On public arguments

Today's email comes from Mark in Colorado.

I work in a Defense firm where everybody is either a fundamentalist Christian or Mormon. I got into a discussion with a mormon guy who is always spouting some stupid shit. Anyway, I confronted him about his ideas and after a few minutes of discussion he realized I wasn't a pushover, so he switched tactics and started bringing up quantum physics (he feels that proves everything), psuedo science, non sequiturs, real science mixed with nonsense -- usually in the same sentence. Just for an example, he said he believed in evolution but described a cartoonish if not naive version. I tried to correct him and tell him he had it wrong, but he switched scripts and said loudly, "You don't believe in evolution"! It went on with a lot of stuff like that to muddy the waters and it seemed to have impressed people in my group.

My question is, have you ever run across anyone like that and how did you handle it?

In a situation like that, my first rule is that it's important to keep your cool. I understand that it's difficult in this situation, but you should calmly step back and assess what you are getting out of the argument. There are, in my mind, three reasons that you would want to argue with somebody:

1. You think you can change that person's mind in some way.
2. You think you can influence the opinion of people who are observing the discussion.
3. You are genuinely interested in the other person's arguments, or would like practice responding to them for your own education. Or it's fun.

These three points boil down to a question of "Who's your audience?" The answers are, respectively, 1. the Mormon; 2. somebody else; 3. Yourself. How you answer the audience question will have a lot of influence on how you should approach the discussion.

If the Mormon is your audience, you've already decided that he is kind of an idiot, so obviously you're not going to make major gains with him. Your best bet is to find the areas where he's most badly misunderstanding mainstream science, point out what is wrong in a straightforward way, and steer him toward credible literature on how it actually works. In order to do this, you'll have to understand the real science well enough to break it down that way, so maybe some extra reading is in order.

If a third party is your audience, you can start out winning big just by keeping your cool. If the other guy is visibly upset, and you are not, then it's hard to side with him. You said that his rant seemed to impress people in your group, so it's possible that they were swayed by it. Maybe you're having your discussion with the wrong person. If you think there is somebody a bit more reasonable who is on the fence and simply doesn't understand the issues involved, I'd look for an opportunity to talk privately with that person (or people). By expanding your influence to other people and getting them on your side, you're less likely to find yourself alone in future discussions.

If you are your own audience, then go ahead and argue to a frustrating standstill, then evaluate the specifics of the conversation later. Toss out the points which sounded like a stupid waste of time to you, but remember the points that left you struggling. Maybe the claims about quantum physics sounded like bunk to you, but you couldn't express why they're bunk. In that case, it's time to educate yourself. Go find some real information about science, preferably from a good, well-spoken popular science writer. It won't help in the current discussion, but it will improve your broad base of knowledge the next time the discussion comes up.

If none of the above are a good audience in this situation, maybe you should check your motives again and see if it's really worth your time to be talking to this lunkhead. I wouldn't pick an argument with a homeless guy in the street shouting at people, and you shouldn't waste time in a situation where nobody has anything to learn.

Whatever the case, remember that a casual debate is a skirmish, not the war. You can lose a battle and it doesn't ruin you as a human being. Just try to bear in mind your long term goals: becoming a knowledgeable and well-rounded individual; and helping good and correct memes to spread through the general population.

Following the script

We got an excellent question from a fan in Perth, Australia, enough that I wanted to share my answer online.

A friend of mine regaled me with a tale a while back, about a theist spouting a well worn apologetic to a prominent atheist. Rather than shoot it down with a just as well worn counter, he simply replied with "did you really think that would work?" Now, I don't know the whole story, but apparently said atheist went on to berate said theist about stupid they were for thinking that of all the things that this atheist had heard and read, it was this one guy spouting this one thing that he probably got of some website that would change his mind. While I'm not a fan of berating people, It does strike me as a valid idea, the whole "do you really think that'll stump me" response.

However, following a lively debate with some fellow atheist friends a while back, I was on the receiving end of a sudden rush of perspective. You see, they were just saying the same old stuff as well. The usual cookies about the christian god being immoral, how many different religions there are all over the world, the nonsense of disregarding science just because it can't explain EVERYTHING... same old crap you hear from people with an education. It got me thinking, what if the shoe was on the other foot? My girlfriend's mother is an Anglican priest and I know for a fact that if I just spouted one of the usual chestnuts to her, she'd have an answer pretty quickly, probably one that'd get me off the script, if there is such a thing as an atheist script.

I suppose my question is, shouldn't a skeptic be trying to come up with new responses all the time, forever? I hate to go us vs them, but the idea of stock responses to stock questions and insular self congratulation seems very, very, well... dumb. In Perth, we don't have many fundies at all, but a lot of people are so vaguely middle class white spiritual, anti-science. The usual crap, "can't prove everything" what the bleep do we know pseudo-spiritual nonsense, and when I try to have honest discourse with them, it just descends into stock responses and I give up. It's very disheartening.

To condense it, my question is: As people who reject claims on the basis of logic and reason, is it enough just to have stock responses? Shouldn't we be trying to come up with new, better and always unexpected ways to exercise our skepticism? Hope you can shed some light on my ramblings.

And my answer is: Yes and no.

It is a mistake to completely dismiss the value of having an arsenal of sound bites. The thing is, you use your stock responses exactly as long as they work well. At the point where they stop working, you either enhance them or abandon them for something that works better.

For example. My stock response to "God must have created the universe because it couldn't have created itself" is probably always going to be some variant of asking, or leading into, the question "What created God?"

Theists don't like this. They ridicule it. They say it's like a question that a little child would ask. They come up with variants like the Kalam argument, in which instead of saying "Everything that exists has a cause" they say instead, "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" -- thereby creating a special pleading loophole. If you're attentive enough, then you can see where the sleight of hand occurs, much as you can look at a "proof" that your high school buddy used to produce showing that 1=2, and identify the fallacious step where he divided by zero or something.

The thing is, the fact that someone will ridicule and dismiss an argument is not, in itself, a demonstration that the argument is not working. I could enter a history class and loudly scoff: "What's that?! You expect me to believe that Henry VIII became the King of England in 1509??? You're so ignorant!" I don't doubt that if I tried this against a bunch of teachers, at least a few of them would be so insecure that they wouldn't argue with you, lapsing into embarrassed silence or changing the subject. This seems to be the disposition of many biology teachers today who would otherwise be teaching evolution.

Your atheist friend who says "Did you really think THAT would work?" is using a tactic. It is neither inherently good nor bad; it's just potentially effective or not effective in a particular situation. The tactic is a combination of poisoning the well and psychological intimidation. He wants to give the opponent and/or the audience the emotional feeling that the opponent is ignorant and the atheist knows more. That feeling may or may not be justified, and the intimidation may or may not work.

Like any tactic, this one has its strengths and weaknesses. If you pull this trick, and your opponent stammers out some apologies and tries to talk about something else, you've just gained a point of data saying that it is a good tactic for you. You pulled it off. On the other hand, do this in an inappropriate way, and you look like an arrogant prick. For an example where this approach bombed, check out the historical Bush/Gore debate, where voters came away with a lasting impression of Gore loudly sighing, rolling his eyes, and getting in Bush's personal space -- which was perceived as needlessly condescending, irrespective of whether Gore's impatience was warranted or not.

Scorning your opponent this way is like throwing a lot of money into the pot in poker. It may be that you are putting all that money in because you genuinely have a good hand -- i.e., you are armed with better facts, your opponent really is ignorant, and you can prove it handily when it's time to show your cards. On the other hand, it may be a bluff, and you're secretly hoping that your opponent will fold under your withering gaze so that you can collect the money without a prolonged fight that you stand to lose.

