Fallen and Flawed

I can’t speak for all skeptics, but if I know one skeptic’s motivations, I know my own.

And what are those motivations of mine?

I’m not trying to ridicule you – I’m trying to share my perspectives with you on your beliefs, questions that I have had in my journey and questions which I think are useful in talking about faith and experience.

For me, believing because “Christ did this” or “Christ did that” isn’t good enough. How does anyone know?

I’m not trying to ridicule you or anyone else – I’m just trying to share my perspectives and my questions with you.

Maybe you think you have all the answers. Maybe you do.

If you’re satisfied with the answers you have now, then there probably will not be much effect from my sharing answers from my life with you.

However, I feel that there are times when my perspective is valuable in this conversation, even if nothing I say is meant to change anyone’s mind about anything.

I’m sorry that you think skeptics are out to ridicule you – many of us just want to share our experiences of once being faithful and what it’s been like to live our lives since then.

Personally, I like to share questions and arguments. I like to prod and poke and pry. I hope I am not offending you too much by those practices, but it is something I enjoy doing.

I am here to share my experiences and to occasionally bring a new line of questioning or a stranger perspective to the issues presented here.

I’m not looking to become a Christian again, or to find religion. Actually, I wasn’t looking to deconvert from Christianity, or to lose my religion, either. It’s just happened that way. But I think you know my story and my purpose here – I have not tried to deceive you. If that is not what you want to respond to, I understand. Long ago, we have each mentioned that we have our own objectives – I think that much is clear.

If you no longer wish to engage me on the subject of Christianity, I understand. I am not exactly here on your terms, after all.

Tele,

I don’t think Demian was referring to actions like:

“I’m not trying to ridicule you or anyone else – I’m just trying to share my perspectives and my questions with you”

…If respect on the part of both parties is maintained.

From true intrest and curiosity, regarding: “For me, believing because “Christ did this” or “Christ did that” isn’t good enough. How does anyone know?”; what is the level of proof needed for you to believe a historical event happened? …any event, not just the most precious event Christians hold to. And do you keep the level of proof the same for all historical events?

Like Demian, I am NOT in the conversion business (that is God’s domain), just the proclaimation business. Being the herald is good enough for me. I don’t have a PhD in Theology, so quite quickly someone will find a question I would honestly answer with “I don’t know”.

Most skeptics will not accept one of the most central things regarding the true conversion of someone to Christianity: The fact that it is a supernatural work of Almighty God.

This is something that no believer could ever explain to any satisfaction to a skeptic.

I wish I could answer all questions about God, Jesus and the Bible, but my puny, finite brain cannot wrap around everything.

Thank God He has brought enough humility into my life that I do not feel the need to make up answers, and instead I easily admit when I don’t know something (which is often).

I learn much from debates and arguments involving Christianity, but I think Demian is talking about neither of these, but when things devolve into verbal fights.

It is where the hearts of those involved are that makes the distinction.

If one’s heart is not in for a fight, then I say “Play ball!”

Demian said,

But unfortunately, you’re not looking to understand our position. You’re looking for a soft spot. And when you think you find that soft spot–you punch it…

You are correct. If I find a “soft spot” in the beliefs that I am being told that I must have, I am going to scrutinize it. I am going to be brutal and I’ll use all the critical thinking tools at my disposal to falsify it. Why? Because I care whether or not that my beliefs are true. I am not going to just take your (or your pastor’s or the bible’s) word on it. The fact that these doctrines have soft spots is telling.

The sad thing is you’ve already answered those questions for yourself–in the negative, which is fine–but now you demand Christians intellectually gratify you.

Boy, I hope I don’t do that. Actually, I hope that I am neutral (at first) when it comes to claims. That way I can examine the claim without bias. I know that not a very human thing to do, but I try.

Demian, dont worry about a thing. The reason I read your blog is because you allow honest and open discussion. That’s a rare find among christian blogs.

The way I see it, if you want to change the subject, that’s your thing. I don’t even think that you have ever changed the subject on me.

Honestly, many of your topics are way above my head theologically.

“…The fact that these doctrines have soft spots is telling.”

Mr. Madewell, have you considered that your system of belief–i.e., you believe that there is no divine force driving the creation and continued existence of everything–also has its soft spots? From the Big Bang theory to that of evolution, there are as many weak points in atheism as there is in ANY theistic faith, including that of Christians. I say this not as an aggressive challenge or in any attempt to demean your own ideas or thoughts on the cosmology of the Universe, but as someone who is trying to maintain the same neutral tone as yourself.

It was these very soft spots that brought me to realize that there is, in fact, an intelligent force behind all of creation. How can one exist in a purposeless world, the product of nothing more than a series of accidents, surrounded by mindless consuming nature in a mindless void? How can one exist believing that their altruism, their compassion, their higher thoughts and emotions, are all nothing but random rivers of chemicals in their animal brains? Everything–even fire ants and mosquitoes–exists for a purpose. The flea exists to feed on the dog. The dog exists to chase the cat. The cat exists to hunt the rat. The rat exists to breed the flea.

How can one peer into the staggering intricacy of a single cell, with its ticking gearworks–the cogs of which are so vital to sustaining life that the the loss of even one can wreak crippling damage or deadly havoc!–and not see a genius Watchmaker’s signature on display? Or look outward at the brilliant filigree tracery of seasonal animal migrations, food chains, tidal cycles, weather, celestial events, terrestrial wonders, and all manner of pulsating life…and not realize that we are treading through the gallery of the Ultimate Artist?

Pardon my poet’s heart. I can’t think about the world around me, even vandalized as it has been by our fall, and not be moved to word-smithing. I confess, I’m as puzzled by your atheism as you are by my theism.

We all know there are flaws in all systems of thoughts and beliefs. The big question, however, is this: do we rabbit-punch the soft spots of others’ beliefs out of a sense of smug superiority? Or do we show grace because we know there are soft spots on BOTH sides?

Thanks for posting this one Demian, discussions about the nature of our discussions are always fun.

As usual, timezone advantages allowed Teleprompter and Robert to beat me to posting pretty much all of what I was thinking.

As an ex-Christian, I completely understand why you change the subject to an articulation of the gospel, after all that is the duty of the Christian and it’s exactly what I used to do.

However, I agree with Robert’s comment about soft spots – they are telling. I am more than happy for a soft spot of mine to be poked, and so should any genuine skeptic.

The difference between a skeptic and most religious people is that the skeptic does not make a “committment” to a point of view, rather they make a committment not to do so. A good enough attack on something a skeptic believes does not leave them emotionally distraught, or retreating to a fallback spiel and shelving of the “problem”. Instead, it leaves them hungry for an alternate hypothesis, on the hunt for more evidence.

Sure, it means that you don’t get the emotional comfort of a supernatural belief, but for the skeptical mind this is probably not possible even if they tried.

I find that life as a non-believer is rich and interesting, and when I observe and interact with religious evangelists (which I often do, in the real world), I don’t miss that worldview one bit. That is why I am happy to poke and prod at the beliefs of people who want to engage with skeptics. a) They asked for it, and b) My deconversion was a positive one, and I am happy to be a catalyst for someone elses.

[...] it’s a bit impersonal, addressed to “Dear Skeptic”, and put up on the internet where anyone could read it. But it’s always nice to hear from someone who cares enough to [...]

Not a whole lot I can say or add to this, though I like it. I will say Cubik’s Rube… whew harsh. But that’s what stuff like this is all about.

Spot on Demian.

I have lots of online friends who like to fight dirty and by that I don’t mean using every argumentative skill at their disposal but the ad hominem, sarcastic, hurtful, mean spirited, designed to destroy attacks that don’t foster discourse but stifle it. Fortunately my “brick and mortar” friends are more less antagonistic. I’d bet most people in person are.

Your call for the gospel is clear. Cubik doesn’t need a more powerful argument to believe. He needs Romans 1:16, just like I did.

Romans 1:16 –

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.”

That’s it?

Rob,

I think I’m confused – what exactly do I need Romans 1:16 for? I’m looking at it now, and it doesn’t seem to be doing a whole lot for me. Does it need to be plugged in somewhere? Is there a trouble-shooting guide?

Cubik,

He doesn’t mean just by reading that verse you will suddenly have it. He simply means you need the “gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation,” and that we are not ashamed to tell you that you need it, despite you being a lot smarter than us (or at least me). We’re not being antagonistic, though you seem to be.

Look, I know it must be hard, especially for a lot of you who have made a name for yourselves in being a skeptic. I don’t know your heart, but if you suddenly feel Christ is your salvation, will you accept that? You would be giving up everything, in a matter of speaking. We are simply wanting you to consider is anything you have really worth losing your soul?

That question is for everyone, believer, non-believer, not just for Cubik. Are you willing to push yourself to the side and let Christ be king, or does that take too much pride?

If I’m being antagonistic, I really truly apologize. Just like Demian said, and I’ve said numerous times, I’m very nervous about some possibly harsh and sniping comments I’m opening myself up to. I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t the absolute most important thing in the world.

Jeff,

You’re not being antagonistic at all, and I hope I’m not really coming across like that either. (I may stray into that territory sometimes, but I’m almost always aiming more for flippancy than hostility or aggressiveness.)

But I do end up being rather puzzled by some of the questions you ask. “Are you willing to push yourself to the side and let Christ be king…?” Well, no. For the same reasons that I imagine you’re not willing to push yourself to the side and let the Flying Spaghetti Monster touch you with his noodly appendage. There’s no good reason you’d want to do that. He’s quite clearly made-up.

If I have an eternal soul, then no, I can’t imagine anything on Earth being worth risking losing it for. But I see absolutely no good reason to suppose that anything like this is truly the case.

Imagine someone earnestly asking whether you’ve made any appropriate sacrifices to the god Thor lately, and suggesting that you really think hard about doing so, because they’re worried he might choose to smite you with his hammer. That’s how a lot of Christian preaching sounds to me. Well-meaning, yes, and I can appreciate the kindness and generosity of the sentiment behind it, and don’t resent anyone’s efforts to do what seems important to them – but there’s no need to worry that any of it might be real.

[...] the comments in the post that sparked off yesterday’s rant might be turning into quite a fun discussion. Or I might just start getting annoyed with everyone [...]

Hi Cubik and Mr. Prompter,

Sorry for the confusion. I was typing as Mrs. Rob was loading the little Roblets into the minivan. What I was trying to convey was that while there is a time and place for every argument under the sun, if my goal is to evangelize you (admittedly it’s not your goal to be evangelized) and have your eyes opened to the spiritual reality around you then this verse doesn’t say I need to give you the philosophical weaknesses of strong rationalism, a comparative religions study, or an ANE history lesson. What is says is effective in changing your heart is the gospel. The good news of, as Demian put it, “the wrath of God appeased on the cross of Christ.”

Heya,

Thanks for your answer, I do admit I’m on the offensive most of the time. And what you say makes sense, there’s very little logical reason to believe in Christ. I’ve dealt with the “why Christianity above all others” things here and there, and I have answered it in my own heart. However, I can’t properly articulate it which I hope you find more of a flaw from me personally than a flaw in my argument. I don’t think “I just know” is sufficient for what we’re trying to do here.

So anyway, I do appreciate humor (my atheistic friends pull the Spaghetti Monster on me all the time), so I just wanted to give a friendly “it’s all good” and add a few more cents into the discussion.

Tele and Robert: You are exceptions to the rule. Skeptics whom I love to hear from. Skeptics who raise good objections–objections I can’t honestly answer always–but skeptics, too, who aren’t bloated with their own self. Skeptics who seem to learn from our discussion. And respect difference of opinions.

And stick around in spite of my droning about the gospel.

Mr. Rube, my only objection to your spaghetti monster or Thor references [or for that matter, pink unicorns] is that neither were rooted in history. Jesus Christ was. If you can actually locate a Christian who believes in a God that’s synonymous with Thor or pink unicorns, send him my way. We need to have a serious talk.

Rob: Okay, I think I get you. But if your goal is to evangelise the gospel to me, with the intent of bringing me round to accepting its truth (which seems to be an important part of the process, if I’m understanding this right), without troubling to address all those other points that might persuade me, then I guess my next question would be: How’s that working out for you? Are people often converted simply upon hearing the good news, or do they tend to be awkward like me and insist on holding out for some kind of rational argument as to why they should believe? I think I’d expect quite a few people to fall into the latter camp, and it seems like this method of evangelism would have limited scope if you’re actually wanting to convert people. But hey, it’s not my gospel, so I wouldn’t know what’s important to it.

