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

Last updated on: October 19, 2019 at 1:05 pm By Bob Seidensticker

This is a continuation of my response to I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek. Though fifteen years old, this book continues to be a bestseller in the category of Christian apologetics. Part 1 of the critique is here.

Morality (Mother Teresa isn’t a good example)

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 (some of those posts are listed below), 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 (well, okay, literally, she is). She has received much criticism. She was little 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 at best is a pat on the head to assure Christians that they’ve backed the right horse.

The Moral Argument

At this point in the book, GT have 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 we 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.

One definition of objective morality . . .

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 will argue here that natural morality explains what we see better than GT’s Moral Law hypothesis.

. . . but wait! There are more!

GT don’t feel obliged to stick with just one definition of objective morality.

When we say the Moral Law exists, we mean that all people are impressed with a fundamental sense of right and wrong. (171)

Redefinition! Now the Moral Law is that which we all feel. I suppose this is an appeal to our moral conscience? The focus is now on people, while William Lane Craig’s definition was on a morality grounded outside people.

Everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations. An absolute moral obligation is something that is binding on all people, at all times, in all places. And an absolute Moral Law implies an absolute Moral Law Giver. (171)

How about “slavery is wrong”? Is that binding on all people, at all times, in all places? I wonder why we didn’t get that from God and, indeed, got the opposite. Apparently in God’s youth, coveting needed prohibiting but not slavery.

Let me invent a term that will get some use as we go through this chapter: the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy. GT declares, “Everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations”? Wrong—the Assumed Objectivity Fallacy is either assuming without evidence that objective morals exist or assuming that everyone knows and accepts objective morality.

Back to GT:

This does not mean that every moral issue has easily recognizable answers. (171)

Redefinition! Now the Moral Law is something that we only dimly feel. The Moral Law is binding on all people . . . but we don’t really know for sure what the Moral Law is saying at every moral fork in the road. That seems unfair—to be bound by a law that we don’t understand—but I suppose GT’s god works in mysterious ways.

The challenge I like to give any believer in objective morality is to take some moral issue of the day—abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, capital punishment—and give us a resolution of the issue that is (1) objectively correct and that (2) everyone can see is correct. Like GT, they justify neither the claim that it exists nor that this Moral Law is reliably accessible. I wonder then, what good is it?

GT’s childlike idea that our morality is objective isn’t supported by the dictionary or everyday experience. Being a grownup is apparently easier for some of us than others.

Continue with part 2.

Other posts responding to Christian views of morality:

If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
they don’t have to worry about the answers.
— Thomas Pynchon

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/17/15.)

Image from thierry ehrmann, CC license

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

Last updated on: September 19, 2019 at 4:13 am 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. Though published in 2004, it continues to be popular (it’s #10 on Amazon’s Christian Apologetics list) 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 said 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 faith 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).

(I explore the ways Christians play games with the definition of “faith” here and critique faith as a way to know things here.)

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 paperback 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)

Someone who has sufficient evidence but refuses to accept it? 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)

(What I’m sure they mean is evolution, not Darwinism, but they insist on speaking childishly to those at the children’s table. The Vridar blog has a helpful summary of why “Darwinism” is incorrect.)

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 they wrestle 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. Maybe he wants to keep out the riffraff 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. This means that being forced to accept the existence of the stranger on the street is not an imposition, 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 answer to the rest of society, let alone 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, which is just one of the reasons I don’t murder people.

[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 94 million years ago. No, we’re not descended from pigs, and 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.)

And presumably “one-sided biology curriculum” is their cute way of saying “rule that says that you need to teach science (and just science) in the science classroom.” Creationism isn’t science—deal with it.

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 another of Frank Turek’s books, 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’ve got a lot to say in response.

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
(this was actually quoted by GT on p. 51)

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/25/15.)

Image from imgur

Silver-Bullet Arguments Against Christianity

Last updated on: November 21, 2019 at 8:10 pm By Bob Seidensticker

Do you remember the series of posts titled, “25 Reasons We Don’t Live in a World with a God”? I had been challenged by a Christian to characterize the evidence he would need to provide to show that God existed. After the typical unfruitful conversation, I realized that I had underestimated what I would need.

