Most U.S. Abortions are Due to Pro-Life Movement

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The pro-life movement has been forced into an all-or-nothing mindset. They’ve convinced themselves that abortion is murder and that it must be eliminated, and yet in no foreseeable future will there be zero abortions.

Nevertheless, this is their unreachable goal. This dogged attachment to a no-win project, at the expense of better approaches, puts the blame for most U.S. abortions on them.

Let’s consider another route, a win-win route, to substantially fewer abortions. With this approach, we will try to reduce abortions, not pretend that we can eliminate them. We won’t try to make them illegal (which has never worked) but make them unnecessary. The focus will be on the actual problem (unwanted pregnancies) rather than the symptom (abortions). If we deal with the problem, the symptom takes care of itself, and pro-lifers will discover that pro-choice advocates share the very same problem. The evidence shows that to reduce unwanted pregnancies, we need to provide comprehensive sex education and convenient, subsidized access to contraception.

Do I hear grumbling? Do I hear puritanical Christians muttering that they won’t put up with public schools teaching 12-year-olds how condoms work or pharmacies providing easy access to contraceptives? Then let’s double check: are we dealing with a Holocaust or not? Is abortion murder or not?

I’ve read many articles from Christians claiming this very thing. Assuming that they’re being honest and millions of conservative Christians really do think this way, let’s take them at their word and proceed.

(This post is about twice as long as usual, but with the U.S. election coming up in days, and abortion being the biggest single issue driving Trump voters, I wanted to have a complete argument for a logical approach to abortion in one article. And pro-life voters, if you want to reduce abortions, you need to rethink what you look for in your candidates.)

Harm reduction and consistency

Let’s consider abortion from a harm reduction standpoint. A harm reduction policy tries to minimize the harm caused by a human behavior.

The best-known such policy is probably needle exchange programs that allow intravenous drug users to exchange used needles for clean ones. While it’d be great to eliminate the drug addiction, experience has shown that that’s very hard to do. Instead, many jurisdictions focus on minimizing the social harm such as the incidence of HIV, hepatitis, and other diseases that can be transmitted by dirty needles. This policy also puts addicts in frequent contact with organizations that can help when they’re ready to quit.

Cast the net more broadly, and medical treatment for accidents can be thought of as harm reduction. No one wags their finger at an accident victim and says, “You knew that car crashes can happen, and yet you drove in a car anyway, didn’t you?” We treat the guy who shot himself by accident. We treat the smoker who gets lung cancer. We treat the person with a poor diet who gets type 2 diabetes. The medical staff does their best, and society (directly or indirectly) pays the bill.

Consider harm reduction even more broadly. We don’t want anyone getting married casually, but we provide divorce as a mechanism for getting out if necessary. The legal option of bankruptcy causes less harm than debtor’s prison. A tough love approach, like long prison terms for drug offenses, often doesn’t minimize societal harm, and a soft landing can be a smart compromise.

If the medical system treats the victim of a car accident (heck, if the medical system treats the person who has a sexually-transmitted disease), by the same logic it should treat the woman who’s pregnant by accident.

A new plan, part 1: sex education

The first part of a workable plan to reduce unwanted pregnancy is comprehensive sex education in school. Of course, the first category of people trying to squirm away from this will be conservative Christians, but remember that the motivation for this approach was to find a way to substantially reduce abortions to satisfy those conservative Christians. This is for you, so grit your teeth and let’s proceed.

Schools must teach children early, before they are likely to become sexually active. The curriculum must come from U.S. and international programs proven to work (unlike abstinence-only programs, which have been proven to fail). There’s clearly room for improvement, since the U.S. ranked worst in a National Institutes of Health survey of 21 countries: Switzerland had 8 pregnancies per thousand women aged 15 to 19, while the U.S. had seven times as many.

Effective programs can provide dramatic success. Wyoming had its birth rate among 15–19 year-old women drop by 40 percent in six years, and this was credited to improved sex education.

And ineffective programs can worsen the problem. A survey of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 found that “60 percent of young adults are misinformed about birth control’s effectiveness,” and blamed that misinformation on abstinence education, which often tries to downplay the effectiveness of contraception. In another survey 44 percent of young women agreed that “It doesn’t matter whether you use birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen.” Only 31 states require sex ed, and only half of those mandate that it must be accurate.

We teach teens how to do things safely: don’t read your phone while driving, don’t get into a car with a driver who’s drunk, and so on. They’re going to get a sexually mature body whether we like it or not, and 95 percent will have premarital sex. We must teach them how to use that body wisely.

Let’s end this section with a palate cleanser:

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in Hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on Earth and you should save it for someone you love. (Butch Hancock)

Part 2: convenient contraception

The next component in workable policies to minimize unwanted pregnancy is easy access to safe contraception. Long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) like intrauterine devices or subcutaneous implants are twenty times more effective at preventing pregnancy than the birth control pill. They make no demands on the user, like remembering to take a daily pill or to bring a condom.

That difference between perfect use and typical use (the success rate in a laboratory setting vs. in the real world) is important because about 40 percent of unplanned pregnancies in the U.S. are due to careless usage.

Several programs show the value in LARCs. Delaware reduced its abortion rate 37 percent in three years. A similar program in Colorado reduced abortions by 34 percent in two years.

Those are improvements due to improved contraception technology. What about cost as an obstacle? One study found that free birth control cut abortion rates by about two-thirds.