Demian: I think you’re being overly generous to the Flying Spaghetti Monster if its lack of historical roots is the only objection you have to it. I mean c’mon, it’s a deity made of pasta. That’s clearly ridiculous. (And it’s okay to mock other people’s religious beliefs like this when they’re really silly. The internet taught me that.) Though, um, Thor isn’t rooted in history? Pretty sure he was taken fairly seriously by a good chunk of first-millennium Europe. And there are plenty of other religious notions floating around with long-standing traditions behind them. Jesus doesn’t seem to stand out in this regard.

And I don’t follow the reasoning by which historical roots automatically provide a strong argument in favour of any of it being true. I don’t want to steer us too wildly off-topic, but there are plenty of ideas that can lay claim to such roots but which shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt as regards their claims of absolute truth or worthwhile pursuit. Islam. Acupuncture. Morris dancing. Aside from whatever other arguments there might be for this Jesus fella, does this point really help his case at all?

(Also, “Mr. Rube” sounds jarringly formal. Some people go with Cubik; James is also fine.)

Cubik, that is a great and thoughtful question. I’m going to take a swing at it first by saying that I think you are understanding what I meant perfectly.

Secondly, may I suggest Demian’s post from a few days ago entitled “Hard-Hearted Ignorance”. I think the bible teaches we are all broken and unable to believe in God apart from the work of Holy Spirit in us. So I could give someone an airtight, test tube verifiable, slam dunk case for Christianity (if there were such a thing) but apart from the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit in their heart they would not be able to believe. I also believe, as Calvin put it, in the irresistible grace of this work done by the Spirit. That when your heart is changed and your eyes are opened that you have no choice but to repent and believe in Christ and all those “did King Solomon have 4000 stalls or 40000?” questions and the more weighty ones that an honest believer will feel the tension with as well become secondary in light of this new overwhelming evidence. Maybe a good way to describe it philosophically is it changes your presuppositions.

As for “How’s that working out?”, I don’t consider myself a gifted evangelist but of the people I have seen come to a repentant faith (n=small) none were as a result of lengthy Hebrew exegesis. Not that that can’t happen. But, look at Billy Graham and the many people that have come to faith in Jesus after hearing him present the gospel. If you’ve never heard him speak he is no Alvin Plantinga but gives a clear vision of our brokenness and it’s remedy. I think you can see Romans 1:16 at work pretty well in his ministry.

Hello Demian -

I’ve moved over here from the Peter’s Denial thread.

If you are impatient with intransigent views different from your own, I can certainly understand. Anyone who lives in a contentious intellectual environment can get weary of the gladiatorial aspects of it.

But what is missing from your post is an understanding that competition, winning, losing -these things are not the core of any kind of debate, except in a literal debating contest that is judged by a panel of know-it-alls.

The essence of any intellectual activity is this: the world of implication and meaning has a life outside human minds. The square root of 2 has always been an irrational number, even before Greek mathematicians proved that it was. When you engage in a discussion with someone, you are exploring this world, or trying to. Sure, he might be beyond convincing. That doesn’t matter. What matters is, what is implied by statement Y? You and he are partners, imperfect partners perhaps, but partners all the same, in exploring this statement. Forget about combat. You haven’t won if you persuade him with a faulty argument. You haven’t lost if you fail to persuade him with a good one.

So when I wonder why God doesn’t heal amputees, perhaps you view me as an annoyance, or perhaps you impute certain motives to me, or perhaps you think I am wasting your time because I will never change my mind. NONE OF THAT MATTERS. What we should be doing is exploring the implications (for Jesus’ miraculous powers, for his divinity, for the power of prayer, etc) of this question. Terminating the discussion with a guess about my motives and my person breaks faith with the spirit of rational thought, which is to get outside the personalities engaged in it and into the underlying reality.

I’ve been to tons of scientific conferences where the attendees disagree most strongly with each other; but imputing presumed motives is NOT part of the proceedings, whatever you might privately think. It’s an irrelevancy. The life of the mind has its own existence.

As for what you are obligated to do and what not, “delivering a clear, graceful articulation of the gospel of Jesus Christ” is the only thing you are NOT obligated to do. In a debate, you ARE obligated to obey the rules of logic, to avoid logical fallacies, to respect the evidence, to argue honestly and not make up ‘facts’, to let the other person speak, and to follow implication wherever it goes. You are not obligated to state and defend what you truly believe (unless that is the understanding of the interaction from the outset). It is perfectly permissible – in fact it is often essential – to try to defend in rational debate a position you do not actually hold. Any good scientist, sitting with his lab group discussing the meaning of the latest results, will do precisely this. And anyone who thinks clearly and imaginatively will do this constantly in his or her head.

“But unfortunately, you’re not looking to understand our position. You’re looking for a soft spot. And when you think you find that soft spot–you punch it…
You demand we give you a systematic explanation that satisfies you…
Sorry. But we’re not obligated to do that.”

This chunk is the problem, for me. Actually, if you want to persuade us that your position is correct, then that is exactly what you are obligated to do.

Forget about religion for a moment. How would you react if someone tried to tell you that Communism (or whatever) was correct, but you’re just asking the wrong questions. You’ve put a lot of thought into understanding what they were saying and could find holes in it, but they dodge your points to come back to what they felt was important. Would that be persuasive for you? If not, why do you think the same thing would convince skeptics about Christianity?

“I Won’t Neglect This to Satisfy You”
If you’re not trying to satisfy us (and, by implication, our problems with Christianity), then why pretend that you’re trying to convert us? Are you really trying to persuade people… or just make yourself feel good? I don’t mean this to be insulting, and I apologise if it seems so, but again – think about the Communist who won’t talk about human rights in China because he doesn’t need to ’satisfy’ you.

James (I was born in the south, so I go formal until I get permission to go casual…thank you), I do have to cut FSM some slack…I ate spaghetti last night, which grounds it in history, meaning I can vouch for it’s existence via sense, namely taste, smell and sight, which is what I meant by Jesus being grounded in history: we can vouch for his existence via sight, smell, touch, hearing, albeit someone else’s vouching. Not so much for Thor.

fropome: Great question and analogy, but my point is that I’m NOT trying to convince you. It’s pointless. I can’t. I think we’ve all been in situations where we offer near-air-tight cases to people (whether Communism or human rights violations in China) and they march on in the same direction. Rob stated it best:

I think the bible teaches we are all broken and unable to believe in God apart from the work of Holy Spirit in us.

That’s the point behind posts like this. And like hard hearted ignorance or dead. It’s not meant to be rude or evasive. I live and breath in a orthodox, calvinist world that frames the way I think. So I’m stating what I see as facts. The same way your nontheisitic worldview frames yours. Hope that helps.

Greg: Thanks for following over. Bottom line: This not an intellectual debate. That’s the point of this post. And it’s not an intellectual argument for two reasons:

1. I’m a wuss. It’s obvious you’re a smart guy, so pick a topic and you’ll school me. That’s true for most arenas. But seriously…

2. It boils down to a heart issue. A spiritual issue. A sin issue. And the only way to debate that is by presenting the gospel.

Trust me, I wouldn’t approach a scientific dissussion this way. There’s a different set of rules involved. And I wouldn’t treat a disagreement with my wife scientifically either, but emotionally. And if we were in a mutually agreed upon debate on the existence of God, I’d roll out philisophical and moral proofs, not just the gospel.

In this post I was just addressing the complaint that we change the subject, explaining my reason for changing the subject and that my MO isn’t to persuade you…but simply share my faith through the gospel which is the mechanism the Holy Spirit uses to regenerate people’s souls.

I appreciate everyone’s thoughtful input.

Frankly, I don’t think that questions about objective reality – about what exists out there and what does not exist – should be “heart” issues. It is oddly fitting that your post should come on September 1, because today is the 70th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland. The Nazis had a name for bypassing the brain – they called it “thinking with the blood”.

This highlights the fundamental contradiction in your approach. You believe that we all have evil natures and dark hearts, and yet you propose that we use these evil natures and these dark hearts to guide us to transcendent truth. This is precisely why religion has spawned so much evil in history – it seeks and finds divine sanction for the worst impulses of people.

Greg good discussion even if you are kind of sliding in a muffled Nazi poke at Christians. I for one enjoy a good Nazi calling out so thank goodness for this and the health care debate!

I think there are objective things in this world that you can’t put in a test tube and measure. Do you? I love my wife but I can’t break out my love-o-meter and show her to what extent, quality, flavor, charm, and spin I do. Does that mean my love for her is not real?

In your second paragraph I think we’ve got another difference in how we’re defining ideas.

You said: “You believe that we all have evil natures and dark hearts, and yet you propose that we use these evil natures and these dark hearts to guide us to transcendent truth. ”

I think it would be more accurate to say that we believe that we all have evil natures and dark hearts and that is why we need God’s transcendent guidance as revealed in his Word and through his Spirit to guide us.

No doubt men have used religion (and many other means to gain power) to do bad things. I’m sure you’ve noticed people with no religion or who were even anti-religion have been responsible for some pretty nasty things this century too. We can argue about whether religion or atheism has been the greater offender but does it really matter? To me that points back to the first point that we are all in fact evil and need some sort of transcendent truth to guide us to right behavior. In keeping with Demian’s original thought on this thread that’s why we need Jesus to die for our sinfulness.

The naturalist position (not to put words in your mouth as you haven’t advocated it here but I’m assuming the opposite of thinking with your blood is thinking with your brain) to me is not any more tenable in this matter. If random chance, time, and natural selection have formed our brains as they are then why trust your logic and reason? Evolution does not cause things to become right, moral, or correct it just pressures things to become better at surviving until breeding. What if reason is just the key to a woman’s (ahem) ovaries and that is why we trust it and study philosophy in college?

What do you think?

Hi Rob –

I’m writing this during commercial breaks of Hell’s Kitchen, and I’m going to have to take care not to borrow my tone from Gordon Ramsay.

Rational inquiry is the only way to learn anything of consequence about the external world. When you speak of loving your wife, that is an internal mental state, and by definition is not the objective world, it is your subjective world; so your analogy is not fair. Everything outside your immediate mental states is the world I am talking about. If you disagree, you might tell me a few truths about the structure of the Milky Way galaxy, or the habits of bees, or the salinity of the Pacific Ocean, that science, in principle, is not able to discern, but which can be known by other means.

In your last paragraph you question the value of reason. You say, “If random chance, time, and natural selection have formed our brains as they are then why trust your logic and reason? Evolution does not cause things to become right, moral, or correct it just pressures things to become better at surviving until breeding.”

It is precisely because our reason is the product of natural selection we should trust it. Reason allowed us to survive. Reason allowed us to figure out how to hunt and farm and fish. Reason is why buildings stay up instead of falling down. Reason is why you did not die of smallpox when you were a child. Reason is why you can go into the hospital for surgery and not die of infection or blood loss. Reason is why you can look up into the night sky and know what those points of light really are. Reason is why you are able to sit at your computer, tapping out your ideas to faraway me. Why trust your logic and reason? You must be kidding.

You say that evolution does not cause things to become right, moral. Quite the contrary. For several million years, our species and its progenitor species lived in social groups, where cooperation was essential to survival. Is it really such a stretch to imagine that such cooperation would be helped by a moral sense, by a feeling of rightness and wrongness in our dealings with others? This is a much more sensible accounting of the human moral sense than the ludicrous Garden of Eden legend.

As for moral philosophy itself. The moral levels of both atheists and theists are irrelevant to the question of whether God exists. These are two separate questions:
1. Which belief most closely corresponds to reality?
2. Which belief has the best effects on the believer?

No one asks if accepting atomic theory makes you a better person. Either it’s true or it isn’t.

Atheism and theism, though, are asymmetric with respect to what flows from their bare-bones beliefs about God. Atheism is simply a denial of supernatural entities, and that’s it. It’s not a belief system and it’s not another religion in disguise. (Someone more eloquent than me once said, “If atheism is a religion, then not playing golf is a sport.”) If you are an atheist, not much is handed to you by that fact alone; you still have work to do. On the positive side, you are to be assessed strictly according to your own merits and behaviour, and not according to how other atheists behave.

But almost all religious people, outside a few deists, think that all sorts of wonderful things in human lives are logically connected to the idea of God; therefore we are entitled to hold theists to tests that atheists, as a group, are not held to.

