Five Bad Reasons to Believe in God

by Mike Hall
When: Thu, Aug 19, 2010 8.00 – 11.00 PM
Where: The Vines (aka the Big House), 81 Lime Street, Liverpool

Summary

Apologetics is the systematic defence of a position. Religious apologetics specifically is a field of theology which seeks to present a rational basis for religious faith, defend the faith against objections and support the claim “God exists”. But are the arguments made by apologetics sound?

Mike Hall takes a look at five common apologetics, deconstructing the arguments presented and exposing any flaws.

Biography

Mike Hall is the president of the Merseyside Skeptics Society and presenter of the Skeptics with a K podcast. His particular interests are the existence of God, alternative medicine and Doctor Who. He owns at least two cyberman heads.

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With the coming of a very low-key, very gentle pro-atheism awareness campaign on facebook in ‘A’ week (http://www.aweekonfacebook.com/, Facebook event, #aweek Twittertag ), I’ve been reminded of the hesitation that many atheists feel towards the promotion of atheism in any way. Talking about any type of promotion or advocacy in favour of atheism as annoying because “this is the sort of thing that X-, Y- or Z-ians/-ists/ers do” may not be exactly how the majority of atheists feel, but I’d say, and only from my own feeling (not very skeptical, but still), that a large majority of atheists either couldn’t care less in trying to spread ideas and grow our mostly merry, but sometimes quite grumpy band of disbelievers, or are very uncomfortable with the thought of trying to actively or passively win people over to the idea that, maybe, they should give up the idea of an invisible Daddy In The Sky who grants wishes a little less frequently than you see the evil evidence of His Divine, or more humanly – if not humanely – divined, Will

But when you see the damage that religion does, and the toxic effect that a supreme, unquestionable authority and unquestioned afterlife can bring – from the banality and stupidity of the penny candle, crap wine and drain-filtering devices (pieces of The Christ’s Holy, suspiciously bread-like, Flesh must be saved from the insult of the sewers) of Catholicism (though after 2000 years on a bread and wine diet, I’m certain Jesus could make excellent use of modern facilities) to the horrendous tradition of wife-burning in Hindu ‘Sati’, thankfully both illegal and much reduced in modern India, or the unholy union of extreme Christianity in demonising a contraceptive layer of latex that could do so much to help the AIDS crisis – doesn’t this, shouldn’t this drive anyone with a rational bent and compassion for humanity towards doing what we can to reduce the influence of The Beast, even to simply kick the giant’s toe?

I can understand that being an atheist-in-practise and technical agnostic in a theist or desperately-wanting-to-believe world soaked in a steady stream of pap-filled, infuriating pamphlets, preaching and priests can be a frustrating existence, but to turn around from this and in that frustration deny to rationalism in general, or your rationalism in particular, the weapons of the battleground of ideas, the modern tools of marketing and persuasion, and give all the ground to fight for over to theists is to stop kicking the giant’s toe and take a gun to your own.

The argument that people should be left alone to find their own path, free to decide without coercion is, firstly, to deny that massive pro-theist coercion is out there, all day every day, not to fight against that tide is to resign the game. Secondly, it strikes of a high-handedness that’s quite prevalent in Buddhism, in my opinion, but without the necessary element in Buddhism of what is called ‘skilful means’, the art of manipulation over the long-term…

It’s with this in mind that I offer you, gentle reader, this parody of a pretty famous anecdote in the world of Zen:

A: Tell me, B, of this Atheism, this acceptance of the overwhelming probability that there is no supreme creator, no divinely-ordained purpose to the existence of every particle and person, no will to bend our souls to…

B: I know not of this Atheism. I cannot breathe of what I accept as truth, for this will inevitably influence your biases towards what would be your own internal outcomes… Yay, I decry the Dawkins and the Sagans of this world for their petty, insolent meddling in the minds of others. There should be those things left to monks and priests and dress-wearing men of every shade or stripe, every colour and complexion. We, WE have a very, VERY high horse upon which we sit and cannot be seen to enter into the arena of ideas with those of such trivial notions of idealistic fancy. Truly, it is a shame we cannot live without air and alimentation, for the foul believers indulge in these earthly, despoiling pursuits also.

A: But B! I’ve seen you chuckle at the Holy Men! I’ve seen you! You mock them! You do not go to the temples as other men, you prefer to sit with Dostoevsky, or a little light Kafka splayed upon your lap! Tell me! Show me the way that you take!

B: I cannot behave as the priests do. They take your hunger and feed you themselves… I leave you to feast upon yourself. Let your chips fall where they may.

A: Please! I beseech you! In the name of Pedagogy!

B: No.

A: An idea! A sign! A Symbol! Anything!!!

B: Have you finished your porridge?

A: I have. I HAVE!

B: Then wash your bowl.