For starters, I would need a crowdsourced revelation of God. This is orders of magnitude more than any religious apologist can provide, but it’s still not enough. Non-God explanations for this apparent revelation are still more plausible—for example, that aliens are tricking us. (Imagine taking our technology just 200 years into the past to overawe the populace, rather like Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Now imagine aliens a thousand years more advanced than us. Or a million years.)

I realized that I couldn’t accept that God exists given certain facts in our world. Our world looks like a world without the supernatural, and I’d need the apologist to first change those fundamental facts about our world. That is, show me that I don’t live in the world I’m living in. Only then I could consider his arguments.

For example, some Christians want the government to help support their religion with Creationism in science class or prayers before the city council meeting. If God existed, Christians wouldn’t do this, because God and his demands/needs would be obvious.

For example, there are natural disasters. If God existed, the actions of his world wouldn’t be so destructive.

For example, the Bible story keeps rebooting. If God existed, the Bible would be unambiguous, noncontradictory, and simple.

Thirteen posts later, I realized a couple of things. First, that getting to 25 reasons wasn’t that hard. I have notes for dozens more. And second, I realized that the category I was exploring was a little confusing.

Reboot

I want to relabel these arguments “silver-bullet arguments.”* Silver bullets were thought to have magical powers and be able to kill supernatural creatures like werewolves that were invulnerable to other weapons. The idea is that a single one of these arguments should be enough to defeat Christianity’s supernatural claims.

End of story, game over, mic drop.

How this works in practice

The way debates often work is that the Christian apologist offers a Christian argument they find compelling. Then the atheist points out flaws in that argument, and the Christian responds as best they can (often confusing a rebuttal with an effective rebuttal) and then offers another. The Christian is typically trying to make a cumulative case. They don’t claim that any of their arguments by itself will be enough. Rather, they hope that each provokes a “Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that” reaction that will eventually create enough evidence to tip the scale in their favor.

The atheist’s position is different. We do have single arguments that should shut down the debate, lots of them. The Christian might want to return to their game plan of gradually adding weight to their side of the balance (in their mind, anyway), but by cooperating, the atheist lets them off the hook. The atheist is entitled to continue hammering on just the one argument, which can’t be left standing if the Christian is to claim any reasonable victory.

It’s these silver-bullet arguments that I want to highlight. I think recasting these arguments this way will have several benefits.

“Silver-bullet arguments” is easier to understand that the God World argument.
There will be just one argument per post, with the argument name in the title (instead of “Part 14,” for example), which will make it more obvious to readers what the post is about.
The Dark Lord to whom I pledge allegiance (I speak of Google, of course) will more clearly understand what each post is about if each sticks to just one argument.

**What’s not a silver-bullet argument**

Lots of topics that I like to talk about won’t be silver-bullet arguments: a rebuttal to a Christian apologetic argument, commentary on social or civil issues (same-sex marriage, abortion, church/state separation), stupid things Christian leaders say, how the brain works (or doesn’t), and so on.

Silver-bullet arguments must be (1) pro-atheism arguments that (2) are broad enough that Christianity as it is understood by most Christians can’t coexist with it.

Christian response

I’m certain that pretty much zero Christians will agree that any of these are indeed silver-bullet arguments, but I can’t be constrained by them. I think I’m much closer to being an objective observer than they are. I’ll do my best to be fair as I invite Christians to point out errors in the arguments or loopholes in which the Christian god could still exist. Of course, I encourage the same of atheist readers.

Are there silver-bullet Christian arguments as well? Bring those up as well.

I apologize for the long introduction, but with that in place, we can continue our list of arguments.

On to part 26.

As was said of the Puritans,
they love religious liberty so much
that they want to keep it all to themselves.
— Freedom From Religion Foundation

Appendix: Silver-bullet arguments so far

Image from Mitya Ivanov, CC license
.

