Case study: William Lane Craig vs. Bart Ehrman

In my ongoing discussion about the need for experienced debaters in the atheist camp, a theist named MrFreeThinker linked to a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman, in which he asserts that Bart Ehrman was "pwned." In particular, MFT says:

Bart Ehrman made some mathematically poor claims where he equivocated between intrinsic probability and specific probability with regard to miracles. W.L. Craig was able to use Baye's theorem to show how his reasoning was mathematically fallacious. Ehrman was unable to counter Crag's claims but made some backhanded ad hominems later on saying that Craig would be laughed at if he tried to bring his calculations on miracles to any secular university. W.L. Craig then pointed out that philosophers such as Richard Swinburne (a eminent philosopher of science at Oxford University) had also made similar calculations it was a moment of sheer pwnage.

(On a side note Swinburne's calculations on the probability of Jesus' Resurrection and God's existence are available in his books "The Existence of God" and "Resurrection of God Incarnate")

After reading the debate transcript, I have to agree that Ehrman made some missteps. But I don't think they're the ones the MFT thinks they are.

Let's start with the topic being debated. Right now I'm a bit fixated on the issue that theist/atheist debates are routinely set up with fixed, bogus, and stacked resolutions. THIS debate proposed to settle the following question:

Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?

Sigh... here we go again. As I keep saying, theist debaters perpetually count on setting up debates with a loaded topic, so that the unbeliever loses before the debate has begun.

So what's wrong with this topic? Yet again, it allows the theist side to play semantic games with definitions. What qualifies as "historical evidence" for the resurrection of Jesus? I think a naive atheist would assume that this means there is "sufficient, compelling, and persuasive evidence" that establishes the resurrection of Jesus. Fine, if you have a sympathetic audience. But you don't. You never will. So here's what Craig's obviously going to do: he's going to declare that any claim by anyone that indicates Jesus was resurrected counts as "historical evidence." And he wins! Why? Because he's right!

Just like "theory," "evidence" is a word with numerous meanings depending on how it's applied. So if Craig can find one person, from any point in history, who is willing to say "Jesus was resurrected," he's got evidence. Is it good evidence? Duh, of course not. But it's evidence. By the same standard, I could easily lose a debate asking me to prove that there's no historical evidence for Galactic Overlord Xenu. And the Salem Witch Trials provided all kinds of evidence (read: other people's testimony) proving that those women were, in fact, in league with the devil.

Ahem, Bart, I believe the topic you actually meant to debate was this: "Was Jesus resurrected?" Simple. No frills. When you stepped into this loaded topic, you gave Craig a free pass to "win" just by throwing out enough stuff to allow for the vaguest possibility that Jesus was resurrected. You awarded yourself the burden of proof, requiring yourself to demonstrate conclusively that there is no evidence of any kind, good or bad.

So if nothing else, I want to thank MFT for bringing up yet another perfect illustration of my point. Now let's move on to the substance of the debate. I'm not going to go through the entire thing. For now, I just want to focus on the specific case this argument from probability that he brought up.

From where I sit, all I see is Craig doing what creationists always do. He throws up a bunch of obfuscated equations on the board, counts on his audience not knowing enough to understand what the argument is, slips in gigantic assumptions about the natural world, and declares victory.

Obfuscated equation: check.

Pr (R/ B&E) = Pr (R/B) × Pr (E/ B & R) /

[ Pr (R/B) × Pr (E/ B & R) ] + [ Pr (not-R/B) × Pr (E/ B & not-R) ]

What value does that equation add to the credibility of Craig's actual argument? None whatsoever. It's a time filler, and it awes a lay audience who are expected to treat monstrous equations as magical incantations.

When you strip away the filler, Craig finally gets around to framing his actual argument, which is this:

"In order to show that that hypothesis is improbable, you’d have to show that God’s existence is improbable. But Dr. Ehrman says that the historian cannot say anything about God. Therefore, he cannot say that God’s existence is improbable. But if he can’t say that, neither can he say that the resurrection of Jesus is improbable. So Dr. Ehrman’s position is literally self-refuting.

But that’s not all. Dr. Ehrman just assumes that the probability of the resurrection on our background knowledge [Pr(R/B)] is very low. But here, I think, he’s confused. What, after all, is the resurrection hypothesis? It’s the hypothesis that Jesus rose supernaturally from the dead. It is not the hypothesis that Jesus rose naturally from the dead. That Jesus rose naturally from the dead is fantastically improbable. But I see no reason whatsoever to think that it is improbable that God raised Jesus from the dead."

That's it. It took approximately five pages and three slides to say that. Five pages of scribbled equations, smarmy insults, cute little nicknaming conventions, and a whole pile of hand-waving. To obfuscate those two simple sentences.

And when you strip the argument down to those two sentences, the argument sucks. It's basically "Jesus could rise from the dead, because God can do magic!" Hey, wait a minute, I thought that was a big part of what we were arguing about in the first place. But Craig just asserts that this is true, and doesn't support his implied belief that magical events are happening all the time. Instead of backing up this claim, he deftly covered it up in those five pages of completely tangential empty academic masturbation.

This is endemic to creationist arguments. Kirk Durston does that too. Michael Behe does it a lot. What these debates have in common is that they use tons of math as a way of befuddling the audience, lulling them into thinking "I have no idea what that guy is saying so he must be smart." Then they have a hook to bring the argument back to the audience's reality. They make a spurious connection between the hook and the math, and then "therefore God exists."

They do this all the time. It's their main tactic.

The thing about math is, it does actually mean something specific, but it's impossible to look up or pore over the details during a live debate. It's also long and it's boring, and they're counting on the audience to gloss right over the equations and assume that the hook is a correct summation of the math.

Okay, so since we know this tactic is going to come up repeatedly. How do we deal with it? I haven't settled this in my own mind, but I have some ideas. First of all, the math is guaranteed to be a smokescreen. There's a place for equations in a scientific journal, or a class full of students who are studying the topic, but if you're trying to persuade an audience of mixed education, it's a sure bet that the intention is to obfuscate rather than explain.

So blow past the math. It's important to watch like a hawk for the moment where the apologist explains what his REAL argument is, and make a snap judgment about whether this argument stands up on its own. You can't study the math or verify it during the debate, so you can assume that (1) it may well be full of lies and phony inferences, and (2) the audience will have no idea if it isn't. So above all else, do not waste time actually addressing the equations.

At any rate, atheists already have a perception problem of being overly nerdy, being concerned with "science" and "evidence" and whatnot. I think a little verbal kung fu is in order, i.e., using your opponent's strength against him. Don't just skip the math... ridicule it. That may sound kind of mean, but pay attention: William Lane Craig is kind of a dick anyway. He resorts to slides with labels like "Ehrman's Egregious Error" and "Bart's Blunder."

Hell, I think it wouldn't hurt to have a slide ready that says "Craig's Cretinous Calculations." And then, fill the page with truly irrelevant equations. Put up the freaking Pythagorean Theorem, or an expanded quadratic equation. Make a joke out of it. The audience will crack up if they realize you were prepared all along to hit Craig with his own nonsense. Odds are that they were probably feeling uncomfortable already because Craig was making them feel stupid, so it should be easy to get them laugh with you. And then, boil down his argument to its unsupported essence, and nail it.

But I digress. We were discussing how Bart Ehrman did. Well, MrFreeThinker, I'm willing to concede that he didn't do all that great. This is right in line with what I keep saying: apologists win debates because they are good at performance art. Ehrman wasn't prepared to act like a circus sideshow attraction.

But don't think that means I'm ridiculing Craig when I say "circus sideshow." That's what an apologetics debate is. Bart should have been prepared to do performance art, and if he can't win at that game then he isn't prepared to debate.

As for Richard Swinburne, I couldn't care less what he thinks. Craig pulled him up because he was name-dropping. Preceding this comment, Ehrman said this:

"I have trouble believing that we’re having a serious conversation about the statistical probability of the resurrection or the statistical probability of the existence of God. I think in any university setting in the country, if we were in front of a group of academics we would be howled off the stage."

Ehrman shouldn't have said that. You know why? Because he should have known that for any crazy belief in the world, there probably exists some crackpot academic who will support it.

So yeah, I guess I'll sort of give Craig the point for his name drop. What he proved was that the correct phrasing is:

"In any university setting in the country, if we were in front of a group of academics we would be howled off the stage... unless, of course, one of them happens to be Richard Swinburne."

Yet another loaded debate topic

Via a comment from reader Curtis Cameron:

Next week (on Darwin Day), Dan Barker will debate Kyle Butt on the specific question of the existence of the God of the Bible.

And from the linked web site:

Barker will affirm, "I know the God of the Bible does not exist"...

Okay, seriously, this is getting ridiculous.  In fact, it's rapidly becoming my number one pet peeve about theist/atheist debates.  I'm going to try to make this real simple.

Attention debaters: Stop falling for this!  Theists who challenge you to a debate are not representatives of the National Forensics League.  They are not a neutral party trying to set up an objective and fair confrontation for both sides.  They are deliberately trying to stack the deck against you.  They want you to lose the debate before you set foot in the room.

How in the world did Dan Barker fall for this?  One of the strongest tools that atheists have is attributing the burden of proof to the theist.  I don't know that unicorns do not exist.  I don't know that Russell's Teapot orbiting beyond Mars does not exist.  I simply don't have any reason to believe that they do.

By accepting this ridiculous topic, (a) Dan Barker is forced to defend a position that he probably doesn't hold; (b) he's now locked into a position where the theist can just spout vague pseudo-philosophy about knowledge and epistemology, and not defend the concept that a god exists at all.

This is important, guys.  Pay attention to the format and the topic before you agree to a debate. Tell your friends.  Don't make me keep repeating it.

Will somebody please pass this friendly advice along?  This trend must be stopped.

