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, these 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 and they certainly don’t want to question their position; 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 Samuel 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 like kosher foods, animal sacrifices, and mixing fabrics.
• Are we talking about morality? They’ll tell you how morals are objective and unchanging, 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 the fallacy of special pleading—having a high bar for evidence from the other guy’s worldview but a lower one for yours. 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.
Ray Comfort is an example. The profile of his anti-evolution blathering is high enough that he’s gotten the attention of some of the world’s most prominent biologists, and they’ve corrected his childish “Well, why don’t we see a crocoduck?!?” arguments. Maybe Ray is too stupid to understand, or maybe he simply knows that his anti-evolution argument doesn’t need to be correct to satisfy the flock.
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 and don’t have much use for it to support your position, don’t pretend to be an honest participant in the intellectual debate.
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.
This is related to the Hypothetical God Fallacy.

You will not find an American astronomy, a Baptist biology,
a capitalist chemistry, a mammalian math, or a feminist physics.
There’s only one worldwide version of each, because they’re all based on facts,
not accidents of birth or matters of opinion.
Conversely, religion is nothing but opinions, no facts involved,
which is why anybody’s word on religion is just as good as anyone else’s
(to wit, no good at all).
— commenter Richard S. Russell

 (This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/19/13.)
Image credit: Luis Marina, flickr, CC
 