Part 3: no nuisance regulations

Conservative states seem to compete with each other to find ever more innovative nuisance regulations that don’t reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies or improve the health of the woman. These include pharmacists deciding which prescriptions they will fill, mandatory waiting periods, false or incomplete information about abortion, mandatory counseling, required reading materials, unnecessary sonograms, required listening to the fetal heartbeat, and so on. These must go. The time from the discovery of an unwanted pregnancy to abortion (if that’s the woman’s choice) should be minimized. That’s not to suggest it should be rushed but that, if it is to happen, it should happen as quickly as possible.

And that’s it: comprehensive sex ed in schools, convenient subsidized contraception, and no nuisance obstacles to abortion. Make these sensible changes, and the abortion rate will be cut in half. One influential thought piece—where I was first introduced to this program—suggests that the rate could be cut by ninety percent. That argument adds some additional features like helping parents become more comfortable discussing sex with their children, improving access to reproductive health services in marginalized communities, seeing family planning as not only a private matter but one that belongs in the conversation with one’s doctor, and researching birth control for men.

Costs?

Some may be wondering who’s going to pay for all this. Given the high cost of more citizens—it costs about a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child to age 17 in the U.S.—it’s not surprising that these programs generate more savings than they cost. One study concluded that “Teen childbearing cost taxpayers $9.1 billion in 2004.” The Colorado program (above) found that every dollar invested in the program brought a six-dollar savings in the Medicaid program. A policy simulation from the Brookings Institution predicted similar savings.

Some Christians might say that taxpayer funding of contraception and sex ed offends them. Yeah, well, that’s life. I don’t like paying for abstinence-only education programs or government programs that promote religion, and I doubt you protested then. Even if you don’t have school-age kids, you pay for public school. We need to follow the evidence and work together for the common good.

Let’s look at the social cost of the pro-life movement from a different angle. What happens when a child is brought into the world unwanted and unloved? Or when the mother doesn’t have enough for another child or the environment is dangerous?

An article from 2001 tried to quantify that. It concluded that the dramatic drop in violent crime in the early 1990s was due in large part to the legalization of abortion nationwide by the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion legalization. The five states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime.

In short, many of the 18-year-old men who would have caused violent crime in the early 1990s didn’t exist because they had been prevented 18 years earlier.

(This argument might sound like that from the book Freakonomics (2005). In fact, Steven Levitt was the coauthor of both the article and the book.)

The impact of abortion on the crime rate is often overlooked, but the pro-life movement must answer for the increased crime due to unwanted children.

Revisit the problems within the pro-life movement

In the last post, 6 Flaws in the Pro-Life Position (that Pro-Lifers Must Stop Ignoring), I explored six problems with the pro-life position. I promised in response a new, more effective approach (sex ed, convenient contraception, and no nuisance obstacles). Let’s revisit those six problems. I think they’ve been resolved.

  • Problem 1: Abstinence doesn’t work as birth control. Encouraging abstinence can be part of sex education, and it does work for a minority of teens. But abstinence-only education is a failure.
  • Problem 2: You focus on the symptom, not the problem. We’re now focusing on the problem: unwanted pregnancies.
  • Problem 3: You’re working against pro-choice community. By focusing on unwanted pregnancies, what both groups see as the problem, the two groups can work together.
  • Problem 4: Children will become sexually mature, whether you like it or not. Sex ed will be made appropriate for the age of the children. Children will be taught what they need to know before it becomes necessary.
  • Problem 5: Making abortion illegal doesn’t prevent abortions. The goal is reducing unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is still available, but the better we are at reducing unwanted pregnancies, the less the demand for abortions.
  • Problem 6: Obstacles erected for abortion clinics won’t work against medication abortions. We’re reducing abortions by focusing on the problem, unwanted pregnancies. Nuisance regulations aren’t helpful.

Is this a bridge too far?

I feel the need to check in again with Christians who are squeamish about this route. Perhaps they’re afraid that it might encourage teen sex. To them I say: I thought you said that the state of abortion in the U.S. is a Holocaust. I thought you said that abortion equals murder.

If not, then don’t create a pro-life litmus test for politicians. And if it is, then it may be true that teens will have sex more. You can even consider this a harm if you want (though keep in mind that pregnancy and STD rates will be much less than they are now). But who cares if this approach dramatically reduces abortions? If abortion really is murder, then I can’t imagine what could be worse. You’d really push back against a workable approach because it offended your prudery?

For Chicken Little politicians, it’s all about the power

Remember the folk tale Chicken Little (or Henny Penny)? An acorn fell on his head, and he ran around warning everyone that the sky was falling. We see something similar in the U.S. today. Christian and political leaders run around, telling Christians that the sky is falling because of abortion. (I’ll refer to both Christian leaders and political leaders as “politicians” since, in this context, their motivation is power.)

The pro-life movement is a political movement, not a moral movement. The problem was manufactured, and many Christian denominations just a few decades ago were in favor of the Roe decision that legalized abortion. A summary of a 1978 Christian analysis of abortion shows a surprisingly pro-choice attitude, supported by these churches: American Baptist Convention, American Lutheran Church, Disciples of Christ, Church of the Brethren, Episcopal Church, Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Church, and United Presbyterian Church.

Today, abortion to conservative politicians is a problem to be nurtured, not to be solved. They’re the only ones who can solve the problem, you see. But if it were solved, it wouldn’t be a vote getter. What else explains conservative politicians pursuing a policy that is so ineffective? (For more on this critique, see my previous post, which listed the fundamental flaws in the pro-life position.) These politicians want pro-life and pro-choice advocates divided. Strife means votes!

