Is America the Greatest Country in the World? A Rant.

Last updated on: October 21, 2015 at 12:28 pm By Bob Seidensticker

You might have seen a popular clip from the television series The Newsroom where Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) is the anchor and managing editor of a news show. In the clip, McAvoy is part of a panel in front of a live audience.

McAvoy takes nothing seriously at first, but things get real at 1:36 in the video. Then at 2:30, in response to a softball question, “Why is America the greatest country in the world?” he says,

There’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force, and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies.

McAvoy dismisses the pleasing answer and instead follows the evidence.

Inspired by this stream-of-consciousness speech, here’s the unhinged rant I’d like to hear from one of the politicians in the presidential race. There must be one who’s fed up with the status quo. To someone in a crowded political field who wants to go out with a bang, let me give you the first draft of your goodbye speech. If you can’t change the world by getting elected, maybe you can help improve the discourse about the challenges America faces.

☙

“When I consider those stats, I see government as a big part of the problem. There’s no backbone, no willingness to make the tough call and take the heat. Politicians fiddle while Rome burns. Take climate change—yes, reducing our carbon footprint is difficult, but aren’t we adults here? Can’t politicians do what’s right? Do their job? Make the tough decisions?

“The scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change is plain enough, but there are political benefits to ignoring responsibility and leaving the mess for someone else. But put aside any controversy. Suppose it were real, and all the evidence pointed there. Would political and business leaders then be ready to take the tough steps necessary to improve society? Of course not! Defiance on this issue would look just like it does today. ‘Lack of evidence’ is a smokescreen.

“There are 39 members of the House Science and Technology Committee. How many reject the scientific consensus on climate change, evolution, or the Big Bang? How many presidential candidates do? What I find incredible is that when political leaders reject science, they aren’t shy about it. They publicly and proudly reject the consensus in a scientific field they don’t understand.

“Imagine what their political forebears in the wake of Sputnik would have said. Science delivered—indeed, it took us to the moon twelve years later. We followed science then, but we can pick and choose now? Let me suggest that competitive pressure from other countries, eager to capitalize on America’s poor educational statistics that I mentioned, creates every bit as much of a Sputnik moment right now. We don’t have the luxury of appeasing science-averse special interests.

“Remember what JFK said about putting a man on the moon: ‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.’ What is our Apollo program? Are there no more big projects to tackle? Do we no longer have the stomach for that kind of national challenge?

“After 9/11, an outraged America turned to President Bush, and we would’ve followed him anywhere. For example, he could’ve said that this attack highlighted our energy dependence on the Middle East, so we needed an Apollo Project for energy independence—practical solar power, safer nuclear power, maybe even fusion power. And while we’re at it, recreate the world’s energy industry with America in the middle of it again. But no, we had a few trillion dollars lying around, so we spent it on a war. Opportunity missed.

“Conservatives hate big government, unless it’s an intrusive government that tells you who you can’t marry and what religious slogans to have in public buildings. They hate government spending, unless it’s on things they like, like the military or anything in their district.

“My conservative friends, I’ve got to comment on your priorities. You seriously put opposition to same-sex marriage near the top of your list? You’re standing in the way of marriage, two people who love each other. I can’t imagine a worse target to put in your crosshairs from a PR standpoint. What’s next—grandma and apple pie? Hate fags in private if you must, but you really need to think about how this looks to the rest of society.

“And just so I piss off everyone, let me note traditionally liberal nuttery like a mindless rejection of nuclear power and GMOs, fear of vaccines, and coddling of college students. You remember college, the place where you’re supposed to be challenged? Students at many colleges are encouraged to be thin skinned and easily offended. Being uncomfortable and off-balance sometimes is part of the learning process.

“Limiting offensive speech can be another liberal tendency. So a religious group is feeling put upon by frank criticism—tough. Ditto anyone who is offended by a religious sermon. I energetically support free speech for pastors saying that fags are evil and atheists deserve hell, because I use the same free speech right to argue how idiotic their position is.

“Today we find ourselves in another interminable presidential campaign cycle. It’s a tedious and expensive chess game where candidates try to avoid saying anything interesting that might come back to bite them. Last time, this process cost $2 billion. I’m sure any of us could’ve found smarter ways to spend 95 percent of that.

“Yet again, candidates will crawl over one another to show America how pious they are. Some will brag about how they pray before major decisions or choose the Bible over science when they conflict. What’s the problem with America’s politicians? In science, religious belief decreases with competence, but we’re to believe that every one of the 535 members of Congress are theists? Congratulations, Christianity—you’ve subverted Article 6 of the Constitution and imposed a de facto religious test for public office.

“To see how Congress likes to spend its time, there was a 2002 ruling declaring ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. In protest, the House assembled on the steps of the Capitol to publicly say the Pledge and loudly accentuate the ‘under God’ bit. Take that, First Amendment! Another example: we had a motto that fit America beautifully, E Pluribus Unum, but Congress replaced that with the one-size-fits-all ‘In God We Trust.’ I’ll bet that made God’s day.

“Congress always seems to be able to fit Christianity into its agenda. On the list of goodies religion has been given, the one that annoys me the most is closed financial records. The American public makes a contract with nonprofit organizations—we give you nonprofit status, and you open your books to prove that you spent the money wisely. That’s true for every charity in America except churches, and about $100 billion annually goes into religion’s black box. Want to find out if CARE or the Red Cross spend their donations wisely? You can find their IRS 990 form online in about 30 seconds, but don’t try the same thing with a church.

“You might say that churches fund soup kitchens and other good works. Sure, but how much is this? Maybe ten percent of their income? Call churches ‘charities’ if you want, but these are charities with 90 percent overhead. Compare that to 10 percent for a well-run charity. Christians, don’t you see how bad this makes you look? You’re okay with God knowing what your churches do with their money, but you’re embarrassed to show the rest of us who are picking up the slack for your tax-free status. Christians should be shouting loudest to remove this perk.

“And let’s compare churches’ $10 billion a year of good works to what happens when society helps people. Federal programs for food, medical care, disability, and retirement spend about 1.5 trillion dollars annually. Government support for public schools and college is another half-trillion dollars. As a society, we do much good, and churches’ contribution is small change.

“Christianity in America has become more of a problem than a solution, though it wasn’t always so. Christians will point with justified pride to schools and hospitals built by churches or religious orders. The Social Gospel movement from a century ago pushed for corrections of many social ills—poverty and wealth inequality, alcoholism, poor schools, child labor, racism, poor living conditions, and more. Christians point to Rev. Martin Luther King’s work on civil rights and William Wilberforce’s Christianity-inspired work on ending slavery. But today, we hear about the Prosperity Gospel, not the Social Gospel.