If I were Barker, I'd try to salvage this bad situation by making a self-deprecating joke about it.  First thing you say is, "Let me tell you right away I'm going to lose this debate.  Why?  The topic is set to a position that is not mine.  I don't 'know' that there is no God, any more than I know that there is no FSM.  So recognizing that I've already lost my case, I'm going to turn this debate into a draw by making sure my opponent loses right along with me.  He doesn't know that God exists because..." etc.

How to manage an atheist debate

I've paid very close attention to all your comments on my post about developing a debate infrastructure for atheists.  There has been a lot of positive feedback, and there were some reasonable concerns brought up as well.  Some people suggested that ACA should just start hosting debates locally, and I'm taking some steps to look into that possibility (but no promises!)

Let me address the most pressing concern right here:

Why bother?  Your opponent will never change his mind.

As I hope I've made thoroughly clear in past discussions on this subject, I don't care if the opponent ever changes his mind.  Likewise, I don't care about the fact that some observers will watch the debate and conclude that the theist won simply because he is on their side.  Yes, that will happen for many people, perhaps even most.

The point is meme-spreading.  Same as the show.  If that works for you, then watch debates.  If it doesn't, then don't.  Simple as that.  The real questions you should ask about the debate are:

1. Would you, personally, find it entertaining?
2. Would it help raise awareness of the atheist movement, as in the case of books by Dawkins and Hitchens, or our other shows?
3. Would it do any harm?  If so, then what?

For me, the answers are yes, yes, and no.  I hope that clarifies my intentions.

Now, I've been giving the whole matter a lot more thought.  Don't assume that I'm writing this as a plan for the ACA, but just keep it on file as potential advice for any atheist groups that might like to debate.  If you know of such a debate coming up, please link them here.

I take Eugenie Scott's "Debates and the Globetrotters" article very seriously, and I've seen my share of bad debates.  So I'd like to throw out some general bits of advice that will help in preparing any atheist debates.

Choice of venue

Many debates are hosted in a church.  This isn't necessarily wrong, but it helps to stack the audience.  Fliers can be placed in the lobby of the church a few weeks in advance, so people who like to go there anyway are more likely to be in the audience.

Here are some ideas for a more neutral venue:

1. A Unitarian church.
2. A college lecture hall. (Durston vs. Sarkar happened in a lecture hall.)
   
3. An outdoor stage.

Churches like to publicize things, so the unbelievers should do so as well.  Go after student organizations and professors.  Really hype it up at your local freethought club, if there is one.  Tell your friends.

Format

This is tricky.  Many debates I have heard turn into shouting matches, where one side loses because they are too polite to talk over the opponent. Dawkins vs. Lennox was a perfect example of this.  Without clear divisions for the speaker, the pushier guy wins.  If your debater is the pushier guy, then maybe this works for you, but personally I don't like that.

Other times, the rounds are way too long.  Some debates allow each person to speak uninterrupted for as long as 30 minutes.  That's ridiculous, and it provides way too much opportunity for the infamous "Gish gallop" that Eugenie Scott described in her article.  Also, if you watch presidential debates, that's unheard of.  Candidates get maybe five minutes for a question, tops (and usually much less).

When I did high school speech, there were two main categories: Lincoln-Douglas debate, which was a slower paced 1 on 1 debate that focused on philosophy and values; and Policy debate, a 2v2 debate focusing on concrete plans and encouraging complex speed presentations.  I was an LD debater myself, and prefer that format, as it can be difficult for a lay audience to follow the rules of a Policy debate.  However, I wouldn't be opposed to pulling in some of each type, so perhaps there would be a values-style debate with teams that would double the length of a typical LD.

In either of these formats, each side has a fixed amount of time to speak in each round, generally less than ten minutes.  There are also fixed times set for direct cross-examination, and a finite buffer of preparation time for each debater between rounds.  For public debates, I also like the style of allowing a long, structured Q&A period at the end.

Topics

Let me give you some great examples of bad debate topics, and I'll tell you why.

1. The topic of discussion in Durston vs. Sarkar was: "What is the best explanation for biological life on this planet: Intelligent Design or Darwinian evolution?"  This topic sucks.  It immediately sets up a false dichotomy, acknowledging that one or the other must be right.  "Darwinian evolution" isn't even the term used by scientists anymore, which means one side is now defending a position that he shouldn't actually have.  This topic invites the theist to completely avoid even defending the implications of Intelligent Design — let alone garden-variety creationism, or God.
   
2. Likewise, "Does God exist?" is a terrible topic of discussion.  Why?  Because there is no agreed-upon definition of "God."  Just this week, the TV email box received a letter from a very earnest person telling us that the universe is God.  Suppose your opponent opens with that... then what do you say?  "Um, I don't believe in the universe?"  Or how about "That's stupid.  The universe isn't God."  You'll spend all your time debating over whose definition is right, which I can conclusively say leads to just about the most boring debates in the world.  Most theists won't get THAT broad with their concept of God, but they'll still try to make their definition as vague and nonspecific as they can in order to cast the widest possible net.

The moral here is, don't let them get away with that.  The definitions should be agreed upon BEFORE the debate.  In a comment on the previous post, "c" suggested this:

"The debates I most enjoy are ones where the theist has to specify which religion they propose and defend it. In my opinion, they are the easiest for an atheist to win (thus the most entertaining.) They are also the most honest because if the debate is generalized to simply whether some god exists, there is often a stalemate and no one can be persuaded that way. It is also disingenuous on the theist's part because they don't just believe in some god, they believe in a specific one, which is a far more preposterous argument."

Great suggestion, c.  Why the heck don't we see more debates where the topic of discussion is "Resolved: That Southern Baptism is the true religion"?  I'll tell you why: it doesn't work for theists, as it immediately kills off a large portion of their sympathetic audience.  Resolve that a God exists, and you have 85% of every audience rooting for you, including Jews and Muslims.  Resolve that YOUR religion is right, and suddenly they're a lot less comfortable.

Splitting the difference, I think that the topics should not get as far as specifying which ecumenical council you prefer.  But I do think it's eminently fair for the topics to be narrowly focused and nail down a clear implication of who wins based on their arguments.  Here are some examples of specific religious topics that seem like they would be fun to debate.

• Resolved: That heaven exists and can be attained exclusively through faith in Jesus Christ.
  
• Resolved: That Jesus died and was resurrected in the first century AD.
• Resolved: That the Ten Commandments collectively outline a moral code that is beneficial to humanity.

You get the idea.  Now here are some other topic suggestions that don't evidently pertain to one religion, but do force a focused debate.

• Resolved: That the universe has existed for more than one million years. (Obviously this one can only be challenged by young earth creationists.  But OMG, imagine what fun it would be to actually pin someone down on really defending a young earth.)
• Resolved: That the Old Testament contains prophecies which cannot be explained by any means other than divine revelation.  (Note how the burden of proof is established right there in the resolution.)
  
• Resolved: That secondary school courses should introduce Intelligent Design as a scientific topic. (A policy topic that suits me fine.)
• Resolved: That the United States Constitution was written with the intent of creating a Christian nation.  (Watch out for those definitions again!  You may want to nail down in advance what a "Christian Nation" is.)
  

Some theists have made a career out of debating topics that look nothing like this.  They might see this as a trap and refuse to participate.  Let them refuse.  Don't yield to their terms and let them stack the deck.  Make it known that your opponent was offered a neutral debate topic to defend his particular beliefs, and he refused to get involved.  That's what Bill O'Reilly would say.  Above all else, I think it's important to set up clear standards against topics that allow a lot of weasel room for semantic games.  Ban them.

Final thought: I'd prefer to see debates held in venues where there is free wireless internet.  Use your prep time to look up and catch obvious lies.  If the debate format allows it, having a henchman behind you who can act as your Google Monkey would be ideal... and I don't necessarily see why it shouldn't be allowed.  Actually, this is a good argument for preferring 2v2 debates: one person researches while the other one talks.

If no internet is available, may I alternatively recommend that you download the contents of Iron Chariots in advance?

Atheist evangelism and the problem of infrastructure

Hi.  I've got stuff on my mind, so settle in.  This might take a while.

Yesterday I was searching through my saved media files for something to listen to, and I came across this debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox.  It's about six months old and an hour long.  Lennox is one of those smug "academic" style theologians, saying -- Ha ha -- of course the universe is fourteen billion years old, nobody seriously contests that!  But philosophers and historians alike all agree on the historical resurrection of Jesus, let me name drop a few names and throw out some academic words to blind you with my erudition.  Etc.

As I listened to this discussion, something gradually dawned on me about Richard Dawkins... he's not really very good at this.  Oh sure, Dawkins had a strong initial presentation, but in the second half, Lennox just goes steamrolling all over him, babbling about Genesis and miracles and the wonderful love of Jesus Christ, virtually uninterrupted.

A couple of times, Lennox brought up "famous scientists" (i.e., Francis Collins) who believe in God, and Dawkins responds by sounding shocked, saying something like "No, really??"  At that point I let out a big vocal "WTF???"  I'm not sure what Dawkins was sounding so shocked about... perhaps he was really trying to say "Seriously, you're not trying to use Mr. 'Waterfall Split Three Ways' to support your position, are you?"  But in the audio it came off as "Oh my goodness, I had no idea that Francis Collins was a theist!  This is a simply devastating turn of events!"

Elsewhere, Dawkins asks "You don't honestly believe in miracles like turning water into wine, do you?"  And Lennox, in his cute little Irish accent, goes "I dyoo, and let me tell ye whae."  Then he proceeds to ramble at length about the amazing creator of the universe and the awesome power of the miracles that are made possible through him.  PZ Myers had a positive spin on this debate.  He says: "Dawkins played it right, letting Lennox just run off at the mouth and expose the inanity of the theological position."