And yes, religious people apply this tactic all the time. Let me throw a few book titles at you:

• You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (Ray Comfort)
• I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist (Norman Geisler)
• Evolution, A Fairy Tale for Grownups! (Ray again -- sorry, but that guy is a walking textbook on this technique)

So as you noticed, it happens on both sides. What, then, do you do when somebody attacks you with that "I've already heard that argument" line while showing obvious contempt?

I think the most important rule here is to keep your cool, don't flinch, and find a way to do a quick end-run around the brush off. The best way to do this, I think, is to highlight the person's arrogance as their weakness rather than their strength.

This is a place where the "reductio ad absurdum" technique often comes in handy. Ask yourself: "Okay, so this guy is acting as if my argument isn't even worthy of consideration. What implications also follow from his dismissal?" Highlighting obvious contradictions is useful, and so is the question "How do you know...?"

Here's a sample dialogue.

Theist: "Everything has a cause. Since the chain can't go back infinitely, there must be a God." (Note: oversimplified, in some cases.)
Atheist: "What created God?"
Theist: "That's a ridiculous question. It's something a child would ask."
Atheist: "Oh, so you don't think everything had a cause."

(Reversal. Instead of demanding that the theist acknowledge your point, you accept his dismissal and calmly look for a contradiction.)

Theist: "Well I don't mean that everything has a cause. Everything which begins to exist has a cause. But God is eternal."
Atheist: "How do you know that?"

(The theist just tried to inject an assertion, again counting on the assumption that it's so obvious that only a fool would challenge it. Don't be intimidated by this.)

The conversation may go in any number of directions at this point -- my money's on "science vs. faith as a means for knowing things." The important thing, though, is that you find a way around the theist baldly asserting a certainty that he has not earned.

As with any argument, it's a game. If you fold, then it doesn't matter how unsupported your opponent was in reality; you still lose. On the flip side, if your opponent calls you on your claim and you can't back it up, you may well lose worse, because then your opponent has condescended to you and then proven that the condescension was justified. That's the gamble you take when you are arrogant.

As you probably noticed, you very much should have an arsenal of "opening moves" that, by and large, don't have to vary much. If you trot out a move and you see your opponent driven before you (and, of course, hear the lamentation of the women!) then you keep doing that. To someone who doesn't argue on a regular basis, this can look easy, even lazy, and perhaps very risky.

The critical point here is that the opening is not the whole game. Good for you if you can occasionally checkmate your opponent in three moves and that's all it takes. (Fear Edward Current!) But if your opponent doesn't cave right away, then what is going to determine your success is your ability to defend the sound bite, to think on the fly and justify your reasoning, not just to quote it.

Developing opening moves does not necessarily have to be a solo, creative process. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you talk to a new person. You should by all means watch other people's debates, see what works and what doesn't, and shamelessly steal the stuff you like. That doesn't make you a mindless parrot, it makes you a smart shopper. But if you use these arguments and then you lose, you should always be willing to take a step back. Ask yourself: Did his response win because it really is actually logically superior? Has he actually made a point? Has he uncovered a genuine flaw in my thought process?

If that turns out to be true, it may well be that you have to dump that argument from your arsenal. The unfit do not survive, it's evolution in action. (And please note that this is intellectual Darwinism, not social Darwinism. I'm advocating the death and abandonment of ideas, not people.)

But that's not the only outcome. You can look for other cases where people have had to deal with that same argument, and find a response that will get you a step further in your next conversation. And in that case, you will become more confident and your response will be stronger each time you face that argument.

Building your mental immune system

When Mark from Stone Church called again yesterday, he provided a perfect example of something that I've been meaning to blog about for a few months. Namely, it is a tempting but extremely bad habit to only associate with people who agree with you all your life.

One issue that most Atheist Experience hosts feel passionately about, apart from religion, is the spate of anti-scientific attacks which have been leveled against vaccinations. When you vaccinate yourself, you deliberately expose your body to small quantities of a disease or virus, in order to train your immune system to recognize and attack that disease. If you don't get vaccinated, when the disease attacks you in its natural form it will likely be much stronger, and your body still won't know how to deal with it.

The fact that they may be adorable is only slight consolation.

Worse, by putting yourself at risk for this disease, you also become a carrier, which could increase its presence in the population at large. The more people there are in a given population who haven't been vaccinated against a disease, the more risk everyone takes of catching it, and the more common the disease comes.

Critical thinking, of course, is your immune system against bad ideas. Even if you have a general background in skepticism and logic, it can be hard to spot the flaws in a claim that you've never heard before. The first time anyone encounters a concerted efforts to discredit vaccination, or prove that alien abductions occur based on anecdotes, or claim that evolution is a scientific conspiracy with no more proof than Biblical literalism -- it's not as easy as you might think to see through those arguments.

It's really not good enough to say "That's stupid" and ignore them, because if you have a policy of treating ideas you disagree with that way, then you risk becoming so dogmatic that you wind up rejecting things that are actually true. Instead, skepticism is a habit that requires practice. It's good mental exercise to take such claims seriously, to ask yourself "What are the implications if this claim is true? Can I investigate it? Are there arguments against it already out there in the memesphere? If so, are they convincing, or do the debunking efforts rely on fallacies themselves? If there are none, why not? Is it not high enough profile, or is there something else going on?"

A lot of religious traditions -- like those practiced in Austin Stone Church -- reject this approach. Followers of such religions not only don't try to understand competing points of view themselves, they regard any efforts to do so with suspicion and fear. They may actually believe that it's a sin against God, or a trick by Satan, if you are even humoring a bad idea. Apologists will often seriously question the value of sending kids to college, because they might be exposed to "worldly" ideas. Cults sometimes advise their members not to read newspapers or watch TV, lest their minds be poisoned by outsiders rejecting their beliefs.

This is the intellectual equivalent of avoiding diseases by locking yourself in a hermetically sealed bubble for life. It can work, of course. As long as no germs can get inside the bubble, you can't catch anything. On the other hand, once you're committed to this plan, you can never leave the bubble for any reason. If you do, your immune system is likely to be so weak that you are especially vulnerable to any and all diseases you might encounter. Something very much like this is speculated to have happened to the relatively isolated Native American population when they first encountered European settlers who, by virtue of living on a much larger, more diverse, and densely populated continent, were relatively swimming in diseases regularly, and hence had much broader immunities.

Here, take this blanket. No really, I insist. We're not using it anymore.

So when you've been sheltered by fundamentalism your whole life, my feeling is that you have to keep sheltering yourself or become similarly vulnerable to invasion from foreign ideas. Which is essentially what Mark told us he does in our call yesterday.


Many emailers have homed in on the fact that Mark kept telling us what his church believes, as synonymous with what he believes. Tracie and I mentioned that the kind of evidence that we would need for God is not really all that strict, and that you don't need to pray or "have faith" in order to be convinced that your mom exists. When something is real and testable, it can be perceived independently by many different people in the same way.

Mark responded that everyone at his church believes the same thing about God, and he proved it by reading a "statement of faith" that all church members are required agree to. I said, "It sounds like you have to devote a lot of work to making people believe the same thing." And of course, there are 30,000 other Christian denominations in the US, many of which have very different perspectives on who this God person is.


I have long loved this interview that American Atheists spokesman David Silverman once did with Douglas Adams.

Above: A face that David Silverman probably did not have to make while talking to Douglas Adams.

In the interview, Adams elaborated on a great many of his atheist beliefs in a way that he has rarely done explicitly in his other work. One of the most striking and memorable arguments presented by Adams was in comparing religious beliefs to other types of scholarship.

Adams points out that if you wish to be taken seriously in the realms of science, history, or math, you should expect to be challenged constantly. Any claim you make, no matter how trivial the matter may look to those outside the discipline, will be subjected to withering criticism and debate, and the ideas that remain standing after this process, round after round, are the ones that can eventually be regarded as credible.

