Theists and IQ

I've made it clear before that I don't think atheists are simply smarter than theists, or that theism is indicative of a low IQ.

I was joking around last week with the head football coach at my school (one of the two people at my school I've dialogued with on atheism) when I said, "I wouldn't mind if my wife left me for Tim Tebow," and he replied, "But then your kid would be raised a theist!" Completely unfazed, I replied, "Oh no, because my son would still have my genes and therefore a very high IQ and thus would never buy into that nonsense." I said it as a joke, but I know some people would take it seriously, although I know he didn't.

When some people ask me if I could ever believe in God again, I try to use Santa as an analogy. Not that I'm saying that I think god-belief is comparable to Santa-belief, but rather that when we learn about Santa's nonexistence through our own experience (seeing mom and dad buying toys or putting them together on Christmas morning) we are so completely deconverted from the belief that we would have to see comparable positive evidence to outweigh the negative evidence we've witnessed. In other words, I might believe in Santa again if he lands on my roof with his magic reindeer and flies off into the night in front of me. Ditto with God.

My experiences with witnessing human suffering are on the scale that I just simply cannot believe in any sort of powerful benevolent Being. If the problem of evil has some satisfactory solution (I don't think it does) then perhaps I could reconsider it, but I think all that would do is clear the logical obstacle that I think exists to prevent god-belief. In order to actually give me a reason to believe (rather than the capacity to do so) I think would actually require a burning bush or something just as dramatic in my own life.

Don't hold your breath waiting...God's propensity for all that miraculous stuff just so happened to go out of style around the time that technology started developing to record it.

Suffering and the Bible

Since I've had a little more free time this past two weeks, I've pondered a little on old philosophical problems and thus have felt the old familiar urge for an atheist apologetic post. I just got through reading a thought I've had before, but put well into words: that the Cinderella-esque nature of the Christian narrative makes the problem of evil even more difficult for the Christian than for the Muslim or Jew. I also saw Bart Ehrman's lecture (video) on suffering via DC. He also mentions Elie Wiesel and his God on Trial that you can watch on YouTube. He lists the following as the attempts in the Bible to explain or understand suffering in the world: as punishment for (or as a natural consequence of) sin, evil forces in the world (Satan) who are allowed to punish people, as a test of one's faith (Job), a "mystery" that even to ask "Why?" is a blasphemy, that sometimes chaos happens and we "get in the way".

Ross Douthat writes:

Any such revolution would affect atheism as well as belief. Consider, for instance, the way in which the dominance of the Christian story has actually sharpened one of the best arrows in the anti-theist's quiver. In Western society, especially, the oft-heard claim that the world is too cruel a place for a good omnipotence to have created derives a great deal of its power, whether implicitly or explicitly, from the person of Christ himself. The God of the New Testament seems more immediate, more personal, and more invested in his creation than He had heretofore revealed Himself to be. But this arguably makes Him seem more culpable for the world's suffering as well. Paradoxically, the God who addresses Job out of the whirlwind is far less vulnerable to complaints about the world's injustice than the God who suffers on the Cross - or the human God who cries in the manger. For many Christians, Christ's suffering provides a partial answer to the problem of theodicy. But for many atheists and agnostics, it only sharpens the question: How can a God who loves mankind enough to die for us allow us to suffer as much as we do?

Take that question away, and all the arguments that spin away from it disappear as well. Which is just one small reason why a world in which nobody had any reason any longer to believe that God had been born in human flesh to a poor Jewish woman in Bethlehem, or died a miserable death on a Roman cross, would be a world in which atheists as well as believers found themselves arguing about life, the universe and everything in very different ways than they do now.

This is true. For people like presuppositionalists, they prefer to use the whirlwind-style God along with their Calvinism and Rom 9 to say, "Who are you to question God's way of running the world?" To them, you either have no logical basis to even argue that God isn't good (a difficult argument for them to maintain) or you have no ability to cross over to disprove their beliefs because of your flawed fundamental premises. They are a small minority of Christians for good reason. For most Christians, they want to believe that the world as you see it is not the world that God wants it to be, but that He allows it to remain this way because of one thing or another (attempting to draw a distinction between what God permissively and what God perfectly wills has always been absurd to me). Free will is the typical theodicy.

I agree with one of the first things Ehrman says about suffering with respect to Americans: it is very, very difficult to relate to most Americans the scope and nature of suffering that occurs in the world on a daily (minute-by-minute) basis. The inability of Americans to grasp at such suffering, I am convinced, is at least in part the reason for the outlier nature of America in being a very religious country which is also very rich. As I said in a recent post,

The idea that God is listening to your requests and will fix that prostate, or give you that new job, or raise, or protect you from danger, is hilarious. While you're sitting there asking that, mothers are raising their dead children to the sky, after pleading with God to spare them. People are physically rotting from leprosy and mentally rotting from Alzheimer's. To think that God is letting all the billions of people on earth suffer and plead with no reprieve, but that he cares what job you have or mate you pick, is the height of hubris. The problem of evil has destroyed the faith of giants like Charles Templeton and unknowns like me.

When Bart Ehrman talks about free will theodicies, he labels them the "robot answer" defense of suffering in the world: humans are given the ability to obey or disobey and this leads to suffering in the world. He points out that this may help explain some suffering but not natural disasters. He doesn't take it to the next level and include animal suffering, accidents and the distinctions I've drawn before -- the question of why one person's (evil) will supersedes the others involved (including God's and the victims of the suffering), the question of why the physical contingencies allow for one person's (evil) will to actually physically occur rather than be a wish...[I won't rehash all that again, but it is essential to read that post as I feel I've dealt with nearly every single point that theists raise to the argument from evil against God's existence.]

Ehrman goes on to bring up the classic 3-point argument from evil:

1. God is all-powerful
2. God is all-loving
3. There is suffering

He establishes the common theodicies:

1. Deny one of the three premises (deny 1, deny 2, deny 3)
   
2. Bring in an "extenuating circumstance" to explain how the three premises are not logically imcompatible: as punishment for (or as a natural consequence of) sin, evil forces in the world (Satan) who are allowed to punish people, as a test of one's faith (Job), a "mystery", that even to ask "Why?" is a blasphemy, that sometimes chaos happens and we "get in the way" (think spiritual warfare here).

He then goes on to look at the two major overarching themes on suffering in the Bible -- one from the OT and one from the NT:

1. OT (the "Prophetic response") -- the Prophets nearly all had the same view on suffering, and it only concerned Israel, that suffering was punishment for sin. This is exemplified in the story of the Exodus and the obligation that Israel had towards God for saving them from Egypt. If Israel was God's "Chosen People" then all its suffering (war, drought, pestilence, famine) must be explained as some sort of breach of contract, and of course it must be man's (not God's) fault for this contract being breached (cf. Amos 3:2). The reason this is a supposed "solution" to the problem of evil is that the punishment is made with repentance in mind; if the people turn around from their "sin" then the suffering will have served a "greater good" of saving their souls. This is consistent with Adam & Eve's explusion from the Garden of Eden, with the Noachian Flood, with Sodom & Gomorrah, &c. The question of why people are supposed to believe that this sort of God is worth serving is left for the thinker...
   
