The Atheist Missionary

Where freedom of religion crosses the line

2010-07-25T07:37:00.008-04:00

Free speech is crucial in a free and democratic society as long as it does not result in people being harmed.

I support freedom of religion and I support freedom from religion. However, when it comes to protecting children, I think we need to start drawing the line when it comes to people's right to practice what they preach. The following story highlights yet another shameful example of parents neglecting a child by eschewing conventional medical treatment in favor of prayer:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/susan_nielsen/index.ssf/2010/07/faith_healing_in_oregon_a_pict.html#incart_mce

I have a simple solution to nip this kind of abuse in the bud. Don't wait for parents to neglect their children when they follow misguided religious practices. Prosecute anyone who preaches that prayer may be used as an acceptable alternative for medical treatment of a child under the age of majority.

Born ok the first time

2010-07-19T23:59:00.003-04:00

I have to admit that I only discovered this bumper sticker recently and have just placed my order for one at: http://www.carryabigsticker.com/born_OK.htm

What a great message ... simple and yet bold. I can't wait for mine to arrive.

Cartoons for thinkers

2010-07-18T10:16:00.009-04:00

This is a fascinating excerpt from Waking Life, in which Irish chemistry professor Dr. Eamonn Healy describes "telescopic evolution". Waking Life is described on youtube as "a digitally rotoscoped and animated film, directed by Richard Linklater and made in 2001. In a broad scope, Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like appearance and reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life. Along the way the film touches on other topics including existentialism, situationist politics, post humanity, and the film theory of André Bazin."

Just thought that I would state the obvious

2010-07-17T22:59:00.002-04:00

For every ridiculous line that you can find in the Bible, Christians have centuries of apologetics and rationalizations and countless brilliant scholars who have "worked through" those problems. If it's found in the Good Book, they will find a way to justify it. My favorite example of this is Abraham's binding of Isaac. Why won't all Christians admit the following?

(1) It would have been wrong for God to order Abraham to kill his son, as the Bible says He did.

(2) It would have been wrong for Abraham to set about doing so.

(3) It is wrong to kill an innocent person because you believe God has told you to.

Onward Christian Soldiers

2010-07-17T09:11:00.004-04:00

I can't count the number of times I sang this hymn in Anglican church as a child. The lyrics are well worth a read:

Onward, Christian Soldiers*

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!

Refrain

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.

At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee;
On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!
Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
Brothers lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.

Refrain

Like a mighty army moves the church of God;
Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.

Refrain

What the saints established that I hold for true.
What the saints believed, that I believe too.
Long as earth endureth, men the faith will hold,
Kingdoms, nations, empires, in destruction rolled.

Refrain

Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the church of Jesus constant will remain.
Gates of hell can never gainst that church prevail;
We have Christ’s own promise, and that cannot fail.

Refrain

Onward then, ye people, join our happy throng,
Blend with ours your voices in the triumph song.
Glory, laud and honor unto Christ the King,
This through countless ages men and angels sing.

Refrain

* Lyrics written by Sabine Baring-Gould in 1865 and music composed by Arthur Sullivan in 1871.

It can't be believed by a thinking person

2010-07-11T20:21:00.008-04:00

This is a killer quote by Christopher Hitchens:

Let’s say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I’ll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks “That’s enough of that. It’s time to intervene,” and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don’t let us appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let’s go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can’t be believed by a thinking person. [my emphasis]

I have heard Hitchens give this line on several occasions but thanks to C. Reid of Montville, New Jersey for posting it on his blog: http://conorreid.tumblr.com/ Also, best wishes to Hitchens who is currently undergoing treatment for oesophageal cancer.

* I took the picture above tonight looking east from my deck just after dusk.

The Bible is the best promotional tool in support of atheism

2010-07-10T09:17:00.007-04:00

People occasionally send me Bibles and I am assembling a nice collection of them at the office. I am just getting ready to start my third reading of the King James version because, to be frank, Bible passages are the gift that won't stop giving. I never cease to be amazed at the Biblical ignorance of those who call themselves Christians. If they would only spend more time reading their holy book, they would begin to appreciate how it is a patchwork of the good, bad and really ugly. For this morning's taste of the latter, I present Leviticus 26:29 (KJV):

And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.

The only thing more repugnant than some of the passages you will find in Leviticus are the efforts of Christian apologists to justify them.