My own observations as a sometime reader of history, as a dabbler in religious texts, and as an observer of flesh-and-blood people, convinces me that the evils of religion are more than an matter of bad people using religion for perverted ends. I believe religion makes people bad by direct influence.

There are commands in religious texts that direct tell people to do bad things. In the Bible we are told that witches must be put to death. We are told that slavery is perfectly permissible. We are told that children who revile their parents must be put to death. We are told that husbands should have command over their wives. We are told that homosexuality is an abomination and that masturbation is a sin. We are told that someone who divorces and remarries is commiting adultery. We are told that it is a sin to look at someone else lustfully.

It is evil and inhuman to believe such things. It is evil to act upon them.

There are also passages and scenes in religious texts that strongly move the believer to evil. It was the Jews who killed Christ – or so most of Christian history has believed, hence 2000 years of hatred and persecution of Jews. Salvation is the highest goal, we read – and thus the Inquisition; thus the torture and burning of dissidents, in the interests of saving their souls and the souls of others.

Religion is also evil because of the power that organized religions have acquired. Eric Hoffer said, “All great causes begin as a movement, turn into a business, and wind up as a racket”. Christianity entered the racket stage about 1600 years ago. All the ghastly crimes committed by the medieval papacy, all the children raped by ministers and priests to this day, all those disgusting televangelists, fleecing their audiences like sheep – these are all the consequence of the aura of undeserved respect and reverence that God’s agents on earth have gathered around themselves.

Finally, the worst moral aspect of religion is the very moral superiority it assumes for itself. We can examine this by mentioning Christ’s injunction to love one’s enemies. Sounds nice. But in its application, pure evil. Why? The syllogism is simplicity itself:

1. Christ said to love one’s enemies.
2. I am a Christian.
3. Therefore, I love my enemies.
4. Therefore, whatever I do to my enemies, I do out of love.

To see a timely and current example of this syllogism in action, you need only tune into video from the latest anti-gay demonstration by the religious right. When you behold people carrying signs that declare “God hates fags” and “Gays are going to hell”, when you look into their fatuous, self-loving, sanctimonious faces, you see the true evil for which religion is responsible.

@Demian (no numbers?)
So if you aren’t trying to convince us, why are you bothering to talk to us at all?

Also, while I have debated people who differ greatly from me, I’ve always (where time has been sufficient) been able to reach a resolution or to at least determine where our difference begins – it usually comes down to a single subjective point; in the case of Christians, that they find the evidence of the gospel convincing is often the key to our differences.

To me – and this obviously a superficial observation – it seems that you are debating with people who ask questions you cannot answer and you are then blaming them for being closed minded. Perhaps you might wonder why your system has ’soft spots’, rather than get annoyed with people for pointing them out.

Hi Greg, feel free to use whatever tone is on the TV at the moment. STYX is on the radio right now so I’m going to speak the rest of this like a robot.

I think we’re boiling down to a difference in terms
again. I’m saying there are things that are every bit
as real and true as the Milky Way that you can’t put a caliper on. Take the beauty of the Milky Way as viewed from a dark beach with a clear night sky. Inspiring, impressive, humbling but science has no beauty-o-meter to quantify it. To me your argument that science can describe everything that is real is a bit like a guy leaving the bar at 2 am that drops his keys on the ground and only looks for them under the street light because that’s the only place he can see anything at all. If we boiled it down I think we’d disagree on whether ultimate reality is completely explained and contained by the physical.

I personally don’t question the value of science, reason, or logic. I do have a degree or two with an S in the title. I see them as trustworthy byproducts of a God that created an orderly world and man in His image with the ability to investigate, learn, reason, and think. It seems like your next paragraphs restate the reasons I think, from a naturalist’s perspective, reason is no more reliable than say humor. We don’t base many decisions on what is the funniest but from a naturalistic perspective humor (just like reason) has evolved to make us better breeders. If there is no other refining force in the world then natural selection would also be responsible for our ability to lie, steal, rape, kill, etc… but is that good? If all it does is get the sperm to the egg more efficiently does that make it right? I’m not arguing that reason isn’t a good thing I’m saying from a naturalist’s perspective it’s foundation seems a little questionable.

I’m going to recommend two books and if you can figure out a way to comfortably get an internet stranger a mailing address I will buy them for you (and not just because one is free). The first is Tim Keller’s Reason for God and specifically the chapter titled “Hasn’t science disproved religion?”. I detect that you see a big battle between the two. I see one truth and two ways to explore it. To the extent that they seem to disagree we are misunderstanding one or the other. If it seems incongruous to hold those two not in opposition I think Galileo, Newton, and maybe Pasteur (the progenitors of most of the things you said reason gave us through natural selection) would disagree.

To my eye the rest of your note has a general error that I think atheists are sometimes guilty of. That is, building a false characterization of “religion” as televangelists, conquistadors, and the Rev. Fred Phelps and then wailing against that misconception. That’s fine but then to counter I’m going to pick as my atheist examples Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Saloth Sar (and yes I know they’re not true Scotsmen but I’d say the same about your picks and this is a satellite issue anyway) but not my neighbor Jim who’s pretty fun to hang out with and lets me borrow his tools. That doesn’t seem very genuine, thoughtful, or productive from a discussion stand point.

I’ve agreed that “religion” can be used for evil but to say that it “poisons everything” or “makes people bad by direct influence” I believe is false. The other book that I’ll buy you is The Irrational Atheist (google it for a free .pdf). It is an acerbic but humorous look at among other things just how bad religious cultures behave vs. irreligious ones. One of the points he makes (it’s 300+ pages) is
that on a per year basis children’s bicycles are more deadly than the all four of the inquisitions put together. Not that that makes it okay but it adds some perspective for this often brought up malady.

Lastly, where I read scripture correctly and still find it harsh or cruel (re as you believe: marriage, adultery, homosexuality, slavery, etc…) I’ve found
that I’m usually overestimating my own righteousness or underestimating God’s. It seems like atheists (and I’m not saying you are one) can’t believe something to be true if it doesn’t make sense to them. That is a pretty low bar to be trapped underneath (not being understood by an atheist but just being understood by anyone). My brain could not remember where I left my helmet last week. I have several examples daily of it not working perfectly. I don’t want to have my brain as the highest authority I live under.

I can’t defend the church as innocent but I think the Jesus you are rallying against (and to a certain extent the view of “religion” you’ve created as well) doesn’t exist or at least is not a complete picture. Maybe we can agree on that. Jesus, as you understand him, doesn’t exist.

Well I’ve rambled and I think we’re bumping up against what Demian was talking about in his original post so I’ll end by saying we both suck but Jesus loves us anyway. (and seriously I’ll buy you Dr. Keller’s book, it will at least hone your defenses)

What do you think?

fropome: Talking and convincing are two different things…maybe what I’m saying is rolling out the gospel and clarifying it for you is what I’m after. Not verifying it’s veracity. I can’t do that for you. Until you have a changed heart, you’re going to reject it as truth.

Now I never said anyone is closeminded. I just said morally incapable of embracing it…

@Demian
Thanks! Now,
“…rolling out the gospel and clarifying it for you is what I’m after.”
But why are you doing so? What are you expecting to happen or not happen? Or do you just enjoy doing so?

“Until you have a changed heart, you’re going to reject it as truth.”
This sounds very much like a tautology…?
Similarly to much of what you say elsewhere, it seems like ‘the reasoning doesn’t make sense unless you believe it does’ – would this be a correct rewording?

Hi guys…I’ve just been lurking a little.

So we’re studying G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy at church. Just curious to see if anyone on this thread has read it. It kind of articulates his personal version of going from skeptic to Catholic.

I wonder if it would resonate with skeptics today or if it is just too personal, or just not relavant for us 21st century types.

If you’re interested, I think it’s in the public domain…you could probably grab i for free. In any case, he’s a pretty funny writer. A lot of it is over my head, but it’s a good read.

Hello Rob -

I’ve been absent for a few days with work, but don’t think I didn’t appreciate your long and thoughtful reply.

I should clarify what I think about what science can do. I don’t think science can reveal everything that is real, and you are erecting a straw man in attributing that position to me; no scientist, no atheist, would ever make that claim. In fact science itself has already proven that it cannot uncover everything that is real. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that we cannot know both the velocity and position of an electron simultaneously. What I am claiming is that everything that we CAN know about the objective world outside our own heads is accessible only through science.

Your analogy of the guy looking for his keys is apt, but in a way you might not realize. Science does not claim that the keys must be only where he can look for them; it claims that if none of his senses can help him in locating his keys, then he cannot know where they are. Why don’t you incorporate faith into this analogy? Can he know by faith where they are, if his senses don’t help him? Is he allowed to believe nonsensical things out of faith, where his senses and his rationality have failed? – for example, that his keys have been magically transported to a forest in Finland?

When you describe the limitations of science, you are essentially assuming that all these limitations imply that, by default, faith can fill the gaps. But you have no right to the inside rail of the default position; you still have to work on positive reasons for your belief.

Most of your other points – atheists believing only what makes sense to them (as a criticism of atheism!); your overestimating your own righteousness compared to the Bible’s defense of obnoxious things; there being two ways to explore the world, science and religion, and that you believe them to be compatible, etc. – can perhaps be most efficiently addressed by a parable. Yes, like Christ I sometimes speak in parables. I call this the Parable of the Useless Detective.

Suppose you and I are detectives who have been called in to work a murder case. The dead man is spread out on a floor of the library of his mansion, head bashed in with a fire poker than lies nearby.

I set about examining the corpse and putting bits of stuff in baggies, the way detectives do. You stand there and say “His brother did it”.

I start to build my case. I learn from his housekeeper that he had a loud, angry argument with his business partner earlier in the evening. A check with the firm’s accountant reveals that the business was going under, that the dead man had suspected his partner of embezzling funds, and that he was ready to go to the police with his information.

You stand there and say “His brother did it”.

Turns out the fingerprints on the poker belong to the partner. When presented with the case against him, the partner confesses, adding details about the crime scene only the police and the murderer could have known.

You stand there and say “His brother did it”.

I lose my patience. “What is your evidence the brother did it? He didn’t even have a brother.”

You respond, without any evidence whatsoever, that he did have a brother but his existence was an undocumented secret, that the brother and the business partner were conducting a homosexual affair, that the brother murdered the dead man to prevent him from outing him, that the partner confessed to protect the brother, whom he loved, and that the partner was just lucky in the guesses he made about the crime scene details.

And I say “What evidence would you accept as disproving this ridiculous scenario?”

You say, “None. I know it by faith. Any evidence you show to me I am going to explain away.”

It is clear that you are not being a detective here. You are not in any way investigating this crime. You are simply holding onto a belief that has its origins outside rationality; what you are doing is not detective work, it’s not investigation, it’s not anything but mindless repetition.

To get back to our debate on this page, your belief in God is not a conclusion of any kind of investigation, it is an assumption. You have simply decided to believe it. Repeated re-assertions of belief have a Chatty Cathy air about them.

In no other sphere of human life is this approach a virtue. If you are an auto mechanic, it is not a virtue to assume from the outset, and stick to this assumption, that the problem is the muffler, when all evidence says that it is the transmission. If you are a distance runner, it is not a virtue to assume that you will win a marathon without doing a lick of training. If you are a chef, you can’t expect to cook a beef roast without turning the oven on. So why, then, in the essential questions of life, morality and the fate of our souls (if we have souls), why is it a virtue to simply believe? (Which, I should add, amounts to simply believing what we are taught as children, since the vast majority of people hold the same or similar religious beliefs as their parents.)

To show that you are not being even remotely rational, I’ll describe the philosophical dilemma of religious belief, which nobody I have spoken with or read has ever answered.

Faith or reason – which is it?

First, I will say that you have to choose between the two. You cannot base your religious belief on “both faith and reason”. Why not? Because if tell yourself that you choose both, you are actually just choosing faith. If you predecide your belief, and use reason to get you as close as possible to the destination, and use faith to get you the rest of the way, you have not used reason at all. Reason is not like a bus that you take, hoping that is has a stop near the shopping center so you won’t have to walk far. If you claim to use reason, you are implicitly agreeing to abide by the rule that you have to stand or fall by the conclusion of your argument. If you are willing to let faith walk you to the destination, whatever the shortcomings of reason, you are violating the integrity of rational thought.

Okay, fine. You choose one or the other. And here is the dilemma.