When Christians Blame God for Disasters

Last updated on: July 9, 2019 at 2:55 pm 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 (which is portrayed in the Bible as 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 (see the painting above), 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 2013–15 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 in 2015 thought that God was similarly involved with her state’s severe drought, and she made clear what God was 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 Hagee ignored the failure of his Four Blood Moons hysteria and launched off into flogging some other groundless catastrophe.

Do these Christians know their own Bible so poorly that they’ve forgotten this verse?

The prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. (Deuteronomy 18:20)

(Maybe it’s not these Christian readers of tea leaves that have forgotten the Bible but their own timid followers who keep giving them attention and money.)

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? What catastrophe could possibly happen that God’s followers wouldn’t bounce back and praise him for his fabulousness?

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

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 6/22/15.)

Image credit: Wikimedia, public domain

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

Last updated on: June 10, 2019 at 9:20 am By Bob Seidensticker

Father Dwight Longenecker (a Patheos blogger in the Catholic channel) 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 respond with “Atheism is Just So… Dull.”

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 certainly aren’t. 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 bragging how little they care about science plus a de facto religious test for public office.
Creationism in schools
Ken Ham’s Ark project allowed to 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 whether his supernatural 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.)
“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”! (I give you 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.

And atheism is boring

Father Dwight’s initial post got pushback from the Friendly Atheist and Danthropology, so he published a rebuttal in which he doubled down on his original position: Christianity is fun, while atheism is “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? You’ve got a god cobbled together from human foibles and frailties.

Don’t have such a dangerous religion and we’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

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/27/15.)

Image from Tao WU, CC license
.

The Future of Christianity and Atheism

Last updated on: June 10, 2019 at 3:47 am By Bob Seidensticker

Ethiopian Christians

A Pew Research study, “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050,” makes interesting predictions about how religion will change.

Part 1 discussed some of the key conclusions:

Christianity will be largely African by 2050. By that time, Africa will have more than twice as many Christians as North America, the second-most-Christian continent.
Christianity’s days as the world’s most popular religion are numbered. By 2050, Islam will have almost caught up.
While “Unaffiliated,” the category that contains atheists, will drop slightly worldwide during this period because of the greater baby-making capability of Christians and Muslims, the story in the U.S. will be quite different. By 2050, Christianity will drop (78% of the population to 66%) and Unaffiliated will be the big winner, with an increase from 16% to 26%.

Could upcoming changes in America predict how the whole world will go?

Notice where these worldwide demographic changes are coming from: more babies. Islam will soon surpass Christianity not because Islam explains reality better or because Allah is the one true god, but for no more profound reason than that Muslims are making more babies. (Which is also largely how Christianity became #1.)

The fertility rate is now 3.1 children per woman for Muslims and 2.7 for Christians. One option for Christians nervous about these changes is to have more babies, which is what the Quiverfull Movement is all about.

But this baby arms race won’t last much longer. Worldwide fertility was 5.0 in 1950, it’s 2.5 now, and it will reach replacement level of 2.1 (the fertility rate of a stable population) by 2050 (source, p. 25).

Demographic changes in religion are now driven by fertility, but as that factor wanes, what will change? Religion will no longer win simply by cranking out a surplus of indoctrinated babies and will have to compete on an intellectual footing.

To see how this may play out, consider world population charts with a sharp upward bend beginning several centuries ago as clean water technology, sewers, vaccines, antibiotics, and modern medicine reduced infant mortality. Modernity slowly brought the birth rate down, but this happened unevenly through the world. The population in Europe and the United States is now shrinking, and about half of the world population lives in countries with negative population growth, but it is still growing dramatically in other parts of the world, most notably in central Africa. (Religion thrives where social conditions are poor, which is one reason why Christianity and Islam are spreading in central Africa and in Arab countries.)

The drop in fertility rates means that the developing world will follow the West. Might the same secularization now happening in the United States happen there as well? The developing world has adopted Western technologies, they are following Western drops in fertility, and perhaps the secular West—where “no religion” is a viable and growing option to Christianity—will also be their future.

Whether atheism (or simply None of the Above) will continue to make inroads in Christianity as it’s projected to do in America for the next few decades is unclear. What seems almost certain, though, is that the time of fertility-driven growth will be over.