Irreligiosity - column makes its second appearance

2010-07-04T22:56:00.003-04:00

Kudos to the Owen Sound Sun Times for having the editorial gumption to allow me the bi-weekly space to offer its readers an alternative view. Here is my second article from the July 3, 2010 edition (please note that I don't choose the headlines):

Atheists no more likely to commit crimes or be incarcerated than theists

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher' answer---but none exists: Stephen Jay Gould, (as quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief, Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, by James A. Haught, Prometheus Books, 1996).

This article was inspired by two issues that recently caught my attention:

1. the disturbing popular notion that atheists are either amoral or immoral; and

2. a Philosophy Bites podcast (freely available on iTunes) in which British humanist/gerontologist/philosopher Raymond Tallis discusses proposed British legislation that would allow assisted dying for terminally ill patients. Tallis made the point of mentioning, presumably with a straight face, that the proposed legislation would not allow euthanasia for those struck with "existential despair".

What exactly is "existential despair"? Essentially, it is a psychological crisis (presumably an overwhelmingly cathartic one) typified by at least three sensations:

1. The sense of being alone and isolated in the world;

2. A stirring realization of one's mortality; and

3. Believing that one's life has no purpose or external meaning.

Existential despair is also known as "existential nihilism". It is derived from a scientific analysis that shows that our existence can be explained solely by reference to the laws of science. With respect to the universe, a single human (or even the entire human species) is insignificant, devoid of purpose and can make no real change in the totality of existence. Stephen Jay Gould captures the thought quite well in the above noted caption.

As noted above, atheists are often criticized as being "moral nihilists"or, in other words, those that subscribe to the view that morality does not exist. If there is no universal morality, it is arguable that no action is preferable to any other. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong.

I would like to propose 10 reasons why atheists (or at least most atheists) are not moral nihilists:

1. We are humans with an evolved disdain for suffering. If you doubt this fact, ask yourself why you do not enjoy watching a dog being gratuitously beaten with a stick. In the unlikely event that you enjoy such a scene, it is because you comprise the roughly 5% of the population that is sociopathic (i.e. you have no conscience and enjoy the suffering of others) and not because you are an atheist.

2. We are humans with an evolved tendency towards reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruism is a concept which suggests that mutual cooperation and the Golden Rule (i.e. treat others the way you want them to treat you) evolve naturally because they benefit us as gene replicating organisms.

3. We genuinely love our neighbours. More to the point, we ask our religious brethren whether they really believe that they would be more likely to kill, rape or steal if all semblence of religion vanished from the world tomorrow.

4. We don't need the "Good Book" or any other moral codification to require us to be decent. When we do good, it is not because we are trying to earn salvation in heaven or trying to avoid eternal damnation in hell - we do not believe in either.

5. The existence of secular humanism as a worldwide movement.

6. The use of applied ethics to better the lives of those who we have no reason to care about if we were moral nihilists. Exhibit A: Peter Unger's Living High, Letting Die (Oxford University Press, 1996). Exhibit B: Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save (Random House, 2009). These books should be required reading for both religious believers and non-believers alike.

7. Professed atheists are less likely to be incarcerated than those who profess a religious affiliation. This is an admittedly contentious claim but the only point I want to make here is that there is no statistical evidence to suggest that atheists are more likely to commit crimes or be incarcerated than theists.

8. Divorce rates are lower for professed atheists than conservative Christians. Believe it or not, that is what the statistics tell us. In any event, the point of this article is not to suggest that religious believers are more likely to divorce their spouses (although that may be true), just that there is no statistical evidence to suggest that non-believers are more likely to divorce. Source : Barna Research Group, 1999.

9. No murder has ever been committed (or war ever been waged) in the name of atheism. Please note that I am not suggesting that atheists are incapable of killing – Stalin’s murderous regime outdid any religiously inspired war or inquisition. My claim is only that there is no evidence to suggest that disbelief in god makes people more murderous or willing to engage in war.

10. We are just like theists in every respect aside from our rejection of what we consider to be irrational religious beliefs. We love our spouses, our kids and our pets. We feel guilty if we cheat. We like to leave tips for chamber maids in hotels that we may never visit again. We laugh at jokes. We cry at funerals. In fact, most of us even enjoy religious music, art and rituals - the only difference is that we are practically certain that they are inspired by myths.

Setting the record straight on atheism and agnosticism

2010-06-30T13:27:00.006-04:00

The author of this recent article from Slate is seriously mistaken: http://www.slate.com/id/2258484/

Atheists share only one thing in common: freethinking nonbelief in the existence of a supernatural deity. That’s it. Some atheists may believe that science will eventually answer the question of "why there is something from nothing?" but certainly not all. Atheists make no positive claims and bear no burden of proof. We are merely skeptics who are all technically agnostics in the sense that most (including Richard Dawkins) admit the possibility of a supernatural creator, we just don’t see any evidence to support it.