2. NT (the "apocalyptic response") -- found in the latest book of the OT (Daniel) and dominated the NT: suffering was not coming as a punishment from God, but from "other sources" in the world. Enemies of God (cosmic forces in the world) cause our suffering (the devil and his demons). The devil was not found in the Prophets. Sin is not a specific wrong that you've done, but a sort of cosmic force in the world ("the flesh") and this is what leads to suffering. Eventually, God will remove these evil forces from the world and restore perfection to the world.
3. The Ecclesiastical Response -- "all is vanity" [vanity = Hebrew hevel: transcience, impermanence]. There is no justice in the world, therefore the idea that suffering is a just punishment for sin is false. Also, there will not be justice in the next world, which takes away the empty hope of Apocalypticists. Therefore, live life fully in the present. There is therefore no "answer" to suffering except to try to live and enjoy life. Paul's thoughts as he pondered this possibility? Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die! This third response is somewhat like that of atheism.
   

Ehrman points out four tenets of this apocalyptic response:
1) dualism [Manichaeism]: which groups everyone into either God's camp or the devil's, and also gives this world (the one of suffering) to the devil but the future world (the one of perfection) to God, is also intended to explain "why the wicked prosper but the righteous suffer", in the sense that the present age will "pass away";
2) pessimism: we can't really improve the present age, and even if we do, it won't matter in the cosmic sense, the present age is under the control of evil forces, and things will get worse and worse;
3) vindication: God will set things right, especially by judgment, and restore its own sovereignty, those in one camp will be rewarded and those in the other will be punished, this is why the suffering that occurred in this world is really inconsequential, this was the beginning of philosophical defenses within Judaism/Christianity of the afterlife;
4) imminence: the timing for all this is soon, the coming of the Lord is at hand, things were just about as bad as they could get/were going to be, Mark 9:1, the imminence seems necessary as it helps to make God less bad for letting all this suffering occur -- if God can stand this much suffering for much longer, it seems that God is less good;

Ehrman looks at the Apocalypticists as a contrast to the Prophets and points out the logical inconsistencies that any believer has to deal with. Moral complacency is a real issue for the former: why worry about evil if things will get better only in the next world? Along this same line, the belief that the end is coming soon is something that gives believers hope but also alarm and fear. Therefore, along with moral complacency, believers along the Apocalyptic response have a certain scary worldview that doesn't enrich their lives or the lives of those around. The conflict between the two major responses is obvious: either this world is rotten and you don't get what you deserve here because God doesn't fundamentally dole out punishment until a later judgment, or, people do get what they deserve in this life. Either you reap what you sow here in this world or you don't and you get it in the world to come.

One of the questions he was given at 48:00 or so in to the video was, "How do you know that suffering is bad if there is no God?" He dealt with it pretty simply: the traditional utilitarian view -- whatever brings about good (in the sense of health, wealth, happiness and pleasure) for the majority of people, acknowledging and using our human sense of empathy in avoiding suffering for ourselves and others as being foundational to this moral view. He also hinted at seeing the problem of Divine Command Theory in his transition from to becoming an agnostic from Christian.

I also liked a guy at the end (55:00 or so) who pointed out that the idea that "the poor you shall have with you always," and the general moral complacency brought about by the Apocalyptical view is harmful and wrong. We have the resources in the world, if they were redistributed and focused, to end the sort of starvation and ridiculous death rates from things like lack of drinking water and mosquito nets. And this guy's point was that a religious view keeps us from realizing that we could alleviate much suffering on earth, and thus in turn reduce the burden on a theist to explain/justify it with a theodicy.

Some of Ehrman's statistics (21:55):

• Every 5 seconds, a child starves to death
• Every minute, 25 people die from drinking unclean drinking water
• Every hour, 700 people die from malaria
  

The anthropic principle revisited

This month's issue of Seed alerted me to something that I have mentioned before and think may just destroy the factual basis of the fine-tuning argument for a God's existence. Imagine that instead of arguing that the physical constants are fine-tuned so that they cannot be independently varied, we actually did a mathematical analysis of them to see how the ratios of the constants could be changed but still produce life. In a peer-reviewed article entitled, "Limitations of anthropic predictions for the cosmological constant Λ: cosmic heat death of anthropic observers", Fred C. Adams at Michigan looked at the relationships of gravity and the nuclear forces as fundamental physical constants and found that so long as these are varied together, they produce a number of star-sustaining, and therefore life-sustaining, physical universes.

In this latter case, the bounds on a Λ [the cosmological constant] can be millions of times larger than previous estimates—and the observed value. We thus conclude that anthropic reasoning has limited predictive power.

Theists often use the anthropic principle to argue in favor of an intelligent designer of the universe. Given that the idea of the argument precludes the designer being a part of the universe, this is all but arguing for the existence of God, not just some alien somewhere. The argument usually goes, "If you changed the force of gravity by even one-quadrillionth of a N, then life couldn't exist..."

You can view this sort of argument here and here by Collins. A substantive reply to Collins' argument follows:

Collins is more persuasive, although certainly not original, when trotting out the Anthropic Principle, the argument that the universe is uniquely pre-tuned to bring about life in general and human life in particular. There are a number of physical constants and laws such that if any had been even slightly different, life might well have been impossible. For example, for roughly every billion quarks and antiquarks, there is an excess of one quark – otherwise, no matter. If the rate of expansion immediately after the Big Bang had been a teeny tiny fraction smaller than it was, the universe would have recollapsed long ago. If the strong nuclear forces holding atomic nuclei together had been just a smidgeon weaker, then only hydrogen would exist; if a hair stronger, all hydrogen would promptly have become helium, and the solar furnaces inside stars –which we can thank for the heavier elements – would never have existed.

Both Dawkins and Sagan also examine this argument, which Dawkins caricatures as "god-as-dial-twiddler." It is oddly tautological, in that if the universe were not as it is, we indeed would not be here to wonder about it. In Fred Hoyle's science fiction novel, The Black Cloud, it is explained that the probability of a golf ball landing on any particular spot is exceedingly low – and yet, it has to land somewhere! The Anthropic Principle can also be "solved" by multiple universes, of which ours could simply be the one in which we exist; this might apply not only to horizontally existing multi-verses, but to the same one occurring differently in time if there have been (and will be) unending expansions and contractions. Moreover, it isn't at all clear that the various physical dials are independent, or that the physical constants in the universe could be any different, given the nature of matter and energy.

This is a typical response to the theistic position --

1) pointing out that improbable events happen all the time without being of divine origin: each seven-card hand dealt in stud poker has a probability of (1/52*1/51*1/50*1/49*1/48*1/47*1/46) = 1 in 674,274,182,400. But does that make it a miracle?
2) questioning whether the constants can be changed at all, or if they are primally fixed by the nature of the universe
3) invoking the multiverse to reduce the significance of any one universe's "uniqueness" in a statistical sense (also see here)

But from a scientist's standpoint, it's much more interesting to wonder what ratios and relationships amongst the physical constants would still produce life if they were varied interdependently. And that's the question that has been answered by Fred Adams. There are many configurations of the constants that, when varied together, still produce life-friendly, or "Goldilocks"-zone universes. This makes the anthropic principle much less interesting. Yet another reason to give up on the idea of a God.

