Theists: If you had to pick just one, what part or action of the human body would you say is the best example of something that had to have been designed by a perfect intelligence, for which evolution does not provide a satisfactory explanation?

Atheists: If you had to pick just one, what part or action of the human body would you say is the best example of something that a perfect intelligence wouldn’t have designed, but which evolution explains well?

It’s far too long to write-up as a single article (and I suspect it would bore you all to tears if I tried), so instead I’ll try to write up one section a week.

Interestingly, the tone of this course is overwhelmingly about trying to find evidence for God, and trying to philosophise God into existing. That seems like a little bit of a cop-out of the whole faith equals belief without evidence thing to me, but maybe that’s why I’m an atheist.

Because the Leaf Fell

This section sets the tone and lays some of the groundwork for the rest of the course. It is also, as we shall see, highly flawed and internally inconsistent. It starts by painting a picture. It’s a picture that has a leaf in it.

“…A leaf breaks off of the branch, floats down through the air, swoops from side to side, being pushed about by a soft breeze and then lands on the ground…”

You can probably guess where this is going already, but just in case you’re immune to things less subtle than being smacked repeatedly with a hammer, we are then treated to a discourse on how some single event must have caused the leaf to fall. We are even given a list of possible causes: Gravity, the breeze, squirrels – All building up to this statement, which I shall call Wince Number 1 (because that’s what happened when I read it):

“…We do have to agree that there had to have been some cause that lead to the falling of the leaf.”

Well… No, not really. The implication here is that there must have been one, single causal event which was responsible for the falling of the leaf. But that ignores the possibility that there may have been many events and contributing factors (which, undoubtedly, there are, even for an event as simple as a falling leaf). Remember: The course doesn’t talk in terms of a triggering-event, it talks about a cause. That’s not the same thing, but the piece conflates the two ideas with startling repetition.

At this point you’ve probably already realised that we’re in the midst of a set-up for the fallacy that cause = intention, but stay with me. It gets worse, I promise.

Now we get to a seemingly uncontentious, statement:

“PRINCIPLE #1: Any activity in this universe creates an effect(s)”

Well… Yes, kind of. Even the act of waving my arm in a vacuum has some effect, if only in terms of glycogen and oxygen burned by my muscles, extra carbon dioxide filtered from my blood by my lungs. So I’ll accept that premise as reasonable until proven otherwise.

There follows a short discourse that we shall call Wince Number 2:

“But that principle is also true when read in the other direction. We also have to agree that in order for it to even be possible for the leaf to fall – a greater, earlier event (cause) must have already taken place: the growth of the limb that the leaf grew from! If that limb had never grown then that particular leaf would have never existed in the first place and thus could never fall. Keep going. If the trunk never grew there would be no limb. Before that, if there were no tree seed – the sprout would have never grown to create a trunk which would never produce a branch that would never grow any leaf to fall.

Did everybody spot the step that was skipped? If we really read the first scenario (that some triggering event caused the leaf to fall) in reverse, we would say that the falling leaf required a trigger event to make it fall. Wince Number 2 skips straight past that unavoidable conclusion, stops talking in terms of triggering events, and instead starts conflating required preconditions for an event with cause for the event. So far, so torturous! All of this leads to Wince Number 3:

“PRINCIPLE #2: Conversely, every effect in this universe is the result of some unified cause(s).”

Just in case I haven’t already pointed out how hard the author(s) of Going Deeper have failed to demonstrate a logical chain from principle #1 to principle #2, let me put it like this:

If all trains are all vehicles, are all vehicles trains? No, of course not. Just because A always equals B, does not mean that B always equals A. This is a common failure among poor arguers: Using the rules of mathematics as interchangeable with the rules of logic.

Another short discourse follows, but it’s largely irrelevant as it assumes that principle 2 is true and proven, and it’s really just a re-statement of it in slightly more complex terms anyway:

“PRINCIPLE #3: All activity in this universe is related through a chain of causes/effects. Nothing in this universe is “uncaused” but rather is dependent upon a prior cause.”

To reiterate: The authors have failed to demonstrate that this is true. Let’s see what they fail to demonstrate next! The next one is fairly straightforward: That the chain of cause and effect is not infinite, it is finite.

I’m not actually going critique the paragraph in which this is asserted, because it is so patently ridiculous – The ignorance it displays is breathtaking all on its own. Here it is:

“To start weighing the facts use this example: Imagine that I am going to travel from my house to yours. I feel like going for a brisk, comfortable jog. Your house is the perfect distance for me to run before I get too tired. So I’m going to head over to take a break at your place! I’ve been conditioned for long distance running. This will equip me for the journey. The only catch – the distance between your house and mine is infinite. There is an endless amount of room between my place and yours!

Can this be true? Can I make the trip from my house to yours by covering the infinite distance between them?

We may not be able to figure out the true distance of space but we can figure this out with absolute certainty – if I am standing at my front door and I claim that I can make it to your house which is an infinite distance away I am rotten a liar!