“Can you imagine—Christians at the forefront of social improvement? They’re sometimes on the generous side of social issues today, but the headlines go to the conservative heel draggers.

“To see Christianity’s impact on society, consider some statistics: 46 percent of Americans believe in some form of the Genesis creation story, 22 percent think that the world will end in their lifetime, 77 percent believe in angels, and 57 percent of Republicans want Christianity as the national religion.

“This is the twenty-first century, my friends. When you open your mental drawbridge to allow in Christian wishful thinking, consider what other crazy stuff comes in as well. It also distorts our priorities, and the time spent wringing our hands over same-sex marriage or fighting to keep a Christian monument on public property is time we’re not spending on actual problems—international competitiveness, infrastructure like roads and bridges, campaign finance reform, improved education and health care, and so on.

“Christian morality is Bronze Age morality, which serves us poorly today. Christians scour the Bible for passages to support what they already believe. They might keep the verses against homosexuality, say, but reject those supporting racism, slavery, rape, and genocide. Christians celebrate faith, just about the least reliable route to the truth. And they’ll pray, thinking they’ve achieved some good, rather than actually doing something about a problem.

“We can agree to disagree—you have the right to believe in the supernatural, but know that in this country, the Constitution calls the shots, not God. Elected officials answer to the law, the Constitution, and their constituents. If you want to answer to a supernatural power that’s higher still, don’t run for public office. The Constitution defines a secular public square, and we’re stuck with it. Creationism and prayer stay out of public schools, and ‘In God We Trust’ stays out of the city council chambers. Though many Christians are determined not to see this, keeping religion out of government helps them as well as atheists.

“America the greatest country? There was a study comparing 17 Western countries, America included, on 25 social metrics—suicide, lifespan, divorce, teen births, alcohol consumption, life satisfaction, and so on. We were dead last for more than half of those 25. But who cares when we were number one in God belief, prayer, belief in heaven and hell, and in rejection of evolution!

“Remember this next time some conservative politician or pundit tells you that society is going downhill because of lack of God belief. No, God belief is inversely correlated with social health.

“Another way society is broken is in income disparity. I love capitalism, but c’mon—there’s a limit. To get a condensed introduction to this, look up ‘Gini coefficient.’ It’s a single value that captures an economy’s income inequality. It was constant for decades, but it shows that income inequality has become steadily worse for the last thirty years.

“Another look at income disparity is the pay of top company’s CEOs. Americans think CEOs make 30 times more than the average worker. In fact, it’s 350 times more, and that’s a far higher disparity than in any other country.

“Conservative politicians have gotten Christians protecting the status quo. Machiavelli would be proud, but is this really the society that Jesus would be pleased to see? Would Jesus be standing in the way of expanded health care? Would he be pro guns and pro death penalty? Would he be more concerned about abortion, or would he be more concerned about the 10 million children under five who die in the Third World every year? Perhaps you’ve forgotten the Jesus we’re talking about—he’s the one who said, ‘What you have done to the least of these brothers and sisters of mine you have done to me.’

“Christians, politicians are leading you around by the nose. They assure you that the sky is falling so you’ll rally around, but they have no incentive to solve problems. Solved problems mean no reason for voters to support them. Think for yourself.

“Look, I don’t have the solutions. As with Cassandra, no one would much care if I did. But let me suggest some of the problems: religion that doesn’t know its place and politicians who don’t know their jobs.

“Does someone have to sacrifice their political career by doing their job? Making the tough call? Big deal—in decades past, Americans sacrificed their lives. Do the right thing. Make a decision you can look back on with pride. Maybe America will surprise you and actually pay attention. A politician doing the right thing, and damn the consequences? That would be noteworthy.”

Image credit: Beverly, flickr, CC

Rationalizing Away the “Canaanite Problem” (2 of 2)

Last updated on: October 19, 2015 at 12:31 pm By Bob Seidensticker

This is the conclusion of a critique of Greg Koukl’s justification of the Canaanite problem, God’s genocide of the people living in the Promised Land. Read part 1 here.

God and Racism

Koukl moves on to defend God against charges of racism.

God cared nothing about skin color or national origin.

Yes, you can make the sock puppet say that God cares nothing about race. But the very concept of a Chosen People means that the Bible has plenty of other verses that say the opposite:

No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of Jehovah, not even in the tenth generation. (Deuteronomy 23:3)

And why should that be a surprise? After all, the founders of those two tribes are said to have come from incestuous relations between Lot and his two daughters (Genesis 19:36–8). Yuck!

Just after the genocide passages in Deuteronomy, God forbids intermarriage with these foreign tribes (Deut. 7:3). The prohibition against intermarriage is also given in Ezra (9:2, 10:10) and Nehemiah (chapter 13). King Solomon was chastised for his foreign wives (1 Kings 11).

Biblical slavery is an excellent way to see the us/them distinction. It was limited to six years for fellow Jews, but it is for life for slaves from other tribes (Lev. 25:44–6). Let’s not imagine that God was colorblind.

The apologist might respond that the prohibitions against intermarriage were meant to avoid temptations to worship other gods. Okay, but they’re still anti-miscegeny laws (slapped down in the United States with Loving v. Virginia). Are those laws wrong today? If so, why excuse them back then?

Even some stories of Jesus show him focused only on his own tribe. He says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” and he denies a Canaanite woman’s pleas for help with, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (Matthew 15:22–8)—see the painting above. He forbids his disciples to waste time on the Gentiles or Samaritans (Matt. 10:5–6).

Back to Koukl:

The book of Judges—a record of the “Canaanization” of Israel—ends on this sinister note: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

Sinister? Where else does “right” come from but from ourselves (both individually and as a society)? Koukl imagines an objective morality grounded outside humanity, and I impatiently await evidence that such a morality exists and is accessible (more here).

Tamp Down Those Feelings of Pity

Koukl wraps up his justification.

Without question, the Canaanite adults got their just deserts. Regarding the children, I personally take comfort in the fact that, on my view, those who die before the age of accountability are ushered immediately into Heaven.

Well, I still have questions. How can genocide be acceptable justice when it’s universally rejected today? And how can you be so comfortable with, say, a five-year-old Canaanite girl dying in agony from her wounds but then get freaked out at the abortion of a single fertilized human egg cell? What about Andrea Yates—did she really save her five children from hell by drowning them, like she hoped? And how does killing children square with, “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin” (Deut. 24:16)?

This nonsense reminds me of William Lane Craig’s response to the genocide of the Canaanites (my critique here). His conclusion:

Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

(Yeah, that’s also who I was most concerned about.)