If you choose reason, argument, and evidence, then your belief must always be provisional and non-absolute. You might conclude that God has only a 55% chance of existing. You might later find evidence or argument that falls heavily on the side of non-existence. You cannot sweep this under the carpet. You can’t say that your belief in God will never falter and never change. And this horn of the dilemma, of course, is that most people want religious belief for the sense of psychological certainty that it provides. People don’t pray to a 55% god. Furthermore, you will have to confront the unpleasant fact that most philosophers are pretty much agreed that the rational case for a creator god’s existence is extremely weak, and the case for that creator being the God of the Bible is even weaker. Long ago I hung out in a philosophy department at a university; they were almost all religious sceptics. One Presbyterian that I knew of, but that was it.

Fine, then, reason cannot give me what I want. So I choose faith. I know by faith.

What is the trouble here? The trouble is that if you choose faith, you have to cut loose from all evidence, otherwise you will be back in the rationality camp. If a space probe swung around an unexplored side of a moon of Saturn and photographed the Ten Commandments spelled out in mountain ranges, you would not be able to claim this as confirmation. If tomorrow morning the heavens opened up and Christ returned and all humanity proclaimed him the son of god, you would not be able to accept this as strengthening your belief. This is all evidence. (Evidence that I would accept, by the way, that my own position was wrong.)

But of course, any of these things would be taken as confirmatory evidence by every living Christian. When a Christian declares that his belief is based on faith, what he is really saying is that his belief is based only on positive evidence, not negative evidence. And when you acknowledge only positive evidence, you are not using evidence at all. A process of analysis that includes only positive evidence for a predecided conclusion is like a baseball game in which only the home team’s runs count. The result is built into the rules, it’s not a baseball game at all.

So which is it, faith or reason? Do any of the books you recommend address this dilemma?

Hey thanks for coming back. I think it’s funny that you don’t do this at work because I do this at the office to avoid work. Since it’s a long weekend I’ll be cutting this short 1) because I think we’re dancing around the primary issue 2) there’s no work to put off, and 3) yes this book and I’ll add another one address what you’re getting at more eloquently than I can and with more endurance.

It seems there are some epistemological or presuppositional issues that we’re disagreeing on and I frankly don’t have the energy to get to the bottom of them. Head over to veritas.org if you’d like the chance to hear opposing philosophers debate our presuppositions. So, let me respond to one of your points and whip us back around to the gospel. I disagree that I have to choose reason or faith. I think the anthropic principle is a great case in point of it being reasonable to believe. Closer to home, I believe and have faith that God created me and loves me. I can’t prove that but I base that belief to a great degree on the historicity of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

You said re: Christ’s second coming, “Evidence that I would accept, by the way, that my own position was wrong”. There’s no small amount of proof he’s been here before. What do you make of it? If you doubt the historicity of Jesus you have to justify why and how a bunch of 1st century Jews created Christianity. So here’s the other book to gnaw on: “The Resurrection of the Son of God” by N.T. Wright.

Demian – what an outstanding argument for the gospel! You’re right in your assertion that we are to change the subject and not argue down the different rabbit trails that the uninterested opponent attempts to lead us down.

“Keeping away from strife is an honor for a man, but any fool will quarrel” (Proverbs 20:3).

Thank you for your excellent blog.

The previous comment only shows what I have believed for a long time: that ‘faith’ is nothing more than accepting positive evidence for your religion, but ignoring negative evidence. And this, my friends, is intellectually dishonest. Religion has its own standards of argument, and these are lower those in every other sphere of human thought. Any scientist, or businessperson, or auto mechanic, or politician, or doctor who ignored negative evidence would not be doing his job; in fact, he would not only be acting incompetently, he would be acting unethically. Religion never ceases to amaze me at its lack of moral standards.

The downsides of fervent religious belief sure pile up, don’t they? Let’s look at a few.
1. The basis of religious belief is a dishonest handling of evidence.
2. Religious people believe in the ‘pious lie’ – they believe that falsehoods are justified if they bring people to god.
3. Religious people believe patent nonsense about the world – creationism and all that, which is utterly bankrupt.
4. Religious people tend to view other people strictly as objects for conversion, and do not see them in any other dimension; in other words, they cease to treat other people as human beings.
5. Religious people have boring sex lives and discriminate against people with sex lives they don’t like, such as gays among the American religious right wasteland.
6. Religious people believe most (or all!) people belong in hell.

So, the sad summary: zealous religious belief – Christian, Muslim, whatever – leads you to dishonesty, laughably false views of the natural world, inhuman treatment of other people, avoidance of sexual joy, and hatred of human life. That’s quite a list, no? And all this is bent to the purely selfish aim of getting into heaven when you die. Yech.

Greg, of course I disagree with almost everything you’ve posted here. I think it is a slanted look at religion at best and disingenuous and malicious at worst.

But, to the extent the church has let you down and allowed you to honestly hold to these beliefs by not being salt and light in this world I humbly and deeply apologize. I hope you can forgive us.

The church didn’t let me down – you’re trying to turn my beliefs into emotional responses to abuse or disappointment. Actually, as a perennial Sunday school student in the United Church of Canada (perfect attendence the year of my fourth grade!) my experiences were rather pleasant. The teachers and the ministers were all decent people; for example, they did not teach the depraved doctrine of hell. Since I did not carry into adulthood that crippling baggage, I have always been rather grateful to them. My Catholic and fundamentalist friends were not so lucky.

No, I am irreligious due to my own assessment of religious claims and the examples set by religious people, in the present world and in history. If you are in an apologetic mood, I am afraid you will have to apologize for much of your holy book, all the gaping deficiencies of Christ, and many of the actions of Christians in the last 2000 years.

You don’t say what about my opinions you consider disingenuous or malicious, nor do you state any reasons for disagreeing with everything I wrote. I suppose that as a man of faith, you do not need reasons. You just believe and that’s enough for you.

But if you are in an analytical mood, why don’t you address my last point: that you and all Christians are basically selfish, given that your central preoccupation, the issue to which everything in your life refers – your behaviour, your thoughts, even your worship of God – is not God at all but your own salvation. Your worship of God is a vehicle to your own salvation, which is the whole point to you. Do you disagree with this? If so, riddle me this. Suppose the proposition was as follows. God, in his unfathomable mystery, gives you this alternative:

1. You can follow God’s word to the letter, acknowledging his power over the whole universe; and you can do his will, and follow his commandments, and obey him in every detail. And your reward will be eternal damnation in the lake of fire in hell.

2.Alternatively, you can disobey God and break every commandment and spit on his sacred book and relics and do whatever you please. And your reward will be an eternity in Paradise at his side, joined by all your ancestors and your whole loving family.

Which would you choose? You would choose #2, as would everyone else. I mean, you’re not insane, right? This proves that your worship of God right now is not for His sake, it’s for your own; it’s your way of maximizing your own happiness and pleasure in the long run, according to what you believe about punishment and reward; it’s serving yourself.

I’m not trying to turn your beliefs into an emotional response. I am truly apologizing to you like I wish I could apologize to so many people I’ve been a bad ambassador for Christ to.

Maybe the church in Canada is how you describe it. I don’t know since I’ve never been there but I’m skeptical of your description.

I didn’t state the reasons I disagree with nearly everything you wrote because I had written previously to that effect in the comments above. I’ll reiterate. I think you’ve created a straw man “religion” consisting of the Rev. Fred Phelps, the Inquisition, and televangelists and I’m not going to defend that “religion”. Like I said I apologize to the extent that you think this is an accurate description of the church, but it’s not.

As to your points, #1 (NT Wright), #2(Keller), #3(Keller), and #4(Day) are all addressed and I think well refuted in the three books (applicable authors in parenthesis) I’ve offered to buy you. I can personally tell you that #5 is false (w00t!). #6 I agree with you on in the Isaiah 53:6 sense that we are all fallen and flawed and deserve separation from God. That is exactly why I need a redeemer. When you make sweeping statements that are too broad to ever be truthful (like religious people have boring sex lives) it seems disingenuous and/or malicious. Not to put motives in your mouth, it’s just the appearance I get.

Your last statement makes me think you don’t understand the doctrine of salvation. My worship of God is NOT a vehicle to my own salvation as you put it. I worship God because he has saved me not because my actions will cause him to save me. Be real clear on that point as it separates Christianity from most other religions. If you don’t understand that then you don’t understand Jesus and you might be all bent out of the frame and arguing on theological blogs because of a misconceived notion of Him.

As to your two alternatives I believe even if I lived like the 2nd option every day of my life (and frankly I do, I’m consistently and predictably disobedient) that my eternal destination is not in jeopardy. Since we’re on a reformed site it’s the P in TULIP.

I have been saved once for all and I can do nothing to loosen his grip or bind it tighter. All I can do is throw myself on the mercy,grace, and atoning sacrifice of Jesus and worship him not for my own sake because remember that’s already been settled for eternity. I do it for His sake because I love him for loving me (and you) first.

Greg, forgive me, but I’ve only got time to address just one portion of your comment…

You said:

The previous comment only shows what I have believed for a long time: that ‘faith’ is nothing more than accepting positive evidence for your religion, but ignoring negative evidence.

Not sure what you mean by that. Could you explain?

I mean just that: when people talk about their faith, they are talking about beliefs that they are quite willing to support with positive evidence, but which they protect from attack by negative evidence by ignoring it.

There is all sorts of evidence and there are all sorts of arguments, pro and con, for the existence of a diety. The case for his existence is, in my opinion, extremely weak – first cause arguments (of the sort Aquinas advanced) fall to the problem of infinite regress; design arguments were destroyed by evolutionary thinking (and by David Hume, a century before Darwin!); and moral arguments are irrelevant, because what we are talking about here is his existence, not how people behave when they believe or disbelieve.

And there are good reasons to think that God is not only not needed to explain anything about the world, but that his existence is incompatible with the world as we see it. For example, no amputee in human history has ever regenerated a missing limb. Why not? Why would God take an interest quite frequently in cancer, and in house fires, and in plane crashes, but never once send an amputee a new limb? Isn’t it curious that the only things God steps in to fix are things which sometimes fix themselves anyway? An instantly-regenerated human limb would truly be a miracle; and it has never happened, not ever.

In any case, if you respect the evidence, you would have to acknowledge that, even if you think the evidence tilted in God’s favour, your conclusion must be only a probability, not a certainty, and you must admit that future evidence might tilt the scales the other way.

None of this is acknowledged by ordinary religious believers. They want certainty. They think that if one person survives a plane crash, that is a miracle that proves God was looking after that person; but the 250 other people who died on the same plane, well, that is not counted as evidence that God was not there after all. Posts right here caution against going down ‘rabbit-trails’, ie. rational arguments that might make you question your beliefs. This is why changing the subject is so popular here, and is even counted a virtue; when you change the subject, you are avoiding contrary evidence and re-asserting your belief.

And, as I said before, using positive evidence for a conclusion while ignoring negative evidence is dishonest.

Okay, so you think, fine. No evidence of any sort will be used. My faith will be pure: it won’t be based on any evidence at all!

Well, this is psychologically impossible. This is also dishonest. If the first lunar probe to photograph the far side of the moon back in the 1960s had photographed “Jesus is Lord” spelled out in mountain ranges, every Christian on earth, without a single exception, would have taken that as evidence that Christianity is true. If the heavens open tomorrow and Christ returns, that will be proof. Alleged miracles are evidence. The Bible is evidence. People want and need evidence.

People don’t choose their beliefs. You cannot choose to believe that the earth is flat or that the sky is green. What you can choose, though, is the evidence you expose yourself to in determining your beliefs. And religious people choose only to consider positive evidence. The other kind simply does not exist for them. That is what faith is, and it is dishonest.

Greg, good to hear from you.

So we both agree that there is positive evidence for God. And we both agree that people shouldn’t shy away from or hide negative evidence.

Okay. [Are you a closet Christian? Just kidding.] Let’s move on.

Yes, first cause arguments can fall into infinite regress, kind of like the big bang. But then again, why believe things go on infinitely, eh?

And to say that evolutionary thinking and Hume “destroyed” design arguments is overstated. Hume might of made it less plausible, but destroyed it?

Understand: I’m not a big fan of the design argument as a case for God’s existence. You can see my post on Darwin’s Dilemma to see what I mean. But I do think the design argument creates problems for Darwin’s theory, as you’ll see in that post, which is another reason why I think your statement is overstated.

Also, I think you misunderstand the moral argument. While it is about what people believe…more importantly it’s about WHY they believe it. What’s the origin of their morality–whether evolutionary, social or divine.

Granted, these aren’t slam dunk cases for the existence of God. They were never meant to be. They are more like clues that add up.

