Chuck Colson responds (response #2)

Chuck Colson's The Faith: Atheist Bloggers Dialogue, post #2

(See also: Kazim's review of The Faith; Chuck Colson's post #1.)

I'm at work right now, so I'll have to read it later when I can devote more attention to it.

Ray Comfort on WDAY AM 970

I'm listening to Ray Comfort spew nonsense on WDAY this morning and losing an IQ point a minute. You may recall that he was supposed to debate PZ Myers on today's show, but there was a change of format. PZ will be on tomorrow at 10:00am, so I can regain my lost IQ points.

Some gems from the show include Ray's agreement that the Catholic Church tortured people during the Inquisition, but "don't blame that on Christians." This was after a caller pointed out that the church imprisoned Gallileo for suggesting that the earth revolves around the sun. Just a few minutes before that, Ray had commented that "In a hundred years time we will laugh at what science believes." The man truly has no sense of irony.

He also thinks there's "absolute, 100% proof" that intelligent design is true. Well, we already knew that Ray, but where's the proof? He had the temerity to use the old "no building without a builder" canard and to further demonstrate his misunderstanding of evolution by asking the host, "Can you make me a cow from nothing?"

No Ray, but you're doing a pretty good job of making an ass of yourself from nothing. Aside from your gross misunderstanding of evolution, you have a habit of pretending you can't hear the callers who disagree with you. Of course, your hearing miraculously returns for the YECs recommending Answers in Genesis as a source of science information.

In short, nothing new here. Same old creationist nonsense, same old intellectual dishonesty.

oh noez teh muslims r in r base critsizin teh athiesm

I always have misgivings about giving attention to blog stalkers, but this is just too amusing to pass up.

As you've read before, I've become a fan of Kafir Girl, a new ex-Muslim atheist blogger who is guiding us heathen Westerners through the Quran, chapter by chapter. A couple of weeks ago, a Muslim student in Pakistan, named Sona, started posting on his own blog about the mean, stupid Kafir Girl and her ridiculous accusations about the Quran.

(The first post I saw about her said: "I have noticed many, blogs by ex Muslim women. What is up with these chicks?" My observation was: "It’s like a bad Jari al-Seinfeld routine.")

After what seemed to me like a very, very slight amount of good natured ridicule, suddenly Sona threw a big temper tantrum, wrote a post saying that he wished humanity would be wiped out by a comet, and deleted his blog forever.

Well, "forever" in a fairly subjective sense, since he was back a short time later with a new blog, same address, this time called "Kafir Girl Sucks." I got a chance to read it yesterday. There were about ten posts, nearly all of which were whining about Kafir Girl.

In the meantime, on Wednesday we at the Non-Prophets received the following sneering, mustache-twirling letter from one Zain ibn Bakari, who wrote:

I am a Muslim. I listened to some of you podcasts - I think they should be offed as alternative to unconscious inducing medication to operating theaters around the world. You openly admit you've not read the Koran and allow this riddiclious women named Kafirgirl spoon-feed you. The term "idiot savant" comes to mind when thinking of her. Admittedly, that term applies only halfway to her, which is why I allege that whenever there's an argument about her devotion to principles and to freedom, all one has to do is point out that there is much more of this to come. That should settle the argument pretty quickly.

Turns out that Zain is Sona's little brother, and now he's listening to our podcast. Yay, expanding international audience!

Matt replied:

Thanks for writing.

Do you have any evidence to support your position — or is it just opinion and faith?

Apparently there have been a few more emails from that exchange which I haven't seen yet. However, Zain's first reply is up on Sona's blog now:

As for your dopey retort of: "do you have evidence" the evidence is in the public domain. Try seeing the 3rd link on google after typing "kafirgirl" am sure with your "lofty" intellect you will eventually find it. Don't confuse us Muslims for the ridiculous little carnival freaks the Christians we openly admit our god is malevolent. Perfection has to be both good and evil.

So I did. I looked up "kafirgirl" on Google, and received the following information at the third link:

"Sorry, the page you were looking for in the blog Sona: Kafir Girl Sucks. does not exist."

Wow! Now that's what I call "evidence"! Surely Allah does exist, for in his infinite wisdom he has struck down the foolish blog "Sona: Kafir Girl Sucks" and... well... replaced it with another blog.

Atheism for the Illogic
We reduce atheism to absurdism. With simple LOGIC!

I must advise you that if you would like to see the posts on this blog, you should look fast, because Sona's record now mandates that he delete his blog and start fresh at the rate of once per week. The introductory post claims that he took down all the old posts about Kafir Girl because:

To leave kafirgirl alone as we feel she is beneath us and we also feel sorry for her, unlike atheists, we don't go after weak targets, we believe its against our principles and morality to attack someone who is not equally intelligent as us or more so. It is our opinion, intellectually kafirgirl is a weak target for us. Therefore, we have rather decided to directly challenge atheism.

This is your typical "Wah, we got humiliated by a GIRL, now we're going somewhere for new sport against somebody who has barely even noticed that we exist yet" post.

My main misgivings about this post regard explicitly acknowledging that they do exist. As we've seen lately, in cases such as Patrick and Yomin, paying attention to somebody who is about to become obsessive about you can backfire. Nevertheless... as often as we are criticized for focusing on Christianity rather than Islam, this could be enjoyable for a while.

I confess that I have not read the Quran. But as PZ Myers pointed out when he came up with The Courtier's Reply, it's fairly ridiculous to assert that you cannot refute obvious nonsense unless you have written all the abstruse scholarship that tries to make excuses for the nonsense.

And by the way, a few tips on blogging for the clueless. First: You don't HAVE TO delete your blog every time somebody criticizes it. Not that I don't appreciate having the power to destroy your blogs with a word, but I'd prefer to see people stand up for what they wrote and not back off from it. If you are saying something silly that you don't want people to read, here's some better advice: don't post it in the first place. Think harder about it and decide what kind of words you will be proud of for the rest of your life.

Second: You don't HAVE TO replace your old blog to start a new blog. You can have multiple blogs. It's okay. They don't run out of space at Google. Next time, instead of deleting and reregistering "sonasblog.blogspot.com", try keeping it around, and go ahead and register "kafirgirlsucks.blogspot.com" and "illogicatheism.blogspot.com" instead. It's okay. Nobody will stop you. You can even post links from the old blog to the new blog, and you'll still get the same amount of traffic. It's just annoying for me when I want to link to something that was said, and then it's going to be gone next week.

Third: IT'S OKAY to have a blog that is about more than one topic. Really. If you want a blog that's all about building up Islam, and only occasionally (or frequently) focuses on your manufactured enemies, knock yourself out. Frankly, if you have a blog that's all about somebody else's blog, it strikes me as a little pathetic... but I'm not going to tell you your business.

Apology Apologetics

We’re sorry that the Pope just doesn’t know what a proper apology looks like. An apology is a request for forgiveness for harm done. However, a proper apology requires that the person apologizing admit to the harm he has caused and display an understanding of the impact on the victim. A proper apology requires a demonstration of learning to show that the perpetrator has changed his ways and will avoid making the same mistake in the future. A proper apology means taking responsibility for one’s own actions. Such an apology is a sign of moral maturity and growth as a human being. The Pope’s July 19^th “apology” to victims of the Catholic church’s pedophilic predilections simply doesn’t measure up. We’re sorry that anyone thinks the Pope has offered a valid apology.