What would the world look like if theism or Christianity were true? And what would it look like if naturalism were true—that is, that nature alone explains what we see?
We’re comparing these two worldviews to see which one matches reality best. (Part 1 here.)
Morality
Theism predicts that religion’s moral teachings would be timeless and progressive. The wisdom of heaven might appear crazy to us simple humans, but time after time we’d follow it and discover that it did indeed improve society.
The Bible declares that Christians don’t sin: “No one who is born of God practices sin” (1 John 3:9; see also 3:6, 5:18). With the Christian church run mostly by sinless Christians, the Church’s morality should likewise far outshine that of other institutions.
In fact, Christianity is conservative, not progressive. It is always late to the party, following society after it embraces a new moral outlook. Christianity must be conservative because it is built on the premise that it’s already got things figured out. New ideas—abolition of slavery, democracy, civil rights for all—catch the church off guard. Sometimes the church is mobilized on some of these issues (William Wilberforce against slavery or Martin Luther King for civil rights, for example), but why are these positions not plainly in the Bible? Why did it take close to 2000 years to get on the right side of change? In these examples, the church was merely a tool used by change makers, not the instigator of change.
Christians were on both sides of these moral issues, as is true for any modern moral issue such as same-sex marriage, gay rights, abortion, or euthanasia. Pick the right Bible verses, and God can be used like a puppet and made to support either position. Pick other verses, and God admits to a long list of moral crimes.
As for the church clearly being a morally superior institution, the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal is merely the most recent moral lapse. You can make the bad-apples argument to sacrifice the individuals for the benefit of the institution, but that simply makes a lie of Bible’s claim that Christians don’t sin. The church becomes yet another large club that occasionally abuses power with no special claims of moral superiority over any other—so much for the guiding hand of God.
The Bible has a lot to answer for. The Old Testament in particular supports moral positions—genocide, slavery, polygamy, and human sacrifice, for starters—that modern society has long rejected. No, not all moral positions in the Bible are timeless.
Christianity declares that morality is grounded exclusively in its god, but then it has a hard time explaining why other cultures without Christian dominance, both current and historical, seem to understand morality just fine. The Problem of Evil—the existence of gratuitous evil despite God taking a loving hand in our lives—also argues against Christianity.
Mind
Theism predicts a mind independent of the body that persists as a soul after the body dies.
In fact, “mind” is just what brains do. The mind’s capability is tied to the capabilities of the brain, and that changes as someone grows from child to mature adult to elderly adult. That capability changes due to physical causes such as being tired, sleepy, stressed, hungry, drunk, or drugged. Damage the brain with dementia or physical injury and you damage the mind, as the story of Phineas Gage illustrates. The fortunes of the mind parallel those of the brain, and no evidence supports an unembodied mind.
Not only do we have a natural explanation for the mind, but physics shows that there is no room for a supernatural soul. There is yet more physics to learn, but we know enough about the physics of our world to know that no as-yet-to-be-found quantum particles could hold or convey the soul.
Growth of religion
Theism predicts that heaven would favor the correct religion.
Christianity did thrive, but that wasn’t because of God’s beneficence but Rome’s. Christianity was just one religion among many until the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 CE made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
Naturalism predicts that religions struggle, rise, and fall and that none will have any supernatural success.
More
If Christianity were true, a single set of moral truths would be held universally, rather than morality being a cultural phenomenon.
If Christianity were true, believers wouldn’t use evidence-based reasoning everywhere in life but then switch to faith for evaluating the claims of their religion.
If Christianity were true, faith healers would go to hospitals and reliably produce healings that science verifies.
If Christianity were true, televangelists wouldn’t waste time asking for money from viewers but would get their expenses covered by praying to God themselves.
If Christianity were true, Christian’s testable prophecies about our imminent end wouldn’t invariably be wrong. (Hilariously bad examples: John Hagee and Harold Camping.)
If Christianity were true, its Bible wouldn’t have contradictions, claims of prophecy wouldn’t suck, and it wouldn’t be wrong about the power of prayer.
If Christianity were true, we wouldn’t see in it mythological themes shared by other contemporary religions of that part of the world like the Combat Myth, virgin birth stories, and dying and rising gods.
If Christianity were true, everyone would understand the same simple and unambiguous message from God.
Christian response
The typical Christian response is, “But God could have perfectly good reasons that make sense to him that you simply can’t imagine!” And that’s true. This tsunami of examples in which the naturalistic explanation beats theism and Christianity doesn’t prove that Christianity is false; it simply concludes that that’s the way to bet. This argument fails by making the Hypothetical God Fallacy.
Cosmologist Sean Carroll in his debate against William Lane Craig said, “It’s not hard to come up with ex post facto justifications for why God would’ve done it that way. Why is it not hard? Because theism is not well defined.”
A couple of days ago, Christian blogger John Mark Reynolds wrote about a time when life was discouraging. After prayer, he saw a rainbow over his house. He said, “Was it chance? It was not. It was God. Would that convince an atheist? Of course it would not, but then it was not a sign for the atheist. God was speaking through nature to me.”
Nope. If it wouldn’t convince an atheist, it shouldn’t convince you. If evidence were important, this being nothing more than a nice coincidence according to anyone outside your religion is the clue that you’ve deluded yourself. And that you dismiss that and embrace your interpretation as reality makes clear that you don’t care about evidence to support your belief.
This is the sign of an invented worldview.

Science doesn’t know everything.
Religion doesn’t know anything.
— Aron Ra

Image credit: Christine Schmidt, flickr, CC

This is a continuation of a critique of Frank Turek’s arguments in favor of Christianity made in his latest book. See the beginning of the discussion here.
The I in CRIMES is Information
Turek said, “Darwinists say we all evolved from a one-celled amoeba.”
If by “Darwinists,” he means “biologists,” I’m pretty sure that biologists say that we share a common ancestor with amoebas.
Turek likes to pick and choose his science. When it pleases him (the Big Bang, for example), he’ll point to the scientific consensus. When it doesn’t (evolution), he points to what he wishes were true, hoping that you won’t notice the contradiction. Frank: is science a reliable tool or not?
There is no pushback against evolution within the biological community, but not to worry. He has a scathing schoolyard taunt: that evolution means “from the goo to you via the zoo.” (Here, he relies on the well-known rule, “if it rhymes, it must be true.” Or something.) Somehow, “goo” is supposed to be derogatory, but Turek has no problem with making Man out of dirt, as God did in Genesis 2:7.
The choice of the amoeba is the absolute worst category of animal Turek could’ve chosen to make his point. Protozoa, which includes amoebas, have DNA that ranges in size over five orders of magnitude—from 3 million to almost 1 trillion base pairs—broader than any other category of animal.
Let’s pause for a moment to consider this animal that Turek thinks shows the hand of an all-wise Designer. The animal with the longest DNA isn’t Homo sapiens. Salamander DNA can be ten times longer, but it’s not salamanders, either. How about fish, with DNA up to forty times longer? Wrong again. No, it’s the amoeba species Amoeba dubia, which has DNA 200 times longer than human DNA. Can this amoeba possibly need all that information, or is most of it (dare I say it?) junk?
DNA—no evidence for a Designer
The marvelous DNA that Creationists so often point to is a Rube Goldberg machine riddled with sloppiness. I discuss that more here. Here is a summary.

