10 Questions Christians Must Answer (2 of 2)

Last updated on: January 5, 2018 at 6:39 am By Bob Seidensticker

Banda Ache earthquake damage, Indonesia

As an homage to a powerful video from GodIsImaginary.com, I summarized five tough questions in Part 1. Here are five more of my own. I’ll give popular Christian answers for each question and then conclude with a single answer that neatly resolves all of these dilemmas.

6. Why is faith required? In John’s gospel, Thomas missed Jesus’s first appearance. He didn’t believe the others’ story that Jesus had risen and said that he needed to see the nail marks in the hands of Jesus as proof. After Jesus appeared again and satisfied Thomas, Jesus said, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me” (John 20:29). In other words, Thomas believed because he had evidence—nothing special there. But someone who can believe without that evidence? Ah, that person is blessed!

Richard Dawkins challenged Kenneth Miller on some religious matter (both men are biologists, but Miller is Catholic), and Miller replied, “There’s a reason it’s called faith!” Christianity without faith wouldn’t be Christianity. Some say that faith isn’t earned but neither is it a right. Instead, the Holy Spirit gives faith to some using some unknown algorithm.

7. Why is God hidden? Thomas had a scientific attitude. Any scientific claim must respond to the demand for evidence. For example, cold fusion would be nice, but “nice” has no currency within science. There is insufficient evidence for any mechanism of cold fusion, so it is rejected. “God exists” is another claim, and the obvious supporting evidence—God simply making his existence known—is unapologetically unavailable.

God works in mysterious ways. This is yet another test of Christians’ faith.

Mother Teresa wrote about God’s silence: “the silence and the emptiness is so great” and “I have no Faith … [the thoughts in my heart] make me suffer untold agony.” She soldiered on despite her weak faith, and she has been beatified by Rome.

8. Why are there natural disasters? Haiti and Indonesia have been devastated by tsunamis in recent years, each disaster killing about a quarter of a million people. The worst tropical cyclones have killed this many people as well. The disaster area can take years to recover, especially if it hits a third-world region. How can God allow these to happen when it would be trivial to prevent the damage?

Christians have responded that the forces of nature have a good side. Earthquakes recycle minerals, and hurricanes are a consequence of the same weather system that brings sunshine and gentle rains. Disasters test Christians and give them an opportunity to help through prayer or donations. Christians infer God’s hand in the “miracle child” that survives the disaster that killed its parents.

Then there’s the tough-love response. About the 9/11 terrorist attack, Jerry Falwell declared:

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 who have tried to secularize America—I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

If all else fails, Christians can fall back on the idea that God is there to comfort the grieving.

9. Why does the Bible show God doing terrible things? God demands genocide, and he gives rules regulating slavery just like the rules he gives regulating commerce.

Christians often argue that genocide and slavery were accepted components of society back then. God was simply working within the system. The tribes that God demanded be destroyed must’ve been morally rotten—how could an all-good God act otherwise?—and even leaving their babies alive would risk a future for a tribe that God knew might tempt Israel in the future.

10. Why is the historical record so weak for Christianity? Outside the gospels, there are no biographies of Jesus from contemporary historians, of which there were many. There are not even any mentions of Jesus, aside from disputed passages in Josephus.

God’s plan apparently was to appear on earth in a low-profile way. A grand entrance is apparently not God’s style, and we’re just going to have to live with that.

The other way of resolving these questions

Instead of individual reasons that clumsily address these questions by assuming God’s existence, let’s again try to resolve these questions with a simple hypothesis: there is no god. This simple and obvious explanation—which Christians themselves apply to the other guy’s god—neatly cuts the Gordian Knot.

Let’s revisit those five challenges with this new response.

Why is faith required? All supernatural religious claims require faith because there is insufficient evidence to accept them otherwise. If there were evidence, you can be sure that that would be celebrated, not faith. (More on faith.)

Why is God hidden? Because he doesn’t exist (more). As for God not wanting to provide evidence, he had no problem doing so in the Old Testament.

Why are there natural disasters? We can assign “good” and “bad” labels to events according to how they affect us, but that’s not nature’s perspective. Nature has no obligation to provide a pleasing environment for anyone. We have to do “the Lord’s work” because he sure isn’t doing it.

Why does the Bible show God doing terrible things? Because “God” is just a character in a mythological tale. His imagination and morality are reflections of that of the Iron Age people who created him.

Why is the historical record so weak for Christianity? Because Christianity is a legend that began after decades of oral history. After this, dogmas like the Trinity gradually developed over the centuries, and unpopular interpretations like Gnosticism were pruned away.

Convoluted answers that demand a presupposition of the very thing in question crumble when we simply consider that the fanciful claim is just what it looks like: legend and myth.

We could list lots more questions—Why create an enormous universe if the point was just to create humans? Why does the view of God change through the Bible? If God created the universe, what created God? and so on—but they are all neatly resolved by dropping the God hypothesis.

Elbow deodorant

Elbow deodorant is a solution in search of a problem. We could imagine a society in which the elbows of any cultured person smell like flowers and only the uncouth go au naturel, but smelly elbows just aren’t a problem in our society.

Christianity is elbow deodorant. It is a solution in search of a problem. So Christian leaders invent one: they imagine a god who gets furious if you do bad stuff and will punish you forever. But if you believe certain things, you get a free pass to the Good Place when you die.

No, smelly elbows and a god that doesn’t exist aren’t worth worrying about.

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt.
It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.
Fundamentalism is, therefore, inevitable in an age
which has destroyed so many certainties
by which faith once expressed itself and upon which it relied.
— Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 5/28/14.)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Anti-Choicers’ Misfire on the Fertility Clinic Hypothetical: a Response (2 of 2)

Last updated on: November 9, 2017 at 10:20 am By Bob Seidensticker

The fertility clinic problem is this: if a fertility clinic were on fire and you could save either a five-year-old child or a canister with a thousand human embryos, which would you save?