But religions don't accept that burden of proof. Quite the opposite, in fact; when someone promotes a silly belief as a statement of faith, we're asked to lend that faith some sort of automatic respect. Atheists who argue with the faith-beliefs of others are regularly regarded as being dicks.

Anyway, Douglas Adams concluded:

So, I was already familiar with and (I’m afraid) accepting of, the view that you couldn't apply the logic of physics to religion, that they were dealing with different types of 'truth'. ... What astonished me, however, was the realization that the arguments in favor of religious ideas were so feeble and silly next to the robust arguments of something as interpretative and opinionated as history. In fact they were embarrassingly childish. They were never subject to the kind of outright challenge which was the normal stock in trade of any other area of intellectual endeavor whatsoever. Why not? Because they wouldn’t stand up to it.

And that, in a nutshell, is why it's not a good idea to show politeness and "respect" for people's beliefs. I try as much as I can to show respect for the people themselves, and appreciate the diversity of backgrounds that causes them to think the way they do. Greta Christina wrote a great article a few months back called "No, Atheists Don't Have to Show 'Respect' for Religion," which observes the same behavior. Greta says:

And, of course, it's ridiculously hypocritical to engage in fervent political and cultural discourse -- as so many progressive ecumenical believers do -- and then expect religion to get a free pass. It's absurd to accept and even welcome vigorous public debate over politics, science, medicine, economics, gender, sexuality, education, the role of government, etc... and then get appalled and insulted when religion is treated as just another hypothesis about the world, one that can be debated and criticized like any other.

It's not about making fun of religion just for sport. When you tiptoe around someone's beliefs, you're not doing them any favors. All you are doing is allowing them to stay in their little bubble for a bit longer, while enabling them to spread the idea that it's okay to be closed off to competing ideas.

"Atheism is a religion too!"

Doubtless you've heard this little nugget of inanity from more than one indignant apologist, and it's usually the sort of thing they resort to when everything else they've thrown your way has been flattened. The glib response is usually something along the lines of, "Yeah, like baldness is a hair color!" Then this is followed by tortuous explanations where you find yourself trying to describe the difference between belief that there are no gods and disbelief in gods, to a mind not exactly skilled in grasping nuance.

But there's an easier way to deal with this one, a way even Christians might understand, and it's illustrated by a post today from PZ.

Atheism is not a religion for the same reason theism is not a religion. The terms refer solely to the disbelief or belief in gods. But religion implies a ritualized, or at least organized practice. Indeed, a person can be theistic and yet not the least bit religious. Theism is not a religion, but Christianity, Islam, et al, are.

Similarly, atheism is not a religion, but...there are atheistic religions. And they are just as irrational and lacking in evidence as theistic ones. Buddhism, on the whole, seems generally benign, though its embrace of such fantasies as reincarnation (which is something you're encouraged to avoid) puts it squarely in the realm of delusion and woo. But then there are the Raelians, a gang of raving nitwits who reject God...only to replace him with aliens. It may be generous even to call Raelianism (if that's the term) atheistic, since they just put God in a UFO and only reject the traditional notion of a supernatural god. But to some, and to themselves, they are considered atheistic on those grounds alone.

We at The Atheist Experience have all encountered self-proclaimed atheists who go on to voice their eager support for other irrational ideas, like 9/11 Trutherism or "alternative" medicine.

So no, atheism itself is not a religion. But there are atheist religions, and there are individual atheists just as lost to reason and confused as many theists. It isn't enough to reject gods simply because you don't like Pat Robertson or the Pope or the Tea Party or what have you. Skepticism and critical thinking must inform everything you do. A person can get to atheism by means other than critical thinking, but it's possible to adopt even ideas that are right for the wrong reasons. Put critical thinking first, and atheism should not only flow naturally from that, but it will have a much more sound intellectual footing, and you'll be better inoculated against other slippery falsehoods that sneak through the back door of your confirmation bias too.

In which Mike demonstrates once and for all the proof that God exists

Having some problems with the blog comments on this post and hoping that starting a new one will fix it.

Please direct your attention to the comments section, where MikeAdAstraSmith shall valiantly demonstrate to us poor, benighted sinners that God irrefutably exists.

[Edit: Actually we traced our problem to an overzealous spam filter, which probably thought that some comments looked too much like the work of a certain D**** M****. We're retraining it as fast as we can, but in the meantime, please do enjoy the thread.]

On changing minds

In a previous thread, someone wrote: "While debating with a theist can be as invigorating as playing chess, one should bear in mind that it's doing them harm. It's driving them deeper into their psychosis."

This is simply not true, and yet it's unfortunately a very common meme among the "Don't be a dick" crowd. As a counterpoint, I'd like to share a letter we received a few months ago. I don't post stuff like this often, as it would come across as too self-congratulatory, but I do want to remind everyone that people sometimes change their minds.

For context: This guy originally wrote to us in January. He wrote that seeing the show was causing serious doubts in his own Christian beliefs. He then went on to say:

I was wondering, if there is no higher power, how you would justify morality in an atheist at all? Please don't misunderstand, as a young person on the verge of apostasy, I'm not saying that atheists have no morals, although I have met 'christians' who have claimed as much. After all, if there is no higher power, then there is no objective truth, ergo no objective morality, meaning all morality is subjective. If that is the case, then to say that a murderer is immoral is surely a fallacy, as he no doubt acted as his morals saw fit. If morality is subjective, then he is as moral for acting out the murder he saw as moral as you are for not acting out a murder you saw as immoral.

I wrote back and we discussed the morality issue for a while. The angle I took on this was the Euthyphro Dilemma, though I usually don't refer to it by name. I like to explore the concept that a God-given morality is somehow objective in a way that human consensus-derived morality is not. In the course of three more exchanges between us, and some messages from Tracie thrown in, we discussed slavery; we discussed the story of Jephthah; we talked about what kind of commands God could issue that would be considered by this person to be immoral.

After a while he said that they were hard questions but he still felt like there must be a god. The conversation petered out.

In September I received this:

Hi, Mr. Glasser,

I doubt you remember me, but we had a discussion about religion and so on just under a year ago. I have since become an atheist and I thought I'd drop you an e-mail to thank you. The video I e-mailed about in the first place was the first real faith-shaking material I had come into contact with, and from there I kept investigating my religion scientifically, historically and morally. Obviously, I found it wanting and, as I said earlier, have since renounced it. I thought I'd let you know a few of the final arguments in convincing me that the bible, at least, is wrong, not really in case you hadn't heard them (I'm sure you have), but rather because, since our discussion must have been frustrating for you, I'd like you to know. One is that the God of the bible forced us into sin, and therefore knowingly and willingly condemned literally billions of people to hell by creating the Eden situation in the first place, for he knew what would happen but did nothing to change it. This is an act of incredible cruelty, and is unjustifiable, giving trouble even to my own father (a minister). That's a moral argument, I suppose, but also shows a biblical contradiction (if God is all loving and unchanging then this act (among dozens of notable others) should be impossible). The second is the fallibility of the bible. I wonder if you knew that Luke, in his gospel, lists 28 generations between Joseph, Jesus' father, and David, whereas Matthew gives 41. On top of that, the census Luke wrote about never happened, and the local census upon which it may have been based happened long after Herod's death.

Those are just a few, but anyway, thanks again for showing me another way of thinking, and it's thanks in part to you guys and what you're doing that I am being fascinated and amazed every day by the way that the world works without resorting to the 'Don't ask questions, God did it' train of thought.

So. I have been asked, on a few occasions, whether arguing with people about atheism ever changes people's minds. My answer is always "Very rarely, and the changes are usually minor but positive." This is what I would consider a happy exception.

Theism is the default position?

