Cage match: Christian's first glancing blow to The Atheist Missionary - why don't you lead a morally upstanding life?

Makarios posed a question to me in an earlier post and I thought my answer was worthy of a post of its own:

Makarios asks: why don't you lead a morally upstanding life? That's a bit of a leading question, don't you think? Kind of like asking me when I stopped beating my wife? If by "morally upstanding" you mean "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (a philosophy which existed for thousands of years before the supposed birth of Jesus), I think I get a pretty good passing grade. I give a significant percentage of my disposable income to charity but I certainly could give more. I love my own family and friends more than strangers but I think that's natural. I suspect that the motivation for your attack on my moral standing is my disdain for religion and I make no apologies for that.

I enjoyed reading your blog post entitled Atheist Misionary Tract: http://makarios-makarios.blogspot.com/2009/05/atheist-missionary-tract.html which I commend to my readers. It's too good to be true.

You state in your blog post that there is: overwhelming evidence of Jesus’ death on the cross, His burial and His resurrection and appearance to others. Please outline this overwhelming evidence for me and let me know if you have read David Hume's chapter Of Miracles from his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. If not, you can find it by searching David Hume on this blog. If you conduct objective research, I think you will find that "overwhelming evidence" actually means "hardly a whiff".

You also state in your blog post: The author says that because a flood could never cover Mt. Everest therefore no flood ever happened. It’s never occurred to the author that Mt. Everest wasn’t always Mt. Everest. We can know that at one time, based on fossil evidence that parts of Mt. Everest were once part of the sea floor. Something, something cataclysmic caused tremendous shifting of the earth’s plates and what we now know as Mt. Everest was formed. Actually, that’s pretty scientific. Another comment was that the Bible says that Adam was created from a handful of dust. Ya, well, if it comes down to non life turning into life via the command of a Creator or non turning into life accidentally (atheists actually claim that inanimate and inorganic gases evolved - Pfft), I’ll take the Creator version every time.

It's comments like these that really offnd my sense of reason. Do you even bother to study science? Your blog post reminds me of English philosopher Stephen Law explaining that he can use the same reasoning which supports religious faith to show that dogs are really spies from Venus:

Are dogs Venusian spies?: dealing with evidence against your theory

Suppose that, for some strange reason, I come to believe that dogs are spies from the planet Venus. Amazed I could believe anything so foolish, you proceed to wheel out counter-evidence. “But dogs can’t even speak!” you point out. My reply: “They can speak, but simply choose to hide this ability from us.” “But they have no method of communicating with Venus”, you add. I reply: “Ah, they communicate by means of secret radio transmitters.” “But we have searched everywhere, and can find no evidence of such transmitters.” I reply: “The transmitters are embedded in the brains.” “But we have X-rayed their heads, and can find no transmitters!” I reply: “The transmitters are made of an organic material indistinguishable from brain stuff.” “But we can detect no signals coming from dogs’ heads.” “The signals are sent via a medium that we are, as yet, unable to detect.” “But Venus is a lifeless, uninhabitable planet.” “The Venusians live in deep underground bunkers where they are protected from the harsh atmosphere.” And so on. You can see that, with a little ingenuity, I might continue to play this game forever. Yes, there is a mountain of evidence that dogs are not Venusian spies. And yet, for any piece of evidence you might care to wheel out, it is always possible for me to concoct some explanation for that evidence – an explanation on which my theory that dogs are Venusian spies is consistent with that evidence.

Yet, clearly, despite the fact that I can continue to make my theory fit the evidence in this way, my theory is patently ridiculous. Certainly, what I am practising is not good science.

The moral is that, whatever good scientific practice is, it requires rather more than that we simply busy ourselves constructing theories that are consistent with the available evidence.

Any theory, no matter how ludicrous, can be made consistent with the available evidence, given enough ingenuity.

Yet the approach of “creationist scientists” is, to a very large extent, similar. Orthodox scientists who attempt quickly to dismiss creationism by wheeling out evidence that seems straightforwardly to falsify it often find themselves tied up in knots by opponents, who, armed with an array of moves developed by the Institute for Creation Research, etc., are able to show how creationism really does fit the evidence after all.

There’s a further moral we can draw. We can now see that, in order for evidence strongly to confirm a theory, more is required than that the theory be consistent with the evidence. Creationist understanding of good science seems often to involve a muddling of this distinction between evidence being consistent with a theory and evidence supporting a theory.

Makarios, have you read Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True? If not, please do. As far as insisting that life requires the intervention of a master intentional designer, think about this: there is no mystery whatsover about the compounds which are found within the human body. They can all be found existing independently of the human body elsewhere in our world and (we are assured) elsewhere in the universe. They are all elements found in the Periodic Table. You feel that it is just too unlikely for life to have originated by chance and therefore you feel that there must be an intelligent designer. I understand this view even though I don't agree with it - how it translates into literal belief of the Bible is beyond me. But that still leaves you with the problem of who or what created your designer. Your response is to say that your creator has no beginning because he/she/it always existed. If you can believe that, I don't know why you can't also believe that time (at least as we know it) may not have a beginning or end either. Think of it this way: if our earth was obliterated tomorrow as a result of an asteroid collision (a concept that I should add Hume points out is just as plausible as the sun rising tomorrow morning), would the concept of a circle still exist? I believe that the concept of a circle always existed well before humans evolved to the point where they could recognize the concept and always will - it is eternal. I don't need to introduce God into the equation to appreciate this concept and I am interested to know why you do.

Makarios, my friend, you are deluded but, to be fair, you are not alone. There are millions who share your delusions which gives it mainstream respectability. A delusion, by the way, is defined as: "a belief that is firmly held on inadequate grounds and is not affected by rational argument or evidence to the contrary" (that very succinct and helpful definition is provided by Lewis Wolpert in Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast).

If I told you that I was Napoleon and you were unable to persuade me to the contrary, you would agree that I was deluded. If you tell me that you actually believe in any of the following I would reach the same conclusion about you:

1. the power of prayer;

2. that Jesus (if he actually existed) died, started to rot and came back to life well over a day after he died;

3. that there is an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent being that intervenes in the affairs of men; and

4. that Hitler could confess his sins on his deathbed and go to "heaven" while a bush pygmy who never heard of Jesus is going to be damned to "hell" for eternity.

I could list examples all day. Just name the religion and I'll give you a dozen beliefs that are as delusional as me being Napoleon in the flesh.

Finally, Makarios, I will pose my favorite question for people like you: how do you know that your brand of religion (which I presume to be some non-Catholic flavour of Christianity) is right and all the others are wrong? No doubt you are aware that there are approximately 38,000 Christian sects and tens of thousands of religions that reject almost every tenet of Christianity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religions_and_spiritual_traditions If your religion is the right one, I would like to know because it is a real tough choice to get this right if I am to abandon my atheist mission.