The Pope did not bother to address the victims of the Church’s crime. Instead, he issued his pretend apology to an audience of bishops and seminarians. He certainly didn’t admit his own wrong doing. Ratzinger actively perpetuated a long-standing policy of official secrecy of sex abuse claims by clergy and issued an order for clergy to obstruct justice in sex abuse claims. We’re talking tens of thousands of victims over more than forty years. Simply put, the Catholic Church is a racket.

His attempted apology, said in part, “Victims should receive compassion and care, and those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice.” He certainly didn’t want to draw any attention to his own role in this sordid affair or that of the Catholic hierarchy. Remember that in 2005, he requested diplomatic immunity in the US for his crimes to evade a lawsuit where these facts would be front-page news for weeks. That would be bad for business. Besides running a pedophile ring, he is the head of the pretend nation called the Vatican. We’re sorry that the Pope has no intention of taking responsibility for his actions. We’re also sorry that the Pope, presumably the very best that Christianity has to offer, doesn’t even meet remedial standards of moral behavior.

We’re sorry that the Pope’s edicts put the Catholic hierarchy in the US in a conflict of interest. Were they to follow the Pope’s order and actively impede criminal investigations, lie, blame others, and claim church-state separation to avoid taking responsibility for their actions? Or would they do the right thing, follow US law, and side with the victims in bringing the criminals to justice? We all know the answer: “screw the victims.” Let us count the ways. We’re sorry that the Catholic hierarchy is all too happy to sell out children to save their own sanctimonious butts. We’re sorry that anyone looks to the Catholic church for moral advice.

We’re sorry that the media will dutifully print the latest moral ramblings of a cad in a funny hat, but they give a free pass to a foreign head of state who is actively controlling his Bishops here in the US. These stooges are systematically violating our laws with impunity. In this age of “the war on terror,” you would think that someone would give a shit about some actual harm done to Americans on US soil by foreign interests. We’re sorry that the media aids and abets such blatant contempt for our country, our citizens, and our laws by simply ignoring it.

We’re sorry that the Catholic laity still amply funds the Catholic church despite their systematic abuse of children. We’re sorry they don’t get to watch the real-life kiddie porn they’ve funded with their tithes. We’re sorry that so many people are happy to sell out children for magic crackers and make-believe trips to see Jeezus after you die, somewhere over the rainbow. We’re sorry that the rest of Christianity is so enthralled with the concept of “religious tolerance” that they’re happy to overlook the problems of their Catholic brethren, so that the Catholics will do the same when they perpetrate their own immoral acts. We’re sorry that Christians are largely ignorant of the long history of crimes of their religion.

We’re sorry the Bible says nothing negative about pedophilia. Children are disposable property in the Bible, owned by their father. We’re sorry that believers worship a god who is either too powerless to help children or who gets off watching the show. We’re sorry that believers think that because they worship such a god, they have done their part to make the world a better place. We’re sorry it never occurs to them that maybe their god doesn’t exist, they should stop being dupes, and maybe stop the harm.

We’re not sorry for the secular courts and twelve-member juries of ordinary people who have done more to clean up this sorry mess than God and all of Christendom with its empty claims of moral authority and power.

There is a little lesson in there somewhere.

What's the Difference?

When I first recognized I was an atheist, I hadn’t read any atheist literature. I studied and came to my own conclusions about god after being brought up as a fundamentalist (and for many years accepting the Bible as the inerrant word of god). After a few years as an atheist, visiting atheist forums and debating and dialoging with atheists and theists alike, I stumbled upon ACA in my community. I had already begun drawing Atheist Eve--a character who reflected my own perspective of what I saw as problems in my own past “logic” and who also voiced my assessment of current Christian doctrines and trends.

I was so ignorant of the atheist community and what it offered that I recall a discussion on the ACA list where someone quoted Richard Dawkins. I replied, “Who is Richard Dawkins? And why should I care what he says?” Interestingly, while I’m not proud of my ignorance, I am happy with my response. Here’s why:

As a Christian, I was always reading the Bible, attending Bible studies and reading commentaries that reinforced my fundamentalist beliefs about doctrine and interpretation. I wanted to be thoroughly informed about what I “believed” (although I have a lot of trouble calling something I have to learn and constantly reinforce _my_ “belief”).

With atheism, it didn’t work that way. I observed and studied all I could about the nature of existence around me, and concluded that god appeared to be a metaphor.

While I can’t claim that no one might read Dawkins and change their mind with regard to religious beliefs, I can claim that I never was “swayed” by Satan in the form of any atheist writer. No silky smooth sophistry confused me into atheism. No angry incident with my church or a preacher made me hate god. No rebellion against the Christian lifestyle or rules and regulations made Christianity impossible for me. No desire to sin with abandon drove my motives. (In fact, later, when I began to adopt a more Buddhist perspective, I was far more morally restricted than I ever had been as a Christian. Personal sacrifice has never been an impediment for me. I’m simply not a highly materialistic person). The truth is, believe it or don’t, I just put my mind to the task of considering the question and studied relevant data as much as I could, and I determined god is a metaphor.

What made me happy about my own ignorance, though, is that there is something to be said for being able to respond to apologetic criticisms that I’m being blindly led astray by the intellectual prowess of such as Dawkins, by pointing out that it can hardly be a valid criticism while it is aimed at someone who has never read any atheist author’s views on religion, and who doesn’t know who Dawkins is. So, even after discovering Dawkins, I never read more than one article. I didn’t want to “learn” arguments from him. I didn’t want to be accused of adopting the beliefs of others and simply labeling them as “my own,” in the same way I had done in my religious years. There is no atheist leader. There is nothing in atheism to follow. And if I disagree with Dawkins, it’s OK to say, “So what if Dawkins says it? I don’t agree.”

When is the last time a fundamentalist posted, “So what if the Bible says it? I don’t agree.”

That’s the difference. And it’s a biggie. And so, if there could ever be a positive result to ignorance, hopefully it was illustrated in my reply on the atheist list those years ago.

But Dawkins is a man, and the Bible, well, that’s god, isn’t it? That’s why you won’t hear that from a fundamentalist. That’s what I would have said as a fundamentalist in response to my own point above. After taking a course of Josh McDowell’s materials with my preacher at about 15 years old, I would have insisted it was inarguable. The Bible was the inerrant word of god. My church said it. My family said it. My school never disputed it. My community held to it. Everyone knew the Bible was the word of god. Everyone knew that if there was a god, then Christianity was the option. And none of us ever bothered to confirm any of our assumptions.

Now, after many years of avoiding reading books about atheists and atheism, I feel I’ve proven my point—mainly to myself, but perhaps to some others—that atheism is my fully informed choice and “my” belief based on “my” conclusions. I have not accepted the claim of atheism from someone else. I’ve given theists their opportunity. I’ve looked at the world and universe around me, and after crunching the data, god is a metaphor.

In celebrating my release from the feeling of obligation that I need to respond to those who would accuse me of succumbing to Satanic atheist dogma that presumably corrupted my brain, I now have begun reading atheist literature. I read some Bertrand Russell, some George Smith, some Dawkins, and now I’m reading Ehrman. I enjoy some of it. I enjoy some of it somewhat less. I find some of it hard to read. I find some of it easy to read. I agree with some of it. I disagree with some of it. But I am able to evaluate all of it and make up my own mind whether or not I deem it as valid based on what I know of the world around me and how it operates.