Michael Ochoa posted a link to a video and asked me to debunk it. Normally, I'd skip requests like this, as I have too much on my plate...but sometimes I get in a mood and just go for it. Here's the first (and only draft) of a response to the video:

"P1 - In order to accept that our rational faculties are reliable, initial sensory experiences of the world must be accepted until proven incorrect. In other words, these experiences must be considered default positions."

This might be true for infants, who lack the wealth of knowledge with which to assess and evaluate the brains interpretation of sensory input, but it is not necessarily true for adults who are cognizant of the ability of our brains to misinterpret sensory data and who have a wealth of comparative experience with which to assess initial interpretations.

For example, we understand that what we see (or, more accurately, think we see) is not always accurate and that our initial assessment of other sensory data ultimately proves incorrect. Realizing this, we are only acting rationally if we tentatively proportion our belief to the quality and quantity of evidence.

In his example about a mirage, he has no reason to question the mirage until he’s given evidence that it might be false. That’s true and it’s the infant position. However, the instant one becomes aware that one can be mistaken, both in perception and in inferences based on those perceptions one is no longer rationally justified in accepting all initial perceptions at face value.

Premise 1, in simplest terms, is simply an assertion that we are justified in accepting our first impressions until they are proven wrong. This is demonstrably false and intellectually childish. Anyone who has ever witnessed a conjurer's trick understands that the mental image their brain has compiled from the sensory data simply does not map to reality. The same is true for any number or other examples where we can understand that the brain simply doesn't have enough information to accurately perceive events.

Only someone convinced that they could never be mistaken could hold this sort of view and remain intellectually honest. The rest of us should try to think like grown-ups and reserve belief for those things which are sufficiently supported by evidence (unless, of course, we don’t care whether or not our beliefs are true).

Premise 1 is simply a denial of rational skepticism (he even uses the 'rigid skepticism' dilemma to underscore this - but ignores the truth about rational skepticism) and is a gross oversimplification for the purposes of propping up the rest of the argument. Rational skepticism holds that acceptance of claims be apportioned to the evidence, whereas this premise ignores the complexities involved in rationally determining if a belief is justified and instead simply attempts to shift the burden of proof by proclaiming that one is justified in accepting one's first impressions until they are proven wrong.

"P2 - The appearance of purpose, intention and order (Design) in the Universe is an initially sensed experience."

No, it isn't. It is an inference that the brain makes by comparing the internal model of the sensed experienced to other things that the brain already holds to be true. It is, the conclusion of an argument by analogy - and it's one that we understand may be flawed. It’s also one that can be tested by scientific exploration.

We’ve done this and identified many instances where one may perceive intelligent, purposeful design where no such inference is justified.

Attempting to call one's inference of design "initially sensed experience" is a rather clumsy attempt to fabricate a predicate link to Premise 1.

"P3 - Hence, the belief in a designed universe, which automatically infers a designer, is in fact the default position until proven otherwise."

This directly follows from the first two premises and (given the flaws in the first two) it is unsound. (Nullifying the rest of the argument...)

The fact that he thinks this is where he'll get the most objections is rather silly. It is only when he asserts that the designer is an intentional, intelligent agent that he runs into trouble, but he doesn't do that until P4. As this stands, it is a direct conclusion from the first two premises… hence, the “hence”.

"P4 - The concept of God (a purposeful, intelligent agent outside the universe that cannot be detected by our senses) is the most tenable explanation for the identity of this designer."

There's no need to continue until the first premises are fixed, but I'd like to point out how really bad this argument is, so we'll keep going.

Premise 4 defines a particular god-concept and asserts - without demonstration - that this particular god-concept is the best explanation. Without a demonstration, this premise can simply be rejected.

Additionally, the definition given isn't simply a theistic proposition. It goes further and without justification. A theistic god need not be "outside the universe" or undetectable and, indeed, many would hold that their god is detectable and operating within the universe.

And here, too, we run into another bit of cognitive dissonance in his argument: outside the universe.

By what right can anyone invoke a claim that any such thing exists? Do we have any direct experience of ‘outside the universe’? Do we have appearance of this? Do we have any initial sensory experience of this? By what right can people assert ‘outside the universe’ or ‘before time’?

"C - Hence, Theism is the default position until proven otherwise."

This entire argument essentially reads as:

1. I'm justified in believing whatever my first perception is, until proven wrong.

2. My first perception is to infer design.

3. I am justified in believing the universe is designed until you prove me wrong.

4. I'm convinced that the best explanation for the design I perceive is God X.

C. Therefore, belief in God X is justified until proved wrong.

This argument is dishonest at virtually every point and it is nothing more than a denial of rational skepticism and a blatant shifting of the burden of proof. This isn't fundamentally different than the obstinate theist who claims "You can't prove me wrong!" - and thus it fails to all of the objections we would launch at that simplified argument.

The inability to disprove something doesn't make it a justified default position. You can't disprove the claim that there are clones of every one of us living on a planet in the Andromeda galaxy - but that doesn't mean that we're justified in accepting it as the default position.

It is trivial to demonstrate that our initial perceptions are often mistaken and we have a pretty good understanding of why some people see the appearance of design - and why their inference of intelligent design in nature is unsupported, at best, and incorrect, at worst.

And even if we didn't already understand how so much of this was wrong, sticking your fingers in your ears and demanding that someone prove you wrong is a childish argument – no matter how you try to dress it up.

Something to read with your Monday morning coffee

Everyone loves a good beatdown of those two adorable sad-sack clowns, Ray Cameron and Kirk Comfort. (Or is that the other way around? Oh, who cares!) And here, a fine young atheist writer named Nathan Dickey provides one for your reading pleasure. Enjoy.

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Talking to Nathan on Facebook this morning, he brought up that he was inspired to take the opposite approach suggested by this post of mine from a year ago, in which I tried to encourage atheists simply to ignore Ray. My opinion then, which I still hold, is that the vast majority of what Ray says and does is every bit as much about self-promotion and aggrandizement as it is about evangelizing.

It's nothing but a publicity stunt when Ray and Kirk do things like publish their own version of Origin of Species, or "challenge" people like Richard Dawkins to a debate (simply so they can crow he must have chickened out when he refuses). And Ray's legendary dishonesty is so shameless in all of his dealings with atheists that for atheists to continue to seek engagements with him can only be seen as an act of futility. This is quite simply a man who cannot be trusted to show any degree of integrity whatsoever. He is a pathological liar, straight up, as we saw most recently in an exchange where Ray informed an atheist commenter to his blog that he would be delighted to phone in to AETV if we extended an invitation to him, as he did not want to invite himself. I immediately went to Ray's blog and posted an invitation. Ray replied by posting a link to his "interview request" form, which would seem bizarre, considering that I wasn't requesting an interview with him, only extending the invitation to call us that he had asked for. I say it would seem bizarre, until you realize that Ray is dishonest in every imaginable way. Then you realize this behavior is par for the course for him.

Weeks later, we were told by a reader that Ray was once again repeating the whole "Sure I'd love to call them, but they haven't invited me!" thing, which makes him nothing less than a blatant, bald-faced lying sack of shit. So in this regard, yes, I still say, atheists should ignore Ray, because he has demonstrated through his every behavior that honesty at even the most basic level is just not part of his playbook.

But then, to do as Nathan has done, and critique the content of Ray and Kirk's evangelism — well, that remains an entirely legitimate exercise in counter-apologetics. And a fun one too, as Ray and Kirk are without question the most laughable excuses for apologists alive — and when you consider the generally low intellectual level the bulk of religious apologetics is working in, that's really saying something. So keep tearing apart their silly books and websites and TV programs. As Nathan notes, beating down Ray and Kirk's drivel can be thought of as the training wheels for newbie atheists just learning to ride the counter-apologetics bike. It's good sport, and good practice.

An unsolicited chat about Pascal's Wager.