Godless money

Dole is losing to Kay Hagan in NC, and thus is using fear of us mean evil atheists to scare people away from her opponent. I just didn't know that there was such a thing as "godless money" lol.

Seed Magazine endorsed Obama. No surprise there.

A new article in Newsweek discusses belief in the paranormal and supernatural as a coping mechanism.

Hitchens debated the guy who wrote, "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist".

The "Out Campaign" for freethinkers

Here's my proposal: give freethinkers an "out campaign" just like the atheists have.

(graphic source)

Happiness and life's value

Full disclosure: I'm about to link to an article from Oprah's magazine. OTOH, it is a decent article written by an academic neuroscientist about happiness. Here are the five main points:

1. Find what you enjoy and are good at and immerse yourself in it.
2. Set out to deliberately make yourself happy by prioritizing it over relationships and career.
3. Avoid living in the past.
4. Invest and spend heavily of your self on a few close friends.
5. Don't ever associate enjoyment with guilt.
   

The reason I'm linking to this is I've been thinking over the meaning of happiness the past few days after receiving an email from a friend of mine who brought up the subject. He brought it up because he's a Christian and he has a non-Christian friend who seemed to make intimations of suicidal thoughts. He wrote me for advice as to what to say to her, presumably because he felt that his lack of ability to invoke God made advising her difficult or impossible. I wrote him back with a strategy much like that outlined in the article below: practical, real-life advice about finding something you enjoy and basking in it. On a deeper note, I've said before that I think the fact-value distinction is very important in considering things like, "what's the meaning of life?" I really don't think that adding God to the equation helps clarify that question, as it only pushes it back to "why would God make anything at all?" and "why would God allow such evil and suffering in the world?" and makes it more confusing. But furthering that idea is for another day.

Five Things Happy People Do
By Gabrielle LeBlanc
http://www.oprah.com/article/spirit/emotionalhealth/omag_200803_happy

Sages going back to Socrates have offered advice on how to be happy, but only now are scientists beginning to address this question with systematic, controlled research. Although many of the new studies reaffirm time-honored wisdom ("Do what you love," "To thine own self be true"), they also add a number of fresh twists and insights. We canvassed the leading experts on what happy people have in common—and why it's worth trying to become one of them:

They find their most golden self. Picture happiness. What do you see? A peaceful soul sitting in a field of daisies appreciating the moment? That kind of passive, pleasure-oriented—hedonic—contentment is definitely a component of overall happiness. But researchers now believe that eudaimonic well-being may be more important. Cobbled from the Greek eu ("good") and daimon ("spirit" or "deity"), eudaimonia means striving toward excellence based on one's unique talents and potential—Aristotle considered it to be the noblest goal in life. In his time, the Greeks believed that each child was blessed at birth with a personal daimon embodying the highest possible expression of his or her nature. One way they envisioned the daimon was as a golden figurine that would be revealed by cracking away an outer layer of cheap pottery (the person's baser exterior). The effort to know and realize one's most golden self—"personal growth," in today's lingo—is now the central concept of eudaimonia, which has also come to include continually taking on new challenges and fulfilling one's sense of purpose in life.

"Eudaimonic well-being is much more robust and satisfying than hedonic happiness, and it engages different parts of the brain," says Richard J. Davidson, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The positive emotion accompanying thoughts that are directed toward meaningful goals is one of the most enduring components of well-being." Eudaimonia is also good for the body. Women who scored high on psychological tests for it (they were purposefully engaged in life, pursued self-development) weighed less, slept better, and had fewer stress hormones and markers for heart disease than others—including those reporting hedonic happiness—according to a study led by Carol Ryff, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

They design their lives to bring in joy. It may seem obvious, but "people don't devote enough time to thinking seriously about how they spend their life and how much of it they actually enjoy," says David Schkade, PhD, a psychologist and professor of management at the University of California San Diego. In a recent study, Schkade and colleagues asked more than 900 working women to write down everything they'd done the day before. Afterward, they reviewed their diaries and evaluated how they felt at each point. When the women saw how much time they spent on activities they didn't like, "some people had tears in their eyes," Schkade says. "They didn't realize their happiness was something they could design and have control over."

Analyzing one's life isn't necessarily easy and may require questioning long-held assumptions. A high-powered career might, in fact, turn out to be unfulfilling; a committed relationship once longed for could end up being irritating with all the compromising that comes with having a partner. Dreams can be hard to abandon, even when they've turned sour.

Fortunately, changes don't have to be big ones to tip the joy in your favor. Schkade says that if you transfer even an hour of your day from an activity you hate (commuting, scrubbing the bathroom) to one you like (reading, spending time with friends), you should see a significant improvement in your overall happiness. Taking action is key. Another recent study, at the University of Missouri, compared college students who made intentional changes (joining a club, upgrading their study habits) with others who passively experienced positive turns in their circumstances (receiving a scholarship, being relieved of a bad roommate). All the students were happier in the short term, but only the group who made deliberate changes stayed that way.

They avoid "if only" fantasies. If only I get a better job…find a man…lose the weight…life will be perfect. Happy people don't buy into this kind of thinking.

The latest research shows that we're surprisingly bad at predicting what will make us happy. People also tend to misjudge their contentment when zeroing in on a single aspect of their life—it's called the focusing illusion. In one study, single subjects were asked, "How happy are you with your life in general?" and "How many dates did you have last month?" When the dating question was asked first, their romantic life weighed more heavily into how they rated their overall happiness than when the questions were reversed.

The other argument against "if only" fantasies has to do with "hedonic adaptation"—the brain's natural dimming effect, which guarantees that a new house won't generate the same pleasure a year after its purchase and the thrill of having a boyfriend will ebb as you get used to being part of a couple. Happy people are wise to this, which is why they keep their lives full of novelty, even if it's just trying a new activity (diving, yoga) or putting a new spin on an old favorite (kundalini instead of vinyasa).

They put best friends first. It's no surprise that social engagement is one of the most important contributors to happiness. What's news is that the nature of the relationship counts. Compared with dashing around chatting with acquaintances, you get more joy from spending longer periods of time with a close friend, according to research by Meliksah Demir, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Northern Arizona University. And the best-friend benefit doesn't necessarily come from delving into heavy discussions. One of the most essential pleasures of close friendship, Demir found, is simple companionship, "just hanging out," as he says, hitting the mall or going to the movies together and eating popcorn in the dark.

They allow themselves to be happy. As much as we all think we want it, many of us are convinced, deep down, that it's wrong to be happy (or too happy). Whether the belief comes from religion, culture, or the family you were raised in, it usually leaves you feeling guilty if you're having fun.

"Some people would say you shouldn't strive for personal happiness until you've taken care of everyone in the world who is starving or doesn't have adequate medical care," says Howard Cutler, MD, coauthor with the Dalai Lama of The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World. "The Dalai Lama believes you should pursue both simultaneously. For one thing, there is clear research showing that happy people tend to be more open to helping others. They also make better spouses and parents." And in one famous study, nuns whose autobiographies expressed positive emotions (such as gratitude and optimism) lived seven to 10-and-a-half years longer than other nuns. So, for any die-hard pessimist who still needs persuading, just think of how much more you can help the world if you allow a little happiness into your life.

Gabrielle Leblanc is a writer and neuroscientist in Washington, D.C.