I am probably best described as an “atheist agnostic”. This article provides a decent explanation: http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/atheism.htm

If I believe anything, it is that there are things that are forever beyond our comprehension in much the same way as a spider will never understand the theory of special relativity. What I don’t understand is why people feel the need to fill the gap of the unknown with a sky daddy!

Worship is a bit of an overkill. Wouldn't a "really big thanks" suffice?

2010-06-28T11:32:00.007-04:00

Vanderbilt philosopher Scott F. Aikin has written a great essay entitled The Problem of Worship which appears in the current edition of Think. The essay (which can be accessed online here: http://people.vanderbilt.edu/~scott.f.aikin/The%20Problem%20of%20Worship.pdf) puts forward the thesis that we shouldn't worship god because we shouldn't worship anything. He then proceeds with a logical argument that convincely results in a finding that there is no god.

Christopher Hitchens has been packing lecture halls for years with his "the idea of god is totalitarian" shtick. However, it's refreshing to see someone like Aikin present a coherent anaylsis of what I think most people already understand intuitively.

Readers also might be interested in one critique of the essay by Micah Tillman (currently a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America) that resulted from my twitter posting of the link: http://micahtillman.com/2010/06/28/must-one-worship-god/ I don't agree with Tillman but he is one smart cookie. Quite frankly, you have to be smart to navigate the intellectual dissonance created by trying to reconcile belief in the tenets of Christianity with reasoning like Aikin's.

What happens if you write an atheist column in Ontario's Bible belt

2010-06-26T14:45:00.011-04:00

I received this message on at 8:30 a.m. on the morning that this column ran in my local newspaper: http://www.atheistmissionary.com/2010/06/introducing-irreligiosity.html

Hi, it's [name withheld - the father of one of my daughter's friends] calling, I just got my paper and I read your column and I just wanted to express to you that I was disappointed that you had to find a reason to print that in the paper .. uuhm, it just seems to be like ... if it's your view, you can have that view but why put it in the paper? I really have a hard time understanding that because religion is a big part of alot of people's lives and it saw my brother through an illness that was horrible and I know that's my view but I don't go around telling people about my view either ... uuhm ... you're a businessman in this community with a business ... I find that hard to believe that you would offend potential clients ... I'm really, really at a loss but wanted to let you know. Talk to you later. Bye.

Message that I left in response:

Hi [name withheld]. I left a message for you to call me back last Saturday after receiving your message but perhaps you didn't get it. I'm sorry that you find the article offensive because, I've got to tell you, I think it was pretty benign. If you read it again, you'll see that all I did was pose a few questions that I thought might make religious believers reflect on what they profess to believe. You mentioned your brother - I know religion provides comfort to plenty of people. However, I don't think that any belief system is immune to criticism and, whether I have a business in this town or not, I trust you agree that I have the right to express my opinion (an opinion I might add that is shared by alot more people than you might otherwise think). If anybody decides not to use my services because I'm an atheist, believe me, I don't need their business. Take it easy.

Postscript - The good news. I have practiced law in my city for the last 11 years and I have never had more new referrals than in the week following the run of my first Irreligiosity column.

Death, taxes and Christian apologetics

2010-06-24T23:08:00.003-04:00

This letter to the editor, in response to my first article (reproduced in the post below), was so predictable I almost could have written it myself:

http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2638086

Introducing Irreligiosity

2010-06-22T07:15:00.007-04:00

I have come out of the closet, so to speak, by the debut of my new column Irreligiosity in the Owen Sound Sun Times. Here is the inaugural piece from the June 19, 2010 edition:

If we had photos contradicting the Bible, would Christianity die?

Last year, Sotheby's auctioned off a photograph of a scene from New York city (actually called a daguerreotype but, for all intents and purposes, a photographic image) for $62,500 US. The image was created in 1848 - 162 years ago.

What is most fascinating about the photograph is that there can never be any debate about what comprised that scene even though every person present at the time the photograph was taken is long since deceased. Of course, the same can be said of photographs taken far more recently than this one. It's just that this one strikes the imagination because it is so old and taken at a time when so few places, things or people were being photographed.

Just imagine, for the sake of argument, that the ongoing investigations into time travel (see Dan Falk's recent book In Search of Time for a fascinating discussion of this issue) were to allow us to take aerial photographs of scenes from Biblical times. If this suggestion sounds absurd, just imagine how unlikely the technology of an iPhone would seem to one of your ancestors who lived a mere century ago.