This bizarre and embarrassing thinking is what happens when smart people are determined to shoehorn this Iron Age book into modern reality regardless of how poorly it fits. And many Christians wonder what about Christianity could possibly bother atheists …

Back to Koukl’s defense of God:

But was God right? I’ve already shown that if God needed morally sufficient reasons for killing the Canaanites, he had them in abundance.

After World War II, 24 Nazi leaders were tried in Nuremburg. Did the Allies have morally sufficient reasons for killing them all? They didn’t think so, because they weren’t all put to death. Seven received prison terms, and three were acquitted.

No, God did not have morally sufficient reasons for genocide. He may have had his own reasons that we’re unable to understand, but “morally sufficient” as those words are defined in the dictionary? Nope. And that also goes for “good,” “just,” and other imagined attributes of God.

Tamp Down Feelings of Reason as Well

Koukl encourages us to find biblical justification for his view that we should just let go and let God.

When Job lost everything dear to him, he did not rail against God, but worshipped Him

God made clear to Job that might makes right (Job 40)—not an especially good reason to justify one’s actions and compel worship.

Reflecting on the sovereignty of God, the Apostle Paul asked, “Does not the potter have a right over the clay?” (Romans 9:21)

Clay has no dreams that can be frustrated, and it can’t lose a loved one. It doesn’t feel pain when you cut it or hold it under water.

How does this irrelevant analogy help us justify God’s genocide of people who, unlike clay, are alive and do feel pain?

God is God and we are not. He is not to be measured by our standards. Rather, we are to be measured by His.

Don’t we share a moral sense with God? When Abraham haggled with God on the minimum number of good people in Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18), Abraham said, “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. … Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Abraham had no problem conversing with God using a shared moral sense. Anyway, this presupposing of God and then selecting facts to support that claim is the Hypothetical God Fallacy.

The Bible itself rejects this idea that God’s moral sense is out of reach.

Atheists read the account of Canaan’s conquest and sniff with moral indignation at the suggestion a holy God could be within His rights to destroy the Canaanite people along with their culture.

Not quite. For me, this contradiction between the good, righteous, and just god that the Christians imagine and his actions summarized in their own book is compelling evidence that what they imagine doesn’t exist.

Koukl imagines that he’s patched the holes his worldview, but it’s as leaky as ever.

I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality,
and of the most lovely benevolence:
and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity,
so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture,
as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions
should have proceeded from the same being.
— Thomas Jefferson

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/9/13.)

Image credit: Wikimedia

How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? Geisler and Turek’s Moral Argument (Part 4).

Last updated on: October 6, 2015 at 10:10 am By Bob Seidensticker

Everyone safe and sound after yesterday’s scary lunar eclipse? The weather in Seattle cooperated, and I watched it with many other sky watchers.

In an article in John Hagee’s local paper titled, “John Hagee Didn’t Mean The Apocalypse Was Coming Yesterday, Silly,” we’re told that all the mocking of Hagee is out of line. “Nowhere in Revelation does it say that the end of days was due to arrive on September 27, 2015.” Right—and nowhere in the entire Bible does it say anything to support John Hagee’s breathless four blood moons hypothesis.

The article continues, “According to Hagee, the end times will arrive at some unspecified point in the future.” In other words, the period of the four blood moons was meaningless for telling us when the End will come. Thoughtfully, the article ends with links for buying the DVD, book, and soundtrack. There’s still time before the End to buy a book that tells you nothing about the End!

This is a continuation of my response to the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin with part 1 here. For part 1 of the critique of the moral argument, go here.

In the (mercifully) final section of their chapter on morality, Geisler and Turek (GT) list areas of confusion within the topic of absolute vs. relative morality. Since the boys have indeed been quite confused about this, perhaps we’ll get some clarity on the issue. The labels in this enumerated list come from their book.

Confusion #1—absolute morals vs. changing behavior

GT tell us that relativists confuse is and ought. You can change what you do, but you can’t change what you ought to do. Relativists sometimes preface their outrage at backwards Christian attitudes about issues like sex with, “This is the twenty-first century!” as if morality adapts to the times.

But of course morality has changed over time—consider slavery, genocide, and rape, for example—and we think that now we’re on the right side of these issues. GT can fume about it, but morality changes. Given that the Bible’s morality is abysmal, moral evolution of society away from that is a good thing.

GT respond to charges that our many approaches to morality undercut the idea of a Moral Law.

But that doesn’t mean there is no unchanging Moral Law; it simply means that we all violate it. (page 182)

No, our contradictory moral actions mean that there is no objective, reliably accessible Morality, which they have already admitted. How they imagine this strengthens their claim of objective morality (when the natural explanation works just fine), I can’t imagine.

There’s also a vague reference to the is-ought problem, which I respond to here.

Confusion #2—absolute morals vs. changing perceptions of the facts

GT try to salvage the idea of objective, unchanging morals with the example of witch burning. We used to burn witches but not anymore. A change in morality? The boys tell us no:

What has changed is not the moral principle that murder is wrong but the perception or factual understanding of whether “witches” can really murder people by their curses. (183)

Not really. The King James Version of Exodus 22:18 memorably commands us, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Western society includes people who claim to be witches with corresponding supernatural beliefs, but only the most fringe Christian would demand the death penalty. This is a change in morality—our modern morality (which is so familiar as to seem like common sense) wins out over a foreign idea in an ancient book.

Confusion #3—absolute morals vs. applying them to particular situations

Even if two victims wind up disagreeing over the morality of a particular act, this does not mean morality is relative. An absolute Moral Law can exist even if people fail to know the right thing to do in a particular situation. (183)

Translation: “Yeah, but I never said that objective morality was reliably accessible.”

The larger point GT make is, “You haven’t proven me wrong.” That’s correct, but that’s not the skeptic’s job. I’ve given a plausible natural explanation for morality. You want to make the remarkable claim that objective morality exists? I’m listening, but so far you’ve done nothing but assert it (with examples that are better explained by the natural explanation!).

Going forward, I’ll leave pointing out the Assumed Objectivity fallacy as an exercise for the reader.

GT move on to imagine people puzzling over a life-or-death dilemma. They come to different conclusions and conclude that morality is relative.

But the dilemma actually proves the opposite—that morality is absolute. How? Because there would be no dilemma if morality were relative! If morality were relative and there were no absolute right to life, you’d say, “It doesn’t matter what happens!” … The very reason we struggle with the dilemma is because we know how valuable life is. (184)

Let’s consider the moral options that GT imagines. They reject option 1, some strange form of laissez-faire, “Whatever you do is fine with me” kind of morality. This straw man morality exists only in GT’s imaginations.