The conservative voter is the mule pulling the cart, motivated by the carrot on a stick of Roe overturned. And who’s back there sitting easy in the cart holding out the carrot? It’s conservative politicians who know what motivates the mule. If you want to make some serious progress on abortion rates, find politicians that embrace a practical policy like the one in this post and join forces with pro-choice advocates. Working together, you’d be unbeatable.

For years, conservative Christians have been taught that “Are you pro-life?” has the same answer as “Do you love Jesus?” Whether Jesus cared much about abortions is a question for another post, but if you want to make a dent in abortions, refocus your activism on measures shown to minimize unwanted pregnancies.

We have an election coming up. If abortion is a big deal to you, forget overturning Roe. Vote instead for those candidates who are most likely to push for tested policies that discourage unwanted pregnancies. That’s how you will minimize abortions.

Pro-life advocates, we can’t do this without you.

No amount of belief makes something a fact.
— The Amazing Randi (1928–2020)
(Thank you, Randi. You will be missed.)

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Image from Spenser (free-use license)
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6 Flaws in the Pro-Life Position (that Pro-Lifers Must Stop Ignoring)

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The U.S. election is two weeks away. Let’s talk about the biggest issue in the minds of Trump’s supporters, abortion.

I want to expose six fundamental flaws that underlie the pro-life position. I think I have solutions, and next time I will outline them. My goal (perhaps surprisingly) isn’t to tell pro-life advocates that they’re idiots but to expose the errors and show them how to fix them. In this post, let’s look at the problems.

(Going forward, I will use “you” to refer to an imaginary pro-life advocate.)

Problem 1: Abstinence doesn’t work as birth control

Congress has put billions into abstinence-only sex education. That money peaked during the Bush administration, was largely redirected to other sex ed programs during the Obama administration, and has increased again during the Trump administration. As one example, the Texas state board of education recently doubled down on abstinence as the focus of sex ed.

But these programs don’t work. Toward the end of the Bush administration, a study was done to evaluate the results of these programs. Out of 700 federally funded abstinence-only sex education programs, “[four] were handpicked to show positive results and they still failed”! There was no increase in sexual abstinence, no increase in the age of sexual debut, and no decrease in the number of partners.

We can analyze this another way. Look at the 2018 list of states ranked by teen birth rate. Take the top 10 worst states and compare them against the top 10 reddest states (ranked by the percentage that voted for Trump in 2016). Six are on both lists: Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Now do the opposite comparison: match the 10 lowest teen birth rate states with the top 10 bluest states (ranked by the percentage voting for Clinton). Again, six are on both lists: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New York. None of the worst-birth-rate states are on the blue list, and none of the best-birth-rate states are on the red list. Whatever conservative states are doing, it’s not working well.

Now consider abstinence teaching in schools. While it’s hard to make a quantitative comparison, bluer states are (in general) likelier to cover abstinence, cover contraception, and take a positive view of sexual orientation. Redder states are likelier to stress (rather than merely cover) abstinence and emphasize that sex is reserved for marriage. They are less likely to cover contraception or take a positive view of sexual orientation (source).

But isn’t abstinence 100% effective?

I’ve talked with conservatives who shake their heads at my ignorance and inform me that abstinence, by definition, eliminates the need for abortion. Abstinence means no sex, no sex means no pregnancy, and no pregnancy means no abortion—QED.

But it obviously doesn’t work like that in the real world. The effectiveness of contraception is measured in two different situations, perfect use and typical use. Perfect use is how it is used during a clinical trial, where every step is done correctly. Typical use is how it is used by ordinary consumers, and these consumers can misunderstand or misread directions, not bother with or forget to take a daily pill, ignore cautions, and so on. So, yes, the perfect use of abstinence gives perfect results, but as we’ve seen above, typical use of abstinence doesn’t give great results.

Abstinence “always works” in the way that dieting always works. If your last weight-loss diet or fitness commitment didn’t work, then you probably have first-hand experience with typical use not matching the expectation of perfect use. It’s like saying “Don’t get shot!” to someone off to war or “Just stop smoking!” to someone trying to quit—not really useful advice since you’re confusing typical use with perfect use.

Abstinence isn’t even a birth control method. To see this, imagine you plan to do some outdoor chores and ask someone for a recommendation for sunscreen. Their response: just stay inside.

It’s true that if you stay inside you won’t get too much sun, but that ignores your goal of doing chores. “Stay inside” isn’t a kind of sunscreen. (h/t Love, Joy, Feminism)

An analogous example is that you want to take a long trip, and you ask for advice on whether it’d be safer to go by plane, train, or car. The response: the safest option is to stay home. That’s true, but it ignores your goal of making the trip.

The choice of birth control method asks, assuming I will be sexually active, what is the best method to avoid STDs and pregnancy? “Just don’t have sex” doesn’t answer the question.

Problem 2: You focus on the symptom, not the problem

Abortion isn’t the problem; abortion is the symptom. No one would have abortions without the problem of an unwanted pregnancy.

No one enjoys getting an abortion. It’s an unpleasant medical procedure with some risk. About this we’re all on the same page, which brings us to the next problem.

Problem 3: You’re working against pro-choice community

You might think “So what? Why would I want to work with my enemy?” but you’d obviously be more effective if you could work with them rather than against them, given the stalemate we have today.