–

Easter is based on a beautiful, empirical, scientific scheme – The first Sunday after the full moon (The Paschal Moon) following the Vernal Equinox – and is a picture of the lack of divine influence in the universe. Why not take this event, this year as the chance to express to the people who know you, the people who may be vulnerable at the moment, to say to the people who may be tempted (link NSFW: Swearing) to celebrate the death and resurrection of a Jewish Carpenter by telling children that a giant bunny left chocolate eggs in the night, to tell the people who will be influenced to even a tiny degree by your choices that you choose reason, you choose a life without a manic-depressive divinity pouring over every detail of you life – especially your sex life and pig-eating habits – and that you openly, unashamedly, staunchly reject giant bunny rabbits with the lock-picking skills of a cat burglar bringing chocolate eggs to the bedrooms of our children in the night.

Don’t get me started on Santa.

Come on!

Go get the A.

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Anyway, in tribute to the book and Ariane’s upcoming talk (which will be fab, so please come along!), I thought I’d stick my oar in and have a bit of a blog about atheism myself. As far back as I can remember, I’ve never believed in a God. Lately, I’ve heard and read a lot of stories by people of their conversions to athiesm, or from atheism to theism, or of their struggle to ‘come out’ as an atheist, particularly in religious households; but I have no such story to tell. No-one in my family is religious or cares much either way about whether a God exists or not, and the friends I grew up with seem to have been in the same boat, so far as I know. It’s simply never been an issue for me, to the extent that I’ve never even really thought of myself as an atheist. It would be like giving myself a label based around the fact I have arms, or have never owned a chicken.

Yet, the more people I meet in the Skeptical community, the more I realise that I may have been lucky. Maybe the town in which I grew up is simply a godless island in a sea of Church of England style passive-aggressiveness. Maybe stories of atheistic struggle are playing out all over the country and I just never noticed.

That said, the Skeptical community is only small, comparitively speaking (though growing considerably all the time), and is probably not a fair representation of atheistic and religous tribulations nationwide. Still, I do wonder.

Back in my primary school days (cue the sound of sweeping harps amid a slow dissolve back to the eighties) I remember one Christmas when Santa Claus himself arrived at out school to deliver presents to all the children. I can’t remember how old I was, though I was still young enough to have some residual belief in Father Christmas, albeit tempered by suspicion and doubt. I believed Father Christmas might exist, but that all those people who looked like him in shopping centre grottos were just his servants, and the nubile girls in skimpy costumes clearly weren’t elves either, but just there to grab the dads’ attention. See how sophisticated my beliefs were? Ahead of my years, I was!

But… this particular Father Christmas? Well, according to our teachers he was the real deal. He lived at the North Pole (or Lapland, or wherever the hell it was. It was cold anyway), was married to Mrs Christmas, owned reindeer and had a fondness for mince pies and brandy (such a terrible role model, drinking and driving over the festive period like the office knobhead after a Christmas party; no wonder he legs it to the North Pole afterwards, he’s dodging the police. Do we have an extradition treaty with the North Pole? Maybe we could get the penguins to arrest him? Do penguins even live at the North Pole? Have I ever read a book? When will this pointless tangent end?).

Where was I? Oh yes, the real Father Christmas. The REAL Father Christmas had come to our school. Apparently, he was on a special visit just to our class before he had to go and get ready for his Christmas seasonal work of breaking into people’s houses and leaving stuff on the living room floor. I, like all my fellow credulous pupils, believed every word the teachers told us about this magnificent man in his stupid red dressing-gown. I bought it hook-line-and-sinker, like the good, ignorant child I was.

Then I saw the elastic on his beard.

It wasn’t even that well hidden, looking back. There it was, a clearly visible white line of elastic, stretching from his ridiculously white cotton wool beard, up and over his cheek, and disappearing under his frankly disappointing attempt at a Christmas hat. I glanced at my classmates. They were in a world of their own, dazzled by the great bearded one’s handing out of brightly coloured presents. I stepped over for a closer look. It was clearly, undeniably elastic. The beard was fake. ‘He’ was a fake.

He wasn’t the real Father Christmas!

At that moment, I had one of those small but incredibly important epiphanies that litter childhood, like a small bulb (probably an LED) going on inside my head. The teachers had lied to us! Obviously, I knew Father Christmas couldn’t be everywhere at once, and often sent out servants in his place; but the teachers had informed us plainly that this man in front of us right here was definitely, definitely, definitely the real Father Crimbo. I was crushed under the terrifying weight (about two ounces) of the knowledge that those in a position of authority over us had abused our trust. This man – this badly clothed man saying “Ho-ho-ho!” over and over again like some kind of deranged alien pirate – was an imposter!