The Erhman book I’m reading currently reminded me very much of my own experiences with religion in my past. And I decided to write some notes about that to someone, and I’m going to share a portion of that correspondence (somewhat paraphrased) here for anyone who likes that sort of thing:

“…At 15, I still would not commit to Christianity, because I was too unsure if there was a god or not. Finally, a preacher invited me to attend a series based on the materials of Josh McDowell, who puts forward the inerrancy of scripture via historical ‘evidence.’

“I was so swayed by McDowell (back then there was no Internet, and local libraries in small towns weren't overflowing with controversial books that questioned mainstream ideas). It wasn't until college that I even met anyone who questioned whether or not the foundation of my beliefs (the Bible--and even the existence of god) was something I should probably think more about. [Because truth was important to me, I took their advice.]

“Outside of my normal course load and my part-time job, I made time to spend in the evenings at the university library, looking up religious history--especially regarding the production of the Bible. What I finally determined (much to my dismay) was that the criticisms of my fellow students (many of whom were taking history themselves) were well-founded. In the end, as a layman, sitting many nights at a table with my books all spread out, I was able to piece together the information--that is today put forward in the book ‘Misquoting Jesus’--from many different sources--some religious, some secular (none, however, which were atheistic or anti-religious). Once I recognized that the history of the Bible--even as presented by honest, god-fearing Christians promoting Christian doctrine--indicated a group of texts one should take with a heaping pile of grains of salt--my mind was finally freed to pursue honest truth.

“Thanks to books like Erhman’s and the Internet, there is today a place for fundamentalist youth (or even the aged) to go and find this information in a simpler fashion…for a layman, this information isn't really old hat, nor is it easy to necessarily even find and put together. But it is becoming more common and available, and that's because of the work of people like Erhman. At the time I was a teen, Josh McDowell's claims could stand completely unchallenged by schools, churches, and communities in America. There was no independent, unbiased source to go to, to see if what McDowell claimed was verifiable. Erhman is part of a structure that is slowly growing and finally making sure that all sides of the fundamentalist story are available to the public.

“Freedom of choice surely needs to be respected, but what is the difference between an uninformed choice and no choice at all? By keeping people ignorant, freedom of choice is clearly impeded. Books like Erhman’s open up real choice to people who might not otherwise realize they even have options. This is upsetting to some people…But they need to ask themselves what ‘truth’ should have to fear from facts. If my version of truth cannot withstand the full brunt of complete disclosure of facts, my version of truth requires re-examination…”

I’m not sure what else to say about it. I no longer have any dogma or doctrine that requires defense against reality or facts or data. I can accept whatever I observe and see how it fits into the rest of the facts and data. If it doesn’t fit, I can re-evaluate the whole enchilada if I have to. Nothing need be too sacred to examine. No question need remain unanswered merely because it’s a taboo of the highest order to even ask it. I have no stake in any “belief” any longer. It can now be purely about truth alone. I have nothing of value that requires me to reject data. In fact, I doubt I would today be capable of valuing anything that would require such a thing from me. I have no bias I’m aware of that causes me to deny what can be observed or to distort its meaning so that it force-fits within my preconceived framework of reality. But as a Christian, I could not have honestly claimed that.

Letter to Chuck Colson on "The Faith"

For a background on what to expect from this discussion, I request that regular readers of the Atheist Experience blog please visit this message before getting involved in any commentary.



Hello Chuck,

Let me introduce myself. I am a software developer in Austin, where I recently acquired a Master's Degree in Computer Engineering from UT. I am also a life long atheist, which makes me something of a rarity. The great majority of atheists I know started out religious and eventually deconverted. In my case, my parents are both physicists. My father is a staunch atheist, while my mother is somewhat more "spiritual" but still does not believe in a traditional god. I definitely take after my father in this area. Both parents come from a Jewish background as well, so I have had a variety of religious instruction including a bar mitzvah. I write for the "Atheist Experience" blog as a hobby, and I also appear regularly on a cable access TV show and an internet podcast on behalf of the Atheist Community of Austin. I am a confirmed family man, with a wonderful wife and a son who just finished kindergarten, and two stepdaughters, one teenaged and one young adult.

First of all, I want to thank you for asking me to participate in this dialogue, and for sending me a copy of The Faith. I often go out of my way to listen to and read material with which I disagree, as I find it educational to consider a variety of perspectives. The last full book I read for this purpose was Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe, about three years ago.

In order to avoid confusion, let me define some terms. I designate myself an "agnostic atheist," a term that I presume you will deny has meaning, based on my reading of chapter 2. In an anecdote, you attributed an aspect of certainty to both words: atheists are certain that God doesn't exist, and agnostics are certain that no knowledge is possible. You acknowledged this as a rhetorical "ploy," and I agree: it leaves no word available to describe my view. I do not believe in the existence of any gods (hence I am an atheist) because I do not believe that sufficient evidence has been presented to justify one. I recognize that I do not "know" in the absolute sense whether there is a god or not (hence I am an agnostic), but remain in a default state of disbelief until such time as better support for one is provided.

The above is a summary of my use of the words, and I can support them from the dictionary if you really want to spend time nitpicking about definitions. Otherwise, if you are uncomfortable with describing me as an atheist, feel free to pick whatever word you want to apply instead. "Infidel" would suit me fine, for example.

As I read your book, one major theme to which you frequently returned was your contempt for post-modernism, which you see as the philosophical rejection of objective truth. In this case, I find myself on common ground with you. Speaking as a person with a strongly held respect for science, I have on several occasions found myself arguing with post-modernists. A certain breed of armchair philosopher loves to describe science as "just another religion," implying that it is arbitrary and irrelevant, and thereby ridiculing the idea that reality is something that can be investigated and understood. So I heartily share your general opposition to post-modernism.

I was troubled, however, by your method of arriving at a conclusion about what is true. Let me give you a small example, from chapter 4, titled simply "Truth." You wrote:

"The only thing the god of tolerance hates more than Christians making truth-claims is Christians proving them. Beginning with a facility in Houston, Prison Fellowship now runs residential programs, 'spiritual boot camps,' within prisons in locations scattered across the country. This is called the InnerChange Freedom Initiative — or IFI. We have, since the beginning, contended that these demonstrate the truth of the Gospel in transforming lives. University of Pennsylvania researchers reported that IFI graduates had an 8 percent re-incarceration rate versus 20 percent in a comparable control group (and 67 percent nationally). Prison officials were astounded.

"It was the first empirical evidence that this faith-based approach to corrections works -- in other words, that the Gospel is true. And that's when Barry Lynn of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State decided to sue. To prove our truth-claims proved an outrage that tolerance could not abide."

In a brief endnote, you mentioned that you actually lost that case and IFI was ordered to cease and desist. However, you didn't trouble yourself to explain why.

In fact, I had already heard about this study, but I had to go and look it up again to see if your claims were right (in an objective, factual, and decidedly not post-modern sense). What I discovered was that when you claim a re-incarceration rate of only 8 percent, you are not describing all people who took your program. Instead, you selectively defined a graduate of your program to be someone who remained with the "boot camp" until their release, and then got and held a job outside of prison. In other words, someone could go through the program, be paroled, attempt to re-enter society, and STILL not be considered in your statistics if they failed to find a job.

I sometimes say that if you take an aspirin and pray to God, then your headache will go away. But that doesn't mean that the prayer was what cured your headache. The situation that you've offered is similar: if you get a job and go through spiritual boot camp, then you'll be less likely to go to jail, leaving you free to jump to your own conclusion about which one was the cause. People who have a job and money are less likely to commit crimes -- this is true whether they take your program or not.