Out of nowhere just now, I received a message on Gmail:

12:40 PM some guy [screen name withheld]: So you're an atheist?

Naturally I thought, "So who the heck is this guy and why is he pestering me?" Searching through my email , I found a long exchange with a Muslim, which I eventually got sick of. I even posted about it here, here and here.

12:41 PM me: We had a ten email long exchange about this already.

12:42 PM I posted it on the Atheist Experience blog and linked you to it.

Remember?

12:44 PM Muslim apologist: ah thats right

12:45 PM Why don't you take advantage of Pascal's wager?

Now I had to think real hard about whether to just hit the "block" button, because I don't really want to be hassled at work by some random Muslim apologist. But then I thought about things I might say, and I was inspired. Here is the rest of that exchange.

me: Ah, you mean become a Christian.

12:46 PM apologist: Christian Muslim, Jewish, same god

so ya sure

me: Really? Because a lot of Christians believe that Muslims will go to hell.

So why don't you take advantage of Pascal's wager? Aren't you afraid of Christian hell?

apologist: So do we, I believe alot of muslims are going to hell too

12:47 PM me: So you're not afraid of Christian hell then.

apologist: of course not. Christians believe those that did wrong will go to hell

me: No.

Christians believe those that don't accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior will go to hell.

Do you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?

12:48 PM apologist: You mean Jesus Christ as in God?

We believe in Jesus Christ

me: Yes, but do you accept that he died for your sins, and have you pledged to let him into your heart specifically?

12:49 PM apologist: We believe he never died...

me: You don't believe that he died for your sins and then rose from the dead?

Bad news, man. According to the Christian religion, you are doomed to hellfire.

12:50 PM It doesn't matter if you're a good person or not. All people who die without accepting salvation go to Christian hell.

Why don't you accept Pascal's wager?

apologist: No we believe Jesus is going to come back to earth

12:51 PM me: Then you are a heretic in the eyes of the Christian god, and you deserve eternal torment.

12:52 PM apologist: Accept christian religion was changed over years so you don't know exactly if thats true or not.

me: I certainly do not know that, but it MIGHT be true.

And even if there is a small chance, then can you afford to take the risk?

I don't understand why you would risk hellfire over the possibility that you are wrong.

12:53 PM apologist: Well no you see, if the Christian religion was not changed and remained in tact from when Jesus first revealed it then it would be exact similiar to the quran

me: That's your belief. It's your business if you want to risk your eternal soul over something when you might be wrong.

12:54 PM Hey, I'm just doing what you asked and taking Pascal's Wager seriously, you know?

Pascal was a Catholic. You're not Catholic. Do you think Pascal thought Muslims would go to heaven?

apologist: Why would I take pascal's theory. Whether I believe in Christianity, Judaism or Islam I am believing that god exists

12:55 PM Christianity and Judaism is just like Islam except for the change documents

only difference is Islam is unchanged

12:57 PM Its just obsurd to think that something came out of nothing

me: Oh I see. So you think there is evidence to support your religion.

So actually Pascal's Wager means nothing to you at all.

If it did, you'd accept Jesus as your savior.

12:58 PM Why did you bring it up then?

apologist: Jesus himself never died he was replaced by someone else on the cross which latter Christians failed to believe

Islam address this in the quran

me: So you don't believe Pascal's wager?

A simple yes or no will do.

apologist: Why would I?

12:59 PM I am in the right religion already

me: then now you know why I don't believe it, and I have answered your question ;)

Then I blocked him.

Flowchart: Does God send people to hell?

Alert viewer Robert K. was inspired to create this flow chart based on Matt and Jeff's dialogue with Denise.


The only part that I would object to, a bit, is that it implies that the caller should not be taken seriously if he or she supplies a "wrong answer" to the early questions about what God is actually like. This implies that there is an actual "right answer" to questions like "Did God create hell?"

Of course, the way I see it, the actual right answer is "Of course not, because there is no God." But even for a believer, there's no compelling reason why their answers must conform to anything other people believe, or even the Bible. See, that's the benefit of belief systems that are just made up. Even if they are internally consistent, there's no chance that you can ever be proven wrong. Even if you are, in fact, wrong.

More risible moral arguments for God

One of my many godless Facebook friends (you mean you're not one? — well, fine, be that way!) is a young Oregonian named Nathan who's written some impressive essays that he's posted to his Notes section, including a fine takedown of Zeitgeist. Sometimes, Christians in his own friends list try to challenge him on some of his Wall posts, and this happened most recently when Nathan posted a quote from Tracie to the effect that religious morality is little more than canine obedience. One Christian woman wrote the following, which I could not resist responding to.

It is important to remember that just as our perception of that which exists is limited, so is our idea of morality apart from its author.

Morality cannot exist merely because we perceive right and wrong in terms of human consequence....this type of moral structure is infinitely at odds with itself, ending in nothing but mere self-preservation. Societies that live at peace have not come up with a "morality that works" apart from the morality set forth in Scripture. You are assuming much when you suggest there might be any morality set forth by the secular world that has not been "borrowed" by the God of the universe. My premise, of course, is that God came first...we all came later.

So, then, we must also ask, is moral character conferred upon the author and creator of all things as you first implied, or does it exist because of that author? We are not the ones who attribute morality to God! We have, through the Scriptures, been given a glimpse of morality as it is merely a reflection of who God is. It comes from him. We do not define it or attribute it to Him. It is a reflection of the person of God, not an idea that floats around in our endlessly depraved minds.

That slurpy sound you hear is that of an atheist theatrically rolling his eyes. Seriously, every moral argument for God I've heard has been a total intellectual faceplant, but this one more than most. It really does read as if this woman is simply parroting claims she got from some apologetics source, without thinking them through for even a moment.

First off, in what way is a set of moral precepts based on an understanding of the consequences of actions any more "at odds with itself" than a set ...of moral precepts simply handed down as rules from a divine authority figure who expects to be obeyed upon pain of eternal torture? The former has at least something to do with compassion, empathy, and kindness. The latter is little more than simple subservience based on fear.

Moral precepts rooted in human empathy and consequences, while no one would claim they are perfect, at least have a real-world referent. Human beings, being thinking creatures, can understand the difference between observed positive and negative consequences. Moreover, another point she ignores in her claim that secular morality leads only to "self-preservation" is the fact that we are a social species, and our instinct for self-preservation is still tied to species success. It is not the norm for human beings to exist in total isolation, and in order to coexist we develop behaviors that are beneficial to maintaining that coexistence. (And humans are far from the only species that do this. Basic moral behaviors have been observed in a number of primate species, as well as in such animals as dolphins and dogs.)

If anything, it is religious "morality" that stems from self-preservation, because a person who adopts moral behaviors simply in order to please a god whom he fears will punish him otherwise is not really a moral person, just a terrified, submissive and broken one. He has been given no reasons to be "good" other than to avoid negative consequences to himself. Beyond this he has been given no understanding of the positive benefits of his moral behavior. Religious morality, as has been said here many times, gives people bad reasons to be good. If you live a moral life simply to score yourself a ticket to heaven, you're doing it wrong, and worst of all you haven't been given the intellectual tools to understand why.

You'll have noticed the woman responding to Nathan makes bold assertions that she glibly fails to back up in any way. At the same time, all she offers as support for her God's alleged moral nature are tautologies (God is moral, morality is of God, is basically all she's got), with a sprinkling of "and anyway, God's just beyond our puny human perception." These are not sound bases for an argument.

If her premise is that "that God came first...we all came later," she must first support that premise with evidence before she begins to argue from it. She says that secularists are "assuming much when you suggest there might be any morality set forth by the secular world that has not been 'borrowed' by the God of the universe." I would say that she's assuming infinitely more when she claims that there is a "God of the universe" to begin with. Demonstrate through evidence that this is true first, then she can begin to argue that morals come from this God.