(Instead of Christianity becoming merely irrelevant, I propose a soft landing for it.)

Limitations to predicting the future

Let me pause and note that the Pew Research study is careful to list caveats. The conclusions may be wrong if they’re based on flawed assumptions. For example, Pew doesn’t speculate on what social conditions might drive atheism, and Christianity’s future in China is hard to predict.

Father Longenecker (the author of the “Atheism is Dying Out” post to which I responded last time) adds his own speculations of events that would change the picture. Some make sense—a global war, natural disaster, or Christian revival in the West. And some are ridiculous—God uses magic to convert Muslims to Christianity or makes birth control pills stop working.

Let me add a few on the atheist side of the ledger. Suppose the Catholic Church figured out that preventing a conception isn’t the same thing as killing anything and lightened up on their antagonism against contraception. Or even allowed abortion. Christian denominations have been fine with abortion in decades past. If the rapid rise of the anti-abortion movement in the United States is possible, the reverse is conceivable as well.

Suppose Islam gets its Enlightenment. Christians can (and sometimes do) find support for regressive policies in the Bible that are out of touch with modern society. But if Christians can dismiss nutty stuff from their holy book, Muslims could, too.

Suppose the move to secularism increases. Maybe there’s a snowball effect waiting to happen, and once enough Unaffiliateds or atheists go public with their unbelief, others will follow their lead—first the doubters who attend church because they feel they must and then other believers who unexpectedly have a new option to consider.

What do we actually want to drive the world’s beliefs?

What’s glaringly missing from Longenecker’s analysis is the claim that Christianity will win out because it’s, y’know, true. He could argue that Christianity simply explains the world better.

Nope—he throws in the towel on the intellectual debate and doesn’t even acknowledge it. He’s simply rooting for Christians to have more babies. (I’m beginning to see the value in conservative Christians’ anti-same-sex-marriage redefinition of marriage to be all about making babies.)

Longenecker is like a General Mills executive fretting that Cheerios will lose its popularity in the breakfast cereal aisle. His claims that Catholicism explains life’s big questions are as well grounded as that Cheerios scenario does. Without an intellectual grounding, Catholicism falls in with Cheerios as a lifestyle feature.

Once this baby-driven phase of religious expansion ends in the next few decades so that the effects of intellectual migration are clearer, it will be interesting to see who wins. The early indication doesn’t support religion.

As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what,
is important for some other reason than that it is true,
a whole host of evils is ready to spring up.
— Bertrand Russell

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/13/15.)

Image from gill_penney, CC license

Stalin Was a Mass Murderer (And I’m Not Too Sure About Myself) 2/2

Last updated on: December 18, 2020 at 9:36 am By Bob Seidensticker

Soviet troops

You must’ve heard the popular Christian argument that the atrocities committed by atheists like Stalin during the twentieth century eclipse Christian overexuberance throughout history. That includes the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch burning, and pogroms. A recent blog post takes this idea and projects it forward: “Hoping Atheists (Or at Least Anti-Theists) Do Not Kill Us This Time” by fellow Patheos blogger John Mark Reynolds.

But Dr. Reynolds isn’t tiptoeing to avoid triggering the atheist avalanche. No, he’s publicly calling atheists to account.

In part 1, we saw that the problem is apparently only with “anti-theist” atheists, those who “actively dislike and work against religion.” That includes me, so I’m apparently part of the problem. We also explored his argument connecting genocide with these atheists. (Spoiler: I wasn’t convinced.) Let’s continue.

Case study: today’s not-so-Christian Western Europe

Reynolds acknowledges that Western Europe is socially healthy despite being more atheistic than America, but he handwaves that that’s just because it still benefits from the imprint of Christianity.

I’ve got news for you: Christianity already had the chance to rule Europe, and we call that period the Dark Ages. (I’m imagining a filthy, emaciated peasant in France around 1200 wearing a ragged t-shirt. On the front it says, “When Christianity was in charge, all I got was this lousy t-shirt” and on the back, “. . . and the plague, smallpox, famine, Pardoners, and a life of indentured servitude as a serf.”)