I'm sorry Paul, I love your blog dearly, but in this case you're wrong.  Dawkins did not play it right, and here's why.  The inanity of Lennox is obvious to you and me, but a Christian audience just eats that stuff up.  Even a largely neutral audience will see Lennox as winning that point, simply because it wasn't effectively challenged.

Meanwhile, as I listened to it, I could practically hear our own Matt Dillahunty's voice jumping in: "Hang on... hang on... hang on..."  Most seasoned veterans of the TV show would not let Lennox go on for so long without backing up the discussion and trying to take a closer look at some of his claims.  Had Matt or I been there, Lennox would be talking about how amazing it is that the order of creation in Genesis perfectly matches what science has discovered, and we'd jump in and yell "Plants didn't start growing before the sun existed, asshat!"

This is not an uncommon reaction for me, either.  About 90% of atheist debates I hear wind up with me grinding my teeth in frustration after a while.  There are just so many missed opportunities, so many places where I remember when the same topic came up on the show, and there's a perfect one-liner to knock it down.  But the atheist just lets it blow right on by.

On the TV show, we regularly debate people with dissenting views, by making a point of prioritizing calls from theists and others likely to disagree.  Matt, Tracie, Don, Martin, Jen, Jeff, and I, deliberately do this on a regular basis.  (I'd also throw in many past hosts and cohosts, including Ashley and Keryn.)  The response to the Atheist Experience has been enormous since we gained a YouTube presence.  We routinely receive around 10, 20, 30 emails every day at the TV address.  The chat room on a live show day contains 200-300 people.  I think part of the reason for this is because we're the only game in town: no one else does what we do, at least not as often.

As I said in my lecture about atheist evangelism, practice is absolutely the key to getting good at any game.  Only by doing such a thing repeatedly can you identify what your opponents are going to bring against you regularly.  You can have lots of theory behind you about what should work, but having to spit out a sound-bite within five seconds of hearing a common apologetic tactic is something that requires experience.  It's not that we AE members have an inherent advantage over other counter-apologists; we just do it more.

If Richard Dawkins, who is a pre-eminent scientist and the author of a best-selling book on atheism, isn't good at debating atheism in person, then who is besides us?  There aren't that many people.  I thought the Rational Response Squad did a fairly good job against the tag team of Comfort and Cameron.  Reginald Finley occasionally hosts debates, either covering the atheism side on his own, or inviting guests like Massimo Pigliucci to act as a champion.  I can't think of a lot of others.

I hate to keep picking on Richard Dawkins, but here's a relevant bit of information: he has said on multiple occasions that he won't debate creationists.  That's certainly his prerogative.  In the linked article you'll see plenty of perfectly valid reasons why it's a bad idea to debate creationists: It gives them the unwarranted appearance of credibility.  Free publicity.  A spoken debate emphasizes style over substance.  These debates are attended by a stacked and biased audience.  Etc.

Dawkins is in good company.  Stephen Jay Gould wouldn't do it either, and Eugenie Scott wrote a very persuasive article on talkorigins.org, explaining why a scientist debating a creationist is like an unprepared team going up against the Harlem Globetrotters.  Not only do they lose the game, but they wind up looking stupid while making the opposition look good.

Yeah, that's all well and good, but it's simply not true that "the only winning strategy is not to play."  If you don't play, you don't improve.  If you don't improve, you can never win.  Then creationists get the upper hand anyway, because they get to crow about how "everyone is scared to debate me."

Here's a big problem: atheists and scientists who would be debaters have no infrastructure to back them up.  There are a lot of professional apologists, who practically have a job description of traveling around the country debating people.  William Lane Craig springs to mind.  Also, I heard that PZ Myers debated Kirk Durston over the weekend.  I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but the name of the opponent stood out for me because I've heard Durston debate before, years ago.  I wrote the report on it, in fact.  So Durston is a pro at this: he flies around the country, and wherever he goes, he debates people who are not professional apologists; they are local professors like Sahotra Sarkar.  Smart guys, yes, but they have day jobs and lives.  They don't debate for a living.  Par for the course, I think.

People pay to fly William Lane Craig to a university as the champion in a debate.  It's one of the perks of having an organization that people tithe to.  Nobody pays for regular travel for atheist champions.  They don't offer speaker fees for a professional on the other side.

Note that I'm not necessarily saying that the Atheist Experience team are the right ones for the job.  I do think that any one of us would stack up well against most opponents.  I would love to debate Bill Dembski on the identity of the intelligent designer sometime, and I bet Matt would jump at the chance to go after Ray Comfort face-to-face.  On the other hand, the TV show offers a lot of home field advantages that we would have to do without in a live debate.  Stuff like having a hold button, for example.  Standing side by side with Ray Comfort, there is no opportunity to say "I'm sorry, you have repeated this bullshit three times now, I'm hanging up on you."  Also, it's certainly clear that the people whom we debate regularly are amateurs, often repeating arguments that they don't really understand.

What I'm saying, though, is it doesn't much matter who the professional atheist debater is; there needs to be one, and he or she needs practice on a regular basis.  And it would also be cool if there were occasional conferences with round table discussions and lectures on how to do this properly, as well as a team of diverse experts to offer serious post-mortem analysis of any debates that happen.

There are many advantages to having an established counter-apologist debater.  Local professors would not feel the pressure to do something they are bad at, thinking "If I don't do this then no one will."  The chosen spokesperson would get to do regular debates, which would help him or her improve and gain insight into the process which could then be passed along to others.  The spokesperson would also gain some notoriety and be a focal point for interviews for the atheist movement.  Apologists would probably jump at the chance to try and defeat this person -- which effectively flips the usual equation of not wanting to grant creationists unwarranted credibility.  Atheists don't have credibility in pop culture; theists do.  In science, the reverse is true; creationists are the outsiders.

Here's the bottom line: it's all too common for atheists to assume that the ridiculousness of religion should be apparent to everyone.  The facts should speak for themselves, we say.  Well, they don't.  Facts don't speak, people do.  Apologists use rhetorical tricks and live debates because it's a good forum to gain media attention.  So what are we going to say -- that we should abandon this medium to them?  Why?  Are atheists just inherently dumber than theists when it comes to style and charisma?  No, I don't think so.  This is a shortcoming that needs to be corrected, and the time to start is now.

Democrats wake up and take the SBOE debacle seriously

The first step in de-moronizing the Texas State Board of Education has begun. In past years the Democrats have ill-advisedly ignored the SBOE, preferring more high-profile races in Texas politics. But with the current board overrun by anti-science creationist wackaloons who are turning the entire state into fodder for late-night comedians, the Dems are finally extracting craniums from rectums and realizing that the neocon theocrats cannot be allowed to gang-rape the education of an entire generation of Texas students.

And so the first challengers have been announced for the 2010 elections. Democratic activist Susan Shelton has announced she will challenge walking joke Cynthia "Obama Is a Terrorist" Dunbar, and that "as many as a dozen" other Democrats are considering a run. It's about frickin' time.

Meanwhile, the recent, second hearing on January 21 was evidently no less packed with stupid than the first. (Note to Clare Wuellner, who emailed me urging me to participate this time: I did try to call the number you gave me, but got nothing but a dispatcher who sounded like she couldn't hear me and kept saying, "Hello, go ahead!" until I hung up. Weird.) You know, it's just so tiresome the way these people try to pretend, with all of their "strengths and weaknesses" code words and what have you, that their opposition to evolution education isn't about promoting their religious agendas. And then when these hearings are held, the fools speaking out for their side put the lie to that the instant they open their idiot gobs.

Folks, we got change in 2008. Let's get some more in '10. Vote!

Looks like all that time I spent playing Left 4 Dead may pay off

It would seem that zombies have infested the streets of Austin.

Somebody fetch me my auto-shotgun and some pain pills.

Superior Christian morality!

Ted Haggard's back in the news. This time, it's been revealed that his megachurch New Life knew full well of Haggard's homosexual proclivities, and that, in addition to the gay drug-dealing male prostitute situation, they paid a 20-year-old church volunteer a bunch of hush money to keep him from telling anyone about his own assignations with Haggard. Of course, the church wants you to think it wasn't hush money.

"This was compassionate assistance. It was to help him move forward, not a settlement to keep him quiet," said [Brady] Boyd, senior pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Uh huh. Just some "compassionate assistance" to a young guy who happened to be in a position to embarrass the church publicly with news about some pillow biting with the pastor. Unless Boyd is implying that all of the church's young members get "compassionate assistance" to pay their college tuition, moving expenses, and, uh, counseling, as a matter of course, and that this guy was no different than any other church member in that regard.

But wait, no, that can't be the case, can it? Because the article also reveals that this "compassionate assistance" came as the result of a settlement between the church and the young man's attorney.

So we have a pastor abusing his position of power for sexual favors, a church lying about the incident as well as their reasons for settling with the young man in question...gosh, it all just seems so wrong...somehow!

But wait, I forgot. I'm an atheist, and so I don't have any valid "objective standards" for determining right or wrong. So I guess all this is okay, then. I guess it'll just be easier if I remember the mantra: if Christians do it, it's moral. Hey, that rationale worked for Nixon: "If the president does it, it's not illegal." Right? Right. And let's not forget the second mantra either: Do as we preach, not as we do. Life is suddenly so much easier, isn't it?

Smackdown of a creationist lecture

The Everything Else Atheist (disclosure: friend of mine, loyal AE viewer, and newbie blogger) just spent an evening tormenting herself by attending a lecture by "Director of Christian Apologetics" Craig J. Hazen. The talk turned out to be as awful as you could hope, but it wasn't a total loss, as we get to enjoy the recap and take-down.

Excerpt:

He then told a story about giving evidence for the resurrection to medical students (notice his subtle transition from faith to christianity?). He told them that "Jesus was alive at point A, dead at point B, and alive at point C" and was excited to tell us that their jaws just dropped. I can tell you why their jaws dropped, it's a stupid claim which you given no reasonable evidence for.