No paradoxes would be created if this technology were developed - we wouldn’t be able to go back in time and change the past. We would just be able to obtain pictures from the past in much the same way as we can obtain images of the earth through Google Earth at present. In other words, we could obtain precise records of what actually happened on the ground with a resolution equal to what our modern day satellites are capable of (i.e. read license plate numbers of moving vehicles). In so doing, we could obtain photographs from whatever period in history we wished - you name it: from the Jurassic period to the Roman/Carthaginian Battle of Lake Trasimene and everything in between.

Obviously, this kind of technology would allow us to track whether miraculous events described in the Bible actually occurred. The question posed by this thought experiment is simple: if the time travel photography established that events described in the Bible (such as Noah’s Ark, Moses parting the Red Sea, the physical resurrection of Jesus, etc.) simply did not happen, would Christianity as we know it die a quick death? If not, why not?

Author’s note: Irreligion includes the absence of religion, indifference towards religion and/or outright hostility towards religion. The term can encompass skepticism, atheism (i.e. disbelief in god), deism (belief in a creator but rejection of religious dogma), agnosticism (belief that the existence or non-existence of god is unknowable) and secular humanism (a philosophy promoting the advancement of reason/ethics/justice and rejecting supernatural and religious dogma).

To kill or not to kill ...

2010-06-20T18:55:00.006-04:00

This video features the Trolley Problem which is one of the best examples I have seen (aside from the phenomenon of religion) to prove that human emotion will always trump logic:

If you are intrigued by this issue, I commend a reading of NYU philosopher Peter Unger's "Living High, Letting Die".

The execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner

2010-06-18T09:01:00.010-04:00

DRAPER, Utah (CBS/AP/KUTV) At 12:17 a.m. Friday, convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner was pronounced dead after a Utah firing squad fired a volley of bullets into the murderer's chest, where a target was pinned over his heart. It was the first execution by firing squad in the United States in 14 years.

If the state of Utah is willing to kill someone, why don't they make live video available of the killing? I'll tell you why: the public can't stomach it. It's the same reason why people who consume meat prefer not to visit slaughterhouses. The only way we can surmount the moral schitzophrenia associated with our actions is to become wilfully blind.

Why do I oppose capital punishment? Let me count the ways:

1. It's barbaric. Pure and simple. Surely we have evolved to the point where we understand that the principle of "an eye for an eye" is unacceptably flawed. Is this how we want our children to deal with conflict in the schoolyard? If it's not ok for them, why is it ok for us?

2. It's premeditated murder. ALL modern, civilized societies outlaw murder.

3. Free will is a mirage: http://www.atheistmissionary.com/2009/07/michael-vick-determinism-and-mirage-of.html If you accept this argument, the only purpose for imposing punishment is to deter the offender (and others) from committing similar crimes in the future. If anyone is aware of a single study to support the argument that capital punishment deters murder (i.e. which suggests that murder rates are lower in jurisdictions which impose capital punishment), please send it to me - but you won't find one.

Will I shed a tear for Ronnie Lee Gardner? Of course not. There is a part of me (one that I am not proud of) that would have enjoyed pulling the trigger myself.

I will shed a tear for a society that stoops to the level of committing the base conduct we despise.

Did Christianity really sow moral intuitions in human consciences?

2010-06-16T21:12:00.012-04:00

I just finished David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions (2009, Yale University Press). It was recommended by the papist Paul who regularly comments on this blog. Perhaps the simplest way to summarize the book is to reproduce the synopsis from google books:

Currently it is fashionable to be devoutly undevout. Religion’s most passionate antagonists—Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and others—have publishers competing eagerly to market their various denunciations of religion, monotheism, Christianity, and Roman Catholicism. But contemporary antireligious polemics are based not only upon profound conceptual confusions but upon facile simplifications of history or even outright historical ignorance: so contends David Bentley Hart in this bold correction of the distortions. One of the most brilliant scholars of religion of our time, Hart provides a powerful antidote to the New Atheists’ misrepresentations of the Christian past, bringing into focus the truth about the most radical revolution in Western history.

Hart outlines how Christianity transformed the ancient world in ways we may have forgotten: bringing liberation from fatalism, conferring great dignity on human beings, subverting the cruelest aspects of pagan society, and elevating charity above all virtues. He then argues that what we term the “Age of Reason” was in fact the beginning of the eclipse of reason’s authority as a cultural value. Hart closes the book in the present, delineating the ominous consequences of the decline of Christendom in a culture that is built upon its moral and spiritual values.

