Tips for Dealing with Creationists

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I hang out with Creationists occasionally and have seen many of the arguments they make. I’d like to tell you what I’ve found.
This isn’t a rebuttal against Creationist arguments (perhaps in a future post). Rather, I’d like to sensitize you to general errors that they make. Consider this a list of cautions when evaluating a Creationist presentation.
Check the speakers’ credentials. Almost no one who speaks as a Creationist or Intelligent Design proponent has credentials in the field he’s criticizing. I’m simply asking for speakers with doctorates in the field plus work credentials. That is, a biologist speaking about biology, a geologist about geology, a cosmologist about cosmology, and so on. There are hundreds of thousands of scientists. That this seems to be a lot to ask says a lot about Creationism and related dogmas.
There are journalists without scientific degrees who popularize science, but they follow the consensus. They don’t try to apply their own agenda to overturn it. Creationists attempting to overturn the biological consensus from outside biology—that’s something different.
Check dates of quotes or criticisms. Words can’t express how uninterested I am in what Darwin wrote or thought or did. Almost every Darwin quote that I’ve seen used by the Creationist/ID side has been taken out of context. Anyway, Darwin’s writings are not binding on evolutionary biologists today.
And don’t get me started about Darwin’s personal life—whether Darwin ate babies with barbeque sauce or plain (actually, he lived a pretty laudable life) says nothing about the question at hand: whether evolution is the best explanation for why life is the way it is.
Focus on the right bin. A popular complaint is to say that evolution led to eugenics, or that the teaching of evolution in public school correlates to the tragic downward spiral that society has made in the past 50 years, and it wasn’t like this when I grew up, and don’t get me started about the kids these days, and blah, blah, blah.
Evolution is science. Eugenics is policy. The scientists give society the best approximation of the truth, and the politicians decide what to do with this information. Don’t blame science for policy.
Watch for Hitler entering the conversation. Godwin’s Law states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” Whether Hitler embraced evolution or not (unlikely, since Darwin was on the Nazi list of banned books—more at “Nazi Soldiers Indoctrinated with Darwin? Yeah right”), what Hitler liked has no bearing on the accuracy of evolution.
Beware lists of Science’s errors. I’m thinking of lists such as the greatest hits of evolution’s mistakes—Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, “Flipperpithecus,” and so on. Or theories that have been discarded—ether, phlogiston, geocentrism, the steady-state universe.
Yeah, science makes mistakes. Get over it. And what process discovered the errors? No, not Christianity or Creationism or divine revelation, but science!
Science clearly delivers pretty good approximations of the truth. For one glaring example, consider the science underpinning all the technology by which I communicate to you right now.
Watch for lots of quotes. Lots of quotes by scientists (often with missing or old dates) is another bad sign. Quotes simply invite counter-quotes, where I try to trump your science-y quote with one of my own, back and forth. For discussions between non-scientists, it’s better to stick with the consensus, which needs a reference but not a quote.
Expect “We’ve seen that evolution is wrong, so Creationism must be right!” This is simply a false dichotomy. Evolution might be wrong (though the evidence is so overwhelming that this is hard to imagine), but even if we discarded it, that wouldn’t leave Creationism the victor.
Did some Creator put life on earth? Wow—that’s an enormous claim. Provide the evidence.
Beware the “Gish Gallop.” Duane Gish pioneered this underhanded debate tactic. When interviewed with a biologist, he would say something like, “Well, what about X? And Y and Z? Evolution can’t explain these things.” The biologist probably has explanations for these puzzles and so begins a tedious (for the audience) explanation of why these are nicely handled by evolution. But when the biologist stops for a breath, Gish is back, piling on more examples. If your goal is winning the argument rather than engaging with the truth, these kinds of games can make an effective approach.
What I find especially annoying is hearing an issue get properly rebutted but then used by the Creationist in the very next encounter. How many times has a biologist destroyed Ray Comfort’s “Where’s the crocoduck?” argument? And yet it pops back up like we’re playing Whac-a-Mole. Does he just value effectiveness over integrity?
Beware lying. Okay, that sounds harsh, but I don’t know what else to make of nonsensical claims from people who should know better.
In 2007, I attended a lecture by someone from the Institute for Creation Research, a young-earth Creationist organization. This lecture was remarkable because the topic was geology, and the speaker actually had a doctorate in geology. He described taking rock samples from an amphibolite layer in the Grand Canyon and getting various radioisotope dating results. Though the rocks were all from the same layer, the date estimates were all over the map. His unsurprising conclusion: this dating technique is flawed, and the Grand Canyon layers were laid down by Noah’s flood, thousands of years ago, not hundreds of millions.
Only after the lecture, after I’d done some research, did I realize that amphibolite is a metamorphic rock, and radioisotope dating is typically used only to date igneous rocks. You’d think that a geologist would’ve made that clear in the lecture.
Beware “Science backtracks all the time!” Science does find errors and correct itself, but don’t imagine that the next correction to evolution is as likely to be a small tweak as the overturning of the entire theory. Once a field is well understood, changes obey a power law, like with the magnitude of earthquakes, the frequency of word use, or the size of cities and towns. For every big earthquake we see thousands of tiny ones, and for every huge correction in a theory we see many small tweaks. The overturning of a well-established theory is very unlikely.