Feeling like a moral crusader (if I’d known the song back then, Saturday Night Fever would have been playing inside my head, just like it is now for absolutely no reason at all), I pulled aside a couple of my classmates and told them the shocking truth about the filthy, lying ‘beard’. I was expecting outrage at this affront to our persons, solidarity for my moral cause. Nothing but the real Father Christmas will do for us! You can’t pull the wool over our eyes! We’ve been conned! It was clear that the great man himself had been too busy to come to our school, and the head had roped in somebody else at the last minute to pretend to be him, probably a supply teacher. He wasn’t even fat and jolly!

Unfortunately, there was one problem. The other kids didn’t believe me. Or rather, they refused to believe me. They looked at me like I was mad. I pointed to the elastic, but their eyes just glazed over, then they called me silly and went back to playing with their new toys. They simply didn’t want to know! It wasn’t even like I was saying that Father Christmas didn’t exist, just that this wasn’t him. The evidence was right there in front of us for us all to see, in all its elasticy fakeness! However, for them the evidence didn’t wash, and from that point on for the rest of the day I was cast out to the fringes of our little mini Santa-church, a metaphorical atheist at the last supper (“Ignore him Jesus, he doesn’t believe in you - can I have some more wine?”). Maybe I should have attacked Faker Christmas, pulled his beard off and waved it above my head, howling in primal victory. Sadly, that is not my style. Or so people tell me.

At this blanket refusal of my discovery, even more lightbulbs (or LEDs) came on in my mind. I realised that not everyone around me was happy to accept the facts of the world around them, like I was. In fact, they were quite happy to just blatantly ignore them and believe whatever the hell they liked. To top it off, they seemed to be having a much better time of it than I was. Bastards. Ignorance really is bliss.

Looking back, I can see the similarities between the thinking of my fellow pupils and people who believe wholeheartedly in God. I don’t know whether my classmates believed in God or not, but this kind of thinking is everywhere. Truth be told, an awful lot of people simply don’t care what the facts are, they are going to believe what they want to regardless. This is fine for them, for the most part, but it’s not so fine for those of us who don’t think that way, who interact with the world more self-consciously. We’re not killjoys, it just takes a bit more to get us to believe something (hell, if the guy who visited our class had actually had his own beard, I might have been convinced). Both kinds of thinking can usually exist alongside each other quite happily. I personally don’t care who believes in God, as long as we all respect and get on with each other. The problem is those occasions when the two kinds of thinking do clash. On the small scale, it may be an annoying, whiny child called Colin complaining about a false beard. On the large scale, however, it could be the stress of somebody telling their parents they’re an atheist, and being treated differently because of it. Those parents might not be particularly religious (those kids in my class weren’t that bothered about the reality – or lack thereof - of Father Christmas either, until the situation was there on a plate in front of them), but when their child suddenly seems to have a view fundamentally at odds with their own, then quite unexpectedly their reason runs and hides, and they can often have genuine difficulty accepting what, to my mind at least, should not be a big deal at all. Being an atheist is a perfectly reasonable and logical position to come to, and it does worry me that it can cause so much consternation to some people. It is this strange strain of magical, wishful thinking that causes it. If something upsets the status quo, cognitive dissonance sets in and the person confronted refuses to see the metaphorical elastic on the metaphorical beard. Suddenly we seem to be on a different gameboard, and the rules don’t make that much sense anymore.

Where does this thinking come from? Part of me thinks that it’s a necessary function of the human brain, one that simply helps us all get along with life and with each other. Certainly, it seemed to benefit my classmates a lot more than it did me. Maybe my brain’s just wired wrong. Most of the time, this thinking is harmless. It could be that I am just a killjoy after all, incapable of shrugging my Skeptical shoulders and diving into the deep end of the pool with all the other humans. Maybe I think about things too much and have crossed the line from Skepticism to Cynicism, as has been suggested to me a couple of times.

Personally, I don’t see myself as cynical at all. I would love to live and let live. Let us all believe what we want and leave it at that. However, I still hear stories of people struggling to have their atheism accepted, of having their rationalism questioned because it’s led them to a conclusion at odds with what other people ‘want’ them to believe. Having a problem with this isn’t cynical. It astounds me that this happens in the twenty-first century. I don’t know whether it’s a sign of a rise in Skepticism, or in magical thinking, or both. Maybe the two feed off each other in a strange way. Maybe I’m just noticing these things more now because I’ve drifted into the Skeptical world. I really don’t know. I really don’t.

But can’t you see it?

It’s right there.

There!

The beard! It’s fake – can’t you see the elastic?

…

Oh, forget it, just pass me a mince pie.

Flyer for the Revival Fellowship. Click for big.