Federal judge to Kevin Trudeau: Grab your ankles, bitch!

This isn't specifically atheisty, but it gives me a big 3S (skeptical schadenfreude squee) all the same. From the "Sometimes the Good Guys Win" file:

A federal judge has ordered infomercial marketer Kevin Trudeau to pay more than $37 million for violating a 2004 stipulated order by misrepresenting the content of his book, “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.”...

This scumsucking assrocket is a kindred spirit to Ben Stein in every way. Peddle a bunch of bullshit claims and sway the feeble minds of an uneducated public into thinking you're a valiant truth-seeker, by contriving a massive conspiracy by Big Science to suppress you. And if it makes you puke to think how this con man is swimming in ill-gotten dough while millions of honest Americans are on the verge of poverty thanks to the Bush Economic Holocaust, then I'm sure this news must make your week. Go, read, bask.

Answering apologists' questions, part 2

In our last episode, Robin had discovered the location of the secret underground lab where Commissioner Gordon has been held prisoner. Meanwhile, Woodstock played an elaborate prank on Snoopy involving Linus's security blanket, some Elmer's Glue, and a feather pillow, and Andy and Opie had finally found Barney Fife passed out at the fishing hole after enjoying a little too much of the whiskey he'd been ordered to confiscate from Otis. Finally, philosopher Paul Copan had contributed a sincere but naive two-part question to Lee Strobel's list, prompting Martin once again to fire up the old Mac.

Philosopher Paul Copan: Given the commonly recognized and scientifically supported belief that the universe (all matter, energy, space, time) began to exist a finite time ago and that the universe is remarkably finely tuned for life, does this not (strongly) suggest that the universe is ontologically haunted and that this fact should require further exploration, given the metaphysically staggering implications?

Copan is a little wide of the mark in terms of what is scientifically supported about the universe's origins. From my layman's standpoint, let me relate my own understanding of where science is right now on that subject. Yes, the universe as we know it has a finite history, but of what came before, we know nothing. The Big Bang theory is not a creation ex nihilo theory, but simply one that describes the event that caused our universe to expand into its present form. The concept I find most plausible is that the pre-BB universe existed in a quantum state, with the BB itself a quantum event. Causal explanations are nicely disposed of here, since causality itself — indeed, most of physics if I understand it correctly — is a non-issue at the quantum level.

In short, there was never a state of nonexistence preceding the Big Bang. And quantum mechanics dispenses with the need to think of the universe as "ontologically haunted," Copan's poetic $20 way of saying "created by God."

There is hardly any kind of scientific consensus on the universe being "fine-tuned for life," a common mantra of the scientifically-minded apologist. As a scientific layman, I'd have to say, if this were in fact the case, where is all the life? That we know of, there is but one planet in all the universe bearing life (although really earnest efforts to find those elusive Martian microbes continue). I think it would be far more accurate to say that life has been fine-tuned for its environment on Earth, and that fine-tuning mechanism is evolution by natural selection.

Moreover, as physicist Victor Stenger has pointed out, if the universe were indeed created by the God of Christianity for the purpose of containing life to worship him, why would God need to "fine tune" it? For Pete's sake, he's supposed to be omnipotent. If all it took was an act of will in Genesis 1 to get the ball rolling, why should any "fine tuning" need to be done? I mean, they can't even claim that this one is scripturally supported. It's not as if Genesis says, "And finally on the seventh day, God rested, having pulled two all-nighters in a row to get the fine-tuning right." The whole "fine tuning" argument from apologists makes it sound as if God really worked his ass off to get this darn universe just so. Again, it seems Christianity's God is omnipotent when it's convenient for him to be. But once science begins taking a close look at his alleged "creation," he's a dedicated if imperfect hard worker who's just done the very best he can, and all of his "bad" design is in fact really "elegant" design that we puny humans are too dim to comprehend. (I've actually heard Hugh Ross make a pitch very like that one.)

I'd suggest Copan go off and read Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis, which addresses these matters with real expertise.

Copan continues:

And, second, granted that the major objection to belief in God is the problem of evil, does the concept of evil itself not suggest a standard of goodness or a design plan from which things deviate, so that if things ought to be a certain way (rather than just happening to be the way they are in nature), don't such ‘injustices' or ‘evils' seem to suggest a moral/design plan independent of nature?

First off, the problem of evil is a major (not necessarily the major) objection to belief in God. The major objection continues to be that whole "complete and utter absence of evidence" thing.

Certainly the concept of evil implies a concept of good. Duh. One must have a frame of reference to compare one to the other. But who came up with this concept? People, that's who.

There is nothing in nature called "right" or "wrong." If a rock on Mars falls off a cliff and breaks another rock, the falling rock has not done a bad thing. These are concepts that exist only in a social context, and then, only among a social species (like our own) who develop the concepts as a helpful way to ensure species survival. Throughout the millennia that civilization has been developing, humans have found it useful to codify certain behaviors as either right or wrong, based upon whether the observable consequences of those behaviors are harmful or not. And we can judge what is harmful or not by our innate empathic qualities. Seeing a person hurting triggers a hardwired response in us, because we can understand what it would be like for us to be in the same situation. And studies have shown that a tendency towards cooperative, altruistic behavior is innate in children. We've also observed that some of our close cousins among primates have developed ethical heirarchies themselves.

We don't need magic men in the sky to explain why we can tell right from wrong. The development of human morality has been a stochastic process, and not always a consistent one. There are many things people one did in the past — hold slaves, marry underage girls, round up Jews and burn them alive (not talking about Nazis here, but medieval Christians) — that were considered perfectly morally acceptible, which today we'd find appalling. The idea of a single "moral/design plan" existing outside of nature that has informed our morality is simply not backed up by any understanding of history or cultural anthropology. If such a thing did exist, you'd expect not to see moral precepts radically changing from age to age and culture to culture, as they have done. While some precepts have remained consistent, many have changed and continue to change. Fifty years ago they were still lynching black men in this country, and now we've put one in the White House. We're always learning.

Finally, your implications about divine "moral/design plans" not only fail to get God off the hook where the problem of evil is concerned, they merely highlight the problem. If right and wrong are in fact God-ordained concepts, then — once more with feeling — why does he allow children to get raped, thousands to die in tsunamis and earthquakes, and so on ad infinitum? Accepting the idea you want me to consider, that God is a necessary precondition for moral understanding, makes his own moral insouciance (let alone his outright evil — remember, this is a guy who will send even a child down the trapdoor to eternal Hell for not joining the Official Jesus Fan Club) a thoroughly intractible problem for the Christian to address. And we haven't even gotten to the Euthyphro Dillemma yet.

Frank Pastore just reiterates some of Copan's points, just in a way that accentuates his ignorance, so I'll address him quickly.

Radio host Frank Pastore: “Please explain how something can come from nothing, how life can come from death, how mind can come from brain, and how our moral senses developed from an amoral source.”

1) Nothing in science says something came from nothing. You believe a God poofed it all into place via an act of will, so could you please give a detailed description of the physical processes set in motion when God said "Let there be light"; please discuss in particular how those processes were initiated, in other words, how exactly the sound of God's voice instantiated the matter that became our universe; and finally, the nature of the realm in which God exists, how that realm came to be, and how and when God came to be, and by what process.

Take your time.

2) Nothing in science says life came from death. Again, you are the one who believes a man was resurrected from the dead. Perhaps you can give a more coherent explanation of how this occurred than your fellow "resurrection expert" Ken Habermas.

As for life coming from non-life, that subject is abiogenesis, and you can probably Google up what actual scientists are thinking about it.

3) I believe the development of the mind is one of the many ongoing fields of study in evolutionary biology. I would not claim to know if they have all the answers in yet (and I doubt they do). But Christians all too often use that fact as an opportunity to launch the Argument from Ignorance fallacy: science hasn't got the answers, so Goddidit. No, God doesn't get to win by default whenever there isn't a better scientific answer at hand (though the fact Christians so often think he does really underscores the fact that "God," when you get right down to it, is merely a placeholder for ignorance).

How our minds evolved is not really that perplexing a mystery. Steven Pinker has an interesting interview here on the topic. We know homo sapiens had just plain bigger brains than other hominids, including those we at one point shared the planet with, like Neanderthals and homo erectus. The latter guy was a huge strapping brute, over six feet on average and built like a linebacker. But he had an itty bitty brain, and never learned, the way H. sapiens did, how to hunt together in teams to bring down the big game. In short, how our minds developed is another amazing story in our evolutionary history, and one — like all factual, scientific alternatives to religious myth — far more glorious and astonishing than the simplistic all-in-one "Goddidit" non-answer, that far too many people seem to prefer to experiencing the real wonder of our world.

4) For our moral development, see my answer to Copan above. Our morality, like everything else, evolved. It didn't just spring wholly made from nothingness. In Pastore's question, you really see the Either/Or Fallacy so commonly at work in Christians' thinking. It's like Behe's irreducible complexity nonsense, applied to all of existence. Either God gave us morals, or somehow morals just poofed out of nothingness all by themselves (and who coould believe that?). Either God developed our minds, or they just poofed into existence from nothingness all by themselves (and who could believe that?). And so on. Questions like Pastore's come front-loaded with their lack of understanding and misinformation, tainting the question's very premise with errors that you have to correct before you can even address the question itself.

Okay, so that wasn't a quick reply after all. Maybe I'll do better with our final question.

Apologist Greg Koukl: Why is something here rather than nothing here? Clearly, the physical universe is not eternal (Second Law of Thermodynamics, Big Bang cosmology). Either everything came from something outside the material universe, or everything came from nothing (Law of Excluded Middle). Which of those two is the most reasonable alternative? As an atheist, you seem to have opted for the latter. Why?