In part 1, I looked at the anti-choice responses by Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, and Greg Koukl. They largely accepted the point of the argument, that we’d all save the child over the embryos, but then rambled on down many tangents, oblivious to the fact that the case was closed. “An embryo is a child” is the foundational moral claim for many in the anti-choice community, and by admitting that one child is more important than many embryos, they showed that claim to be false.

Let’s wrap up our look at the points made in these anti-choice arguments.

Unfair! It’s an emotional argument.

One objection was to reject this as an emotional argument. Koukl complained, “The dilemma simply forces us to make a choice in a no-win situation. It doesn’t draw out buried intuitions that show our real values; it draws out our emotions in a forced choice.”

Koukl calls this a “dilemma” and a “no-win situation,” but there’s no dilemma here. The choice is obvious.

He’s also wrong about emotional arguments being unfair. This is basically the Portman Effect, named after Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who turned against his party in 2013 to support same-sex marriage. What caused the turnaround was his son coming out as gay. You’d think that people would be good at hypotheticals like, “Gee—what if my son were gay? Would I still oppose same-sex marriage?” But for some reason, having it happen for real puts things in a new focus.

And so it is with abortion. It’s one thing to stroke one’s chin thoughtfully and harrumph that an embryo is a child, but it’s another to be told, “Child or embryos—choose now!”

(And don’t get me started about men weighing in on a matter that can never affect them personally.)

It’s absurd hearing a Christian complain about the unfairness of emotional arguments in support of abortion when anti-choice advocates torment women needing an abortion with posters showing an aborted fetus, the height of emotional manipulation.

More hypotheticals

Shapiro complains that a dangerous fire needing a quick choice has no parallel with the question of whether to have an abortion. “No such hard choice exists in 99.99 percent of abortion cases.” That’s true, but that’s the nature of hypotheticals like this. They’re designed to flush out one’s real attitudes, which are often a surprise to the opinion holders themselves.

Anyway, the complaint is misguided since the hypothetical has done its work by exposing “embryo = child” as false.

Each author is eager to provide his own hypotheticals to replace the original series of tweets from Tomlinson. Shapiro’s contribution: Imagine now that those thousand embryos are required to save humanity. “Do you save the five-year-old and doom the human species to extinction, or do you save the embryos? . . . . Does that mean the five-year-old is no longer a human being?”

And another: “You can save the box of embryos or you can save the life of a woman who will die of cancer tomorrow. Which one do you save? If you choose the embryos, is the cancer-ridden woman therefore of no moral value?”

Where did “no moral value” enter the discussion? Ditto for the five-year-old no longer being a human being. The point is that Shapiro has agreed that the child is more significant than an embryo, which destroys the capstone of his moral high ground. This admission has exposed an enormous hole in the anti-choice argument. Even if the boys never personally argued “embryo = child,” they must know that it’s central to the anti-choice position. I’m amazed that they don’t confront this directly. Maybe because they can’t.

Cluelessness

I can’t leave without highlighting some unrepentant, world class cluelessness. Walsh pounds the virtual table, proclaiming that silly hypotheticals are the tools of a coward. He says, “You don’t seem willing to put all of your fantasy scenarios aside and just deal with what abortion is 99% of the time: the willful choice by a healthy woman to kill a healthy unborn child because the child is inconvenient.”

Inconvenient? Is that your final answer? Have you ever used this argument with a real woman seeking an abortion? Have you told her that her pregnancy is merely an inconvenience? Share with us how she replied.

Consider this example. Suppose a 15-year-old girl got pregnant in large part because the sex ed in her public school focused on abstinence, so she didn’t really know how to prevent pregnancy, and because no contraception was available. She had dreamed of college and a career as a teacher or maybe a doctor, but that’s all in jeopardy now because to take the fetus to term means a life as a mother. And don’t say that there’s always adoption since less than one percent of never-married women relinquish their newborns for adoption.

Convenience isn’t the issue when the girl’s entire life is in the balance. What an idiot.

Spectrum argument

Much of these anti-choice rebuttals were shadow boxing against nonexistent arguments, outraged that the fertility clinic hypothetical didn’t do a better job making arguments it never intended to make.

Let me summarize how this fits into an effective pro-choice argument. Personhood is a spectrum, and the newborn is a person while the single cell isn’t. During the development process, the fetus increasingly becomes a person.

The anti-choice response had been to say that the embryo is 100% a person. In response, you can point at the enormous gulf separating the single cell from the newborn, far more than what separates a newborn from an adult, but evidence and reason can’t move a person away from an argument that they didn’t use evidence and reason to reach. I know—I’ve tried.

But the conclusion of the fertility clinic hypothetical changes that. With it, they admit that the embryo isn’t a person.

The spectrum argument doesn’t conclude that abortion should always (or ever) be moral. You could still conclude that the single cell, though not a person, still must be protected, but you’ve got to make that argument. No longer can they fall back on, “Well, you wouldn’t kill a newborn, would you? The single cell is the moral equivalent.”

The increasing personhood of the fetus during gestation is the foundation of any argument for abortion, and this hypothetical clears the way.

Ever notice that in fantasy roleplaying games
the admittedly fictional gods answer prayers
much better than the so-called real gods?
— Bob Jase

Image credit: Wilhelm Joys Andersen, flickr, CC

Anti-Choicers’ Misfire on the Fertility Clinic Hypothetical: a Response

Last updated on: November 9, 2017 at 11:41 am By Bob Seidensticker

Who knew that anti-choice advocates could go off the rails so inventively in response to a brief hypothetical argument posed in a series of tweets?

A few weeks ago, Patrick Tomlinson tweeted a scenario that I first wrote about over five years ago and that he says he’s been using for over ten years. In short, if a fertility clinic were on fire and you could save either a five-year-old child or a canister with a thousand human embryos, which would you save? Read the original in this Friendly Atheist post.