She asserts that "societies that live at peace have not come up with a 'morality that works' apart from the morality set forth in Scripture," without, of course, citing any source to support this claim. Indeed, I suspect that the bulk of the world's cultural anthropologists would be laughing their heads off about now. The Code of Hammurabi predates most Biblical writings, and Confucius came up with something very like The Golden Rule more than 500 years before Jesus is said to have done so. While you might argue that many of the punishments laid out by Hammurabi would be barbaric by modern standards, so would the morals of the Old Testament. After all, this is a book in which Lot, said to be the most virtuous of men, offers his daughters to a gang of rapists simply so that they'll leave his male house guests alone. Later these same daughters get him drunk and have incestuous sex with him, because God wants them to. (God doesn't explicitly command it, but given that this is one pissed off motherfucking deity who's just firebombed the living shit out of two whole cities for their sexual shenanigans, it's hard to imagine that He just stepped out to grab a smoke and totally missed the act of drunken incest, let alone failed to notice the subsequent pregnancies that gave rise to two whole new lineages.)

Among the "moral" precepts God is proud to have handed down to me is that I must be put to death for eating shellfish, gathering sticks on a Sunday, or having sex with a woman during her period. On the other hand, if I rape a girl, all I have to do is buy her from her father for 50 shekels, and it's all good. If these "morals" are a reflection of "the person of God," then God is a person I don't care to know. (Oh yes, this God also explicitly, unambiguously, and without any possibility of spinning it otherwise, endorses slavery.)

I think if this woman ever chooses to crack a history book that hasn't been vetted and redacted by fundamentalists, she'll learn a thing or two: that the time when such modern concepts as human rights, equality, free speech — ideas that emerged from the "endlessly depraved minds" of people — began to take root is known as the Enlightenment. And this period is notable for the decline of the authority of religion over all of the affairs of humanity.

Finally, I'm going to repeat a point I made in my last post on this topic: what use would God have for morality? This is an all-powerful being, who needs to answer to no one at all for his deeds. He can never face any form of punishment for even the greatest atrocity he could conceive. Furthermore, why would God care if we were moral? If all God wants is our unyielding worship and adulation, why would morality need to be part of that equation? We could all wipe ourselves out in the worst of all possible wars, and God could simply chuckle and, being all-powerful and stuff, just recreate the human race from scratch. So why would God have bothered to "author" something like morality in the first place, when its own consequences could never apply to him, and its application to our own lives could not possibly be relevant to him?

Morality is entirely comprehensible when considered as an emergent social phenomenon occurring within social frameworks. It is incomprehensible when thought of as originating from a supernatural being utterly immune to its consequences or even its practical application.

The Quran and the speed of light

I think I should make a policy, that if I received a similar very specific question by email twice, I should turn the first exchange into a blog post and link it as a reply to the same question in the future. I probably won't be able to stick to this policy, but I'm doing it now for this message.

The claim: The Quran computes the value of the speed of light with unbelievable accuracy.

Sources: "Speed of Light"; "Quran and The Speed of Light?" (video)

Best rebuttal online: At Islam Watch.

My two cents:

This is a clear case of cherry picking numbers to sound plausible. They had to use some incredibly tortured logic to drag the number "12,000 lunar orbits" out of a fairly generic verse which, after all, makes no reference whatsoever to moons or distances or even the number 12. They are taking something vague and trying to make it specific, which after all is what all apologists do when they want to make a prophecy out of something that isn't. If it hadn't been the moon, they could have tried "1000 centuries of walking" or "1000 rotations of the earth" or "1000 earth orbits" -- ANYTHING which gets them within the right order of magnitude to something specific.

Then that's not enough to get them all that close, so they screw around with the numbers more. For instance, you'll notice they use some extremely fuzzy math to claim that there are 86170 seconds in a day. There aren't 86,170 seconds in a day, there are 86,400. If there were as much as 230 seconds difference every day, then we'd have a leap year every year.

They do all kinds of stupid math tricks just to line up some number with a lunar cycle to match a verse that doesn't even say anything about lunar orbits, and then they claim that the Quran predicts the speed of light. Okay. If that's the case, then why didn't the ancient Muslims know what the speed of light was? Why is it never referenced anywhere? Why isn't it calculated? Why, in fact, did no one think to calculate the speed of light from the Quran until long after Einstein Ole Rømer came along? [Edited -- thanks Curt!]

I'll tell you why, because it's nonsense. It's applying known scientific facts, discovered by westerners, and giving credit to their holy book by retrofitting nonsensical numerology with cherry picked frames of reference.

How did the authors of the Quran have such fantastic futuristic knowledge, Muslims ask? It's really simple when you recognize a few facts. The Quran is an ancient book written by people who had no knowledge of modern science, and in fact reads this way. A contemporary person who knows some science can make passages of the Quran superficially resemble scientific insights by manipulating verses that have nothing to do with science and trying to pigeonhole them into something resembling contemporary knowledge.

You could, if you were so inclined, do exactly the same thing with "The Canterbury Tales," "The Epic of Gilgamesh," or Lewis Carrol's "Jabberwocky."

Answering the right questions...

Reposted from my Facebook notes, by request:

"What proof and evidence can you provide that atheism is accurate and correct?"

Atheism is not a world view or a philosophy, it does not assert claims that could be viewed as accurate and correct - it is the rejection of theistic claims. It is disbelief of the claim "some god exists" - there is no requirement that one believe that no gods exist in order to be an atheist.

The question, as phrased, represents a misunderstanding of both atheism and the burden of proof. It's an attempt to frame atheism as if it is asserting that no gods exist and it does so in order to shift the burden of proof. It's not only hand waving...there's a big, rotten, fallacy-ridden, red herring in that hand. Why phrase the question that way? Because, to those who don't understand the burden of proof or the subjects at hand, it sounds so much more clever than "can you prove that there are no gods?"

In my case, I reject theistic claims because they have not met their burden of proof. That's it. I'm an atheist because no one has been able to provide sufficient evidence to support their theistic claims. They've failed to answer a question similar to the one they aim at me...and after being called on that failure they're desperately trying to point the finger in any direction except where it belongs.

If you believe you can read minds, why would you ask a non-believer if they can provide proof and evidence that you can't — instead of simply demonstrating the truth of your claims? The simple answer is that you can't, and you know you can't.

Consider the following:

I get e-mails from Christians on a regular basis. Many of them are convinced that the Holy Spirit has instructed them to contact me and give me valuable evidence that will change my mind. These people believe that their god is real, that he wants me to know that he's real and that he's charged them with providing me with the evidence.

We can, via reductio ad absurdum, demonstrate that these people are simply wrong:

If their god exists, then it knows precisely what information they'll need to convey to convince me and it would communicate this information to a person who is capable of accurately presenting it in a way that achieves the stated goal. (I'm not going to draw out a syllogism for this...it's all from the definition of the god that they believe is real.)

Why then do these people consistently present the most obviously flawed arguments and absurd anecdotal evidence? Why then do these people often say the very thing that confirms that they have no clue what they're talking about?

Are they just inept at communicating the needed information? Then their god has made a terribly stupid mistake, inconsistent with the character of the god they believe in.

Is their god incapable of accurate communication? Not according to their beliefs. Their god is perfectly (or nearly) wise, intelligent, capable, powerful, etc...and clearly directed them to present the information.

No matter how you break this down, the god they believe in simply doesn't exist. There may be a god, and it might even be the one that they're trying to represent, but they're clearly wrong about its desire and ability to demonstrate its existence. At best we're left with something that is, to a third party, indistinguishable from delusion.

Is there something that you're really good at or knowledgeable about? Perhaps you're a bit of an expert at a game, or at repairing cars, or you're a trivia wiz about a certain show. Perhaps you're highly educated in a particular scientific discipline or you've been doing a particular job for many years.