Debating with a creationist is like playing chess with a pigeon.
It jumps on the board, knocks all the pieces off, craps on the table,
and flies off to its flock to claim victory.
— Anonymous

Photo credit: FreeThoughtPedia

Imagine a Christianity Without Indoctrination

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Suppose we re-categorized Christianity as an adult activity. It would be like smoking, alcohol, voting, driving, sex, marriage, and (in some states) pot—things that you must be mature enough to handle wisely.
How long would this adults-only Christianity survive? My guess is that, starved of its primary source of new members, it would die out within a few generations.
We all have inside us what could be called a BS Detector—that common sense that helps us believe as many true things and reject as many false things as possible. For example, present most American adults with a case for Islam or Hinduism or Sikhism, and they will be extraordinarily unconvinced in the same way that claims for miracle cures, alien abduction stories, and great deals on swamp land in Florida would typically be rejected.
As adults, we’re far better at sifting truth from BS than we were as children. And that’s why Christians must be indoctrinated as children, before their BS Detectors are mature. This is the idea behind the Jesuit maxim, “Give me a child until the age of seven and I will give you the man.”
(The full version ends with “… but give me the man, and he will say, ‘Dude, are you insane? Who would believe that??’”)
Getting a 50-year-old who’s never smoked hooked on cigarettes is like getting a 50-year-old who’s never heard of Jesus hooked on Christianity. It’s possible in both cases, but it’s far easier when you make the appeal early in life.
Imagine this conversation between the father of a 6-year-old child and the grandmother.

Grandma: “Little Johnny is old enough for me to take to Sunday School now.”
Dad: “You can take him when he’s 18, but I’d prefer he stay out of church until then.”
Grandma: “But 18 is too late! By then he’ll be set in his ways. He won’t accept the truth then.”

What kind of “truth” is it that must be taught before people are mature, before their BS Detectors are fully functioning? Grandma realizes that only before someone’s BS Detector is operating correctly can the beliefs of religion be put into someone’s head. This is a very poor stand-in for truth.
Many Christians will agree that Christianity needs access to immature minds to survive. But what does this say about the evidence behind the Christian claim that God exists?

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—
and you are the easiest person to fool.
— Richard Feynman

(This is a modified version of a post originally posted 9/8/11)

Christianity 2.0: Secular Christianity

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I remember, years ago, being startled by the idea that “Jewish” could be an ambiguous term. It might mean an ethnic identity, or a cultural one, or a religious one. In other words, someone could be a Jewish atheist, identifying with Judaism culturally but not religiously. Indeed, Israeli Jews are predominantly secular.
Christian belief within America has changed continuously, going through Great Awakenings and spawning new flavors of Christianity such as Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh-Day Adventist church, and the Christian Science church. At the turn of the early twentieth century, during the Golden Age of Freethought and decades after Darwin’s The Origin of Species, observers saw Christianity on the wane. But Christianity rebounded, with Pentecostal and other new charismatic churches. Today, Christianity continues to change, lately becoming more polarized within America while Europe becomes more secular.
Since Christianity will continue to evolve, might it follow the example of Judaism, creating secular Christianity as a viable position?
Consider what this might be like. A secular Christian—I could be a candidate, for example—might go to church for the beautiful or traditional or inspiring music. The church building might be a draw, whether it were awe-inspiring or quaint. Sermons about finding the right path or avoiding the shallow temptations in life or even Bible stories might be edifying. Services could mark the important events in life such as births, marriages, and deaths. Whether the secular Christian went weekly or only a few times a year, the community of good people, eager to help others, would be welcoming. It might give focus to good works, providing opportunities for volunteering and direction for charitable giving.
But—and here’s the interesting bit—secular Christians would reject the supernatural origin of Christianity, would be open about their atheism, and would be accepted within the church community. The Christian church has millions of members who are secular Christians except for the last part. They’ve lost their faith in the supernatural claims, they’ve admitted this to themselves, but they can’t come out to their church community. The concept of a secular Christian would allow these people to keep their community, charitable, and even family connections.
The Christian church isn’t pleased with these ex-Christians simply leaving the church, and this broadening of the church community, as is done in many Jewish communities, could provide a soft landing for many mainstream churches hurting for members. Conservatives will insist that a no-compromise position be taken, but the church is determined to evolve, and this direction seems to be a win-win.
Of course, keeping the good parts of Christianity and discarding the supernatural beliefs wouldn’t solve all the world’s problems. There would still be human folly. But perhaps there would be just a little bit less.