Last weekend I was handed a flyer on the street for something called the Revival Fellowship. Well, that’s not strictly true – it was actually a friend of my girlfriend’s who was given the flyer, with the specific reason that she knew it would annoy the hell out of me, and she was right. Because the Revival Fellowship is a ‘prayer heals’ kind of organisation, going so far as to make some extraordinarily outrageous claims. The flyer – which is a pretty well-made affair, I might add (you can view it right there on the right) – claims to be ‘Totally Different from anything you’ve heard before’. Bold claims. Turn the flyer over, and you’ll see the happy faces of various healees (it’s not a word, I know, but I like it). Beside the face of the first healee, the flyer proclaims:

“After prayer, Russell was healed from a severe food allergy and Autism. He now leads a completely normal life”

This struck my girlfriend as odd, and it definitely strikes me as odd. First of all, I like how the statement goes with the big claims first – namely that he was healed from a severe food allergy? Wow, that’s an amazing claim! Oh yeah, and he was healed from the hitherto-untreatable autism too, but that’s by the by… And that’s not the only extraordinary claim. Next up, we have the story of Granville:

“In 1984, Granville suffered another brain haemorrage and died 3 times. After prayer, he came alive. He still lives today”

Now here’s a bizarre claim. So Granville died three times, and then prayer brought him back to life? The question we need to ask ourselves, as skeptics and adherents to logic and reason, is what brought him back to life after the first and the second times he died? And specifically how dead was he that he could be brought back those two occasions without reverting to magic prayer?! Also, it’s interesting to note, there’s nothing to say that prayer itself brought him back to life – just that he came back to life after someone prayed. I got in my car after I had breakfast – my breakfast did not transport me to my car. Correlation causation, people. There’s also claims regarding a child who was ‘incompatible with life’ (with no scientific or medical definitions as to what that means or how it was solves) and healing from a broken heart, as well as the following health claim:

“A severe car accident had Don in agony for four years. He was instantly healed of a broken vertebrae upon baptism in water”

This is an amazing claim, genuinely! Fortunately they took X-Rays immediately before and after the baptism, showing the miraculous recovery. I mean, I presume they took X-Rays, or else how would they know it was the magic baptism water that was responsible? I thought I better check their website, in case there were some clues as to medical proof there… but disappointingly (if not surprisingly), there was nothing. It’s almost as if the claims were unsubstantiated… What the site did offer us is the following:

“When you read the following accounts, we want you to ask yourself if Jesus Christ is dead, how did these things happen? And, if He is alive, where does that leave you? What He did for these people yesterday, He can do for you today. The Bible offers you evidence. It’s an experience, not a theory.”

Taking these assertions in order, how did these things happen if Jesus Christ is dead? Erm, they most likely didn’t? Russell most likely wasn’t healed from Autism – he might have had a diagnosis that was low on the spectrum scale which then was redefined off the scale as he grew older. That’s one way, for example. Whatever brought Granville back from the dead the first couple of times – modern medicine, say – went on to manage it for a fourth time. Just an idea. The vertebrae that Dan was left with might not have been broken, or might not have been fixed – back pain is a notoriously tricky area to diagnose pain, and most susceptible to placebos and quack remedies. For example. None of these require Jesus to be involved, or for him to be real for that matter. I’m not saying absolutely that this is the story behind each of these miraculous claims – but these are possible solutions, that need to be addressed before the claims are used to convert.

The UK and Ireland are not the only places where the Revival Fellowship operates – indeed the organisation is part of a global network of local level sites, operating in many countries including Australia, Hungary, India and South Africa. I checked websites from those countries for similar claims, and again found anecdotes regarding all manner of healing miracles, with no manner of evidence. For example, the South African site had a story about a pregnant woman who contracted German Measles, and was told there was a chance her baby would be born deformed:

In 1995 I fell pregnant with my daughter Tracy, but in the 1st trimester I contracted German measles. The doctors told me that the effects on my unborn baby could be catastrophic – she could be born blind or deformed or badly retarded. I was strongly advised to terminate the pregnancy. I decided to trust God’s promises, and I knew that He could heal any problem that Tracy might have. When she was born, she was a perfect little girl. God had protected her completely.

What’s interesting here is that there wasn’t even a disease or affliction being healed – there was a chance the unborn child could have been adversely effected, admittedly severely, by the condition of the mother. A chance. Which means there was a chance that the child WOULDN’T be. I’m not saying for a moment that it isn’t a wonderful thing that Rowena’s baby was born without affliction – it is, it’s a truly beautiful thing. But even if the chances of deformation were as high as 99.9% (which they weren’t), that would still mean that 1 in 1000 babies born in similar circumstances would be unafflicted. If 1000 pregnant women with measles decided to turn to prayer over medical advice, statistically, on average, 999 of those mother’s prayers would not be answered.