That doesn't mean that IFI can take credit simply for disqualifying participants without a job from the survey. It would be like writing a rule that says their graduate status is automatically revoked if they ever go back to jail. If such a rule existed, then you could claim a 0% recidivism rate among "graduates," and this would remain true even if the program accomplished nothing constructive at all.

I'm no sociologist, but I have taken a few classes on statistical methods and data analysis in my time. One of the first things that anyone should learn about citing a study is that if you taint the set of data in advance to selectively mask underlying causes, then any results you come out with are meaningless. And in this case, when you look at the whole of the study which you claimed provided "empirical evidence that this faith-based approach to corrections works," what you find is that among all people who enrolled in your program, the recidivism rate was actually worse than the control group.

(Here is a link to the original study. On page 5 it is revealed that "Among the total number of IFI participants, 24.3% were incarcerated compared to 20.3% of the comparison group during the two-year post-release period.")

This is just one example of a cavalier attitude toward the facts in evidence, and it puts a very different perspective on your pursuit of "capital T Truth." What you describe as "Truth," on many occasions I perceive as "an unwavering certainty in situations where none is warranted." Or to put it more succinctly, "faith."

The scientific method is built primarily on the principles that:

1. There is objective truth that may be discovered through investigation, but
2. Human perception of that truth is always subject to errors

In other words, science embodies the principle that we should always be vigilant against the possibility that we may be wrong, and be ready to recognize mistakes even in our own deeply held opinions.

I don't see this kind of acknowledgement of your own fallibility in your writing. Even though you see things in terms of the fallen nature of mankind, you feel sure that the omniscient creator of the universe wrote a book which contains the answers to everything, and that your own interpretation is always the right one. From where I sit, this looks as if you have granted yourself infallibility. As long as your beliefs are in tune with what you think God wants, no error is possible.

Yet being certain is not necessarily the same thing as being right. Several times throughout the book, you emphasize the role of Christians who fought for the abolition of slavery, an act that we both applaud. You also dismiss the role of Christians who fought for the preservation of slavery. You curtly acknowledge their existence in chapter 12 by saying "It's true that some Christians have been hypocritical about slavery, condoning it for too long. The record of the church is not without blemish."

As I do not share your inclination to defend the Bible, it's not clear to me that this is hypocrisy at all. Far from disregarding the Bible's advice, many devout 19th century Christians saw the Bible in itself as proof that slavery was an act sanctioned by God. For example, in 1856 Reverend Thornton Stringfellow, a Baptist minister from Culpepper County in Virginia, wrote an essay called "Scriptural View of Slavery", which is full of passages that support his opinion, such as:

"Job himself was a great slave-holder, and, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, won no small portion of his claims to character with God and men from the manner in which he discharged his duty to his slaves."

"See Lev. xxv: 44, 45, 46; 'Thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you: of them shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land. And they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-man forever.' I ask any candid man, if the words of this institution could be more explicit? It is from God himself; it authorizes that people, to whom he had become king and law-giver, to purchase men and women as property; to hold them and their posterity in bondage; and to will them to their children as a possession forever; and more, it allows foreign slaveholders to settle and live among them; to breed slaves and sell them."

"This, by the way, is a singular circumstance, that Jesus Christ should put a system of measures into operation, which have for their object the subjugation of all men to him as a law-giver--kings, legislators, and private citizens in all nations; at a time, too, when hereditary slavery existed in all; and after it had been incorporated for fifteen hundred years into the Jewish constitution, immediately given by God himself. I say, it is passing strange, that under such circumstances, Jesus should fail to prohibit its further existence, if it was his intention to abolish it."

"If, therefore, doing to others as we would they should do to us, means precisely what loving our neighbor as ourself means, then Jesus has added no new moral principle above those in the law of Moses, to prohibit slavery, for in his law is found this principle, and slavery also."

So you can see here that faith and conviction in the truth of the Bible were at one time used to support the continuation of slavery. I don't think that Reverend Stringfellow's faith was any less sincere than yours; even though I think, as you do, that he was wrong.

Please don't assume that this way of thinking is too old-fashioned for modern, enlightened Christians. I have engaged in many conversations with very earnest Christians who, rather than explaining away passages such as those in Leviticus which clearly prescribe slavery, worked hard to justify them. They argue that "Biblical slavery" was very different from the slavery in the American South, and that it simply wasn't such a problem for those living in ancient Israel to own slaves as long as the slaves were treated humanely. In a few extreme cases, I've even had Christians essentially tell me that having a job is no worse than being a slave, and it would therefore not be such a bad thing if "Biblical slavery" still existed.

Christians arguing for slavery? Is this the fault of post-modernism and relativism? Or is it simply an honest effort to reconcile a book which is "known" to contain absolute immutable truth? Assuming that your faith is incompatible with slavery, by what method should I choose the truth-value of your faith over the faith of Stringfellow? I could apply reason based on core values, of course. But if this is possible, as I think it is, then I would argue that "faith" is a useless contribution to the discussion altogether.

One of the main things that motivates my atheism -- beyond the simple fact that I do not see any compelling reason to believe in God -- is that I cannot regard faith as more reliable than evidence as a means to learn about truth. Sometimes I must make decisions without enough evidence to be certain. In those cases, I recognize the possibility that I may be wrong, while still choosing to believe whatever best fits the available facts; and I expect that my beliefs may change when new information is available. This is not similar to the Biblical description of "faith," which is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1, NIV translation) It is this sense of "being certain" despite a lack of evidence that troubles me.

The perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks had a tremendous amount of faith. You can say whatever unflattering things you want about their actions and their motives, and I'd certainly agree with you; but one thing you cannot accuse them of is a lack of faith. I see no reason to think that they did not sincerely believe their own doctrine which said that they would be honored as martyrs in the afterlife and awarded 72 virgins.

Was it a bad thing to do? Absolutely. Many innocent people were hurt and killed due to the faith of the hijackers, and that is a terrible thing for the victims and their families; it is also extremely sad for the rest of us, as people who have empathy and compassion. Yet if I were to speak reasonably to a fundamentalist Muslim, as I am speaking to you now, I do not think I would be able to persuade that Muslim that he was wrong. Why? Because he doesn't believe that there is any such thing as truth? Of course not -- it is because he has very concrete beliefs about the truth of his god, which cannot be proven on the basis of observation or reason, but which are confidently accepted on the grounds of faith.

Throughout your book, you lumped unbelievers in with both post-modernists and radical Islam as cooperative forces that you imagine are working to destroy our culture. From my perspective, this is a categorical error. On the contrary, I tend to think that what divides "us" from "them" is not which religion is claimed by the majority of citizens. It is our willingness to recognize that although people have different opinions, it is worth the effort to communicate with them and resolve our differences peacefully. War is an option, but a last resort. We even understand that other people might continue to believe things that are wrong, and yet strive for a solution that involves conversation rather than blowing stuff up or crashing airlines. I know you must desire this approach in some cases, because you sent me your book and asked for a dialogue, even though it is clear from your text that you believe I am your enemy.

Ultimately I reject the faith of the hijackers as insufficient grounds to claim knowledge, just as I reject yours. This leaves me free to judge their actions and yours based on the consequences, as viewed through the lens of my values and my concerns about justice. You may say that this is subjective, and perhaps it is. Unlike "the physical world," which can be observed, values are ultimately the domain of the person who possesses them and the society in which they live. You presume that your values are the same as the values of a god who is always right. But in thousands of years of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, faith and devotion have been used to defend slavery as often as condemn it; to promote unproductive wars as often as prevent them; to suppress freedom as often as to champion it.