Anyway, we do share something else in common: suspicion about God’s involvement in the world through plane crashes, fires and earthquakes–and those who survive. And things that would fix themselves anyway.

I’m with you.

I don’t think 99.99% of what gets suggested as a miracle is indeed a miracle of God. Mostly because of the biblical model of miracles found in the Old and New Testaments–like people raised from the dead, life-long paralytics walking, storms conquered and grossly disfigured limbs made perfect–everything that gets thrown around today pales in comparison.

Greg, did you know there’s a reason why these authentic miracle occurred in the NT? To announce the entrance of the kingdom of God. To authenticate the messenger and his message, namely Jesus Christ.

Which is, Greg, what you need to deal with…you need to deal with the substance and content of these people’s faith–not their behavior. It sounds like you are content with listening to ridiculous, low-brow Christians mock the faith and make your decisions about Christianity based on their behavior and talk.

[I have a feeling you have not known very good Christians. Sorry to hear that.]

But there are plenty of ridiculous, low-brow atheists. Would you let me off the hook if all I did was bash their stupidity? Would it be intellectual honesty if I did that?

Bottom line: you’re not proving or disproving anything.

And this is why I try to avoid these rabbit trails. Jesus lived, died and rose again. That’s ground zero for us, Greg. Let’s interact with that. And that means coming up with something better than native human gullibility as a negative evidence against Jesus’s life death and resurrection, cause so far you’ve said a lot but proved nothing.

Greg: I don’t know you, but my heart breaks for you. I long for you to know and see the majesty of Christ. His truth. I long for you to come to your senses…for your liberty from sin and Satan…for your spiritual resurrection. This probably sounds weird, but I labor in prayer for you–and others like you–that God would soften your heart and draw you to him.

Because relational purity with God the Father is sweet. But the only way you can do that is by looking at the evidence of Jesus, particularly his story in the gospel of John.

Greg, don’t let the cultural caricature of Christians stop you from worshiping Jesus Christ. Go deeper than that, friend. Please. Hope to hear from you soon.

“Greg, did you know there’s a reason why these authentic miracle occurred in the NT?”
I think Greg is very eloquently pointing out that before you start addressing WHY a miracle occured, you need to show that it did. Greg is pointing out that Christians are inconsistent in their approach to the evidence – combining confirmation bias with guesswork to get to the outcome they want.
You’re jumping to a conclusion that Greg (and I) don’t think you’ve yet justified.

Hello Demian – Forgive my absence from this forum; coincidentally, I’ve been busying myself for the last two weeks teaching evolutionary biology to people who do not understand it.

I think I can save some keyboard tapping by pointing out the real disagreement between you and me. The real disagreement is not over the existence or non-existence of God, or the existence or non-existence of some rabbi named Yeshua. Rather, you and I disagree about what the human mind should be doing.

Almost all posts from your side of the argument state that the important thing is acceptance of Christianity. This is the prize from which one should not be diverted. This indeed is the Christian position, and has been for 2000 years. It does not matter how you come to believe in Christ – whether by rational thought, or animal faith, or childhood doctrination, or trickery like bogus ‘miracles’, or naked force (much of Christianity’s early spread was by coercion – force of arms or of law) – the important thing is the belief.

My view is that the important thing is the process, not the conclusion. If a person is drawn to your side by a fallacious argument, or by no argument at all, that’s alright according to Christian standards. He’s in, he’s saved. But if a person is drawn to my side by a fallacious argument, in my opinion he has made a mistake, and he should re-consider.

The side of rationality, therefore, respects people and respects the operation of the thinking human mind. Its workings are its own justification. The side of faith does not respect the operation of the human mind. Agreement at any cost is the supreme virtue. The side of faith only cares about numbers.

You believe the human mind should be believing; I think the human mind should be thinking. That is the core difference between religion and atheism.

Concerning some of the points raised:

Infinite regress – There is no logical reason to think that the past could not be infinite (I’m referring to before the Big Bang). Any arguments that posit a creator god to intiate things are based on the false assumption that things must have had a beginning. But we know from the law of conservation of mass-energy that it cannot be created or destroyed. Natural cosmological explanations have only one uncomfortable idea to deal with: infinite time. Theistic explanations have two: infinite time (God is eternal) and creation from nothing. So theistic explanations fall to Occam’s razor.

Moral argument – I am aware of the moral argument: we are moral because a god implanted a moral sense in us. People who advance it seem not to be aware that we have evolved in social groups, in both our species and our progenitor species, for millions of years. Is it really too much of a stretch to think that a moral sense would have evolved in such circumstances as an aid to cooperative behaviour? And if so, what explanatory purose does dragging God into it serve? Also, ethologists are increasingly finding moral behaviour among social primates today; it is a controversial topic, I admit, but the assertion that only people are moral is just another tired face of the old idea that there is a sharp division between people and animals, a view mandated by holy texts that assert this division, but one that is increasingly untenable on both genetic and behavioural grounds.

Miracles – Demain says that 99.99% of supposed miracles are not miracles. Only the NT miracles qualify. How they qualify as real miracles escapes me; they’re just stories written down 2000 years ago, indistinguishable from the miracle traditions of every other religion. They have no special evidenciary basis whatsoever.

There is another point here too. When I hear a Christian apologist debating with a religious skeptic, the Christian is often forced into a very curious position. He is forced to admit that what 99% of Christians believe about their own religion is nonsense. Like or not, the vast majority of Christians believe that God routinely intervenes miraculously in reality. I once saw a poll (informal, unscientific) in which most people who believe in the power of prayer do so because they think prayer moved God to perform a miracle to help them. It would be difficult to find an adult Christian who does not believe this. Now you might not think these prayers were answered (I don’t either), but I wish you would proclaim more loudly to your fellow Christians that they are living in a fantasyland. Then brace yourself for the Christian hate mail.

Evolution – I’ve followed the link to “Darwin’s Dilemma”. The creationist mentality of American Christianity that is its worst intellectual selling point. It is hard to describe to a typical American how his religion is regarded in educated circles in other countries. You would have to leave the country for a number of years and turn around and see it through foreign eyes. And I don’t just mean the televangelist hucksters, the faith healers, the Billy Grahams, the George Bushes, the anti-gay bigots, the dental-drill-like “God Bless America” mantra; I mean the aggressive assassination of intelligence that is inherent in the creationism and ‘intelligent design’ that half of all Americans (and a majority of American Christians) accept. People descended from apes? Nonsense! How could such a process produce anything as extraordinary as Mr. and Mrs. Average American?

The ideas on evolution that you present, whether your own or those of the makers of the documentary, are so muddled, it’s hard to know where to begin. But I have to start somewhere, so here goes.

One. “Darwin’s theory”. The reality of evolutionary change is a fact in science, as well-established as the statement that planets revolve around the sun, or that blood circulates. It is not a theory, as ordinary people understand the word ‘theory’.

Two. People who constantly say “Darwin” when they take a tilt at evolution are dishonestly importing a subtext that they keep hidden at the subconscious level, but that I will make explicit here. They are implying that biologists are in the thrall of Darwin, and have made an infallible diety of him, and are consequently guilty of the same idol-worshipping dogmatism that they accuse Christians of committing. Of course this is tripe. Darwin was right about most things, wrong about a few others. Evolution is the central fact of biological science not because of false tribute paid to one man, but because of two centuries of overwhelming evidence. Biologists seldom mention Darwin, you might be surprised to hear. Whole issues of biological journals, even journals about evolutionary biology, go by with nary a mention. Indeed, phrases like “Darwinism” and “Darwin’s theory” and even “the theory of evolution” are almost infallible tipoffs that the author is some ding-dong creationist. If you wanted to be accurate, you would replace “Darwin’s theory” with “the fact of evolutionary change”.

Three. The word “theory” needs clarification. In popular speech, theories can be wild guesses, hypotheses. But in science, theories are explanatory statements or sets of statements. They are defined by their generality, not their dubiousness. Theories try to explain facts. Evolutionary theory does not consist of the assertion that life evolves. It consists of attempts to explain why life evolves. Natural selection is given primary importance by all biologists, although they disagree about how exactly how much importance to attach to it. There are other causes of evolutionary change (gene flow, genetic drift) that play a role in evolutionary change.

Four. Critics confuse the cause of evolutionary change with the reality of evolutionary change. They seem to believe that if you cast doubt on natural selection, you can cast doubt on evolutionary change itself. But of course this is a non sequiter. Two historians might disagree about what caused World War I, but that disagreement does not imply that World War I never happened at all!

Five. Critics’ interest in the so-called Cambrian Explosion is both irrelevant to what they seem to be trying to prove, and any case what they know about it is decades out of date. New animal phyla did not appear instantly during the Cambrain; they appeared over a range of a few tens of millions of years. And it is not so surprising that such experimentation with basic body plan might happen in the early days of animal evolution, in light of the discovery of Hox genes, common to all animals, that control the basic body plans of animals.

Darwin had his own views about the pace of evolutionary change, and it is still a current debate just how variable it is. But generally, natural selection is now acknowledged to happen more quickly, in some instances, than Darwin thought it could. One reason for this conclusion: natural selection has been observed in the field in the time scale of a few years. Look up the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant on Darwin’s finches.

Six. It is not an axiom of evolutionary theory that evolution always proceeds from simple to complex. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Even Darwin knew this: he cited parasitism as an association that often favours the simplification of organisms by natural selection.

Seven. The 1074 calculation is ridiculous. What changes, exactly, are having their probabilities calculated?

Greg,

Please allow me to offer some critiques of your arguments for our mutual learning and benefit.

You said:
“My view is that the important thing is the process, not the conclusion.”

If this is true why should we accept your conclusion that the conclusion is not as important as the process? This logic seems to undermine itself. It’s like saying there’s no absolute truth. Or put another way it’s true that there is no absolute truth. It defeats itself.

You said:
“You believe the human mind should be believing; I think the human mind should be thinking. That is the core difference between religion and atheism.”

I’m running out of ways to say this or and am unsure why you think the opposite is true. Christians are called to use their minds whether it’s to love God with it, give a defense for their hope with it, or to explore God’s world with it. Would you tell Dr. Collins you believe he doesn’t think at his work with the genome project? Or that Pascal didn’t think in his mathematical studies. We’ve talked about why I think the mind, reason, and rationality are reliable faculties but I don’t think you’ve addressed why evolution allows us to trust them. I would rephrase your core difference this way. Christians hold that you should think and believe. Atheists believe they only think.

You said:
“Infinite regress – There is no logical reason to think that the past could not be infinite (I’m referring to before the Big Bang). Any arguments that posit a creator god to intiate things are based on the false assumption that things must have had a beginning. But we know from the law of conservation of mass-energy that it cannot be created or destroyed. Natural cosmological explanations have only one uncomfortable idea to deal with: infinite time. Theistic explanations have two: infinite time (God is eternal) and creation from nothing. So theistic explanations fall to Occam’s razor.”

What scientific proof do you have for this infinite regress? It is a wild unsubstantiated idea that science could never address (i.e. it is outside of our universe) just like the postulated multiverse theory to get around the argument of the anthropic principle. It is an article of faith in the truest sense. According to Dr. Hawking and the the theory of relativity, time and space itself grew from the big bang singularity, before that event there was no space or time. Also an infinite past doesn’t address where matter came from for the big bang it just pushes it back ad infinitum. It’s not logical to have an infinite past because an infinite amount of time would have to pass to get to the present which logically can’t happen. Theistic belief is that God created space and time and so it had a beginning which is in line with what we observe in our universe.

you said:
“Moral argument – I am aware of the moral argument: we are moral because a god implanted a moral sense in us. People who advance it seem not to be aware that we have evolved in social groups, in both our species and our progenitor species, for millions of years. Is it really too much of a stretch to think that a moral sense would have evolved in such circumstances as an aid to cooperative behaviour? And if so, what explanatory purose does dragging God into it serve? Also, ethologists are increasingly finding moral behaviour among social primates today; it is a controversial topic, I admit, but the assertion that only people are moral is just another tired face of the old idea that there is a sharp division between people and animals, a view mandated by holy texts that assert this division, but one that is increasingly untenable on both genetic and behavioural grounds.”

By attributing morals to evolution you are saying that morals are not objective. If they evolve then what is evil today may not be evil tomorrow. That means you have to be okay with a world where Nazis kill Jews because that might be a good thing someday due to it’s helping us breed better. Spend $10 and download the movie Collision from Amazon. The moral argument is the main bone of contention for Hitchens and Wilson and they journey into it deeply and no resolution is given. Is there nothing going on in the world today that you think should stop regardless of what other people think and regardless of how well it propagates our species?