There’s also an overall global site, and it’s here that the real impressive claims are kept. Headings under their ‘Healing’ section include Blindness, Coeliac Disease, Glaucoma, Leukaemia, Spine Degeneration, HIV AIDS and Death. Prayer heals AIDS? So we’re lead to believe – yet their evidence is, of course, a personal anecdote which runs along the lines of ‘Rebecca was diagnosed with AIDS, joined the fellowship, was baptised, spoke in tongues, and a year later blood tests showed she didn’t have AIDS’.

Now, if we take that as true, surely the whole thing could be easily explained as a false positive in the first test. There’s no mention of a second test which also proved positive, which is standard practice in the Western world when it comes to positive results in HIV test – but of course in Papua New Guinea I don’t think it’s a stretch to say repeating AIDS tests is not a priority, the priority instead would be to treat so as to minimise spread and infection. Notably there are no tales of prayer curing AIDS in the developed Western world, where there are the time and resources to re-test, and there are no medical proofs offered of any of these cases.

So, what’s the harm here? I think it’s clear – if you teach people that magical thinking will cure their serious and deadly diseases, they will turn their back on real medicine. Miraculous recoveries will happen – they’re statistically unlikely, but crucially it only takes one anomaly to make a great testimonial. For every miraculous recovery from a seemingly deadly disease, how many followers will die from an untreated illness? How many people will waste their last days in this life believing in magic water and speaking in tongues, when they could be getting real treatment? I don’t think for one moment that the Revival Fellowship is twisting the cases it presents in order to convert people – I’m sure they strongly believe the healing stories they tell and the anecdotes they put forward. But when it comes to illnesses, and the death of real people, it’s vital we look beyond anecdotes, and explore every Earthly possibility before we allow for a more mystical conclusion, lest real people will get hurt.

Rev. Rick Nelson, Central’s senior pastor, says of the freak tornado:

“We give thanks to God that no one was injured by today’s tornado” – Source: www.centralmpls.org

So far, so normal. But not everyone was as willing to take it as a random act of weather as we reasonably sorts might. In fact, soon after the reports went out, the hardline Christian blogs were alight with tales of fearful vengeance from the magic sky man. Especially given the unfortunate fact that, at the same time as the tornado landed, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America debate was taking place over the road, in order to decide whether to allow practicing homosexuals to be ordained clergy. So, of course, the more hardline and nuttier elements of the church – and the wider Christian community in America – have taken this freak weather event as some kind of warning from God, a kind of ‘Repent lest ye be blown!’

One great such post I found was from John Piper of the DesiringGod.org blog – a particularly creepy and smug character who I urge you to check out, if you can stand it. He wrote of the whole affair:

Let me venture an interpretation of this Providence with some biblical warrant:

The unrepentant practice of homosexual behavior (like other sins) will exclude a person from the kingdom of God.

“The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)” – Source:  www.desiringgod.org

This, I think, is a great argument from John, because it’s so clearly self-defeating – if homosexuality is a sin on par with adultery, greed, thievery or drunkenness, then surely we should be having a hell of a lot more tornadoes! Strange then that God only seems to take weathery vengeance on the gay community.  Also, and it might be childish of me to point out, but I fail to see how anyone who has a website called ‘Desiring God’ can criticise anyone for being gay…

I did, however, find a nice reasonably rebuttal from ChristianityToday.com, where Julia Duin wrote:

“If God was speaking in downtown Minneapolis through the twister, no one was listening… if God had wanted to get through to the assembly, why didn’t he send the tornado a day earlier so word would have gotten through to everyone?” - Source: blog.christianitytoday.com

And she has a point – exploring the story more, I found that many of the voting committee were only informed of the damage to the church a long time after they’d voted. And as it turns out, the vote ended with a two thirds majority in favour of allowing homosexual clergy. So they failed to take heed of God’s warning – surely we should expect some even greater catastrophe to befall them? Surely God’s not going to take it lying down?

Seeking a slightly more independent source, I found reports of the incident on Associated Press:

“Residents began cleaning up Thursday after tornadoes and severe storms slammed a large part of the Midwest, tearing the roofs from buildings and overturning vehicles” - Source: Associated Press

So unless the Central Lutheran Church can be considered to be ‘a large part of the Midwest’, it seems like the Lutheran’s who think God’s holy rage is upon them are just being a little self-centred. Didn’t I read somewhere that vanity is a sin…?

The christian fundamentalist board wish to amend history lessons to stress the role God played in the initial formation of America. One of the board members is David Barton, founder of the Christian heritage group WallBuilders whose mission statement is:

“…to exert a direct and positive influence in government, education, and the family by (1) educating the nation concerning the Godly foundation of our country; (2) providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values; and (3) encouraging Christians to be involved in the civic arena” – Source: Wallbuilders

I guess David’s been too busy reading his Bible to bother reading, say, the US Constitution. It’s a shame, because he wouldn’t even have to read very far into it – in fact the first amendment in the Bill of Rights is:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” – Source: US Constitution, quoted here from Wikipedia

This is what’s often referred to as the ‘Separation of Church and State’ clause – prohibiting the establishment of a national religion by the Congress or the preference of one religion over another, non-religion over religion, or religion over non-religion.