By no means does this imply that I think all atheists are wonderful, nor that Christians are evil. Certainly not in the same sense that you seem to believe my point of view is evil. On the contrary, from reading the historical anecdotes that you highlighted in the second half of your book, I would venture to say that we admire many of the same character traits in people, and love many of the same aspects of humanity.

In practice, though, I believe that you make many clear factual mistakes due to your insistence that belief in God and Jesus can never steer you wrong. And because I am still not impressed with the arguments for the accuracy of the Bible -- which we can discuss in future correspondence, if you wish -- I ultimately don't feel that supporting your faith is worth enough to justify the extreme tolerance for error.

Thanks again for initiating this discussion, and I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,
Russell Glasser

A typical amateur apologist's mistake: atheism requires omniscience

This thread is generating lots of comments, mostly in the form of an amusing ongoing exchange with our old pal Rhology, who's going all postmodern and solipsistic on us in a frankly bizarre bid to deny that requiring evidence for claims is rational. But this comment from a reader named Jay contains a very basic mistake that Christians make when trying to argue with atheists, and so I thought I'd top-post it as a kind of counter-apologetics primer. My response in full follows. Jay declares:

Ok Martin,evoultion does not require you know how the universe was created, but atheism does... Unless you can prove how the universe was created and in doing so also disprove there is a God, then atheism is not rational.

Yes, I know, we all thought arguments that silly had gone the way of Pascal's Wager and Ray Comfort's banana. Alas, we find people who are new to this whole debating thing who still think they're brilliant stumpers they can whip out like an "Instant" card in Magic The Gathering, to counter your atheist mojo. Sorry, not so fast.

Atheism is simply a statement of disbelief concerning the existence of gods. It does not require knowledge of how the universe was created any more than disbelief in leprechauns requires you to know why rainbows exist.

(In the case of rainbows, of course, we do know why those occur, but a person would not have to know this in order to disbelieve in leprechauns.)

Jay's second sentence is the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof. The statement assumes the truth of its conclusion, to wit, that God exists because atheists cannot prove God does not exist. The flaw in this argument is glaringly obvious simply by a slight edit to what Jay wrote.

Unless you can prove how the universe was created and in doing so also disprove there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster, then a-spaghetti-monsterism is not rational.

Literally any mythical being can be substituted for "God" in Jay's statement. So it's a fallacious argument rooted in a false premise.

The burden of proof for a claim always rests upon the person claiming the existence of the thing in question. There is no such burden upon those who take the skeptical view. If someone wishes to tell me that fairies live in his backyard, it is not my obligation to prove to him that they don't, it is his to prove to me that they do. If he fails, I will not believe in his fairies. Similarly, not knowing precisely how the universe was created does not preclude someone saying, "I don't believe the cause was the Biblical God or any other god, including Zeus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, because I don't think there is adequate evidence for it."

When it comes to questions with as-yet-unknown answers, such as exactly how the universe originated, we admit the limitations of our knowledge and look at the whole mystery as a compelling subject for ongoing study. We're not inclined simply to place our ignorance on an altar and call it "God."

The Colson thing already getting amusing

Kazim and I have heard back from Mike Pritchard, who told us he's sending us Colson's book and all that. Kazim then set out a few parameters for how we would like any dialogue to go, mindful of the fact that our usual dealings with apologists reveal them to be, oh, less than scrupulously honest, shall we say. Mike responded with this interestingly worded note.

Yes, this all sounds great to me. I thought about the difference between the posting and comments too, and explained this to my liaison with Chuck. Basically, we know the comments could go in a million different directions, but we'll just keep focused on the main blog postings and realize the comments are a bit of the Wild Wild West if you will.

Let me run all this by Chuck's folks, but I'm confident they'll agree too. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for documenting this all out.

"My liaison with Chuck"? "Chuck's folks"? First we're told that Colson wants all dialogue to go through Mike Pritchard, and now it looks like everything is going to get filtered through Mike and a small army of handlers. It's as if Colson doesn't want to talk to the evil godless heathens without a bunch of redshirts shielding him or something. Our suspicion is that Colson is having his "folks" contact quite a lot of atheist blogs, with the intent of choosing the one offering the most lightweight arguments against his book. People who tend to be hard arguers like us could well end up not being chosen to participate in this "dialogue" at all.

Still, we'll see. Kazim, Matt and I are all finding the whole thing kind of entertaining, and if the book turns up, all I can promise to do is read it and be as honest in my critique as I can. Which will probably mean he won't want me to join in. But we'll just play it as it lays.

Since I haven't really read any of Colson's books or columns, I plan to do so over the next few weeks to see what his standard points are. I already know he's got a list of "Ten Questions About Origins," which an initial reading reveals to be the usual McDonald's menu of creationist canards and ignorance (where are the transitional fossils? what about the 2nd Law? what about irreducible complexity? yada yada). I suppose I'll respond to that one first, probably early next week, and then see what else he's got.

Closed captioned for the humor impaired

Yes, that was a joke yesterday. No, the show isn't going away. And no, this blog has not been renamed to "The Rhology/Dan Marvin Apologetic Power Hour."

It's important to emphasize this point, because when our regular commenter Dan Marvin saw the altered title of the blog yesterday, he appeared to just about blow a gasket with excitement. He spent a large part of yesterday using the existence of his new pretend TV show as a reason to just burst forth with the preaching to the unwashed masses, in a completely un-ironic way that was also not particularly funny (at least not intentionally so). I would have answered him then, but I wanted to stay "in character" for April Fool's Day. Luckily, that's over now.

Personally, I don't despise Dan in the way that Martin seems to. Maybe it's because I'm particularly susceptible to implied flattery. A few weeks ago, I casually mentioned that Dan should watch the movie "Memento" in order to get the point I was making about using not personal experience as a substitute for evidence. Then he made a point of posting a reply in the comments on Kazim's Korner and saying that he did watch it, and liked it. That goes a long way toward making me feel charitable toward a person. (Well, he also called Martin a rude name, but that's par for the course.)

Dan, now I know that you sometimes sincerely listen to me, and I appreciate that. So please understand that I'm posting this in the spirit of brotherly love and harmony, because frankly, your apologetic style sucks. Very much. You may not believe me, but it's true when I tell you that I'm trying to help you -- and other apologists who might be reading -- do it better.

Here's my first point: learn how to make your own damn arguments, and lay off with the wall-to-wall Bible quotes.

Let me explain.

I am not unfamiliar with the Bible. I went to Jewish Sunday school and covered a lot of old testament material. I played Haman in a Purim play. I did my bar mitzvah speech on "an eye for an eye." I took two separate college level humanities classes that used the Bible as source material. I have my own Bible. I've read it. I've read it to my kids. I've read CS Lewis and Lee Strobel. I listen to Christian radio, although not as much as I used to, because after many years it gets extremely repetitive.

You may think that when you start quoting the Bible by chapter and verse, you are causing us atheists to take a surprised pause and reconsider our place in the universe. In fact, we're not doing that. Have you ever seen this Far Side cartoon, where the man is scolding his dog Ginger, but all the dog hears is "blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah GINGER"? That's pretty much what atheists hear when you start quoting the Bible: "blah blah blah." To be perfectly honest, I don't even read that stuff anymore. My eyes just slide right over those paragraphs as I skim down to try and figure out if you have a point buried in there somewhere.