Good stuff.

GC member on local TV

*Tangent: Paul Kurtz has a new editorial on secular ethics in Free Inquiry*

A member of Godless Columbia was interviewed for an article on the healing power of prayer on local television. Some of the comments on the article are hilarious.

The idea that God is listening to your requests and will fix that prostate, or give you that new job, or raise, or protect you from danger, is hilarious. While you're sitting there asking that, mothers are raising their dead children to the sky, after pleading with God to spare them. People are rotting from leprosy and mentally rotting from Alzheimer's. To think that God is letting all the billions of people on earth suffer and plead with no reprieve, but that he cares what job you have or mate you pick, is the height of hubris. The problem of evil has destroyed the faith of giants like Charles Templeton and unknowns like me.

This point gets explored in more detail by whywontgodhealamputees.com in a recent video (see the accompanying document here):

Dialog with Andy

Two of the guys in athletics department at my school are very thoughtful theists who I enjoy bantering with about theological issues. I've posted my recent dialog with Andy below, his responses are indented further and mine are between carets (>>, <<). The hyperlinks have been added to this to refer to things I've already written on the topics:

Andy wrote:

God is recorded in the sacred writ as being omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. I've been pondering lately the implications of the third quality, given what we've learned about relativity.

>>I actually don't know if I agree with this premise or not. I think that early Christian thought didn't have this concept, but that later Christian thinkers, re-discovering philosophy from the Greeks and Romans, adopted it. For the sake of argument, let's say you're right. What I would bring up, though, are certain aspects of the OT, in particular, where God asks questions and other things in the Bible that don't comport well in a literal reading with these properties.<<

Someone ostensibly traveling at the speed of light need not age. (Is this correct?) The closer one travels to the speed of light, the slower time "moves." (I guess in actuality, there may somehow be a continuum and time moves more slowly as speeds are gradually increased, so that even at 60 miles an hour, you might age a fraction slower than someone standing still?) But this is not central to my thoughts.

>>You are right, but an important distinction: Remember that in physics, you must always clarify your frame of reference. More time passes for an observer to your frame of reference than for you within the frame of reference. It isn't that there is such a universal thing as "time" -- in the same way that there isn't such a universal thing as "space" -- space-time is experienced locally for each person, thus the need for different frames of reference. In other words, if God has on a watch, and goes near the speed of light from X to Y and back to X, the amount of time that has passed for God will be very very little compared to what we experienced in watching the space ship leave and return (observers).

But...yes, this is the basis for the Lorentz factor.<<

I cannot be in two places (let's call them points X and Y in three dimensions) "at the same time." However, as my speed increases, I can move from point X to point Y, closer and closer to "the same time" Time becomes a sort of fourth dimension, so that as I move faster, the interrelatedness and interdependence of time and space become apparent. Indeed, exceeding the speed of light even allows me to move backward on the timeline?

>>Indeed, the four-dimensional nature of space-time makes it such that if you sort of have to pick three to move through rapidly, so that you are not moving through the fourth rapidly. A really good overview of both special and general relativity is given in both of Brian Greene's layman-oriented books: The Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos.<<

The Christian theistic concept of a God that exists outside of physical time (Ravi Zacharias maintains that the Judeo-Christian God is the only God of the major world religions that attempts to speak of a God existing outside of time) then allows for a quite elementary explanation of an omnipresent God, in the sense that God is able to be in multiple places at the same time. I don't know whether it's better to explain it as God moving at an extremely fast speed, so that time slows or even reverses, allowing God to move back and forth on the space-time continuum, or whether you simply view God as existing outside of the fourth dimension of time, able to move through space without the constraints of time. In either case, this would make issues like prophecy, omnipresence, etc, all much more palatable to our limited human reason. God can simultaneously be at points X and Y, given his ability to "move quckly" and be free from the constraints of time. And so on for points, Z, W, V, etc. :) Any thoughts?

>>There is an a priori issue that must be addressed about the idea of omnipresence: what does it mean to say that God "is" somewhere? Is God even composed of a substance? If so, then we could speak of how His matter is located within space-time at those coordinates (think: Columbia, SC are the 3 space dimensions and Sun, 8/24/08 @ 1 PM is the 1 time dimension), but then we start to wonder -- is God's matter/substance interspersed between physical matter/substances? Is it like God exists between the atoms in my body (and everywhere else), and if so, then can we say that God exists "within" space-time? Can we say that God is actually omnipresent, since to be between two things is not to be at those actual things?

I think that a lot of the properties ascribed to God don't withstand serious logical scrutiny. If God "is" somewhere, does that mean being a part of that space/matter, or distinct from it? If God is "at" distinct coordinates within space-time, then is God is just as much a part of the universe as you and I? Then does that make God just as bound to the laws of physics as we are? And if so, how could God create that which God is a part of?

I don't think that special (or general) relativity really serves to provide a basis for omnipresence, because omnipresence itself is antithetical to the concepts of physics.

There is also a fundamental physical issue that makes it problematic to say that relativity "allows for a quite elementary explanation" of omnipresence. One of the things relativity does is prevent anything with mass from actually moving at the speed of light, and definitely not faster than it. [note: a differentiation must be made between c (3.0 x 10^8 m/s) and the speed of light outside of a vacuum (c/n), thus things like the faster-than-light Cherenkov radiation observed in nuclear cores]. This is a first principle issue that would diminish the ability to use the physics to justify omnipresence. Nothing is actually allowed to travel at light speed with mass, and it must travel in only one distinct direction at a time. This would also prevent traveling backwards through time as nothing could travel faster-than-light.

If God is massless, then in that sense God is not composed of anything. If God is not composed of anything, then God isn't "located" anywhere. And that gets back to the a priori issue of whether omnipresence even makes sense. You can't say, "God is at coordinates: A, B, C, D within space-time," because there isn't any "stuff" (matter/substance) which actually occupies space or time there.

In addition, as I said above, special relativity allows for objects moving rapidly in three dimensions to move very slowly in the fourth. This would put a lot of limits on your idea of being "able to be in multiple places at the same time" -- for although God could (theoretically) travel from X to Y with no apparent time loss to the observer (us), this framework still puts God thoroughly "inside" space-time. God's frame of reference is still very much bound by space-time in the sense that time still passes for God. So God is still bound to physics, rather than, as most theists believe, able to create physics.

So, to me, to try to use physics to justify or explain omnipresence is both unnecessary and illogical. You can't use a physical theory to try to explain an immaterial God. You can still believe in God, of course, but you can't support the property of omnipresence using physics.<<

On an unrelated note, what do you think about having some sort of "faith forum" in the chapel from time to time, where different faculty or staff are free to speak on topics of deeper significance, eventually even allowing some debates, Q & A, apologetic lectures, etc. I think it would be neat to all come under one figurative big tent in the collective pursuit of truth.

>>I think that sort of thing would be great. I just don't know if I personally would want to participate as a religious skeptic, since it could really be a bad thing for me career-wise. A lot of parents would just never forgive me or like me again if they heard me present arguments against the existence of a theistic God, and you might be surprised at the ways that some people would bring that up later on as ammo against me. But I would go, I would enjoy it, and I would push my students to attend. I just don't know if I personally would want to be up there at the podium/lectern. Maybe in a few years...