The pro-life movement wants no abortions and the pro-choice movement wants to keep them as an option, but there is common ground. Both would like to see fewer unwanted pregnancies. An unwanted pregnancy prevented is far cheaper, safer, and easier than one treated with an abortion. Fewer unwanted pregnancies mean less demand for abortions (which makes pro-life advocates happy), and that means less pressure to restrict abortions (which makes pro-choice advocates happy).

The pro-life movement’s focus on the wrong thing—the symptom of abortion rather than the problem of unwanted pregnancy—is so flawed that it looks deliberate. It’s like someone wants there to be conflict, to prevent people coming together and making progress on the real problem.

(More on who that might be in the next post.)

Problem 4: Children will become sexually mature, whether you like it or not

Christian pundit James Dobson said about the recent decision by the Texas state board of education to focus sex ed on abstinence:

Activists groups like Planned Parenthood and its morally bankrupt allies were salivating at the chance to eliminate abstinence-based teaching once and for all and replace it with a not-suitable-for-children indoctrination program. If they got their way, 11 and 12-year-olds would spend classroom time learning about gender identity, condom use and other highly sexualized topics.

By “11 and 12-year-olds,” I assume you mean “children who are about to become sexually mature.” Yes, they need to understand how their bodies will soon work.

Imagine a world where every teenager got a car, and you couldn’t prevent that. They would be eager to drive their cars, and all you as a parent could do would be to put up constraints and educate them so that when they left your house as adults, they would be responsible drivers.

Wouldn’t you want them to get driver’s ed?

In our world, people are getting married later and sexually maturing sooner. In the U.S., women are marrying on average at age 27 and men at age 29. Onset of puberty is now 10–11 for girls and a year later for boys (about five years earlier than it was in the 1800s). The process is complete about five years later.

That’s a given, and your only option is how to respond. “Wait until marriage” won’t work for everyone. It’s particularly naive given the many years typically between sexual maturity and marriage. Wouldn’t you want them to get driver’s ed?

Problem 5: Making abortion illegal doesn’t prevent abortions

Remember Kermit Gosnell? He ran a filthy abortion clinic in Philadelphia that focused on illegal late-term abortions and was sentenced to life in prison in 2011. Though they may not realize it, this is pro-life advocates’ goal. When safe, legal abortion is unavailable or inconvenient, it will be performed in unsafe, illegal clinics. One of Gosnell’s patients said about the closest Planned Parenthood clinic, “The picketers out there, they just scared me half to death.”

We’re seeing the beginnings of this today. A recent study of the restrictive climate in Texas, where more than half of abortion clinics have closed, has found that seven percent of patients seeking abortion tried to end the pregnancy on their own rather than jump the obstacles to get to a clinic. That’s more than three times the national average. The restrictions in Texas have also made late-term abortions increase.

Reliable data about the abortion rate before the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal nationwide is hard to find, but it appears that about 800,000 abortions were performed per year. That’s roughly the rate today. With our substantially higher population, that means the abortion rate was higher before Roe.

We find the same thing in other countries. Abortion rates are highest in countries where the procedure is illegal. No, making abortion illegal won’t make it end.

Problem 6: Obstacles erected for abortion clinics won’t work against medication abortions

Nuisance regulations like demanding that clinics have wide corridors or that their doctors have hospital admitting privileges (as Texas has imposed) will become less relevant. Medication abortions are abortions done by pills rather than an operation, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved this treatment twenty years ago. For abortions up to ten weeks’ gestation, the majority are done this way in the U.S., and that fraction is increasing.

Regulations about corridor width won’t matter if the abortion can come through the mail. Prescription drugs already come into the U.S. illegally from countries with cheaper prices. The tighter the controls on bricks-and-mortar clinics, the more demand for safe medication abortions will increase.

Let’s find solutions to these problems and find ways to make the pro-life movement effective. Continue with: Most U.S. Abortions are Due to Pro-Life Movement

“Explain to me how making abortion illegal
wouldn’t lower abortion rates.”
Explain to me how making drugs illegal
didn’t lower drug use rates.
— commenter adam

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Image from Ragesoss (license CC-BY-SA-3.0,2.5,2.0,1.0)
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Science vs. Christianity: When Worldviews Collide

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Alister McGrath, an Anglican priest and professor of theology at Oxford, contrasted atheism and Christianity in an interview on the conservative Christian site The Stream: “An Atheist’s Reasonable Journey to Faith: An Interview With Alister McGrath.” You may know McGrath from The Dawkins Delusion, his response to Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which I read shortly after it came out in 2007.

A reasonable journey to faith? Let’s see how reasonable it was and how well supported by evidence his adopted Christian position is. He has plenty to say about science, too, and we’ll critique the comparison.

1. Science has limitations, and other avenues may be more attractive

McGrath says that “science did not demand atheism” and that the other worldview options “seemed to be more interesting.” Another limitation of science was that it didn’t answer life’s big questions such as the meaning of life. “I began to realize that human beings need existential answers about meaning, purpose and value, not just an understanding about how the universe works.”

He says, “human beings need existential answers,” and I agree that people might well want such answers, but Reality is under no obligation to provide them. McGrath plows forward, looking for answers without satisfying that annoying little prerequisite that the source for the answers must be reliable.

And yes, science is limited. Scientists themselves are quick to make these limitations clear. It’s too bad we don’t see the same thing within Christianity. I wish Christianity was also self-critical and admitted to its limitations. As an example of Christianity’s hydra-headed blundering, consider John Hagee’s “four blood moons” humiliation. Five years afterwards, I’m still feeling the schadenfreude.