Okay, this one will go quickly. Talk about your Either/Or Fallacies! Koukl even uses the words themselves in describing what he incorrectly thinks the only explanations are for the existence of the universe. (And indeed, what he mistakenly refers to as the "Law of Excluded Middle" is in fact another classical fallacy.)

See my answer to Copan for my thinking on the pre-Big Bang universe. It's a reasonably well scientifically supported hypothesis that doesn't involve either of Koukl's alternatives, and metaphysically, it's more sound as well. Many Christian apologists work from what Dawson Bethrick — an erudite atheist blogger I occasionally read, though I'm not an Objectivist as he is — calls a "primacy of nonexistence" metaphysics. In other words, they start from the presupposition that before the universe there had to be nothing, and since nothing can come from nothing, a God was therefore needed to create the universe. Conversely, an atheist can reasonably employ a "primacy of existence" metaphysics that takes into account the notion that there was never a period of nothingness, that there has in fact always been a universe, and that universe was in a quantum state prior to the Big Bang. Thus, existence itself becomes a causal primary. There's no need to prove that "existence exists," because, well, you know, here we are and all. (Unless you end up talking to a solipsist, that is, and frankly I think your time would be more productively spent tweezing your ass hairs.) And it works better with Occam's Razor, too. It is indeed the more parsimonious explanation to think that existence exists, rather than having to come up with whole speculative realms of meta-existence — and I'd include gods in heavens alongside bubble multiverses here — just to concoct tortuous explanations for our own existence.

Okay. I think that about wraps it up for me. If anyone else has answers for Lee's list of questioners, or corrections and enhancements to any of the answers I gave, well, that's what comment threads are for.

Poor, poor, poor, poor, poor little Ray

Ray Comfort. The Uwe Boll of Christian apologetics.

You know, it'd be pretty easy to do a Ray Comfort Drinking Game. Just take a shot at any straw-man attack on atheists, moronic canard about evolution...

On second thought, alcohol poisoning within minutes might be a real hazard. Better not. Still, he's worth a laugh, poor sad idiot. Notice there are no comments allowed, though. Knock me over with a feather.

America Hating Theocrats Pray For Failure

Hey everybody, let's all pray for the failure of the new president!

Wait, you silly fundie, haven't you heard that it is treasonous to criticize a sitting president in a time of war?

OOOOOHHHHH! I've been waiting to say that for a long time.

...But seriously, folks, I'd like to say a few words about partisanship.

I don't believe in treating both sides equally. That should be clear from my consistently stated position on teaching Intelligent Design in schools (for example, in this press release that I wrote), or their latest smokescreen, euphemistically known as "academic freedom" or "teach the controversy." There is no "controversy" other than the one raised by a tiny minority of religious goons seeking to camouflage their efforts to make political hay. Matt and I have both repeatedly said that it's a good thing to be biased in favor of reality, and not make up reasons to criticize both sides equally. There are not really two sides to the question of whether we landed on the moon, or whether Barack Obama is secretly a reptoid. Or rather, there are two sides, but one side is clearly a bunch of idiots.

So. I've occasionally been accused of being a partisan hack for Obama. I don't love everything Obama does. I have some objections to his overt religious statements, which I believe I've aired out on the show before. I'm not delighted with his choice of Rick Warren as a speaker yesterday. When I specifically object to some of Obama's policies, I'll let you know.

However, it would be a mistake to think that it reflects some sort of unthinking bias if I am less critical of this president than the previous one. Casting around for an analogy... okay, let's talk about movies. I absolutely love Inherit the Wind. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. I own the DVD, I watch it repeatedly. It is an enduring classic with great acting and a powerful message.

If presidents were movies, Barack Obama would not be Inherit the Wind. He would be... oh let's say... Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters is a pretty good movie. It's funny. It's got some good performances and quotable lines. If it happened to be on TV I would probably watch it. But it's not in the same league as Inherit the Wind.

On the other hand, the Bush presidency in my opinion has been Plan 9 From Outer Space. There's very, very little for me to recommend it, whether we're considering faith-based initiatives, or otherwise funneling money into organizations with evangelical ties like Blackwater, or constant lip service to the National Day of Prayer, or an aide's snide dismissal of the "reality-based community."

There is simply no comparison. It's not mere partisanship that impels me to say that Barack Obama is likely to be a better president than George Bush. It's simply that it would be hard for him to do much worse. I disagree with the new president on some of his choices, and appreciate him for others -- like his straightforward acknowledgment of non-believers as part of our nation's heritage. A minor thing, it doesn't translate into any policy changes, but it's something Bush would never, ever have done.

However, as with everything, I reserve the right to change my opinion when presented with new evidence. So when Obama does something clearly offensive to the atheist community, I promise you'll hear about it from me.

Today makes me go wOOt

Hey gang. Did you hear?

George W. Bush is not the president any more! He's gone! Out!

Everybody exhale.

That frackin' miserable useless failure has joined the expanding ranks of our nation's many unemployed!

We have a new guy. I like him. I have high, but realistic hopes for him. I do think there has been a bit of excess from the media hype machine about his inauguration, but I put that down to pride over the fact that the USA, with its utterly appalling history of racism, has elected a non-white president, as well as general excitement over the fact that George W. Bush is no longer the president!

I'm pleased to be living in an America where the people are excited, rather than appalled and embarrassed by, our president. But go easy on the rockstar stuff. President Obama has eight years of almost apocalyptic disaster to fix. It will take time. He will have failures as well as successes. He knows how hard a row he has to hoe. I just want all of his slathering fans supporters to know that too. The higher they build you up, the longer and harder the fall you may be in for. Just remember, Obama is a man, not a messiah. I think he stands to be a better president than most we've had in my lifetime. But let's keep our heads, and stay realistic. Today's excitement aside, tomorrow we're back to workaday. There's a big job ahead.

Good luck, Mr. President.

Answering apologists' questions, part 1

A fellow emailed the TV show address with this forwarded list of questions that apologists have for atheists, taken from Lee Strobel's site. What is surprising is how simplistic and banal many the questions are (most of them being variations of "if God didn't create us, who/what did?"). Only one question is any good, and one is downright idiotic. You'd think these guys had never read any atheist literature in their lives. They probably haven't, though, being apologists, you'd think that doing so would at least give them some kind of frame of reference from which to formulate good responses to atheists' and skeptics' criticism of religion. Or maybe they're worried they wouldn't be able to respond...

The following answers are my own. Readers are invited to offer their own answers in the comments.

Lee opens:

What Would I Ask an Atheist?
Hemant Mehta's offer for me to respond to questions from atheists led me to ponder this topic: what would I ask an atheist in return? Hmmmmm. I decided to send emails to some of my friends and ask them for their suggestions. Here are their replies.

Hmmmm indeed. Rather than ask questions of us yourself, Lee, you pass the buck to your buddies. Cute. Anyway, here are the questions:

Apologist Mike Licona: "What turns you off about Christianity? Irrespective of one's worldview, many experience periods of doubt. Do you ever doubt your atheism and, if so, what is it about theism or Christianity that is most troubling to your atheism?"

I'm glad this question came first, as it's actually the first time I've heard a question phrased this way from any Christian. Notice Licona doesn't ask why I don't believe, he asks why Christianity is a turnoff. Which is quite a different matter. Licona has noticed that, apart from disbelief, there is something about religion in particular that rubs atheists the wrong way. Very astute, Mike. (Except, of course, for slipping in the mistaken attempt at equivocation with the ever-popular Christian weasel word "worldview." Atheism is not a "worldview." It is merely the disbelief in gods.)

I'll take the final question first. When credible evidence for a deity comes to light — a thing theists have singly been incapable of providing — then I will doubt my atheism. This does not mean I have a closed mind towards the idea. Even when I say, with full confidence, that I don't believe in any gods, I'm not making a dogmatic proclamation of absolute knowledge. But here, it's like the question of leprechauns. Would I believe in leprechauns if evidence for them ever made it sensible to do so? Sure. But in the absence of such evidence, I'm quite confident in maintaining my disbelief in leprechauns. Ditto gods.

There's nothing about Christianity troubling to my atheism, per se, so much as troubling to my humanism and ideas about goodness and decency. What turns me off about Christianity is that I consider it morally confused at best, and morally bankrupt at worst. Indeed, the Doctrine of Hell alone forever disqualifies Christianity as a moral belief system of any kind. Put bluntly, any religion that not only uses threats of eternal torture and punishment to enforce compliance, let alone considers eternal torture morally acceptable in the first place, simply for the "crime" of not being Christian, can only be considered not merely immoral but evil. Let us, for the sake of argument, say God exists. Am I to understand that this deity — said to be omniscient, omnipotent, omnific — is so insecure in his rule over his creation that he would find it necessary to consign me to eternity in hell merely for using my reasoning capacities (which he presumably gave me) to doubt his existence, especially when this God has deliberately chosen to refuse to reveal his existence unambiguously? Am I supposed to consider such a being worthy of my admiration, let alone my love and, most incredibly, my worship?

I often ask people who call the television show to imagine an abusive spouse, who tells his wife the following: "Honey, I love you with all my heart. But I swear, if you ever leave me, if I ever even think you're looking at another man or thinking about breaking up with me, so help me, I'll break your neck!" Now, is this a man you'd introduce your lady friends to? Is this someone you'd consider, not only a good man, but the best and most moral kind of man possible? No? But look closely. This man is your God. Don't worship him to his satisfaction, don't accept the divine love he so generously offers you, and go directly to hell, boom, no passing "Go" or collecting the proverbial two Benjamins.

Honestly, can you really be so clueless as to why Christianity turns atheists off, when it offers such an appalling deity for our devotion?