“An embryo is a child” is the foundational moral claim for many in the anti-choice* community, and the fertility clinic thought experiment nicely shows that, no it isn’t, even to them. Someone once observed, there’s nothing like a life-or-death predicament to help you get your priorities straight. You can pontificate at leisure about how things ought to be, but when you have seconds to decide between a child who would suffer unimaginable agony and a can of cells that not only won’t but can’t, you quickly realize what’s important.

Rebuttal

In what is the most impressive “Yes, but” tap dancing that I’ve seen in a long time, anti-choice advocates have a lot to say in response. I’ll look at three high-profile responses, by Matt Walsh (blogger), Ben Shapiro (editor of The Daily Wire, a conservative website), and Greg Koukl (Christian radio host).

Walsh and Shapiro admit up front that they would save the child, while Koukl won’t.

The next item on the agenda is the obligatory changing of the subject. Each author raises all manner of tangential topics, some interesting but some seemingly deliberate misdirections.

Before I give examples, let’s take a step back to remember the point of this exercise. Many anti-choicers tell us that an embryo is equivalent to a child. That is, they declare that the definition of “child” goes from, say, eight years old and goes all the way down to –9 months. It’s a child at eight years old, as a newborn, as a fetus, as a frozen embryo (which is a blastocyst with roughly 100 cells), and even as a single cell.

That’s the claim, but by saving the hypothetical child they’ve admitted that this claim is false. No, a child is much more valuable than a single cell. End of argument. There’s nothing more to say.

That’s where the “Yes, but” arguments come in. They want to change the subject. They want to have the last word. But the argument is over. It had the sole goal of undercutting their moral argument, and it succeeded. QED.

See also: Five Intuitive Pro-Choice Arguments

Change the subject

But for completeness and to illustrate the games they play, I want to list some of their arguments.

Walsh: “Yes, I would save the kid. No, that does not prove that the embryos have no value.” No one said it did.
Walsh: Leaving the embryos behind isn’t the same as killing them intentionally, and it doesn’t show that abortion is moral. The hypothetical argument doesn’t claim to prove that abortion is moral, just that “embryo = child” is false.
Shapiro: “Let’s say that it was your five-year-old in the room, and next door were 1,000 actual full-grown human adults. Your instinct would probably be to save your five-year-old. Mine would be. Does that make me right, or the 1,000 humans no longer human?” If “human” means “has Homo sapiens DNA,” then of course they’re human, but that’s off topic. You’ve already agreed that embryos aren’t children—that’s the point.
Shapiro: “We can agree with Tomlinson that one ought to save the five-year-old rather than the box of embryos and still not admit that embryonic life is meaningless.” Huh? Who said it was meaningless?
Koukl: “Moral dilemmas, by design, make us choose. But the choice doesn’t rebut the argument for the intrinsic value of embryonic human beings.” No, it rebuts the claim that embryos are children.
Koukl: “The fact that Sophie, in the film Sophie’s Choice, made the choice to save her son didn’t mean she thought her daughter wasn’t a valuable human being.” This is yet another change of subject. The subject is: embryos aren’t children.

Notice the word games in several of these. Keeping things simple doesn’t seem to be the goal, so we take “child” from the original challenge and add “human” and “human being” to the mix. Throw in Homo sapiens and “person,” and we’ve got a nice selection of terms that may or may not be synonyms. For some apologists, there’s nothing they like better than spending hours fileting the definition of a word to keep the debate away from an embarrassing area.

Concluded in part 2.

The mystery is how people can follow a religion
whose central theme from beginning to end is:
“Deity angry. Something gotta die.”
— commenter Lark 62

* Normally, I refer to the two camps as pro-life and pro-choice, but the obnoxious response by one author used “pro-abortion.” In fact, I am pro-abortion in the same way that I’m pro-amputation: no one enjoys a medical procedure, but sometimes they’re necessary. Nevertheless, that article encouraged me to use “anti-choice” as the reciprocal term for their side of the argument.

Image credit: Bailiwick Studios, flickr, CC

Christians: Why You Need an Atheist Speaker at Your Next Conference

Last updated on: July 3, 2017 at 8:38 am By Bob Seidensticker

I read or listen to lots of Christian apologists. Frank Turek. Norm Geisler. Dinesh D’Souza. William Lane Craig. Gary Habermas. Mike Licona. Jim Wallace. Greg Koukl. Peter Kreeft.

I went to John Warrick Montgomery’s two-week Apologetics Academy in Strasbourg, France in 2011. I want to hear the best that Christian apologetics has to offer.

The reverse is rarely true.

Christian conferences

I see the ads for Christian apologetics conferences that promise to equip dedicated Christians who want to win souls for Christ. Sometimes they cover arguments for a historical Jesus. Or review scientific arguments that can be used to argue for a deity behind nature. Or even role-play interaction with mock atheists.

It’s not enough. They need to hear from an actual atheist. A faux atheist is no foe.

To me, their refusal to invite one means that conference organizers don’t trust their material to carry the day. They’re afraid that they’ll get embarrassed or upstaged or that the attendees would get freaked out or overwhelmed with material that’s just too real.

But then how well do they prepare attendees? If the conference must tiptoe through the material to avoid the difficult topics, how will newly minted apologists do when they get out and talk to real, live, well-informed atheists? If you hope that God will give you the right words as he did with Moses, you are setting yourself up for embarrassment.

If someone wants apologetics lite, they can read a book, but a conference should ramp it up. Attendees shouldn’t be spoon-fed straw man arguments but given the real thing.

In this blog, I’ve responded to many Christian arguments—from books, interviews, articles, blog posts, podcasts, lectures, and debates. It’s one of my favorite kinds of posts because they pretty much write themselves. Christians’ arguments are easy to refute. I’ve seen enough to know that the good stuff isn’t kept secret, like magic tricks, and whispered only to worthy initiates. If you’re counting on an apologetics conference to show you the landscape, you will be disappointed. I’ve heard the good stuff, and it’s not very good.

My proposal

The next time you see a notice for an apologetics conference, tell the organizing team to invite me to speak, either in a debate or with a lecture.