McGrath next wonders about worldview options that are more interesting than science while doing nothing to convince us (or himself) that they’re correct. Without this fundamental first step, who really cares whether they’re interesting?

I’ll grant that Christianity can tell you what the meaning of life is. So can Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. So can David Koresh, Jim Jones, or Sathya Sai Baba. So can Pastafarianism, Jediism, or Zuism. So can the drunk stranger at a party. But are any of these sources worth listening to?

2. We have Christianity to thank for nurturing science

“There has always been a strong religious motivation for the scientific study of nature. Religious writers like Thomas Aquinas have always insisted that the regularity and beauty of nature point to the wisdom and beauty of God.”

There have been Christian scientists for centuries, though that’s not saying much since pretty much everyone in Europe was Christian until recently. To give Christianity credit for the last 500 years of European science is to call attention to how little Europe progressed while Christianity was in charge (see also here).

McGrath admits that Christianity hasn’t always been science-positive: “Of course, there have been episodes when religious ideas or politics have got in the way of scientific advance.”

Let me add to that. I’ve written about how apologists falsely claim the Bible anticipated modern science and how the Bible got science wrong. Also, about how apologists’ boasts about Christianity building universities and hospitals are overblown.

3. Christianity makes sense of the world

Many think that religion is irrational, but don’t let that stop you. Consider how seemingly irrational are areas of science such as quantum physics.

C. S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” McGrath added, “A theory is judged by how much sense it makes of our world.”

If Christianity untangles reality where no other worldview does, McGrath does nothing to argue for this claim. The most charitable interpretation of this is that McGrath has support for these claims but the interview simply didn’t allow him to express them.

A less-charitable interpretation is that McGrath’s arguments are aimed only at his own community, and he doesn’t have much that would convince an atheist, despite his frequent contrasting of the two worldviews.

4. Science is “provisional and limited”

Science is provisional because it changes its mind. It’s limited because it can’t address the important areas of meaning, value, and beauty.

Yes, science is limited. Do you have an alternative? Surely you’re not thinking of Christianity! With 45,000 denominations and counting, it can’t even sort out its own beliefs.

Every year there are “Top 10” lists of scientific discoveries. Show me a similar list of things Christianity has given the world—not Christians (I grant that people do good things) but Christianity. If Christianity doesn’t dirty its hands with evidence and doesn’t care to make such advancements, then what good is it? That Christianity tells you happy, groundless nonsense isn’t much of a selling point.

Are Christianity’s contributions to the world all in the past? If so, I need evidence of that, too.

McGrath has good things to say about science and points out limitations that anyone would grant. But his vague praise about the Christian worldview make me want to set some ground rules. Can we at least agree that groundless certainty is bad? And that evidence is mandatory to support a belief? And that faith (that is, belief despite insufficient evidence) has no place in this conversation? If so, I wonder where Christianity is in all of this.

5. Science can’t prove whether God exists or not

“Science has been hijacked by ideological atheists, who have weaponized science in their battle against religion. . . . The epistemic dilemma of humanity is that we cannot prove the things that matter most to us. We can only prove shallow truths. It’s not a comfortable situation, but we have to get used to it, and not seek refuge in the illusory utopian world of the New Atheism, which holds that we can prove all our valid core beliefs.”

(I’ll remember Weaponized Science if I need a name for another blog. Or a band.)

McGrath frets about science’s “shallow truths,” but I wonder what truths these are. Perhaps truths like, “The earth orbits an ordinary star in an unimportant corner of a vast galaxy, just one of roughly 200 billion galaxies”? Or, “This technique will increase crop yields so that billions of people can be fed”? Or, “This vaccine will immunize your child against smallpox”? Those sound like pretty important truths to me. Here’s another one: you don’t need to have someone give you the answers to life’s Big Questions®. You decide what the purpose of your life is. I appreciate that this is can be an intimidating challenge, but it’s also a thrilling opportunity.

As for science being unable to prove or disprove God, that’s true. All we can do is follow the evidence (and it’s not looking good for Christianity). I have no idea what he means by an “illusory utopian world of the New Atheism” in which we can prove all core beliefs. That certainly doesn’t describe my views. If “illusory utopian world” describes anything, it’s religion, not atheism.

6. Christianity helps science in two ways

First, it provides “a reassurance of the coherence of reality.” Our view of the world is imperfect, but we see a bigger picture that gives meaning to a world that would otherwise be “incoherent and pointless.”

Second, Christianity provides answers where science can’t to the big questions such as “the meaning of life, and our place in a greater scheme of things.” Science alone can’t be “the foundation of meaning and value.”

These are bold claims, but I need evidence to back them up. Show me where Christianity has helped science. All the clues from science tell us that the universe is ultimately pointless, and Christianity’s flailing explanations are just fantasy, built on nothing. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t find meaning in life and assign a purpose for your existence. It doesn’t bother me that the universe has no ultimate purpose, but if it troubles you, remember that your wishing reality were different counts for nothing.

McGrath says that there is more to a full life than science. If he’s thinking of enjoying family and friends, finding satisfaction in a job well done, or helping the less fortunate, that falls outside of both science and Christianity.

McGrath’s approach can be adapted to justify lots of supernatural worldviews, most incompatible with Christianity. He has done nothing to make clear why Christianity is the only correct worldview or even why we should believe the supernatural of any sort exists.

Mystical explanations are considered deep.
The truth is that they are not even superficial.
— Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Way down deep, you’re shallow
Superficial to the core
Beneath your surface, there’s just more surface
And beneath that, even more.
— “Way Down Deep (You’re Shallow)” by John Forster
(h/t commenter David B. Appleton)

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/9/16.)