The immorality of Christianity doesn't stop there. This is a religion that preaches "love one another," and yet encourages the most virulent forms of hate. True, Islam does this to a degree Christianity can only dream of, but Christianity is still pretty objectionable. It is Christianity that inspires essentially 100% of the homophobia that is practiced in this country, and it informs most of its racism as well. You could say that this activity is merely bad people misinterpreting Christianity to their own ends. But it's hard to sell that excuse when passages in Leviticus calling for the execution of gays, and similarly hateful passages in Romans exist.

And why do so many racist groups openly identify themselves as Christian, giving themselves such pompous names as "World Church of the Creator"? This, I'd say, is perhaps not something particular to Christianity as it is to the very nature of religion itself: religion has historically been a tool for people to justify violence, atrocities, bigotry, oppression, even outright murder by giving such activity the divine stamp of approval. Todd Rundgren comments eloquently on this in his song "God Said," in which he imagines God replying to the prayers of a desperate and insecure believer.

You are not serving me, you're serving something else
Cause I don't need to be pleased, just get over yourself
You can't suck up to me, I know you all too well
But I don't dwell upon you, so get over yourself
Cause you're not praying to me, you're praying to yourself
And you're not worshiping me, you're worshiping yourself
And you will kill in my name and heaven knows what else
When you can't prove I exist, so get over yourself

You might say, again, that religiously-inspired hate and violence is man misusing religion, and doesn't come from God. But outside of Rundgren's song, I don't see God doing much to put a stop to such activity in his name. And when you consider, as I (and Todd) have, that what people call God is pretty much always simply their own idealized self-image, projected upon the universe, is it any wonder that religiosity has so often taken such an ugly form?

Another thing that turns me off about religion in general and Christianity in particular is the way such beliefs encourage delusion and bankrupt knowledge. I could go on (and have) at length about the way Christian fundamentalists in America are engaged in an all-out war on science education, specifically the study of a subject — evolutionary biology — that is vital to the understanding of our health and of our ability to treat disease. And the roster of scientific all-stars suppressed (Galileo) or just plain murdered outright (Giordano Bruno) by the Church is a stain you'll never wash off. But this post is going to be long enough as it is, so I'll move on.

Scholar William Lane Craig: “What's the real reason you don't believe in God? How and when do you lose your faith in God?”

Why ask for the "real reason" as if you assume atheists are, as a general rule, dishonest about their reasons for not believing? If you think that's the case, I'd expect to see you back the claim up. You know, being a "scholar" and all. But really, the reason I don't believe in God is the same for why I don't believe that UFO's have a habit of traveling millions of light-years across space only to leave odd markings in crops and kidnap poor country bumpkins in order to perform proctology exams: There's zilch in the way of credible evidence for the belief.

As for when I lost my faith in God, well, let me say this. While I had a Christian upbringing, don't assume all atheists started out theist. Kazim here on the blog is a lifelong atheist, and you'll find many such folks. I'd say my process towards disbelief began in early adolescence, around age 14 or so, and progressed through to my adulthood. Atheists do not tend to have "road to Damascus" deconversion epiphanies. The path to disbelief is an intellectual exercise in developing one's reasoning capacities and learning to slough off the rubbish your mind's been filled with since childhood. It's a lot like outgrowing your belief in Santa, just a bit more involved.

Thinking back, I don't think I ever really had "faith" in God. I know you'll leap on that as an admission I was never a True Christian™ to begin with. But to be totally honest, I don't think most of the people sitting in pews every Sunday really have "faith" in God either. They say they do, because that is what is expected of you in the Christian life. But, as George H. Smith pointed out, "scratch the surface of a Christian and you will find an agnostic." I tend to think most Christians are cultural believers who, when their backs are against the wall, really don't believe what they claim to believe. At least not to the point of having real "faith" in their God.

Example: When pink-wigged Jan Crouch of TBN infamy came down with colon cancer in 2003, she checked herself into a hospital's oncology ward to undergo surgery. And yet the network she and her husband run regularly features the rallies of Benny Hinn, who performs flamboyant onstage "healings." If the Crouches really believed in what Hinn was doing as an agent of the Lord (after all, they're promoting his programs to millions and making money off them), why didn't Jan just go to Benny for a miracle cure? So much for "faith in God." When the chips are down, it's science to the rescue after all.

Author and pastor John Ortberg: “How can you create a meaningful life in a meaningless universe?”

I'd first ask John what he means by "meaningless universe." If he means "non-teleological," that is, not intentionally designed for the purpose of housing us, the human race, who are so very special, then yes, I do think the universe is meaningless in that sense, and I further fail to see how that fact prevents me, as an individual and higher-thinking being, from establishing meaning in my own life here on Earth. Imagine a group of people putting on a Shakespeare play in an open field. You might as well ask them, "How can you produce a Shakespeare play in a location not specifically constructed and designed for the purpose of performing plays?" Meaning is that which we attach to our own lives, through our goals, ambitions, our desire to leave behind a legacy to be proud of. I don't tend to fret over my life choices because they cannot possibly "mean" anything on Omicron Ceti VIII. Why do you, John, think the universe must have some kind of specific "meaning" first, in order for your own life to have one?

The next question, and easily the silliest of the lot, comes from apologist Gary Habermas, who identifies himself as a "resurrection expert" in a way that indicates we're meant to be impressed. From my side of the fence this sounds like identifying oneself as a "Greek mythology expert." Sure, there's a vast and interesting field of cultural history and literature to be studied there. But the fact there are experts in Greek mythology doesn't imply those myths are true, any more than the fact some apologist considers himself a "resurrection expert" makes that particular myth true. But Gary is quite full of himself and his expertise, and launches into a prolix question loaded with unfounded assumptions and unsupported claims stated as fact.

Resurrection expert Gary Habermas: “Utilizing each of the historical facts conceded by virtually all contemporary scholars, please produce a comprehensive natural explanation of Jesus' resurrection that makes better sense than the event itself.”

These historical facts are: (1) Jesus was killed by crucifixion; (2) Jesus' disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them; (3) The conversion of the church persecutor Saul; (4) the conversion of the skeptic James, Jesus' half-brother; (5) The empty tomb of Jesus. These “minimal facts” are strongly evidenced and are regarded as historical by the vast majority of scholars, including skeptics, who have written about the resurrection in French, German, and English since 1975. While the fifth fact doesn't enjoy quite the same universal consensus, nevertheless it is conceded by 75 percent of these scholars and is well supported by the historical data if assessed without preconceptions.

I bet you didn't know there was universal consensus among "virtually all contemporary scholars" that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, did you? Why, it must be true, since Gary says so himself. Who exactly are these "scholars," Gary? Yes, I'm being tiresome, asking for names, citations, and what have you, but you know, that's what we skeptics do. I'd especially like to know who the "skeptics" are among this vast array of contemporary scholars, and especially what it is they are supposed to be skeptical about, since, according to you, they all agree with the historicity of Gospel claims about Jesus. Which would seem to make them, you know, not skeptics. Not to be pedantic or anything. I'm just sayin'.

Naturally it would help to have some of these names. And then, once given the names, we'd need to immediately weed out the ones who were, like Gary, Christian apologists writing for Christian publications rather than peer-reviewed academic journals. Because, as Gary so astutely points out, you really need to assess evidence without preconceptions clouding your judgment.

Okay, enough snark. Obviously Gary's question is preposterous on its face, mainly because it's rooted in numerous claims that certain events have been independently established as historical fact, when they have not. Shall we go through them by the numbers?

1. We have no bulletproof extra-Biblical evidence that the Jesus of the Bible existed at all, let alone that he performed any of the feats attributed to him by the Gospels. Now, I happen to think that the character of Jesus was, in all likelihood, inspired by a real person.

   But even granting this much of the benefit of the doubt, this gets us no closer to real historical, archaeological proof of anything the Gospels say he did. Remember that the earliest scriptures were the product of an unscientific, pre-Enlightenment, primitive, barbaric and cruel culture. Even educated Roman historians like Seutonius, writing about the Twelve Caesars (a great read, btw — snag it), took things like omens and auguries seriously, and slipped them into their histories. Fanciful stories about supernatural occurrences involving popular Roman generals were circulated and believed by the legionnaires; these helped boost morale among the men. In short, the Gospels are hardly unique in making occult claims about famous men. But at its most prosaic, is it likely that, if an itinerant Jewish rabbi named Jesus/Jeshua existed, and pissed off the establishment, that he'd have been crucified as a common rabble rouser and malcontent? Sure, it may have happened. Does it follow from this that we can then claim to have sufficient evidence he rose from the dead? Here's a hint: no.

2. That someone is converted to a religion or embraces a belief does not prove it is true.


3. Goto 2.


4. Goto 3.


5. What accounts of Jesus' empty tomb exist outside of scripture? And even if we had such (the passages in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews are widely considered inauthentic), well, allow me to illustrate the absurdity of what you're claiming, Gary.

   You're stating that it is an established historical fact that Jesus' tomb was empty three days after his crucifixion, and that this supports the belief that he rose from the dead. How, exactly, would we in the present day establish this as a fact?

   Let's go for the best case scenario a Christian could hope for. Let's say a tomb is unearthed by archaeologists in a location conforming to where Jesus' tomb is supposed to have been. (No, not this one.) Let's say they find pretty solid evidence that the tomb was, in fact, the one Jesus was placed in. (For grins, we'll say they find that little INRI sign that appears in every dead-guy-on-a-stick painting handed down to us through the ages.) Let's say they carbon date all this stuff right to 33 C.E. (that's A.D. to you). And let's say there's no skeleton in the tomb at all.

   Could we deduce from this that the resurrection really happened? Well, no, any more than an Egyptologist could deduce, finding an empty burial tomb of a forgotten pharaoh, that the guy's mummy shambled to its feet and wandered off to do some Boris Karloff thing. Maybe the tomb was broken into and robbed; happened often enough. You might expect to see signs of that, but maybe the graverobbers were extremely careful to conceal their tracks. Indeed, maybe the tomb had been broken into by the disciples themselves, in which case, you'd expect them to be careful. Or maybe the tomb was broken into 1800 years ago, or 1600, or 1200, or 700. Maybe it wasn't maliciously broken into at all, but quite intentionally opened up in order to relocate the body to a different tomb altogether.