I can educate the audience about atheism. (Yes, atheists have purpose and morality. No, atheists don’t see their worldview as empty or hopeless.) I can argue for same-sex marriage and abortion rights. I can attack intellectual arguments for Christianity, and I can provide positive arguments for atheism. And then you get the last word.

The Christian arguments will be tested in the field. Shouldn’t they be tested in the conference?

My fee: $0

Give me an audience of 50 or more, and I’ll do it for free. Just cover my expenses. I’m meeting you more than halfway—you donate expenses, and I’ll donate a day or a weekend of my time plus preparation.

Read my books and blog to see how I think. I’ll even provide my books to attendees at cost. If you want someone with a higher profile, that’s great. I’ll be happy to make suggestions.

You think that after an atheist presents the best that that worldview has to offer, you can give your audience an adequate response? Great—then an atheist would be an asset to the conference.

You know how to reach me.

“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the LORD
— Isaiah 1:18

Does Christianity Lead to a Better Society?

Last updated on: September 15, 2017 at 8:05 am By Bob Seidensticker

Studies have compared believers and atheists on lots of issues—compassion, mental health, happiness, intelligence, quality of marriages, and even antidepressant consumption. I have little interest in the game where the Christian and atheist each present studies to show how their group is superior in this or that social category. My interest lies more in which worldview is more accurate.

Nevertheless, we often hear that Christianity leads to a better society—or, perhaps more often, that the loss of Christianity leads to a worse society. In this scenario, God is furious about our acceptance of homosexuals or abortion or whatever, so he allows the 9/11 attack or Hurricane Katrina or the latest school shootings.

But this is a claim that we can test.

Researcher Gregory Paul used public records of social metrics such as suicide, lifespan, divorce, alcohol consumption, and life satisfaction to compare 17 Western countries (the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, and 12 European countries). He concluded:

Of the 25 socioeconomic and environmental indicators, the most theistic and procreationist western nation, the U.S., scores the worst in 14 and by a very large margin in 8, very poorly in 2, average in 4, well or very well in 4, and the best in 1. . . .

Because the U.S. performs so poorly in so many respects, its cumulative score on the [Successful Societies Scale is lowest,] placing it as an outlier so dysfunctional relative to the other advanced democracies that some researchers have described it as “sick.” (p. 416)

The metrics in which the U.S. ranks worst out of the 17 countries are homicides, incarceration, under-5 mortality, gonorrhea, syphilis, abortions, teen births, marriage duration, income inequality, poverty, and hours worked.

But it’s #1 in God belief, prayer, belief in heaven and hell, and in rejection of evolution! That’s not much consolation to the Christian, however, because this study destroys the notion that religious belief is correlated with societal health.

What causes what?

Why do we find this correlation of secularism with social health? And in what direction should a society move to improve social health?

Conditions in America are decent in spite of the strong influence of Christianity, not because of it. From a related article by Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman, here are the secrets to making a secular society:

It is to be expected that in 2nd and 3rd world nations where wealth is concentrated among an elite few and the masses are impoverished that the great majority cling to the reassurance of faith.

Nor is it all that surprising that faith has imploded in most of the west. Every single 1st world nation that is irreligious shares a set of distinctive attributes. These include handgun control, anti-corporal punishment and anti-bullying policies, rehabilitative rather than punitive incarceration, intensive sex education that emphasizes condom use, reduced socio-economic disparity via tax and welfare systems combined with comprehensive health care, increased leisure time that can be dedicated to family needs and stress reduction, and so forth.

As a result the great majority enjoy long, safe, comfortable, middle class lives that they can be confident will not be lost due to factors beyond their control. It is hard to lose one’s middle class status in Europe, Canada and so forth, and modern medicine is always accessible regardless of income. Nor do these egalitarian cultures emphasize the attainment of immense wealth and luxury, so most folks are reasonably satisfied with what they have got. Such circumstances dramatically reduces peoples’ need to believe in supernatural forces that protect them from life’s calamities, help them get what they don’t have, or at least make up for them with the ultimate Club Med of heaven.

The U.S. is the anomaly among its peers. Why does its large, educated, comfortable middle class cling to belief in a supernatural creator? Paul and Zuckerman say that it’s because they are insecure: salaries and jobs are under pressure from companies eager to cut costs, health insurance is uncertain, social pressure to keep up with the Jones increases debt, and so on. A single extended illness can bankrupt a family.

They also reject the popular hypothesis that America’s separation of church and state has encouraged a vibrant mix of Christian denominations that have had to fight for market share, making a stronger Christianity. They cite Australia and New Zealand who both have a strong separation of church and state but far less religiosity.

What use is faith?

They conclude that a healthy society eliminates the need for faith.

Every time a nation becomes truly advanced in terms of democratic, egalitarian education and prosperity it loses the faith. It’s guaranteed. That is why perceptive theists are justifiably scared. In practical terms their only . . . hope is for nations to continue to suffer from socio-economic disparity, poverty and maleducation. That strategy is, of course, neither credible nor desirable. And that is why the secular community should be more encouraged. . . .

The religious industry simply lacks a reliable stratagem for defeating disbelief in the 21st century.

So perhaps many of us have it backwards. This is not a contest between religion and secularism that will determine the quality of society. Rather, the quality of society will determine whether religion or secularism will thrive. In a dysfunctional society, religion helps pick up the pieces, but in a society where life is secure, religion is unnecessary and withers away.

Do you want a religious society or a healthy one? You can’t have both.

Incredibly, I’m sure many American Christian leaders would happily choose a religious society over a healthy one.

Celebrate life: live better, help often, wonder more.
— Motto of the Sunday Assembly

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/6/14.)

Image credit: Peter Mooney, flickr, CC

A Defense of Premarital Sex

Last updated on: June 7, 2017 at 6:22 am By Bob Seidensticker

Avoiding sex before marriage isn’t much of a problem in a society where people get married shortly after they become sexually mature. Unfortunately, the West isn’t such a society. Take a look at how things have changed.

