Purely anecdotal contentions

My first contention should be uncontroversial: most people (myself included) are not that smart, not that well read and have little to no sophistication when it comes to formal philosophy.

My second contention is purely anecdotal: very few of those who identify themselves as Christians believe the fundamental tenets of their faith. By fundamental tenets, I mean the following beliefs: that God is a supernatural deity who actively intervenes in the world (such as through the power of prayer), the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Christ. I don't arrive at this contention lightly. It is the product of hundreds of conversations with professed religious believers. Once you scratch the surface of their professed belief, what you usually find are the following:

1. a sincere desire to believe the things they have usually indoctrinated with since birth;

2. a host of logical fallacies such as the false dichotomy, the negative proof fallacy (i.e. because a premise cannot be proven false, the premise must be true) and the inevitable arguments from ignorance;

3. a general sense that "religion is good" for society and that nihilist anarchy would result if everyone admitted that the myths underpinning Christianity are, at best, improbable and, at worst, absurd; and

4. an honest skepticism with respect to the supernatural claims of their chosen creed.

If my anecdotal contention is correct, is there anything we can draw from this fact? Probably not. Argumentum ad populum (a proposition is claimed to be true solely because many people believe it to be true) cuts both ways. However, recognition that disbelief in religious supernatural claims is far more pervasive than current polling might otherwise indicate might help bring more atheists out of the closet.

Does the first contention have any connection to the second? Only to the extent that an increase in IQ and/or philosophical sophistication does not appear to lead to a greater degree of belief in religious supernatural claims. Again, this is admittedly an anecdotal claim but, nevertheless, one that I believe can be easily verified.

It's only a matter of time before the Mystery Card is trumped

From today's edition of the National Post:

Synthetic Cell Could Be Positive: R.C. Church

Rome - Catholic Church officials said Friday that the recently created first synthetic cell could be a positive development if correctly used, but warned scientists that only God can create life.

Vatican and Italian church officials were mostly cautious in their first reaction to the announcement from the United States that researchers had produced a living cell containing manmade DNA. They said that the manner in which the innovation is applied in the future will be crucial.

The statement "only God can create life" should really be interpreted as: "we haven't yet created life in a laboratory setting, it remains a mystery as to how that can be done and therefore our chosen deity is the answer to that mystery".

I have no doubt that Vatican spin doctors are working right now on how the Church is going to respond to the next logical step in abiogenesis: creation of self-replicating organic molecules from inanimate matter. Think it can't be done? Mark my words - if it doesn't happen within my lifetime, it will happen within the life time of my children.

We already know that the human body is entirely comprised of approximately 60 inorganic elements from the periodic table (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_makeup_of_the_human_body) and 99% of the mass of the human body is made up of just six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus. If a scientist can show us how these elements can be combined into the basic building blocks of life by way of natural processes, religion's favorite mystery card will be trumped.

Of course, the Vatican's answer will be: Hallelujah, now we know how our god did it!

Scared into Christianity?

Pictured above is The Last Judgement, a painting by Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400-1464). If you click on the picture, you should be able to see it in much higher resolution.

The reason why I am profiling the painting is due to the fact that it has been noted by Peter Hitchens (brother of celebrated atheist columnist/author Christopher Hitchens) as a significant factor in his path from atheism towards Christianity. He describes his visit to see the painting at the Musée de l'Hôtel-Dieu in Beaune, France as the point "where I started to worry".

Peter's response undoubtedly would have pleased van der Weyden, a devout Catholic. I find it interesting because I continue to be baffled by the (relatively rare) examples of intelligent people embracing Christianity in adulthood.

Taking my mission to Humble, TX

There is no better place in the world get in tune with your golf swing than a few days with a PGA teaching professional in Humble, Texas. My pro is a cross between a drill sergeant and an evangelical preacher.

I am flying down with a fellow litigator who has his Master of Divinity. We're meeting up with an old friend of mine from Catholic school - we were taught (but not reared by) Irish Christian Brothers.

Good times ....

If you could have dinner with any three people who ever lived, who would you invite and why?

If you could have dinner party with any three people who ever lived, who would you invite and why? I have given this question some considerable thought and my choices would be:

Philosopher/theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (pictured above) ... in the hope that he would levitate while defending the nature of the holy trinity.