Even if atheists removed all religion from our planet,
it would still not mean that people are engaged
in more fact-based thinking than before.
I would argue that religion is a symptom of belief-based thinking,
but there is all sorts of New Age and superstitious thinking
that is just as damaging.
— Tyson Gill

(This is a modification of a post that was originally published 9/14/11.)

Josephus: A Reliable Source?

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Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian born in 37 CE. His Antiquities of the Jews, written in approximately 93 CE, has two references to Jesus. He was not a Christian, and this non-biblical source is often cited by apologists as strong confirmation of key elements from the gospel story.
At least, that’s what they’d like to imagine.
This first passage is the famous Testimonium Flavianum:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

That’s powerful support for the Christian position, but you know what they say about things that sound too good to be true.
Josephus was born after Jesus died, so in the most charitable interpretation, he is simply passing along second-hand information. More damning, scholars almost universally agree that this was not original to Josephus. He was a Jew, not a Christian, and this isn’t what he would’ve written. Also, the passage interrupts the flow of the book at this point (that is, the book would read better if this passage were removed), and it is briefer than similar summaries in the rest of the work. This is what you’d expect from a later addition.
From the Jewish standpoint, Josephus was a traitor. Formerly a Jewish commander, he defected to the Roman side during the First Jewish-Roman War in around 67, and his history was written in Rome. Jews had little interest in copying his works to keep them in circulation, and it was mostly Christians who copied them. They might have been motivated to “improve” Josephus.
The earliest copy of the Testimonium Flavianum is from Eusebius (324 CE or earlier). That it is traceable back to Eusebius raises concerns. He is not considered an especially reliable historian, and it’s possible that he added this paragraph.
The second passage is a bit long, so let me summarize. Ananus was named the new high priest. He was eager to establish his authority, and he sentenced a group of men to death, one of whom was James the brother of Jesus. There was an outcry against this execution (perhaps it was hasty or was built on insufficient evidence—the text isn’t specific), and concerned citizens petitioned the Roman procurator to rein in Ananus. The procurator agreed and removed Ananus from the high priesthood, “and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.”
Let’s return to James, one of the unfortunates executed by stoning. The text says:

… [Ananus] assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others …

While this doesn’t celebrate the miracles of Jesus, it does at least establish the existence of Jesus Christ in the first century, since the book was written in about 93 CE. However, David Fitzgerald (Nailed, p. 58–61) summarizes a Richard Carrier argument that makes an intriguing case that this isn’t what it seems to be.
The first problem is that this isn’t how other accounts describe the death of James the Just, the brother of Jesus Christ and first bishop of Jerusalem.
Next, notice the clumsy sentence structure:

“the brother of Jesus,
who was called the Christ,
whose name was James … ”

rather than simply “the brother of Jesus, whose name was James.” Imagine if “who was called the Christ” was originally a marginal note in a copy that was merged into the manuscript by a later scribe. Scholars can point to many examples of these scribal insertions. In the form that we have it, it’s like a chatty email that drops “and then I saw Jesus” into a rather boring summary of a trip to the mall. Surely the reader of Josephus would say, “What?? Who cares about James? Go back and elaborate on that Christ bit!” This is what journalists call “burying the lead.”
The argument for that phrase being an addition goes from intriguing to convincing when we consider how the passage ends. Who replaced the hotheaded Ananus? It was “Jesus, the son of Damneus.” (Don’t forget that Jesus or Yeshua was a popular name at this time.)
Before, you had some random guy named James, highlighted for no reason from the list of those who were killed. But delete the “Christ” phrase as a later addition, and the story makes sense. Ananus the high priest irresponsibly kills some people, and he’s removed from office. The title is transferred to Jesus the son of Damneus, the brother of one of the men killed, as partial compensation for the wrongful death.
The most charitable interpretation of Josephus gives faint support for the Christian position—Josephus simply is passing along hearsay of supernatural events. We would give this the same credibility deserved by any ancient book with supernatural claims.
A critical review shows why both of these could be later additions, suggesting an original Josephus with no references to Jesus Christ. This is just educated guesswork, and scholars don’t argue this position with certainty, but dismissing it is a poor foundation on which to build any truth claims of Christianity.

When others asked the truth of me,
I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted,
but an illusion they could bear to live with.
— Anais Nin

Photo credit: Wikipedia

The Sin of Sodom was Homosexuality … Right?