Image from Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington (license CC BY 2.0)

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“I Just Believe in One Less God Than You Do”: an Atheist Fallacy? (4 of 4)

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The idea behind this argument is that humanity has invented thousands of gods throughout history. The atheist and the Christian both reject these many gods, so rejecting gods can’t be something the Christian would object to. Why then complain when the atheist rejects that one final god? (Part 1 here.)

Let’s wrap up by exploring the last few arguments.

13a. The Mere Christianity argument

When I first encountered C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, I found the title confusing. Was he dismissing or denigrating Christianity? No, by “mere” he meant those traits of Christianity that were common among the many denominations. One source sees this kind of commonality with religions as well.

As a Christian I do believe that most other religions have many things right. I am not a Hindu, but the Hindus and I agree that there is more to the world than the material, that humans have souls, and that there is objective right and wrong. There are many aspects of Brahmin that I recognize as aspects of my own God. I simply believe that Hindus are wrong on most of the details.

The author goes on to make a similar comparison with Norse religion, noting that both he and the Norseman agree on the supernatural, life after death, and that we will be judged based on our work on earth.

It’s true that many societies share a few core supernatural beliefs, but they may also share racism and sexism. They may share beliefs in superstitions and astrology. Does, “Yeah, but look at all the societies that shared this thinking!” still sound like a good way to discover the truth?

And you’re making too much from this observation since you and your fellow believers across the world’s religions can’t even agree on the names the god(s), the number of god(s), and how to placate them. Those are some substantial details to disagree on.

Can you be a Christian and declare that all roads lead to God? If not, then this all-encompassing Kumbaya thinking is just a smoke screen, and we’re back to the Christians and atheists agreeing on 99+% of the gods that don’t exist.

13b. God as unicorn

Here’s a variation on that argument. One source imagines that he believes in unicorns. His belief is strengthened when he learns of another person who believes in them as well, though this person calls them something else and describes them completely differently. And then there’s another believer, though he also has a different name and description.

Hearing all [these] different accounts might make me doubt my own conception of the unicorn: but the last thing it would do is make me doubt that a unicorn exists. Instead my faith would be strengthened by that fact that all these other people did see something.

But unicorns don’t exist! How can this example get off the ground when it nicely illustrates how pre-scientific people create legendary animals?

And let’s imagine duplicating this author’s experiment. If you describe a “unicorn” as a horse with a horn, and someone else describes a “Bigfoot” as a giant hairy man, and a third person describes “Nessie” as a fresh water sea monster, why would all this strengthen your unicorn belief? If anything, it shows that cultures worldwide have turned imagination into creatures that probably don’t exist.

There is a magical creature out there; it is only my own conception of it that is in doubt. In just the same way pointing out that mankind has believed in thousands of other gods and worshipped in other ways may be a decent argument against my own conception of God, but it is a terrible argument to try and make me believe that there are no gods at all. Indeed it only strengthens my faith in the supernatural.

You look around and see thousands of gods that societies have invented and that strengthens your belief in the supernatural? Why not see thousands of instances of a particular mental error and try to identify the same error in your own thinking?

Are there any gods in that pile that actually exist? Maybe, but you’ve got an uphill climb to give us good reason to believe so. The study of religion shows that mankind has a strong need to invent the supernatural, and this should only undercut your belief in it.

14. We both have gods. “God” is just the thing central to one’s life—money in your case.

Functionally-speaking, everybody has a “god”, even if they don’t have a “religion.” You have something that you’ve placed at the center of your life that gives it direction, meaning, purpose, and value. You devote your time, energy, love, and affection to this thing as if it were the most central thing in the universe. That, in the monotheistic traditions, is what is called an idol. . . . The point isn’t whether or not you will worship a god. The point is “which god will you worship?” (Source)

Uh oh—I think it’s tough-love time.

If you match Jesus up with the most common American god, Money, Jesus wins. Jesus is totally better than money.

And yet we know that money exists. Money 1, Jesus 0.

Money never satisfies.

While I agree that successful people can seek wealth beyond the point where it is helpful, money actually solves a lot of problems. One influential U.S. study said that money can buy happiness—happiness correlates with income up to $75,000 per year. Greed isn’t pretty, but neither is poverty.

[Money] never delivers what it promises.

Sounds like Jesus! Only by making him unfalsifiable can Christians put him in the ring with a competitor that actually exists.

Jesus, on the other hand, well, he’s not going anywhere. . . . I could go on [for] hours, but you kinda get the point. Jesus > Money. Name anything else, even really good things, (Jesus > relationships, Jesus > your personal freedom, Jesus > sex, Jesus > power, Jesus > fame, Jesus > stuff, Jesus > a career, Jesus > status, Jesus > being a rockstar, etc.), and Jesus wins every time.

Jesus goes where you tell him to go because he’s just pretend. If you say he’s not going anywhere, then I’m sure he’s not. He’s just a meme in your mind and you’ve made him immune to evidence.

Money, relationships, career, and so on actually exist. Look at your list and notice that Jesus is the odd man out.

15. A final critique.

There are more arguments on the internet, but let’s round it out to 15.

There are problems with this reasoning. The first is that it begs the question against Christianity by assuming that there are no good reasons to be a theist (i.e. if you examined Christianity, you’d reject it too). (Source)

That’s not the way I see the “I just believe in one less god than you do” argument. It makes no declaration that Christianity is false; it’s just trying to provoke thought. What does it say that our positions are so similar with respect to the other religions? Sure, Christianity could be, against all odds, the needle in the haystack, but understand how much evidence you’ll need to convince us (or yourself).