Hart is a bright boy and it's not often that I get to learn this many new words - my favorites: obloquy & perspicacious. The most notable problem with his thesis is that he falls into the trap of assuming that correlation equals causation. Here is one of my favorite passages:

"The more vital and essential victory of Christianity lay in the strange, impractical, altogether unworldly tenderness of the moral intuitions it succeeded in sowing in human consciences. If we find ourselves occasionally shocked by how casually ancient men and women ignored lives we would think ineffably precious, we would do well to reflect that theirs was - in purely pragmatic terms - a more "natural" disposition toward reality. It required an extraordinary moment of awakening in a few privileged souls, and then centuries of the relentless and total immersion of culture in the Christian story, to make even the best of us conscious of (or at least able to believe in) the moral claim of all other persons upon us, the splendor and irreducible dignity of the divine humanity within them, that depth within each of them that potentially touches upon the eternal. In light of Christianity's absolute law of charity, we came to see what formerly we could not; the autistic or Down syndrome or otherwise sdisabled child, for instance, for whom the world can remain a perpetual perplexity, which can too often cause pain but perhaps only vaguely and fleetingly charm or delight; the derelict or wretched or broken man or woman who has wasted his or her life away; the homeless, the utterly impoversihed, the diseased, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, exiles, refugees, fugitives; even criminals and reprobates. To reject, turn away from, or kill any or all of them would be, in a very real sense, the most purely practical of impulses. To be able, however, to see in them not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls. To look on the child whom our ancient ancestors would have seen as somehow unwholesome or as a worthless burden, and would have abandoned to fate, and to see in him or her instead a person worthy of all affection - resplendent with divine glory, ominous with an absolute demand upon our consciences, evoking our love and our reverence - is to be set free from mere elemental existence, and from those natural limitations that pre-Christian persons took to be the very definition of reality. Any only someone profoundly ignorant of history and of native human inclinations could doubt that it is only as a consequence of the revolutionary force of Christianity within our history, within the very heart of our shared nature, that any of us can experience this freedom."

Only somone like Hart, profoundly ignorant (or wilfully blind) of the history of charity, philanthropy and humanism would credit their rise in human history to the "revolutionary force of Christianity". The word "philanthropy" is generally agreed to have arisen in ancient Greece at least 5 centuries prior to the supposed birth of Jesus. The Greek word philanthropos combined two words: philos meaning “loving” in the sense of benefitting, caring for, nourishing with anthropos meaning “human being”. Philanthropia (i.e. loving what it is to be human) was considered by ancient Greeks to be one of the keys to civilization.

What Hart conveniently ignores is that there is not one iota of proof that "Christian civilizations" were more benevolent or charitable than their non-Christian counterparts. Altruism, the selfless concern for the welfare of others, is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious traditions such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Sikhism. Hart fails to explain why Christinianity gets singled out for the notable accomplishment of sowing moral intuitions in human consciences.

The real Good News

2010-06-08T08:08:00.002-04:00

Watch this in full screen mode. Please circulate it far and wide.

Are ethics a human invention?

2010-06-07T09:17:00.005-04:00

Are ethics a human invention? According to philosopher Peter Singer, the answer is yes. The following is a snippet from his discussion with Noel Rooney in 2004 which can be found in its entirety at the website http://www.nthposition.com/:

Rooney: That implies to me that ethics are in some way super-human; and one assumes ethics to be a human product.

Singer: I think that some of it is pre-human. We see proto-ethics at least among our closer non-human relatives. We see things like reciprocity which are fairly central to our view of ethics. But if you're talking about a set of worked-out rules on what we are supposed to do then, yes, it is a human product.

Rooney: And as a human product you wouldn't expect any regional variations?

Singer: At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places. They tend to be pretty abstract ones then, like doing what will have the best consequences; obviously you wouldn't specify what consequences are best, they may be different in some circumstances, so at a lower, more specific level, you may well get differences.

The Language of God

2010-06-04T14:54:00.001-04:00

This is a fantastic example of how you can, quite profitably, sell nothing:

Purely anecdotal contentions

2010-05-28T21:15:00.011-04:00

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

2010-05-22T09:57:00.016-04:00

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?

2010-05-16T22:44:00.007-04:00

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

2010-05-11T20:49:00.003-04:00

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?

2010-05-08T12:59:00.012-04:00

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?

2010-05-03T21:21:00.024-04:00

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.