GT hope you’ll pick option 2 and say that an objectively correct answer exists, and our only problem is calling forth this answer from the phlogiston or ectoplasm or wherever it lives. The problem is that they admit that they have no reliable voodoo to do so.

It’s up to the skeptic to point to option 3, the obvious natural explanation: we all share a common sense of morality, and ambiguous or subtle moral puzzles can separate us into opposing camps. There is no objectively correct answer.

The fact that there are difficult problems in morality doesn’t disprove the existence of objective moral laws any more than difficult problems in science disprove the existence of objective natural laws. (184)

Translation: “Ha! You can’t prove me wrong”—not much of an argument.

Yes, there are difficult problems in science, and there are objective natural laws. Science continually pushes through difficult problems and finds those laws. But you say that’s parallel to our search for objective moral laws?

Show me. Produce one example of a new objective moral law from the last two centuries. Eternal aphorisms like the Golden Rule don’t count because they’re old. And if it’s a new development (say, “slavery is bad” or “no genocide”), it can’t be unchanging and is therefore not objective.

The attempted parallel with natural laws fails.

If just one moral obligation exists (such as don’t murder, or don’t rape, or don’t torture babies), then the Moral Law exists. If the Moral Law exists, then so does the Moral Law Giver. (184)

GT are getting desperate now and have ignored the collateral damage. They’ve thrown out of the life raft any claim that this Moral Law is reliably accessible—or even accessible at all. Their objective morality has become a useless bit of trivia—something that exists but might as well not for all the good it does us. They have no answer for God’s Old Testament rampages and moral errors. As a result, they have discarded any claim to be honestly searching for the truth. This is all to make the claim, “Well, you haven’t proven that objective moral truth is impossible, so God could still exist!”

Would God want to rule the moral wasteland that you’ve left him?

Confusion #4—absolute morals (what) vs. a relative culture (how)

Morality varies by culture—yes, I agree.

Confusion #5—absolute morals vs. moral disagreements

GT note that there are contentious moral issues within society.

Some think abortion is acceptable while others think it’s murder. But just because there are different opinions about abortion doesn’t mean morality is relative. (185)

Not for sure, but it’s a good clue. This is the “You haven’t proven me wrong!” argument again. The burden of proof is yours.

Next up, GT handwave that “each side defends what they think is an absolute moral value.” Redefinition! No one believes in relative morality, and morality is now only absolute morality.

On the heels of that is another redefinition. If you disagree with GT’s anti-abortion stance,

This moral disagreement [about abortion] exists because some people are suppressing the Moral Law in order [to] justify what they want to do. (186)

So if you’re pro-choice, you’re just wrong. As if the arrogance couldn’t get any greater, morality has devolved to become that which GT believe.

I can’t take any more of the same childish errors over and over, so I’m done with this chapter. I’m amazed that the Christian flock is content to be fed such pablum.

I don’t have enough intellectual dishonesty
to be a Christian.
— title of one Amazon review of
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist

Image credit: Wikipedia

How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? Geisler and Turek’s Moral Argument (Part 3).

Last updated on: December 8, 2015 at 6:52 pm By Bob Seidensticker

We move on to dabble in history.

Founding U.S. documents

About the U. S. Declaration of Independence, Geisler and Turek (GT) say:

Notice the phrase, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” In other words, the Founding Fathers believed that human rights are God-given. (page 175)

Nope. “Creator” to the Founding Fathers wasn’t the Yahweh of the Old Testament, it was a hands-off, deist god. The Declaration is of no help to the Christian cause because it makes clear who’s in charge: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Unlike Harry Truman, God doesn’t have a sign on his desk that reads, “The buck stops here.” God is irrelevant to the American experiment.

And an appeal to the Declaration is always a sign that the apologists couldn’t find what they wanted in the Constitution. The Constitution remains the supreme law of the land, while the Declaration is just an important historical document with no role in government today.

Objective morality in the Nuremburg trials

If there were no such international morality that transcended the laws of the secular German government, then the Allies would have had no grounds to condemn the Nazis. (175)

The Allies won, and they imposed their laws—is that surprising? Isn’t that how wars work? Whose laws do you think they should’ve used?

In other words, we couldn’t have said that the Nazis were absolutely wrong unless we knew what was absolutely right. But we do know they were absolutely wrong, so the Moral Law must exist. (175)

Who said the Nazis were absolutely wrong? The Allies said they were regular wrong, we had a trial of 24 German leaders, and we imposed justice from our perspective. This wasn’t a sham trial with summary death sentences for all—half were given sentenced to hang, three were acquitted, and most of the rest were given prison terms. Centuries from now, future historians might criticize those sentences from their perspective.

The Problem of Evil

GT move on to address what Christians often admit is their toughest intellectual challenge: why does a good god allow so much bad in the world?

GT respond with an analogy from C. S. Lewis: “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” God’s actions may appear wrong, but that can only be because we’re comparing them against an absolute good.

The only straight lines we can make are imperfectly straight lines; similarly, the only moral standards come from our own not-objective rules. GT have again only allowed themselves the option of imagining one kind of morality, absolute or objective morality.

Notice also that to make this argument, GT must grant our claim that there is a problem of evil, which puts God in a bad light.

Lewis, like you and me, can only detect injustice because there’s an unchanging standard of justice written on our hearts. (176)

Another redefinition—now the Moral Law has become unchanging. But I don’t know what’s unchanging about it. Is slavery wrong? It sure wasn’t back in the Old Testament. Same for genocide. Same for polygamy. I certainly think that slavery is wrong for all time, but the Bible won’t support that.

The Holocaust

GT want to know, How do Jewish atheists argue against the Holocaust? Are a critique about a meal and a critique about the Holocaust both mere opinions?

That works for me. Perhaps there’s a word difference that will capture the strongly held or deeply felt nature of judgments about the Holocaust. Regardless, this still doesn’t get GT their desired objective morality. The natural explanation of morality works fine: we have a shared idea of morality, and killing millions of people is almost universally accepted as wrong.

GT can’t let go of the idea of a moral law that’s not objective. They imagine that a claim like “racism is wrong” has no objective meaning without the Moral Law. This chapter is 25 pages long, but they could distill it to a page if they cut out the repeated errors. For example:

Unless there’s an unchanging standard of good, there is no such thing as objective evil. But since we all know that evil exists, then so does the Moral Law. (177)

If the Moral Law doesn’t exist, then there’s no moral difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and that of Hitler. (178)

[C. S. Lewis said,] “If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.” (178)

Suppose I think it’s okay to kill mice in my house, and you say that one must trap them humanely and set them free outside. There’s a moral difference; is that impossible without a Real Morality?

