
“No, sir, cold doesn’t exist. Heat exists, and cold is merely the absence of heat. Professor, does darkness exist?”
“Of course.”
“No, sir. Darkness doesn’t exist. It is merely the absence of light. In the same way, evil doesn’t exist. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love in his heart.”
At the end, we see the name of this precocious schoolboy: Albert Einstein. We’re left with the tagline: “Religion is knowledge too. Bring religion back to school.”
With a tagline like that on a government video, I guess there’s not much separation of church and state here. And a Macedonian ministry puts together a German video with English subtitles? Why not Macedonian subtitles? What possible goal of theirs could this serve?
Putting aside this mystery, this isn’t an honest portrayal of Einstein’s religious beliefs, at least not in his later life.
And the professor knew his Bible better than little Albert. God did indeed create evil.

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7)
Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? (Lamentations 3:38)

We can quibble about whether evil is something or the absence of something, but the final statement, that evil is the result of not having God’s love, is simply an assertion without evidence. Unconvincing.
Is it me, or have Christian parables gone downhill?

If people are good
only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.
— Albert Einstein

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 12/2/11.)

Christianity Can Rot Your Brain

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There’s a lot of killing in the Bible—the honest and wholesome kind. The God-commanded kind.
What are we to make of this violence? Apologist William Lane Craig takes a stab at justifying “The Slaughter of the Canaanites.”
Craig’s entire project is bizarre—trying to support the sagging claims of God’s goodness despite that deity’s passion for genocide—but he gamely has a go. Craig responds to the question, “But wasn’t it wrong to kill all the innocent children?”

If we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

What’s this supposed to mean?? Does it mean that Andrea Yates was actually right that she was saving her five children from the possibility of going to hell by drowning them one by one in the bathtub? Does it mean that abortion is actually a good thing because those souls “are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy”? I hope none of Craig’s readers have followed up with this route to salvation.
It’s hard to believe that he’s actually justifying the killing of children, but there’s more. Let’s fillet Craig’s next paragraph:

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgment.

I thought that genocide was wrong. Perhaps I was mistaken.

Not the children, for they inherit eternal life.

Yeah, right. Killing children is actually a good thing. (Are we living Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”?)

So who is wronged?

Wait for it …

Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

Uh, yeah. That was the big concern in my mind, too.
Can you believe this guy? My guess is that he is a decent and responsible person, is a good husband and father, works hard, and pays his taxes. But he’s writing this? It’s like discovering that your next-door neighbor is a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
This brings up the Christopher Hitchens Challenge (video). Hitchens challenges anyone to state a moral action taken or a moral sentiment uttered by a believer that couldn’t be taken or uttered by an unbeliever—something that a believer could do but an atheist couldn’t. In the many public appearances in which Hitchens has made this challenge, he has never heard a valid reply.
But think of the reverse: something terrible that only a believer would do or say. Now, there are lots of possibilities. Obviously, anything containing variations on “because God says” or “because the Bible says” could be an example.

  • “The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’”
  • “Despite the potential benefits to public health, we should avoid embryonic stem cell research because it’s against the Bible.”
  • “God hates fags.”

Or, as in this case, “God supports genocide.”
This reminds me what physicist Steven Weinberg said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
In other words: Christianity can rot your brain.
(This is a modified version of a post originally published 10/24/11.)
Photo credit: Wikimedia

Post #333!

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We’re at post number 333, halfway between downtown and the number of the beast (which, for some readers, is an appropriate number for this blog). Pretty soon we’ll be neighbors. It’s time to celebrate!
I started this blog close to two years ago, and I’ve been at Patheos for almost a year. The blog has had over a third of a million page views and over 17,000 comments. This would be a lonely process except for you. You make it worthwhile. Thanks!
Though I hesitate to risk losing you to better blogs, you really ought to check out the other atheist bloggers at Patheos. It’s an impressive community, and I’m honored to be included among them.
And hey, while we’re chatting, have you recommended this blog to friends and acquaintances who enjoy digging into the arguments behind Christianity? Readers are the hydrazine that keeps this rocket going.
I’ll now complete my shameless self-promotion by encouraging you to consider my book Cross Examined: An Unconventional Spiritual Journey. Have you bought a copy lately? If not, please do so and encourage your friends as well. Dr. Robert Price has given it a favorable review.
Cross Examined is the only novel I know of in which apologetics—the intellectual arguments for and against Christianity—takes on the importance of another character. The book challenges the popular arguments for Christianity and invites the reader to shore them up … or discard them. Take the journey and see where it leads you.
And finally, a bit of news. I’m halfway through another book project, a novella this time. If the Muses smile on me, it’ll be available for Christmas.
Thanks again for your support, everyone, and I hope you stick around for hundreds more posts!

Beware 668,
the neighbor of the Beast.

Photo credit: Steve Babb

New Commenting System!

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The sorcerers behind the scenes at Patheos are changing the commenting engine for all the blogs to Disqus. You might’ve seen Disqus elsewhere on the internet.
Some of the improvements are:

  • You can finally edit your comment. No more zero tolerance for HTML typos.
  • Long comments collapse so that the first hundred words or so are shown, with a “see more” button at the bottom.
  • You can vote comments up or down.
  • Comments can be sorted—Oldest at the top, Newest at the top, or Best (as voted on by readers) at the top.
  • You can share a comment on Twitter or Facebook.

I’m sure there’s more stuff that I don’t understand yet. (Will your old name will still work? How do you get email notification of new comments?)
There’s one temporary downside: old comments are there, but not all of the comments in the past few days have made it over. The sorcerers have assured me that all is well, and any comments you don’t see will, like the proverbial lost sheep, be brought back to the fold.