• You know how humans get scurvy if we don’t get enough vitamin C? Almost all other mammals can synthesize their own vitamin C. We also have the gene that does that … except that it’s broken. Every cell of your body carries the DNA encoding of this broken, useless gene. That’s just one of 20,000 pseudogenes (broken genes) in human DNA.
• You know how viruses can’t copy their own DNA but must force cells to do it for them? If the infected cell is a sperm or egg cell, that snippet of viral DNA gets passed on to children. It’s happened so often that 8% of our DNA is now inactivated viral DNA.
• You know how the human appendix is vestigial (no longer used for its original purpose)? Other animals have vestigial structures, too—the pelvis in whales or eyes in blind cave fish. What’s really spooky are atavisms—archaic structures that get inadvertently switched on. Examples are humans with tails, dolphins with hind limbs, chickens with teeth, and snakes with legs.

Design Hypothesis
The Design Hypothesis argues that nature looks as if it were designed by an all-powerful Designer. How would we tell whether something is designed or not? We’d look for evidence of the principles followed by the designers that we know of, human designers. For example, designers might want to balance cost, strength, durability, beauty, and so on. But designers never put junk in their designs. The excess length of the protozoa DNA, pseudogenes, viral DNA, vestigial structures, and atavisms are traits that no designer would put in DNA. (I explore this more here.)
This doesn’t mean that God couldn’t do his work in ways that we don’t understand, but the Design Hypothesis—life shows the hand of an all-wise Creator—is now defeated.
Messages and minds
Turek gives an example of information. Suppose you saw on the kitchen table Alpha Bits cereal spelling out “Take out the garbage, Mom.” Clearly this was intelligent design, he says, and I agree. We’ve seen people compose text just like this countless times.
“Messages come from minds,” Turek says. “Where I come from, codes always come from coders.”
And where I come from, minds are housed in brains. Is this true for God’s mind as well?
Text made with cereal is just one of many similar examples. But where are the examples of people sending messages with coded chemicals (besides doing it in DNA)? Where’s the proof that this can’t come from nature? Turek merely been provocative and has dodged the hard questions.
Turek wraps up: “To believe that [the amoeba’s DNA] resulted by natural forces is like believing that the Library of Congress resulted from an explosion in a printing shop. I don’t have enough faith to believe that.” Snap! Respond to that, atheists!
But anyone who’s studied evolution knows that it proceeds by mutation (which is random) and natural selection (which is not). An explosion in a printing shop is only random, and Turek’s analogy fails completely.
I want to interpret Turek’s points charitably, but I can’t believe that he hasn’t been corrected on this point already, probably many times. I’m guessing he deliberately prefers the useful to the accurate. Accurately characterizing evolution doesn’t suit his purpose, so he mischaracterizes it. It’d be refreshing if he would take his medicine and drop these flawed arguments.
Continue on to M = Morality.

What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure
that we can comprehend only very imperfectly,
and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of “humility.”
This is a genuinely religious feeling
that has nothing to do with mysticism.
— Albert Einstein

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/7/13.)
Photo credit: J.K. Califf, flickr, CC