Ordinary, natural morality is quite capable of distinguishing between Mother Teresa and Hitler (let’s assume that Mother Teresa is the shining example of goodness, as they falsely imagine). GT refuse to consider that the natural explanation even exists, let alone explains morality better than any claim to objective morality. This is the Assumed Objectivity fallacy—either assuming without evidence that objective morals exist or assuming that everyone knows and accepts objective morality.

Moral relativists? Hoist by their own petard!

GT imagine a chaotic world where abortion, birth control, and sex were outlawed. What could atheists say about this?

So by rebelling against the Moral Law, atheists have, ironically, undermined their grounds for rebelling against anything. In fact, without the Moral Law, no one has any objective grounds for being for or against anything! (181)

Assumed Objectivity fallacy. We don’t need objective grounds for morality because the regular kind works.

They continue by arguing that excuses for breaking moral rules are evidence for the Moral Law. Excuses like “It was just a white lie” or “I had to steal the bread because I was starving” or even “I had to shoot him because he had a gun himself” point to the Moral Law.

Nope—these excuses point to a shared natural morality. There is no need to imagine an objective morality.

I don’t remember ever seeing so much blather that could be shut down so quickly, in Gordian Knot fashion. Just drop the demand for objective morality, and this empty argumentation blows away like irrational smoke.

To be concluded in Part 4.

I assert that if you are depressed
after being exposed to the cosmic perspective,
you started your day with an unjustifiably large ego.
— Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Image credit: Wikimedia

How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? Geisler and Turek’s Moral Argument.

Last updated on: September 22, 2015 at 10:06 am By Bob Seidensticker

This is a continuation of my response to the Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Begin with part 1 here.

Geisler and Turek (GT) spend 25 pages giving their argument for a divine source for morality. I’ve written a lot about the weak Christian justification for morality before, but this is the most thorough version of the Christian argument to which I’ve responded.

That doesn’t mean that it’s well thought out. The chapter is titled, “Mother Teresa vs. Hitler,” and we’re already off to a bad start. Mother Teresa isn’t the saint that GT imagine and has received much criticism. She wasn’t much concerned about healing her patients or even preventing their pain. She saw her patients’ suffering as a moral crucible and said, “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.” The goal of modern medicine is precisely the opposite—not to celebrate suffering and disease but to fight it.

GT’s moral arguments are shallow, and the same few mistakes are made repeatedly. I’ll give a fair amount of the argument rather than simplifying it, in the hope that this prepares you for similar arguments. Their argument is aimed at the choir. The thinking is confused and sloppy and only serves only as a pat on the head to assure Christians that they’ve backed the right horse.

At this point in the book, GT has given us their Cosmological and Teleological arguments. Their third is the Moral Law argument:

1. Every law has a law giver.

2. There is a Moral Law.

3. Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver. (page 171)

Newton’s Second Law of Motion (f = ma) is also a law. Must there be a physics law giver? GT will say Yes, but I need evidence. With GT, we rarely go beyond an intuitive, kinda-feels-right type of argument, but I suppose that works well with their target audience.

The theme running through this argument is a Moral Law that mimics the Greek god Proteus, changing shape whenever we grab it. The Moral Law is a claim of objective morality, but “objective morality” is never clearly defined. Let’s start with William Lane Craig’s definition of objective morality: “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.”

And let me define my opposing hypothesis, the natural morality position. Morality comes from two places. Our programming (from evolution) explains the traits that are largely common across all societies such as the Golden Rule. We’re all the same species, so it’s not surprising that we respond in similar ways to moral challenges. Our customs (from society) explain society-specific attitudes to issues like capital punishment, sex, blasphemy, honor, and so on. I hope to argue that natural morality explains what we see better than GT’s Moral Law hypothesis.

How Much Faith to Be an Atheist? (A Response to Geisler and Turek)

Last updated on: September 2, 2015 at 12:02 pm By Bob Seidensticker

I’d like to respond to the Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. It continues to be popular and needs a rebuttal.

What does “faith” mean?

Let’s pause for a moment to consider the word “faith” in the title. Atheists will charge that it means belief poorly grounded in evidence or even in contradiction to the evidence. To rehabilitate their poor relationship with evidence, many Christian apologists today argue the opposite. For example, Christian podcaster Jim Wallace says it’s “trusting the best inference from the evidence.” Presbyterian leader A. A. Hodge said, “Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.”

But the very title of Geisler and Turek’s book admits the opposite. They “don’t have enough faith to be an atheist,” and they’re not apologetic about it. “Faith” here has returned to our old, familiar definition: belief poorly grounded on evidence. In the Introduction, the authors make this clear: “The less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge” (p. 26).

Characteristics of atheists (it’s not pretty)

I’ll refer to the book as GT (Geisler and Turek). Page numbers refer to the 2004 Crossway edition.

GT is certain that many or most atheists are really theists. Atheists already have enough evidence—they just willfully refuse to accept it.

[For many nonbelievers] it’s not that they don’t have evidence to believe, it’s that they don’t want to believe. (page 30)

Many non-Christians … take a “blind leap of faith” that their non-Christian beliefs are true simply because they want them to be true. (p. 30)

What we have here is a will problem—some people, despite the evidence, simply don’t want to admit there’s a Designer. (p. 112)

They have the evidence but refuse to believe it? Then what you’re describing is not an atheist.

He argues that even scientists have an agenda:

By admitting God, Darwinists would be admitting that they are not the highest authority when it comes to truth. Currently, in this technologically advanced world, scientists are viewed by the public as the revered authority figures—the new priests who make a better life possible and who comprise the sole source of objective truth. (p. 162)

So biologists can’t admit that God exists, not because of evidence, but because they’d be forced give up their authority? Religion has never taught us anything new about reality. Even if all scientists became Christian, science rather than theology would still be how we’d understand the world.

GT drops a final turd as it wrestles with the evidence necessary to believe:

God has provided enough evidence in this life to convince anyone willing to believe, yet he has also left some ambiguity so as not to compel the unwilling. (p. 31)

But Romans 1:20 says there’s no ambiguity: “God’s invisible qualities … have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” You’d better confer with your Bible to get your story straight.

GT imagines that God plays games about evidence for his existence. Maybe God doesn’t want it too easy so that everyone gets it, and heaven gets crowded. He wants to keep out the riff-raff so heaven remains an exclusive gated community.

This becomes the free-will argument: God won’t force you to believe, because that would be an imposition. Of course, being forced to accept the existence of the stranger in the car ahead of you is not an imposition worth mentioning, but being forced to know the existence of the coolest guy in the universe would be a burden, so it’d be unfair to impose that on you. Or something.