As to animals being moral that creates another conundrum. Either lions shouldn’t eat gazelles or it’s okay when Harry eats Sally. And why stop at animals? Why would you morally differentiate between animals and plants? Am I immoral for mowing my yard today? You can’t live by this logic or you’d starve to death.

you said:
“How they qualify as real miracles escapes me; they’re just stories written down 2000 years ago, indistinguishable from the miracle traditions of every other religion. They have no special evidenciary basis whatsoever.”

Please see every post on this board as to the historicity of a risen Christ.

As to all of your writing on evolution, I see why you’ve included it here in response to Demian’s Darwin thread. But, the largest Christian church in the world holds as doctrine that evolution is compatible with the Christian faith. So I guess you’d make a great Catholic. Evolution and God and even the biblical God are not mutually exclusive.

Lastly here is a quote I came across today that I hope we keep at the front of our minds in this discussion:

“Most people think that winning the argument is what matters, not learning the truth. He who regards conversation as a battle can win only by being an antagonist, only by disagreeing successfully, whether he is right or wrong. The reader who approaches a book in this spirit reads it only to find something he can disagree with. For the disputatious and the contentious, a bone can always be found to pick a quarrel over. It makes no difference whether the bone is really a chip on your own shoulder.”
[...]
“But if he realizes that the only profit in conversation, with living or dead teachers, is what one can learn from them, if he realizes that you win only by gaining knowledge, not by knocking the other fellow down, he may see the futility of mere contentiousness.”"

I appreciate what I’m learning from you.

I just can’t help repeatedly butting in…

“By attributing morals to evolution you are saying that morals are not objective. If they evolve then what is evil today may not be evil tomorrow. That means you have to be okay with a world where Nazis kill Jews because that might be a good thing someday due to it’s helping us breed better.”
I think you’ve partly mis-understood what Greg was saying, which wasn’t that morals aren’t really evolving, but that humans have evolved to have morals. A group of people who help each other, and in particular who are more likely to help those close to them (and therefore likely to be related), will be more reproductively successful than groups who do not co-operate.

There’s another point worth making here, which is that your morals may be relatively constant, but the morals of people in general over the last couple of thousand years have changed considerably. Just taking the bible as an example, your attitude to law and order will be very different to the attitude of the author of Leviticus (I hope). Even Jesus didn’t explicitly condemn slavery – whereas to most modern people the idea that a person could ‘own’ another seems inherently wrong, certainly much more so than many things that are specifically outlawed in the bible (e.g. unclean meat, or even, for that matter, lying). It’s only in the last 100 years that women were given the vote in the UK and USA – today such sexism is (hopefully) unthinkable.

Moral codes vary dramatically over time and from place to place. I believe, passionately, that capital punishment is wrong (partly for practical reasons, but also for moral reasons). But I can’t *prove* this any more than those in favour of capital punishment can prove their case. That doesn’t mean that they think my view is evil or vice versa, we just disagree.

“As to animals being moral that creates another conundrum. Either lions shouldn’t eat gazelles or it’s okay when Harry eats Sally.”
I’m pretty sure Greg was not saying that animals have (or should have!) the same morals as humans. However he was pointing out that, for example, chimps are more generous to other chimps who are generous, or ostracize chimps who are selfish (I seem to remember – may have the details wrong!).

Thanks fropome,

you said:
“I think you’ve partly mis-understood what Greg was saying, which wasn’t that morals aren’t really evolving, but that humans have evolved to have morals. A group of people who help each other, and in particular who are more likely to help those close to them (and therefore likely to be related), will be more reproductively successful than groups who do not co-operate.”

But that doesn’t address whether its good or bad to help people close to us it just means that collaborative behavior helps us breed better. If rape helped us breed better it would still be wrong, no?. If killing off the old, non-reproductive people freed up resources for younger breeding people it would still be wrong in my world view but what about yours? On what do you base the morality that guides you every day? If we’re accountable to no one other then ourselves than we can make the rules however we see fit. Get enough people to agree with you and you can feel right in whatever behavior you like, but are you actually right?

Doug Wilson makes the point in Collision that atheists want to condemn God for all of his “evil” behavior but he asks on what basis do you call any behavior evil. You need a system whereby people have intrinsic rights and value but with naturalistic atheism all you have in people is a certain collection of atoms due to time and chance. The atheist has to co-opt the theistic world view that people have value (and more value than other collections of living tissue) to make such claims because the naturalistic world could not care less.

you said:
“There’s another point worth making here, which is that your morals may be relatively constant, but the morals of people in general over the last couple of thousand years have changed considerably. Just taking the bible as an example, your attitude to law and order will be very different to the attitude of the author of Leviticus (I hope). Even Jesus didn’t explicitly condemn slavery – whereas to most modern people the idea that a person could ‘own’ another seems inherently wrong, certainly much more so than many things that are specifically outlawed in the bible (e.g. unclean meat, or even, for that matter, lying). It’s only in the last 100 years that women were given the vote in the UK and USA – today such sexism is (hopefully) unthinkable.

I agree that the social acceptableness of our behavior changes but the rightness or wrongness of our actions does not. Chattel slavery is wrong now and was wrong then. Female child genital mutilation is wrong under all circumstances. Just because we’ve recently come to call it wrong this doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong all along.

you said:
“Moral codes vary dramatically over time and from place to place. I believe, passionately, that capital punishment is wrong (partly for practical reasons, but also for moral reasons). But I can’t *prove* this any more than those in favour of capital punishment can prove their case. That doesn’t mean that they think my view is evil or vice versa, we just disagree.”

And yet one of you is right. Don’t take a complicated social issue like capital punishment (which in each instance is still either moral or immoral, it can’t be both), take child sacrifice. Is that always wrong? Would it be wrong even if you couldn’t prove it? Is it wrong for men to sell young girls into sex slavery? Why in your world view would it be immoral? Are there people in the world doing things right now that you think they should stop regardless of their own thoughts, environment, and social situation? If so, you believe in objective moral values which I haven’t seen a case for with out God yet. If you don’t, you believe in subjective moral values and then we’re back to how do we know that the holocaust is wrong regardless of whether the battle of the bulge goes one way or the other?

you said:
I’m pretty sure Greg was not saying that animals have (or should have!) the same morals as humans. However he was pointing out that, for example, chimps are more generous to other chimps who are generous, or ostracize chimps who are selfish (I seem to remember – may have the details wrong!).”

The same thing applies here. Sure chimps have moral behavior but would it be immoral for a orangutan to abandon it’s baby? I don’t think so. No more so than a cheetah killing a baby deer. I think you’re confusing moral behavior with why it is moral.

Help me clear this up. I think humans are intrinsically valuable and have rights because we are created by God in his image. Why do you think so? What force other than the random chance and mutation of evolution makes people valuable?

Really interesting points Rob. I’ll see if I can explain my position.
I did start going through point by point, but I think much of it comes down to the objectivity or otherwise of morals. You seem to be implying that you feel that there is an objectively ‘correct’ moral stance: “And yet one of you is right”. This is an interesting argument, but I think I’ve been guilty of dragging us away from the point, which is where our morals came from.
My argument would be that our morals emerge from our past… because we evolved to be social animals we value each other, usually in direct proportion to how closely related they are to ourselves. This is somewhat short-circuited by our (relatively) recent tendency to live in large towns / cities, but the patterns can still be seen.
This argument is, in my opinion emergent from knowledge of evolution, but is not by any means the clearest evidence of evolution. Can I ask if you accept evolution? If not then I’m happy to either talk about the evidence for that – I suspect that if you agreed with me on evolution you might understand my view of morality, even if you wouldn’t agree. However this might be utterly patronising if you do accept evolution!

Hey great, glad we’re having fun!

you said:
“You seem to be implying that you feel that there is an objectively ‘correct’ moral stance: “And yet one of you is right”.

Yes I do. And I think I can get you to say morals are objective too. Let’s see!

you said:
“My argument would be that our morals emerge from our past… because we evolved to be social animals we value each other, usually in direct proportion to how closely related they are to ourselves. This is somewhat short-circuited by our (relatively) recent tendency to live in large towns / cities, but the patterns can still be seen.”

So then in this framework it would seem less wrong for me to murder a Chinese child than a hometown child since there is no chance of them being related to me. I don’t think you really believe that so can you help clarify why good is good and evil is evil. Is it that good benefits the most people and evil hurts the most?

I hear you saying that you think we behave morally and have a moral sense because it benefitted us in the past. Is that fair? I think that explains why we behave in a particular manner but not why that manner is good or moral.

Let me give you an example. A man steals $10 from a billionaire against his the billionaire’s will. The billionaire’s life is in no tangible way compromised from this loss. Does that mean the man acted morally in stealing the $10? I don’t think so and I don’t think you do either. I also don’t think you can explain why it’s not moral to steal if no one’s affected without God.

Another point. If evolution produced our moral sense then it also produced our predisposition to belief in God. Why throw out one and not throw out the other? Why should we trust one but regard the other as outmoded superstition? Both benefitted us in the past but you (I’m guessing) only hold on to one.

you said:
“Can I ask if you accept evolution? If not then I’m happy to either talk about the evidence for that – I suspect that if you agreed with me on evolution you might understand my view of morality, even if you wouldn’t agree. However this might be utterly patronising if you do accept evolution!”

I think evolution in a discussion of morals or God is a moot point and therefore my acceptance or denial of it is also a moot point. I see why so many make a big deal of it but I find it a non-starter. There’s no rational reason why God couldn’t have created the world at the big bang and shaped it with physical laws and evolutionary processes. And like I said above I don’t think evolution contributes a whit to why something is right or wrong, it merely cares whether the sperm finds the egg. For argument’s sake I am willing to postulate that all of evolution is correct.

I think with evolution you can say a certain behavior benefits my species, or propagates my DNA, or is pleasing to me and most people but you can’t say something is good or bad, moral or immoral.

An example. A man sees a child who’s fallen from their bike, has broken their leg and can’t move, and is on the road laying just over a hill in oncoming traffic. He can stop and help the child off the road or not. I believe he ought to help the child and I’m sure you do to. That’s the right thing to do and to not help the child would be immoral. A naturalistic world view can say that not helping hasn’t benefitted us in the past, or it will increase suffering instead of happiness, or it will be frowned on by most people but it can’t say that inaction is right or wrong. There is no higher power than the self that anyone must abide by so who will hold him culpable.

There is no “ought” or “should” in atheism.

So if you think there are things people are doing in this world right now (sex trade, genocide, flatulence in elevators, etc…) that they ought to stop no matter how they feel or what it’s doing for their happiness or reproductivity then you believe in objective morals If you can’t think of anything like that then you’re Ivan Karamazov.

From an article prepared for Free Inquiry:http://reformedperspectives.org/newfiles/joh_frame/Frame.Apologetics2004.DoWeNeedGodToBeMoral.pdf

Honest discussion between reasonable people with different opinions is always fun!

“So then in this framework it would seem less wrong for me to murder a Chinese child than a hometown child since there is no chance of them being related to me. I don’t think you really believe that so can you help clarify why good is good and evil is evil.”
In my framework I would separate what I know to be objectively true from what I believe to be right or wrong. I would say that I believe that killing a child anywhere is wrong – obviously – but I would say that if our morals were formed from our evolutionary past then we would probably feel less guilty about the deaths of people we don’t know than those we do; especially if they seem alien in some way, or can be thought of as ‘other’ or dehumanised in some way. Unfortunately this often seems to be the case. On the other hand it’s worth remembering that for most of our history we would have lived in relatively small communities and would be unable to communicate or effect anyone as remote to us as China is to either of us – this is part of what I mean by the ‘close to us’ paradigm being short-circuited by modern life and the strangeness of our relationships compared to most of our past.
But knowing (as I believe I do, roughly anyway) how I came by my morals doesn’t mean that they stop being my morals, any more than realising that alcohol or laughter are enjoyable because of chemical effect on the brain means I don’t like a pint or a joke.

“I hear you saying that you think we behave morally and have a moral sense because it benefitted us in the past. Is that fair? I think that explains why we behave in a particular manner but not why that manner is good or moral.”
I would say that you think the way you behave is a product of the way you think – in part, your morals. Our history has made us think in such a way that we believe that certain practises are good (giving to those in need) while others are bad (stealing), in order that we behave in that way. The one causes the other. If everyone on earth believed that it was ‘good’ to lie then we’d all be liars (more so than we are already).