Medieval marriage

Centuries ago, first marriages in Europe were typically at 25 years, with brides a couple of years younger than grooms. Yes, Shakespeare portrays Juliet as only 13, but that was uncommon. Noble folk typically married earlier, but Juliet would’ve been young even for a noblewoman.

Onset of puberty in the 1800s was about 16–17 for girls and a year later for boys, with sexual maturity requiring another five years.

This meant that young people typically had just a few years between sexual maturity and marriage. Even so, premarital sex was common (though out-of-wedlock births were frowned upon). Until the mid-1700s in Britain, betrothed couples could live together and have sex, and pregnant brides were common and accepted. Customs in Colonial America were about the same, and a third of New England brides were pregnant.

Marriage today

The average age at first marriage in the U.S. is now 27 for women and 29 for men, a bit older than centuries earlier. The bigger difference is the age of sexual maturity. Onset of puberty is now 10–11 for girls and a year later for boys. The process is complete about five years later.

While the cause of this change in puberty is debated—some combination of improved nutrition and hormone-like chemicals in our environment?—this means an average of over a decade of sexual maturity before marriage. Abstinence before marriage is now much more of a trial.

What does the Bible say?

The Bible has a lot to say about sex. It talks about a girl who is presented as a virgin but isn’t. It talks about adultery. It talks about when rape is okay. It talks about how to take captured women as wives. It talks about which relatives you may not sleep with. It even talks about which relatives you must sleep with. (More on the Bible’s crazy marriage and sex customs here.)

The Bible also has plenty to say about premarital sex. Or nothing, depending on your interpretation. The issue revolves around the Greek word porneia.

The New Testament uses this word a lot. It’s clearly a bad thing, but it’s not clear exactly what it means. It’s often translated as “fornication,” which is consensual sex between two persons not married to each other. That includes premarital sex, so the Bible prohibition appears to be clear.

But explore other translations, and the issue is trickier. Some define the word as “prostitution,” because the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) used it this way.

A popular translation is “sexual immorality,” though this ambiguous. Even if the sins in this category were clear in Paul’s mind, they’re not clear in ours, and we are only projecting our own biases when listing what this prohibition must mean. No, “sexual immorality” doesn’t clearly prohibit premarital sex, and it’s not included in the long list of sexual sins in Leviticus 18 and 20.

Even if premarital sex were prohibited in the Bible, so what? The Bible celebrates genocide, polygamy, and slavery, and yet we reject them. You might say that God was bound by the customs of the time, and that’s why they’re allowed. But no matter—they’re not allowed today. Similarly, if a ban on premarital sex makes no sense for modern society, drop it.

The Christian response

One approach, often adopted by conservative Christians, is to get married early. You want sex? Fair enough—just get married first. But a rush to marriage driven by a desire for sex can make for a poorly grounded marriage. A Barna study came to similar conclusions as earlier studies when it concluded, “divorce rates are higher among people who are members of conservative Protestant faiths,” and “divorce rates were lower for people who described themselves as atheist or agnostic.”

Just as sex-driven marriage isn’t the best approach, neither is abstinence-only sex education. More knowledge leads to less risky sexual behavior. Not teaching safe sex or discouraging teens from the HPV vaccine is like banning fire extinguishers because otherwise everyone will set things on fire.

Another approach

Let me propose a different approach. Nature will give adult bodies to teens whether we like it or not. We don’t give them the keys to the car without driver’s education, so give them the owner’s manual to go along with their adult bodies as well (more).

Instead of a one-size-fits-all demand that premarital sex be off limits, society should (1) provide sex education that minimizes unwanted pregnancy and STDs, (2) make contraception and condoms easily available, (3) emphasize that “No” means no in a relationship, and (4) teach that sex alters a relationship and shouldn’t be treated lightly. Finally, have abortion available as a backstop.

Yes, there can be harm with sex, but there can be harm with cars and the internet, too. Sexual compatibility is an important component of a strong marriage. Should the couple figure that out before or after committing their lives to each other?

The gap between sexual maturity and marriage has gone from a couple of years to more than a decade. The ban on premarital sex is naive, especially when it’s just a tradition and isn’t in the Bible. This is like female genital mutilation in predominantly Muslim societies—it’s only a tradition, and it’s not in the Quran.

There’s nothing inherently harmful in premarital sex, and the sin of premarital sex is one of those rare problems that you can simply define away.

We are living at a time where some people . . .
want to test whether the milk is good before they buy the cow.
— John Sentamu, Archbishop of York
(commenting on the decision of Prince William and Kate Middleton
to live together before their wedding)

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/23/13.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

25 Stupid Arguments Christians Should Avoid (Part 13)

Last updated on: November 12, 2017 at 10:03 pm By Bob Seidensticker

It’s time once again to put on our neoprene waders and gas mask and step in, looking for the stupidest arguments by which Christians embarrass themselves.

The list begins here. We’re well past the original 25 and still going.

Stupid argument #42: Why do atheists worry about someone they don’t think exists?

One Christian source expressed it this way: “How can you hate someone you don’t believe in? Why the hostility? If God does not exist, shouldn’t atheists just relax and seek a good time before they become plant food? Why should it matter if people believe in God?”

We don’t care about gods; we care about their followers. Gods don’t cause problems within society, but people who think they’re following gods do.

This argument seems to presume that Christianity is all about doing good works, community, mutual support, and other worthy aspects that no one would object to. It presumes that nothing bad comes from believing false things. They imagine that Christianity has no more destructive impact on society than knitting, but Christianity in America does quite a bit more than just good works. Christians push for Creationism in public schools, demand prayers at government meetings, stand in the way of abortion and same-sex marriage, block the use of fetal stem cells used for research, and make other attacks on the separation of church and state. And that’s just their attacks on society—within their own communities, people can be ostracized for thinking the wrong things or terrified as children with talk of hell and demons.