GT provides no evidence but simply makes a sweeping claim, a claim that could be made by any believer. He could just as easily say that Allah or Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster has given you plenty of evidence, so don’t tell me otherwise.

Hedonism

But why would atheists reject clear evidence for God? GT has uncovered the selfish reasons:

By ruling out the supernatural, Darwinists can avoid the possibility that anything is morally prohibited. (p. 163)

So atheists are just hedonists with no concern about the consequences of their actions?

If the atheists are right, then we might as well lie, cheat, and steal to get what we want because this life is all there is, and there are no consequences in eternity. (p. 68)

Wow—what planet are these guys from? How many atheists think that it’s fine to lie, cheat, and steal? Are the prisons filled with atheists? Do atheists not care about their reputations with their family and friends? Do atheists not have consciences?

Since you’ll agree, after a moment’s reflection, that atheists are indeed moral, maybe you should drop the “atheists have no morals” claim and wonder where they get their morals from. I predict it’s the same place where you do.

Atheism does indeed mean that “there are no consequence in eternity,” but (dang it!) there are consequences right here and now, so I’d better cancel my Saturday night orgy ’n bacchanalia.

[Instead of teaching Islam] wouldn’t it be better to teach [kids] the religious truth that God wants them to love their neighbors? (p. 68)

GT is probably thinking of verses like Leviticus 19:18, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself,” but “neighbor” meant fellow Jew in this case. In a few cases, neighborly affection was demanded for non-Jews living in Israel. But we can’t twist either interpretation to mean everyone in the world, which is the modern interpretation that GT would like to impose.

When it comes to non-Jewish neighbors, God thinks of slavery or genocide more often than love.

GT talks about biology a lot (more later), but here is the connection between what atheists think and morality.

By means of a one-sided biology curriculum, we teach kids that there’s really no difference between any human being and a pig. After all, if we’re merely the product of blind naturalistic forces—if no deity created us with any special significance—then we are nothing more than pigs with big brains. (p. 68)

Being scientifically accurate is such a pain. Who’s got time for the research? But since you won’t do it, I will: pigs and humans share a common ancestor from 95 million years ago. No, humans aren’t pigs with big brains.

If the clumsily made point is that evolution explains everything with no need for a designer to grant some sort of transcendental moral value, then yes, that’s true. Humans are no more special in a nonexistent god’s mind than pigs are.

I see no problem with that. Morality works just fine with no god—look up the word and tell me what part assumes a god. (But while we’re going off on tangents, I do see a problem with your moral equivalence between a single fertilized human egg cell and a newborn baby. In fact, there’s a spectrum of personhood.)

Frank Turek’s next train wreck

I’ll be following up with more posts rebutting the statements in this book, but let me touch on Turek’s most recent book, Stealing from God. It’s an expanded version of his CRIMES argument, an acronym for Cosmos, Reason, Information, Morality, Evil, and Science. He attempts to argue that these categories are strong evidence for the Christian position. I disagree.

Continued in part 2.

People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof
but on the basis of what they find attractive.
— Blaise Pascal
(ironically, quoted by GT on p. 51)

Image credit: mamabishop

Christians Blaming God for Disasters

Last updated on: June 22, 2015 at 8:43 am By Bob Seidensticker

In the Jonah story, Jonah doesn’t like the task God assigned for him. He flees in a boat, and then a terrible storm comes up. The sailors draw lots (apparently a reliable way of discovering the truth) and discover that Jonah is the problem, which Jonah admits. They throw cargo overboard but that’s not enough. The storm finally stops only when they throw Jonah over.

God caused the storm. The Bible even admits that God causes all evil:

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, Jehovah, do all these things (Isaiah 45:7).

Is it not from the mouth of El Elyon that both calamities and good things come? (Lamentations 3:38)

This idea that disasters are caused by God continued in the medieval period. With the Black Death, which killed roughly half of Europe’s population from 1346–53, the Christian continent again thought that only God’s rage could explain the pandemic. The best way to protect oneself from this terrible disease was penitential activity such as public and bloody flagellation, pious commemoration of the dead, and persecution of those groups that God was probably angry at such as the poor, beggars, or minorities like Catalans or Jews.

Our approach to evil today

Things are different today, with modern science to tell us what causes storms and disease.

Or maybe not. When it suits them, some apologists and politicians will dismiss the science and fall back on superstition.

Remember what Jerry Falwell said on Pat Robertson’s television show two days after the 9/11 attack:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way—all of them have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say, “You helped this happen.”

Remember Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005? God was obviously mad about something, but what was it? Maybe racism (Louis Farrakhan’s conclusion) or abortion (Pat Robertson) or America’s insufficient support for Israel (an Israeli rabbi). Or, of course, the gays.

Remember the 2010 Haiti earthquake that killed 300,000? It was the result of that pact they made with the devil. Just ask Pat Robertson—he’ll tell you.

Remember the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa that killed over 10,000 people? Reverend Ron Baity of North Carolina said that God was furious about same-sex marriage.

If you think for one skinny minute, God is going to stand idly by and allow [same-sex marriage] to go forward without repercussions, you better back up and rethink this situation.… You think Ebola is bad now, just wait.

(For even more examples of everything that’s the gays’ fault, check out this list from The Advocate.)

Remember when Texas governor Rick Perry prayed for an end to the 2011 drought in Texas? A California State Assembly member now thinks that God is similarly involved with her state’s ongoing drought, and she makes clear what God is livid about this time: abortion.

Remember John Hagee’s groundless fulminating about the “Four Blood Moons”?

A little reason

Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson both backed away from their hysterical 9/11 slander. The first major rain after Rick Perry’s 3-day public Days of Prayer came six months later. And who knows what nonsense Hagee will invent as he claims victory after the final eclipse this September.

We know what causes hurricanes, lunar eclipses, disease, and droughts. We understand terrorism. We know that homosexuality is natural. God isn’t part of the equation. Pointing to God as the puppet master behind the world’s disasters is an empty claim. It’s like pointing to Halley’s Comet as the harbinger for the victory of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

It’s hard to believe that it’s the twenty-first century, and Christian leaders still make these claims. Or that their fans accept the claims and then come back for more after they fail. And what does it say about their God that they can easily imagine that he’s behind all the natural evil in the world?

I can do little but suggest that that’s what our imperfect brains can do, that we’re all susceptible, and that we must be continuously on guard. And to offer this bit of insight from author and professor Kathryn Gin Lum:

This instinct [to fear an angry God] is also why conservative evangelicals care so deeply about same-sex marriage and abortion even though they don’t engage in those activities themselves. It’s why people who are anti-big-government want the government to intervene in affairs that don’t seem to have that much to do with their own lives. This is why some evangelicals take a laissez-faire view of the financial markets but a highly interventional view of the government’s role in policing others’ individual choices.