Why? To travel an infinity is to never, ever stop. There is no such thing as endpoints in an infinity! If I start running no matter how trained I am I will not make it. That fact has nothing to do with my athletic stamina but rather with mathematical laws. An infinite distance means that for every step I take there would be another, and another, and another, and another in a never-ending cycle for all eternity. From whatever point are you standing and looking out onto infinity you will never find an endpoint because that is what defines an infinity – no ending point!”

Um… Yes? And? I’m confused about where this is going. I’ll let you look up the next paragraph yourself if you want to read it – It’s pretty much a restatement of the last one. It’s equally irrelevant, and involves brownies. I’m not making this up. It all leads to this:

“PRINCIPLE #4: All events in this universe have a finite list of causes. Since nothing in this universe is uncaused all things are related to one another through their dependency on a prior cause. Thus all existence in this universe is contingent upon common, ultimate, singular first event.

Do I need to restate the obvious? Absolutely no part of principle 4 has been demonstrated or proven in any way, shape or form. Further, even if they could demonstrate first-cause, how could they rule out many simultaneous but otherwise unrelated first-causes? They could not.

What follows is almost sixteen hundred words that can be summed up very easily in one sentence: “The whole universe is subject to the same physical laws and constants as human beings”. Of course, the authors don’t actually demonstrate (or even reason) this. They just blithely state is as if it were an established fact. I suspect this is the reason for the sixteen hundred words: They’re stultifyingly dull and repetitive. I suspect they’re only there in the hope that readers will skip to the conclusion and assume that it has been proven. It hasn’t been proven, or even vaguely justified, but the conclusion is:

“CONCLUSION: Something transcendent to our universe put the chain of causes/effects of our universe into motion. A “FIRST CAUSE” exists.

Hands up if you saw that coming straight from Wince Number 1. I think that will do for now, not least because I’ve reached my limit for reading such silliness for the day. Stay tuned for part 2 next week.

For me, it’s when you refuse to give somebody special privileges simply because of their religion. This theme has been in the news in Britain today after a Christian woman lost at an employment tribunal, where she claimed she was forced out of her job because she couldn’t work on Sundays.

“An employment tribunal ruled that Celestina Mba, 57, was not constructively dismissed from her job in 2010. Miss Mba, from south London, worked helping children with severe learning difficulties. The council said it had a duty to ensure children had weekend care. Ms Mba worked for Merton Council at Brightwell Respite Care House in Morden for three years.”

I take issue with Miss Mba’s claim that she couldn’t work on Sundays. She wouldn’t work on Sundays, and yet she still applied for a job which requires employees to be available 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days of the year. It seems that she also misled her employer when she was interviewed for the job; “she had told her employer she had ‘difficulties’ working on Sundays before she was employed, but did not specify they were religious”.

This is an important ruling, not only because it protects employers from having to make unreasonable concessions on the grounds of religion, but also because it protects other employees – The days when Miss Mba would not work, ultimately have to be worked by somebody else. Is it fair that other people routinely lose their Sundays off because one person claims a religious right to have Sunday as their “day of rest”? I would argue that it is not reasonable at all.

I would also speculate that Sundays would only be the opening salvo in a case like this – Speaking as a healthcare professional, I would love to never have to work on Christmas day, and to always have a long weekend over Easter, but I accept that that’s not going to happen because of the job that I have chosen to do.

Of course, Mis Mba disagrees:

“Miss Mba said: “I am amazed by this decision. I thought that this country was a Christian country. I worked hard for years at my job, and to lose it because of intolerance towards my faith is shocking to me.”

Where to start… Firstly, we are not a “Christian country”, a claim which Christians seem to love throwing out at every opportunity, in complete ignorance of the fact that they’re in a clear minority. Census data suggests that we’re a 71% Christian country, but that’s at complete odds with reality – Most people record themselves as Church of England, simply because until very recently it was the default entry on the Register of Births and therefore on birth certificates. As of 2008, there were actually only about 1.1 million church-goers in the UK – about 1.5% of the population. So no, Miss Mba. We are not a “Christian Country” – and more to the point, even if we were, it would be irrelevant to this case.

Secondly, and this is a point I think I’ve harped on at great length: Failing to give somebody special privileges that they try to demand over everybody else because they’re religious, is not the same thing as being intolerant of their religion.

I am sick to death of this tired old argument; there really is nothing more to say about it than the last paragraph says, and yet religious people continue to scream like spoiled, obnoxious teenagers when expected to abide by the same conditions as everybody else.

I love this guy. In fact, he’s so good, let’s have that speech as a picture:

At first I thought it was an elaborate joke, but it didn’t take long to discover that it’s actually a still from a new Tea Party sponsored documentary (I use the term loosely) which basically seeks to establish that Krischun ‘Muuurkha = Good, and Left Wing Soshalism = EBUL.

Strap in folks, it’s about to get crazy:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And now it’s going to get even crazier:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The guy in the second video is such an obvious liar that it’s a little bit painful to try to watch all the way through, but do your best.

The religious right accusing everybody else of historical revisionism and promoting an inclusive mind-set… The irony burns.

<3 SMBC…