Western Europe is largely atheistic, but it wasn’t always that way. The hold of Christianity was much higher a century ago. As social conditions improved over the decades, secularism increased. Some scholars have suggested the causal relationship as poor social conditions as the incubator for more religion, with Christianity the symptom of a sick society.

Social metrics like homicide, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and so on can be used to compare countries. Atheistic and gay-friendly Western Europe does well in this comparison, and the good old U. S. of A. looks embarrassingly bad.

Yeah, but look at all Christianity gave you!

Reynolds is pretty happy with Western society, but he’s deluded about Christianity’s contribution. He imagines that Western society has as its foundation “a borrowed Christian culture.”

Atheists have such a poor track record in his mind that he suggests that, to polish their image, “Western atheists of the anti-theist sort [should] take over a nation or an area and run it for a decade or two. They should create new social norms, new art, and new constitutions.” As if these all came from Christianity!?

Consider just our legal rights, America’s fundamental principles that did not come from the Bible: democracy, secular government, separation of powers, and a limited executive; freedoms of religion, speech, press, and assembly; protection from self-incrimination and double jeopardy; speedy and public trial, trial by jury, and the right to confront witnesses; no cruel and unusual punishment; and no slavery (more here and here).

A Christian dictatorship that followed biblical principles is easy to imagine. It would look similar to today’s Muslim theocracies where atheism and apostasy are punished by death.

For creating a livable society, I’ll take the U.S. Constitution over the Ten Commandments, thank you. And I think that in a thoughtful moment, you would, too. Note also that the one hundred percent secular U.S. Constitution protects you against religious excesses just like it does me.

And now let’s poison the well

Reynolds is judge, jury, and all but executioner.

Until anti-theism shows it can stop killing people, Christians are right to worry about “anti-theist” atheists dominating the levers of power.

None of this proves that if your local Internet atheist troll took over, people would lose civil rights, freedom of religion, their children, their right to religious education, and eventually their lives in “re-education camps”, but the track record is very bad and their present tone not promising.

Christians are not paranoid to worry and would be foolish not to do so. A rising tide of anti-theism (or even anti-clericalism) has oft been a prelude to death.

When this Chicken Little attitude gets an enthusiastic hearing in some quarters, who can wonder why atheists are (depending on the poll) often the least electable? Americans are more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who has never held public office than one who is an atheist. Reynolds is doing a fine job strengthening this prejudice.

But let’s review the holes that sink his argument. Dictatorships are the problem, and there is no call within the Western atheist community for an anti-theistic dictatorship. Indeed, there have been zero people killed in the name of atheism because atheism takes no stand on issues like morality.

The U. S. has had a secular government since the ratification of the Constitution in 1788. Preserving this is the goal of every atheist I know, and this is quite different from a Stalinist dictatorship. It’s the Christians who rock the boat, not atheists eager for a dictatorship.

Western Europe is substantially less Christian and more healthy than the United States. Atheism or secularism haven’t led to bad conditions there, let alone genocide. In fact, the present religious friction in the United States is Christians asking for special privileges (such as the right to discriminate as they please) and demanding to impose their beliefs on the rest of the country by law (same-sex marriage and abortion, for example). Christian excesses are the driving force behind the anti-theism.

Reynolds concludes:

The twentieth and twenty-first century victims of state atheism cannot read “angry atheism” without a shudder and this is reasonable. Let’s start any dialog with this in mind.

So you expect me to come to the discussion with head hung in appropriate humility, burdened down with Stalin’s sins? Forget it—they’re not my sins. And if dialogue is your goal—it certainly is mine—poisoning the well like this isn’t helpful.

Dr. Reynolds replied to these posts. I respond here.

If religion were the key to morality,
then mega-churches would look more like charities
and less like million-dollar businesses.
— seen on a t-shirt

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/28/15.)

Image from Wikimedia, CC license

Stalin Was a Mass Murderer (And I’m Not Too Sure About Myself)

Last updated on: May 23, 2019 at 1:33 pm By Bob Seidensticker

Stalin and friends

Stalin is a popular marionette for many Christian apologists. “Don’t tell me about Christian atrocities during the Crusades or the Inquisition,” they’ll say. “The atheist regimes in the twentieth century of Stalin, Mao, and others killed far more people!”