There have been many who have examined Christianity and found it to be epistemologically robust; so the reasoning of the atheist is question begging.

I’m not assuming Christianity false from the outset (which would beg the question). So what if some have found it robust? Others have found it not so. Or found other contradicting religions to be robust.

But it also assumes that atheism is a kind of epistemic neutral ground . . . : if one is an atheist, he/she can examine all worldviews without bias. Again, the problem is that this is false.

Again, this is not where I’m going. It’s not that atheism is neutral ground or the atheist is somehow in sole possession of the clear-seeing glasses. Rather, it’s that atheism is the null hypothesis. It’s the starting point. The Christian is making the bold claim and so has the burden of proof.

I anticipate the “Yes, but most people have been theists throughout history” argument again. To that, I simply repeat: you make the bold claim, so you have the burden of proof.

An important caveat

There’s one more point to make, and this helps explain the Christian side of the argument (h/t to long-time commenter avalon, who helped me see this point). Going from belief in n gods to n – 1 gods may not be too painful a process until you’re making that final step down to zero gods. That is a different kind of jump, because in addition to changing the number of gods, it discards the supernatural world. That can be a big deal.

We have been exploring and debunking charges that the atheist argument “I just believe in one less god than you do” is a fallacy. I think that argument can be effective when it shows that the gulf between the atheist and Christian positions is a little smaller. This final caveat helps illustrate why that gulf is not nonexistent.

We can’t observe quarks or black holes,
but we should see their effects.
We do.
We can’t observe the Christian God,
but we should see his effects.
We don’t.
— Victor Stenger,
“Faith in Anything is Unreasonable”

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/25/16.)

Image from Eirik Solheim (license CC BY-SA 2.0)
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“I Just Believe in One Less God Than You Do”: an Atheist Fallacy? (3 of 4)

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The idea behind this argument is that humanity has invented thousands of gods throughout history. The atheist and the Christian both reject these many gods, so rejecting gods can’t be something the Christian would object to. Why then complain when the atheist rejects that one final god? (Part 1 here.)

Sharpen your wits by seeing how you’d respond to these Christian rebuttals.

9. Courtier’s Reply

Unless one has made a serious study of philosophical theology as it has been developed within the Neo-Platonic, Aristotelian, Thomistic and other Scholastic traditions, one’s understanding of traditional Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theology, not to mention philosophical theism, is simply infantile. …

The [objection represents] a failure to understand even the fundamentals of the position one is attacking. (Source)

In other words: Christianity has had 2000 years to develop sophisticated theology, and by bypassing that, your “I just believe in one less god than you do” argument is beneath contempt. And don’t get me started on the uselessness of parodies like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

This is a nice example of the Courtier’s Reply, a logical fallacy in which an opponent is declared at the outset unqualified to even enter the field of combat, let alone make a thoughtful contribution to the debate. (It was developed by PZ Myers in 2006 as the imagined reply by one of the Emperor’s self-important courtiers to the charge that the Emperor wore no clothes.)

What matters in evaluating classical theism is not what your Grandpa or your Pastor Bob have to say about it, but rather what serious thinkers like Aristotle, Plotinus, Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, and countless others have to say.

Your mistake is imagining that “serious thinkers” speak with one voice. By starting with one Christian perspective and then selecting scholars, you can hide behind their writings. But other Christian scholars could be collected to argue a different story, and each camp finds heresy in the thinking of the others. Add in theologians from outside Christianity, and the chaos increases.

That’s the power of the “one less god” argument. It bypasses not just the “sophisticated theology” of Christianity but that of all the other religions and challenges the Christian to justify why, if dismissing religions by the hundreds is reasonable, one religion must be kept.

10. Car analogy

Here is a thought experiment. Let’s say that you and I both own cars, and we use our cars almost every day. They’re essential to our lives, but we each need just one. We don’t own hundreds of cars. And then one day, you lose your car—say you’re in an accident and you can’t afford a new one. You wouldn’t tell me, “It’s no big deal—I just have one less car than you do.”

My first response would be to ask why this is a good analogy. We understand cars and how useful they can be. Show me that your god exists and is useful in the same way. They seem very different to me.

We can map this onto a world with Christians and atheists by imagining that you (the guy who has no car) switches over to mass transit, taxis, Uber, rental cars, Zipcar, and so on as appropriate. You get where you want to go, though in a different way, just like the atheist has answers to the big questions of life, though different ones than the Christian has. So, no—getting rid of your supernatural “car” isn’t a big deal. Just ask an atheist.

11. Arithmetic analogy

There are a theoretically infinite number of possible answers to the equation “Two plus two,” but only one actually true answer. To say that “Two plus two equals four” is to automatically make me an unbeliever in all the other possible answers. It’s not rational, however, for the atheist to say, “Well I just go one step further and choose to disbelieve that four is the answer either.” (Source)

This source has deliberately chosen an example where “one” is the correct answer to “How many answers are valid?” I wonder if it’s a coincidence that “one” is also the answer the Christian wants from “How many gods are there?” While arithmetic problems always have one correct answer, the correct answer to “How many gods are there?” could be one or twenty or zero.

Note also that arithmetic has proved itself, but religion has not. The many incompatible religions look like they’re all manmade. Comparing religion to arithmetic is to illegitimately appropriate arithmetic’s success. (More in this analysis of the map of world religions.)