Now you're probably already snickering "Hee hee, Kazim just admitted that atheists are as dumb as dogs!" Nope, that's not it. Think of it like this. Imagine you're trying to have a conversation with some guy who really loves Star Trek. Every time you try to discuss something with him, he suddenly perks up and babbles random Star Trek references. He'll say: "You know, in episode 45/4211.4, Captain Kirk said 'The only solution is...a balance of power. We arm our side with exactly that much more. A balance of power...the trickiest, most difficult, dirtiest game of them all. But the only one that preserves both sides.'" Sometimes the Star Trek quotes make sense in context, and sometimes he just says things that appear to be a complete non sequitur. But he always quotes them with great significance, as if the words of Captain Kirk are the greatest pearls of wisdom that have ever been offered to the world.

After a while, wouldn't you stop paying attention to what this guy says? I mean, not that there's anything particularly wrong with Star Trek, but it is, after all, a fictional story written by some guys in Hollywood in order to make a paycheck.

That's what we think of your Bible. Wait, you're about to argue and tell me why the Bible is the greatest book ever written. Shut up and listen. I'm sure there's an argument to be had about why the Bible is important to you and why we should pay attention to it. But the important thing to realize is that we haven't accepted the Bible as true yet. Maybe you can change that, but you're never, never, EVER going to change our minds by quoting from the Bible. It's like trying to prove that Star Trek is true by quoting from Star Trek. It doesn't work. It's annoying. You're wasting both your time and ours. I mean it.

In fact, let's henceforth refer to this as the Star Trek Rule, and I will try to remind you of it in future conversations, to make sure it sinks in. The Star Trek Rule is this:

Before quoting the Bible to atheists, always ask yourself whether the same statement would be just as effective in your mind if you were quoting Captain Kirk.

If the answer is "yes," then you may be making a good point that people will listen to. If the answer is "no," then you are probably trying to rely on the Bible as something that people will regard as credible in its own right... and atheists, because we are blind to the merits of the Bible, will miss the point.

So I'm going to repeat the words with which I started: learn how to make your own damn arguments. Just figure it out. If CS Lewis and Lee Strobel can do it, then you can too. It's not some magical superpower, it's just putting your own thoughts in order and then explaining them. If you must quote from the Bible (and frankly I haven't seen many situations where it makes any difference) then at least use your own words to tell us why we, who believe the Bible is no more credible than Star Trek, should give a hoot about that particular chapter and verse.

And I have just one more point to make: You never change anyone's mind by personally insulting them. It's just a fact. Take, for example, the verse you used yesterday... all together now: "The fool has said in his heart, there is no God." Ha ha! Zing! We've never heard THAT one before! Your fictional book about God says that we're fools not to believe in the fictional God!

See, this is a doubly bad way to preach effectively, because first it breaks the Star Trek rule ("Captain Kirk says you're a fool"); and second it makes you sound like a dick. Is your goal to make all the Christians reading the thread chortle with merriment and glee at your wit? Then by all means, be a dick. Doesn't matter to us. But is your goal to persuade the foolish atheists to accept Jesus as their savior? Then stop being a dick. People don't listen to dicks. You will get way more positive response by being personable, charming, and interesting. I promise.

Those are my suggestions... take them or leave them.

Why and How

Many years ago, a Krishna friend said to me, “People often ask ‘why?,’ when what they really mean is ‘how?’”

Initially, this statement confused me. But he explained it further. It made sense to me. And since that day, I have adopted his stance.

On Yesterday’s show, we had a Christian caller who told us that she believes in god because she has personally witnessed miracles. Matt asked her to give us an example of a miracle. She said there were so many to choose from it would take too much time to go into them. Matt asked her to just give us one example.

If you are an atheist who is ever engaged by Christians, you know that it’s important to get an example of a miracle, because Christians do not agree on what constitutes a “miracle.” Like most other religious terms, the word is meaningless, and pretty much self-defined, along the lines of something like, “love” or “freedom.”

The woman explained her “miracle” pretty thoroughly. But it didn’t take much time to see this woman defines miracle as “a natural/reasonable occurrence that I interpret as a sign from god.” Her definition is not unlike an autobiographical story I once read about a Christian woman who hated the color of carpet in her church. When it was changed out, she knew it was a sign she should marry her fiancé, because, prior to that, she had determined she must be married in that church, but couldn’t bear to be married on that hideous shade of aqua carpeting. Most atheists don’t think of these types of things as “miracles,” so it’s always good to check before assuming when a Christian uses a word that relates to the supernatural. Since none of it is available for examination/verification to anyone—we’re left with the reality that any such term has only the meaning that any individual Christian assigns.

The woman on the phone said her reason for believing in god was that she began asking questions such as “why is the sky blue?” And she prayed ardently to a god (that she didn’t believe in) to let her know if he was there. She also began to research different religions. And she found one that really spoke to her, and became a Christian. So, now, in her words, “I know that I know that I know [there is a god].”

There are some obvious issues with a claim of “not believing” a god exists while I’m repeatedly pleading to that god. But this is already going to be long, so let me jump to where it ties into another obvious problem: the problem of asking for signs from spirit beings to determine whether or not they exist.

In other words, any “sign” I receive as the result of prayer is only open to subjective interpretation, and not to any verification. Christians put forward that it’s wrong to ask for any sort of verifiable miracle or definitive sign. To do so would be “testing” god—a serious no-no. So a person making this sort of plea is open to accepting any sort of subtle influence or coincidence. They’re not asking for Earth-shattering, convincing evidence—just something “meaningful” to them, personally.

What’s the obvious problem? Well, ask them how this sounds to their ears: “If you wanted to know if Big Foot exists, and I told you that I know Big Foot exists because I prayed to god for a sign to let me know if they exist. And after a few days, weeks, and months, I got nothing. So, I started researching Big Foot online—reading all I could find. I also kept on praying and asking to feel assured and have a sign. I prayed and prayed and kept on praying, and reading about Big Foot, until I finally encounter a subtle coincidence—a better job offer, a feeling of euphoria/peace, (or even a video of Big Foot online)—that convinced me god was telling me that Big Foot do, in fact, exist. And so now, I know that I know that I know Big Foot is out there in the woods.”

Would they think I had justification for belief in Big Foot? Or would they think I wanted so badly to believe that I just drilled myself until I finally accepted anything as proof of Big Foot’s existence?

If I want to know if a god exists, why not check into it like I would check into the existence of anything else—of Big Foot? Clearly define what it means to “exist,” exactly what it is I’m seeking, and where it should be found manifesting, then check to see if it’s actually manifesting there in the way I expect. If it’s not, then what I am seeking doesn’t exist. That’s, honestly, the best anyone could do to make a determination of the existence of any item-X. Praying to item-X for assurance it exists makes no sense unless, on some level, I’ve already accepted all sorts of claims about the existence of this item and how it operates—even while I attempt to assure others I haven’t presupposed these claims to be valid. I’m certainly throwing out everything I have learned in life about how to determine whether or not something exists and how to determine truth value, and it appears I’ve also, to some significant degree, accepted all the terms laid down by superstition in my search. And if I was truly skeptical—is this really how I’d go about it? Would I see proof of the validity of a god on supernatural terms? Or would I go with what I know to be tried and true in existent reality?