Comedian Robin Williams (pictured below) ... because he is the fastest thinker I have ever seen in person and his rapier wit would help me keep the discussion light hearted.



Enlightenment thinker David Hume (1711-1776) ... because, as shown by this extract from Of Miracles, he is probably the smartest critic of religious belief of all time:

" ... we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin. Upon reading this book, we find it full of prodigies and miracles. It gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely different from the present: Of our fall from that state: Of the age of man, extended to near a thousand years: Of the destruction of the world by a deluge: Of the arbitrary choice of one people, as the favourites of heaven; and that people the countrymen of the author ... I desire any one to lay his hand upon his heart, and after a serious consideration declare, whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates; So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience."

Do we need God, now that we have science?

British based Premier Christian Radio hosts a weekly program entitled Unbelievable? which features engaging discussions and debates on various topics between Christians and non-believers. The most recent episode squared off atheist philosopher/author Stephen Law (pictured left) and Christian biologist Denis Alexander (pictured above). The question raised was Do we need God, now that we have science?

I was far from an impartial listener but I felt Law stole the show from both Alexander and the equally biased Christian moderator Justin Brierley. In fact, I didn't hear Alexander raise a single point that would support belief in his chosen deity. He agreed with Law on several points and, on the few points where he departed from Law, he was the victim of an intellectual reaming. Law raised several stumbling blocks which stand in the way of the traditional conception of the Judeo-Christian god, including the following:

1. The conception of an active agent standing outside our space and time makes no more sense than a mountain existing without space and time;

2. If once conceives of an intelligent designer, why is the Judeo-Christian god any more likely than the inhabitants of another universe using "super-duper alien technology"?

3. Hundreds of millions of years of seemingly pointless suffering of sentient animals provides excellent evidence there is no all-powerful, all-good God. In the same way, immense amounts of seemingly pointless good is excellent evidence there's no evil God either. Law concludes that it is perfectly obvious to all of us that there is no all-evil God and asked Alexander why it wasn't equally obvious that there was no all-good God. This is a verbatim transcript of Alexander's incomprehensible response:

We're in a pretty poor position, uh really ... not being God, to weigh up .. you know ... the pros and cons of, let's say the level of suffering or pain and so forth and, I mean there is, there are of course various, as I'm sure Stephen well knows, there are very standard responses to this, I mean one is we, we simply are not in a position to measure those kind of things, we can measure certain things in science and so forth but we all know also of examples where you know suffering actually can be good for people or can be there for a particular purpose that we, the person, the individual doesn't know about but which they find out later on or they don't find out later on so I think the Christian argument can take several approaches here but I think one is, of course, that it may be that the only way in which thinking freely, choosing beings, intelligent beings, can come into being is through carbon based life and certainly the evolutionary account would suggest that, you know, people playing with silicone based life and so forth, but in terms of the sort of life that we know about, that can be intelligent life, that can appreciate the universe, that can have consciousness, that can choose between good and evil and so forth, that seems to be carbon based life, and there are good biochemical reasons actually for thinking that's probably the only kind of life we're going to find anywhere in the universe, I mean the universe is uniformly the same from the point of view of its chemistry and biochemistry and we can see a very long way into the universe so biochemically it's looking pretty uniform so it seems quite likely that carbon based life is the only kind of life that is possible. Now if that is the case, it might turn out to be the case and this is what we don't know, that really if you want beings who can freely respond to god's love or not who have free choice then this is the kind of universe that you're going to have to have and, also, it's a universe with costs, it's a universe with particular costs, and of course if it's the only universe, then it will be very hard to mount any kind of defence against Stephen's critique but, you know, the Christian will obviously want to say that we're looking forward to new heavens and a new earth where things won't be the case so there are certain goods that will be achieved and a certain price in achieving those goods.

You can listen to the entire program described above at Premier Christian Radio's website at this link: http://www.premierradio.org.uk/shows/saturday/unbelievable.aspx but I recommend that you subscribe to Unbelievable? on iTunes. If you enjoy the show as much as I did, please email the show at unbelievable@premier.org.uk and request a return engagement for Professor Law.