   There'd be almost no way to tell. And the point is, I'm giving a hypothetical here. We don't have an actual Tomb O' Jesus in the archaeological record anywhere at all. Don't think for moment every accountant in Israel's Ministry of Tourism hasn't fantasized that they had one. So how you expect to approach a group of skeptics with the bald claim that Jesus' empty tomb is established as factual, while citing no sources and naming none of the impressive dramatis personae of scholars you say agree with you, is quite boggling. You seem to think you can say, "hey, some of these guys were skeptics too!" as if we are obliged to respond with, "well, gee, then maybe I should take all this seriously myself." Honestly, Gary, you give the impression that the job of "resurrection expert" is to make a bunch of stuff up! [/sarcasm] Do you even know what skepticism entails?

   Okay, I'll grant that you admitted there isn't universal consensus on the tomb thing. But, you say, 75% of scholars concede the point. How handy that it's exactly 75%! I mean, it could have been 72.14% percent, which is, like, a weird number. But 75% would be the kind of thing that might make people sit up and notice, unless they were intelligent skeptics. In which case, you should expect to hear lots of snickering, as you're hearing now. Then again, you could always cite your sources and name these guys. Because, as the saying goes, 98% of statistics are made up on the spot. But who knows? Maybe yours are among that 2%. I think there's about an 11.3851% possibility of that.

So my "comprehensive natural explanation" of the resurrection that "makes better sense than the event itself"? Simple. Like the Virgin Birth, it's a myth. Because the event itself makes no sense. While understanding that it is a myth conforms to Occam's Razor, the law of parsimony. Which is the more parsimonious and sensible explanation for the resurrection?

• That it is a myth, or...
• ...that at one point in history, one human cadaver behaved in a manner that, in all of human history, no human cadaver had ever acted before, or has acted since.

Don't think too hard on it.

Final points: Is it not odd, considering how factually established you seem to think the resurrection is, that the Gospels themselves give conflicting accounts of how it all went down? Being a resurrection expert, I assume you know this. I mean, if the divinely inspired word of God can't get its information straight, what can we trust? Here, for the rest of you, is the game I like to call Choose Your Own Resurrection Adventure.

Matthew 28

• Number of women visiting the tomb: 2 (Mary Magdalene and Mary (Jesus' mother).
• Earthquake: yes.
• Number of angels and when they appear: 1, descending from Heaven following earthquake.
• Anybody else there?: yes, an unspecified number of "keepers," who understandably did "shake and become as dead men" in response to all this divine seismic activity and angelic visitation.
• Tomb open or closed?: Opened by angel immediately upon touchdown, demonstrating that no one knows how to make an entrance quite like an angel. Then, just to show off how frickin' cool angels are, he calmly sits down on the stone after rolling it away.
• Reaction: The two Marys rush off to tell the disciples. Part-ay! Jesus arrives, fashionably late. Serious part-ay! Disciples are encouraged to spread the word that Jesus will appear to his "brethren" in Galilee, and to meet him there.
• Anti-Semitic CYA quotient: High. Priests from the temple, who must have slept through the earthquake, are led to empty tomb by guards, and are accordingly chagrined. They bribe the guards to spread the word that the disciples stole the body. If I were writing this scene, I'd have a clueless, comedy-relief guard named Dorkus Magnus say something like, "But what about the earthq—", followed by a getting-hit-over-the-head sound.

Mark 16

• Number of women visiting the tomb: 3 (Mary Mag, Mary Mom, and someone named Salome).
• Earthquake: no. In fact we get the idea it's a pretty morning.
• Anybody else there?: No.
• Tomb open or closed?: Already open when the women get there.
• Number of angels and when they appear: 1, and he's already inside the open tomb, waiting for them.
• Reaction: Fear. The angel calmly tells the women to inform the disciples Jesus is arisen, but, terrified, they keep their mouths shut and tell no one. Then Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, and next, bizarrely, appears to two of his disciples (not named) in "another form." These men tell the remaining disciples, who don't believe them. Jesus then appears to them (as himself, I presume), jumps everybody's shit for doubting his return, then orders them all to spread the word. In short, a considerably less joyous reunion than in Matthew. Footnote: a lot of folks have died over the years thanks to Mark 16:18.
• Anti-Semitic CYA quotient: None. No denouement here about wily Sanhedrin.

Luke 24

• Number of women visiting the tomb: More than 3 (Mary Mag, Mary Mom, someone named Joanna, plus an unspecified number of "other women").
• Earthquake: no.
• Anybody else there?: No.
• Tomb open or closed?: Already open when the women get there.
• Number of angels and when they appear: 2, who beam down from Heaven with considerably less pyrotechnics than Matthew's angel, while the women are standing slack-jawed inside the empty tomb wondering where Jesus is. This sudden appearance, not surprisingly, scares the shit out of them.
• Reaction: Complex, happy but muted. The women rush off and tell all the disciples, who don't believe them. But Peter goes and checks out the empty tomb himself, leaving perplexed. An unspecified time later, two disciples are discussing the event in a town called Erasmus, when they encounter Jesus and fail to recognize him, with the passage indicating, as did Mark, that Jesus was intentionally disguising himself. The disguised Jesus casually questions the men, who express their sadness at Jesus' death and confusion over events at the tomb. Jesus gently rebukes them for their doubt, then has dinner with them later, where he reveals his true identity then promptly disappears. The men return to Jerusalem and inform the other disciples, at which point Jesus beams in. But the disciples are frightened and think he may be a ghost. Jesus confirms his realness by letting them examine his wounds. Then, instead of giving his "go out into all the world" speech, he tells them all to hang loose in Jerusalem "until ye be endued with power from on high." Finally Jesus goes back to Heaven and the disciples spend all their time in the temple praying.
• Anti-Semitic CYA quotient: None.

John 20-21

• Number of women visiting the tomb: 1, only Mary Magdalene.
• Earthquake: no.
• Anybody else there?: No.
• Tomb open or closed?: Already open when Mary Mag gets there. She promptly runs off and gets Simon Peter and another unnamed disciple, believing that someone has already stolen Jesus' body.
• Number of angels and when they appear: 2, who, for some reason, only show up inside the tomb after Simon Peter and the other disciple have checked the place out and gone home. Only Mary Mag sees them.
• Reaction: ...And not only that, Jesus is in there too, alive! And like the befuddled disciples in the other Gospels, Mary Mag at first not only doesn't recognize him, but mistakes him for the gardener and asks where he has moved Jesus' body! Then he reveals himself to her. Interestingly he says he has not yet ascended to Heaven, but is waiting to tell her to inform the disciples of his resurrection first. (Why didn't he just appear when the men were there too? John really needed a good story editor.) She does so that night, at which point Jesus materializes in their midst. In John, there is only one disciple, Thomas, who later doubts Jesus is alive (unlike all of them in Luke), and that's because he was the only guy not there at the time. Eight days later Jesus appears again, proves himself to Thomas, and chides him for his entirely reasonable skepticism. Later still, Jesus plays an odd prank on some of the disciples fishing on a boat in the Sea of Tiberias. In disguise again (why? — they already know he's risen), he calls to them from the shore and they complain the fishing is lousy. Jesus tells them to cast their net again, and they promptly snag 153 fish. Simon Peter, now aware the stranger is Jesus, gets embarrassed at his nudity and jumps over the side. Har! Later, over a yummy fish dinner on the beach, Jesus, after a fashion, forgives Simon Peter for his earlier denial of him (John 18:25-27), giving the man a speech that might have inspired the one given by Don Corleone in The Godfather. ("Someday, and that day may never come, I may ask you a favor...") Finally, the author of John slips himself into the dinner party, giving Jesus a line that implies the kingdom of Heaven will be installed on Earth in John's own lifetime.
• Anti-Semitic CYA quotient: Surprisingly light, considering how anti-Semitic most of John is considered to be in its crucifixion scene. There's a brief note that, after the tomb is found empty, the disciples are in hiding "for fear of the Jews."

Whew. Quite a lot of variations for one story, eh? Was there an earthquake, or not? Angels inside or outside the tomb? And why is Jesus doing all this concealing of himself, when he presumably wants his followers to know he's back and better than ever? Given so many discrepancies and incongruities in the narrative, it must take a great deal of stretching on Habermas' part to have the stones to claim all of this is established historical fact. But then, maybe that's what being a "resurrection expert" is about: skillful explaining away of the problems in the narrative, to make it all sound like it was meant to be that way. I think that's probably what apologists call "interpretation."

Next: Three more apologists to answer...stay tuned.

This weekend on the show: End times theology for kids!

This Sunday afternoon, tune in to "The Atheist Experience," where Tracie and I will be joined by a guest. Charity is an 18 year old ex-believer who will be discussing the series "Left Behind: the Kids" and other wacky end times beliefs.

Update: Since I leaned heavily on the Slacktivist blog to get us through the horrid technical errors that left us phone-less, I'd be remiss if I didn't link him so you all could enjoy what I was reading.

- Slacktivist main page
- Posts on "Left Behind"

Apologists do not make good sci fi authors

Last weekend on "The Non-Prophets," Matt read part of a a right wing Christian screed entitled "Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America." At the time, I remember being much more interested in picking apart the literary shortcomings of the letter than worrying about the specific paranoid delusions of the author.

For instance, the entire first page of the letter is an introduction explaining what he is trying to do. Writing no-no number one. Show, don't tell. If you have to explain what your writing MEANS, you've already failed as an author. Shilling pointed out that he was writing for a fairly dumb target audience who might not get the conceit. Even so, you have to be fairly dense to read a letter from 2012 and not understand that it is fiction.