“I also don’t think you can explain why it’s not moral to steal if no one’s affected without God. “
If no one was affected then I don’t think it would be immoral! (Of course, the rich person is affected, but by a very small amount) But of course if everyone thought that it was ok to steal from the rich then they wouldn’t stay rich very long, so we all agree to allow people’s property to remain largely their own. It’s what’s good for the community – most of us wouldn’t get that $10 and many of us would be afraid for our own $s.

“Another point. If evolution produced our moral sense then it also produced our predisposition to belief in God. Why throw out one and not throw out the other?”
It also predisposed many children and mothers to die in childbirth. Not all of our past is beneficial – ‘red in tooth and claw’ remember.
“Why should we trust one but regard the other as outmoded superstition? Both benefitted us in the past but you (I’m guessing) only hold on to one.”
I don’t ‘trust’ my morals… I just have them. I know that they are based on subjective emotion and probably meaningless over the scale of the universe and whole of time, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t my morals. I know that The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is fiction, but that doesn’t stop me finding it funny.

“For argument’s sake I am willing to postulate that all of evolution is correct.”
My point was more that an understanding of evolutionary theory is helpful in understanding why I think as I do, as it has informed my opinions.

“I think with evolution you can say a certain behavior benefits my species, or propagates my DNA, or is pleasing to me and most people but you can’t say something is good or bad, moral or immoral.”
I agree. But if the behaviour you are looking at is moral behaviour in species, then knowledge of evolution can be a useful tool for understanding it.

“There is no “ought” or “should” in atheism.”
Again, I agree. I don’t go around murdering people, but that’s not because I’m an atheist. Also, I don’t like beetroot, but it isn’t that which stops me mugging old ladies.

“So if you think there are things people are doing in this world right now (sex trade, genocide, flatulence in elevators, etc…) that they ought to stop no matter how they feel or what it’s doing for their happiness or reproductivity then you believe in objective morals If you can’t think of anything like that then you’re Ivan Karamazov.”
Afraid not. I believe in *my* morals, I just don’t think they’re objective. I also think that Monty Python is funny, that Venice is a beautiful city and that Jane Austin wrote great literature, and I’d happily argue with you if you disagreed on any of these points… but that doesn’t mean that they are objective facts.

you said:
“If everyone on earth believed that it was ‘good’ to lie then we’d all be liars (more so than we are already).”

I’m going to change this a little bit for emphasis but not change the implication of what you’ve said: “If everyone on earth believed that it was ‘good’ to sacrifice babies, rape little girls, and burn the elderly for fuel then we’d all be baby sacrificers, girl rapers, and fogey burners (more than we are already).

Frankly I can’t find fault with that as the atheist position. I don’t think that’s how 99.99% of people (including atheists) actually live but I agree with your premise. If there is no God there are no rules only social etiquette. Shucks, I was just starting to enjoy this. Maybe something else will pop up we can disagree on.

Hi fropome, Rob, Demian, and anyone else still awake –

fropome is defending rationality more succinctly that I ever could. But I might throw in a couple of words about evolution. Rob holds a misconception about evolution – the same as every other religious fundamentalist I’ve read or spoken to since I became involved with evolutionary biology at the university level in 1971.

Basically, the argument form of the evolutionary fallacy that Rob commits goes as follows: “X was the selective advantage conferred by Y in evolutionary history; therefore, X is the only reason for doing Y today”. Some people, for example, think homosexuality is “unnatural”, because it’s not what sexual organs “evolved for”.

To show the absurdity of this reasoning, ask yourself why we have hands and opposable thumbs. We have them because they were useful in climbing trees and manipulating food items when we were arboreal primates; those individuals that could do these tasks more dexterously left more offsrping, on average, than those who could not.

Well, does that mean we can’t use our hands to play the piano now? Does it mean that when we play the piano, we subconsciously think that we are climbing trees? Of course not. The selective advantage conferred by a structure or process in evolutionary history does not constitute its “real” use or its only justification. This is one if the commonest evolutionary fallacies out there.

If our moral sense developed naturally in small social primate groupings, it would have had the effect of enhancing group cooperation and the propects of that group in a world of competitors. But does that mean that such a moral sense is “only” about self-interest and reproductive success of small hunting groups? Of course not. We can use our moral sense, and our hands, for functions that have nothing to do with their original selective advantage. We can use our hands to build houses (and churches! – although I wish we’d stop). We can use our moral sense to regulate large industrial societies with just laws, or push for human rights in countries across the ocean we’ve never visited, or end barbaric punishments such as the biblical injunction to execute witches. This is not by any stretch a “slippery slope” to anything-goes; it’s exactly the opposite. Religionists love false dichotomies as much as they love begging the question and changing the subject.

Rob’s imaginary scenarios in his last post commit this fallacy. He thinks that moral principles derived from a naturally-evolved moral sense must involve conscious or unconscious self-interest in their application, a la natural selection, which, to repeat, is a fallacy in evolutionary thinking.

As fropome has pointed out, the Bible speaks with several mouths when it comes to morality. Slavery, capital punishment, polygamy, discrimination against other races – supporters for all sides of all these issues have found biblical support for their positions. In fact, it would be difficult to find a single moral principle that is uniquely Christian and is agreed upon by all Christians. I can’t think of a single one. All the good and bad aspects of Christian morality can be found in pre-existing religions, philosophies and societies, with one exception: Christianity invented religious persecution. Don’t believe those stories you hear about Christianity being persecuted in Roman Empire – they’re 90% hogwash. A few Christians were persecuted over the 250 years between Nero and Diocletian, but these events were greatly exaggerated by later legend, and were not done out of a sense of religious intolerance. The Romans permitted the practice of other religions, such as Judaism, in the territories they conquered, not insisting on conversion to the imperial cult. Christians sometimes got into trouble because they often refused to serve in the Roman army when called (a crime in most societies, including our own), and because they would not publicly sacrifice to pagan gods. But the idea that one religion should be the only legal one, and others should be extirpated, was a new idea in human history when Emperor Theodosius (I think) made all religions except Christianity illegal in AD 392 (I think – memory fading in middle age).

There is a curious missing element in Rob’s attack on the morals of atheists. What his position implies is that atheists should be pretty bad dudes, acting only in self-interest etc etc. (Never mind that it was an atheist (the Buddha) who founded a belief system that is morally superior to Christianity.) But why sit around speculating about it? It is easily tested. Does research show that atheists are in fact morally inferior to Christians? None that I am aware of. In fact, to my knowledge, Christians are more likely to believe or practice such disgusting things as capital punishment, discrimination against gays, the promotion of virginity among people who should be seeking satisfying sex lives, and the separation of races. (No institutions are more racially homogenous than Christian churches.)

That’s my two cents’ worth for tonight. I appreciate everyone’s contributions so far.

Greg makes a number of points which I don’t know enough about to comment, but he also neatly summarises what I’ve been stumbling towards for a couple of posts:

*Just because I think our morals are the result of our evolution and cultural history, this does not mean that I value them less than you do.*

You may consider belief in God to be necessary for a moral life; well I and other atheists may be proof that he is not. I give money to charity every month, try to be kind to strangers and to not strangle kittens. I’m not claiming to be especially good, but I don’t think that atheists in general (and that includes a high proportion of my friends) are less ‘good’ than religious people.

Again, just because I know that humour is subjective doesn’t mean that I don’t find things funny or that I think humour is less important.

The difference is, possibly, that I think morals are important because I am human. I don’t think morals exist independently of humanity in the same way as (say) gravity; however given that humans exist moral behaviour is clearly very important.

Hi Greg,

I am sure I hold several conceptual errors about evolution. It is not my topic of expertise. I don’t think any variation on it though gets you out of saying like fropome did that it could be moral to lie (or put your other favorite evil here). Gould said something to the extent that if we replayed the tape of evolution a million times we would never have creatures like us again. The same would have to be said for what we hold to be moral. So our sense of right and wrong is completely arbitrary in this world view. Since it’s arbitrary, it’s meaningless and if it’s meaningless why pay attention to it. Do you hold like fropome that morals are subjective? If not what force other than time and chance has winnowed our moral sense into something that can tell objective right from wrong. Like I said I can’t argue with that from the atheist position.

THAT IS NOT TO SAY THAT ATHEISTS CANNOT BEHAVE MORALLY. I don’t think you need to believe in God to behave morally. Wilson says to Hitchens in Collison, (paraphrased) “I think you have a fine moral house but I think it has no foundation. I denounce many of the things you denounce. I’m not questioning what you denounce, I’m questioning why you denounce it.” I am not implying “atheists should be pretty bad dudes”. We agree on 95% of what is good and evil behavior and probably 100% of what should be punished in court. I just don’t think you have a reason to believe it is objectively good or evil. And apparently fropome sees that. If you have an objective sense of evil maybe you should take it up with him/her.

you said:
“(never mind that it was an atheist (the Buddha) who founded a belief system that is morally superior to Christianity.)”

On what objective basis do you say that Buddhist morality is superior to Christian morality and that capital punishment, discrimination against gays, virginity, etc… are wrong? Please do me the favor of answering this, I’d be glad to specifically answer anything for you.

I’m feeling like a poor communicator tonight since it seems like we’ve been over most of this stuff before. I’m sorry for not addressing all of your points because it seems like we’re rehashing things I’ve addressed and you haven’t responded to or is moot to the discussion (the extent of Christian persecution has nothing to do with objective morals and I think you’re off on a Fred Phelps caricature of Christianity again).

lastly you said:
“But why sit around speculating about it? It is easily tested. Does research show that atheists are in fact morally inferior to Christians? None that I am aware of.”

Define your objective basis for calling something morally inferior and then read the Irrational Atheist. I think you’ll be surprised by what he says.

By the way I’m feeling the pressure of Demian’s initial letter again. I think I’ve forgotten the point he was making. So I never get tired of saying this, Jesus loves you. And he loves homosexuals (and murderers and racists) more than you do, enough to die for them.

“The same would have to be said for what we hold to be moral. So our sense of right and wrong is completely arbitrary in this world view. Since it’s arbitrary, it’s meaningless and if it’s meaningless why pay attention to it.”

Would you not agree that humour is arbitrary in the same way? And, if so, why pay attention to it?

Atheists don’t get their morals from atheism, but since that doesn’t mean we don’t have morals the question is where do we get them? Well in my opinion our morals can be seen as an extended and more complicated version of the group dynamics in other species – as such, evolution and cultural history seem to be a sufficient explanation. But since theists were also subject to the same (or near enough) evolution and cultural history it follows that their morals have little to do with their beliefs. Comparing the morals of, say, Christians throughout history shows that they have not been any more consistent than anyone else. Slavery was fine, now it’s not. Sexism was fine, now it’s not.

Myself and Greg (and you!) are saying that it’s perfectly possible to be a moral person and an atheist. I’m also saying that even if it wasn’t, that wouldn’t imply the existence of a God – just because it would be better for something to be so does not make it fact.
This is our answer to Demian’s moral argument… where exactly do you disagree? Or don’t you?

Hi Rob and fropome –

Doesn’t anyone here sleep?

Rob, you’re confusing two concepts: the human moral sense, and moral codes and principles.

What is the human moral sense? It is a sense of how others should be treated. It is a sense of empathy, an ability to imagine the pain or pleasure of others and to be concerned about it and to not want to contribute to their suffering. It’s a sense of rightness and a sense of justice. Whenever I say “human moral sense” below, substitute the three previous sentences.

Moral codes and principles are the agents we use, collectively, for the implementation of the human moral sense. They are found in religions and in secular social organizations alike. It is remarkable how similar moral principles are, at the most general level, from society to society. Every society recognizes offenses against people (murder, rape, assault etc) offenses against property (theft) and offenses against truth (perjury, giving false witness). (And every society, religious and secular alike, has numerous exceptions as it suits them.)

Codes and principles are not products of evolution; but the wish to form them is.

When you say that the morals of an atheist might be high, but have no foundation, that is wrong. Of course they have a foundation: it is in the human moral sense. You are also wrong when you say that in my world view, right and wrong are completely arbitrary. Right and wrong are based on this moral sense. I treat other people (or like to think I do) on the basis that their welfare means something to me on an emotional level. What is arbitrary about that? I mean, is this not how you treat people too?