If David’s too busy to read through the constitution of his own country before making bold statements regarding the founding principles of the nation, maybe he has time to look over a few other historical facts. For example, when we think of religion in America, we might well think of the ‘One nation under God’ line in the Pledge of Allegiance – the patriotic mantra recited by millions of American school children every morning. A line which was only officially adopted in 1954.

Or perhaps the board should look into the history of the phrase ‘In God We Trust’ – the official motto of the United States. Since 1956. America, by the way, was around before 1956.

Or perhaps the board might want to look at the founding fathers, and their religious beliefs.

• Benjamin Franklin was a deist – believing that religious truth in general could be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without a need for either faith or organized religion
• George Washington believed in religious freedom, and to this day historians and biographers continue to debate the degree to which he can be counted as a Christian, and the degree to which he was a deist.
• Thomas Jefferson openly opposed organised religious institutions, and even published his own version of the Bible – removing sections of the New Testament containing supernatural aspects

Hardly the basis of the fundamentally-Christian ideology the Texan board would have us believe lies at the historical foundations of America.

Also on the board is Reverend Peter Marshall – a charming preacher from New Orleans. For a quick flavour of the teachings of this mild-mannered Christian preacher, I’d recommend a look at his website:

First comes the news that more than 10,000 homosexuals were expected in New Orleans over Labor Day weekend for the 34th annual Southern Decadence party. It was supposed to start two days after Katrina arrived… Was [this] finally enough for the Lord. Did He allow Katrina as a judgment on the wickedness and decadence of New Orleans? Well, what do you think? To borrow the saying from Fox News, “we report, you decide.” – Source: Petermarshallministries.com

I’m sure you agree, he’s exactly the type of level-headed individual who should be determining what Texan children learn about the world. The good Reverend also claims there are too few references to American faith in the current curriculum, and told the Wall Street Journal:

“We’re in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it” – Source: Wall Street Journal

The most disturbing aspect of this whole affair, for me, is the troublingly Orwellian echoes – I can’t help but be reminded of Winston Smith, diligently re-writing history for the Ministry of Truth.

“Those who control the past control the future. Those who control the present control the past” – Source: George Orwell, 1984

I suppose the question Texas needs to ask itself, as it faces this next front in the fight against religious indoctrination in schools, is this:

Are David Barton and Peter Marshall really the men they want controlling the future of their children?

Right, I’ve just finished watching Chloe’s sterling performance for AHS on the BBC’s “The Big Questions” (it’s on iPlayer) and am chewing my own arm in frustration. I am absolutely sick and tired of the sheer amount of time wasted on programmes like this dealing with basic, basic misunderstandings about atheism and weak poorly-reasoned arguments that have been bludgeoned to death about a million times in print and on television. Enough! From now on, if you ever want to discuss religion with me – or just generally – you should take these three points as read. They are done, over, talked to death, and repeating them will make you look like an idiot.

1) “Atheism is intolerant because it sees itself as a neutral position, and wants to remove religion from the public sphere”

Your problem here is just common-a-garden ignorance of basic terminology. What you’re describing there is a natty thing called secularism, which protects people of all denominations by not privileging any. Removing the ten commandments from courts, stopping faith schools getting public funding, campaigning for an end to bishops in the House of Lords – discrimination against Christians? No, it’s stripping away centuries of privilege. Really, for it to be discrimination, you’d have to be losing rights that other people have rather than losing ancient feudal powers resulting from hundreds of years of total cultural dominance. Consider it this way. In a free society you are able to choose to support any of hundreds of political parties, from the Lib Dems to the Monster Raving Loonies, even to the BNP if you really feel the need. So, say the Tories are in power and they decide that from now on they’re going to have 26 Conservatives permanently sitting in Parliament who cannot be unseated, and have all the voting rights of regular MPs. Public outcry would undoubtedly follow, but can you honestly say with a straight face that Tories would have a genuine reason to be offended by this? Do you honestly believe that removing these 26 unelected partisan figures from Parliament would constitute anti-Tory discrimination? Of course you wouldn’t. This is pretty much the situation with the bishops in the Lords and it shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone – not to atheists, not to Christians, not to people of any other faith; it shouldn’t even be acceptable to the bishops themselves, and they’d say so if they weren’t enjoying the extra power.

So to sum up:

• Atheism: no belief in a God
• Secularism: not allowing any religious belief or lack thereof to be privileged in government to protect them all. It prevents the passing of laws that restrict the freedom to worship and stop one sect being able to legislate itself into permanent power.