Reading it again, there is another thing I wish I had said as well. Who the hell is the person supposed to be writing to? Is it another person in 2012? If so, why is he rattling off a bullet list of things which would presumably be common knowledge to everyone living there? Is it a person from another country? It seems to contain so much sappy patriotism that anybody receiving it would probably dismiss it. Unless they're an American overseas, which again raises the question of why they didn't know this stuff already.

Or is the author a time traveler, who somehow knowingly sent the message back in time to warn our ignorant past selves? That makes more sense, but I skipped to the end to read the sign-off. It says: "I still believe God is sovereign over all history, and though I don’t know why he has allowed these events, it is still his purpose that will ultimately be accomplished." That doesn't sound at all like your usual sign-off for a supposed ghost of Christmas future visitation. Not "You can still change all this! Vote for McCain!" but "I don't understand how this happened." If he doesn't think he can change history, why did he write the letter?

Is it too much to ask that the author think about a genre and a writing style, and then write something that makes some small amount of sense within that genre? Sigh.

Off-topic, but...

Damn!

Danger Man and The Prisoner are two of my favorite classic TV shows. The Prisoner, especially, was a surreal odyssey that managed to be some of the most socially relevant television, then as now: an allegory about maintaining one's individuality and integrity in a world determined to buy you, own you, corrupt you, sell you, or just plain throw you away. I had always entertained the quaint fantasy of working with McGoohan on a film at some hazy point in the future, but knew it would be quite impossible due to his advanced age. Oh well. Prisoner DVD marathon tonight!

Double damn!

I was never such a big Star Trek fan as all that. But when you consider Ricardo Montalban's guest slot on one episode became one of the iconic characters of the series and inspired what is still the only one of the feature films worth repeat viewing...well, that's not a bad legacy.

More confusion about that darn church-and-state thing

Here's an AP article talking about the existence of some of the new Washington dollar coins that managed to go into circulation without the "In God We Trust" motto stamped into the edge. These godless coins, legal tender all the way, are reportedly fetching around $50 apiece from collectors. In a display of the kind of theistic bias that has regrettably left its pee-markings on our entire nation, the godless dollars are described as "flawed" and "error coins," while the ones proclaiming our patriotic "trust" in an imaginary being are described as "properly struck." In an America that actually respected its own Constitution, the reverse would be true, of course.

No, we aren't Pharyngula...

...but here's a poll worth crashing.

A bit of artistic justice

Lurking on some of my usual movie sites today, I noticed a fun fact that has gone unnoticed by the godless blogosphere. I still haven't seen Bill Maher's Religulous; I understand the ACA had a little group movie night when it opened here, which I missed due to being out of town. No one saw fit to blog a review of it here, though, so perhaps it just didn't make much of an impression at all.

Still, it's gotten pretty good notices in Free Inquiry and other sources I keep up with, and so I'm looking forward to the DVD.

But here's the fun fact. Religulous had a minute fraction of the hype Expelled got, and never played on more than half the screens of Ben Stein's disasterpiece. And yet, Religulous almost doubled Expelled's box office take.

So go Bill. Sometimes, the good guys win one. Now all he has to do is jettison his ill-considered anti-vaccination issues, and he'll really earn his skeptic stripes.

On the same page: another atheist criticizes the FFRF

Just tripped over this editorial by atheist David Gleeson over at the Denver Post, where he lambastes the FFRF's Christmas sign for most of the same reasons I did. Some good points here.

My wife's mind is not enslaved when she lights the Hanukkah candles and sings the blessings that have been handed down to her through the generations.

She is simply taking part in a tradition that is important to her identity as a Jewish woman.

Religion certainly can harden hearts and enslave minds, but so can atheism.

The FFRF is taking the very worst that religion can muster and using it to paint everyone with the same bold brush strokes, a tactic perfected, ironically, by radical religious groups seeking to brand all nonbelievers as immoral devil-worshipping heathens. How easily the FFRF stoops to the same level. Pot, meet Kettle.

---

After some discussion in the comments, I must qualify my position on Gleeson's piece. I do think that atheists can be hard-hearted people; anyone can be. I do not agree, though, that atheism itself can "enslave" a mind. Atheism is nothing more than not believing in a god, and there are no dogmas or creeds one must subscribe to, no requirement that one throw evidence to the winds in determining how you learn about the world. A person, however, can be atheist for irrational reasons, such as simple rebellion towards or hatred of religion and religious people. Most atheists I know and have had the pleasure of working with base their atheism on a rational critique of religion's claims, but there are foolish people in any group. And if your atheism is rooted in unreason rather than reason, then yes, you can be a hard-hearted person whose mind is enslaved to anger and emotionalism, instead of being liberated by reason.

If you're looking for TalkOrigins.org...

...it seems to be down, though there is a mirror site at toarchive.org. The Talk Origins Archive has frequently (and not surprisingly) been the target of creationist malice over the years. It's faced numerous DDOS attacks; someone hacked it and placed some code on it forwarding visitors to a pornographic site, which got TO delisted from Google for a while; you name it. No idea what's going on this time, though, but at least the site is still online in its complete form, just at a different URL. Adjust your bookmarks accordingly.

Interview in "MediaShift"

I was recently interviewed by a group that is loosely affiliated with PBS. The resulting online article is called Public-Access TV Fights for Relevance in the YouTube Age. A couple of other Access personalities and I discussed the difference between live TV and a pure internet show. There are a couple of quotes in there from me, although I deny any blame for Matt being characterized as "my co-host."

Fairly interesting article, although obviously my own thoughts were not news to me. :)

Oh, I just had to send off for one of these!

"Is America Going Under?" asks the hand-wringing wackaloons over at the Christian Worldview Network. Well, yes, guys, it has been. But remember who's been in charge the past eight years: an extremist, Christian fundamentalist gang of right-wing thugs who view the Constitution as a list of bothersome technicalities to be skirted around, who honestly think their military misadventures in Iraq (which have all but broken our military) are part of a battle between Biblical notions of Good and Evil, and who have been supported by a mob of like-minded religious ideologues who look upon the prospect of total holocaust in the mideast as ultimately desirable, as it will prompt the Second Coming and the Last Days all the much sooner. If people who view the end of the world as if it were a party they can't wait to get to seem scary as shit, that's because they are.

I suspect, however, that the Christian Worldview goons see the decline of America in a slightly different light. And they've compiled all their paranoid lunacy into a "new, free, full-color magazine" that apparently explains "how America's rejection of a Biblical worldview is leading to our demise and how every Christian must respond."

This just looked like such a heaping, juicy helping of red meat that my mouth began watering right away. Hey, it was free. So I sent off for one. Look forward to seeing it, ahem, dissected here very soon.

Here is some of the entertainment promised within.

• Reinventing A Stormy History: 25 Worldview Similarities Between America Today and Nazi Germany and How Christians Must Respond (Wow, Godwinning right out of the gate!)
• Five Consequences Facing America For Rejecting God As Found in Romans, Chapter One
• America's Unknown Revolution That Robbed You of Your Liberties and What Must Happen to Get Them Back (Which liberties, you wonder? Me too. We'll see.)
• Obama, Liberals and Political Correctness Which is Really Cultural Marxism (Do these clowns even know what Marxism is? I suspect they're just throwing it out because their ill-educated sheep will react with, "Hey, wasn't Marx that commie guy?" and then go "Ooo! Bad thing!")
• How Politicians Pervert the Law and Liberty is the Casualty (Which politicians? Do you think they mean Republicans? No? Gee, what makes you think that?)
• How Humanism is Leading to Judicial Tyranny (Translation: "Waaaah! We can't get our way all the time! Waaaaah! Want my bwanky!")

Celibate men in dresses say dumb things about sex

Ah well, the Roman Catholic Church is always good for a laugh. This week they've come out swinging against the pill. It's deliriously silly.

The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report.

"We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further.

For real, you can't make this stuff up!

Remember, the official position of the Church is basically that they don't want you to have sex at all, unless you're married Catholics trying to make little Catholics, or...well...we know what the other criterion is.

Celebrate the new year by beating up on some religious wankers!

What better way to get 2009 off to a positive start?

Wanker A: Kent Hovind.

The 11th Circuit Court of appeals has upheld Hovind's conviction. Too bad, so sad. One thing I've always been amused by is the way that, nearly two years later, this post has become AE's zombie thread, with the occasional Hovindite still popping up like a gopher after finding the thing via Google, and posting some petulant comment about how we're mean and evil and a bunch of heartless bullies and they hope we find the grace of Jebus in our hearts and all that. And oh yeah, Kent's innocent and the tax laws are unfair/illegal/evil/whatever, too. There is no breaking the delusions of fundies, and there's no overestimating just how profoundly disconnected from reality they are. After all, Kent still indulges in his laugh-a-minute "dialogues with God," which you just have to read. (HT: PZ)

Wanker B: Ben Stein.

What fun! You can vote for Ben Stein to receive the Malkin Award, handed out by Andrew Sullivan over at the Daily Dish. The Malkin Award is, in his words, "for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric. Ann Coulter is ineligible - to give others a chance." Hat tip on this one to Jim Emerson, editor of RogerEbert.com, where the venerable movie critic already beat Stein bloody a few weeks ago. Emerson has his own flogging to deliver unto Stein at his own Chicago Sun Times blog, too.

Addendum — Wanker C: Casey Luskin

The Discovery Institute's official punching bag gets his ass handed to him by Ken Miller, for getting everything wrong about Miller's testimony in Dover...let alone the pathetic foolishness of still trying to win a case his side lost decisively three years ago. ID is deader than dead, Casey. Deal.

Time marches on...

And I hope everyone has a much more prosperous 2009 than they've had over the past eight years.