-------- Original Message --------

	Subject:	Re: chat yesterday
	Date:	Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:43:46 -0700 (PDT)
	From:	Andy

Ultimately, for better or worse, I chose to focus on one or two key points. I’ve found in discussions like this it’s quite easy to try to advance on a dozen different concurrent fronts, leaving both sides unable to address any of the issues fully. Perhaps we just take a bite-size piece at a time in our pursuit of the truth. And I’ll try to provide a more timely response next time, should you respond.

>>I understand and agree.<<

First, by way of introduction, let me say that I understand why it would appear to you that Christ’s claim to BE truth is a conflation of terminology. You must admit this would follow naturally for someone who denies any metaphysical personality*. J But assume for the sake of argument that that a metaphysical personality exists (for you must grant that a finite being cannot posit with any certainty the non-existence of an infinite one). If you can picture even for a moment that this possibility exists, it becomes easier to follow Christ’s seemingly incongruous statements.

>>It seems here, and below with your asterisk-marked footnote, you may be admitting that there are things that are not philosophically "neutral" to discuss. If that is so, then you may be literally wasting your time in this dialog. I don't think that it is so. I think that most of what we'll disagree on can be examined objectively without the need for presupposing a certain viewpoint. I hope so, or else we're just arguing post hoc to legitimize (to ourselves, mostly) what we already want to believe is true, because we can't be persuaded by rational argument.

I don't think it's possible to ascribe personhood to a logical relationship. Logical relations and things like properties are the "basement" or foundation in metaphysics -- part of what philosophers refer to as universals, and there are some different ways that they describe them: nominalism, conceptualism and realism. Without getting off on a tangent, truth is a relation, or a correspondence between particulars. It is also universal because it is the relation or correspondence between an infinite number of particulars.

Personhood implies a mind (intentionality), and a mind implies more than one simple relation or property. Therefore, a mind occurs much higher up on the scale of metaphysics. Mind is not a universal. This is true whether or not I believe in God or an immaterial spirit. Minds are more than just one logical relation or property, but cannot be an infinite number of them. It's a non sequitur to say that relations between things are equal to the things themselves: walking is not just two legs, but the relationship between how they move in space-time; thinking is not just a brain, but how it functions in space-time. Another example: if Jesus is truth, and if it is true that evil exists, then Jesus is the evil that exists. I think we'd both agree that there is an error in the logic here.<<

In the same way, when he claims in the same unbelievable statement to be THE truth, is he saying that he is the representation of every physical truth? Of course not. But is he the only truth that matters in an ultimate, metaphysical sense?

>>But determining that which is true depends on knowing how logic works. Logically, Jesus can be "the way to avoid damnation" or "the only way to heaven" or something like that. Jesus cannot be "truth, period"...which is what people sometimes say or imply by referring to Jesus as truth. I think we probably agree on that.<<

I’ve found it a fascinating reinforcement of this concept that in many cases, people who reject Christ’s claims often begin to part ways with Christ as the source of Truth when a clear prohibition of scripture does not square with their lifestyle. They are unwilling to adhere to God’s moral law, and seeking to create their own moral code, they exchange the metaphysical “truth” of scripture for their own metaphysical “truth,” typically establishing moral boundaries that fit their lifestyle. Isn’t it interesting that modern attempts to invent a new morality seldom forge any rules that would de-legitimize the new moralist’s own behavior? The moral code they create always seems conveniently to square with their current behavior.

>>As I think you know, I'm not a moral relativist. Thus, a lot of what you said above doesn't apply to me. However, I can say that my lifestyle today versus my lifestyle at the time I was in church are pretty much identical. That is, I haven't taken up anything since leaving the church that was prohibited, and thus there was no incentive for decadence for me.

I'm not sure if you are in this boat, but lots of people don't believe that atheists exist. It's an interesting thing for me to hear that, as I wonder how these same people would react to me if I claimed that religion was just opiate for the masses, or said, "No one really believes in God. Deep down they know it's an invented device to help us live with the belief that there's cosmic significance to our existence, and it helps us cope with death and hardships. But they establish this to fit their lifestyle, their desire to believe that we're all more important than we really are..." It's a little insulting, isn't it? And presumptuous. Now, am I saying that you may not be correct about *some* people? No. But I'm sure the above parallel argument (that no one really believes in God) also applies about *some* people as well. I'll agree with you that sometimes it is the case that person X actually believes in the Bible and the interpretations of it given by Evangelicals, but really wants to "fornicate" and engage in "lasciviousness" (I love the KJV), and so might try to stop believing in the suddenly-inconvenient moral standard that it is against God's commandments.

However, it doesn't explain, at all, any transition in metaphysical beliefs from conservative/Evangelical Christian all the way to atheist. It may explain why certain people would relax their moral standards in order to assuage their own guilt. But, all one would need to do is transition from conservative/Evangelical Christian to a liberal Christian (e.g., Unitarian Universalist) or Deist or any of the other hundreds of options in between. There's no need to change one's metaphysical views in order to change one's moral views.

Also, consider this: does it really serve a purpose to invent/create something you don't *actually believe* is true? This implies that people reject what is true in order to do what they want, and yet if they really don't *believe* that what they reject was wrong, then they're self-delusional, and one would think, probably won't be able to live with a mind divided between what one wants to be true versus what one really thinks is true. How does it gain any relief to the sinner who pretends not to believe in his sin, but deep down still feels the guilt and shame?

The last part of your sentence could be (and probably was) used to explain why the church no longer puts people in stocks, no longer prohibits movies, music, technology, etc., etc., etc. That is, one could always say that freedom/liberty of conscience is really a "crutch" or a symptom/sign of the loss of spiritual goodness. Lots of people still refuse to allow women to wear pants or makeup, etc., etc., and they might look at you and say, "Isn't it interesting, Andy, that your 'new morality' is supposed to be grounded in God's grace and liberty, but it always legitimizes those things you already *want* to do?!?!?" The same logic works there. I think the premise is what's flawed.<<

Interestingly, while your moral realism proposes that there is a transcendent moral standard out there, in the same way that you would accuse those who follow a certain religion of “creating” their own codes through their own creativity, I believe that it’s impossible for you to prove that the moral realist is not doing ultimately the same thing—as every moral realist out there may not agree on morality, and must fabricate his own moral code. I think more problematic, though, is the issue of consequences. What consequences does Hitler suffer for his actions?

>>By your own beliefs, if *anyone* repents and asks God for forgiveness, they will suffer no consequences in the afterlife for their actions, yes? And thus the dilemma of many theistic beliefs is exposed -- you can't have both mercy and justice. You can have mercy for some and justice for others. To say that by Jesus' death, justice is served, is to pervert what justice means: Jesus was said to be morally perfect and thus innocent. Letting someone innocent "take the fall" for someone guilty is not just. It's merciful on the part of the one who volunteered to take the fall. <<

Perhaps we can relegate this to our next debate.