I can ask both Demian and Rob to submit to the following thought-experiment. Suppose that you got rip-roaring drunk at a bar, picked a fight with a much smaller man, and beat the shit out of him, breaking many of his bones, blinding him with hot pepper sauce, and sending to him to the hospital. The next day, when you sobered up, would you not be troubled that you caused someone to suffer so much? Yeah, yeah, I know, you would be worried because you broke one of God’s laws and ordinances etc etc. But on top of that, you would be shaken on an emotional level. That’s your moral sense talking, and basing your behaviour on it is the beginning of moral life.

You don’t need a religion to instill in you a moral sense. In fact, religion CANNOT instill one. All religion does is to project this sense into the sky and have it bounce back to earth with a god as the supposed origin; to divinify what is our evolutionary legacy; to give a BS supernatural explanation to a natural phenomenon – which has been religion’s speciality for its entire history.

In other news. I wish you would define “objective” and “subjective”. They appear to mean this: objective morals are the ones in your religion, subjective morals are everyone else’s. Simply because the moral principles you believe in are alleged to come from a creator god in the sky, that does not make them objective. The existence of this god is precisely the point at issue; your reasoning is circular. You first must establish the existence and moral worth of this god, and that must be done anterior to any assumption of his existence. You can’t prove the worth of a god figure by comparing him to himself.

When I evaluate the moral standards of a religion, I do so from the basis of my moral sense. I think discrimination against gays and capital punishment are moral evils because they do not align with my moral sense. That’s how everyone should think about such questions. Your position is that we should decide that a certain religion is correct without any reference to its moral codes and without any comparison with our own standards; and then accept those codes as “objective”, not having evaluated them at all. This is the basis of mind-control religious cults, not the practice of thinking human beings.

you said:
“Would you not agree that humour is arbitrary in the same way? And, if so, why pay attention to it?”

Yes, I agree there is not an objective standard of funny. Witness Borat, Jackass, and Hee Haw. What I think is funny does not have to be funny so I would not try to keep people from watching Borat. With morality I believe there is an objective standard so I would try to stop Philippine men from buying sex slaves even if they thought it was fine. On what basis do you tell the Philippine man he shouldn’t do that? It can’t just be your cultural milieu because he has one too and it’s just as valid.

you said:
“Comparing the morals of, say, Christians throughout history shows that they have not been any more consistent than anyone else. Slavery was fine, now it’s not. Sexism was fine, now it’s not.”

I think you’re confusing morality with socially acceptable behavior or what we currently believe is moral. I think morality is based on the unchanging nature of God so it never changes. It’s objective. Slavery has always been wrong. I believe with my world view I can say that whereas yours has no objective stance to say it was wrong back then. Read Demian’s post on slavery if you think the bible condones it. Let’s say all Christians (including myself) agreed today that slavery was moral. That would not make it so since slavery objectively isnt moral. Does that make sense?’

you said:
“Myself and Greg (and you!) are saying that it’s perfectly possible to be a moral person and an atheist. I’m also saying that even if it wasn’t, that wouldn’t imply the existence of a God – just because it would be better for something to be so does not make it fact. This is our answer to Demian’s moral argument… where exactly do you disagree? Or don’t you?”

I agree that you can act morally without a belief in God. I’m saying you can’t say why it’s objectively moral without God. Let’s take an atheist that never lies, cheats, or steals and a Christian who is having an affair, steals cable from his neighbors, and has shady business practices. I am sure we could find real life examples of both. From my world view the Christian is objectively wrong but I don’t think an atheist can say why that is so.

The moral argument for God is persuasive because most people aren’t willing to admit that it might not be evil to burn old people for fuel.

you said:
“When I evaluate the moral standards of a religion, I do so from the basis of my moral sense. I think discrimination against gays and capital punishment are moral evils because they do not align with my moral sense. That’s how everyone should think about such questions.”

You really don’t see relativeness here? You said MY moral sense, not THE moral sense. Every perspective on earth could say the same thing. I’ll give you my 3rd grade response. Says who? Why are you right and what makes your moral sense right? Scientifically prove this. Philosophically prove this.

you said:
“Your position is that we should decide that a certain religion is correct without any reference to its moral codes and without any comparison with our own standards; and then accept those codes as “objective”, not having evaluated them at all.”

No. I’m saying that IF God exists then our moral sense must play second fiddle to his, because he is God. Once we believe there’s a God then we should figure out what his morals are. If you don’t believe there’s a God then the next rung down the authority ladder would be man and you know what they say about opinions and posterior orifices, everybody has one.

you said:
“In other news. I wish you would define “objective” and “subjective”. They appear to mean this: objective morals are the ones in your religion, subjective morals are everyone else’s. Simply because the moral principles you believe in are alleged to come from a creator god in the sky, that does not make them objective.”

No.

objective-having a basis outside of my subjective wants and desires, Having actual existence or reality

subjective-Proceeding from or taking place in a person’s mind rather than the external world, Particular to a given person; personal

They way you define your moral sense is subjective. Every person in the world obviously does not feel the same way you do about capital punishment and you have nothing objective to base your feeling on so it’s personal, subjective.

I feel like we are miscommunicating on such a basic level as you don’t have a good grasp on my position at all. I’m not sure I know any different ways than I’ve already tried to bridge that gap. I’m sorry I can’t communicate more clearly.

The reason we are not communicating is that you are continuing to assume what is to be proven. And what is to be proven is that God exists and is good. You cannot prove this without a comparison with your own moral sense. You have not offered such a comparison. You have only offered an unspoken assumption that God is good. All your arguments proceed from this assumption, whereas your arguments should be trying to reach this as a conclusion.

Your definitions of objective and subjective are also beggings of the question. You assert the “objectivity” of Christian morals on the basis that they have their origin in the mind of a good diety. Has it occurred to you that the Bible might have been written by the Devil? Or by a diety who has a mixed nature, both good and bad? What is your evidence that it was not? None.

You seem to have a phobia about moral disagreement. You get quite hysterical at the thought that people might disagree about what is good and what is bad if they are employing only their “subjective” moral senses, not iron eternal religious dogma. You think that disagreement about anything is tantamount to disagreement about everything, and thus a descent into chaos.

Do you actually know absolutely nothing about society and politics? Not only is your fear absurd and historically false (in most advanced countries, laws bearing on moral issues are decided by secular debate, not alignment with religious principles), your solution (religion), as a way of getting everybody to agree on “objective” standards, is in some region of nonsensicality that has no name in English. Yes, that’s how we should settle questions of abortion and slavery and capital punishment and gay rights and civil rights and environmental responsibility – have everyone read the Bible and come to an agreement about what it really says. There’s a winning strategy! Preposterous. Utterly preposterous.

Did you really encounter the Bible as a blank slate – someone without a clue about right and wrong? Right and wrong are actually not too tough to figure out. The Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have others do unto you – covers most cases; I would estimate it’s a 90-95% reliable guide to moral behaviour. And it is NOT a uniquely Christian principle. Every society has had a version of this rule. Indeed Christianity has erred in history when it has departed from this rule, which is usually.

If you were to forget all about the Bible, and live strictly according the Golden Rule, you would be right most of the time; certainly your average would be better than doctrinaire religious wingnuts. Would your standard be objective? Subjective? Who cares? These are meaningless words. Such a standard would promote human welfare most of the time, and that’s what counts.

Let me repeat that. What matters is human welfare and well-being. I am totally unapologetic about testing supposed gods and their nostrums against this standard. Gods can look after themselves. I care more about the well-being of people, not the vanity of imaginary dieties. That is my ultimate standard. When it ceases to be your standard, the face of humanity has another gob of spittle on it.

Last night due to some bad links or something I couldn’t post what I eventually did this morning. I should have taken that as kismet .

It seems like this discussion is done being productive, maybe for a while now. I’m okay if we leave things here and let anyone unfortunate enough to read all our ramblings figure out what’s what. Thanks for the dialogue I understand the time and effort it took. I wish you well. See you around Demian’s blog.

Okay, well, it’s been a carnival ride for me (that’s good, by the way), except I didn’t get sick, so it was positive all around. Thanks to everyone who posted.

One last post to reply to some issues – I realise that if there are lurkers they probably largely disagree with me so I want to be clear.

“Yes, I agree there is not an objective standard of funny. Witness Borat, Jackass, and Hee Haw. What I think is funny does not have to be funny so I would not try to keep people from watching Borat. With morality I believe there is an objective standard so I would try to stop Philippine men from buying sex slaves even if they thought it was fine. On what basis do you tell the Philippine man he shouldn’t do that? It can’t just be your cultural milieu because he has one too and it’s just as valid. ”

In a purely logical, rational way I agree. But then, in a purely cold and logical sense, pain and suffering do not matter. If I catch some horrible disease and die then this doesn’t actually matter – nothing does. Because the idea that some things ‘matter’ or that things might be more or less ‘important’ is a human conceit, dependent on our subjective view of the universe. As it happens, my subjective opinion – no doubt emerging from my evolutionary and cultural past (though no less strongly felt because of that) – is that buying sex slaves is wrong, and I would condemn it. Indeed I donate money to charity directly to help prevent such things.

You’re hung up on this objective / subjective thing so I’m trying to be clear in this post. My morals (and everyone elses) are subjective. But they are no more or less likely to change than my view of what is beautiful or funny; they may differ slightly across the span of my life, but very largely they will remain constant. More importantly, I cannot CHOOSE my morals any more than I can choose to find something beautiful or funny, nor can I stop having morals, any more than I can stop finding things beautiful or funny, nor does this realisation make me hold my morals less strongly.

“I think you’re confusing morality with socially acceptable behavior or what we currently believe is moral.”

I don’t think I am – you seem to be introducing a concept which, as far as I can tell, is redundent here. Slavery was condoned by Christians and non-Christians alike and condemned by Christians and non-Christians alike. I have seen no evidence that Christians have always argued that slavery is wrong against a sinning majority of atheists and heathens. If everyone agrees that something is acceptable, then they are agreeing that it is moral. Many Christians, for thousands of years, were happy that slavery existed and owned slaves.

“I think morality is based on the unchanging nature of God so it never changes. It’s objective.”

I realise that’s what you believe, but you’re trying to demonstrate a fallacy in what I believe, so you need to attempt to prove this – not just state it. At the moment your argument amounts to ‘I believe in God and therefore you are wrong’.

“Slavery has always been wrong. I believe with my world view I can say that whereas yours has no objective stance to say it was wrong back then. Read Demian’s post on slavery if you think the bible condones it. Let’s say all Christians (including myself) agreed today that slavery was moral. That would not make it so since slavery objectively isnt moral. Does that make sense?”

I don’t think you can objectively (in the absolute sense) say that *anything* is right or wrong – this is my point. However my subjective opinion is that slavery is, was, and always will be wrong. You are assuming throughout this statement that you have an objective sense of morals – this is what you need to demonstrate. (I’ve read Demian’s post on slavery – I suspect it’ll only convincing to those who want it to be)

“I agree that you can act morally without a belief in God. I’m saying you can’t say why it’s objectively moral without God. Let’s take an atheist that never lies, cheats, or steals and a Christian who is having an affair, steals cable from his neighbors, and has shady business practices. I am sure we could find real life examples of both. From my world view the Christian is objectively wrong but I don’t think an atheist can say why that is so.”

Again – I do not argue that I can say these things are objectively wrong, any more than I can objectively prove that The Simpsons isn’t as funny as it used to be. But you are only assuming that *you* can! (Perhaps better but, ‘only believing that you can’) You believe in a God who gives you objective morals (though surely they’re just HIS subjective opinion rather than yours?). I do not believe in your God and so I do not believe that your morals are objective.

“The moral argument for God is persuasive because most people aren’t willing to admit that it might not be evil to burn old people for fuel.”

This is because everyone has the subjective opinion that burning old people is wrong! You can’t get people to admit that my house is more beautiful than the Vatican either, but that doesn’t make it *objectively* true.

For the subjectivity of my moral system to be a problem, you need to demonstrate that your morals are objectively true. You are assuming this conclusion, perhaps because you are so used to it – but remember, atheists (pretty much by definition I think!) don’t believe in your God.

I’m sorry you’ve stopped finding this discussion helpful – I was rather enjoying it and did actually feel that we were getting somewhere. Conversations like this are always more difficult until we understand the paradigm of the other persons thoughts, at which point things often move much more swiftly.

It helps to have an inordinate amount of patience for such debates!

Fropome thanks for the interaction here too, I did find it helpful. I think you’ve done a good job of showing the differences between objective and subjective morality and the prerequisites and ramifications of both.