Fellow Patheos blogger John Mark Reynolds from the Evangelical channel has a new angle on that: “Hoping Atheists (Or at Least Anti-Theists) Do Not Kill Us This Time.” Apparently, you’ve got to keep an eye on those out-of-control atheists to make sure they don’t kill us all.

The connection between atheism and genocide

Reynolds makes clear that he’s not fearful of all atheists. It’s only the anti-theists, which he defines as atheists who “actively dislike and work against religion.” That sounds like me. If you’re in the same boat (or know someone who is), come along as we find out why “these are the atheists that have proven dangerous in power and are worrisome to civil society.”

Reynolds gives three reasons for connecting anti-theists with genocide.

1. “The atheists of Russia, China, North Korea, Cambodia, [and] Albania came to their atheism and then picked a social and economic system compatible with their general worldview.”

Nope. These were dictatorships, and religion was a problem. You can’t have a proper dictatorship with the church as an alternate authority. Solution: eliminate religion. Atheism was merely a tool.

The only nations that have been officially atheistic have been uniformly horrible.

And they’ve all been dictatorships. Let’s put the blame where it belongs. This mistake is like pointing to Stalin and Hitler and saying, “It must be the mustaches! Men with mustaches have killed millions!”

Did Harry Truman kill several hundred thousand in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the name of Christianity? If not, then don’t say that Stalin killed millions in the name of atheism. Or if you do, make clear the causal connection, which Reynolds hasn’t done (h/t commenter epeeist).

2. “Atheism was used as a reason for persecution in all of these nations.”

Control was the reason for persecution in dictatorships. Atheism was just a tool, like a scalpel used to murder.

Reynolds next goes on a poorly thought out rant about morality.

There is no check against genocide in atheism. And there is no check against genocide in chemistry, either. Neither has a moral rulebook. Atheism is the simple lack of god belief, not a worldview, and it neither advocates nor rejects genocide. Christianity, by contrast, does have a moral rulebook, and it sucks. Next, Reynolds claims that Christianity has a “built-in check on genocide,” which is completely false. God luvs him some genocide and demanded it often in the Old Testament.
“Christians are told to love their enemies.” If you go into the Bible looking for this, you can indeed find it, but Reynolds imagines that this is an unambiguous message in the Bible. It’s not. Did you hear about the American pastor who demanded that we stone gays? Being consistent with the Bible isn’t so loving.
“An anti-theist creates his own values.” And Christians don’t? There is nothing in the Bible about transgender people, euthanasia, or chemically induced abortions, and Christians must improvise in response to new situations just like the rest of us.
Not all atheists are selfish, though they aren’t acting decently because of atheism. Atheists are decent for the same reason you are—how you are programmed as a Homo sapiens and the influence of your environment and society.

3. “There is a nearly perfect track record of officially atheist states killing large numbers of innocent people to this day. When atheists gain power and can impose an anti-theism, they have always started killing people.”

You’ve convinced me: dictatorships are a problem. But you have yet to show atheism as a cause of anything.

Reynolds imagines the powerless atheists saying that they would rule more sensibly than the Christians if given the chance, but “large mass movements dedicated to selfishness or to ideology ([Ayn] Rand or Communism) have [no] external authority to allow the common member of society to rebuke the leaders.” But you do? Christians imagine an objective morality that isn’t there.

Notice an important difference. Atheists are as offended by the actions of Stalin and other dictators as much as Christians. No atheist says, “Well, we do have to cut the guy a little slack. He was an atheist, after all.” Contrast that with the Bible’s mass murderers—Joshua, Moses, God. Perhaps it’s the Christians who are on the wrong side of this issue (h/t Mr. Deity).

A bad bishop can be rebuked based on professed Christian beliefs.

A bad bishop’s actions can also be supported by Christian beliefs. “Love your neighbor” and rules for slavery are both in the Bible.

A bad atheist cannot [be rebuked] since atheism has no creed or necessary beliefs beyond not believing in God, a life force, or a higher power.