If secularism were the same as atheism, we’d be pushing an atheist agenda instead of one where the state has no opinion on the whole debate. When was the last time you saw a recklessly secularist government pushing for atheism as opposed to just taking away unwarranted privilege?

2) “Atheists say religious belief can make people do evil things, but so can atheism! Just look at Pol Pot/Stalin/Hitler etc”

Fucking hell. This one is buried and rotting the ground and has been for years. It seems like no matter how many times you explain this to people, they just tune it out and keep on repeating it. It’s like a goddamn virus! Let’s put it simply:

• Atheists: follow their own conscience, aren’t told what to do by a supernatural entity, personally responsible for their own actions
• Religionists: are given rules that they are not allowed to break by a supernatural entity, which allows the absconding of responsibility to someone else

Dictators like Stalin and Pol Pot did not carry out their atrocities because they were atheists. They did not do them in the name of atheism. They did what every dictator does and dismantled opposing sources of power for their own ends. In many cases the alternative source of power was organised religion, but this was not out of some atheistic imperative to wipe out the religious! Compare this to religious texts, many of which demand blood sacrifice, genocides and all sorts of discrimination. The crusades were carried out in the name of Christianity. The oppression of women and homosexuals in Iran is carried out in the name of Islam. The genital mutilation of millions of babies is carried out continuously in the name of Judaism. Millions of people across the world are HIV positive and will die of AIDS in the next decade because the Catholic Church believes that contraception is sinful.

Here are some stories that have recently been in the news, where awful crimes have been perpetrated and then justified with religious belief, or have been carried out because of religious belief. I see about three of these every day. I challenge you to find similar cases where people have committed crimes in the name of atheism, or because Richard Dawkins told them to.

• Mom of dead girl: Sickness was test of faith
• San Antonio baby found stabbed, decapitated – Police say mother, whose bail is set at $1 million, told them devil made her kill newborn
• British Humanist Association: Anti-witchcraft conference attacked by Christian church in Nigeria

3) “Your arguments are infantile because you know nothing about theology”

Sorry guys, I know you’ve spent your life studying it, but if you don’t believe in God then theology is a crock. It doesn’t matter how intricate and powerful your ‘discoveries’ might be but to paraphrase PZ Myers: “science doesn’t care”. I could posit the existence of living, breathing Haggises in the wilds of Scotland. I could write books about the quality of their tartan, their mating calls, explanations of how they are able to hide from human eyes due to excellent camouflage. I could describe with pinpoint accuracy their ability to use complex tools, their fondness for water and their average weekly diet. But you know what? If I couldn’t provide even basic evidence that they existed at all then the rest is just bullshit. If you reject a premise because it is entirely unsupported by evidence, then everything you have deduced and developed over the centuries is unsupported too. It all rests on the question of whether God exists or not; if he doesn’t then theology is bunk. This one also seems not to die, but it needs to be put down swiftly. It’s a rubbish argument.

It absolutely boggles me that these three arguments get rolled out even on TV programmes by people who are meant to be seriously intellectually committed to this debate. So next time, take these three lines of arugment as read, because atheists are sick of them. They’re lazy, and ignorant, and really really boring to counter. It just eats up time that could be spent debating more interesting issues.

Personally, I’d really test the fella, see how far he could go.  If I could sell my soul for, say, a guarantee that hell would stop being such a crappy place to spend eternity, I think that would be a decent deal.  You know, scatter a few cushions, stick in a pool table, get rid of all that fire and brimstone and gnashing of teeth, and Hades could really be a decent hang-out.  It’s essentially a bit of an eternal fixer-upper.  Plus, I can imagine I’d get some serious respect from the population of Hell for putting an end to their eternal damnation and torture, so that would really start me out on the right foot, socially-speaking.

So, with this in mind, what would you enter into a Faustian pact with the horned-one for?  What would you trade-in your immortal soul for?  And what impact might that have on your day to day life?

Leave your answers, as weird, wacky and wonderful as you like, below the fold.

To this end, we’ve been compiling a short-list of people we’d love to invite down to talk to us.  Some have spoken at “Skeptics in the Pub” events around the UK; some are just people we think it would be cool to hear speak about science.  I was researching a guest from this latter category (to whom I shall refer only as John Smith) when I was met by two surprises in quick succession.

The first surprise was reading that John Smith apparently finds Pascal’s Wager to be a compelling argument.  The second surprise was discovering that Marshall, our publicist, resident psychic-basher, and Skepchick-fan has no idea what Pascal’s Wager is.

Now, you don’t know who John Smith really is, so the impact of that initial revelation will likely be lost in translation.  I will say, however, that Smith is a boyhood hero of mine and a science populariser of some repute.  How can he find such a poor argument convincing? I don’t understand.  He is supposed to know everything!