If so, then you'll have some idea of how easy it is, in many cases, to determine (roughly) how skilled someone else is in that same area. You probably also have some sense of the extreme frustration you feel when someone who clearly has no clue what they're talking about is trying to "educate" someone else. It's almost as frustrating as when they're trying to "educate" you. You can spot the bullshit from a mile away and it's almost physically painful to watch someone get away with poisoning another mind with nonsense.

That's what I feel like when I read many of these e-mails. That's what I feel like when I see apologists videos or blogs.

I'll continue to take on all callers, including (especially?) the overly-glib bullshit artists who willingly lie to promote their beliefs...because it's something that I find important and something that I'm pretty good at.

The phone lines are open.

Not quite the double standard you were thinking

Hey, kids. Yes, I'm back. Been back a few days in fact. And I'm finally ready to post again, so here's my first, in reply to a letter received responding to the conversation with Behe fan "Garry" on the last show I did with Matt. Our correspondent begins:

I am an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, and I am a friendly/open-minded agnostic theist. So with my introduction out of the way, here is my email:

In the Problem of Evil debate, skeptics and/or non-believers of God’s existence formulate their argumentation as follows:

(1) If there were an all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful God, then (due to His unlimited knowledge and unlimited power) He would be able to prevent gratuitous/pointless evil and suffering that is not necessary for an adequately compensating good.

(2) Because God would have such a capability, and because He is supposedly all-good, he would act on that capability and prevent the gratuitous/pointless suffering and evil that is not necessary for an adequately compensating good.

(3) But, there is lots of evils and sufferings that occur in the world (which have not been prevented by the supposed all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God), and much of it is not logically necessary for any adequately compensating good (and therefore seems to be gratuitous/pointless).

(4) Therefore, the conclusion is that there does not exist a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful, or all-good.

Now, many theists argue against the argument of ‘The Problem of Evil’ presented above by way of refuting premise (3) and saying that there is no evil that is gratuitous/pointless, and that all evil is logically necessary for adequately compensating goods. One of the ways in which they do this is by presenting ‘The Contrast Response,’ which basically says that if there were no evil in the world, we would not be aware of the good. God then allows evil to make us aware of goodness, since this awareness in itself is a good.

But, many skeptics and/or non-believers of God’s existence do not accept ‘The Contrast Response’ because they claim that it is not necessarily the case that our minds work this way. Essentially, they believe that we would still be aware of goodness even if there were less (or even no) evil to contrast it. So they say that ‘The Contrast Response’ is logically invalid.

That being said, I am assuming that you (Matt and Martin) are not exceptions (and have the same point of contention in regards to ‘The Contrast Response’).

So if I am actually correct about my assumption and your point of contention and belief that our minds don’t need contrasting things in order to be aware of (or recognize) non-contrasting things, why then (in episode # 660, which occurred on Sunday, 6/06/2010 and while responding to Garry from Manhattan, NY and his example of irreducibly complex systems) did you (Matt and Martin) flip the contrast response (which you do not accept as being valid in the problem of evil argument) around in order to claim (within the context of the argument of creationism) that in order to know if something was created, we have to first have an example of something that wasn’t created to compare it with (or contrast it to)? To me, this seems like a logically fallacious contradiction???

Our correspondent is wrong in his assumption of where I stand on "The Contrast Response." I don't reject the notion that a knowledge of the difference between good and evil is a vital element of ascertaining one's moral positions. What I reject is the notion that an omnibenevolent God is necessary for such an understanding, especially one who would continue to allow gratuitous evils to occur long after the human race had well and truly understood those differences and had established laws to punish them. Why, in this day and age, would God allow (to use the most button-mashing of examples) the continued sexual abuse of children? Are there significant pockets of human civilization (apart from the Vatican) who still do not understand this is a deplorable act, and therefore, children must still be put through the anguish of sexual abuse in order to make those people aware of its evil, and of the goodness of not abusing children in contrast?

Another objection would be that, even if one accepts the notion of God's allowing acts of evil in the world for the sake of "compensating goods" (and I don't know that I accept the idea of non-victims of evil realizing how lucky they are to be a "compensating good"), this would still not absolve God of the moral responsibility to stop such acts of evil when he can. Honestly, in what way would God's refusal to prevent the sexual abuse of a child — thereby presumably allowing us to experience the horror of the act so as to better appreciate it when children aren't raped — constitute a better "compensating good" than for him simply to blast the assailant to smithereens with a well-aimed lightning bolt? Who would be sitting around thinking, "Gosh, I don't understand, why did God do that to that poor man?"

Why establish good and evil as concepts if not to enforce them? A common argument in theodicy is that God must allow evil for an understanding of good. But how are we mere mortals expected to reach such an understanding if God doesn't explain which is which and punish the evil when it happens? Instead, it seems we are meant to work it out for ourselves which are good and evil acts, as God apparently cannot interfere in the interests of not undermining our supposed free will.

The great irony of this form of theodicy is that it ends up rendering God irrelevant. Atheists and secular moralists do argue that we are the ones responsible for determining the differences between good and evil...but that we are perfectly capable of doing this by using our intellects and our empathy to evaluate the consequences of human actions, rejecting those which are destructive.

Any theodicy that proposes a God as the architect of moral precepts, only to immediately take Him out of the picture, leaving humanity to deal with good and evil on our own, pragmatic terms, might as well concede the argument and pack it in. A God who refuses to prevent gratuitous destructive acts for any reason is one who has, if He exists, surrendered His moral authority and is deserving of no thanks from us.

Additionally, even if I am wrong about my assumption [and you guys actually DO accept the contrast response as a good response to the problem of evil—or reject it for another reason that I have not presented above—(and therefore have not contradicted yourselves)], why do you even find the merit in asking a theist to provide an example of something that was not created, anyways? Essentially, asking a theist to provide an example of something that wasn’t created is unfair, because if he/she is a common theist and believes that God exists, he/she also believes that EVERYTHING [including natural things] in our physical universe was created by Him (which would mean that to the theist there would be no example of an uncreated thing that he/she could provide, because no such example would exist).

As such, the theist’s lack of ability to provide such an example does not prove (or even serve to insinuate) that there was no creator (or God). Moreover, it only further begs the question. So essentially, I think that asking Garry to provide such an example was an invalid (and therefore unnecessary) form of argumentation.

This is because, like Garry, you fail to understand that a key component of any scientific hypothesis — which is what ID wants to be — is falsifiability. In order to determine if your hypothesis is even valid in its basic premises, you have to be able to answer this question: "If what I am proposing is not true, what conditions would I expect to find existing today?" Therefore someone insisting that life was intelligently designed must be able to answer, "If life were not designed, what would it look like?" It's hardly unfair or invalid. It's basic science.

And yes, this question has been answered in regards to evolution, and very simply. When asked what he thought would falsify evolution, biologist J.B.S. Haldane answered simply, "Fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian." If anything in the fossil record were not where it was supposed to be in the timeline, this would be a problem. But it has not been a problem. Indeed, evolutionary theory has been validated many times in its predictive power, another important factor establishing scientific validity. Tiktaalik was found right where paleontologists were sure a certain transitional fossil of its type would have to be found if it existed at all.

If insisting that Garry state the way in which ID or any other design hypothesis was falsifiable was "unfair," it can only be in the way a scientifically illiterate fellow set himself up to be humiliated in his ignorance on live television. But that's hardly our fault. If some creationist calls us, trying to peddle an inferior product, and proceeds to lecture authoritatively on a subject about which he is in fact ignorant, a little humiliation is the least he has coming.

An Inspiration!