>>Probably a good idea. This can get convoluted in a hurry.<<

To say something “ought” to be a certain way becomes a meaningless distinction, simply a set of neurons firing in your brain at the present time, if there are no consequences. It immediately begs the questions, “Who says so?” and more importantly, “So what?” To put a moral standard out there that no one need follow might avoid the unpleasant thought of ultimate consequences in the afterlife, but it would seem there is little value in following this moral law, and little danger in breaking it. I would be eager to hear your thoughts on this, though, since I haven’t studied it except for a cursory reading online…

>>In responding to that, I would point out that there are no consequences for not believing that 2+2=4. Morality, to me, is the same way. You don't have to have consequences in an afterlife in order to make something true.

Causing harm is immoral. You (all of us) ought not cause harm.

That's just the simple truth of the matter. Trying to get into why, and how, and whether or not someone believes it or accepts it are all different issues. I would say, briefly, that just as singular objects have a metaphysical property about them that we call "1", so moral actions have a metaphysical property that we call "good" or "evil". The labels themselves may be arbitrary (imagine for a moment switching around the labels, or the numbers), but the underlying properties are not. And the underlying properties (causing harm, or alleviating suffering) exist independently of our human mind and desire.

In the same way that 2+2=4, morality is all about causing harm and recognizing the symmetry principle: you have to apply the standard of actions to others that you want applied to yourself.<<

Looking forward to more good discussions on Truth, Andy

Me too! Now it's your turn. Tag, you're it!

I'll post the responses later on. Since it took us a few months to get this dialog fully going, it'll probably be a while.

A brief comment on presuppositionalism

An old friend of mine wrote me and told me about finding something negative (I'm not linking) about me via a web search for atheism. Hint: it involves Frank Walton.

I was reminded in looking at Frank's site of how pathetic he really is, which led to me remembering when I actually used to waste time arguing with people like him, the Triabloguers and other presuppositionalists. They waste such time by doing something simple: conflating strict reductionist physicalism/materialism with atheism.

When one begins with the fundamental presupposition that God has spoken in the Scriptures in Christ’s Law-word, you are left with the only worldview that can consistently allow for immaterial, universal, and abstract things like laws of science, laws of logic, and abstract concepts.

Funny, I thought there were numerous metaphysical ways to describe universals, properties and relations besides "Jesus"...

As has been pointed out before, the absurd burden of proof which these guys place on themselves requires them to show how every other explanation in metaphysics is logically inconsistent. Quite a tall order, given that brilliant philosophers have spent centuries thinking about these things. Instead, they use a simple straw man wherein atheists must be strict materialists who cannot embrace nominalism or conceptualism or any other theory of universals.

In addition, they hold that internal critiques are all that can be done "across worldviews" because of different presuppositions, but then proceed to contradict that by saying that certain basic beliefs are not justified within other worldviews (i.e., that logic is self-evident and incorrigible, that morality is about causing harm, &c.)

Great atheist images

I've given you wise words before, so here are some hilarious images, courtesy fruitloop and her cool Believers Anonymous site:

Same image, different perspective:


I like it, and her 12-step program idea. We used a similar image at GF until Ryan made the cool logos we have now. Another good one from her profile:

See more of her work at cafepress...

The fear of reprisals among atheists

The conversation on the message board at GC is turning to the issue of making our membership directory there private to non-members. (It is now private) Charlie, the same guy I debated concerning alternative energy, has of course waxed poetic randroid-style about fear and courage and individuality. While I think comparing the "coming out as atheists" thing to a civil rights movement is fallacious, I do know of many instances of workplace discrimination and illegal terminations based on atheism. However, I don't like the comparison between atheist "movements" and civil rights movements:

Most important is that this isn't about ending some entrenched economic system or clear and flagrant inequality before the law. We have none of the same legal and moral authority that civil rights and abolitionist groups had on their side. And it was this very issue that became an argument a while back between D.J. Grothe and PZ when atheists today were contrasted to civil rights crusaders in the 60s. Ditto with gay rights groups, who are still denied marriage and have been targets of violence since time out of mind. We have to go back to the Puritans or Bruno to get that sort of comparison with atheists.

Honestly, I think that I could be fired if parents found my blog site and/or the extent of my Godless Columbia ties and decided to go to the headmaster with threats of withholding gifts. My school runs on donations, and they'd find some way to justify getting a new chemistry teacher. But, this sort of prejudice is not akin to the legal discrimination that other groups face based on race, sex and sexual preference.

If people want their privacy, they should have it, while not walking around worrying about being the victim of a hate crime like that at the UU of Knoxville. Now, on to the latest post:

I think everyone is making more of this than what it is. I don't think anyone is more out there than myself, and the negative backlash I have received has been minimal.

I think you should separate out two very different things:

1) fear of violence
2) fear of reprisals -- attempts to smear you, get you fired, &c

As for (1), you are a physically-large male with an agressive attitude, so it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that you neither worry about, nor have reason to, acts of violence directed against you for your lack of religious beliefs.

As for (2), you are lucky. Many of us work in places that we can easily be fired for minor offenses, and although saying, "I'll sue!" sounds good and all, at best, this will lead to months of no pay followed by (hopefully) reinstatement and some coverage of our legal fees. Given the conservative composition of the high courts and recent relevant rulings in areas of labor protection, especially Enquist v. Oregon Dept. of Ag. (ruling), I wouldn't hold my breath.

I keep a blog that my boss reads on a regular basis where I publish my unvarnished opinions on anything and everything. No backlash. In fact, it is often the topic of conversation at work.

Then you are obviously lucky to work under someone who isn't a bigot. Many are not so lucky. I don't think that the people here are worried about "people not liking me at work," but rather, some Evangelical type supervisor who would find a way to start putting undue pressure on you or finding ways to discredit your job performance once they learned.

People disagree with me, but they respect me. That is because I don't hide in fear or shame.

When I was at the University of Florida, I started the only non-theistic student group on campus and went on Hannity & Colmes to argue against the placement of a Decalogue monument in Dixie County, Florida. While we were there, people cussed at me from the crowd gathered around and said crap to my wife while I was on-camera. (Unfortunately, the satellite feed was cut off right as it was getting ready to be my turn to talk to Alan Colmes, who would've let me speak uninterrupted for a few minutes. I still wonder if Hannity had me cut off because I sounded half-competent and cognizant of the facts surrounding the other cases he referenced...)

Does that sound like I "hide" from being an atheist?

However, now that I'm working, with a baby on the way in about a month, the security and stability of my job is far more important than having my atheists.meetup.com profile public. In the question of risk versus reward, what is the reward? The real risk I face is in having a parent at my school find this site and rally a bunch of other parents to have me fired. Given that my school is run by donations and gifts, if even one "high roller" put pressure on them to get rid of me because, "We don't need no elitist bastard atheist teaching Johnny or Janey," I have little to no doubt that I'd be gone.

The real threat here is not getting assaulted or fired. It is being embarrassed. It is sticking out from the herd. It is being an individual.

If you say so. Sounds to me like you don't really care about the evidence of discrimination based on atheism in the workplace and school for others. You just choose to pretend all that doesn't exist or doesn't matter. If you feel strongly that it's about "being embarrassed" then that's all that matters to you, right?

I am with Seneca when he said that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

Yeah because having a public membership directory of a meetup group is to "die on your feet", while having a private one to non-members is to "live on your knees"...

Believe me when I say that everyone of you is more likely to die or be injured in a car wreck than to be assaulted or lose your job as a consequence of being a freethinker.

So do you wear a seat belt, or is that also fear? Do you show courage and "die on your feet" by not wearing a seat belt?