I love seeing the Universe described by math.
I also love seeing it described by Michelangelo and Beethoven.
I’m appalled at seeing it described by William Lane Craig and Ray Comfort.
— commenter Richard S. Russell

Image credit: Wikimedia, public domain

Kreeft’s Argument from Absolute Conscience Fails Absolutely

Last updated on: June 15, 2015 at 7:53 am By Bob Seidensticker

Philosopher Peter Kreeft says that his Argument from Conscience (PDF) is one of only two arguments for the existence of God in the Bible. Its biblical pedigree doesn’t do it any favors, however, and it fares no better than the rest.

Kreeft summarizes the argument:

The simple, intuitive point of the argument from conscience is that everyone in the world knows, deep down, that he is absolutely obligated to be and do good, and this absolute obligation could come only from God. Thus everyone knows God, however obscurely, by this moral intuition, which we usually call conscience. Conscience is the voice of God in the soul.

Kreeft defines conscience as “the knowledge of my absolute obligation to goodness.”

Absolute obligation? Where did this come from? That’s not how I define the word, nor is it how the dictionary defines it. This qualifier exists only in Kreeft’s definition.

The bad people

What does Kreeft do with people like me who aren’t on board? He puts us into two bins: (1) those who have no conscience or a defective conscience and (2) those who know the truth of Kreeft’s words but repress this knowledge.

And what about the third bin, those who see obligation but not absolute obligation? There is no third bin. Kreeft says these people actually understand God’s will because the Bible says so. You know the kind—those people “who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them” (Rom. 1:18–19).

(Is it just me or does it seem circular to assume the existence of God in an argument about the existence of God? And is it just me or have I been labeled as someone “who suppresses the truth by their wickedness”?)

He continues with the assumption of absoluteness and says that one’s conscience has absolute moral authority. I appreciate that I’m compelled to listen to my conscience, but (again) where does the absoluteness come in?

Maybe we’re defining things differently. To me, an absolute obligation isn’t simply an important or strongly felt obligation. The key is its grounding. It’s more than grounded within me (such as, “it’s just wrong to chew with your mouth open”). It’s more than grounded within society (such as, “it’s illegal to pass a stop sign in a car without stopping completely”). It’s grounded in an absolute way that transcends both me and society.

I see no evidence that one’s conscience is an absolute moral authority. Kreeft provides none and simply asserts the claim.

Source of morals

Back to Kreeft’s argument, quoted in summary above. He imagines that he’s firmly established that the conscience is an absolute moral authority and moves on to the second premise: “the only possible source of absolute authority is an absolutely perfect will, a divine being.” But since he’s given no reason to imagine that the absolute authority he refers to exists, he has no argument.

Given the imagined absolute conscience, can ordinary people reliably access its absolute truth? Kreeft admits that they can’t but says that God has “revealed to us clear moral maps (Scripture and Church).” If our conscience tells us to reject these maps, that’s the indication of a faulty conscience.

Hold on—scripture and church are “clear moral maps”?

Nonsense. The Christian church is dividing faster than amoebas. There are now 42,000 denominations of Christianity and counting. Which one(s) are correct? Christians can’t even decide among themselves.

And let’s check the hypothesis that scripture is a clear moral map. Are Christians of a unified voice on the topic of abortion? Same-sex marriage? Euthanasia? Stem-cell research? Capital punishment? The use of torture? Any divisive social issue? Scripture is a sock puppet that you can make say just about anything you want, and Christians on all sides of these issues do just that.

I see two possibilities: (1) absolute morality exists though we can’t reliably access it or (2) there is no absolute morality but we have a shared (and imperfect) moral instinct. Kreeft’s argument has done nothing to justify the supernatural explanation. I recommend the natural one.

Secular schools can never be tolerated
because such schools have no religious instruction,
and a general moral instruction
without a religious foundation is built on air;
consequently, all character training and religion
must be derived from faith.
— Adolf Hitler

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/29/12.)

Image credit: Hans Gerwitz, flickr, CC

C. S. Lewis Gets Morality Wrong

Last updated on: June 14, 2015 at 3:38 pm By Bob Seidensticker

C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity is a fundamental work in Christian apologetics. Many Christians point to this book as a turning point in their coming to faith, but Lewis’s ideas on morality need work.

Lewis says that there is a “real” right and wrong. If this were not so, how could we declare the Nazis wrong? Find a man who rejects this premise, Lewis says, and you will quickly detect the hypocrisy. He may break a promise to you, but as soon as you do the same, he declares that that’s not fair and falls back on a “real” rightness.

But it doesn’t work that way. “Right” and “wrong” come with an implied point of view. Of course I say that the Nazis were wrong, but when I do so, the word wrong is grounded in my point of view. (Kind of obvious, right? Whose point of view would I be using but my own?)

That statement is simply a less clumsy version of, “The Nazis were wrong according to Bob.” There is neither a need to imagine nor justification for an absolute standard.

Lewis doesn’t use the term “objective morality” (he wrote about 70 years ago, which explains a few odd phrasings), but I believe this is what he means by “real right and wrong.” Let’s use William Lane Craig’s definition for objective morality: “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.”

Despite Lewis’s claims, we needn’t imagine that morality is objectively grounded. We see this simply by looking in the dictionary. The definition of “morality” (or “right” or “wrong”) doesn’t require any sense of objective grounding or absoluteness.

Like Lewis, I insist that you keep your commitments to me, that you follow the basic rules of civility, and so on. When you don’t, I’m annoyed not because you violated an absolute law; you violated my law. It ain’t much, but it’s all I’ve got, and that’s enough to explain the morality we see around us.

To the person who insists that objective morality exists, I say: show me. Take a vexing moral issue—abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, capital punishment, sex before marriage, torture, and so on—and show us the objectively true moral position. If you want to say that objective morality exists but it’s not reliably accessible, then what good is it? This kind of objective morality that looks nonexistent might as well be.

When we see a widespread sense of a shared morality within society, are we seeing universal moral truth? Or are we seeing universally held moral programming? That latter explanation is natural and does the job without the need to imagine an objective moral truth that doesn’t exist.

Evolution explains why part of morals is built-in. What we think of as proper morals has survival value. It’s not surprising that evolution would select for a moral instinct in social animals like humans. Evolution is often caricatured as being built on the principle “might makes right.” No, natural selection doesn’t favor might but fitness to the environment. A human tribe with trust and compassion might outcompete a more savage rival tribe without those traits.