12. Who needs evidence? Not the Christian.

This argument cautions us to not assume that the Christian reaches his worldview as an atheist might. Don’t assume that the Christian has sifted through the evidence for the hundreds of other gods, found none, and concluded that his original Christian belief is correct. Instead, some Christians say they have had a personal revelation. They also point to “self-verification of the Holy Spirit within.”

On this, William Lane Craig adds,

It is the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit that gives us the fundamental knowledge of Christianity’s truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. (Reasonable Faith, Third Edition, p. 47)

Self-authenticating? Evidence in a subsidiary role? I hope you’re consistent and allow the other guy to have the same careless attitude toward reality.

(Craig takes this thinking much further, and I analyze that here and here.)

Concluded in part 4.

“What would you replace Christianity with?”
“When a man has smallpox, you don’t replace it with anything.
You cure him and send him on his way.”
— Cross Examined

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/23/16.)

Image from Tighten up! (license CC BY 2.0)

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“I Just Believe in One Less God Than You Do”: an Atheist Fallacy? (2 of 4)

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The idea behind this argument is that humanity has invented thousands of gods throughout history. The atheist and the Christian both reject these many gods, so rejecting gods can’t be something that Christians are uncomfortable with. Why then complain when the atheist rejects that one final god? (Part 1 here.)

Let’s continue analyzing Christian rebuttals to this argument.

5. The other gods weren’t really gods.

The gods of these pantheons were/are not really gods in the proper sense. In order to call them such is a misunderstanding of what “god” means. In other words, they were functional deities who carried a role that was expedient to the life and happiness of the people. They were the gods of rain, sun, crops, war, fertility, and the like. They were the “go-to” immanent forces who had no transcendence or ultimate creative power. They were more like superheroes from the Justice League than gods. (Source)

Sounds like Yahweh. He was the war god in the early Justice League of Israel Israelite pantheon.

6. The other religions were polytheistic, and that doesn’t count.

I understand perfectly why [atheists] reject all the other gods. It is because they reject polytheism. But I don’t understand how this parallels to the rejection of the Christian God. It is a slight of hand to make such a comparison (effective as it may be). People believe in these two completely different things for completely different reasons and, therefore, must reject the two differently. The same arguments used against these gods cannot be used effectively against the Christian God. Once polytheism as a worldview is rejected, all the millions of gods go with it. I don’t have to argue against each, one at a time. (Source)

In the first place, what’s wrong with polytheism? This author gives no justification for any prejudice against it. I’ll grant that it’s a primitive and superstitious view of the world, but then so is monotheism. (Let’s avoid the temptation to detour into the Trinity to discuss whether Christianity actually is monotheistic.)

If one wants to claim that the invention of monotheism was a bold innovation, Amun-Ra in the Egyptian pantheon was worshipped as the sole god before Yahweh was.

In the second place, the Old Testament idea of Yahweh evolved. The theology of the people who would become the Jews began as a pantheon like those of the cultures around them, and only gradually did Yahweh become the sole god.

See also: The Perplexing Monty Hall Problem and How It Undercuts Christianity

7. It doesn’t count if that god wasn’t a creator god.

This first cause is by definition God. (Source)

Look it up. You won’t find “god” defined as the first cause. We’re not talking about the upper-case version.

Simply put, whoever started it all (the time, space, matter creation) is the only true God. . . . God, while able to interact and love mankind, must transcend all that we see and know. He must be outside of our universe holding it all together, not simply the most powerful actor in our current play.

Other religions from the Ancient Near East had gods who created our world from the carcass of the defeated chaos monster. For example, Marduk, the god of the Babylonians, formed the universe from the body of Tiamat. This story was common enough to be given a name: the Combat Myth. We see hints in the Bible that Yahweh defeated Rahab (another name for Leviathan) in a way that parallels this creation story, which makes Yahweh’s creation story just one of a series of similar stories.

It’s almost as if the Old Testament god didn’t actually exist but was inspired by stories from the surrounding cultures. . . .

8. God must be infinite in greatness, and nothing less will do.

Alvin Plantinga representatively captured the concept of God as a being “having an unsurpassable degree of greatness—that is, having a degree of greatness such that it’s not possible that there exist a being having more. . . .

There is no, and cannot be, a possible world with two or more beings that possesses unsurpassable degree of greatness. (Source)

From this, we conclude that there is no possible world with three beings that possess an unsurpassable degree of greatness. (It sounds like this Christian doesn’t believe in the Trinity.)

Define God (that is, Yahweh) anyway you want, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the thousands of gods—that is, deities—that people believe in.

This author is saying, “What thousands of other gods? There is only one God by definition!” But that’s changing the subject. He’s imagines Yahweh as a privileged example of the set of gods, and we must decide if that privilege is warranted.

Another author provides insight into Plantinga’s definition of God as the greatest possible thing. “Greatest” sounds impressive until we try to define it and find that it’s more debatable than we thought.

The resurrected Osiris asked Horus a question, “What is the most glorious deed a man can perform?”

Horus answered, “To take revenge upon one who has injured his father or mother.”

Are we all on the same page with Horus? If not, then greatest, most glorious, or best may be in the eye of the beholder. (The difficulty of finding the best is made clearer in the Ontological Argument.)

To be continued.

In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue.
It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about.
That’s not keeping it real or telling it like it is.
It’s not challenging political correctness . . .
that’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.
— Barack Obama, commencement speech at Rutgers

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/18/16.)

Image from M’s photography (license CC BY 2.0)

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