Bingo! And your argument is now in a heap at your feet. Atheism is a lack of god belief; that’s it. No one has ever been killed in the name of atheism.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Christianity.

My analysis of Reynolds’ argument is concluded in part 2.

God used floods and plagues to kill people.
Why command the Israelites to do the dirty work?
That’s not a god, it’s a Godfather.
— commenter Greg G.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/27/15.)

Image from Wikimedia, CC license

Two Sizes Too Small: For What Social Errors Will History Condemn Us?

Last updated on: March 25, 2019 at 9:19 pm By Bob Seidensticker

Social conventions change. Think of examples where we look back on Western society past and shake our heads at how morally wrong they were. Slavery. Chopping off hands for stealing. Debtor’s prison. Workhouses. Slow public executions. Voting rights given to landowners only.

But does it end there?

A group of freethinking friends saw the James Randi biopic “Honest Liar,” and we were chatting afterwards. One person raised this question about how morality has changed and continues to do so. Let’s not imagine that we’ve got it all figured out. Though we’d like to think otherwise, our descendants will look back on our society and find their own examples of moral error.

So here’s the question (feel free to participate in the comments): What social attitude changes will happen this century such that future Americans will look back on us with bemusement or horror?

Prediction 1: sex!

Let me get you started with examples from our conversation. Paul had raised the question, and he predicted the widespread acceptance of both polyamory (having multiple romantic or sexual partners at a time) and polygamy (marriage with more than two partners) and that today’s views will seem prudish and backwards.

Yes, he’s saying that the conservatives’ prediction is right: from mixed-race marriage comes same-sex marriage, and that opens the floodgates to even more redefinition. (What they forget is that this isn’t new, since marriage has always been in flux.)

It’s interesting to imagine this evolution. In the past, we had one man and one woman, same race, the bride is treated like property and comes with a dowry, and with few restrictions on the bride. We’ve gotten past the racial restriction and are moving past the gender restriction, and Paul imagined loosening up the number restriction.

But note that this isn’t a Sexual Revolution free-for-all. There are new rules, and now the bride must be old enough, must consent, and must not be a close relative. Divorce is now allowed, marital rape is forbidden, both parties are legally equal, and so on.

Prediction 2: climate change

Scot anticipated that both policy makers and ordinary voters will universally accept human-caused climate change. People will be shocked and outraged that we had the evidence for climate change but fiddled while Rome burned. He illustrated it by imagining members of our future society shocked that someone would drive a 3000-pound car for fifteen minutes, spewing out carbon dioxide all the way, just to deliver a pizza.

Prediction 3: animal rights

My proposal was that synthetic meat will be widely available, and future society will look back on us with horror that we raised animals solely to be killed, butchered, and eaten. Today, we are outraged at the idea of clubbing baby seals for fur and at bays red with blood from Japanese dolphin kills, and our future selves will have the same revulsion at our killing cows for cheeseburgers.

Given the enormous environmental impact of livestock, they will also wonder why the financial argument wasn’t enough of a driver even if the moral one wasn’t.

Your turn

Which practice or attitude, customary today, will our descendants look back on with surprise or shock? Maybe they will be outraged that we had capital punishment or that euthanasia was illegal. Maybe they will shake their heads thinking back on when abortion was legal. Maybe they will laugh at our prudishness about sex on television but be disgusted at our appetite for violence. Maybe they will marvel that we let every bonehead vote for no better reason than that they were a citizen, with complete disregard to understanding of the issues and mental capability.

It doesn’t have to be a positive prediction—you might hate it but see it as inevitable anyway.

What do you think?

I think hedonism is one of the most
morally defensible philosophies.
If the purpose of life is pleasure,
it becomes hard to justify suffering.
— commenter smrnda

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/26/15.)

Image from Marlon Cureg, CC license

10 Skeptical Principles for Evaluating the Bible (2 of 2)

Last updated on: March 17, 2019 at 10:48 pm By Bob Seidensticker

Let’s conclude our ten principles for evaluating the Bible. This list is in response to a Christian version by Jim Wallace, “Ten Principles When Considering Alleged Bible Contradictions,” critiqued here. Part 1 of my skeptical list is introduced here.