But that’s a huge digression. Back to “why” and “how.” Definitions can change, I understand. And I will be the first to admit that people I know use “why” and “how,” often, interchangeably. I’m not writing to say “you’re wrong.” I’m writing to call out a subtle difference that may/may not speak to a difference in perspective that an atheist should be aware of when he or she is engaged by a Christian. When the Christian says, “I was asking myself, ‘why is the sky blue?’” I should already be wary, because the Christian is potentially starting off asking the wrong (and potentially very loaded) question. With my prior disqualifier regarding definitions firmly in place, I’m going to appeal now to Webster for a standard, accepted definition.

“Why” is listed as basically meaning: “For what reason, cause, purpose or motive.” “How” is listed as “in what manner, in what way, by what means.”

Can they be used interchangeably? I think so. However, consider this: In a discussion about whether or not the universe is the result of natural causes or intelligent purpose, doesn’t the term “why” carry with it the potential to muddy the waters with presupposition, whereas “how” is more unpresuming and more to the point? If a god did it, “how” will get to that. If a god didn’t do it, “how” will also get to that. But if a god didn’t do it, “why” may or may not get to that—depending on how we’re using it.

Depending on what the Christian means by “why,” the word comes preloaded to presume purpose and motive in creation. When I hear a Christian ask “Why X?,” where X is a natural function, I will say, “I think you mean ‘how’ X.” The less biased and more accurate question is “How is the sky blue?”

We use “why” rather than “how” so often that that last question may sound awkward to some. But I recommend getting used to it. And I recommend pointing out the bias that comes with a preloaded word like “why” when a Christian uses it. “Do you recognize that a more appropriate word would be ‘how’—since ‘why’ presupposes motive in natural functions and causes? You’re potentially already starting off with a bias that the universe has purpose. And since that is the very point of our debate, I have to declare that I don’t know if there is any reason ‘why’ the sky is blue—but I believe we can discuss something of how the sky is blue; and if it leads to a purpose, so be it.”

Am I being over-analytical here? I don’t think so. Consider that the Christian on the phone was responding to Matt’s question about what made her believe a god exists. She answered that she was putting questions to herself, such as “Why is the sky blue?” What does that have to do with god unless you perceive a motive behind the reality that the sky is blue? If Matt had asked her a question about determining truth values or finding the cause of natural realities, then there probably would be no reason to consider the word “why” to have any ulterior meaning beyond it’s interchangeable use with “how.” But in the context of “Why do I believe an intelligent being is behind the natural universe?,” the idea that someone pondered “Why is the sky blue?,” takes on a whole new (pardon the pun) shade of meaning.

Make of it what you will. Draw your own conclusions. If you think I’m being too detailed in analyzing the language people use, then disregard my point entirely. But I find that definitions often are key source of misunderstandings in any discussion with a Christian. And, so, I see no reason to allow for more than will certainly already occur. “Why” has, over the years, become a red flag to me in discussions with Christians. I don’t know there are any “why”s for the things they want to know. But we can talk about “how”s, if they’re ready to investigate nature in an unbiased fashion.

Theomatics again

Probably not many of you have long enough memories for this, but one of the very first topics I ever did as a guest on the Atheist Experience TV show was about a concept called "Theomatics." If you're familiar with the "Bible codes" then you probably have the general gist of what it's about. You don't create crossword puzzles to find significant words and phrases. Instead, you have a cypher which assigns each letter to a number, and then you attempt to find significant words or phrases in the Bible that are multiples of some number that you pick.

It's all very silly, of course, because you can pick any number that you like, and then given a long enough sequence of words, you can find seemingly significant phrases on any subject. If you'd like to verify this for yourself, you can read the short article I wrote at the time, and then find your own gematria-based phrases by running my program.

I still get email about this from time to time. Part of the reason is because I'm linked from the first page of a Google search on Theomatics, and I'm also linked from the Wikipedia page. Here is an email exchange I just had.

Gary writes:

I just reviewed your Theomatics Debunked rebuttal of Theomatics... and immediately,

it became a useless challenge.

I have known of Theomatics for over 20 years... and understand it.

After reading your rebuttal and so called "Debunking" it became

immediately apparent that you completely misunderstand the entire

premise and subject. And so much so, that I can see that your only

goal was to slam Theomatics... whether you proved anything or not.

In totem, your 'Debunking' was hillarious... hedging on utter stupidity!

Now, usually I don't respond to this level of obnoxiousness at all -- somebody who walks in assuming that I'm an idiot is unlikely to yield a fruitful discussion. But I was curious about what Gary might bring to the table, so I replied:

Okay, I'll bite. What was it about my program that failed to capture
the point of Theomatics? Can you be more specific about what makes it so stupid?

Gary replied:

For one (major) of many points:

I am admitedly no expert on the subject, but I'm not brain dead. Your analogies to debunk Theomatics were clearly without merit.

All you did was show that numbers can be found in random text.

a) you completely ignore the fact that in the Bible, specific NUMBERS are established "in the text/writings" that also correlate and become significantly re-established in the numerology of both the Hebrew/Greek alphabet. That these numbers are adequately repeated throughout scripture.

Theomatics reveals that these numbers written in text (IE: seven, two etc) are reinforced by the subjects, themes and within context of "MEANING" whether literal or prophetic, whether poetic or factual, whether spiritual or historic... THESE SAME NUMBERS IN TEXT are directly supported by the construction of the writings... which, across 4000 years span of two languages/cultures (Hebrew/Greek), and authored by 40 authors... the letter symbol construction of these writings in these two languages reinforce the script or TEXT level numbers and meanings. None of which was assembled in random nor is there ANY evidence in collusion between or amidst the authors to establish the onion skin-like layers of numerical significance. To go further, The phenomenon of Theomatics wasn't even KNOWN until the mid seventies.

In this point alone, you have missed the boat in your lame attempt to make an analogy of Theomatics with your examples. In short, your examples leave out 80% of what is significant about Theomatics.

I replied:

I certainly do appreciate the feedback, but I'm not convinced that
your claim has any bearing whatsoever on my response.

Regardless of how the significant numbers are chosen, the point of the program was to demonstrate that ANY number can yield seemingly significant results from any text. Thus is doesn't matter whether the text attaches significant meaning to 111 or 52 or 69. By running a large enough text through a computer with some set of rules and any number you please, you can pick out thousands of phrases which translate to multiples of that number. It's simply a matter of confirmation bias. No collaboration or special planning on the part of the authors is required.

> To go further, The phenomenon of Theomatics wasn't even KNOWN until the mid
> seventies.

Of course it wasn't, and that's part of the point also. Theomatics doesn't make any predictions and it doesn't yield any useful new knowledge. At best it can be used as a tool for identifying events in hindsight. You know what you are looking for already, and you find things that appear to confirm the significance of phrases that look
important.

Gary replied (all bold text from the original):

But you DO SO at the complete exclusion of the fact that the numbers

are significant because they are established IN THE TEXT and writings.

They are established both in language/writings and are given specific

relationships to people, times, places and subjects.

Your analogies do NOTHING but prove you can produce detached numbers!

You exclude that the phrases associated with these numbers are related

IN CONTEXT of the commucation of concepts of various central theme.

No. I have reviewed your site all morning... and you simply DO NOT MAKE

A VIABLE CRITIQUE that holds relevence whatsoever to support "debunking."

All you achieved is to debuke yourself.