Marshall’s revelation (notice how I don’t spare his blushes!) that he doesn’t know Pascal’s Wager, is something that perhaps shouldn’t have surprised me.  Unlike the erstwhile Mr Smith, I don’t expect Marsh to know everything and it is very easy to forget that, unlike me, Marsh didn’t come to skepticism via atheism.  Why would he know the standard arguments?

Some people go to great lengths to assert that atheism and skepticism are not the same thing.  This makes sense to me.  There are many great skeptics who also accept claims about the existence of gods and it would be a mistake to alienate those people by insisting that atheism is the only rational position.  However, a bad argument is a bad argument is a bad argument – and irrespective of whether there is a god or not, Pascal’s Wager is a bad argument.  So, especially for Marsh, but also for anyone else who isn’t aware, I’m going to take some time (after the long and rambling introduction) to look at Pascal’s Wager and explain why it doesn’t hold up.

The Argument

Blaise Pascal was an influential 17th century French mathematician and physicist whose techniques and theories are still taught today.  He invented the mathematics of probability, created Pascal’s Triangle, gave his name to the SI unit of pressure, and even has a programming language named after him.  Make no mistake, Blaise Pascal is a big, big deal.  In 1654, Pascal had a “religious experience” and all but gave up his work in mathematics and physics, instead becoming a religious apologist.  His Pensées, a collection of thoughts defending Christianity, was published posthumously, following his death in 1662.

Note 233 of the Pensées contains the argument now referred to as “Pascal’s Wager”.  The argument runs along these lines:

1. The existence of God cannot be determined by reason, since God is infinitely incomprehensible.
2. Therefore, we can only guess, or wager, if God exists.
3. If we wager that God is and win, then we gain all.  If we lose, we lose nothing.
4. If we wager that God is not and win, we gain nothing.  If we lose, we lose all.
5. Wager then, without hesitation, that He is.

Modern apologists frequently suggest that to “gain all” means to go to Heaven and to “lose all” means to go to Hell.  It’s not clear that this is what Pascal meant when he penned his wager, but it is in this context which his argument is used today.

Objection #1: Which god?

The most obvious objection is that wager sets up a false dichotomy.  The interlocutor almost always assumes that the Christian god is the only possible manifestation of god and that the available choices are, therefore, Christianity and Atheism.  This obviously excludes all the other possible gods – Vishnu, Allah, Zeus, Odin, Jupiter, etc.

Objection #2: Do infidels go to Hell?

An unstated major premise is that God uses belief to decide if a soul goes to Heaven or Hell.  If, however, God rewards good works, or perhaps intellectual honesty and truth-seeking, then the wager is no longer valid.  Maybe the vikings were right, and you have to die gloriously in battle to get into the Halls of Asgard?

Objection #3: How stupid is God?

Even if we are to assume that the Christian god is the only possible manifestation of god, and that he rewards belief and punishes non-belief, just how thick do you think God is?  Do you not think he may see through your cowardly bet-hedging and realise that you don’t believe to glorify him, you’re just selfishly trying to avoid Hell.

Indeed, it could be argued that Pascal’s Wager doesn’t represent an argument for belief, but only an argument for feigning belief.  You cannot choose to belief, you are either convinced or you are not.  Going through the motions in the hope of avoiding Hell is unlikely to curry favour with the Almighty, unless you think he is stupid enough to fall for your trick.

Objection #4: Losing nothing?

The wager suggests that, in a world with no God, living as a Christian doesn’t cost you anything.  But there is more to being a believer than declaring “I believe!” and then getting on with your life.  Aside from having spent your life believing something which isn’t true (something I’d find distressing), what about all the time you wasted in church or in prayer?  What about the money you have spent donating to the church?

What about the impact on science?  If you accept the existence of God, then “God did it” becomes a viable answer to scientific questions. Research stops and progress flounders.  What research may continue will be hampered by religiously-based objections, as we have seen with stem-cell therapy.

Then there are all the people who are hurt or killed in the name of God.  Whether that is through misguided attempts to heal life-threatening conditions through prayer, or through various forms of religious crusade.  Don’t the lives of these people count as a loss?

A world where we uncritically accept God, when no god exists, cannot be said to be a world where we “lose nothing”.

Objection #5: Is God incomprehensible?

My final objection is the unsupported assertion that the existence of a god cannot be examined by reason.  Perhaps we could argue that a deist god, who plays no active part in the universe after its creation, cannot be examined by reason.  But a Christian god?  We’re told that he is always sticking his hand in… performing miracles here and personal revelations there. Transubstantiating bread and wine.  Though never healing amputees. Where God has had an supposed effect on the natural world, that is something we can investigate.  And we do.  And will continue to do so.

To attempt to squirrel your god away by asserting that he is intrinsically uninvestigable serves only to expose your own fear than an honest investigation of the claims you make about your god will show that he isn’t there at all.