A variant of this argument wonders why we don’t see a parallel to atheism (an organized movement against something) with, say, stamp collecting. Why aren’t there non-stamp-collecting organizations, blogs, and lectures?

That comparison is poor, so let’s fix it. Make stamp collecting in the U. S. an industry with revenue of $100 billion per year, all of which is tax deductible, but make that revenue secret. That is, require all nonprofits in the country to open their financial records to show that they are worthy of nonprofit status, except for stamp-collecting organizations (more here). Have the leadership of the stamp collecting industry meddle in public affairs, have them complain to their lawmakers when stamp collectors’ perks are attacked, amend Article VI of the Constitution to forbid any public stamp-collecting test of political candidates (but make it a de facto test anyway), add in some financial and sexual scandals, and the comparison becomes more accurate.

Perhaps now it’s clear why atheism exists as a movement.

This is related to Stupid Argument #24: You really believe in God. (You must believe in God because you talk about him so much.)

Stupid argument #43a: For the benefit of the Little People, don’t take away their God

This isn’t an argument that Christians make but I think it’s worth highlighting. The Little People Argument is made by atheists and agnostics against fellow atheists. They scold the cranky atheists for taking God away from ordinary people. These intellectual atheists don’t need God themselves, they assure us, but we mustn’t ruin things for the people who aren’t as smart or stable as we are.

They say that there’s more to a religious claim than just its truth. If believers get benefits from their belief, and their belief is grounded on the (false) claim that it’s true, why rock their boat?

Christianity’s reckless activity within society is why. Remember the problems listed in the argument above—Christians pushing for Creationism in schools, prayer in public meetings, and so on.

Of course, not all Christians are part of the problem. It’s likely a minority. In addition, politicians sometimes abduct Christian thinking for their own purposes, demanding that good Christians must vote for them to end the godless scourge of abortion, same-sex marriage, or whatever. Nevertheless, Christianity must take some blame for allowing this meddling in society.

One variant on the argument is to demand that you not undercut Christianity without something to replace it. Jerry Coyne, whose article was my inspiration for this argument, gives a counterexample: did the Civil Rights movement offer something to replace the idea that whites are superior to blacks? Nope. If you suffered from the realization that you weren’t superior to someone else, you had to get over it. Northern Europe is far ahead of us in pushing out Christianity, and they seem to have muddled through just fine.

Another example: when you’re cured of cancer or malaria, doctors don’t replace that disease with something else; they make you well and send you on your way.

Stupid argument #43b: Religion is useful

Yes, religion can be useful, but that doesn’t help us if we’re trying to find out if it’s true.

(My interest is responding to Christian claims that their supernatural beliefs are true; however, some Christians make no such claim. If a believer doesn’t state that their religion can back up its supernatural claims, then there’s nothing to respond to. I focus instead on those who insist that Christianity is true and want to tell me why.)

I don’t agree with C. S. Lewis on much, but he had a good point when he said, “If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.” If religion is useful, let’s acknowledge that and try to understand why. But that shouldn’t hamper efforts to get everyone to agree on what’s true.

Continued with part 14. Find the complete list in one place here.

Don’t touch the fruit of the tree of historical knowledge
lest it open your eyes to the hooey that the Church professes.
— commenter Sophia Sadek

Image credit: Dan Ox, flickr, CC

Maybe People CAN Change Their Minds After All

Last updated on: March 23, 2017 at 10:48 am By Bob Seidensticker

I’ve written before about the discouraging studies that illustrate the Backfire Effect. If someone has a belief that is objectively wrong—that is, a belief that an unbiased observer equipped with all relevant facts would judge as false—giving the correct information isn’t likely to get them to change their mind.

But it feels so right! The other guy has come to the wrong conclusion, and once I give him the correct facts, he’ll cheerfully thank me and switch to the correct opinion, right? That sounds reasonable, but no—he will instead very likely double down on the false belief. Changing one’s opinion is painful, and this response to his error only makes the problem worse.

I explored approaches that minimize the Backfire Effect, but a recent article, “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds” by Elizabeth Kolbert, has an approach that should be more productive. But more on that shortly. Getting there is an interesting journey.

Study 1: biased weighing of data

The article gives a number of studies that reveal the embarrassingly inept way our minds sometimes work. In one study, half of the participants were in favor of capital punishment and half not. Each participant was given two studies that argued the two sides of the issue. These studies were actually made up, but they presented data that was equally compelling. Participants reported that the one that supported their own opinion was far more compelling than the other (this is confirmation bias). Afterwards, they were asked about their views. Unsurprisingly, they were more entrenched than they’d been at the start. This is the Backfire Effect.

Why are we susceptible to poor thinking?

This human failing enables America’s new vogue of alternative facts. But since this thinking isn’t logical, why do people do it? Why are they biased toward confirming evidence, and why does presenting disconfirming evidence force them to double down?

Since this is pretty much universal, it’s an evolved trait, but what value could it have to outweigh the downsides? Some researchers say that it developed in a society where humans had to work together. A cooperating society wants to encourage members who contribute, but it must punish freeloaders—possibly even to the point of exile. That’s a substantial punishment because, in a primitive society, living on your own is much harder than being a contributing member in a tribe.

Human reason didn’t evolve to weigh economic policy options or evaluate social safety nets, but, according to this theory, it evolved to defend one’s social status. Winning arguments is important, and self-confidence helps. Doubting your position is not a good thing. The thoughtful tribal member who says, “Well, that’s a good point—maybe my contribution to the group has been sub-par” risks exile.

(Another area of thought where we are surprisingly poor is probability—surprising because we seem to bump into simple probability questions all the time. I’ve written about the Monty Hall Problem here and about simple puzzles that reveal our imperfect thought process here.)

Study 2: explain your answer

In this study, graduate students were first asked to evaluate their understanding of everyday devices—toilets, zippers, cylinder locks, and so on. Next, they were asked to write a detailed explanation of how the devices worked. Finally, they again rated their understanding of these devices. Being confronted with their incompetence caused them to lower their self-rating.