It's about risk and reward Charlie, nothing more. Having a private membership directory to non-members is not "hiding in fear" any more than your wearing a seat belt in the car is "driving in fear".

William Lane Craig on Richard Dawkins' "Ultimate Boeing 747" Argument

A caveat first: I'm not a huge fan of Dawkins or The God Delusion. However, Richard Dawkins brings up a good argument, "the ultimate Boeing 747 argument" in his last book, The God Delusion: it's basically the idea that if the complexity of the universe requires a designer, then the complexity of the designer becomes the next focus for argument. Fred Hoyle once famously said that abiogenesis was like claiming a tornado could hit a junkyard and assemble a working 747. The implication is that life is very complex (like a Boeing 747), and thus it couldn't have come about without another (intelligent) cause.

Dawkins' response: If complex things require intentionality or causation, then what about God? Isn't God more complex than the universe, given that God is capable of creating the universe? The basic response to this argument has so far been to claim that, no, in fact God is simple...just as William Lane Craig responds to Dawkins':

So Dawkins' argument for atheism is a failure even if we concede, for the sake of argument, all its steps. But, in fact, several of these steps are plausibly false. Take just step (3), for example. Dawkins' claim here is that one is not justified in inferring design as the best explanation of the complex order of the universe because then a new problem arises: who designed the designer?

This rejoinder is flawed on at least two counts. First, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent, extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there. In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn't be able to explain the designer.

Secondly, Dawkins thinks that in the case of a divine designer of the universe, the designer is just as complex as the thing to be explained, so that no explanatory advance is made. This objection raises all sorts of questions about the role played by simplicity in assessing competing explanations; for example, how simplicity is to be weighted in comparison with other criteria like explanatory power, explanatory scope, and so forth. But leave those questions aside. Dawkins' fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that a divine designer is an entity comparable in complexity to the universe. As an unembodied mind, God is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it. In contrast to the contingent and variegated universe with all its inexplicable quantities and constants, a divine mind is startlingly simple. Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas—it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus—, but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity. Dawkins has evidently confused a mind's ideas, which may, indeed, be complex, with a mind itself, which is an incredibly simple entity. Therefore, postulating a divine mind behind the universe most definitely does represent an advance in simplicity, for whatever that is worth.

On Craig's first point, the problem is that Intelligent Design Creationism is a joke, as it doesn't "detect" anything. Furthermore, although there are parallels in detecting intelligence from archeology, because we know what humans do and what to look for, the sort of intelligent designer implied by IDC is supernatural. Given that IDC also claims that our place in the cosmos is "privileged" -- the anthropic principle -- this would require the "designer" to have tuned the very physical constants that any naturalistic designer would be controlled by. Unlike in archeology, where we find artifacts that we can reliably infer intelligence or design in, as we have a basis for comparison (ourselves) with which we are intimately familiar, the "designer" in IDC would be so alien and preternatural as to remove our capability to even recognize its handiwork.

On Craig's second point, I think that it is Craig who is confused. Craig claims that a divine mind would be "an advance in simplicity" -- but this refers to philosophical economy: Ockham's razor, if you will. However, in addressing Dawkins' argument, Craig claims that an "unembodied mind" is somehow a simple entity. The problem with this argument is that even if I were to grant that an unembodied mind could exist, which is problematic, God is able to create a physical universe, and thus cause it to exist, in addition to thinking it. Furthermore, Craig's God not only creates the universe ex nihilo, He interacts with it and even becomes physical within it. If these things don't make God more complex than the product of His creation, then what could?

If something or someone X can create something or someone Y, then alter its properties post creation, then selectively become part of Y in a controlled manner, and none of these things can occur from Y -> X, but only from X -> Y, is X not more complex and less simple than Y?

I think Craig's premise is not only unsupported, but is almost self-evidently false: X is more complex than Y, and Craig's God is more complex than the universe it creates, alters, becomes one with...&c.

Therefore, Dawkins' argument stands: appealing to the argument from design in saying that complexity demands simplicity does not get us anywhere when the designer is purported to be more complex than that which is designed!

Skeptical thoughts re the Bible

I've made no bones about my feeling that the resurrection is a myth, as well as the birth narratives. I've also explained why skepticism is warranted when approaching the Bible in general, given the nature of ancient superstition, the lack of fact finding capabilities for writers in the era, the relative dearth of gospel-related facts in the earliest NT (Pauline) manuscripts, the growth of legend as the gospels aged, and so forth.

I just wanted to highlight two posts at my old haunt that are very good on these issues:

1. Why I don't believe in the resurrection, by Matthew Green
2. Where is the 800 pound gorilla? by Bart Willruth

A lot of the stuff being written at DC is sort of "pop culture atheism", but the overall tenor of conversation there is much higher than, say, the RRS.

Feynman on doubt and uncertainty

Voltaire once said:

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

I found a great video of Richard Feynman talking about living with uncertainty:

For those of you who can't watch video or have slow connections, here's the transcript:

Richard Feynman: You see, one thing, is I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing then to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and there are many things I don't know anything about; such as whether it means anything to ask, "Why we're here?" and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit and then if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a strange universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

I'm tempted to go a step beyond Feynman here and say that not only is it possible, or okay, to live with doubt and uncertainty, but that it is a given. The only question is whether or not we place those doubts and uncertainties below a thin layer of a faith claim. When people say, "I know God exists and created the universe," they know no such thing. They believe it and have faith in it, but they don't have warrant to have "justified true belief," which is the definition of knowledge. And so no religion gives knowledge, they simply give a measure of certitude, proportional to how much a person decides they'll put "faith", or unjustified belief, in something.

Godless Columbia

When we moved to Columbia in August, I felt the culture shock for a while. Eventually, work swamped me to the point that I didn't have time to reflect on it much. Besides Gainesville being ranked number one of the best places in America to live, it was a "college town" in the sense that USC does not make Columbia. This city is the state capitol and is rich with secessionist history and Dixie pride, while G'ville really had only UF to its merits. In February, during a lull (winter break at my school), I decided to poke around and find out if there were any atheist/freethought groups here in Columbia.

Almost to my surprise, there are a few.

I first found a secular humanist group here, but it seemed pretty dull. I emailed one of the officers there and he directed me to Godless Columbia, a more social, informal and active group. I joined it in February. I attended last night for only my second time, at the meeting at Starbucks in Sandhills and we discussed making a website and a logo. This morning, I bought the godlesscolumbia.org domain and constructed a page there using Blogger. I also put up a facebook group for good measure. Go check it out.

I'm pretty proud of what I was able to do in such a hurry.

I found out this morning that USC has something of a freethought group, although their web presence is a little weak: a Pastafarian group. At least there's something here, which is almost surprising, considering the history of Gator Freethought and the relative size and demographic disadvantages here. The former group, Carolina Freethinkers Association, registered with CFI, went defunct after a short while, the faculty advisor told me.

I'm not sure that I really have the time or desire to get involved in leadership in a group again, but I certainly enjoyed putting together those web resources this morning, and I hope they ameliorate the group's membership and activity in some way. I've grown a little more realistic (cynical, probably) in my vision for what websites can do. When I started GF, I thought everyone there would want to join and contribute to the blog, and that it would be like a hive of activity. Now, I see that a group's primary lifeblood is its meetings, while website are only great for sharing information and preparing for said meetings.