Of course it wasn't, and that's part of the point also. Theomatics
doesn't make any predictions and it doesn't yield any useful new
knowledge. At best it can be used as a tool for identifying events in
hindsight. You know what you are looking for already, and you find
things that appear to confirm the significance of phrases that look
important.

Wrong again. But, you've already debunked yourself.

So I will leave you to your own defunct debunkingness.

Then I replied:

But as I've already said, it doesn't actually matter how the numbers are chosen. The number 111 will produce significant hits, and so will all other numbers. You claim that the number 111 is especially interesting because it is established as important by the text — although in reality, 111 is just one of thousands of numbers which could be regarded as significant depending on your interpretation.

But I don't care how you pick your numbers. The point is that whether a number is "significant" to you or not, it will yield phrases which appear to relate to any topic you choose. It's just that you care about the resulting phrases when the chosen number is "significant," and you don't care when the chosen number is not "significant." It's your own filter on the text that makes it meaningful or not, however you read it.

> Wrong again. But, you've already debunked yourself.
> So I will leave you to your own defunct debunkingness.

That's a great word you've invented. Although I think I would have picked something like "debunkiferation."

Gary replied:

You have missed the entire collective point.

I don't know how to help you see it, but I have friends who are

PHd's that get it... and several friends who are not even Christians

see the signifiance. If you see a copy of the book I have,

Sanford University's Statistics division studied Theomatics

for several months and produced a report that said that

the Theomatics feature in the Bible is unique. They could

not produce the same results in other writings, or even

spiitual writings. And they said the chances of it just

happening were like 1 out of several hundred billion.

If I find the online re-print of this I will send it.

I replied:

> I don't know how to help you see it, but I have friends who are
> PHd's that get it...

It looks like you can't. Maybe you should ask them to discuss it with me instead of you.

> If you see a copy of the book I have,
> Sanford University's Statistics division studied Theomatics
> for several months and produced a report that said that
> the Theomatics feature in the Bible is unique.

Since "Sanford" doesn't appear to be the name of an actual university, I have to assume that you mean either "Stanford" or "Samford." Samford is a Bible college in Alabama, so I bet it's that. Imagine that: a Bible college came to the conclusion that Theomatics is correct. I'm floored by their objectivity.

> They could
> not produce the same results in other writings, or even
> spiitual writings. And they said the chances of it just
> happening were like 1 out of several hundred billion.
> If I find the online re-print of this I will send it.

Well, I produced what appears to be a similar result in just twenty minutes on my computer, so perhaps they weren't trying all that hard. I expect you'll continue to repeat that I missed the entire point of Theomatics, as you have in each letter so far. So far I still don't see the relevance of your argument that some numbers are more important than others. But I suppose that's just a factor of my dysfuntional debunktionality.

That was the last message in this exchange.

So let's see: in the final tally I see at least two arguments from (unnamed) authority, and three things I'll say are confusion of cause and effect (the phrases were found in the Bible after the "discovery" of theomatics, therefore they were put there deliberately by someone who knew theomatics in advance).

Did I miss any others?

"What would convince you?"

Christians often get frustrated with atheists. They complain that no argument is good enough, that we must be even more dogmatic in our unbelief than they are in their belief. You see this whine reflected in the swiftness with which believers, desperate to refute Dawkins and the "new atheists," began referring to them as "atheist fundamentalists." Nothing they can possibly say to persuade these closed-minded heathens will ever change their minds.

What believers don't see is that this has nothing to do with the presumed intellectual constipation of atheists, and everything to do with the lame quality of their arguments for faith. You must realize that to a lot of believers — not just the rank-and-file Jack and Jill Churchgoer, but even to apologists who write books and ought to know better, like Ray Comfort and Dinesh D'Souza — laughable nonsense like Pascal's Wager or Lewis's "lord, liar or lunatic" are excellent arguments. The simple fact is that, to an atheist who has spent years living his/her life rooted in reason, the feeble, emotionally comforting justifications that believers use to prop up their beliefs won't work.

So what can believers do to change our minds? Often I've been asked, "What would it take to convince you? What evidence would break through your intellectual front lines?" Maybe you've been asked this yourself.

My response is to tell the believer that they should be directing their question at themselves and not me. Here's what they should do.

Ask yourself, "Why do I believe in God?" Be brutally honest in your answer. Do you believe simply because you've been raised to believe and have never thought to question your upbringing? Or do you think you actually have sound intellectual reasons for your theism?

If you answer in the former, then you need to ask yourself if that is really good enough. Believers like to throw around terms like "intellectual honesty," so any believer who is willing to admit they hold on to their theism simply because they were raised Christian ought to ask themselves if it is truly intellectually honest not to question beliefs just because you were raised in them.

If you answer in the latter, then ask yourself this: If your reasons for belief are intellectually satisfying to you, and are in your opinion well supported by evidence, then are those reasons on their own strong enough to sway unbelievers? If you think of yourself as a smart person, and your reasons to believe were strong enough to sway you, shouldn't they be good enough for anyone else also?

If yes, then by all means, present them. And expect them to be scrutinized and evaluated. Don't be angry if they aren't just automatically accepted.

But if you don't think your reasons are strong enough to sway an atheist, then ask yourself, why did they sway you? Are they really especially good reasons? Or did you allow something else — your emotions, your desire for acceptance and fear of rejection by your neighbors and family — to overpower your reason? If other smart people aren't convinced by your reasons, should you have accepted those reasons as good enough for you, being that you're a smart person too?

So don't let atheists' insistence on arguing these things down to the bone frustrate you, and don't waste time asking us what would convince us, because that effectively amounts to your giving up. (And if you're doing that, what does it say about how supportable your beliefs are?) Instead, take a moment to really evaluate your reasons for being a believer, and be coldly, unforgivingly honest with yourself in that evaluation. It will be difficult, but it's worth doing. In my case, I must admit it was that process of self-evaluation that steered me towards my eventual atheism. But if such self-scrutiny only reassures you your reasons are sound, and that they are sound enough to trounce all of us "new atheists," then bring 'em on. And prepare to defend yourself in a hearty argument. Much as people might like to think of us as "atheist fundamentalists" as an excuse to avoid getting in such arguments with us, just remember, we aren't fundamentalists, we're rationalists who insist on strict fidelity to evidence and reason. If we can be proven wrong, we'll admit it when we are.

Something from Nothing

There are certain Xian fabrications that just won't die. It's like getting one of those bad e-mail claims that you know before you type in "snopes.com" is going to turn out to be a fraud.

It's a fraud. It's listed as a fraud at fraud-checking sites. And yet, here it is, again, in your in-box. Often you might get it again a few months later from the same person you sent the snopes link to previously.

On our tv list at ACA, a young person wrote to us to ask some questions. I'm glad he's asking, but one of his questions started out pretty much saying (and please don't stop me, even though I know you've heard this one before): Even though Big Bang has a lot of good theory behind it, I don't see how something could come from nothing?

Let's examing "nothing" in the context of Big Bang: "Nothing" in the theory of Big Bang ever states that something comes from nothing. "Nothing" in Big Bang hints at this. "Nothing" in Big Bang could possibly be confused with this idea that something came from nothing. But like a bad penny, it just keeps coming back: "How can Big Bang say something comes from nothing?"

I pointed out that BB doesn't say that. That there is a Law of Conservation of Matter that agrees with the boy's observation that "something" just doesn't seem to come from "nothing"; and I pointed out that the only model of origins I know that states such a thing is creation ex nihilo or "God made somet