We see this moral instinct in other animals. In a study of capuchin monkeys, for example, those given cucumber for completing a task complained when others got grapes (a preferred food) for the same task. These monkeys understood fairness just like a human. (An excellent video of the monkey’s reaction is here @1:18.)

As an aside, I think it’s a mistake to look down on other primates and their “less-developed” sense of morality. The same powerful brain that gives us honor and patriotism, justice and mercy, love and altruism, and other moral instincts that we’re proud of also gives us racism, self-pity, greed, resentment, hate, contempt, bitterness, jealousy, and all the others on the other side of the coin. No other species has perfected violence, slavery, cruelty, revenge, torture, and war to the extent that humans have.

If we exceed the morality of our primate cousins on the positive side, we also do so on the negative side. Let’s show a little humility.

Human morality is nicely explained by an instinctive and shared sense of the Golden Rule plus rules that are specific to each culture. The dictionary doesn’t demand any objective grounding in its definition of morality, and neither should we.

I believe in Christianity
as I believe that the sun has risen:
not only because I see it,
but because by it I see everything else.
— C. S. Lewis

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/17/12.)

Image credit: ho visto nina volare, flickr, CC

Theology, the Queen Clown of Sciences (Plus the Argument From Dullness)

Last updated on: May 28, 2015 at 12:06 am By Bob Seidensticker

Father Dwight Longenecker has developed a new Christian apologetic, the Argument from Dullness. Here it is: atheism is really dull.

That’s it. There’s not really any substantive conclusion like “God exists” or “The gospel story is historically accurate” like the typical apologetic.

Genesis

I may have instigated this groundbreaking new argument. I wrote two posts about the new Pew study showing how religion would change over the next 35 years and had a few discouraging words for a commentary Longenecker had written. I alerted him in case he wanted to respond. Nope. He finds theism/atheism arguments to be dull—“one gigantic yawn,” he said.

So I like intellectual arguments and discussion, and he doesn’t. That’s fine. But apparently that inspired him to write “Atheism is Just So… Dull” a couple of days later.

The problem

Here’s the problem as Father Dwight sees it.

[Atheists are] all so serious all the time. So unimaginative. So pedantic and literal and dull.

I mean, what can be more tiresome than someone who’s always rabbiting on about “Facts” or “Evidence” or “Arguments for the Existence of God…”

Yeah, that’s atheists all over—trying to sift reality from nonsense. It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it. You make the incredible claims and don’t much care to back them up with evidence, and the atheists must hold you to account.

Stop being so seriously dangerous to society, and we won’t have to be so serious in return. You’re a clown saying, “Turn that frown upside down!” but we’re cleaning up your mess. For example:

“In God We Trust” as a motto in a country governed by a secular constitution
Christianity in government, with politicians climbing over each other to show how Christian they are and brag how little they care about science
Creationism in school
Ken Ham whining that his Ark project can’t both discriminate in hiring and get state tax benefits
pedophile priests
Catholic takeover of hospitals, where Catholic dogma overrides patients’ needs
Catholic opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage

The wall of separation between church and state is a dike leaking with a thousand constitutional insults. Father Dwight is the Cat in the Hat who leaves a wake of destruction, but he’s fun! Who cares if his worldview is correct?

Religion is interesting!

Dwight lists examples of how fun religion is, but atheists can see eccentric religions as an anthropologist just like any Catholic.

“We have Christmas with all that good stuff like presents and St Nicholas and Black Peter”! (You mean the Black Peter who hauls off bad children in a sack back home to Spain? Yeah, fun.)
“They swim naked in the Ganges and say [it’s] something holy—and are they wrong?” (Hemant Mehta said: “Yes, they’re completely wrong. I’ve been to the Ganges. It ain’t holy. It’s disgusting.”)
Jews have cool hats! And Catholics have fun hats, too! (Don’t forget the dresses. You do know that everyone else is laughing at Catholics’ outlandish clergy, not with them, right? They look like wizards.)
“Snake handlers and people who speak in tongues and faith healers and televangelists”! (Yeah—Protestantism’s greatest hits. These are no asset, bro.)
“Even the wacko religions are more interesting than atheism”! He lists Mormons’ special underwear, Scientologists’ e-meters, and Jehovah’s Witnesses’ obsession with the End. (You want wacko? How about a pope that rejected condom use to help prevent the spread of HIV? Or the Catholic hierarchy that moves pedophile priests around to avoid prosecution? Or a church that thinks nothing about the carrying capacity of the earth and fights against not just abortions but contraception as well?)
Cathedrals! (Each is a celebration of Man’s inventiveness and skill.)
“Show me an atheist building as wonderfully kooky as a Baroque church”! (The Large Hadron Collider—$10 billion of shameless awesomeness.)

Atheism is one big denial of most everything that is infinite, that is wonderful, that is far out and unbelievable and unbelievably true. Religion, on the other hand, is interesting because, rather than close down all that is infinite and wonderful and strange and inexplicable it opens up to all that.

Wrong. Religion is mental shackles, it’s blinders, it’s make-believe. Drop religion to see reality clearly. Read stories of ex-Christians who are much happier now that they can follow the evidence where it leads rather than shoulder religion’s cognitive dissonance.

Religion is constrained by Man’s limited imagination. Replace the God goggles with science glasses and you get the universe.

Rebuttal

The initial post got pushback from the Friendly Atheist and Danthropology, so Father Dwight published a rebuttal in which he doubled down on his original position: Christianity is fun, while atheism is “mind crushingly boring.”

(I can imagine the note sent home from his second grade teacher: “Little Dwight got a gold star in art class for his balloon animals, but he didn’t complete his arithmetic. He needs to work on his attitude. He called it ‘mind crushingly boring.’”)

This is one of the distinctive marks of a true religion: [its] followers are joyful. They know how to laugh.

Hey there, starving boy—here’s a Bible and a happy-face shirt! Now let’s see a smile!

Joyful is nice, but don’t give me that in place of accuracy. I hate to be a buzz kill, but is it true? First show me that your supernatural beliefs are correct—y’know, sift through all that boring argumentation and evidence—and then we’ll have something to celebrate.

[Believers] take God seriously, but they do not take themselves seriously.

You think this describes all Christians? You need to get out more.

[Believers] laugh at the human foibles and frailties in their religion.

That’s what you take from the Bible? The Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the genocide of the Canaanites, advice on how to beat slaves—each a reason for a good chuckle? Don’t have such a dangerous religion and I’ll have more to laugh at.

For anyone to slam atheists as dull
because we rely on evidence and reason
to decipher the truth is hardly a criticism at all.
It’s a sign that the best your side has to offer
is creative fiction.
— Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist

Image credit: Tao WU, flickr, CC