One of the things I've never liked about groups such as Godless Columbia is when it seems that those attending meetings only rave or rant about atheism or religion on a "pop-culture" level, repeating common fallacies and engaging in fallacious generalization rather than engaging on a respectable (philosophical) level. This group falls more into the Kelly at RR category than my friends at GF, so I'm not sure I'll even attend very many meetings. They don't seem interested in setting up debates or guest speakers, nor engaging academically with the "other side" to any degree. We'll have to wait and see.

I get email: Atheist professor and Christian student

Every once in a while, you receive emails that deserve a blog post to respond to. To me, if the email has either arguments that are poor and thus ought to be shown as such, or the topic is a common misconception, or you've received this email multiple times, that warrants a thoughtful response. Two recent examples:

1. "Muslims cannot be good Americans"
2. "America is a Christian nation"

Interestingly, my mother sent me the following email back on 1/12/08, and I just received it yesterday from a former high school chemistry student of mine. I changed a few things around, but largely used the text below to send this response to her.

It can be found in different forms online, and there are some who have taken the time to respond to it at length. Even though it reads like a bad Jack Chick tract, I think one thing in it is worth responding to: the proposed "contrast theodicy", aka the Augustinian privatio boni theodicy, to the problem of evil.

Interestingly, this part of the email is lifted from another email chain in which Albert Einstein was supposed to be the student; snopes.com debunked that a long time ago. Since I think there are a few things fallacious about the email, and since I think a lot of people read emails like these and hold misconceptions that this email affirms, I want to respond to it.

This is about a college freshman. I would not have had the maturity to do this.

God vs. Science (long but worth reading)

A science professor begins his school year with a lecture to the students, "Let me explain the problem science has with religion." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand.

"You're a Christian, aren't you, son?"

"Yes sir," the student says.

"So you believe in God?"

"Absolutely."

"Is God good?"

"Sure! God's good."

"Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?"

"Yes."

"Are you good or evil?"

"The Bible says I'm evil."

The professor grins knowingly. "Aha! The Bible!" He considers for a moment. "Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?"

"Yes sir, I would."

"So you're good...!"

"I wouldn't say that."

"But why not say that? You'd help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn't."

The student does not answer, so the professor continues. "He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Hmmm? Can you answer that one?"

The student remains silent.

"No, you can't, can you?" the professor says. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax.

"Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?"

"Er...yes," the student says.

"Is Satan good?"

The student doesn't hesitate on this one. "No."

"Then where does Satan come from?"

The student falters. "From God"

"That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?"

"Yes, sir."

"Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything, correct?"

"Yes."

"So who created evil?" The professor continued, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil."

Again, the student has no answer.

"Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?"

The student squirms on his feet. "Yes."

"So who created them?"

The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question. "Who created them?" There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. "Tell me," he continues onto another student. "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?"

The student's voice betrays him and cracks. "Yes, professor, I do."

The old man stops pacing. "Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?"

"No sir. I've never seen Him."

"Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?"

"No, sir, I have not."

"Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?"

"No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't."

"Yet you still believe in him?"

"Yes."

"According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?"

"Nothing," the student replies. "I only have my faith."

"Yes, faith," the professor repeats. "And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith."

The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of His own. "Professor, is there such thing as heat?"

"Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat."

"And is there such a thing as cold?"

"Yes, son, there's cold too."

"No sir, there isn't."

The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain. "You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit up to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees."

"Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it."

Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.

"What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?"

"Yes," the professor replies without hesitation. "What is night if it isn't darkness?"

"You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word."

" In reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?"

The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. "So what point are you making, young man?"

"Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed."

The professor' s face cannot hide his surprise this time. "Flawed? Can you explain how?"

"You are working on the premise of duality," the student explains. "You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought."

"It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is
not the opposite of life, just the absence of it."

"Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?"

"If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do."

"Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?"

The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going. A very good semester, indeed.

"Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?"

The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. "To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean."

The student looks around the room. "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?" The class breaks out into laughter. "Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir."

"So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?"

Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. "I guess you'll have to take them on faith."

"Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life," the student continues. "Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?"

Now uncertain, the professor responds, "Of course, there is. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These
manifestations are nothing else but evil."

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

If you read it all the way through and had a smile on your face when you finished, mail to your friends and family with the title "God vs. Science".

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1-2)

I hope you feel as dirty at the end of reading that as I did. The reason I say "dirty" is because this whole thing is such a caricature of reality and makes the atheistic position rude and mean in the form of the professor, while the theistic position is humble and polite in the form of the student. It is such a cheesy setup: the atheist is abusing his position to belittle a student while the student is showing great humility and courage in his manner of interaction and defense of his faith. Also, the dialog presents straw man arguments for atheism by presenting only a logical empiricist/positivist approach.

I also wanted to point out something else about the professor, besides his obvious meanness: he is an idiot. He begins the class by saying that science has a "problem with religion" but then goes on to make two separate arguments:

1. Evolution renders creationism false
2. The problem of evil renders theism false

The first reason that this professor is an idiot is that neither of these two is the same as science rendering religion false Creationism is only a subset of beliefs within only a few religious interpretations of a few religions! There are many religions which embrace evolution, and there are many non-theistic religions as well (e.g., Buddhism). By making the argument from evil, he is arguing from philosophy, not science.

The second reason that this professor is an idiot is that he is making an argument from logical positivism, but one completely distorted by needing to visually "see" anything that may be justified for belief. His criterion for warrant is absurd, and is completely unaware of how to respond when the kid asks him if he has "seen" evolution himself. Obviously, empiricism doesn't demand that we must ourselves visually see anything that warrants our belief, only that it be falsifiable and that someone (usually a scientist) has observed it, directly or indirectly, using any sort of instrumentation or test.

The third reason that this professor is an idiot is that he had no concept of how to respond to the claim that there "is no such thing as cold" or darkness or evil. Even using each of these as the absence of their dualist counterpart, one may and ought to respond that the words themselves serve as logical relations, or at least subjective perceptions: X is colder than Y, A is darker than B, Satan is more evil than an infant child...&c.

The fourth reason that this professor is an idiot is that he did not respond to the student's reiteration of the "contrast theodicy" in the way that I will:

The professor was quite "on the money" when he asked the student if he would cure others' sicknesses, and then pointed out that God does not do this, and so the student was "more good" than God in this way. This gets to the crux of the issue: does God have a moral duty and moral obligation to do good? (See here for more on that) Even if you grant that evil is "just" the absence of good, then any time and any where you point to an absence of good, then you are pointing to a dereliction of duty on God's part. So long story short, whether you call it "the problem of evil" or "the problem of absent goods" you still have a strong argument for atheism. When the student says "evil does not exist," after he has defined evil as Augustine's privatio boni (privation of good), he is, in effect, incoherent, because if this is true, then good should be everywhere in everything all the time. I sincerely doubt any thinking person, theist or otherwise, would assert such nonsense.

Those four things make the professor an idiot, and by extension, make the dialog a straw man argument for theists to present. Real arguments for atheism aren't presented here. If you are interested in more, there are some who have taken the time to respond to more of this dialog at greater length than I will.