It’s easy to think of the user interface alone and overestimate our understanding of how it works inside. This encapsulation is important for progress—you don’t understand how a calculator works but you know how to operate it. The same is true (for most of us) for a car, a computer, a cell phone, or the internet. We know how to buy hamburger or a suit, but we don’t understand the particulars of how they got to the store. This encapsulation extends into public policy—we (usually) don’t understand the intricacies of policy proposals like cap and trade or trade deals like NAFTA or TPP. Instead, we rely on trusted politicians and domain experts to convince us of the rightness of one side of the issue.

Study 3: policy questions

That brings us to one final study, modeled on the last one. Participants were asked their opinions on policy questions like single-payer health care or merit-based pay for teachers and then were asked to rate their confidence in their answers. Next, they were asked to explain in detail the impact of implementing each proposal. Finally, they were asked to reevaluate their stance. Having just struggled to explain the details of their favored proposal, they dialed back their confidence.

This finding may be relevant to our interactions with people arguing for scientific or historical claims like Creationism or the Resurrection, or for social policies like making abortions illegal or “natural marriage.” Instead of pushing back, ask them to explain their position. Let them marinate in their own confusion. Avoid the snarky retort (tempting, I know), which would trigger the Backfire Effect.

This research is equally applicable to ourselves. Find or create opportunities to explain how your favored policy, if implemented, would work and then ask yourself how this exercise changes your opinion. Is it still a no-brainer? Or have you uncovered obstacles that might make success more elusive?

Let me end with one final cautionary observation. When you ask someone, “Do you accept evolution?,” you may see this as a straightforward question about opinion or knowledge. For some, however, you’re asking about who they are. “I am a Christian,” they think, “and my kind of Christian rejects evolution.” Your straightforward question becomes in their mind, “Do you reject Jesus Christ as Lord and savior?,” to which the answer is, obviously, No. Other personal questions potentially fall into the same trap—questions about abortion or same-sex marriage or even climate change.

There is security in obscurity.
Precision invites refutation.
— Walter Kaufmann

Image credit: Wesley Eller, flickr, CC

Bad Atheist Arguments: “Christianity is Child Abuse”

Last updated on: February 17, 2017 at 5:49 pm By Bob Seidensticker

This is part 4 of a critique of The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist: The Dreadful Consequences of Bad Arguments (2015) by Andy Bannister (part 1 here). The book promises to critique a number of atheist arguments.

Chapter 4. The Santa Delusion

In today’s opening episode, we find Richard Dawkins (Bannister’s favorite atheist to dislike) in the office of his literary agent. The agent reports that things aren’t selling well. What to do? Dawkins suggests The Santa Delusion.

This is a reference to Dawkins saying, “Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us grow out of all three.”

Who wants to guess what Bannister thought about that? He said, “I guess a good place to begin is by illustrating what a disastrous argument this is on many levels.” So where’s the problem? “The first problem is that it’s a classic example of an ad hominem fallacy. That is when, rather than critique an argument or belief, you attack the person making it.”

Yep, that’s the definition of ad hominem fallacy that I know, but Dawkins doesn’t make that fallacy. I wasted half an hour poring over the pages that precede his charge trying to see if there’s anything more offensive than Dawkins’ quote above. Nothing.

Parents

The second problem that keeps Bannister up at night is Dawkins’ concern with Christian parents. In The God Delusion (chapter 9), he says, “Horrible as sexual abuse [of children by Catholic priests in Ireland] no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.”

Bannister overflows with ridicule—remember this is from someone who hates ad hominem arguments—but he has no studies. He has no arguments. He doesn’t even search for anecdotes of people who’d experienced harm (or good) from a Catholic upbringing. All he has is another invented story where he imagines Dawkins faced with two educational options for his daughter. One school is run by Catholic nuns and the other “by a group of sexually voracious convicted pedophiles.”

Bannister is too busy mocking to notice the irony. For this to be an analogy with Dawkins’ quote, both of Bannister’s options—sweet nuns and sexually voracious pedophiles—are within the Catholic Church. Sure, that accurately describes some of these priests; I’m just surprised that Bannister wants to put that sharp a focus on it.

Let’s recall Dawkins’ quote to be clear what he’s saying. He’s not saying every child raised as a Catholic is psychologically damaged more than every child sexually abused by priests. He’s simply arguing that there is overlap.

Bannister only has time for ridicule, but Dawkins actually supports his claim with evidence. Right after we read the quote above in God Delusion, Dawkins introduces a woman who experienced trauma from both sexual abuse and her Catholic upbringing. At the age of seven, she was sexually abused by her priest, and a friend from school died. What made it worse was that the friend went to hell (so she was told) because she was a Protestant. The woman later recalled,

Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression . . . as “yucky” while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest—but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares.

Bannister’s book would’ve been better if he’d spent less time on witty dismissals and more time on actually making an argument.

He next quotes a psychologist lecturing for Amnesty International.

We as a society have a duty to protect [children from nonsense]. We should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible, or that the planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.

Bannister then worries about the practical problems of a Big Brother state critiquing parents’ every action.

My response

Dawkins is right that religious indoctrination is a problem. (Aside: I propose a thought experiment where religion is in the adults-only category, along with voting, driving, and smoking here. Religion must have access to immature minds to propagate and would vanish like the Shakers without them.)

However, I’ve never heard Dawkins demand that society ban religion or forbid parents from teaching their worldview to their children. Again, that’s my belief as well.

For Bannister to note that he agrees with Dawkins wouldn’t make for much of a chapter, I suppose, so he has to resort to strawman arguments, pushing back against what Dawkins isn’t saying. The result is that he loses any chance to offer a sensible critique of parents’ rights.

Let me take a brief tangent. Bannister insists that parents be given free rein to raise their children as they think best. Society is there as a backstop to intervene as necessary, but the benefit of the doubt for how to raise children goes to their parents.