Let’s continue.

6. Missed opportunities count

God could’ve given us soap or told us that the earth is a sphere. Jesus could’ve eliminated all disease—and poverty, war, and famine while he was at it. But they didn’t.

What does that tell you? Apologists will say that the Bible isn’t a science textbook (though many will then take the Creation story literally). They’ll say that it simply wasn’t part of the plan for God to make life easy or even make the Bible message obvious so that there would be no need for the thousands of denominations of Christianity.

Even though the Bible doesn’t tell us anything that wasn’t already known to people of that time and place, that doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist. But what can we learn from the fact that the Bible is ambiguous and contradictory, that life on earth sucks for many people, and that the “God” character has no more knowledge or wisdom than the primitive people who wrote his story? This world and all the problems in it do not look like they were created by an all-loving and omnipotent deity.

7. If it looks like a book written by a primitive people, it almost certainly is

The best explanation for the Bible is that primitive people of the time wrote the story and that the Bible is just the blog of an early Iron Age desert tribe. We can’t ignore the many examples of mythology from other ancient cultures, and the Bible looks like just one more.

We need an enormous amount of evidence to conclude that Babylonian Enuma Elish or the Hindu Vedas are mythology, but the Bible, which looks so similar, is actually history.

8. Natural evidence provides poor support for a supernatural conclusion

Many Christians “just believe,” but to get there by an intellectual route takes much evidence. On one hand, we can suppose that an omniscient god who wanted to convince us that he existed would be able to reach the most skeptical atheist. For example, God could reveal himself to everyone on the same day so that we would have everyone else’s verification that our senses are reliable.

But how would you rule out very intelligent aliens? Imagine if you went back just 200 years in time with today’s modern technology—antibiotics, telephones, CGI movies and Photoshopped photos, airplanes, weapons, and so on. It would be easy to convince many people that you were a god.

Now imagine how we’d respond to someone from a technology 200 years more advanced than us. Now make it two million years. If they wanted to convince us that they were the creator of the universe, how would we know any different? (More.)

Consider from a more abstract level the problem of finding proof for the supernatural. Using natural evidence to prove the existence of the supernatural may be like Flatlanders using evidence in their 2D world to prove that there is a 3D world out there. (More.)

9. Don’t read in your own desires

Was God wrong to demand genocide or not? Did God demand human sacrifice or not? Did God approve of slavery and polygamy or not?

Christians are often quick to come to God’s rescue to find counter-verses to argue that God shares our modern sensibilities on these matters. (One wonders why God can’t make things clear himself, but never mind.) These apologists are certain that they and God are on the right side of these moral matters despite what a plain reading of the Bible indicates.

And while they’re at it, they’ll find support for their own particular views on homosexuality, abortion, and other social issues—either pro or con, it doesn’t matter because the Bible can be mined to find support for just about anything..

The honest critic lets the Bible speak for itself. If it seems to contradict itself, that may be explained by the many books of the Bible coming from many authors from different cultures and with different ideas of God.

10. Don’t presuppose God

The Christian set of 10 principles ended with this one: “Remember who’s boss.” That is, don’t forget that God is in charge and that we aren’t empowered to judge him. Whether the problem is ambiguity or contradictions in the Bible or evil in the world, we can’t even understand the situation enough to convict him.

But of course this simply starts with the conclusion. We can’t start by assuming that God exists and the Bible is his word any more than we’d start a critique of Islam, Mormonism, or Scientology with an assumption that they were correct. We’re not trying to judge God but simply decide if the Bible is anything more than what it looks like, an ancient myth.

Bonus: #11. Don’t abdicate your role as judge

There is no objective authority to lean on. As a Christian, you might rely on a pastor, televangelist, or biblical scholar. You can read the Bible, trying to resolve its various interpretations applied by its various partisans. And still the problem remains—you take their input, but the buck stops with you.

You ain’t much, but you’re all you’ve got.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is,
it doesn’t matter how smart you are.
If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
— Richard P. Feynman

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/16/15.)

Image from Martin Thomas, CC license
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