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While on a business trip to Japan in the 1990s, I came across an interesting brand of bath salts. In bold letters across the top of the bag was the word “Sodom.”
Salt, Sodom—yes, I see the connection, but that’s not the happiest image to attach to your brand.
So what ought we think of when we think of Sodom?
On a recent Stand to Reason podcast (“The Bible and Homosexuality,” 9/2/12), Greg Koukl unsurprisingly thinks that the point of the Sodom and Gomorrah story recounted in Genesis 19 is that homosexuality is bad—bad enough, in fact, to get your city destroyed.
He kicks around an alternative possibility, that poor hospitality was really the sin of Sodom. Remember that Lot offered hospitality to the two visiting angels, but the men of Sodom threatened their safety.
Koukl rejects this option. And if the sin isn’t lack of hospitality, it must be homosexuality. Apparently, there are just two possibilities.
He concludes that “the scripture speaks clearly on this … don’t twist what it says.” I agree, both that the issue wasn’t hospitality and that we mustn’t twist the scripture to make it say what it doesn’t.
Koukl looks to other parts of the Bible for their interpretation. One cross-reference is in the book of Ezekiel. In chapter 16, the faithlessness of the Jews is portrayed with Jerusalem being analogous to an adulterous wife. Other cities are likened to wicked sisters, and one of these is Sodom.
What are wicked Sodom’s crimes?

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen (Ezekiel 16:49–50).

If homosexuality were Sodom’s crime, wouldn’t this be the only thing on the list? Instead, we have arrogance, lack of concern for the needy, and unspecified “detestable things.” This gives no tangible support for the Homosexuality Hypothesis.
In fact, it’s pretty clear from the Genesis story itself that homosexuality wasn’t the issue.
1. Lot makes this clear. Lot was a resident, and he understood the townspeople. If the men were all gay, he’d know it, and he wouldn’t bother offering them his daughters as a substitute, which he does in Gen. 19:8.
(As an aside: is it just me, or is it weird for the most godly man in the city to offer his daughters as if they were property? And if this is unthinkable today, why would it be an option thousands of years ago? Or does morality change with time?)
2. An all-gay city wouldn’t be sustainable. “All the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house” (Gen. 19:4). So “all the men” were gay? How could there be children if all the men were gay? Such a city would simply die out. And why wouldn’t that be an option for God? Just give Sodom a few decades and let the population fade away.
3. Seriously? A city with all men gay? Homosexuality wasn’t studied when it was taboo, but we now know that only a few percent of society is homosexual. Anyway, why would godly Lot stick around if the city was so detestable? Perhaps for literary purposes?
4. Can we assume that there were no women? There is no evidence that this is an all-male city. “All the men” makes clear that this is not everyone, and so some must’ve been left behind. The straightforward interpretation is that all the men came to Lot’s house, that the women stayed at home, and that the women were mothers, wives, and daughters as in any ordinary city.
5. We have a better explanation. Gang rape is less about pleasure than about humiliating or establishing dominance. That the local men wanted to bully or dominate the visitors seems a better explanation than that they were just eager for sexual pleasure.
As we study the story, however, let’s not dismiss the violence. No one can question that there was significant evil in Sodom (fictive or not) when visitors are threatened with gang rape. But what was the sin of Sodom? This is a story of attempted rape. Yes, it was homosexual rape, but the homosexuality isn’t highlighted as the crime.
Koukl is right that we shouldn’t twist the story, but he seems to be the one with the agenda. Only with a desire to find anti-gay messages in the Bible can we imagine one in the Sodom and Gomorrah story.
What’s also clear is that this has nothing to do with the loving, monogamous, homosexual relationship that is the subject of today’s discussion of same-sex marriage.
(Tomorrow is election day, and Washington’s Referendum 74 is a big deal. If it passes, it will be the first same-sex law in the U.S. directly put into effect by the citizens.)

Every time you see a rainbow,
God is having gay sex
(seen on a bumper sticker)

Believers are Products of their Environment

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What fraction of Muslims were not raised in a Muslim environment? What fraction of Christians were not raised in a Christian environment? What does it say about the validity of religious claims that people typically take on the religion of their culture?
When someone gets a religious vision, why does it have elements from that person’s religion and not some other religion? Why do Hindus not get visions of Mary or Jesus or Christian angels, and why do Christians not get visions of Hindu gods?
To avoid the charge of special pleading, Christians must argue that they were just extraordinarily lucky to have been born in a place and time in which the correct religion happened to be available.
Religion is like language. I speak English because I was raised in America. I didn’t evaluate all the languages of the world before I picked the best one; it was just part of my environment.
Any Christian will tell you that babies born to Muslim parents are almost exclusively Muslim for no more profound reason than that they were raised in a Muslim environment. Why should it be any different for babies born to Christian parents?
Christians aren’t Christian because Christianity is true, but because they were born into a Christian environment. Christianity is a cultural trait, not a reflection of the truth.

What religion a man shall have is a historical accident,
quite as much as what language he shall speak.
— George Santayana

(This is a modification of a post that originally appeared 9/16/11.)
Photo credit: Wikipedia