I agree, and that’s the philosophy that must govern pregnant women considering an abortion. In the same way, they are on the front line, they best understand the issues within their lives, and they must be given free rein to decide for themselves whether an abortion is the right course. (I talk more about abortion here and here.) Bannister must be consistent—if we trust parents to do the right thing, we must similarly trust pregnant women. (Let me make clear that Bannister never mentioned abortion. I’m simply drawing a parallel that religious conservatives often miss.)

Now back to Bannister’s argument: I don’t want religion criminalized. Rather, I want religious privilege eliminated in the U.S. and education improved so that religion can be allowed to fall away. You don’t snatch away someone’s crutches; you cure them and let them discard the crutches once they’re unnecessary.

Some evidence points to religion being a symptom of a sick society. Religion is Marx’s opiate of the masses—a salve to cushion against problems within society. Fix those problems, and religion becomes unnecessary.

Bannister ends the chapter with this: “When one believes something deeply, passionately, energetically, one has a tendency simply to grab hold of any arguments that appear to support you, however desperate.” That’s both true and relevant, though he’s thinking of atheists here. Can he really not see that it’s his side that is likelier to believe things without sufficient evidence?

Continue to part 5.

God is Santa Claus for adults
— observation from the internet

Image credit: Bailiwick Studios, flickr, CC

Explanation for Objective Morality? Another Fail.

Last updated on: August 29, 2017 at 9:24 pm By Bob Seidensticker

Let’s revisit the question of objective morality. We have another contestant who thinks he can convince us that objective morality exists.

But before we consider that, here’s Christian apologist Tim Keller to set the stage:

The Nazis who exterminated Jews may have claimed that they didn’t feel it was immoral at all. We don’t care. We don’t care if they sincerely felt they were doing a service to humanity. They ought not to have done it. We do not only have moral feelings, but we also have an ineradicable belief that moral standards exist, outside of us, by which our internal moral feelings are evaluated.

“They ought not have done it”? How do you know?

This is the problem with how this topic is typically handled within Christian apologetics: a moral situation with one obvious answer is tossed out, and we’re supposed to infer ourselves into the apologist’s moral viewpoint. This is insufficient. There’s a difference between a widely believed or strongly felt moral opinion and objective morality. Don’t make the remarkable claim of objective morality (Keller’s “moral standards exist, outside of us”) without evidence.

Enter our contestant …

Let’s give a warm welcome to J. Warner Wallace of the Cold Case Christianity blog. He interviewed me on his podcast once, and we’ve had occasional email exchanges. He’s unfailingly polite and a good reminder to all of us that dialing back the anger makes one’s arguments more palatable.

In one post, Wallace first notes that the simple moral dictates that we find in the Ten Commandments (don’t kill, don’t lie, etc.) are insufficient because sometimes these actions are justified. How do we escape from this moral morass? He offers this rule:

When we simply insert the expression “for the fun of it” into our descriptions of these moral actions, we discover the objective moral foundation to these claims. [With this applied to killing and lying], we’ve just discovered two objective moral absolutes.

So we shouldn’t kill or lie just for fun. I confess that I’m unimpressed. Do we now have a useful moral roadmap where we didn’t before? Does this rule illuminate issues that frustrate society like abortion, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and capital punishment so that the correct path is now clear to all?

Nope. We’re no wiser than we were before. And note that the Nazis didn’t kill Jews just for fun, so this rule does nothing to help Keller’s example.

The point of this exercise is only to spit out yet another example that we can all agree to. Keller pointed out that exterminating Jews was bad, and Wallace points out that killing or lying without justification is bad. I’m sure we all agree with these claims, but this isn’t news. Nothing has been illuminated.

And the correct answer is …

The problem, of course, is the remarkable claim of moral truth grounded outside humanity—“moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not” as William Lane Craig defines it. Why would you pick this explanation? A far more plausible explanation is morality as a combination of

a fixed part (moral programming that we all pretty much share since we’re the same species) and
a variable part (social mores).

This explains morality completely without an appeal to the supernatural.

Wallace next anticipates some reactions to his position.

What do we do when two groups disagree on a moral issue?

Wallace first imagines Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.

When a society defines an objective moral truth and the vast majority of its members agree, on what basis can a lone reformer make a call for change?

Obviously not through an appeal to an objective moral truth. If such a truth were accessible to all of us, how could we be in disagreement? Or does Wallace imagine that objective moral truth is not reliably accessible? But if it’s inaccessible, what good is it?

Wallace puzzles over how MLK could’ve caused change, but where’s the difficulty? History tells how it happened. America is not a simple democracy where the majority rules. We have a Bill of Rights that protects the minority against the tyranny of the majority. We have a free press. And we have a long history of (slowly) changing our minds on moral issues.

The majority opinion is that and nothing more. The moral claim “Jim Crow laws are wrong” is grounded only by everyone who agrees with the statement. It’s not objective moral truth.

Next, what about two societies that disagree? He gives as an example the Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals, during which a prosecutor said, “There is a law above the law.” Yes, that sounds like an appeal to objective morality, but that appeal is no more supported by this guy than by Wallace himself. The laws used during the trials came from the Allies, not from God.

Since morality changes, doesn’t this overturn the idea of objective morality?

Wallace gives an anecdote about four witnesses with conflicting descriptions of a purse snatcher. Does this disagreement mean that there was no purse snatcher? No, Wallace says, and similarly, disagreement about what objective moral truth is doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

But if we can’t agree on the description of the purse snatcher, then why bring up objective truth? All you’ve shown is that the description is inaccessible, so why bring up “objective” anything?

And back to our subject, if different people give different answers to today’s moral issues, where does “objective” fit in? There may be an objectively correct resolution to each, but we can’t access it. The Big Book of Moral Truth is locked up in God’s library.

Wallace might’ve given us slightly more than other apologists, but this is woefully insufficient to overturn the obvious natural explanation of morality.

Can God make a rock so heavy that hitting His head with it
would explain the change in personality He underwent
between the Old Testament and the New Testament?
— commenter GubbaBumpkin

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/21/13.)