We received a letter this week from a woman who had an upbeat story worth sharing. I don’t think I would ever have thought to try this, but what a great idea:

I have written in before about general stuff but I had a story about something that happened yesterday that I would love some opinions on. Near where I work, on nice days there are usually a lot of people out proselytizing. Now, I have dealt with street and door-to-door proselytizing before, usually women; and they have usually not been too bad. However, I find the idea of going up to people on the street to push religion kind of appalling, and though I personally don't mind, because it offers the opportunity for discussion, I still find it to be incredibly rude. I understand the reason they go around in pairs, or sometimes even groups of 3 or 4, so they are able to corner people. And it just bothers me.

So I was walking home from work, and I spotted two young men with Bibles talking to some young lady sitting on a park bench. I decided to go up to them, and instead of addressing the two young men I turned to the girl and said something along the lines of “You are a good person, you have your own morals and can make your own decisions and don't need them or their book to tell you that you are weak, because you are not.”

Then I told them all to have a nice day and started on my way again. But then the two boys started shouting after me. I say “boys,” they were probably in their early twenties. So, as they started to shout things like "yeah get out of here! No one cares what you have to say!" I decided that I couldn't just leave it at that.

Maybe I should have left it, but I decided to go back. Maybe I shouldn't have said this, but addressing the first boy I said "Well why don't you tell her about the part where Lot gets drunk and has sex with his daughters, or the part in Judges where Jephtha sets his daughter on fire."

After looks of confusion from the two young men, and a quirky smile from the girl, the first boy just kept repeating "Who are you? Get out of here! You're Satan!" in a robotic tone, as the other one holding the Bible said I was “crazy.” I asked if I could borrow their Bible to show her either passage, to which the first asked "Well where's your Bible?"

I pulled out my digital reader on which I had a copy of the King James Bible, and I informed him that I read it often. He replied that I didn't know what was in the Bible, and that I must be Satan. They asked me if I knew the girl or something, to which I said that they didn't know her, either, and were probably bothering her while she was trying to relax in the park. It was at this point that the one young man said that I "must be retarded".

I wish I had had time to, instead, draw these two away from this poor girl, but I didn't, so I addressed her with another vote of confidence and went on my way.

She seemed to be responsive to what I had said, but one can't be entirely sure. As I walked away they continued to shout after me, continuing to call me “Satan” and such.

Now I never mentioned to any of them that I was an atheist or even what my particular beliefs might be. I even acknowledged in my last words to the girl that I didn't know if she was a Christian herself, or what her beliefs might be, but only that she didn't need these two young men to figure those things out—basically, to believe in herself and not them. I have a Youtube channel, and as soon as I got home I did a big long video telling the story exactly as I have told it here.

I recall an open-air preacher who used to shout at passers-by at my university. He would handle questions and hecklers alike; but this is something different. She proselytized to proseltyzers, showed them up in front of their mark, and absolutely gave them as good as they were giving to other people that day. I bet she totally knocked them off their script!

She asked what we thought about what she did—if it was rude. I told her it was inspirational!

Here is her YouTube account of her adventure...

A Skeptic's Wager?

I got this on my Facebook newsfeed, and wanted to share. It's like a skeptic's Pascal's Wager, but works much better. The question came up as to whether it can be labeled with a catchy title like "Pascal's Wager"? Any ideas?

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but...will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” —Marcus Aurelius

Why I don't argue with YouTube, redux

A few months back I posted a statement of policy about refusing to argue with YouTube videos. It has served me pretty well since then, because now every time we get email saying "Watch this video and tell me what you think!" I link to that post and reply with "Please sum up the points in that video that you found compelling, because I'm not going to watch." I've seen several other members take a similar approach more often as well.

I have to say, however, that over at the Conspiracy Science blog, this post provides a much longer and more thorough explanation of why arguing via YouTube videos is (1) mostly fruitless, and (2) so beloved of people who don't really have a good argument. Read it! Although it relates to conspiracy theories and not atheism in particular, they face a lot of the same issues. A couple of excerpts to get you over there:

Because there’s no difference in a conspiracy theorist’s eyes between any two sources based upon the nature of those sources, they have no way of telling whether a source is true or false. David McCullough, a respected academic historian with decades of credentials, is no more reliable a source than David Icke, an ex-football player who believes that the world is controlled by reptilian shape-shifting aliens. John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists in recent history, is no more credible than bloviating radio talkshow host Alex Jones on matters of economics. This is why conspiracy theorists generally interpret any questioning of the credibility of their sources as an “ad hominem” attack, because to them credibility is irrelevant. Taken to an extreme, this idea results in the bizarre belief that a YouTube video can be just as true and credible as a peer-reviewed scientific paper published in a nationally-respected journal.

Conspiracy theorists hate experts and intellectuals mainly because they are forced to. Few if any real experts in anything—engineering, economics, metallurgy, political science, or history—agree with conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theorists know that this is a major obstacle in their attempts to gain mainstream acceptance. Honestly, if one structural engineer with questionable credentials says that the World Trade Center towers were dynamited and 99 real structural engineers say that theory is bullshit, which side are most people going to believe? Consequently, conspiracy theorists have to tear down experts. They do this mainly by denigrating the real value or relevance of expert opinion, which usually means casting aspersions on expert status in the first place. This has two effects: first, they think it blunts the attacks of experts on their theories, and second, it elevates non-expert opinion into the same realm as expert knowledge.

Also, in the interest of not having a double standard, I want to say something else.

(Pausing to look sternly at the Atheist Experience audience.)

I hope you guys don't argue that way.

Something I prefer not to see is using a clip from TAE as an authority. We're not one. Thus, if you're in an argument and you say "You're wrong! Here, watch this video!" ... You're doing it wrong. You know they won't watch the video, and if they do, they will dismiss it as quickly as possible.

It's the arguments in the video that are meant to help you, and they don't carry any additional weight just because some slobs with a few bucks to blow on producer licenses said them in front of an audience. If you thought the arguments were good, do yourself a favor and learn to use them. The effort of typing in your own version of the Euthyphro dilemma or the argument from evil or whatever, will serve you much better in the long run than proving you can paste a URL into a window.

A Zacharias follow-up

Because there was no indication Matt had done it, I thought it would be interesting to email the link to his post answering Ravi Zacharias' "Six Questions to Ask an Atheist" to the contact address I found at the RZIM website. Monday afternoon I received this response, not from Zacharias himself, but the ministry staffer who posted the actual "Six Questions" article to the site.

Dear Martin,

Thank you for your recent email to RZIM in response to the article "Six Questions to Ask an Atheist" in our "Engaging Conversations" section of the website. I want you to know that I read the posted response in its entirety including the comments. On the whole, I found these responses to be very helpful and challenging. I am the author of this essay, and I borrowed heavily from a framework used in Brian McLaren's book "Finding Faith." I can completely understand how since you do not know me, the "tone" of this article seemed to be antagonistic rather than genuinely interested in either conversation or learning from your perspective. I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. I am seeking to learn, just as I assume you are, and I have learned a great deal from this post and the responses.

If you would permit me some time to more carefully reflect on what has been written, I would like to respond to you. While I know that what I may write will likely end up as "public domain," I would appreciate it if we could exchange emails initially that are between the two of us. If you find something useful - either to critique or to stimulate further conversation, you are welcome to post it. But, let me do some thinking first, and then respond.

Again, thank you for sending this to me and for the very thoughtful
interaction that was presented in this post.

Sincerely,

Margaret Manning

Speaking Team/Associate Writer

So there. I replied that I would be delighted to continue a dialogue (which I'll bring Matt in on, as he wrote the original post, of course), while assuring Margaret that I wouldn't post any of it here without securing her permission. But I thought there'd be no harm in letting you guys know there was a response, and a polite and receptive one at that. It does appear as though Margaret had not in fact field-tested Ravi's Six Questions among any actual atheists before. So hopefully there will be an eye-opening series of exchanges to come.